The Last Animal

ALSO BY RAMONA AUSUBEL AwaylandSons and Daughters of Ease and PlentyA Guide to Being BornNo One Is Here Except All of Us RIVERHEAD BOOKSAn imprint of Penguin Random House LLCpenguinrandomhouse.comCopyright © 2023 by Ramona AusubelPenguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.Riverhead and the R colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Ausubel, Ramona, author.Title: The last animal: a novel / Ramona Ausubel.Description: New York: Riverhead Books, 2023.Identifiers: LCCN 2022023946 (print) | LCCN 2022023947 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593420522 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593420546 (ebook)Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.Classification: LCC PS3601.U868 L37 2023 (print) | LCC PS3601.U868 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022023946LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022023947Cover design: Lauren Peters-CollaerCover image: Vac1 / ShutterstockBOOK DESIGN BY MEIGHAN CAVANAUGH, ADAPTED FOR EBOOK BY MAGGIE HUNTThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.pid_prh_6.0_143156802_c0_r0 ContentsCoverAlso by Ramona AusubelTitle PageCopyrightDedicationBeforeOneTwoThreeFourPearlFiveSixSevenEightNineAcknowledgmentsAbout the Author_143156802_ For my mom and my sister Before OneIn the Age of Extinction, two tagalong daughters traveled to the edge of the world with their mother to search the frozen earth for the bones of woolly mammoths.Eve was fifteen, reshaping herself more each day; Vera, just shy of thirteen, was a stubborn straight line. Jane, their mother, was a graduate student in paleobiology. Their father had died one year before, plunged into a shock-green mountain in a tiny car on a tiny road in Italy where he was doing research for an article. Now they were three. Girls, sad and angry and growing and trying. Mom, sad and angry and trying. Hauling their bodies across the scoop of sky to get to a bare place, a lost place where ancient beasts had once roamed. Somehow, they hoped, this trip would be the beginning of a new road. Gentler, ascending.• • • JANE’S PROFESSOR HAD GROWN a beard for the trip to Siberia, and Todd, a postdoc, wore all tan safari clothing. Everything had several pockets and zipped into different configurations. In New York, Vera watched Todd zip off the legs to his pants and jog laps around the terminal in shorts and hiking boots, his stained white athletic socks like burned-down candles. The professor plugged in a full power strip to charge his computer, tablet and two phones and then ate three kale salads out of plastic to-go containers. He said, “We’re unlikely to get fresh veggies. I want to vitamin-load.”Vera wondered if the professor was someone’s father.During their five-hour layover in Moscow Jane brought blini with caviar on a real plate to the seats where her daughters were draped, sleepy and prickling.“Airport fish eggs, Mom, I don’t know,” Vera said. She wanted a burrito.“You’re in junior high, what do you know? They’re actually so good,” Jane said, sour cream on her lips.Eve said, “I’m in high school, but I still find this embarrassing.”Todd, in the next row of chairs, again zipped his pant legs off and slung them over his carry-on, then jogged the halls. Eve made a hand flourish and said, “Exhibit A.” Vera watched the Russians watch Todd and it seemed possible that he alone might inspire a war between the two countries. Americans, if this was any indication, needed to be put out of their misery. It would have been a service.• • •AS THE SUN WAS going down, they boarded a plane that would take them from Moscow to Yakutsk. The stewardesses in stilettos served chicken cutlet and sweet wine. The plane crossed six time zones and they had only traveled two thirds of the way across Russia.Eve and Vera played a favorite game, Fortunately/Unfortunately, a game that had traveled with them on buses, planes, ships, trains all over the globe.“Once there were two sisters who wanted to run away,” Eve started.Vera said, “Fortunately, they had large bags full of precious gems.”“Unfortunately,” Eve continued, “the gems were heavy and the girls couldn’t carry them.”“Fortunately, they came upon a cave where they could hide the bags until they had a way to transport them.”“Unfortunately, there was a wild and ferocious bear living in the cave.”Vera smiled at her older sister. “You always put a ferocious bear.”“It’s a classic.”The story was, by design, endless. Meant to carry the girls across land and sea, every piece of bad news immediately followed by the upswing of salvation.• • •IT WAS MORNING AGAIN when they landed, dawn a fine pink stripe on the horizon. Vera felt broken by tiredness. She was not a person anymore but a hunger for sleep. The tarmac smelled like fire and melt.This was the coldest city on earth in winter and all the photos in the hotel lobby were of people with iced eyelashes, men in fur suits with fur hoods selling fish in the outside market and everything shimmered with frost and the fish were frozen but not because they had been in a freezer. It was summer now but Vera could sense the threat of cold.While the travelers checked in, the professor and Todd had a loud conversation about three-pointers in relationship to wingspan in the NBA. The professor said, “Who wants a drink?” Jane said, “It’s morning and I have children.”“Go, go,” Vera said. “We will sleep.”“If you sleep now you’ll never get onto the right time. You’ll ruin the entire trip.”The desk clerk handed Jane her key. It was old-fashioned and had a giant wooden block for a key chain. These were the moments when careers took shape. Trust was earned over jet-lag vodka.Jane said, “Go walk, girls,”