“It’s all right,” I said, awkwardly patting her shoulder. “That guy on the steps was an enforcer. I’m sure they didn’t do that to James.”
“Maybe they just killed him. Because they wanted our food.”
This did seem kind of likely, so I didn’t know what else to say.
We reached the main road, and saw a group of people coming our way, eight or nine of them. They skipped along the yellow stripe, singing and clapping and shaking a tambourine, laughing like babies. They carried flowers and wore flowers in their hair . . . and those flowers were all they wore.
“What’s up with that?” I asked, but Nicole didn’t know.
“Hey!” I called out. “Whatcha doin’?” They didn’t seem to notice. We watched as they jiggled past in the nude.
An older woman followed a few paces behind them, dressed in normal clothes. Instead of flowers she carried a large stick.
“Oh, hello,” she said. “I’m Ruth. Don’t I know you girls?”
She lived down the street from us, but my mother would never let any of us kids talk to her, or even walk past her yard, on account of the pentagram she had hanging in her window. I was beginning to see that the end of the world might have its perks—for the first time I could talk to anyone I pleased.
“I’m Annette,” I said. “And this is Nicole. What are they so happy about?”
“Well,” Ruth said. “Bless their hearts, but they’re in paradise. Or at least they think they are.”
“They think this is Planet X?”
“It’s called seeing what you want to see. We all do it. Some more than others.”
“That’s fucked,” Nicole said. “Fucked up. Fucked in the head.”
“It’s no worse than setting half the city on fire. Are you girls headed to the bread lines? Let me walk with you. I like to follow the loonies, since they’re harmless. But you seem like better conversationalists.”
“Okay,” I said.
“We’ve got a gun,” Nicole added.
The ration station was nothing more than a big messy row of folding tables, guarded by military and manned by city workers and volunteers. We waited in line, while the soldiers strode back and forth alongside, their heavy rifles slung across their chests.
Ruth wasn’t intimidated by any of it. Straightaway she struck up a conversation with a baby-faced soldier lingering nearby: “Young man,” she said, “You hardly look old enough to be in the army at all.”
“I’m eighteen, ma’am,” he said, half-smiling.
“My god. They get younger every year.”
“I just signed up,” he volunteered. He really did look young, barely older than me. He was a Midwestern boy, with blue eyes and light brown hair and a clean fresh face. “Soon’s I heard the President’s speech, about how there was gonna be a war. I thought we was gonna be fighting aliens, but instead they sent us to two days of basic and then up here to guard supply lines, keep the peace.”
“I’m sure you’ll see your aliens soon,” said Ruth.
“I hope so,” he said. He seemed eager to talk to us, and who wouldn’t be, so young and suddenly far from home? “I heard there might be a big attack soon. Somewhere close. Like Chicago. Or St. Louis. We’ll be ready! You can count on that!”
The rest of us bedraggled, half-starved people waiting for white bread and government cheese weren’t so happy about the idea, and a low moan of dread ran through the line. It was bad enough with no power, and half the city a burnt-out wreck, and our kin dead and gone with no bodies to bury, but to be attacked by aliens, too? It was getting absurd.
“But you know what else?” the young soldier continued. “I heard there’s rebels. People who don’t even believe in aliens at all. So we got that, too. It’s a war on two fronts. Don’t make sense to me, though. We got an enemy, a real enemy. Like Nazis, but worse, you know? I heard they look like walking frogs.”
“Okay, okay,” his commander said, coming up behind him and clapping him on the shoulder. “That’s enough storytelling. Let’s keep it moving.”
Our soldier grinned sheepishly, half-saluted at Ruth, and headed up the line.
• • • •
That night there were attacks on cities in India and China and Brazil. They showed it all on the news: crumbling buildings, burning foliage, eroding skylines. Raging lakes of fire and flame. And terrified people, as they ran and cried, everything they’d loved reduced to ash. The news announcers didn’t talk. They just watched with the rest of us, pale and afraid.
Nicole had followed me home, after the bread line. At first I was worried to bring her, but she was young and pretty and the rebels were mostly men, so they didn’t seem to mind. Right away she handed her baby off to Jane and the men gave her a gun. Now she was leaning into their circle with a thirsty look on her face, watching the wreckage on TV.
They weren’t afraid. They claimed it was all manufactured, nothing but fake. A false flag operation, they said.
“What’s that mean?” Nicole demanded, and Big Doug explained.
“But aren’t the dead people still dead?” I wanted to know. No one had an answer for that.
I brought dinner to Jane and the kiddies upstairs. They were all of ’em starving, because there’d been no one around to fix lunch, and nothing to fix. Timmy dove toward the plate like a hungry wolf, but quick as could be, Jane slapped him away. “Timmy,” she said. “We haven’t had time to pray. Close your eyes, Annette,” she commanded, so I did.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood,” she said, quoting from the Bible, a verse I once knew too. “But against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places . . .”
I didn’t want to listen. Eyes still closed, I slipped away.
• • • •
The next day I had to go back to the ration station all over again. There were too many people at my house, eating too much food, but we had to keep it secret, or the soldiers would get suspicious. Someone else should wait in the line, but no one wanted to do that, because it was boring. It was way more fun to sit in the basement counting the hand grenades some lunatic from Rolla had brought in under cover of night. So food duty fell to me, again.
