Station Eleven

The pleasure of being alone for once, away from the clamor of the Symphony. It was possible to look up at the McDonald’s sign and fleetingly imagine, by keeping her gaze directed upward so that there was only the sign and the sky, that this was still the former world and she could stop in for a burger. The last time she’d been here, the IHOP had housed three or four families; she was surprised to see that it had been boarded up, a plank hammered across the door with an inscrutable symbol spray-painted in silver—something like a lowercase t with an extra line toward the bottom. Two years ago she’d been followed around town by a flock of children, but now she saw only two, the boy with the toy car and a girl of eleven or so who watched her from a doorway. A man with a gun and reflective sunglasses was standing guard at the gas station, whose windows were blocked by curtains that had once been flowered sheets. A young and very pregnant woman sunbathed on a lounge chair by the gas pumps, her eyes closed. The presence of an armed guard in the middle of town suggested that the place was unsafe—had they recently been raided?—but surely not as unsafe as all that, if a pregnant woman was sunbathing in the open. It didn’t quite make sense. The McDonald’s had housed two families, but where had they gone? Now a board had been nailed across the door, spray-painted with that same odd symbol.

The Wendy’s was a low square building with the look of having been slapped together from a kit in an architecturally careless era, but it had a beautiful front door. It was a replacement, solid wood, and someone had taken the trouble to carve a row of flowers alongside the carved handle. Kirsten ran her fingertips over the wooden petals before she knocked.

How many times had she imagined this moment, over two years of traveling apart from her friend? Knocking on the flowered door, Charlie answering with a baby in her arms, tears and laughter, the sixth guitar grinning beside her. I have missed you so much. But the woman who answered the door was unfamiliar.

“Good afternoon,” Kirsten said. “I’m looking for Charlie.”

“I’m sorry, who?” The woman’s tone wasn’t unfriendly, but there was no recognition in her eyes. She was about Kirsten’s age or a little younger, and it seemed to Kirsten that she wasn’t well. She was very pale and too thin, black circles under her eyes.

“Charlie. Charlotte Harrison. She was here about two years ago.”

“Here in the Wendy’s?”

“Yes.” Oh Charlie, where are you? “She’s a friend of mine, a cellist. She was here with her husband, the sixth—her husband, Jeremy. She was pregnant.”

“I’ve only been here a year, but maybe someone else here would know. Would you like to come in?”

Kirsten stepped into an airless corridor. It opened into a common room at the back of the building, where once there’d been an industrial kitchen. She saw a cornfield through the open back door, stalks swaying for a dozen yards or so before the wall of the forest. An older woman sat in a chair by the doorway, knitting. Kirsten recognized the local midwife.

“Maria,” she said.

Maria was backlit by the open door behind her. It was impossible to see the expression on her face when she looked up.

“You’re with the Symphony,” she said. “I remember you.”

“I’m looking for Charlie and Jeremy.”

“I’m sorry, they left town.”

“Left? Why would they leave? Where did they go?”

The midwife glanced at the woman who’d shown Kirsten in. The woman looked at the floor. Neither spoke.

“At least tell me when,” Kirsten said. “How long have they been gone?”

“A little more than a year.”

“Did she have her baby?”

“A little girl, Annabel. Perfectly healthy.”

“And is that all you’ll tell me?” Kirsten was entertaining a pleasant fantasy of holding a knife to the midwife’s throat.

“Alissa,” Maria said, to the other woman, “you look so pale, darling. Why don’t you go lie down?”

Alissa disappeared through a curtained doorway into another room. The midwife stood quickly. “Your friend rejected the prophet’s advances,” she whispered, close to Kirsten’s ear. “They had to leave town. Stop asking questions and tell your people to leave here as quickly as possible.” She settled back into her chair and picked up her knitting. “Thank you for stopping by,” she said, in a voice loud enough to be heard in the next room. “Is the Symphony performing tonight?”

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream. With orchestral accompaniment.” Kirsten was having trouble keeping her voice steady. That after two years the Symphony might arrive in St. Deborah by the Water to find that Charlie and Jeremy had already left was a possibility that hadn’t occurred to her. “This town seems different from when we were here last,” she said.

“Oh,” the midwife said brightly, “it is! It’s completely different.”