The End Is Now

by John Joseph Adams

  As she turned around she noticed a wealthy couple. She could tell by the finery of their clothing, their noble, confident gait, the air of importance even as they walked around the wreckage, arm-in-arm, beneath a pair of matching silver gas masks. The woman spun her tinsel-fringed parasol and the man tipped his felt bowler hat to the blue-skinned crowd as if this were just another lovely Sunday afternoon.

  Dorothy backed away when she saw the anger in the faces of the other survivors. She ran back toward Chinatown and heard screams as the crowd descended upon the couple like dogs on a sick, lame deer. Years of rage from generations of servitude had been unleashed. The affluent strollers must have emerged proudly from a generously built comet shelter, armed with the dull axe of wealth, a blunt instrument now. Their money and social standing was inert, useless at the end of the world.

  When the Earth shook again, stronger than before, this time for a long minute, which stretched out like an hour, Dorothy crouched next to an overturned brewers wagon, sheltered by a copper cask the size of a bank vault. She cried into her fists, determined to see her Nai Nai one last time before the world ended. But even that familial notion seemed like a hopeless wish as she watched the Hayes & Hayes Bank building explode.

  A gas main must have erupted.

  When the tremors subsided, she ran away from the heat. She was four blocks away when she heard the terrifying reverberation of the Earth opening its maw as a chasm of flame swallowed what remained of the six-story building.

  Ten minutes and many haggard breaths later, she arrived on the far side of the International District and the Asian Housing Zone, Dorothy found her Nai Nai where she’d last seen her—in the mixed-roots cemetery next to a potter’s field.

  Dorothy stared at the toppled forest of slender Buddhist headstones. The carved granite obelisks that once stood virtually shoulder-to-shoulder had all fallen, or cracked, or both. Dorothy felt bad for irreverently stepping on so many graves, but was relieved—comforted even, to find her Nai Nai’s headstone in once piece. She embraced the cold grave marker and felt the vibrations of the Earth through the stone, slow and rhythmic, like a metronome.

  Then the cemetery lit up as lighting flashed deep within the dark clouds rotating on the western horizon. The billowing haze spun into tornadoes that reached down with long twisted fingers, probing, searching, and wending their way across the horizon, creeping as though ready to pick the bones of the ruination of Seattle.

  Dorothy watched numbly, helplessly, as a fleet of zeppelins was pulled toward the maelstrom. Their concrete anchors tore through the wrecked remains of the waterfront and the massive blimps were swallowed whole, disappearing into the spinning clouds.

  “I don’t have much time, Nai Nai,” Dorothy cried above wind and the sporadic spotting of hailstones that were the size of the opium balls she’d been smoking, the ones that had briefly extended, if not saved, her life.

  “I think I’ll be seeing you soon, wherever you are.” Dorothy imagined herself sucked into the sky along with her grandmother’s ashes.

  That’s when she noticed the inscription on her grandmother’s headstone—her Nai Nai’s favorite quote from the I Ching. She touched the ornate Chinese characters.

  It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any self-deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events, by which the path to success may be recognized.

  She heard a thick, European accent shout, “I see one!” and looked around. A block away there was a gathering of men, five or six in soiled fox hunting garb. “She’s skulking in the graveyard. And she’s ripe. Blue for the taking!”

  “Thank Heavens,” a man said, “It’s only right that God favors the just.”

  Dorothy stood up, confounded by their words, shocked to see their mouths, their suit collars mottled with what could only be the rusty, clotted crimson of human stain. That’s when she surmised that they weren’t looking for stragglers to rescue. They wanted the silver in her blood. They must have been seen the blue-hued survivors and decided that drinking their cruor was the only way to stave off the effects of the comet’s poison.

  “Careful, you’ll spook her.” Another man said as the group spread out and crept toward her, “We don’t have much time to find shelter from the storm.”

  Dorothy remembered her Nai Nai—the message on her grandmother’s grave, the I Ching and the fateful prediction that she and her cousin would witness an event and later marry. If the I Ching were true, then this was the event, the end of the world. And she’d see Darwin again, whether she wanted to or not; her life was destined, preordained, fated. But only if she had the courage to face things exactly as they are, these men—these savages who wanted to take her blood, and make it through the storm, which was disassembling the city, block by block, sucking brick and mortar into the sky.

  But she had a chance, didn’t she? She had a glimmer of hope, along with a hidden packet of blue silver opium—the last Pilus Lunares. She’d find Darwin, alive, and she’d keep him alive. She’d save him if she could, by the hair of the moon.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jamie Ford is the great grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Kaiping, China, to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the western name “Ford,” thus confusing countless generations. His debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list and went on to win the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His work has been translated into 32 languages. Jamie is still holding out for Klingon (because that’s when you know you’ve made it). He can be found at www.jamieford.com blogging about his new book, Songs of Willow Frost, and also on Twitter @jamieford.

