Leave the World Behind

Still lost, Clay ponders how long he’s been gone. He refuses to drive to a nearby farm and ask for help, as that would be admitting defeat and panic. He stops to smoke and thinks about how much thought he and Amanda put into letting Archie ride the subway by himself, and then he thinks about their ruined vacation. The only thing to do would be to pack up and drive home.

He gets back in his car and drives. Before long, he encounters a woman wearing khakis and a polo shirt; since she looks Hispanic, he assumes she is wearing a uniform. He pulls over, and the woman starts speaking urgently in Spanish. He cannot understand her, but she is clearly panicking, and she begins to cry and ask him a question. Clay apologizes, knowing he should do more to help, then rolls up the window and drives away, afraid.

While Archie and Rose explore further into the woods, the omniscient narrator questions if the end of humanity (and who is to blame for it) matters in the grand scheme of the planet and begins to reveal the things that are happening around the world: missing airplanes, people dying trapped in subway trains, a broken-down emergency system that can’t reach people in need.