The baby-faced soldier recognized me; he came up and said hello. “Didn’t I just see you yesterday?” he asked. “Did they give you enough?”
“I, um, I’ve got a big family,” I said, which wasn’t exactly a lie.
He lit up. “Oh yeah? Me too. How many you got?”
“Well, there’s me, and Jane, and Larry, and Timmy, and Sylvie,” I said. “And Dad. And Mom, but she got enforced.”
“So did my sister Rae Ann,” he said. “And my big brother Jack, and he had two kids. I like to think I’m here for him. Those people, the ones who fought back at the very beginning, they were the real heroes, don’t you think? My momma says we should be grateful to them all. She’d say your momma was a hero too.”
Then his commander was giving him a look, so he moved on, down the line.
On the way back I ran into Ruth. “Oh, you again,” she said. “Listen, do you want to come by my house tonight? It’s a full moon and seeing as how the world was supposed to end and then didn’t, I figured some thanks to the goddess would probably be in order, don’t you agree? Bring your friend, too. It would help complete the circle.”
“I, um, okay,” I said. “That sounds good. I’ll see what I can do.”
• • • •
Nicole didn’t want to go at first, because she said it sounded weird, and kinda lame, but I insisted. I’d been on my feet cooking and cleaning for days. Now the whole house reeked because we couldn’t take showers anymore and the toilets were all backed up. No one was even bothering about it, because they expected the war to begin any day. Their makeshift beds were scattered all over the house, heaped with dirty clothes and damp towels they’d used to clean their privates. I just wanted to get out of the house, away from all the men with
their unkempt beards and stinking feet. So I reminded Nicole that she wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me, and finally she agreed to go.
We slipped away just after dinner when the kids had gone to bed and the men were talking by firelight to conserve the generator’s fuel. They’d banned the TV completely, because we couldn’t afford the power, and anyway they said it was nothing but lies.
Now that nearly all the power was gone, night was deeper than it had ever been before. Storm-heavy clouds shifted and scattered across the face of the moon. In Ruth’s backyard, surrounded by overgrown hedges and the low-hanging branches of sycamore trees, it was so dark we could barely see each other. The match flared bright for a moment as Ruth lit three candles, illuminating spooky shadows across her face—for a moment she really did look like a witch.
We stood in a circle with our arms outstretched, while Ruth explained that there is only one goddess, though she goes by different names—different names for different forms. Tonight Ruth called on Hecate, the goddess in three. Hecate was ours: maiden, mother, and crone. She was the goddess of transformations, of endings and beginnings, of birth and death. Here, in this moment, as one world perished and the next came into being, she was the goddess of now.
Then Ruth prayed, though it was not like Jane’s prayers. She prayed for strength, and wisdom, and harmony; she prayed for protection for women everywhere and for peace to come at the crossroads.
I could feel the heat radiating off my white candle, its warmth on my fingers and forehead.
When it ended Nicole was the first to blow out her candle without so much as an “Amen.” She tossed the dripping candle into the grass and said, “So, um, that was fun? I better be getting back. Annette—you’ll be along?” She slipped past the shadows and through the gate.
“And the circle is broken,” Ruth said. She knelt and lodged the three candles upright in a little pile of stones and rocks, and relit Nicole’s candle. She patted the grass beside her. I sat.
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” I said. “But the people at my house . . . they’re planning a war. They’re going to attack the army base. Or maybe just the soldiers. I’m not exactly sure.”
“I thought that might be the case,” Ruth said.
“I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
“I know,” Ruth said. “They will, though, you know. The army is stronger. So much stronger. Your friends can never win.”
“They’re not my friends.”
“But you still don’t want them to die.”
“Of course not. I don’t want anyone to die.” I wasn’t a hero, not like my mother, not like my father. I just wanted to live.
“If you need anything, Annette, promise me you’ll come to me, alright?”
I promised.
Then she told me to go home, before they started worrying.
• • • •
No one had missed me. They were getting updates from Joplin; the uprising there had begun tonight. Most had been killed in the skirmishes, and the rest had fled and gone into hiding. The army base was strong as ever. The rebels had failed.
“We won’t fail, though, will we?” Nicole asked. “We’re stronger. We have more people. We can do this. We can win.”
On the radio there was talk of new cities destroyed, demolished by alien weapons and leveled to cinders and ash. Albuquerque. Florence. Perth. Lahore. The announcers speculated on the next target. “I’ve heard military strategists fear an attack on the financial center of the northeast,” said one. “Or perhaps a psychological strike, aimed at America’s heartland.”
“Omaha? St. Louis? Des Moines?”
“Tomorrow,” my father said. “Dumb fucks in Joplin. Tipped our hand. Tomorrow, before they start doing block sweeps over here. Tomorrow we strike.”
• • • •
Jane woke me a couple hours past midnight, gripping my shoulder with her bony fingers. “Annette,” she whispered. “Larry’s missing. Wake up. I can’t find Larry.”
“What time is it?” I groaned, but then I understood and I was up like a shot.
