Megan walks over for a better look; Skitter has fallen asleep in the front seat. Megan is too confused to be terrified for herself. "Oh, Godoh God." The malls seems drained of people, and the parking lot has cooled down to near emptiness. Traffic on the road above is filled with speeders and horns and bumps and squeals.
How to get home?
The sky darkens. She can hear herself breathe. It's only a week past the shortest day of the year and it feels it. Looking at Skitter, she's too afraid of his death to rifle his pocket for his car's keys. She creeps into the mall, now lit only by emergency bulbs. From a sporting goods store she takes a mountain bike and from the drug store some Tylenol-3, two nine-volt flashlights, and Bubblicious gum. A lost springer spaniel behind her barks and startles her. Outside, back in Skitter's car, she takes two handguns then sets out to navigate her way home through the craziness of the highway.
The two miles from Lynn Valley to Westview are vastly more insane than she could have conceived. Nothing is moving save for motorcycles and crazy people driving down the shoulders and over the embankments, plowing whatever lies in their way. Three times, men try to stand in her way to take her bike; three times, Megan has shot them in or near their feet and feels a bit sicker with each crack,
She realizes the next miles of highway leading up to the Rabbit Lane exit are going to be impassable. While planning her next steps, amotorcyclist pulls over in front of hera big bruiser Yamaha. The driver kicks the kickstand, hops off, winks at Megan, and falls asleep face-first onto the pavement.
Megan instantly hops onto the bike and guns it up Delbrook Road, through Edgemont and across Cleveland Dam. By now it's fully dark. She takes the utility road up to Glenmore then bombs down Stevens and into Rabbit Lane. She is home.
What an ucking-fay aste-way of an ay-day.
Hamilton wakes up with a crashing headache and tumultuous hangover; his brain feels like a boxcar full of dying aliens being buried in the desert soilan image taken from an old episode of Richard's TV show. Shortly before noon, he hobbles up for water, stubs his toe on a chair leg, curses, feels his head throb, and quickly snugs into the tangle of sheets and duvet that is his lair while he recuperates. The phone rings somewhere in the afternoon; he ignores it. Around three, he gets a glass of orange juice and the morning paper and tries to read the paper in bed, but he's still dizzy. He gives it up, turns out the light, and waits for Pam to return around six.
Wendy is lost in the forest. She is tired. She thought she knew the correct pathway home; now she has only the hushed roar of the Dam to the north to give her guidance. There is no moon or glow from the citythe clouds are too dense. The ten-speed is gone long ago, its wheels bent after snagging a root. She hears occasional explosions or booms down toward the city.
The path twists; trees that fell during last year's storms confuse her memory of the trails. Suddenly, there's a stream where there ought to have been soil and ferns where there ought to have been stone. Wendy falls to her kneesshe is beyond tired. She can't even begin to count the hours she has been awake. A half-formulated idea flits within her mind: She will build a nest of ferns to keep her warm until daybreak. This is only a foolish child's dream. She knows it.
She cuts her knee on a burl. She reaches down to hold the cut when in her peripheral vision she sees a pale yellow haze of light float downfrom the treetops, a shape and shade of green and gold, steadily falling down, down, down. She pivots her head to watch the light's steady downward sweep, steady and smooth like a glass elevator. It stops.
"Hello, Wendy." It's Jared, standing before her, impossibly young, unchanged from the sunny day he threw a football to a startled Wendy eating lunch alone in the bleachers.
"Jared? Sweetie? Is that you?"
The light that is Jared holds his finger to his lips and shushes Wendy. He extends his hand and Wendy clasps its lightnessthere is no actual touch sensation, yet suddenly she is warm. This is all she'd ever wanted.
She says, "Jared, I've missed you so much. I'vewe've all" She begins to blubber. "I loved you and I miss you and the world has never been the same since you left. And now I'm lost and I'm frightened and the world seems to be closing down and dying. I'm a doctor nowI was at the hospital today. Oh Wendy, stop being so emotional."
Jared kisses his fingers, flicks the kiss at Wendy, smiles, and makes a wanking off gesture. He nods his head to indicate that Wendy should follow. His long curly hair doesn't jiggle as his head moves. Wendy follows him, lit by his body's gentle sulfur color. Wendy's feet squelch in mud patches and her cheeks burn red, thwacked by damp salmonberry twigs. They wind through unfamiliar paths, and they reach a straightaway that Wendy recognizes. Jared stops. He moves his eyebrows the way he did two decades previously to indicate that he's leaving.
"You're leaving? No. Jaredno. Don't go. Please stay with me. Talk. I missed you so much. You were all I ever wanted. It's only half a world without you."
But Jared gently pulls away his hand and walks back three paces. He smiles and melts downward into the soil like a peg in a hole.
Wendy is left behind. She grabs a small stone at the point where
Jared's head left the path and crushes it so hard in her palm that her skin bleeds. For years, Wendy had thought the world was fine andcompletethat she could make do with what she had worked for and with what life had handed her. Now she knows this has never been true.
She arrives out onto the unlit street and sees her own house unlit, but decides not go there. She sees candlelight down the road at Karen's, so she walks that way. Once inside, she looks around at the familiar faces lit by the flames. She says to them, "I'm going to sleep. I'm not tirednot that kind of tiredI'm exhausted." She tumbles into a warm clump on the couch. Linus places a mohair blanket over her, and Wendy flinches at his touch.
25 2000 IS SILLY
"The Queen is dead."
"Go on," Richard says.
Karen continues: "The two princes are wearing blackout sunglasses. The Queen's body is being lowered into a grave. Only a few people are looking through the palace fence. It's dark outand raining. The grave is all muddy."
Silence.
"Karen, do you really have to wear that paper bag over your head?"
"It's not just one paper bag, Richard, it's three bags. I can't see my visions properly if there's even one speck of light hitting my face. Even candlelight. It's a recognized paranormal fact."
"You look like a joke wearing it."
"Yeah, a real triple-bagger, Richard."
"Richard," Hamilton says, "could you please shut up? Let Karen speak."
"Hamilton, stop being an alpha male for just one second and let Karen alone."
"Hey, Wendy, excuse me for being so interested in what is decidedly one great big dung heap of a situation. I thought you were asleep."
"I'm not going to sleep through this situation no matter how tired I am."
"He's right, Wen," Pam says, "this is an extremely not good situation. "
''''Quiet, everybody. If you want me to tell you what I can see, then be quiet. Could you all put your personalities on hold for just two minutes?"
Karen is trying to describe the collapse of the world to her friends, who are masking their fear with funeral gigglesa protective, ironic coating. "Okay. Let me seePam, did I just hear you yawn?"
Pam jumps: "Yawn? No! Tired? Not at all." The group is petrified of yawning, physical comfort, and anything that might make them restful or sleepy. Their coffee is strong.