The End Is Now

by John Joseph Adams

  Jacket off, I dry my face with the lining. A spot on the back of my hand looks nasty, leprous gray, starting to flake at the edges, but I tell myself it’s my imagination.

  “Good thinking,” Cloud says, “with the window.”

  I laugh weakly. “Vanessa is going to eat me alive when she sees her tomatoes.”

  “Better you than the tomatoes,” Vanessa says. She’s standing in the door between the greenhouse and the rest of the apartment, a stained white towel draped over each arm. Something winglike about that. She looks like the world’s most pissed-off Christmas angel. “You,” she adds without a trace of humor, “are not the ones I was expecting.”

  • • • •

  Inside the apartment, we wrap the towels around our shoulders and sit on the lonely corduroy-upholstered couch that is the only piece of furniture in Vanessa’s living room. The floor is littered with empty plastic bottles. Vanessa disappears through a swinging door and re-emerges with a wicker chair under one arm. Slams it down across from us, and it skids on the age-worn floor, the decades of splinters held together with varnish.

  “We’re sorry about your plants, Dr. Novak.” Cloud, hovering in the middle of the light switch, charming as can be: This is why I brought him along.

  But Vanessa’s not having any of it. She glares at him, plops herself into the chair. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “We’re all fucked anyway.”

  This may be the first time I’ve heard her swear. Welcome to the end of the world, indeed. “Yeah,” I agree.

  “Not in the abstract. I mean specifically, precisely fucked.” She points at the ceiling, the flaking plaster, yellow cracks spiderwebbing out from a bronze fixture that’s missing half its bulbs. “The solar panels, on the roof, in the rain. How long do you think they’ll hold up? Another four months?” Hard sigh, like she’s pushing all the air out of her lungs. “Hardly. I had to take one down this morning. Completely past repair. And everyone pretends not to notice.”

  Cloud looks like he’s been bitten by a strange dog.

  “What don’t we notice?” I ask.

  “We’re running out of everything. I don’t mean going to run out, I mean out, now, today. So I’m not sure what good my vegetables would do, all things considered. I’m not pretending anymore.” She kicks a plastic jug under her chair. It’s a weak kick, toppling the jug, not moving it along the floor. It should strike me as pathetic, more sullen than angry, but it doesn’t: Her face is too hard. And suddenly, she’s shouting.

  “Fuck this city,” she says, “with its goddamn fucking doomsday parties, and all the rest of it. You’ve convinced yourselves that you’re ready for the end, but you aren’t. You’re pretending. Still convinced that this can go on indefinitely. All the fun of the end of the world without the ending, isn’t that right?”

  “Stop it.”

  I think I’m as surprised as Vanessa when the words come out of my mouth. It’s her turn to say, “Pardon?”

  “I said stop it. You don’t have to lecture me about endings.” I feel my voice climbing to match hers, and part of me wants to shut up. She’s scared and angry, she doesn’t deserve me yelling at her. But maybe it isn’t just her I’m yelling at; maybe I’m reaching for something else. Cloud has started to stare. “My mother died,” I say, “because she was hooked on prescriptions. Benzodiazepine. Not from an overdose. She went into withdrawal, and died from a seizure, because she couldn’t buy any more. Her body couldn’t get the fix it needed. So yes, I’ve seen what happens when things run out. I’m not pretending, either.”

  Cloud is definitely staring at me, frowning, and I feel my eyes watering. Blink the tears away. I pull the graffiti sketch from my pocket and hold it out to Vanessa. “Now. What is this?”

  • • • •

  The rain streams down the windows, etching white lines in the glass. Somewhere, distantly, thunder rumbles. Or maybe something is collapsing.

  Vanessa takes the scrap of paper between two fingers.

  “It’s Naglfar,” she says. “The ship made out of dead men’s nails in Norse mythology. My lab used it as a logo on some of our projects. Morgan helped me come up with it.”

  “You used the ship of Ragnarok as a logo?” Cloud interjects. I remember he was the one who recognized it as a Viking ship in the first place. “Brilliant.”

