The End Is Now

by John Joseph Adams

  “No, not your man. The girl.”

  Guilt wracked Lucy, but she shoved it away. It was like Jack said. Act now, process later.

  “Of course,” she said. She walked forward, following Maddie Grace into what had been a utility room but was now a makeshift surgery. A folding table, the kind you might use for a picnic or impromptu card game, held Heidi’s still body. Bloody rags were gathered in a tidy pile to one side, and Victor stood, his head hanging, tears dripping off his thick nose.

  Jack lay half propped in a folding chair, his arm still wrapped in her tee-shirt. He looked up at Lucy and held out his good hand to her.

  She ignored it, going to Heidi’s side on the table. Lucy wrapped her fingers around her friend’s and was surprised when Heidi’s eyes flickered and she weakly squeezed back.

  “I’m sorry,” Lucy said. All she did was argue with people, and then her last words were always anger or apology. She blinked at tears, trying to smile at her friend. “You stay with us, okay? We’re right here. You aren’t alone.”

  Heidi’s mouth moved, but whatever she said was lost as she went rigid. She shook her head, and then started to choke. Victor moved in, propping up her head, trying to get her to breathe, his words a string of soothing nonsense.

  Heidi stilled. Lucy had seen animals put down before, had seen that moment when a being went from life to death. It was disturbingly similar and yet more terrible, now. One moment her friend was there, struggling for air, bleeding out on the table. The next, no one was home.

  Lucy collapsed, and all the tears she’d held back over the last hellish day found freedom now and scraped hotly down her cheeks. Jack tried to get up, but Victor told him to sit.

  It was Maddie Grace who wrapped her wiry, strong arms around Lucy’s shoulders and guided her into a cozy family room, pressing her gently onto the couch. Someone found a shirt for her, something clean. Tea was pressed into her hands. A handkerchief for her tears. Still the tears came.

  Finally, cried down to dry sobs, the tea a minty memory in her throat, Lucy passed out.

  • • • •

  “It will be dark soon. We can go tomorrow,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, it’ll be dark soon, but I don’t care. I’m going home, Jack. I am not waiting any longer. Victor said the Jeep will run. He changed the tire for me and cleared out the broken glass. I’m going home.” Lucy rubbed her hands down her borrowed shirt. She’d slept for over an hour, but that was long enough. Every ache and cut told her that Jack was right, that she should stay where she was safe and sleep some more.

  But this wasn’t home.

  “Your dad can wait a day,” Jack said. He struggled to sit upright on the pull-out couch, and she could see he was in horrible pain even through the morphine Victor had given him.

  “What if he can’t?” Lucy shot back. “The last thing I said to her was so mean, Jack. I told her I wished I had a mother who could understand, a mother like my friends’ moms. I have to go home. I can’t let my last words to Mom be the last thing said in our family.”

  “She might be alive.”

  “No,” Lucy said. The word hurt to say, but it rang inside her aching heart with a truth she couldn’t explain. “I can feel it. She’s gone.” Like Heidi. Like god knew how many people. Even the radios were out; Maddie Grace’s family had no recent news.

  “Fine. I’m going too.” Jack tried to swing his legs over to the side and cried out in pain as the movement jolted his arm.

  “No. It’s only an hour away. Stay here. Maddie Grace said she doesn’t mind. They can run you up to the farm when you are better, or I’ll come back and get you in a day or two. I gave them directions.” Lucy walked over to him and bent down, kissing his damp forehead. He felt feverish, and she made a note to tell Victor on her way out.

  “I love you, Luce,” Jack said.

  “Damn well better. I shot a dude in the balls for you.” She fought more tears as she smiled. This would not be their last conversation—she was determined about that. But if it was . . . if, well, she wouldn’t leave with angry words. Not this time. “I love you, too, you big damn soldier.”

  The US-93 was a wreck of debris and branches. Lucy put the Jeep’s four-wheel drive through its paces. It was full dark when she spotted the bright yellow reflectors on the mailbox at the end of her driveway shining like welcome home beacons through the haze.