We crept barefoot through the house, over and around the sleeping hulks of men, passed out anywhere and everywhere. We looked in the kitchen, in the backed-up bathrooms that smelled of sewage, in the abandoned backyard, and even in the basement, where a couple guys were still awake, guarding the guns. They looked us up and down as if they barely knew us. “Nope. Haven’t seen the kid.”
We went outside, holding hands now, more afraid than we’d admit. We should have gotten Dad, but we understood that he was no longer here for us, not like that. He’d become part of something else—he was leading something else—and now we were the distraction.
We found Larry standing in the middle of the street as the Paradisers had done, staring up at the brilliant full moon. The clouds had passed. Jane called his name in a quiet voice, but he didn’t seem to hear.
I followed his gaze. There, soaring and zipping across the sky, I saw a spacecraft.
It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and I knew immediately that it was completely and totally alien, not of this world. It was dimly luminescent, speedy and nimble. Along one triangular side were racing patterns of turquoise and violet light.
“Look,” I said, pointing toward the sky, but Jane was occupied with Larry, and when I looked back, the spacecraft was gone.
“Is he sleepwalking?” But he seemed awake, just groggy and confused. We dragged him back to the safety of the front porch, demanding to know what was up.
“I got up to pee,” he said. “Then I looked out the window and I saw an alien standing here, in the front yard. I knew it was one because it was fat and scaly like a frog. Then it waved at me. It wanted me to follow. So I did.”
“But the windows are boarded up,” I said. “Remember? You were dreaming. It was just a dream.”
“It wasn’t a dream,” he insisted. “I’m awake.”
“No,” Jane said sharply. “Stop lying. Annette’s right. The windows are boarded up. You didn’t see a thing.”
“I’m not lying. I saw an alien. I did.”
She slapped him, hard. “There are no aliens, Larry. There’s no such thing. Jesus wouldn’t allow it. Now come back to bed.” She grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him toward the front door.
He began to cry. “You’re hurting me.”
“Stop hurting him, Jane,” I said. “It’s okay. Everyone just go back to bed.”
But I couldn’t sleep for a long, long time. I lay on the floor by my siblings, remembering the way the glowing spacecraft had zigzagged across the sky. I wondered if I’d been dreaming, too.
• • • •
The next morning I woke late. By the time I came downstairs, everyone was already eating breakfast. Nicole had taken over what she called “Provisions,” so I didn’t have to worry so much about cooking anymore.
But Nicole and Jane were telling everyone about the “witchcraft” Ruth had forced Nicole and me to do, and how it made Larry hallucinate an alien and sleepwalk down the street. All the men were cracking up at the idea of Larry following an alien because it waved at him. Embarrassed, Larry started laughing too.
Nicole and Jane were serious, though. “I’m telling you,” Nicole said. “There was something real creepy about that lady. I’m not going back there. And I think Annette best not either.”
“Agreed,” my dad said, looking at me as if he’d just remembered I was his daughter. “We need your help around here. And no more talking to outsiders! That kind of thing could get us all killed.”
I was going to tell them about the spacecraft, but then I realized they’d just laugh at me the way they’d laughed at Larry. So I didn’t say a word.
I still wanted to talk to Dad, though. I pulled him into the empty pantry where we could have a moment to ourselves. “Dad. I’m afraid,” I said. “I don’t want you to do this. I don’t want you to die. Don’t you remember what you said to Mom?”
He looked like I’d hit him. “Don’t you see, Annette? Your mom fought back. Now we’re fighting back. Everyone else is a collaborator. They’re followers, Annette, traitors, sheep. Not us. Not me. That’s why we’ve all got to fight.”
“But what about me and Jane and Larry and Timmy and little Sylvie? If you die, we’ll be alone.”
“That’s just it. I’m doing this for you. So you kids can live in a future that’s safe and free.”
“I don’t care about the future. I care about now. I just want us to be okay.”
He promised that we would.
• • • •
I went back to the ration station that day, hoping my soldier would still be there. I had to tell someone about the alien ship.
In the old days, if my parents said there were no such thing as aliens, I’d have believed them without a second thought, never mind what I thought I saw. But things were changing now. I could believe what I wanted to believe, be whatever I wanted to be.
I figured my soldier would understand. Maybe he’d even be pleased; his aliens were finally near.
Instead he bit his bottom lip and looked at me with brooding eyes. “A lot of people have been seeing things,” he said. “All kinds of weird things. Things that don’t always match up, don’t always fit the facts. My commander says it’s ‘stress-induced hallucinations.’ That’s what he called it. Some of the boys been gettin’ ’em too. Maybe sometimes we just see what we want to see.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “It looked so real. It felt real, too. I felt it in my skin. Like electricity. A tingle.” Then I got embarrassed, talking about my tingly skin.
“Maybe it was,” he said kindly, and I knew he was humoring me. “Anyway, I gotta say goodbye. I probably won’t see you no more . . . I’m headed out to St. Louis tonight.”
“Everyone? All the soldiers?”
“A good bit,” he said. “You know, I’m sure you’ve heard the talk.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Like there could be an attack. What time you headed out?”
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