  TO WRESTLE NOT AGAINST FLESH AND BLOOD

  Desirina Boskovich

  They said the world would end on Friday. The next moment we’d all be on Planet X, which was like heaven, but in real life.

  In Missouri it was supposed to happen at exactly four o’clock. We gathered ’round the living room with the shades down and the lights off, watching the TV and praying while we waited to disappear. It was me, and Jane, and Larry, and Tim. Plus Sylvie, who was crying all the time now. And Dad, of course. Mom had been enforced.

  Eventually the TV turned to static as the last station went off the air. We turned it down low and waited some more.

  3:55. 3:58. 3:59.

  Nothing happened.

  4:01. 4:02. 4:05.

  Nothing at all.

  Larry got up first and peeked out the blinds. That was Larry for you: always curious, always wanting to know. “There’s people,” he said. “Runnin’ around.”

  Dad went to the gun cabinet and took out two double-barreled shotguns. One for him, one for me—I was fifteen, old enough to drive, and old enough to shoot, even as a girl. “Can I have one?” Jane asked, but he shook his head. She was only twelve.

  At 4:25 the TV picture came back, and every channel was the President, saying: “My fellow Americans . . . We were tricked.”

  Apparently, like Dad, the government had had their suspicions. What if the aliens were con men, liars, cheats, and fakes? NASA, the Pentagon, the CIA—they’d reached out to others, through secret channels, the President said. They’d refused to be victims. They’d made other plans.

  “We are bruised, but not beaten,” he declared. “Damaged, but not defeated. Now, we must go to war against the alien invaders. We must defend not just our country, but our planet. I stand here today—and I beg you—from the bottom of my heart: Stand with me. We must—we will—we will stand together. God bless the United States of America!”

  My father cursed and turned off the set. “Aliens,” he said. “Bullshit. I knew it all along.” He turned on me, sharp and harsh. “Annette. Can you please get your sister to stop that damn crying? I’ve got to make some calls.”

  “Okay,” I said. I put down the shotgun and picked up Sylvie. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s take a nap.”

  • �
� • •

  When I came downstairs a bunch of men were sitting around the dining room table.

  I listened to them whisper. They were saying what dad had said all along: that it was a vast conspiracy, the scientists and the government and the people on the news. They wanted to impose a one-world government, install martial law, confiscate our guns. “A war on the free-minded,” they called it, but actually there weren’t so many free-minded left. They’d all been enforced.

  Mom had been free-minded. That’s why she was gone.

  People kept coming to the door with stories to tell: Smashed cars scattered across the intersections. Fistfights in the streets. Gas stations run dry. City blocks aflame. Supermarkets with their windows bashed in and their shelves stark empty, three customers brawling over the last frozen ham.

  And enforcers being chased down, beaten, and shot.

  Jane stood behind me, listening in. She was twelve and thought she was awfully grownup, but she didn’t need to hear all that. “Come help me fix supper,” I said.

  Supper was just sandwiches, a selection of bologna on white bread and PB&J. We were carrying the platters to the table, when someone outside started beating on the door, hammering the bell, screaming for help.

  Dad looked around. “Anyone expectin’ someone? ’Cause by my count that’s everybody.” He went to the window by the door and peeked around the shades. “It’s Don.”

  Don went to our church, before he’d become an enforcer. No one had spoken to him since.

  Jane and I set the chips and sandwiches on the table. “Go get the soda,” I told her.

  “You do it,” she said.

  Dad opened the front door a crack, the chain still up. “What do you want?” he demanded.

  “Please,” Don said, crying. “I heard people were meeting here. I’m begging you. Just let me in. They’re going to kill me.”

  “Sorry,” Dad said, not sorry at all.

  “But what about forgiveness?” Don pleaded. It was so quiet around the table you could hear our stomachs gurgling, but outside the door sounded the roar of building chaos: yelling crowds, screaming sirens, squealing tires, and the constant crackle-pop of guns going off. “What about mercy? What about fellowship? What about turning the other cheek?”

  “What about it?” Dad said, and slammed the door in Don’s face.

  Don shrieked and the mob howled and we heard tussling and scraping and something hard thudding against the door. A shot rang out, then another.

  My brother began to move toward the curtains. “Larry,” my dad said, in a dangerous voice, “Don’t you dare look out that window.” Then he returned to the table. “Now. Where were we?”

  They scarfed down the sandwiches and planned a war.

  Later, when no one was watching, I peeked outside the window. I saw Don, or what was left of Don—a pile of torn clothes and leaking body fluids and splattered brain matter and a lake of blood—and a broken casserole dish, tuna noodles and busted glass mixed together with all the human gore.

  That night they boarded up the windows.

  When bedtime came, Jane and I took the kids upstairs. Jane led the prayers, but even after she said “Amen,” she continued to pray in silence, her hands folded and her eyes closed, her face turned toward the window and the night sky. I sat with her until the waxing crescent moon rose high and bright.

