The Cabin at the End of the World(68)

I ask you, Eric, is it here now?

He tells me no, but he thinks it will be soon.

Andrew charges across the room at me. He is crying and yelling, telling me to stop talking to Eric, to stop filling his head with nonsense and lies. To Eric he says you’re hurt and whatever you saw was a hallucination and you’re not thinking clearly.

I tell you, Andrew, I’m sorry and I’m not trying to convince Eric of anything and I want to help you both leave the cabin. That’s all I want to do now. That’s my only mission left in life, to help you both leave here and leave here alive.

Leonard says they have to choose again, and soon. His voice is a reveille, and the new part of me that isn’t an actual part of me stirs and I say yes without being able to stop the affirmation.

Andrew ignores Leonard and he tells me to sit in a chair and if I say another word he’ll kill me.

I hold my ground. If Andrew is going to swing that block hammer at my head, so be it. I tell you, Andrew, listen, Redmond’s truck is exactly three miles away from the cabin. On the side of the dirt road, about halfway between here and the truck, we hid the keys under a flat rock the size of a Frisbee. It’s slate colored, and half of it has a light-green beard of lichen and it’s maybe four steps off the road and into the brush. The rock is in front of a tree with a goiter-sized knot on its trunk. I don’t know what kind of tree, and I tell you, Andrew and Eric, I’m sorry. You can go now and try to find it yourselves, but it’ll be difficult to pick out the tree if you haven’t seen it before. So I am going to go with you.

Andrew says fuck you.

I say to you, Andrew and Eric, the four of us left our phones and wallets in the truck. Leaving the phones and the keys behind was our safety net. We’d decided we couldn’t risk having you overpower us, take the keys to the truck and simply drive away, leaving the world to die. Now that’s exactly what I’m going to help you do. I believe in what’s happening here, but I also don’t believe.

Leonard says my name like he’s a disapproving, disappointed parent, a self-appointed expert, an authority who has none. He tells me to stop talking about the truck and convince them to make the selfless choice. He says time is running out more quickly now.

I tell you, Andrew and Eric and Leonard, I don’t believe in this kind of god. I pause and laugh at myself. Instead of saying someone or something I’ve finally deigned to say the g-word, haven’t I?

I tell you, Andrew and Eric and Leonard, I don’t believe in this kind of devil, either, or in this kind of universe. I’m sure all of them will be disappointed to hear it. I laugh again, and I’m sorry, this is not funny. Not in the least.

I tell you, Andrew and Eric and Leonard, I don’t believe any of this is right anymore. I mean, I never believed it was right or moral, but I thought it had to happen to save the world, no matter what. Now I don’t. I am done trusting the process.

Eric tells Andrew that he should listen to me. That they should take me with them.

I am going to say that after we find the truck, I’ll go with them to the police and tell them everything about our four and the kidnapping and admit to all the crimes perpetrated here, even though I know I will not live long enough to speak to anyone who isn’t already in this cabin. I am going to tell them this and more, but Eric and Andrew fall into a shockingly ferocious argument and they ignore me.

I pick up the staff at my feet, the one Redmond custom made for me, the one with a function that was never explained but was wordlessly obvious, and it feels right in my hands and it feels so wrong I’d be happy if someone cut my traitorous hands off so I could never hold it again. I return to the darkness in the valley, and I’m alone and flowing away in the nothingness, and I’m alone in the cabin and the presence in light or whatever you, Eric, tried to explain to me is nowhere to be found. There’s no light. There never was. There’s only emptiness and lack and void and it all explains why the world is the way it is and I would scream if I could. Andrew, you’re pleading with Eric to stop listening to me, to consider that I might be lying about the keys so I can ambush you, that it should be so obvious I can’t be trusted. And, Eric, you’re telling Andrew to let me help, that you believe me and you need me to find the keys, you need me to get out. I run across the room on feet that do not feel the floor. The curlicued blade is raised over my head like a banner, a flag, an emblem of death, sorrow, and never-ending violence. Andrew, you tell Eric that you’re leaving now and you’re not taking me with you. Eric, you see me sprinting across the room, but you don’t warn Andrew.

I swing the staff down like I’m aiming to split a log. My torso bends and my legs squat autonomically so the full force and weight of my body is behind the strike. The edge of the blade smashes into Leonard at the top of his head with a wet smack and a chunky thud. I’m brought back from the nothing so I can feel the impact reverberate through my hands and arms. Leonard screams, high pitched and algorithmic, his damaged brain stuck on a wailing siren setting. The shovel blade has sunk into his skull and I anchor a foot on his lap for leverage to help pull it out. Leonard convulses and thrashes about and his screams are now a dying prey animal’s desperate and betrayed squealing. I finally work the shovel free and then I swing it horizontally and I swing it madly, sending the warped blade into his face and his neck, again and again. And at the end of it, I’m all me. I am swinging the weapon and I hit him as hard as I can until he isn’t screaming or moving.