  “Well, we didn’t plan on sparking the apocalypse.” Turning to Cloud, she lapses back into classic Vanessa, and I can’t tell if she’s serious. “We just liked the look of it, the ambiguity. Forward or backward, who can tell? The project was intended to clean up the air pollution, replenish lost oxygen. I said we should try to make the bots self-repairing. Didn’t think we’d actually get it to work.”

  “So Morgan, she’s the woman who’s looking for you? What does she want?”

  “Her name is Morgan Larsen. At least it was. She probably goes by something different now. In Colorado, she was a manager at a music store, a friend of mine.” Speaking precisely, lining up the sentences like aluminum cans she’s going to knock over with stones. “At least, she started out that way.”

  “And what is she now?” I ask.

  “After what we did at the lab? What I told her?” An almost imperceptible shake of her head. “I don’t think I have friends anymore.”

  The edge sweeps back into her voice, like a gust slamming rain against the window glass. Sitting in her wicker chair, staring down at her hands, her voice cold enough to burn. The rain comes in sheets down the living room window, and the gray spot on the back of my hand itches, whitening at the edges. Toxic, all of it. So toxic I could be sick.

  “Well, fuck me,” I say.

  Vanessa looks up.

  “Fuck me and fuck Felicity.” I meet her eyes, warm cinnamon brown and hard as glass. Well, fuck it. I can be hard, too. “How long have we been bringing your water? You want to talk about running out, let’s start there. Start with the lines at the distribution centers, twelve, twenty-four, thirty-six hours waiting. For you, Vanessa. Start with the men Felicity’s been hanging around with because they know where to get it. Start with the goddamn trek I make on my bike to get down here. You know how lucky I am this is the first time I’ve been caught in the rain?” I grab her towel from around my shoulders, fling it into the corner beside the door. It wraps itself around the neck of a gallon jug.

  “And every time,” I continue, “I’ve been inviting you. I guess you don’t like music, or you don’t like it anymore, but goddamn it, we wanted you to have fun. Have a good time. But no, you say you don’t have friends anymore. Wonder why that is.”

  She actually flinches.

  A warm hand touches my wrist, Cloud’s hand, but I brush him off with my fingertips. My eyes are stinging, liner running. I’m not done. “Your friend Morgan,” I say. “I didn’t believe her when she said she knew you. Didn’t trust her, and do you know why? Because she was a lot like me. A lot like us. I didn’t think you’d have anything to do with a person like that. And I guess that’s right.”

  Cloud grabs me again, and this time I yank my wrist away. Stand, pull my hood up, head toward the door. Rain and Vanessa both be damned.

  “Wait.” Cloud’s voice, not Vanessa’s. “Wait, Friday.”

  I turn on my heel, stand there with my arms folded. Face in shadow, and I hope they can’t see the mess I’m making of my eyeliner.

  Cloud turns to Vanessa, who’s staring down at her hands again. He scootches to the edge of the couch cushion, touches the tips of his fingers to hers, and she lets him. “Will you come, please? Tonight? You’ll be in a crowd. You can see her from a distance first. You won’t have to come any closer if you change your mind.”

  Oh, Cloud, I think. This is why I brought you with me, this gentleness. This is why I love you.

  And I’ve never thought those words before, never said them even to myself. I love an addict at the end of the world, a bridge about to buckle, a building on the verge of collapse. A disaster waiting to happen, Felicity says, and who
wants to admit a thing like that? The stupid tears spill over, hot and sticky. I bend down, grab the stained towel, dab at my cheeks. Stupid, but neither of them is looking at me. Vanessa, pressing her hand to Cloud’s, is nodding her head.

  “Okay. Okay, great.” Cloud beams—a big, stupid, relieved smile. “They’ll be setting up by the time we get back. It’s in a church, abandoned from the flooding. No one’ll bother us. We can find a ride down there, meet some people on the way—”

  “Cloud,” I interrupt. My voice sounds normal again, thank God. Thank the patron saint of living precariously, who for whatever reason seems to be smiling on us. “Gray City is still at Felicity’s. We have their van.”

