The Man Who Watched the World End (17 page)

Andrew was always at the far end of the sofa when Candace and I watched the movie. I tried to make out with her a couple
of times during our
Ghostbusters
sessions, but she would always push me away, saying it was weird with my brother right there.

“He doesn’t care,” I’d say, hoping that would be enough to let me touch her boobs. What can I say
, raging teenage hormones will do that to a boy. My lines never worked on her.

She had a Block sister at home
who she was more mature around than I was with Andrew. Looking back, I suppose I can see how it would have been awkward if I tried to put the moves on her while her Block sister was four feet away. I still apologize to Andrew each time the opening scene starts. That was always when I’d put my arm around Candace and make my move.

“I was young,” I still tell Andrew to this day, as if that made everything I did back then excusable. “Young and dumb.”'he. other

I only dated Candace for two years before she moved, but she was my only real girlfriend. We never even talked about a long-term future or anything like that, but after she moved I had an image of her in my distorted memory as being my last shot at getting married, having a normal family, and growing old with someone I loved. Yes, I still had flings after that, but to me, the prospect of a normal life ended when Candace left. That’s what I think about now any time I watch
Ghostbusters
, and it’s why I don’t like watching the movie very often anymore.

When her family moved I gave up trying to have the same kind of life my parents had. Everyone was starting to pack up
their belongings around that time anyway. There was a sense of misplaced urgency in getting to the southern settlements earlier than anyone else, as though the declining population would still somehow manage to overrun an entire city’s worth of vacant houses, condominiums, and apartment buildings, leaving no open residences for the last people to arrive. Deep down I think I knew right then, as Candace’s father drove her family out of the neighborhood one final time, that I would end up taking care of Andrew by myself until the day I died.

I never did find out if she made it safely to one of the settlements
. I never heard from her again at all. What happened to her after her parents took her away? Did she still think about me after she was gone, about the time we spent together in high school and also at senior week? I like to think so. I thought about her.

The supply of comics is gone.
Even some of my old clothes are gone. No one has found us. We’re alone. I try not to think about it too much. My dad’s Santa costume went in the flames today. I have no idea how many other items are scattered around the house that might serve to keep the fire going.

We need to be found, and we need to be found soon.

It was Andrew’s birthday today. As I do every year, I sang Happy Birthday to him. I didn’t go as far as baking a cake that he wouldn’t be able to eat (although I have done that before) or by lighting candles he wouldn’t be able to blow out (I’ve done that before too). We watched the
Star Wars
trilogy, just like we do every year on his birthday. When the final installment was over I turned the TV off, told Andrew I loved him, put a blanket over him, and went to bed.

There’s a framed picture of Andrew and me on my bedside table that never fails to
amaze me. My dad took the photograph when I was nine and Andrew was five. Andrew is sitting on the sofa with presents on either side of him while I’m sitting on the floor in front of him with half my presents unwrapped. I don’t look anything like I did back then: most of my hair is gone now, loose skin hangs off my arms, and I have more wrinkles than I ever thought possible. But while I don’t resemble the happy nine year-old anymore, there has never been a moment in all the time since then that I looked in the mirror and noticed a change from one day to the next. There has never been a startling moment when I saw a reflection of myself and was shocked at the sudden transformation. Andrew is the exact opposite. Sometimes I go out to the living room and can’t believe the person sitting on the sofa is the same person from that photograph. Instead of a young boy, I see an old man. When I see how old he looks now, I wonder where all the years went.

As a Block he has always been skinnier than me; he can’t do anything to create a semblance of muscle. That’s the only real difference between us, however. We share the same
brown eyes, the same bubbled chin. I see these characteristics in our childhood photos and I see them in both of us now, but I’m still amazed at how Andrew has progressed from being that little kid, my little kid brother, to an old man with a bald head and grey stubble over his cheeks.

The Blocks were quieter and skinnier than the rest of us, but they went through puberty the same age as everyone else. Each time I
had a growth spurt and needed new clothes, my old clothes were perfect for my growing brother. I still remember how happy I was when I finally outgrew a red and orange striped sweater my mother got me for my birthday. It looked like something a kid would wear the day of a family portrait and then hide in the back of his closet. Sadly, my mother expected me to wear it until I finally got too big for it. I giggled two years later when I saw Andrew wearing it for the first time. What I noticed, though, was that it didn’t seem quite so bad once I wasn’t the one wearing it. It seemed fine on him.

He wore my old sweaters and my old jeans and everything else I ha
nded down. And somewhere along the line, he went from being a little boy to an old, wrinkled man. No matter how many times I see him, I’m still shocked at how he looks because, while he appears to be an old man, he still acts like the same person I’ve always known. To me, he’s still the same Andrew my parents brought home from the hospital that first day, and always will be.

My old copy of Steinbecker’s
Mapping the Great De-evolution
, the book that described what the progression of the Great De-evolution would be like, was in a box in my basement. I flipped through some of the chapters, telling Andrew what the Johnsons might be up to and also what we might expect in the coming days. Part of Steinbecker’s final chapter says:

“The final group settleme
nts will experience a emotional surges each time there is an increase of people due to the migrations. This increase will provide the city with a sense that the urban area is once again bustling, a return to the city they knew in previous years. The crime rate will experience a very slight rise as these people are brought together in the confines of a couple of city blocks. This influx will be limited to minor crimes such as petty burglary and littering. There will be no violent crimes amongst the final inhabitants. Because material possessions will have little or no value, pick-pockets and thieves will become normal members of society. Only the mentally ill will persist in acting out against others. People will notice more revelry and noise in the streets. Drug and alcohol dependence will increase. This feeling will only last momentarily, though. Toward the end, it could last as little as a few minutes or an hour before the emotional surge wears off. The high of seeing new people will be replaced by the low of witnessing another round of senior citizens passing away. The inhabitants of the finals settlements will experience a constant bi-polar swing in which they experience the up of seeing new people arriving to their community, followed by the down of seeing familiar faces pass away. As the Great De-evolution progresses, and fewer new people arrive to the final settlements, these highs and lows will become less dramatic.

