The Cabin at the End of the World(42)
Wen is on the couch. Eric didn’t witness her relocation from the kitchen table. Did she walk there on her own or was she carried, too? A blanket is pulled over her legs. Andrew is trying to get her attention and asks if she is cold, if she’s all right, if she wants to sit with him or Eric. She doesn’t answer and stares ahead blankly as though witnessing the horror awaiting their near futures.
The others pace around the room, searching for something they forgot to prepare properly. They circle like carrion birds, squawking and muttering. Each asks the others how they feel and if they’re ready. One of them says, “I can’t believe we have to go through this again,” and another one says, “I know,” and another, “This is so hard,” and another, “I don’t know if I can,” and another, “You can,” and another, “We can and we must,” and another, “This isn’t like a bad dream but I wish it was,” and another, “It’s real, the realest thing I’ve ever done,” and another, “Let’s just get it over with,” and another, “We have to do it right,” and another, “We owe it to them,” and another, “Give them a chance to save us all.”
Their positioning within the room shifts on some unseen, unheard cue. Adriane steps up between Eric and Andrew. Leonard and Sabrina retreat into the background.
Leonard says, “I didn’t do a very good job of, um, presenting the choice, yesterday.” Leonard looks at his watch and then looks everywhere else in the room but at Wen. “You’ll be great, Adriane. I know it.”
Adriane rolls her eyes and says, “Gee, thanks, boss. So, yeah, here we are again.”
Leonard and Sabrina gather the same weaponized wooden staffs they used the day before. They are held with purpose, with the confidence of already having been wielded properly and successfully.
Adriane is empty-handed. Propped against the woodburning stove, her cleaned weapon is a rustic decoration, something from an alternate bygone era, impractical as it is improbable.
Adriane says, “We”—she pauses to look over her shoulder at Sabrina, who nods encouragement—“are here to present you with the same choice you had yesterday.”
Eric says, “Look, we’re powerless here. It’s you three that have a choice, and a chance to do the right thing and let us go. You know letting us go is the right thing to do. You all seem like nice people who honestly don’t want to be doing what you’re doing. And the good news is you do not have to do this, any of this.” Eric feels more in control, feels more like himself, and the nagging echo of the vision of the figure in light he saw yesterday is more easily dismissed as a hallucination, or perhaps a visual symptom of an acute ocular migraine, something that he has suffered in the past.
Adriane twitches and rubs her arms, clearly uncomfortable speaking for the group. “No, we do have to. We don’t have a choice. Not like you. Even if we wanted to let you go, we can’t. It wouldn’t fly, man. We wouldn’t be allowed to.”
Eric focuses on Adriane’s fidgeting, empty hands, and with her weapon across the room, it occurs to him that she is next. He almost says aloud you will be next. If he, Eric, and Wen again choose not to sacrifice any one of themselves, then the other two will kill Adriane ritualistically with their weapons like they killed Redmond yesterday. Does he have it correct? It feels right but it doesn’t make any sense and at some point they would have to stop killing each other, wouldn’t they?
“So you guys have the same choice to make, and you have to make it now, same as yesterday. Same deal, right? I mean, you saw what happened on the West Coast.” Adriane points at the television, her outstretched arm reflected in the black screen. “How could you not believe us after watching all those people drown? We told you it was coming and when you didn’t make the choice, all those people died and died screaming, how could you see that and not—”
Andrew screams, “For fuck’s sake,” and thrashes around in his chair. “None of that had anything to do with us or you.”
Eric says, “Purely a coincidence.” The lack of conviction in his voice is obvious, so obvious the three others look at him as though they’re seeing him for the first time, as though they’ve made a discovery.
Andrew says, “No, it was not a coincidence. It wasn’t. You knew the Alaskan earthquake had happened already, before you came out to the cabin, and there was the tsunami warning and you planned your little visit here accordingly—”
Sabrina says, “That’s not true.”
“—so tell us what’s going to be on TV this morning? I know it’s almost time for something Leonard wants to see because he keeps checking his watch, just like he did yesterday. You know, I never realized the end of the world would be kept to such a tight, regimented TV Guide schedule. This is enough! This is insane! You’re all insane!”
Adriane shouts, “You need to calm right the fuck down and think for a second!”
Sabrina leans forward and speaks to Eric, as to his shame, he’s now been identified as the one who might believe them. “Even if we knew about the earthquake in the hours before we came here, why and how did we end up even coming here in the first place? I mean, how did the four of us strangers from different parts of the country know to randomly meet in the Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire? It was because we had visions, were sent here, were told to—”