End of the World Afterparty: Part Nine

For End of the World Afterparty: Part One, click here. 

For End of the World Afterparty: Part Eight, click here. 

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

At some point I heard a series of strange sounds and looked over to see that Alana was cutting off her teeth with a pair of nail clippers. While Jason watched with a mixture of horror and amusement, oblivious to the blood that dripped from her chin onto his pants, she moved on to one of her canines. This was during the fourth episode of The Walking Dead. I’d been sitting still for so long—afraid that if I even got up to pee, Jason would pounce—my legs felt like distant memories. When I tried to jump to my feet, my body moved sluggishly, like something half-awake, and for a moment my vision took me to the back rooms. 

“The hell are you doing?” I spat, startling Ian out of his fixation on the TV screen. Almost since we first sat down, he’d been mouthing the dialogue along with the characters, every single line, which up until this moment had seemed really freaking weird. 

When Alana answered me, it sounded like she was gargling marbles, one hand still half in her mouth as she yanked on a root, the other waving the nail clippers wildly, eyebrows raised like we were stupid not to immediately understand her motivation. But I got the gist of what she was saying, something to the effect of, “I told you I was turning. If I can’t bite you, I can’t infect you, so you’re welcome. This is what you get for not killing me.” 

Before she died, my nan had sounded like that when she took her dentures out, which was most of the time, because she hated wearing them and preferred eating soft foods like applesauce and mashed peas. She would have made the sweetest, most harmless zombie. 

Maybe that’s why, despite the look on Alana’s face that told me she was too crazed and mean to feel pain, I tried to wrestle the nail clippers from her grip anyway, propelled by some misguided urge to save a person who no longer existed. So of course that was when she reminded me that she was a black belt in jiu jitsu. 

One moment I was standing over her and Jason, hands slick with her blood as I fought for the piece of metal like it was the Hope Diamond or something, the next I was on the ground, questioning all my life choices as she twisted my arm out of joint. And all the while she kept yelling, a garbled, wet stream of words I could no longer make out past the pain running riot on the left side of my body. 

“Oh yeah, bitch-fight,” Jason shouted. 

While Alana busied herself trying to rip my arm off, Ann floated over like a questionable guardian angel and plucked the nail clippers from her distracted fingers. The writer’s eyebrows had made it a good two thirds of the hike up her forehead. “Could have used these to kill them,” she muttered. As she wandered away, I wasn’t sure I caught the last thing she said, but it sounded a bit like, “Would have been more interesting.” 

Once the first shock of pain wore off, I started thinking about fighting back. Problem was, Alana had trained for years and built some serious muscle. I…played video games. Turns out real life scraps are a little more complicated than pressing buttons on a controller. Who’d have known? Every time I tried to shift her off me, using my dubious core muscles and the fractured memories of moves I’d seen on TV, she counteracted my weight, until soon it became apparent I’d worked myself into a far worse position than when I’d started. 

Next thing I knew, Jason was down on the floor next me, face so close to mine it looked alien and distorted from this angle. “Damn, Singh, why are you always causing trouble? Maybe leave fighting for the heavyweights.” 

Dimly, I was aware of Ian, tapping on Alana’s shoulder like a little kid trying to get his teacher’s attention, saying, “You’ve made your point—you can let her go now.” 

When that didn’t work, he just shrugged and walked away as if it wasn’t his problem anymore. I wanted to call after him, to yell for someone to help me, anyone, but my chest was so constricted, I didn’t want to use any of the air I had left, and I knew Jason was waiting for me to beg. Even if it killed me, I wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. 

As if to prove my point, Jason whispered, “You know what to say to make this stop,” and I managed, despite myself, to spit on him. 

Time expanded, opening to become the event horizon of a black hole where I hung suspended, falling forever. But in reality, the whole altercation lasted only a couple minutes. I know, because I checked the footage. Eventually Ann stooped down into Alana’s field of vision and dangled the nail clippers like they were a tasty fish and Alana was a killer whale at sea world. It did the trick. The moment she let go, I curled in on myself, struggling not to cry as my left arm sent back error messages when I tried to move it. 

