And then the cars in front of the other man suddenly parted to either side, the drivers pulling to the left and right to open up a lane down the middle. The man laughed and drove forward into the open space the other drivers had created for him.
That was when Zane realized he was an angel.
* * *
THE NEW address the pregnant woman gave him was for a church. Our Lady of Perpetual Suffering. Zane thought it was an apt name, given that it took him forty-five minutes to get there because of road construction. While he drove, he thought about the time a different man had asked him to part traffic, although for the whole day in that case. He told Zane he wanted to feel what it was like to be important. Zane had granted him the miracle and hadn’t charged him anything.
The church was empty when Zane went inside, but it was lit up by candles everywhere. Zane sat in a pew and waited. He looked at the saints and angels in the stained glass windows that lined the walls and wondered if they had been people like him or if they had actually performed miracles that mattered.
After a time a man came through the sacristy door wearing black clerical clothing. He glanced around the church and looked surprised to see Zane sitting there. He nodded and then busied himself by bending down behind the pulpit to work on something. Zane got his attention by making all the candles in the church flare up for a few seconds, long enough that the priest straightened up at the pulpit and glanced around again to see what was happening. When the flames died back down, the priest looked at Zane.
“You could have just said hello or something,” he said.
“I’m trying to find a woman,” Zane said.
“This isn’t really the place for that.”
“Agnes Bath. She helped another woman get pregnant. I’m told you introduced them.”
The priest studied him for a moment without saying anything. Then he walked out from behind the pulpit and down the aisle, to sit in the pew across from Zane.
“I should have known you weren’t someone new looking for a little salvation,” he said.
“I could have been,” Zane said.
“You know, hardly anyone comes into the church these days.” The priest gazed around at the empty pews. “Not since all you miracle workers showed up.”
“Most people call us angels.”
“Well, I don’t,” the priest said. He looked at the Christ in the stained glass window at the back of the church, crucified in a broken rainbow. “But that’s the trouble, isn’t it? We all prayed for the angels to come back, but we got you instead. And you don’t make any difference at all.”
“I don’t tell people what miracles to ask for,” Zane said.
“No, but you show them miracles can’t really change anything. So why bother searching for God when he’s not going to help you anyway?”
“If anyone knows the answer to that, it should be you.”
The priest smiled a little but didn’t look away from the people in the windows. “What exactly do you want with Agnes?” he asked.
“I just want to find her and talk to her,” Zane said. “It’s a long story.”
“She’s easy enough to find, but I think you’ll have a hard time talking to her,” the priest said. “She’s in a cemetery now.”
Zane absorbed that in silence for a moment. “What happened to her?” he finally asked.
“I think you know what happened,” the priest said, looking back at him now.
“Which cemetery?”
“Eternal Garden. She said she wandered the grounds for a week and didn’t recognize any of the names there.”
Zane nodded and stood up. “What do you want?” he asked.
The priest laughed, a low, dry sound. “I want more people to come to church.”
“There are some miracles even I can’t manage,” Zane said. But he looked at the Christ in the stained glass long enough to hear the sound of the miracle, then walked out as blood started to trickle from the Christ’s wounds.
* * *
THE SKY had turned fiery with the setting sun by the time Zane reached the cemetery. There were no other cars in the parking lot, although there was a bouquet of flowers resting in one of the parking spaces. The gate to the cemetery grounds was locked for the evening, but that wasn’t the sort of thing that could stop someone like him.
Zane wandered the cemetery alone, like he was the last man left alive, until he found the grave of Agnes Bath. He looked down at the grave marker for several minutes, until he began to grow cold. It looked like all the other grave markers. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought it the grave of just another person. But if he hadn’t known better, he wouldn’t have been here.
Zane knew he couldn’t resurrect Agnes. That was far beyond the power of a casual miracle. But perhaps there was another way to talk to her.
He reached down and put his hand on the grave marker until he heard the sound of the miracle moving through him. He looked around but didn’t see anything. He wondered if maybe his idea hadn’t worked after all.
Then Zane heard the sound of swearing coming from the earth underfoot. He stepped back just in time to watch the ghost of Agnes pull herself from the ground, like she was digging her way out even though the grass remained undisturbed. She dragged herself out on hands and knees, then pushed herself to her feet and brushed imaginary dirt from her limbs. She was as ethereal as Zane had always imagined a ghost – he could see right through her to the grave markers stretching away in rows until they disappeared in the deepening gloom.
Agnes didn’t look the way Zane remembered her, though. Her skin was drawn tight over the bones of her face and arms, and she looked more like a skeleton than a person. Zane realized his miracle had created a ghost of the Agnes that was in the grave, not the one who had been alive. Still, it was better than no miracle at all.
She looked at Zane and sighed. “What the hell do you want? I thought I was done with all this.”
“What happened to you?” Zane asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Agnes asked. “I died.”
