The End Has Come

by John Joseph Adams

  “Think of it, dear child. Other planets we destroyed in a sweep, but your people — our people — got two generations of knowing that God was waiting for them. Two generations without terror, without regret. Two generations looking upward and onward instead of into misery.

  Pea is crying, alone but not alone on this ridiculous love seat she has created, and she is ashamed because she isn’t crying for her parents, and she isn’t crying for her world — she is crying for herself. “What about me?” she says now. “Why am I different? Why did I escape?”

  “We don’t know, Pea. It had taken the rest of us many generations, on a different kind of soil and under a different kind of sun, to become what we were. And here you were, all along. Like a fairy caught under glass. You were here all along. You are special, Pea.”

  She stands up. “I don’t want to be special.”

  “You are one of us, Pea.”

  “I don’t want to be one of you.”

  LOOK! The voice booms again. It is a hive of voices, a thousand voices. LOOK! — and Pea rockets up into the air, and she doesn’t know if she’s doing it or if it’s being done to her, but the thousand voices fill her head again, LOOK!

  She hovers in the air and can see all that she has done, in three days, she has rebuilt every building, remade every surface. She has borne a whole dead planet into a living world.

  YOU HAVE BUILT YOUR OWN FUTURE, DEAR CHILD.

  “No —”

  Pea misses her parents. She misses the world as it used to be. But the future is here, it’s coming now, the future is always rushing closer — the future was starting already — the sky was filling with lights, and the lights revealed themselves to be ships, the undersides of ships crowding the horizon.

  And then the future begins.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ben H. Winters is the winner of the Edgar Award for his novel The Last Policeman, which was also an Amazon.com Best Book of 2012. The sequel, Countdown City, won the Philip K. Dick Award; the third volume in the trilogy is World of Trouble. Other works of fiction include the middle-grade novel The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman, an Edgar Award nominee, and the parody novel Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, a New York Times bestseller. Ben has written extensively for the stage and is a past fellow of the Dramatists Guild. His journalism has appeared in Slate, The Nation, The Chicago Reader, and many other publications. He lives in Indianapolis, Indiana and at BenHWinters.com.

  AGENT NEUTRALIZED

  David Wellington

  Safety glass cracked, and the driver’s side window caved in. The biker brought his wrench back for another blow, and shards poured in through the suddenly open window, dust and wind blinding Whitman for a second as he fought to control the van and keep it on the road. In the back seat, Bob screamed, while up front in the passenger seat Grace fumbled with the shotgun clipped to the van’s dashboard.

  The biker’s face was tattooed like a Japanese demon. He shoved his wrench back into a pannier on the side of his motorcycle and reached for a machete.

  It was all Whitman could do to keep the van on the road. Ten years since the end of the world, potholes and broken asphalt made driving hazardous at any time. With a lunatic trying to kill him and six more of them in the rearview, Whitman was driving way too fast. One bad bump in the road and they would spin out, or fishtail to a stop at the worst possible time.

  “Glove compartment,” Whitman said, though he wasn’t sure if Grace would hear him over the boy screaming in the back. “Glove compartment!”

  He tried to push the biker off the road — the van might be a lumbering hulk at these speeds, but it weighed a lot more than Demonface’s patched-together bike. He veered hard, right into the bastard, but it was no use. The biker had to grab both handlebars for a second but he was a lot more maneuverable than the van. He swerved away, avoiding the collision with ease.

  “Glove compartment!”

  Grace finally seemed to process what he was saying. She popped open the glove compartment and a heavy revolver fell out. She caught it before it bounced away, then stared at it like she’d never seen a gun before.

  Maybe she hadn’t — Whitman knew nothing about her, nothing that the plus sign tattooed on the back of her hand couldn’t tell him. He’d picked her — and Bob — up at Atlanta the day before. He was supposed to drive them to a medical camp in Florida. There hadn’t been much conversation since then.