  Track 6. Love from Hell

  Vanessa steps out of the van like she’s wading into deep water. One foot, then the other, flat white sneakers on rain-spotted concrete already drying in the afternoon sun. Felicity stands on her front porch in a satin robe the color of chocolate ice cream, smoking a cigarette. “Hey, sweetheart,” she says to Vanessa, not batting an eyelash.

  By the time Cloud and I are climbing the steps, Vanessa is in the foyer and Morgan, or whatever she’s calling herself now, stands in the doorway from the family room. In a different vest and the same leather pants, her hair down and face made-up. Smiling and crying at the same time. Her eyeliner runs, too.

  “Let’s get out of the way,” Cloud whispers in my ear. I give him a nudge toward my room, surreptitiously slipping the key to Gray City’s van back into the shoebox.

  There’s a note on the top of my pillow, green pen on lined paper:

  I wanted you to know I’m not upset if she doesn’t want to see me. Just let her know I came looking. That someone was still thinking about her. Thanks for looking out for her, Friday.

  Love from Hel.

  I read it twice. “She can’t be serious.”

  I hand the note to Cloud, who seems to take it in with one glance. “Norse goddess of the underworld?” He shrugs. “Hel’s half-black, half-white, so I guess it’s kind of clever, with the arm tats. Or maybe she’s trying to justify drawing Naglfar over half the city.”

  “Not that,” I say. “Well, not just that. I mean she seems to be surprised that someone was looking out for Vanessa.”

  “You don’t think that’s surprising?” He raises his eyebrows as he sets the note down on the window seat. It’s only afternoon, but the sky has started to turn red. Autumn is coming, or maybe the end of everything. “Vanessa seemed a little—”

  “Batshit?”

  “Difficult, I was going to say.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” I sit on the edge of my bed. Cloud sits next to me, long legs folded under him. “It’s just, I guess I expect that things will work out okay. Or no, not that things will be okay, but that people will be. Call me crazy.”

  “Join the club,” Cloud says. He leans back on the mattress, resting his weight on his forearms. Looking up at me, grinning. “The way I see it, we’re all going different kinds of crazy. Vanessa is, I don’t know, maybe paranoid, or maybe she really knows something the rest of us don’t. Felicity’s delusional about Mia, and I guess I have the pills, and whatever’s up with Morgan and Hel and fucking Ragnarok, that’s pretty damn nuts.”

  “So what kind of crazy am I?”

  He wets his lips. Reaches up, cups my cheek and gently rubs a streak of eyeliner away with his thumb.

  “I’m not sure,” he says. “But I like it.”

  Tell him, I say to myself. Tell him now. The rain will be back tomorrow, who knows when you’ll get another chance.

  “Stay off the pills tonight,” I say. “Can you do that? Just tonight. No drugs, just you.”

  “I can try,” he says. “Just me.”

  I kiss him. One arm around his back, catching some of his weight, the other wiping my cheek. He tastes like tears, clean and sweet.

  “Good,” I say. “That’s all I’m looking for.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Megan Arkenberg lives and writes in California. Her short stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, and dozens of other places. She procrastinates by editing the fantasy e-zine Mirror Dance.

  SUNSET HOLLOW

  A Rot & Ruin Story

  Jonathan Maberry

  -1-

  The kid kept crying.

  Crying.

  Crying.

  Blood all over him. Their blood. Not his.

  Not Benny’s.

  Theirs.

  He stood on the lawn and stared at the house.

  Watching as the fallen lamp inside the room threw goblin shadows on the curtains. Listening to the screams as they filled the night. Filled the room. Spilled out onto the lawn. Punched him in the face and belly and over the heart. Screams that sounded less and less like her. Like Mom.

  Less like her.

  More like Dad.

  Like whatever he was. Whatever this was.

  Tom Imura stood there, holding the kid. Benny was eighteen months. He could say a few words. Mom. Dog. Foot.

  Now all he could do was wail. One long, inarticulate wail that tore into Tom’s head. It hit him as hard as Mom’s screams.