“I thought we couldn’t die,” Zane said. “I’ve tried.”
“I know,” Agnes said, nodding. Her twisted hair fell over her face and she didn’t try to move it. “I tried for years after I got my powers. Once every few months at least. I just finally gave up. You can’t die as long as you’ve got the miracles in you. But the thing is there’s no ‘we.’ There was me with the power and then you with the power. Once I gave it to you, I could do anything I wanted. So here I am.”
Zane lifted his hand and put it through one of her arms for a couple of seconds, to see if he could. He didn’t feel anything, even though it was harder to see his hand on the other side of her. It was like looking through a thick fog.
“How did you give me the power?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Agnes said. “I just did.” She looked down at the ground. “Sorry about that.”
“I’ve tried to give it away,” Zane said. “With maybe dozens of people. I can’t figure out the trick to do it.”
“You have to find the right person.”
“How do you find the right person?” Zane asked.
“You just know,” Agnes said. “It’s like when you’re dating and you’re not expecting anything and then you go out one night to a bar to meet friends and your entire life changes. Maybe it changes for the better, maybe for the worse, but it changes.” She looked back up at him and brushed the hair from her eyes now. “Like when I saw you coming to save me. I knew you were the one.”
“I was just driving down the road and you jumped onto my car,” Zane said.
“It was like our eyes met across a crowded club.”
Zane looked at the graves all around them. He wondered if there were any other angels in the cemetery. He wondered if maybe someday he would get to die and be buried and forgotten in a place like this.
“That’s all you wanted to know?” Agnes asked. “You probably could have found everything I’ve
told you on Google.”
“Did you hear the modem sound when you did miracles?” Zane asked.
“What modem sound?”
“Like an old computer modem. Only it’s made of human voices.”
“All I heard was someone breathing. At first I thought maybe it was God. But then I realized it sounded a lot like my ex-boyfriend. So I tried not to think about it too much.”
Zane didn’t know what to say to that. He rubbed his face with his hands and stared up at the sky. This wasn’t going like he had expected. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted from her. His phone vibrated in his pocket but he ignored it.
“Is this all you raised me from the dead for?” Agnes asked. “It hardly seems worth it.”
“How do you do a real miracle?” Zane asked, still gazing up at the sky.
“What do you mean, ‘a real miracle’?”
“Something life or death, something that matters.”
“If I had known how to do that, I’d probably still be alive and you’d be wandering around as just another person,” she said. “I don’t think anyone knows how to do a real miracle. Maybe not even God, if he exists.”
“You made the baby,” Zane said.
“What are you going on about now?” Agnes asked. “Are you all right? Maybe you should be talking to a therapist, not me.”
“The woman who wanted to have a baby but couldn’t. The priest sent you to her.”
“Oh, her. That was nothing. No different than dyeing someone’s hair or showing them a photo of the life they could have had with that past lover.”
“You helped her to have a baby,” Zane said. “You made a life. That’s a real miracle, not fixing someone’s car.”
“Is that what you think?” Agnes asked.
Zane looked back at her. “I’ve never been able to do anything life or death like that.”
“No, I mean you think the baby is actually going to live?” Agnes asked. She shook her head. “It’s just another casual miracle. That woman’s life won’t be any different a year from now.”
Zane stared at her as he finally understood. Agnes looked back at him with her dead eyes. The phone in his pocket buzzed again.
“Are you going to get that?” Agnes asked.
Zane took out the phone and looked at it. There was a series of text messages waiting. They all said the same thing. HELP! He scrolled through them until he saw the older message that told him who they were from. It was the pregnant woman.
“I guess you’ll be going now,” Agnes said. “I’d like to say it was nice to see you again, but ...”
Zane stared at the messages for several seconds, not sure what he should do. Another one arrived as he stood there.
WE’RE AT THE HOSPITAL! HELP!
He turned and started back toward the car. He wasn’t sure if the ghost of Agnes had been real or if he had just imagined her because it was what he wanted.
“You won’t be able to do anything,” Agnes said as she sank back into the grave. “None of us can do anything.”
* * *
ZANE DROVE to the hospital and left the car in the parking lot without paying. There was no time. He went in through the ER entrance and walked past all the people staring at the television and floor and ceiling as they waited, and went up to the nurse behind the reception desk.
“You have a woman losing a baby here,” he said.
“We have a lot of women who lose babies here,” the nurse said, not looking away from her computer.
“I’ve come to help,” Zane said.
“Are you family? Or a doctor?” the nurse asked. She glanced at him and then back at her computer. “You don’t look like a doctor.”
“I’m an angel.”
“That baby is going to need more than your little miracles.” The nurse hit the keys on her keyboard hard as she typed. “We all are.”
“I’m the only hope the baby has,” Zane said. “We both know the doctors can’t save it.”
The nurse looked at him again and this time didn’t look away. There was blood in one of her eyes from who knew what.