  Through his window he saw Demonface grab the machete again. The bike had no trouble matching speeds with the van, no matter how hard Whitman leaned on the gas.

  “What do I do?” Grace demanded.

  Whitman didn’t get a chance to answer. The machete came chopping down, the blade slicing deep into the rubber lining of the empty space where Whitman’s window used to be. He shoved himself back in his seat and the tip of the machete just missed cutting off the end of his nose.

  Cubes of broken glass danced and fell from his shirt. Up ahead was the on-ramp to Route 75. Maybe it would be safer up there — he knew the government had pushed most of the abandoned cars off the main roads. Maybe —

  The machete had cut deep into the window frame. Demonface had to wrench it free, a tricky thing to do while also controlling his motorcycle. The blade came loose, but the bike skidded across the road, falling back a full car length.

  Whitman took the on-ramp at high speed, leaning into the curve as the van reared up on two wheels, then fell back on its suspension with a sickening crunch. Up ahead the road stretched out straight and clear forever, six lanes wide and completely empty. Even the road surface was in better shape, with barely a pothole to be seen.

  Behind them the bikes came roaring up the ramp, seven of them riding in formation. Whitman saw their leader riding up front, a guy in a leather jacket with deer antlers sewn up and down the arms. Demonface was right next to him.

  Even as he watched, Demonface poured on the speed and surged ahead, clutching his machete across his handlebars. He was coming in for another attack.

  In the back, Bob kept screaming. The kid hadn’t said a word all night, literally not one word. Now he wouldn’t shut up.

  Demonface came up alongside the van again. Whitman could see him grow huge in his wing mirror. He was grinning, his own white teeth visible inside the demon’s row of fangs.

  “Give me —” Whitman started to say, but he didn’t get a chance to finish.

  Demonface was riding right next to him, at his window, machete in hand. Then Grace leaned across Whitman’s body, obscuring his view.

  She pointed the revolver right at the bastard’s face and pulled the trigger.

  The noise and the flash of light rendered Whitman senseless. He tried to hold the wheel straight, but his head was full of smoke. Grace dropped the revolver in his lap, and he felt the hot barrel graze his knee.

  He fought to recover, to see again at least — his hearing would be gone for a while, he knew. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes and finally got a bleary view of the road ahead. He straightened out the van before it could plunge into the concrete median strip.

  Then he looked back and saw the bikers falling away, slowing down and letting the van rush forward and away from them.

  Demonface’s bike was still sliding over the road, its wheels racing as it clattered to a stop. The biker himself lay motionless on the blacktop, one arm twisted over his head.

  • • • •

  A month ago — ten years after the Crisis began, shortly after the world ended. Time didn’t mean what it used to.

  There was music in the trees. Softly playing, patriotic songs. The trees were fake. The music was there to cut the silence.

  A mile underground, seven hundred miles away. States between then and now, trackless lengths of wasteland and wilderness. Distances were so much longer than they had been.

  Whitman dozed on a comfortable wooden bench, waiting his turn. Overhead, something that felt like the sun burned down on his face. Except, of course, it wasn’t the sun. It was a
bank of floodlights high in the bunker roof.

  They had moved Washington underground. The vaults below the capital had been built long before, built to withstand a nuclear apocalypse. More than safe enough for this particular Crisis. They’d brought down everything they needed, food and water and a nuclear generator. Staffers and pages and clerks. The business of government had to continue — somebody had to be in charge.

  “They’re ready for you, Mr. Whitman,” a page said, a young woman in a blazer and a modest tweed skirt. She smiled at him when he opened his eyes.

  He stood up — a little too fast. He heard movement behind him, rubber-soled boots squeaking on simulated flagstones. The jangling sound of an assault rifle being unlimbered from its strap.

  He turned and looked behind him. The soldier there never smiled. He did his best to stay out of Whitman’s line of sight, but he was always there. Everywhere Whitman went in the Washington bunkers — to the bathroom, when he slept — the guard was there, because Whitman had a tattoo of a plus sign on the back of his hand.