  • • • •

  By the next morning the power was out, but our generator was on. Later that day the President got on TV and declared martial law, just like Dad had predicted.

  Soon the army tanks were rolling down the streets, the soldiers waving, while people came out of their houses to clap and cry and wave the flag. Everyone was mad as hell; everyone was ready for war.

  At our house more guys arrived all the time. Soon we had a dozen people living at our house ‘round the clock and another dozen coming in and out, all hours of the day. I wanted to listen to the war plans, but I had to spend all my time cooking, doing the dishes, washing the towels and sheets. I made Larry help me, though he complained the whole time. Jane had an entire nursery going upstairs now with the motherless babies and toddlers that other widowed fathers had brought along.

  I folded the laundry and watched the news. It was all overheated talk shows, playing and replaying the blurry footage of the aliens landing in Siberia or Greenland, setting up a massive camp.

  “Can’t we shoot them down?” demanded one panelist. “That’s what I want to know. We have the capabilities, right? The most powerful military in the entire world. Maybe the universe, I don’t know. Is the entire Air Force asleep at the wheel?”

  “Nuke them from orbit, right.”

  “Annette,” my father called. “We’re all starving. Can you put something together?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “And turn that garbage off. You know it’s all a bunch of lies.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Typical: It was the end of the world and not only did I have to spend it waiting on everybody, I wasn’t even allowed to watch TV.

  • • • •

  Everything was different with Mom gone.

  It wasn’t about the practical stuff. I’d always helped with all of that. It was about the purpose. Because Mom always believed, and though the God of her faith was vengeful and cruel, He was always there. Her belief had gotten us through the past couple weeks when everything else began to crumble.

  The schism at church happened as soon as the aliens arrived. Half the congregation believed this was false prophesy; there was no god but God, no heaven but His Kingdom, and Planet X was just another end-times distraction, sent to tempt.

  The other half believed this might be God, working in His own mysterious way; He was the author of every force in the universe, and no one could understand the working of his hands. So they wanted to pray, and proselytize, and convert as many souls as they could, before the final day.

  Of course, this was against alien orders; the aliens had commanded that everyone continue about their business as usual, no special preparations for the apocalypse, and certainly no last ditch efforts to save the world. They’d made one of every thousand people become an enforcer and punish violations. The punishment was instant execution. The punishment for refusing to be an enforcer was also instant execution.

  Mom and Dad fought a lot that week, because he didn’t want her to die. “But the Lord has called us,” she patiently explained.

  “Can’t He call someone else? For a change?”

  They enforced her on Thursday, hand in hand with other martyrs as they prayed beneath the steeple.

  We used to be homeschooled, before all this started. Now, Jane wanted to continue the lessons. “I’ll just start where we left off,” she said, but every time I went to check on them, they were listening to radio preachers and studying the Bible.

  • • • •

  We’d been stockpiling food for a long time, in case the end of the world happened. Then, luckily, it actually did, so all that rice and creamed corn wouldn’t have to go to waste.

  I expected the pantry stores to last a long time. But with the people coming in and out, making war plans and gobbling down all the stew, our food was gone in less than a week. Everyone kept saying the grocery stores were cleaned out, but somehow we’d have to find something to eat.

  I went down to the basement and tried to get some help, but they were all busy and distracted, arguing over a pile of illegally encrypted two-way radios and a stack of hand-drawn maps, telling each other to shush so they could hear the news from Joplin, another rebel cell. Someone paused long enough to tell me they’d passed a ration station, just a mile down the road. So I grabbed a .22 pistol, tucked it in my purse, and set out on my own.

  I hadn’t been outside in a while. The whole neighborhood looked pretty bad. There were cars stranded in the street where they’d run out of gas, after thieves had come in the night to siphon it away. There was trash everywhere, battered furniture, shell cas
ings, burned siding, broken glass.

  A neighbor girl stopped me three doors down. She stood in the doorway with her baby on her hip, waving frantically and calling my name.

  “Nicole,” I called. “Are you okay?” My parents never let me talk to her; they said she’d be a bad influence.

  “Yeah,” she called back. “But we don’t got no food in the house and James went out three days ago to get some and he never came back, and I’m starving and the baby won’t quit crying. I’m so scared and I dunno what to do.”

  “You can come with me. I’m looking for food.”

  “Scared to come outside,” she said.

  “It’s okay. I got a gun.” I showed her the pistol in my purse, and we set out toward the corner where they said the ration station would be.

  “They steal your gas?” Nicole asked, bouncing her baby a bit.

  “We siphoned it off for the generator,” I said, before I thought.

  “Generator. So you still got lights and stuff.”

  “Yeah. They boarded up the windows so nobody would know.”

  “Smart,” she said. Then she started crying. “I’m so glad you came outside,” she said. “I saw what they did to that guy standing on your doorstep. And the fires, and the fights, and the soldiers came through on tanks and hauled a whole bunch of people off. Then James boarded up our windows, and he disappeared. I guess they got him, too.”