“Okay, get up, let’s see the damage,” Ian said gruffly, appearing out of nowhere to poke me with his toe like I was roadkill or something. In the distance, I heard Ann giggling maniacally as Alana chased her. 

Using my good arm, I pushed myself into a sitting position, hyperventilating so badly I could see stars. Someone had turned on the news, and now the old juice shop footage was playing in the background while the camera man got eaten alive. 

“I thought the camera man was supposed to be invincible,” I muttered. “Isn’t that, like, a universal law?” 

“Try to keep your breathing even,” Ian said, stooping down next to me. When he prodded the joint, I made suspiciously zombie-sounding noises. “Yep, looks like it’s out of socket. You need to relax.” 

“How exactly am I supposed to relax?” I ground out. 

“You stay tense like that, it’s going to hurt a lot worse going back in. You need your muscles loose. Hey Jason, you have any muscle relaxants?” 

“Hell, yeah!” Jason’s voice was a distant echo from across the room, unmistakably gleeful. “I thought you’d never ask.” 

“I’m not taking any muscle relaxants,” I snapped. “And who on God’s green earth made you doctor?” 

Ian laughed. “No one seems to remember, but I was a combat medic before I signed with Clothed and Unafraid. Ten whole years, right on the front lines. Even worked with UN peacekeepers.” He sounded proud of himself, and a little astonished, too, as if the person who’d been forgetting up until now was actually him. “Now, are you going to let me help you, or are you going to keep bitching at me?” 

I don’t know why it was then, of all moments, that I realized why I disliked him so viscerally, even though he didn’t seem as terrible as Jason or Mr. President. Maybe it was just the first time I’d stared directly at him. Ian had this look in his eyes like he was constantly begging you to absolve him of something, and I realized I understood where he was coming from, that he wasn’t good, and he wasn’t evil, because he didn’t have the guts to choose a side. I guess he thought that made him neutral, or maybe he didn’t care what he was, so long as someone else made the decision for him. 

“Alana is going to be a problem,” I whispered as he unbuckled the tactical vest and eased it off me. Strange, how I’d started seeing it as a protective shell, an extra layer to ward off Jason and every other threat here, and how, at the same time, I hadn’t realized how heavy it had become until I felt its weight leave me. When I glanced up to see if anyone else had heard my comment, I realized that Jason and Alana were nowhere to be seen, probably in the bathroom or the other room. Maybe they’d gone outside and abandoned us for good, I could always hope. And there was Ann, seated at Jason’s desk, typing frantically on his computer. “Alana’s a loose cannon. You ever read that story in school, about the loose cannon?” 

“Not much of a reader,” Ian said, and I couldn’t gauge from his tone or from his face what he was thinking as he gripped my arm and held it out. “Exhale in three. One… Two… Three—” 

For a moment, the universe exploded behind my eyelids, pain so strong it could have registered on the Richter scale, then all at once it died down to a deep, rotten ache I could at least live with, and I found myself able to breathe again. 

“Wish I had a sling or something,” Ian muttered. “You’ll want to avoid moving it for a while, until the swelling in the joint has gone down. If you’re not careful, it’ll pop back out. And you should really reconsider the muscle relaxants.” As he climbed to his feet and dusted off his pants, I tried and failed to ignore his subsequent lecture about how, now more than ever, I needed to stay out of trouble. “You’re a galvanizing influence,” he explained. “You keep getting everyone worked up when it would be in our best interests to remain calm and collected. People like you can bring a whole regiment down. Talk about loose cannons.” 

“Ian, I just want to leave.” By some cruel trick of fate, that was the moment I spotted a key, hanging from the edge of the desk where Jason had known I wouldn’t be able to miss it. The Mercedes-Benz logo was unmistakable. Staring at that key, I felt for it the same fierce need the zombies felt for us. “If, according to you, I’m the cause of all your problems, letting me go will solve them. I don’t understand why you’re helping Jason keep me trapped here.” 