  She pulled up at the house, eyes searching for a light in the dark. She heard the screen door bang open as she stumbled up the steps and blinked as a flashlight poured warm light over her.

  “Daddy?” she said.

  “Lucita! Lucy!” he dropped the flashlight and wrapped her in his arms. She pushed her nose into his soft flannel shirt and breathed in the familiar smell of vanilla pipe tobacco, horses, and mint.

  “Dad, I’m home,” she said, laughing into his chest.

  “Yes, yes you are.”

  • • • •

  The meteor strike outside Darby was the closest anything large got to Lolo, Montana. The impact haze—as the news radio, when it was working, called it—persisted. They were in for what was called an impact winter. No one knew how long it would last. Years, was the guess. Nobody could say what the death toll was. The coastal regions had been hit hard with tsunamis. Miami was rumored to be gone, struck directly by a large chunk of Moon debris. The equatorial zones were the hardest hit, but Lucy didn’t regret fleeing California.

  Three months, and they were crawling on toward real winter. Jack had shown up after a week with Maddie Grace and Victor in tow, bringing a crate of pickles with them. His arm wasn’t fully healed even months later, but he was learning how to use his fingers again and doing the exercises Victor ordered him to. Lucy was a little jealous about how well Jack and her dad got along, but she figured they might have to cohabitate for a while, so she didn’t say too much about it.

  Victor said they’d buried Heidi by a really pretty dogwood that had survived the shockwave. No one knew how to get a message to Chicago and her family. Lucy vowed that someday she would make that journey and tell Heidi’s mom and sister where their daughter was buried.

  She knew, deeply, how crushing a lack of closure could be.

  No one talked about Mom. Not after the first night, when Lucy had asked about the Moon and all her dad said was “Yes, it’s true” and they’d left it at that.

  Almost three months. It felt like three minutes sometimes.

  Lucy leaned on the porch rail, hands tucked into her coat, watching the hazy sky darken. There were no more flashes in the night, at least in this area, but there were no stars either. No sun except a slightly brighter patch of sky some afternoons. The farm had its own generator and well, but they rationed everything. The National Guard had been through from Missoula, clearing the roads and bringing news and fuel. That was all they had of the outside world. There had been no news of Mom or the people on the Moon. It was like the world was pretending no one had been there.

  Crunching gravel pulled Lucy from her melancholy. A Hummer crept up the driveway, looking dark and military and official.

  “Dad,” she yelled. Jack was out at the barn, but her father was inside, whipping up his famous camp stove chili they were all too nice to tell him they were sick to death of eating.

  He came out on the porch with his .22 rifle in hand. He looked older to Lucy, his hair grayer and lines forming around his mouth and eyes she didn’t remember being there before. He was still tall and solid and calm, though.

  Two men in fatigues came out first, nodding to Lucy and her father.

  “You Paul Goodwin?” one man asked.

  “I am,” her dad said. He gently propped the gun against the house and walked forward to the steps.

  A woman climbed out of the vehicle, assisted by one of the men in fatigues. She was pregnant, her belly pushing out heavily against her navy blue pea-coat. She was thin except for that belly, and pretty. She looked up at Dad, then at Lucy, and walked forward, a small bag in her hand.
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  “My name is Shannon,” she said, a soft English accent lilting her voice. “I served with Neta on the Far Side Array.”

  “No—” Dad half cried out, his fist pressing into his lips. Lucy grabbed for his arm and leaned into him.

  It was one thing to believe that Mom was dead. It was another to see this woman, to hear her use the past tense, and know it for real.

  “Is that?” Lucy said, motioning toward the bag. Had they brought only her body back? Cremated her?

  “What? No,” Shannon said. “This is, I mean, she recorded a message. We couldn’t all go home, there wasn’t space.”

  A man behind Shannon coughed loudly, his expression a warning.

  “Bloody hell, Wentworth. It’s Neta’s family. They deserve to know the truth.” She turned back to Lucy and her dad. “Your mom chose to stay so that I could come home . . . she knew I was pregnant.”

  “Neta would do that,” Dad said. Tears reddened his eyes, but he managed a smile. “God, she would do that.”

