MERUZ

Chapter 1

Don switched off the television. He’d spent the morning in the garden, those pesky weeds returning with a vengeance. All that spring rain, he thought. And for what?

His husband, Rodney, sat in a recliner a few feet away. At seventy-eight, Rodney was a gruff and quiet man, his bushy eyebrows doing most of the talking for him. Forty years together, and Don could tell what he was thinking without a word between them.

“I know,” Don said. “It’s time.”

Rodney grunted in response, leaning forward in his chair, hands on his knees. His back was bothering him, though he wouldn’t say as much. But Don knew. Of course he did. He knew everything about Rodney. Rodney, who looked over at Don, expression softening.

“You all right?”

“No, I don’t think I am.”

Rodney nodded and stood from the recliner, groaning as he did so, knees popping. “Stay right there,” he said.

Don did, staring off into nothing. He didn’t know how to feel. Frightened? Oh yes. Angry? Perhaps; a little spark that whispered how is this fair?

But mostly, Don felt relieved, and oddly so. Not over the fact that the entire world would be gone in thirty days, give or take. No, he wasn’t the type to revel in the misfortune of others. His relief came in knowing how it would end.

Getting older meant he was running down the clock as it was, thoughts sometimes straying to darker corners:

Would it be the colon?

The heart?

A little pop in a blood vessel of the brain that caused one to drop dead?

The human body was a miracle that was not meant to last. He felt it in the stiffening of his joints. Stretch wrong in the morning? That was a week’s worth of discomfort. Get a blood test? Ooh, what could be found in that?

Now, though. Now, it was different. Now, the mystery of death—when, how, why—was solved for everyone.

Rodney returned. Don didn’t know how long he’d been gone. He carried a small box with him—oak polished within an inch of its life, a brass keyhole in the front. Roughly the size of a jewelry box, it wasn’t large nor was it heavy, but Rodney was careful with it.

He said, “If we’re going to do this, we have to do it now.”

Don lowered his head. “I know. It’s . . . You always think there’s going to be more time.”

“We have enough,” Rodney said. “That’s what counts.”

Don looked out the window. Clouds in the sky, wispy clouds that stretched above a green forest. The sun, shining. Birds singing. And if the people who knew about these things were right, all of it would be gone in a month. Either the planet would be cracked apart, chunks of rock being pulled toward infinity, or it would be stretched and stretched and stretched until the entire world was a thin, straight line, unable to support life.

The cause? A rogue black hole. A one-in-a-trillion chance, they’d been told breathlessly. There was a one-in-a-trillion chance a black hole would find its way to our little corner of the universe. Astronomical odds, and yet, now a reality.

Which meant chaos, of course. Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened. They’d known about the black hole for close to a year, and in those early days, more things were aflame than not. When backed into a corner, an animal could be dangerous. Humans were animals, and deadly ones at that.

Over the last year, they’d proven themselves as such. In Arizona, a group of people had doused themselves in gasoline. As a horrified crowd looked on, someone flicked a lighter, and up they went in fire and smoke, all in the name of leaving the world behind on their own terms. In Nebraska, thirty-four people attempted to take the capitol, but ten of them were shot before they could get inside. Six died from their injuries. In Paris, massive crowds filled the streets, storefront windows shattered as people looted everything that wasn’t bolted down. In Cape Town, hundreds of people walked into the ocean and drowned. Some held children. Others assisted the elderly. In Chengdu, dozens of people leapt from the tops of skyscrapers while others looked on with blank expressions, waiting their turn. In Denmark, a self-proclaimed prophet said that before the planet was destroyed, Heaven would open up for the chosen, and they would rise into Eternal Glory. He amassed crowds in the thousands, his voice carrying over a packed field. During one of his pulpit sessions, he was stabbed to death by a woman who cried as she raised and lowered the knife again and again. No one tried to stop her until it was already too late. The prophet died choking on his own blood. The woman—older, shouting and screaming—did not resist when the crowd descended upon her.

“We’ll be careful,” Don said, gaze going back to the chest in Rodney’s arms. “Take the back roads. Avoid major freeways.”

“When?” Rodney asked.

“Tomorrow.”

And so it was decided.

When they’d retired ten years ago, it’d been unexpected. Both had planned to work a few more years, but then life happened, and both were pulled away in a direction they hadn’t expected. Rodney had worked for the state in a thankless role, filling out endless reports for any little thing the government could think of. Don had managed the office for a physical therapist, doing so for damn near fifteen years. And then . . . well. An ending, of sorts, one they had both expected and dreaded in equal measure. Cut off, like a limb had been removed without discussion.

Seven months in, Rodney had bought an RV.

Don had not been pleased.

Their friends—all older—had been excited. RV life was a different breed, they said. Why, buying their own RVs had been one of the best decisions they had ever made for themselves. A hotel on wheels! Sure, you had to find a place to park for the night—avoid Walmarts if you could—but there were so many places made for RVs. Hell, there were thousands upon thousands of retirees who’d done the same and hadn’t regretted it.

Yes, it would be grand, except the RV was an ugly thing: old, with dented siding and rust around the wheel wells. White, with a fat dirt-brown line down the sides. Not one of the overpriced RVs that looked and traveled like a bus. No, this one was more akin to a camper slapped onto an old truck. But its worse sin was a set of hideous brown-and-pink knitted blinds that hung in the small bedroom. Don was not a fan of those blinds.

Small wonders, the RV ran, belching out thick black exhaust from the tailpipe. Registered, passed inspection (barely), and guzzled gas like it was an endless pit. But Rodney was charmed by it, saying he thought they could get on the road, taking in sights and people they’d never had the time to see before. Don had never really considered himself an RV person, but he could picture it in his mind: long summer days with nothing but the open road, the sun setting in the distance, making the sky pink and red and orange. An audiobook on the radio, one he’d always meant to get to, but hadn’t had the time.

He often thought about that: time. How interminable it could be, and then in a blink of an eye, years have gone by.

Oh, the places they’d gone: To Montana and water so clear, the deep lakebeds looked within arm’s reach. To Arizona, standing before the Grand Canyon, the rock burnt red, the air sizzling hot. To the Appalachian Trail, hiking a good eight miles before calling it quits. To Wyoming, the Grand Tetons rising in all their majesty. To Utah and the Painted Desert, the petrified forest, rocks in impossible hues. To Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains, trying to reach the top of Mount Le Conte.

Years of travel, years of doing what needed to be done. And now, at last, the trip they’d been putting off because that made the distance real, something they’d long avoided. They had no other choice.