End Times

by Anna Schumacher

  Daphne crouched and got both arms around the filing cabinet. She took a deep breath and reminded herself of all the heavy lifting she’d done in the past: crates of beer and Slurpee syrup, the industrial meat slicer behind the 7-Eleven’s deli counter, a drunk who had once passed out in the Doritos aisle. With her gloves firmly gripping the cabinet’s slippery sides, she grunted and sank weight into her feet, using her knees for leverage. Beads of sweat popped out on her forehead as she lifted it one, then three, then several inches off the ground. It felt like being crushed to death by a dinosaur, but she didn’t let go.

  Still holding the filing cabinet, she turned to face Dale. Coffee had sloshed over the sides of his mug, which he held uselessly in the air, as if he’d forgotten its purpose.

  “Is this strong enough?” she gasped. She knew her face must be scarlet with exertion, but she didn’t care.

  Dale gulped.

  Shuffling her feet and guessing at the distance, Daphne lugged the cabinet to the other side of the trailer. She could barely see around it but used her peripheral vision to sense when she was across.

  “I’m going to put this here now.” Her voice was strained, but she wasn’t panting. Yet.

  “Okaaaaaaaay,” Dale said.

  She set the cabinet down slowly, taking extra care to make sure it didn’t bang on the floor. She mopped sweat from her brow and met the foreman’s mild blue eyes.

  “Is it okay there, or would you like me to put it back?” she asked.

  Dale looked as if he’d misplaced his voice. “I guess it’s good there,” he finally croaked.

  “Good,” Daphne said. “Now, what were you saying about needing big, strong guys?”

  Dale looked at her, openmouthed, for a long moment. “I stand corrected,” he said finally.

  “Thank you.” Daphne peeled off her work gloves and shoved them in her back pocket. “So when can I start?”

  Dale still looked reluctant. “You know I wasn’t joking about the danger, right?” he said. “It’s not just lifting and carrying. You’re in the line of fire. Things go wrong.”

  Daphne shrugged. “Still sounds better than waiting tables.”

  Dale guffawed, slapping his Carhartts hard with a leathery palm. “All right,” he said. “You’re hired. You can start tomorrow.”

  “Great!” Daphne smiled.

  “And now for the really killer part of this job—the paperwork.” He turned and rummaged in one of the filing cabinets, producing a folder bulging with papers. “I’ll need you to fill out all of these—and if you’re under eighteen, I can’t put you on the graveyard shift.”

  “Sounds fair,” Daphne said. She pulled up a chair, and Dale handed her a pen, looking over her shoulder as she filled in her name.

  “Daphne Peyton?” he read, eyebrows creeping up his forehead.

  “Mmm-hmmm.” She chewed on the pen cap, trying to decide whom to put as her emergency contact—Myra or Uncle Floyd.

  Dale sat back in his chair. “Floyd’s niece, huh. I’ve heard some things about you.”

  “Like what?” She looked up to see him stroking the stubble on his face.

  “Pretty crazy stuff—like there were trumpets coming from nowhere the day you arrived, and you found this oil by jamming a dipstick in the ground. Is that true?”

  “Sort of.” Daphne felt color creep into her cheeks. She wasn’t used to how fast gossip spread in a small town. “I guess.”

  He shook his head. “Craziest thing I ever heard. Finding the oil is usually the hard part: Global’s spent millions on discovery, drilled more test wells than you can shake a stick at. And you just touch the ground and it comes pouring out.” He laughed softly to himself. “Heck, maybe Global Oil should send you to those test sites, instead of all those overpaid scientists.”

  He continued stroking his chin, looking at her thoughtfully as Daphne filled out the rest of her paperwork. When she handed it back to him, he stood and smiled, extending his hand.

  “Let’s hope neither of us end up regretting this,” he said, pumping her arm up and down. “But welcome to the Global Oil team.”