  As hard. But differently.

  The front door was open, standing ajar. The back door was unlocked. He’d left through the window, though. The downstairs bedroom on the side of the house. Mom had pushed him out. She’d shoved Benny into his hands and pushed him out.

  Into the night.

  Into the sound of sirens, of screams, of weeping and praying people, of gunfire and helicopters.

  Out here on the lawn.

  While she stayed inside.

  He tried to fight her on it.

  He was bigger. Stronger. All those years of jujutsu and karate. She was a middle-aged housewife. He could have forced her out. Could have gone to face the horror that was beating on the bedroom door. The thing that wore Dad’s face but had such a hungry, bloody mouth.

  Tom could have pulled Mom out of there.

  But Mom had one kind of strength, one bit of power that neither black belts nor biceps could hope to fight. It was there on her arm, hidden in that last moment by her white sleeve.

  No.

  That was a lie he wanted to tell himself.

  Not white.

  The sleeve was red, and getting redder with every beat of his heart.

  That sleeve was her power and he could not defeat it.

  That sleeve and what it hid.

  The mark. The wound.

  The bite.

  It amazed Tom that Dad’s teeth could fit that shape. That it was so perfect a match in an otherwise imperfect tumble of events. That it was possible at all.

  Benny struggled in his arms. Wailing for Mom.

  Tom clutched his little brother to his chest and bathed his face with tears. They stood like that until the last of the screams from inside had faded, faded, and . . .

  Even now Tom could not finish that sentence. There was no dictionary in his head that contained the words that would make sense of this.

  The screams faded.

  Not into silence.

  Into moans.

  Such hungry, hungry moans.

  He had lingered there because it seemed a true sin to leave Mom to this without even a witness. Without mourners.

  Mom and Dad.

  Inside the house now.

  Moaning. Both of them.

  Tom Imura staggered to the front door and nearly committed the sin of entry. But Benny was a squirming reminder of all the ways this would kill them both. Body and soul.

  Truly. Body and soul.

  So Tom reached out and pulled the door closed.

  He fumbled in his pocket for the key. He didn’t know why. The TV and the Internet said that they can’t think, that something as simple and ordinary as a doorknob could stop them. Locks weren’t necessary.

  He locked it anyway.

  And put the key safely in his pocket. It jangled against his own.

  He backed a
way onto the lawn to watch the window again. The curtains moved. Shapes stirred on the other side, but the movements made the wrong kind of sense.

  The shapes, though.

  God, the shapes.

  Dad and Mom.

  Tom’s knees gave all at once, and he fell to the grass so hard that it shot pain into his groin and up his spine. He almost lost his grip on his brother. Almost. But didn’t.

  He bent his head at length, unable to watch those shapes. He closed his eyes and bared his teeth and uttered his own moan. A long, protracted, half-choked sound of loss. Of a hurt that no articulation could possibly express because the descriptive terms belonged to no human dictionary. Only the lost understand it, and they don’t require further explanation. They get it because there is only one language spoken in the blighted place where they live.

  Tom actually understood in that moment why the poets called the feeling heartbreak. There was a fracturing, a splintering in his chest. He could feel it.

  Benny kicked him with little feet and banged on Tom’s face with tiny fists. It hurt, but Tom endured it. As long as it hurt there was some proof they were both alive.

  Still alive.

  Still alive.

  -2-

  It was Benny Imura who saved his brother Tom.

  Little, eighteen-month-old screaming Benny.

  First he nearly got them both killed, but then he saved them. The universe is perverse and strange like that.

  His brother, on his knees, lost in the deep well of the moment, did not hear the sounds behind him. Or, if he did, his grief orchestrated them into the same discordant symphony.

  So, no, he did not separate out the moans behind him from those inside the house. Or the echoes of them inside his head.

  That was the soundtrack of the world now.

  But Benny could tell the difference.

  He was a toddler. Everything was immediate, everything was new. He heard those moans, turned to look past his brother’s trembling shoulder, and he saw them.