  There was no test for the prion disease that turned people into zombies. No symptoms to warn you when it was coming. It could incubate in your head for twenty years and then just one day, out of the blue, you would snap. Your eyes would fill with blood. You would forget your name; you would attack any living thing you saw.

  Or — you could be perfectly fine. You could be completely clean, live out your whole natural life and never succumb. You just never knew. Once you had the tattoo on your left hand, it didn’t matter.

  The guard followed Whitman as he walked down toward the Capitol dome. Not as nice as the old one, the above-ground one, he thought. This dome was made of concrete and wasn’t even painted. It was designed to survive even if the entire bunker came crashing down around it, a million tons of rock.

  Inside, it looked much like the old Senate floor. Rows of desks turned inward toward a big podium. The desks were empty today, but five senators sat at the podium. Whitman recognized three of them. The other two were very, very young.

  One of them, a man with white hair and gold-rimmed glasses perched on top of his head, had his own honor guard. A soldier stood behind him with an assault rifle, waiting. The senator had a plus sign on his hand just like Whitman’s. Apparently no matter how powerful you might be, the tattoo still made people nervous. A great democratizer, that tattoo.

  A table stood in front of the podium, covered in loose papers and manila folders and two microphones on flexible stalks like the eyes of a crab. Two men were already sitting there. One of them — the lawyer assigned to Whitman’s defense — stared at the floor, his mouth a set line. Whitman had seen plenty of people like that. People who survived the Crisis but couldn’t handle what came next. People who couldn’t forget what they’d seen.

  The other man turned as Whitman approached. Whitman couldn’t help but be surprised. It was Director Philips, Whitman’s old boss at the CDC. He’d heard the man had killed himself.

  Pink scar tissue covered one side of Philips’ head. His ear was missing. Aha, Whitman thought. He had enough medical training to recognize a self-inflicted gunshot wound. So Philips had tried to kill himself — tried and failed.

  Whitman could sympathize. He’d tried lots of things in his life, and failed. Now he was going to get to tell a select committee how badly he’d fucked up.

  He was ready. He actually wanted this.

  It meant closure.

  • • • •

  Whitman stood on the gritty shoulder of the road, keeping one eye on the trees twenty yards away. There could be zombies out there. But he had to check the van, make sure it wasn’t going to conk out at the worst possible moment.

  The painted government seal on the driver’s side door was scratched to hell, and his window was a complete loss. The tires seemed alright, though, and when he bent low to look at the undercarriage, he found only a few dents and scrapes.

  They’d been lucky. As fast as he’d been driving over those rough roads, they could’ve cracked an axle.

  When he straightened up, he nearly jumped out of his shoes. A figure with long stringy hair was walking toward him. It was only Grace, though.

  “I told you to stay in the car,” he said.

  She shrugged, then nodded at Bob sitting in the back seat. The kid was still screaming, though he’d grown hoarse and it wasn’t quite as deafening.

  “I’m not like him,” Grace said.

  Whitman took a deep breath. He had a pretty good idea what was coming. When he’d picked these two up, back in Atlanta, he’d been aware they were both positives. Positives weren’t allowed to live inside a proper city.

  Being positive didn’t mean you were actually infected. At least that’s what every one of them told themselves.

  “My friend Heather and I found a zombie in this underground mall. We weren’t supposed to be there, but . . . look, it bit Heather. I get that. They took her away and I don’t know what happened to her.”

  Whitman could probably guess. Heather wouldn’t have been a positive, then. She’d been a confirmed infected. Only one thing happened to people like that.

  “I ran away. I know that was . . . cowardly,” Grace said. She sounded like she’d prepared this speech well in advance. “I know it was wrong. But I never even got close to the zombie. It didn’t touch me.”

  Whitman nodded. He supposed he had to hear her out.