  “This is her last message. Do you have power? It had a full charge when we left, but if you need more, we can hook up a battery for you.” Shannon walked to the edge of the stairs, holding out the bag.

  “We have enough,” Lucy said, stepping down from the porch and taking the bag. It felt like a small laptop was inside. “So she’s really gone,” she whispered to Shannon.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart, she is,” Shannon said. She looked like she might cry, too.

  Lucy nodded and pressed her lips together. “Thank you,” she said.

  “I’m sorry if we don’t ask you to stay,” her dad said as Lucy turned and climbed the steps.

  “I understand,” Shannon said.

  Lucy hugged her father’s side, and they watched as the woman and her escort got back into their car and made a swinging turn, driving off down the road in a swarm of dust.

  They played the message on the military’s portable DVD player, just the two of them, not calling Jack in from the barn in unspoken agreement. Lucy loved Jack, but this was a family thing.

  Mom seemed so composed on the screen, but so tiny. Her face was lined and tired, her dark eyes bright, her words steady and full of love. There was no reproach, no anger, no blame.

  She even called Lucy Lucy.

  And then that final moment, just before the message cut out, when the tears broke for a shining second from her mother’s eyes, and she whispered to the camera: “Love her, Paul. Give our little light all the love I won’t be there to give. And don’t hang on to me. I want you both to live, to be happy.”

  Lucy bolted from the kitchen and out onto the porch, sobbing. Her dad joined her, his big arms wrapping around her shoulders and pulling her into his warm, flannel-covered chest.

  “I was so mad at her,” she said, her breath misting in the freezing air. “But I didn’t mean it. I didn’t.”

  “She knew, Luce, she knew.” He pressed his lips into her hair and rocked her gently.

  “I can’t tell her though. She’s gone. Just . . . gone.”

  “She isn’t gone. Your mother is not gone.” The force of his words shocked Lucy, and she pulled away a little to stare up into his face. “Are the stars gone?” He pointed at the sky.

  “What? No, we just can’t see them.”

  “Exactly, Lucita. They are still there, just like your mom. Invisible, but shining down on us all the same.”

  They stood for a long time out on the porch, until Jack’s footsteps roused them.

  “You coming inside?” Jack asked, looking them over, questions in his eyes.

  Lucy nodded. She slipped her hand into his good one and took a last look at the sky. Invisible, but still there. She squeezed Jack’s fingers and walked through the door.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Annie Bellet is the author of The Twenty-Sided Sorceress and the Gryphonpike Chronicles series. She holds a BA in English and a BA in Medieval Studies and thus can speak a smattering of useful languages such as Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Welsh. Her short fiction is available in multiple collections and anthologies. Her interests besides writing include rock climbing, reading, horseback riding, video games, comic books, table-top RPGs, and many other nerdy pursuits. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and a very demanding Bengal cat. Find her on her website at anniebellet.com.

  ROCK MANNING CAN’T HEAR YOU

  Charlie Jane Anders

  This guy came into the half-stocked convenience store where I was working, and he wanted me to empty out the safe. He had a waxy mustache and soul patch, and he wore a poncho over a bulky football sweatshirt and knee-high socks. He was waving a shotgun that looked like someone had shot a grouse with it back in 2009, and then it had sat in a closet ever since. I thought about angles of escape, up over his head or around behind the Juicy Yoo cooler—because I’m Rock Manning, the internet’s favorite hyperfiend, and that’s what I do.

  Then I shrugged and put up my hands.

  The trouble was, he couldn’t get at the safe because it was keyed to my vital signs, so if my heart or breathing sped up then the safe went into total lockdown, and if my heart stopped then every alarm went dog-crazy. My boss Ramon couldn’t even get cash for legitimate purposes half the time because I’d be doing jumping jacks and thinking about whether we should stage a trolley accident or a scooter joust when we were making our slapstick movies this weekend. I had to practice no-mind deep breathing just so my boss could take out petty cash.