Ian laughed bitterly, holding out an arm to indicate the door. “You’re free to leave any time you want. But I know you just like complaining. You’re choosing—choosing—not to go because you know you wouldn’t survive fifteen minutes out there without the rest of us. So far, it’s Jason and his guns that have been keeping you alive. But you’d think nothing of stealing from him and leaving him to die. That’s really selfish. You should be thanking him for looking out for your best interests when you’re so clearly incapable of doing so yourself, but you’re such an ungrateful child.” 

“Not you, too,” I muttered, before I could stop myself. 

“What?” he asked, sounding just this side of hostile, like a boomer who’s decided skateboarding in the park is actually so disrespectful. He couldn’t have been older than his late thirties, but he already had the belligerent look down pat. 

“Nothing.” Maybe it was the pain, or my growing desperation, but I figured I was seconds from exploding, even though I knew it would only make things worse. 

“No, you said something, and I want to hear it.” He stepped in, looming over me like a thundercloud on the horizon, his face the first glimpse of lightning. 

“You know, I hope one day you look in the mirror and see yourself for who you really are,” I snapped, surprised at my own bravery, even as I could feel the shaking start, first in my hands, and then in the rest of my body. “Jason is a predator. He kidnapped me, and you’re defend—” 

“He’s not a predator,” Ian snapped. “I don’t understand girls these days. You’re so quick to yell #metoo—no, shut up, I’m talking. Do not interrupt me. I miss the days when people had a sense of humor. You didn’t have to worry that a harmless joke was going to cost you your job. Now, I’m at the gym and I see some girl benching too much without a spotter, and she gets pinned, and I think, well, I’d help her, but she’d only demand to know why I was staring at her in the first place, or yell that she could have gotten it herself.” 

He leaned down so close I could feel flecks of spittle hitting my face. “A beautiful woman rings me up at the gas station, flirting and smiling like she wants me, and I can’t even ask for her number without her telling management I’m a creep.” 

“Maybe she was just being nice so she wouldn’t lose her job,” I muttered. 

He poked me so hard in my bad shoulder that my vision swam. “You see how it’s people like you who cause your own problems, spoiled selfish females who like to cry victim when a man so much as looks at them. One day you’re going to end up alone wondering why no one wants to be with you and your thirty-seven cats, and the irony is, it probably won’t dawn on you even then. You’ll be complaining, ‘ooh, ooh, woe is me, where have all the good men gone?’ Let me guess, next you’re going to go crying to Jason telling him I was too handsy when I fixed your arm, so he should beat me up. You like men fighting over you, is that it? You going to make me regret being nice to you?” He shook his head in patent disgust, face red enough to be on a Heinz commercial. “You’re so damn emotional.” 

I dragged myself to my feet. It seemed to take forever. I felt impossibly unsteady. All the while, my rage was thrumming through me like a live current, and even I couldn’t predict what was going to come out of my mouth next. “Bet you wouldn’t say that to your mother,” I whispered, and that’s when he punched me so hard the lights went out. At least then I didn’t have to listen to him talk. 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Oh, Singh.” Jason’s voice was the first thing I heard as I gradually swam to the surface. “You really should know better than to bring a man’s mother into it. Them’s fighting words, and you’re no fighter.” Worse than Jason’s monologue was the way my head felt like an overripe watermelon someone had dropped on the pavement. 

Then all at once, a new sensation took over: the cold bite of an ice pack against my temple. I cracked my eyelids open to take stock of the situation. 

“Bet you that’s another concussion—you know the damage is going to be exponential, right?” he said, sounding far too excited about it. His face was a distant moon, orbiting my awareness at dizzying speeds. “Who’s the current president?” 

“The guy at the bottom of the pool.” 

