The Book of M. Peng Shepherd

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      The day after there was no more electricity, Rhino and Marion returned from the far side of the mountain stumbling under the weight of a small elk. The wedding band made a fire in the fancy stone pit in the courtyard using the strange, empty dollar bills as kindling. We burned it all. Not a single person kept even one piece. We wanted it gone. They roasted the elk while you, me, and a couple of other guests from Paul’s side went through what was left in the kitchen and separated it into “eat tonight, before it goes off,” “eat within the next few days,” and “save as long as we can.”

      The singer didn’t want to sing that night, or anymore. The rest of the band played something instrumental, and we all feasted on elk steak, shrimp, random fillets of fish, and a metric fuckton of ice cream.

      Tomorrow was going to be a lot worse than today, I realized dimly as I sat in front of the fire, digging around in my own personal gallon of mint chocolate chip. There was so much that every single guest got their own container. And the day after tomorrow was going to be a lot worse than tomorrow. Today was probably the last good day. After I finished that ice cream and crawled under our blankets with you and fell asleep it was never going to go back up again. Only down.

      “Want some rocky road?” you asked, and we swapped. The chocolate fudge was so gooey and sweet that it made the glands at the back of my jaw pinch painfully. That was probably never going to happen again either. A kind of sweetness so artificially strong that it could make my mouth ache.

      Suddenly I was crying again, before I even knew what was happening.

      “I have to pee,” I said hurriedly, and scrambled away from the fire before anyone else realized my eyes were swollen and red. I don’t think you saw.

      I stopped as soon as I left the manicured part of the hill and hit the trees, and found myself gulping desperately as I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. I should have savored it more, I thought. I should have fought violently for my favorite flavor. Then I realized someone else was already out here, probably doing the same thing in the trees.

      “The ice cream?” Marion asked through the darkness.

      I nodded. “It just …”—I tried to clear my throat—“it was so fucking good.”

      Marion snorted gently in agreement. I could tell she dug the toe of her shoe into the dirt only by the sound of it grinding.

      “It’s the phones for me,” she murmured.

      “Fuck,” I said. Her husband and daughter were still in San Diego. He’d had to skip the wedding to take care of their little girl who’d caught the flu. “Fuck, Marion.” I felt sick for having forgotten, in all the chaos. “What are you going to—”

      “Don’t,” Marion said. “I can’t think of it directly. Not yet.”

      I wanted to go to her, to hug her like we always did when one of us had just argued with a boyfriend or done poorly on an exam, but I didn’t know how to. We stood there for a while, pushing rocks around with our feet instead, not saying anything.

      There was no more ice cream. There was no more of a lot of things. But there was still you, Ory, here with me. That was something. That was more than hope.

      Marion’s outline, barely visible in the night, was leaning against a tree, holding some kind of leaf. It was so dark, I realized I couldn’t tell if either of us still had a shadow anymore. I think that was the first time it occurred to me to wonder, and the last time I could ever have that thought without compulsively checking to make sure my own was still there. Of being able to do nothing else, not even breathe, until I saw that it was still a part of me.

      “What do you think—” Marion spoke suddenly. “What do you think caused this?”

      “I don’t know,” I said. It was true. I didn’t—not for sure.

      She laughed. It didn’t sound much like a laugh. “Rob and I separated,” she finally said. All the air went out of me. “Two weeks ago. Hallie doesn’t have the flu. I was going to tell you at the reception, once we were drunk enough. But then Boston happened.”

      “Marion.”

      “I know it’s not karma,” she interrupted, cutting me off. “That would be—stupid. But I just can’t help but …” She took a shaky breath. “You and Ory, Paul and Imanuel—happy. Here we all are at the end of the world, and you guys are here together. I’m the only one with marriage troubles—and look at where I am, where he is.”

      “It’s not karma,” I said, desperately. “Karma doesn’t exist.”

      “I know,” Marion replied. “But it sure seems like it, doesn’t it?”

      I didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter. I knew what she wanted me to know: that if she’d known somehow that it really was going to end now—not in some far future time, but now, right now—she never would have left him. She would have cherished all the moments. We waited in silence for what felt like hours.

      “I’m going back now,” I finally said. I couldn’t think of anything to comfort her. There was nothing to say, without looking at the truth of it head on—no way to offer hope without also reminding her that she might never see them again.

      “I’m going to stay,” Marion answered.

      When I reemerged from the woods and sat down beside you again at the fire, Rhino was standing, stating to the group that he was going to drag his blankets out onto the grass after we put the fire out, because now that there was no electricity and therefore no air conditioning, it was going to be disgustingly hot in the ballroom where we were all camped out.

      He wasn’t really announcing it, I knew as I watched him. It was more that he was trying to ask the rest of us to join him without begging outright. For comfort in numbers. I realized that none of us had even tried sleeping in our individual guest rooms once. After the wedding reception had been interrupted by the news about Boston, we’d all banded together in the ballroom and never left, save to retrieve our suitcases and bring them back down. The courtyard where Rhino wanted to sleep was a couple hundred feet from where the rest of us were still set up inside. Nine days ago, that wouldn’t have been enough distance for me to be from a random stranger. Now it felt terrifyingly far.

      “That’s a good idea,” you said. “Let’s all move out here.”

      Over the top of the flames, Rhino looked at you so gratefully it made my eyes tear again.

       MAHNAZ AHMADI

      THE NIGHT NAZ CONSIDERED KILLING HERSELF, SHE SAW HER sister again.

      It was a few weeks after she finally took the Bluetooth headset off. She wasn’t sure of the exact date, but it was snowing outside, which meant she’d been in the studio for four or five months by then. Hiding, talking to herself, and beginning to starve. She’d rationed well, but there was no food left in the entire building anymore, or in the duffel bag. She’d gone out a few times to the roof, but all she could see beyond the vast, empty parking lot was darkness and the glow of flashing police lights, and all she could hear were the echoing sounds of people crying or being killed. She had her bow, but it was no good in situations like that. In the open or one-on-one, she might win. But against a crowd, in a city, a bow was almost useless. In close quarters, she’d never stop every single one of a gang before one of them reached her and took her down.

      She planned to jump. Or at least think about jumping, soon. Before the hunger made her too weak to find a quicker, more dignified death than starvation. Her mother had almost starved once, she’d told her. When the times were very bad. It was a way of leaving life that Naz never wanted to experience.

      But that night, there was a small, solitary shape standing uncertainly in the center of the