  FROM the moment Owen and Luna left the Radical Roots festival, their journey took on the urgency of a phantom itch, ephemeral and omnipresent, demanding yet refusing relief. They talked endlessly as they drove from town to town, hitting races when they needed the money and pushing on when they didn’t, the phantom vein from their dream pulsing like a mirage, always a few miles farther down the road. They regurgitated their life stories as his wheels ate mile after mile of pavement, poring over the details of their childhoods and looking for the loose threads that would weave into an explanation behind their shared nightmares.

  Besides being born on the same commune, they discovered that she was just two days older than him, that they both hated the taste of pesto, and that they would always rather move than sit still. Their restless energy filled the cab of the truck, pulsing to the jam-band tunes from Luna’s iPod, relentlessly propelling them forward. They didn’t know where they were going—only that they needed to get there as soon as possible, to placate the voice in their dreams.

  A few nights into their journey, at a campground in a remote logging village in Montana, the bonfire in Owen’s nightmares burned brighter than ever before. Luna was there, her face no longer cloaked in shadow like the rest of the figures dancing and shrieking around them. Her green eyes glowed like embers as she writhed in a hoop made of fire, the flames lapping at her skin without leaving a mark. The bonfire grew until it nearly blinded him with its white-hot hunger, robbing the air of oxygen until he awoke, choking on his own fear, with the gravelly voice still whispering find the vein in his ears.

  He thrashed in his sleeping bag, clawing at the drawstring that had wrapped around his neck until he’d shaken himself free. The late-morning sun was high in the sky, baking the bed he’d made for himself in the back of his truck, and he shielded his eyes with his hands, glancing around at the tents and RVs until he spotted Luna. She had rolled out a yoga mat under a pine tree and was standing in downward dog, peering at him upside down through the gap between her legs with an unmistakable smirk on her face.

  “Morning, sleepyhead,” she said, kicking into a handstand.

  Fear still throbbed in Owen’s veins. “I had it again,” he told her. “Just now.”

  “The dream?” She arched her body into a bridge, the charms in her dreadlocks jangling as they scraped the yoga mat. “I had it, too. It was so intense! I know we’re getting closer. I can feel it.”

  Owen wondered whether the morning yoga session had calmed her, or if Luna simply didn’t find the dreams as unsettling as he did. “Where are they coming from?” he wondered aloud. “Was it like that at the commune, when you were a kid? You mentioned there were bonfires every night.” He swung his legs over the truck’s tailgate and fished in his backpack for a canteen, taking a long, lukewarm swig of water.

  “A little.” Luna pulsed up and down in her backbend, the slim muscles in her arms straining. “But it was nothing like this. That was what was. This is what will come to be.”

  “What do you mean?” he started to ask. But Luna had already cartwheeled her way to standing. Her back was to him as she raised her arms to the sky in a final long stretch, so that it looked like her tree tattoo was growing.

  “I’m starving,” she said, turning back to him. “Let’s go get breakfast.”

  • • •

  THEY drove up the road to a restaurant they’d passed on the way in, a log cabin with a long lunch counter and a few small tables. From the wool hats and flannel shirts of the grizzled regulars sipping coffee and polishing off stacks of pancakes, Owen could tell it was a popular spot among the local loggers.

  “Mmmm . . . fluffy blueberry pancakes, golden waffles with butter and strawberries and whipped cream, sausage links, cottage cheese and cantaloupe,” Luna
read off the menu. “I just might get one of everything.”

  “Yeah, well, try and control yourself,” Owen said. “I’ve only got fifty bucks to last me till the next race, and we need thirty for gas.”

  “You worry too much,” Luna said as the waitress came by, pulling a pencil from a bun as frizzy as cotton candy. Luna waited until Owen had ordered his omelet, then asked for the Lumberjack Special with extra bacon, waffles, and hash browns, plus an extra-large orange juice and a side of fresh fruit. Owen found himself scanning the menu while she talked, trying to add up all of her extras. He realized with an unpleasant shiver that she’d just totaled close to eighteen dollars in food.