“How many fingers am I holding up?” 

“Twelve,” I grumbled, not even bothering to look as I spat out blood. My rage was so powerful, it threatened to paralyze me; it dug out parts of me to make room for itself because there was nowhere else for it to go. 

“That’s the spirit! All right, upsy-daisy,” he announced, grabbing me under my arms and hoisting me to my feet. For a second I stood there, wavering on legs as wobbly as those of a newborn horse, wondering if I was going to face-plant and embarrass myself further. At least Ian was nowhere to be seen. “Awww, does Singh need help?” Something about Jason’s mocking baby-voice propelled me the several steps to the couch, where I collapsed in an undignified heap. But at least I made it by myself. 

Before I could glory in my victory, he dropped the frigid ice pack onto my lap and plunked down so close beside me I could feel his arm pressing against mine. I scooted over, poking at the tender spot on my temple where a trickle of blood leaked out. 

“Let’s see, let’s see,” he demanded, as if he hadn’t already had a chance to assess the damage. When I tried to duck away, he grabbed my chin in a vise grip and yanked my head around to face him. “Damn, he clocked you good. Have you already forgotten what I said about not causing trouble? Because I’d be happy to remind you.” He licked his lips, flicking his tongue out like a lizard scenting the air. 

Briefly I considered the logistics of jamming the ice pack so far down his throat it suffocated him. “If anyone’s causing trouble, it’s your crazy girlfriend.” 

“Which one?” He laughed at my expression. “Oh come on, Gamer Girl, you’re no fun.” 

“Yeah, and how did you know to call me Gamer Girl?” I snapped. Maybe it was the concussion talking. 

He looked at me like the head trauma suddenly seemed a lot more serious. “Uh, because you play video games.” 

“Yeah, but I never told any of you guys that. I gave you exactly zero information about myself. My name isn’t even Singh.”

“Oh I know—it’s Eun-Mi,” he said casually, releasing my face as if I’d suddenly become the most boring thing ever. “I’ve watched your streams.” 

I stood sharply, hot panic taking over every muscle in my body, but he just reached up, snagged my elbow, and yanked me back down. “We’re watching the news right now, Singh. We’re bonding. I need you to chill for a bit. You’re not in any shape to run away.” 

“How the fu—” 

“Alana’s okay, thanks for asking. She’ll be touched to know you care.” He stretched his arms out across the back of the couch, and I leaned forward, wondering whether I was going to land on fight or flight, freeze or fawn. “She’s in the other room, lying down. I gave her a…uh…mild sedative, just enough to put her out for a few minutes. While there are definitely benefits to a girl with no teeth,” he winked at me, “she was getting a little too gung-ho about body modifications for my taste.” 

“Jason seriously, how the hell did you learn my name?” 

“You know what I like about you, Singh?” he asked, resting his arm around my shoulders. “You really do not know when to quit. When they were handing out the instinct for self-preservation, did you think they were saying like, self-persecution or something, and say no thanks? Because, damn.” 

When I looked over at Ann, I saw that she was still typing away at Jason’s desk, locked in a frenzied world so separate from our own, I wasn’t sure anything would be able to reach her. If I managed to escape, I told myself I would try to bring her, too, even if I had to drag her kicking and screaming—I could see the writing on the wall for us all if we stayed here. 

“Speaking of self-persecution,” I tuned back in just in time to hear Jason saying, “Ian claims you made some interesting accusations about me. Would you like to repeat them, find out whether or not they’re true?” 

“You of all people should know better than to listen to rumors,” I muttered, wondering when my life had started to feel like a reality show. This was doing nothing for me, sitting here and verbally sparring with him as if it was buying me time when I needed to be planning my escape. But of course my skull felt like it was filled with scrambled eggs, all congealed and rubbery. 