“I can give you your own miracle,” Zane said. “No charge.”
The nurse didn’t seem to move but a door opened beside the reception desk. The nurse nodded at the open doorway. “She’s in the first private room after the trauma beds.”
Zane went through the door and down the hallway beyond. The hall was lined with beds. A young boy wearing an oxygen mask sat on one with his mother, watching something on her phone. They both looked up at him hopefully as Zane walked past, and he looked away. He didn’t meet the eyes of the elderly man with the shaking legs in the next bed, or the teen girl with the bloody arms in the bed after that. He didn’t meet the eyes of the nurses or doctors or any of the other patients as he walked through the ER and to the row of private rooms on the other side. He opened the first door and stepped into the room, ignoring the nurse who called after him from somewhere amid the trauma beds.
The pregnant woman was alone in the room. She lay on a bed surrounded by machines. She was attached to the machines by wires stuck to her head and stomach. Her stomach was otherwise bare, except it was covered in some sort of gel. The machines were all sounding alarms. The woman was crying as she held her hands to her stomach.
“I’m sorry,” she said when she saw Zane standing there. “I know you can’t help. I know that’s not how the miracles work. But I don’t ...” She turned her head to the wall for a few seconds, then looked back down at her stomach.
“They’re going to bring him out,” she said. “They say it’s his only chance.”
“They won’t be able to save him,” Zane said.
The woman nodded like she understood. “So that’s why the other angel was able to help me,” she said. “Because she knew. She knew this would happen. It wouldn’t matter in the end.”
Zane went over to stand at her side. He looked down at her stomach. He was hoping to see the baby move, to see some sign of life, but there was nothing. The machines kept up their alarms.
The woman looked up at him. “There’s a rainbow around your head. Is that a halo?”
“That’s the drugs they put you on,” Zane said. He knew he had never done anything to deserve a halo.
“You can’t do anything, can you?” the woman asked. “None of you can.”
Zane didn’t answer her. Instead, he put his hand on the woman’s stomach. The gel was sticky and warm under his fingers. He could feel the woman’s breathing, maybe even a heartbeat.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
But he did know. He knew this was the one. And then he felt something push against his hand from inside the woman’s stomach. The baby. Maybe a hand or maybe a foot. The baby was reaching out to touch him.
“No one can die when they have the miracles inside them,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” the woman asked. “What are you doing to my baby?” She tried to sit up, but she was tangled in the cords from all the machines.
The sound of the miracle rose inside of Zane, and this time the chorus of voices was the loudest it had ever been, like every person on earth was a part of it.
“It’s all right,” he said as he pushed back against the baby’s hand or foot, whatever it was, even though he wasn’t really sure whom he was talking to. “Everything is going to be all right.”
First
CONTACTS
The first we knew of the world's end was when the bodies fell burning from the sky. Signs of things to come, although we didn’t realize what they meant at the time.
They smashed into our cities, into bank towers and shopping malls and car lots and apartment blocks. When we first saw them blazing down from the heavens, we thought maybe the aliens had finally answered our calls, for better or worse.
But they weren’t aliens, or even alien weapons. They were mummified people in spacesuits. Our soldiers came and gathered up the sc
orched remains, and our scientists studied them in labs. The rest of us studied them in videos online.
And we recognized the suits.
They were the kind worn in the early days of the space race, back when we still dreamed about the future. The suits were charred and torn from their descents and impacts with the earth, but the flags survived on some of them. Flags for nations that existed in name only now.
CCCP.
Republic of China.
USA.
We didn’t know what the bodies meant, so we tested their DNA. We found matches around the world.
A dead spaceman had the same DNA as a Wichita man who’d dreamed of becoming an astronaut but had become a cargo pilot instead.
A dead spacewoman’s DNA matched that of a woman in Hong Kong who wrote poems about the stars.
A dead spaceman’s DNA profile was identical to that of a man who owned a Moscow nightclub called Sputnik.
The dead who fell from the sky were ghosts. But they were ghosts of the living.
We wondered about time travel, about wormholes, about cosmic strings. The dead were a question, but we had no answer.
So we turned all our telescopes and looked past our moon, in the direction the bodies had come from. And saw more dead astronauts drifting our way through space. And beyond them, the fragment of another moon. But, like the dead, it also belonged to us.
We identified part of Mare Tranquillitatis on it, and we found the Apollo 11 landing site, the flag buried in dust. Just like on the moon that continued to orbit us.
But this ghost moon was different from our moon in other ways. It had water mines and solar farms. Buildings ruptured by meteors, with more bodies drifting through the tears in the structures. This other moon had been colonized, but now it just held colonies of the dead.
We searched for answers as the remains of the other moon came at us on a collision path.
We thought maybe the universe was infinite, which meant anything was possible – even another us.
We thought maybe we’d collided with an alternate universe.
Has The World Ended Yet? Page 3