  With this guy waving his gun at me, my heart juddered so damn hard the tumblers in the safe hugged each other for dear life. He almost gave up and left, but then he found some extra drowsy cough syrup and made me drink some of it along with a ton of Grand Marnier, with that shotgun in my face the whole time I was chugging. My heart stayed pigeon-like, and I told the guy he’d have to be patient and wait for the stuff to take effect. He wanted to keep force-feeding me downers but I reminded him that if I died the safe locked up tight.

  He and I ended up sitting around the store a couple hours, talking about old movies and video games and stuff. Reginald loved all the cop buddy comedies of the eighties and nineties, and he could recite long sections of Lethal Weapon from memory. Before I even knew what I was doing, I was telling Reginald that a bunch of us made our own amateur web movies in Boston Common and he should swing by this Saturday and join in. I guess it was the cough syrup, or just the fact that we’d been talking for ages and he’d put down the gun by then. Five minutes after he thanked me and wandered off down the street, I took a deep breath and heard the safe un-jam itself.

  I meant to tell some of my friends about Reginald, but then I got sidetracked into thinking about my character. Not my real-life character, which I didn’t really know much about, but my movie character.

  Think about it! Harold Lloyd is the same guy in every one of his movies—a small-town innocent, maybe a little egg-headed but not street smart, with his heart on his sleeve but also full of crazy ambitions. I could be like that, except maybe more cunning and just a little loopy. Or okay, a lot loopy. Coming off the super-cold-relief formula and cognac buzz, I felt a swelling urgency that people should root for me, not just laugh at my hijinks.

  Janelle, the cute film student with the rainbow dreads, agreed with me. The comic hero has to be loveable or relatable, or at least there has to be a moment of connection with the audience in between all the falling gargoyles, she said. The two of us cornered Sally Hamster, our director, who kept trying to get us to talk to her hands. Sally was like, “I make art during the week. This weekend shit is just for fun.” Sally had been making serious strides at film school until I came back into her life, fully recovered from my nervous breakdown and eager to make more weird movies on the internet. But Janelle and I both said it wasn’t about art, just making the fun as fun as possible.

  I kept forgetting to mention Reginald the corner-store robber, until he showed up on Saturday wearing some kind of bright red wrestling costume, or maybe those were just his
regular exercise clothes. We dressed Reginald up as a cop, and a bunch of the film school kids played a motorcycle gang who’d started riding bicycles because gas was $12 a gallon, so they all overcompensated by whooping really loud and blasting heavy metal when they pedaled into town.

  Someone had renovated a whole section of Boston near the river to look like a little “ye olde” village, except it was really all yuppie boutiques that had been boarded up since the Debt Crisis. So we turned it into a small town that was trying to keep the bikers out with the help of Reginald the cop, and I got mixed up in the middle of their conflict because I had to deliver a cactus to a sick friend. Once again, my motivation was a little hazy, and it bothered me as well as Janelle. Sally had her elbow in the way of us doing any kind of love story, even though I could never figure out why. It wasn’t just that she’d gotten her heart pulped with her boyfriend Raine’s head during the Peace Riots. She was just dead set against goo-goo eyes.

  Everybody thought Reginald rocked, especially the sequence where a bunch of the bikers rode up a giant ramp we made out of an old herbal facial spa sign and flew over Reginald’s head while he tried to kick-box with their wheels. Except Zapp Stillman, because Reginald somehow managed to break Zapp’s nose, although the other film geeks said it would just add some boxery distinction to his face. (Zapp was the grand-nephew of some famous movie director, and an expert on everything.)

  Sally asked where I found Reginald, and I said I just ran into him. Reginald nearly dropped me off the Longfellow Bridge when he found out this was a volunteer gig, but I convinced him the exposure would help him to get other, paying gigs. He got pretty jazzed thinking about his roundhouse popping up all over the internet and becoming a cult phenom. He was pretty glad he didn’t actually kill me, at least for now.

  I started wondering if I should tell Sally the truth about Reginald, but I figured he would probably disappear soon anyway, since he made me look like long-attention-span guy by comparison. I hadn’t been able to concentrate much before Raine died, but ever since I involuntarily ate a piece of Raine’s brain I was a human jitter. The Army recruiter doctors had taken one look at me and just laughed at the idea of militarizing me.