Onscreen, the news cycled through what must have been several older updates, confirming that the military barricade had been removed because cases had now been confirmed as far as Florida. Tactical retreat, they called it. Another clip included incidents in the midwest; the next mentioned California; all stuff that had been aired before. I wondered if the stations had been left unmanned, programmed to play canned clips on loop until the power grid went down, whenever that might be. For half a second I tried to run a mental tally in my head, but I couldn’t come close to figuring out how long I’d been stuck with Jason, and I felt myself slipping away into an endless whirlpool of time. 

After watching the update where our lizard-in-chief ordered everyone to stay indoors, I felt something worse than despair building inside me. We were under martial law, he’d informed us, explaining that anyone outside would be shot on sight, no questions asked. I wanted to call up my buddies and talk about how this was the perfect opportunity for the government to seize complete control, and maybe this was why they’d started this whole nightmare in the first place, but I found I couldn’t work up any excitement at the prospect. Those aspects of my old life felt so distant and removed from where I sat now, it was like remembering someone else’s past. If I escaped, I got the sense that I wouldn’t be able to avoid leaving something vital behind. 

“Still think leaving on your own is a good idea?” Jason whispered, leaning in. The sour tang of whiskey on his breath turned my stomach. 

“My mom is out there,” I whispered, hating how vulnerable I sounded. Suddenly the knowledge that Mom was in danger was like a monster trying to claw its way out of my ribcage. There were no guns at home, only the prop sword I’d bought to hang on my wall as a backdrop. Though it was solid metal, good enough to bludgeon someone if it came down to it, the edge was blunt and useless for slashing, and I wasn’t sure Mom would have the necessary strength. She wasn’t even five feet tall. As soon as I thought about that, I pictured her crouched on the floor in her old slippers, kitchen knife clutched in a death grip as she tried again and again to call me on the old, cordless landline. If she kept the door locked, I figured she stood a decent chance. Our apartment was on the top floor, with a fully-stocked pantry. But I needed to be there for her, not stuck in the jet stream of Jason’s daydreams. 

“Let’s hope she’s smart enough to stay inside,” Jason murmured. 

“What about your mom? Aren’t you worried about her?” 

His face did something strange then that I couldn’t decipher, and his laugh sounded almost confused. “I don’t think she’s in any danger from the zombies,” he said simply. Before I could pull away, he snatched the melting ice pack from where it sat forgotten in my lap and brought it up to my temple. “All jokes aside, you really should take care of yourself. It’s no fun if you die.” 

“What exactly is your endgame?” I demanded, wondering at what point my heart was going to explode from the stress of this tenuous situation. 

“Well, I would have thought it was obvious.” His voice turned low and husky. “I want to have fun. Think of it. There are no rules now, no laws to keep our darkest fantasies in check. Don’t tell me you don’t find that the least bit exhilarating.” 

“And when you run out of booze?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “The military is out there, threatening to shoot people on sight, in case you’ve forgotten. Realistically speaking, how long do you think you can sustain this party?” 

“As long as I want.” His eyes slid halfway shut as a contented smile took over his face. “When this place gets boring, we’ll pack up all the MREs we can fit into the Wagon and make our way back to my house where we’ll hole up in the basement until we need to find somewhere better. This right now,” he twirled a finger in lazy circles, finally letting go of the ice pack, “is just the beginning. It may look like chaos at the moment, but when the dust settles, a new society will emerge, run by the strong. Are you strong, Singh?” Without waiting for a reply, he snorted and shook his head. “Don’t bother—I already know the answer. But you’ll be safe if you stick with me. I’ll make sure your needs are met. All your needs. Maybe someday we’ll set out and join a roving band of scavengers who’ll accept me as their leader, and we’ll live like nomads, traveling the country and living off the unguarded spoils of the land. Most people won’t survive. But what remains will be ours to inherit.” 

By that point, I was only half paying attention to him. In my periphery, I’d caught a glimpse of a line of text, running across the bottom of the TV screen as the news switched back to the juice shop footage. “Killer still on the loose,” it said. “Authorities have temporarily suspended the search for author and serial murderer Ann Peletier, who is now believed to have killed at least fifty people.” 

