The Cabin at the End of the World(65)

Sabrina continues, “—and the apocalypse is another step closer. And if you don’t choose and the last of our four dies—” Her fist swallows up the last finger.

Eric says, “The final darkness. That’s what Leonard said.”

“—then it’ll be the end of everything. When the last of us are dead, there are no more chances for you to stop the apocalypse.”

Andrew wobbles across the room toward Sabrina. “I said stop talking.”

“Before we got here, Leonard and I wanted to spell it all out for you, tell you everything we knew as soon as we walked into the cabin. Redmond and Adriane talked us out of it. We knew we had an impossible sell and, look, we’re not stupid or crazy—I wish we were crazy . . .”

Leonard says, “You’re not crazy.”

“I think it’s both now,” she says without explaining what she means. “Andrew, you weren’t going to believe us, believe why we were here, believe in the choice and the consequences, especially when we first presented it to you, and maybe not ever. So we couldn’t risk telling you we would kill each other off one by one if you chose to never make a sacrifice. We were afraid you’d wait us out, watch us kill each other, and then the world would end.”

“Get a chair, put it against the front wall, and sit down,” Andrew says.

“Maybe the world should end if any small part of it was made to be like this.” Sabrina nods as though she’s made a decision or a pact. She faces Leonard and points at the television. “Did you know this bird flu show was going to be on?”

Leonard is surprised by her sudden pivot. “Huh? Y-yeah. Well, no. I mean, I didn’t know there would be a show like this, or what kind of, um, plague, there’d be, or even where, but I knew there’d be some kind of deadly illness.”

“How’d you know?”

“Sabrina, why are you—?”

“Before we came up here, you told us the plague would happen around nine o’clock if they didn’t make a choice in the early morning of the second day. Adriane and I had a vague sense of a plaguelike calamity happening after the tsunami but not the precise time. You gave us a time.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. I just knew the time it would happen, like it was always there in my head, waiting for me to find it.”

“You didn’t check the television programming schedule before we met up with you?”

“No, of course not.”

Andrew doesn’t know what Sabrina is doing, why she’s now grilling Leonard about the show and the timing, why she has seemingly flipped to arguing Andrew’s side.

She says, “Redmond said he knew the time, too. Did he tell you first?”

“No, I knew the time before he and I—or any of us—talked about it.”

“Are you sure?”

Leonard sighs. “Yes. I’m sure.”

“So he only knew the time because you told him?”

“I have no idea what he knew or was shown. Why all these questions now? You can’t doubt what’s happening—”

Andrew says, “I really don’t care anymore. You guys will have plenty of time to figure it out once we’re out of here. Take that chair and sit, Sabrina, or I’m going to have to hurt you both. Know that I won’t hesitate to hurt you.”

Sabrina says, “I’m going to help you and Eric leave here if you’ll let me.”





Sabrina


I tell you, Andrew and Eric, the four of us hid the keys to Redmond’s truck, buried them a few paces away from the dirt road. Or maybe I should say O’Bannon instead of Redmond because even if Andrew is mistaken, I believe that’s who he is now. Redmond was awful even when I first encountered him on the online message board. He made jokes about posting dick pics and asked what Adriane and I were wearing while we shared the dreams, nightmares, messages, and visions we were all experiencing, and what it was doing to our lives. Despite Redmond, I was relieved there were others living through the same thing. Yes, obviously our shared visions were terrifying, but as frightened as I was, finding the others meant I wasn’t alone, and it meant I wasn’t having some sort of psychotic break and I could stop the obsessive self-analysis and self-diagnosis. The first night on the message board together, we didn’t know yet what the visions meant or that we had any part to play. I hoped we were going to be like prophets, or something. Warn people, you know? Warn them about what might happen if we didn’t stop doing all the shitty things we’re all doing to one another and to the environment. I told the others how it started with me hearing whispers a few nights before while I was in line at In-N-Out Burger. The burger was my reward for a long day of entrance exam prep; I was planning to apply to nurse practitioner master’s programs in the California State University system. So at first I thought some creep behind me was whispering in my ear. And it wasn’t just hearing the whisper; I felt breathed-out air pushing through my hair and brushing the rim of my ear. I turned but there was no one in line behind me. I must’ve looked like a lunatic spinning around like I did. I tried to pass it off as my own yammering brain unable to come down from study mode and I pawed at my ears like there was a fly or mosquito dive-bombing me. I nearly shouted my order at the confused kid behind the counter. The whispering continued and I thought maybe it was the clunky air-conditioning operating at some weird frequency, so instead of eating at the restaurant like I’d planned, I scooped everything off the tray and ran out to my car. I was exhausted and now totally freaked out and the voice was still there with me. It wasn’t in my head. It sounded like someone talking through the tiny speakers of a cell phone but when the phone wasn’t against my ear and was instead crammed inside my jeans pocket, or lost inside my bag, or it had fallen down underneath the driver’s seat. Believe me, I’ve thought long and hard about this and I know it’s what a crazy person who doesn’t know she’s going crazy would say, but it wasn’t in my head. That small voice existed independent of me and it was coming from somewhere inside the car. I drove home with the radio tuned to KRock and blasting at full volume. I shouted and I sang along with songs I didn’t know the words to. I parked and ran up to my little second-floor studio apartment, fumbling with the keys at the front door like some slasher movie victim moments before the knife blade flashes, and then I was inside and I dropped my food on the kitchen table, which was covered in papers and the exam practice booklet. The apartment was quiet but for the ticking of the central air and muffled steps coming from the floor above. No voice or whispers, but my apartment seemed off, like it had been staged to look like the way I would’ve left it, but there were imperceptible inauthenticities. Something was wrong, or would be wrong, and all I could do was wait for the wrong to happen. The more I listened, percolating up from below those everyday background noises I usually ignored, there was a high-pitched ringing, the kind you get in your ears after a really loud concert, but it wasn’t coming from inside my head or my ears. A spanned distance was communicated in how it sounded. A great, impossible distance. The ringing pitched lower, like the hum of slowing fan blades, and focused into words that were in my own voice but not a voice I’ve ever used. I sat and I listened. I never ate that stupid burger and I fell asleep at the table and I dreamed. Those dreams from that first night are a deck of used playing cards, the colors faded, corners bent and peeling, and some of the cards are missing and I don’t know which ones are gone but they are the important ones, the most important. I do remember everything the voice said to me, though. And I remember the physical part of listening. I remember what those words felt like.