In contrast, those members of society
who have remained on their own in the now barren suburbs and rural areas will find themselves experiencing what life was like for the first settlers. These people will witness no influx of visitors, will see no new faces. There will be no crime of any kind, even petty crimes, in these desolate parts. These inhabitants will not go through the bi-polar highs and lows seen in the urban areas. These inhabitants risk isolation due to physical and mental infirmity. Material possessions hold no monetary value here either, but may serve to provide a sentimental purpose for the isolated few. Alcohol and drug dependence could sky rocket. The absence of humans in various areas around the world provides too many variables for the issues these people may experience due to local wildlife. The local predators might become a security threat, while a seemingly ordinary beetle may either become extinct or grow in numbers until it has destroyed the entire surrounding eco-system. The environments are too volatile to determine how the animals might affect each region’s transition back to a human-free world.”

“What do you think?” I said to Andrew when I was done reading. “
He got a lot of things right. But hopefully he got a couple of things wrong too.”

I guess we’ll see. I wonder what choice
Steinbecker made as his own end approached. Did he stay in the home he was familiar with, or did he abandon it for one of the final settlements?

I’ve seen too many things in my old age to be afraid of an empty house. I’ve witnessed the migration of mankind southwards. I’ve seen countries collapse. I’ve seen Blocks murdered and abused as though they were mannequins instead of real people with real hearts. I once saw wild dogs drag an unattended Block woman from our neighbor’s patio into the woods where she was torn apart without struggling or crying out for help. I cried out for her because she couldn’t save herself. There was nothing I could do besides scream. By the time Dan heard me and came running, it was too late. His sister was already disemboweled. It took me a long time to get over witnessing that.

I’ve seen all of that, yet each time
I try to convince myself to go down the street to check out the Johnsons’ house, I can only make it to the edge of my driveway before I become stuck. The first night, I turned back without needing much convincing. Last night I was all set to go down the street when I thought I heard a pack of dogs in the woods. The late hour meant too little sun, too much cover of darkness for the nearby animals. The bat I had with me would do little good against a pack of feral house cats, let alone a pack of Dalmatians or Labradors. There was a time when I used to be too proud to back down from a band of kittens! Now, though, I concede they would get the better of me. And then there are the wolves and Rottweilers—the animals I thought I heard growling from the edge of the forest—that I was never foolhardy enough to think I stood a chance against.

From somewhere in the forest I heard a roar that made me think of a Tyrannosaurus
rex, a roar much too great for a bear or even a pack of bears in unison. For a moment it made sense: the world had become so unbalanced that there might in fact be three-story tall monsters roaming in the woods. Anything was possible. Just as quickly, I had the thought—I’m not sure why—that the sound was either a normal growl, one that hadn’t been nearly as menacing as the one I thought I had heard, or else the roar had never sounded at all, my mind had imagined the entire thing.

The odor from down the street, the smell of filth
and sickness, overwhelmed me then, kept me planted at the edge of my driveway. Like the roar, the odor might not be real, might only be a f a giant brown bear lumberpsW,igment of my imagination, some peculiar display of my nervousness. Maybe if I become even more worried and anxious I’ll begin hearing voices. I’ll know the end is near when all of my senses are being tricked. Sometimes I have to remember I’m an old man. Kids never get scared. Old men get nervous; they get paranoid. Their minds are overactive like their bladders.

I still wonder
what could make the Johnsons feel like they had to pack their things, buckle their sisters into the backseats, and sneak away without saying where they were going. Each time the Johnsons and I discussed the possibility of leaving Camelot, they were the ones against going. Maybe, when it came down to it, they had one priority: taking care of themselves and their Block sisters, not taking care of an old man and his Block brother.

It’s
also quite possible they were deceiving me the entire time. Andrew is the only person I spend my days with and he’s incapable of telling a bold-faced lie or even a little white lie, so it’s definitely feasible I’m just not used to sensing when someone is swindling me. It’s possible the Johnsons gave every indication that their intentions didn’t match with what they were saying, but I never picked up on it. They could have been passing knowing looks back and forth in between bites of pork chops or chicken wings. If all of those conversations were replayed again, maybe I would pick up on how their tone didn’t match their words or how they never looked me in the eye when they said they were staying in Camelot to the very end.

After they left the neighborhood I
rewatched every mobster movie in my collection. Each gangster movie had a scene where one of the criminals was being lied to, recognized the deceit, and did something about it. Every time I tried to identify the same telltale signs that the gangster noticed when being lied to, I thought the other character had been telling the truth.

Of course it’s also possible that the Johnsons weren’t lying, that they really did want to stay in the neighborhood, but
an emergency made them leave as quickly as they could. If that happened it wouldn’t matter if it was the middle of the night when they needed to leave. If Mark thought his sister was dying, he would have packed his three siblings in the SUV and raced as fast as he could toward one of the settlements where better care awaited them.