  “The police wouldn’t even listen, they just tattooed me and locked me up. They don’t know all the details. I know they were just trying to be careful. But I’m not at risk.” She gave him a hopeful smile. “I’m really not. Please. You can just take me back. Tell them I’m clean.” A little shake of her hair, which probably worked great on boys her age. “Please,” she said.

  “I don’t make the rules.”

  “I shouldn’t be out here!” she said. “It’s dangerous — those bikers would’ve killed us, they would’ve . . . what they would’ve done to me —”

  “You’ll be safe at the medical camp,” he told her. He pulled open the driver’s side door and jumped back inside. “You coming?”

  She stood there for a while, her face a mask of disbelief. She must have really thought she could talk her way out of this. Finally, she turned and looked back the way they’d come.

  “Those bikers —”

  “They were after our water, our food, our gasoline,” Whitman told her. “They must’ve been following us for a while.”

  “They’re not going to give up, are they?” she asked. “They’ll kill us.”

  Whitman shrugged. “They didn’t have any guns, or they would’ve used them. I guess after ten years there aren’t any bullets left out here. That gives us a chance. Plus, we’ve got a head start now. The sooner you get in the van,” he told her, “the sooner we get to Florida.”

  She got in the van.

  • • • •

  “Once we walled in the cities,” Director Philips droned on, “zombie incidents fell by a considerable degree. New infection rates are down nearly ninety-nine per cent . . .”

  Even the senators looked bored as the Director droned on with his endless report on the progression of the Crisis. Whitman barely listened to any of it. He knew the numbers. As the CDC’s ranking field agent, he’d been responsible for collecting most of them. The last few years had been a blur as he traveled around the country interviewing what passed for medical personnel, overseeing the administration of the hospital camps, working with the army to get a sense of how many zombies were still out there, hiding in the wilderness.

  It had been depressing work, if vital.

  “Outside the cities, looting has become endemic,” Philips went on. “The vast majority of people surviving outside of protected communities make their living by foraging. Of perhaps greater concern is the appearance of so-called road pirates. Gangs, organized to a lesser or greater degree, who prey on the looters and even government convoys . . .”

  Whitman had seen the p
irates, though only from the window of a helicopter. Packs of scavengers. He’d pitied them, looking down from that height. They were only doing what they had to if they wanted to survive, he supposed. He’d assumed the army would put a quick end to such nonsense, but it seemed they had more important things to do.

  “Food stocks continue to be a problem, though the agricultural worker program has made considerable advances in that regard. The key seems to have been adequate policing of the countryside around the farm complexes . . .”

  Plantations, in other words. Out west, whole communities had been conscripted to work the fields. Battalions of soldiers watched over them, keeping them safe from zombies — and making sure they couldn’t run away.

  “I believe that completes my report. I want to thank the committee for allowing us this chance to speak about —”

  “Horseshit,” Whitman said.

  The senators stirred in their chairs. Philips fell silent. Even the braindead lawyer sitting next to him twitched his head around as if looking for the cause of the disturbance.

  Whitman was surprised at himself. He hadn’t meant to interject. Maybe his tolerance for obfuscation was just at its end.

  “Mr. Whitman, we will have order in this chamber,” the white-haired senator insisted.

  “Fine,” Whitman said. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “I just thought we could all save a little time if we skipped the pleasantries. We all know you didn’t bring Philips and me here to talk statistics. We could just as easily have submitted those in writing.”

  “Then why,” the white-haired senator asked, smiling like a shark, “do you believe we asked for this face-to-face meeting?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Whitman asked. “You want someone to blame for the end of the world.”

  • • • •

  When night fell, he had no choice but to pull over.

  “We’ll take turns sleeping,” he said.

  Grace protested — she wanted to keep driving through the night — but Whitman knew better. “Nothing out here shows lights at night,” he said. “The merest flicker, and the zombies would be all over us.”