Next to me, Jason fell silent as he followed my gaze, mouth frozen half-open. “This is the gift that keeps on giving,” he muttered, smile widening. 

Suddenly it registered for me. I’d remembered seeing headlines on the Google homepage about the Goodreads Killer, but it had always seemed like clickbait, the product of an urban legend rather than someone’s actual machinations, nothing more than a spooky story to frighten new book reviewers. “If you give her novels a one-star rating,” the story might go, if it had found its origins on r/nosleep instead, “you’ll turn up dead the next morning. They won’t know why you had to die, but she will.” It had seemed silly to assume an author was killing people who’d given her less-than-stellar reviews, ridiculous that she could get away with offing that many people, and equally ridiculous that anyone would ever make the connection if she did. How do you pick up on something like that, when the murders are so isolated and so far apart geographically, the motive so seemingly mundane? Who thinks to look at a victim’s Goodreads account, of all places? But I guess someone eventually made the connection and built a strong enough case for the judge to sign a warrant. 

Looking back, I realized where I’d failed to recognize Ann’s worrying comments for what they really were, confessions to crime, rather than the product of some fractured mind. 

“I wonder if the police are offering a reward,” Jason mused. 

In the background, I heard the sound of a door opening and closing, and when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw Ian stepping out of the bathroom, his dark hair wet and freshly-slicked back. When he noticed how close Jason was sitting to me, he rolled his eyes as if to say, “Predator, yeah,” and stalked off to the kitchenette where he dug out the instant coffee. 

Laughing, Jason leaned in so close his mouth was millimeters from my face and whispered, “Who do you think is going to go postal first: Ann or Ian?” 

I heard the sound of distant cursing as something clattered to the floor, and I knew what Jason was trying to do here, what sort of scene he saw playing out in the future. When I tried to scoot away, his arm trapped me in place, heavy and suffocating. “Get off me. Just let me go,” I tried to say, but almost no sound came out because my lungs couldn’t seem to pull in enough oxygen. My fear was so large, so absolute, it could only be observed in its entirety from space. 

“I tracked your IP address,” Jason murmured, pressing closer. “I found your streams one day, and I thought, no dude would go to such lengths to hide his identity—that’s for sure a chick. And I’ll give you credit: you did a decent job. But I know your name, your mom’s name, the fact that your parents are divorced, the last three places that fired you. I know that your mom is from South Korea and your dad is from India, but you were born in Michigan. I know where you live, Eun-Mi. This was always going to happen, one way or another. Fate just decided to work overtime for me outside the juice shop. So no, I am not letting you leave.” 

Dimly, I knew that I was hyperventilating, that every breath wrenched my bad arm until the pain became a living thing tucked neatly under my rib cage next to my heart. His fingers were sliding under the strap of my tank top, like worms digging through soil, foraging for nutrients, and I told myself to jump up, to punch him in the throat, to do something, anything. No one was going to stop him, I knew, not if I didn’t. But just like when I woke to find Mr. President chewing on my shin guards, I found myself paralyzed, locked in a fear so absolute it left no room for movement as my brain spun away screaming. 

“Where’s all that spunk gone? You’re like a deer in the headlights,” Jason whispered, nuzzling my neck. “Don’t worry though, I’ll be gentle.” He laughed. “The first time, at least.” 

I heard a high-pitched mewling sound, echoing through the open space of the garage as Ian clattered around in the kitchen and Mr. President splashed hungrily in the pool. The fact that the noise was coming from my own throat failed to register with my brain; I only know it was me from the footage. 

So it was my own deus ex machina when Ian chose that moment to approach Ann, read over her shoulder, and say, “Wow, for a published author, your writing is kind of shit.” 

Because that’s when we all learned how Ann managed to kill fifty people. 

 

Copyright © 2025 by Elizabeth Brooks