Part 27 (1/2)

”That's not going to help you,” Roxy says.

It's the first time she has spoken first.

Trevor thinks for a minute that she's taken to him, but her back is still turned, so there's no knowing. ”It couldn't hurt.” Hopeful, he chirps. ”Spot me?”

There's a long silence, as if she's thinking about it. Then Trevor hears her snoring.

On Monday his hair starts to thin. It isn't falling out, it's just vanish-ing. By Friday he's bald.

He's not alone in this. Everyone else is bald, too. For the few people still out lurching around, hats have come back into fas.h.i.+on. The hats last for only a few hours, since everyone has for-gotten how to make them. He thinks about working out on the weights hut then thinks, Screw it.

He is so depressed that he orders pizza. Inexplicably, you can still get pizza delivered to your door, even though everything else has gone to h.e.l.l. After he pays he opens the box and sees that he can't recognize even one of the toppings. Shuddering, he offers it to Roxy.

She eats half of it before asking, ”Want any?”

”No thanks. Hey, you have hair!”

”I've always had hair.” She finishes the pizza.

He prays. It's hard to do when you don't know what you want and you can't see the face of the ent.i.ty you're talking to. Deep in the bas.e.m.e.nt, Roxy groans.

”Dammit,” he yells, ”if you're in love with me, why don't you just say so?”

He creeps down and looks in on her.Where she was tough and fit when he got her, Roxy has gotten a little stringy. It's as though her muscles have lengthened, like a runner's. He wonders at the change. Roxy is either sick with love, he decides, or sick with waiting. It would help to know.

Trevor picks love.

He coughs, and she raises herself on one elbow to look at him.

”What's wrong with you?”

”Gorilla troubles. You wouldn't understand.”

Daylight is now twenty-four hours long, but to compensate, nighttime also takes twenty-four hours. Sunrises take so long that everyone loses interest. The telephone cuts out in the middle of a solicitation, someone trying to get Trevor to change his long-distance phone company even though the last phone company is defunct. There will be no e-mails from Jane.

He sometimes checks anyway.

During one cloudless day, the windows melt.

Trevor can barely breathe. He doesn't know where all the air has gone, but it isn't where he needs it. Near his mouth. He crawls to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

What's happening? He gasps. ”Do you know what-what's happening?”

”Nope,” Roxy says.

”The whole thing's gone to s.h.i.+t. What's happening to us?” Trevor is interrupted by horrible high-pitched screeching outside. Fire ants the size of sport utility vehicles are roaming the street, eating anything that isn't made of metal. Trevor unlocks the cage, / have a gorilla, thank G.o.d.

Roxy kills the entire hive in the time it takes him to make a milkshake. She returns to the cage and takes a nap. Later that night, in bed, he remembers that he forgot to lock the cage. He decides to screw it. He thinks, there's always the chance that she'll decide to come to me; when I least expect it she'll sneak upstairs . . .

Because things like disease and Armageddon happen to other people, never to us (for we are special), what really happens always comes as a surprise. A freak accident. A mistake!

Therefore Trevor wakes up one day with fear rising in his throat, the suffocating thought that this is his last day on earth.

He says, the way you do when you know it can't possibly be true, ”This is my last day on earth.” He's right.

He staggers to the front door and grapples it open. He looks outside and sees nothing.

No city. No streets. No newspaper on his front step. There is nothing to see except the dry wasteland that stretches in all directions. The dust at the end of the world? He doesn't know.

When you are special, even at the end of the world you carry on. It's What One Does. Business as usual. Carry on, and destiny won't notice you. Hold your breath and clamp your elbows to your sides. Small gestures. Nothing to attract attention. Wait, and the fates will pa.s.s you by Roxy joins him in the living room, where he's eating, for all he knows, the last frozen lasagna on the sere, blasted planet.”Roxy, thank G.o.d!”

”I'm hungry.”

”Can you save me?” he asks.

”Not at this point.”

”Why?”

”You're too weak. You think too much.”

”I think too much?” Staggered, he considers it from all sides. ”What does that mean? What do I think too much about?”

”Everything.”

”Does thinking make me weak?”

She polishes off the lasagna. ”See?”

”It doesn't make sense!”

She licks the lasagna wrapper. ”My point,” Roxy says.

Bemused, he looks at her. The open cage. The hook latch on the cellar door. ”Why didn't you escape?” She stayed because she loves me. She does!

”This place was as good as any other.”

”Don't you love me? ”

He dies before she has to answer.

Roxy packs up food and water from the kitchen, a couple of steak knives, a plastic bucket, a blanket, and a string of pearls. She sets off toward the horizon, in no particular direction.

Whatever else happens, in this new world, the gorilla always survives Bob Vardeman has done it all in science fiction and out of it- he's also written westerns, fantasies, and just about anything else you can think of, including original Star Trek novelizations and, most recently, h.e.l.l Heart (Vor #5). He's particularly adept at melding himself into series books, but when he turns to something purely of his own invention, watch out.

”Feedback” is a weird one-it's about s.e.x (which means that you've already stopped reading this headnote and started in on the tale that follows) but it's also about much more.