  “You know we’re not going to have enough leftover for gas,” he hissed when the waitress was out of earshot.

  Luna grinned. “I told you, don’t worry. I got this covered.”

  “How?” Owen asked. Luna had told him that she’d worked for Ariel Crow in exchange for festival tickets and food.

  “I have my ways.”

  The waitress set down two mugs of coffee, and Luna busied herself pouring packet after packet of sugar into hers, leaving a pile of empty white wrappers on the table.

  Owen took a quick sip, grimacing at the scalding heat on his tongue. It was strong and bitter, the way he liked it, and it helped clear his head. With the final cold fingers of his dream retreating and a new day shining bright and clear ahead of them, he was ready to stop letting Luna lead him around like a puppy on a leash, evading his questions whenever it felt like he was starting to learn something about his past. He was ready to get some answers.

  “Do you remember Murdock?” he asked casually, propping his chin in his palm. He was taking a chance, he knew—it was a name he’d only read online, that the race organizer back in Olympia had mentioned in passing.

  “Who?” Luna stopped mid-stir.

  “You know, the leader,” Owen pressed. “Of the Children of the Earth.”

  “Oh—you mean Galen. Murdock was his last name, but none of us called him that. We didn’t believe in last names. The only reason I know his was that it was in the papers later. My mom saved the clippings.”

  “In the papers?” Owen asked. “For what?”

  Luna shrugged, sending the thin strap of her tank dress slipping down one shoulder. “A couple of people who never should have been there in the first place filed a lawsuit, and he went to jail. I think the government was just trying to silence him, though. They couldn’t stand how he always spoke the truth.”

  “What truth?” He was getting closer. He could feel it.

  “That we’re raping the earth. That our endless quest for possessions and enlightenment will bring about the end of the world—and when that day comes, the God of the Earth will summon us, and we’ll all come together to rule a beautiful new world.”

  “What do you mean, us? Are there others?”

  But even as he said it, Owen knew. They were the shadowy figures dancing around the bonfire in his dreams, the faceless ciphers with the green eyes.

  “Thirteen of us.” Luna raised the mug to her mouth, and steam swirled dreamily around her face. “We were all conceived on the same night, in a magical ritual on the summer solstice under the full moon. We had a festival to celebrate it every year when I was growing up on the commune.”

  “All conceived on the same night? How?”

  Luna smiled mysteriously. “I don’t know all the details. Only that it marked us forever.”

  A sick feeling began to brew in Owen’s stomach. “Was everyone there?” he asked as the waitress staggered back to them under the weight of a tray piled high with food. “All the Children of the Earth? The night we were . . . conceived?”

  Luna licked her lips as the waitress set plate after plate in front of her. She grabbed the pitcher of syrup and poured it generously over everything, even her toast.

  “I think so,” she said. “Galen said they summoned the God of the Earth that night, and we were created by the power of community—and the earth—and magic.”

  “It sounds like an orgy,” Owen said flatly. He pushed his omelet away, repulsed by the mounds of cheese vibrating gelatinously on top.

  Luna crunched loudly on a piece of bacon, continuing to talk around it. “It was a ritual. It was sacred. This is where we come from, Earth Brother, like it or not.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Earth Brother’?” Owen felt ickier by the second. “Are we related?”

  She shrugged. “We were conceived in the same ritual, on the same night, by the same group of people, and we have the same eyes. Call it whatever you want, Earth Brother, but we’re here for the same reason.”

  He sat back and put his head in his hands. “So my real father could be anyone,” he said to the rutted wooden tabletop. “Yours, too. It could be the same guy, or someone totally different. And I’ll never know.”

  He felt an old dream from his childhood slip away, the dream of someday finding his biological father, of looking up into a face that he could finally, honestly call “Dad.” It was yet another thing he’d learned to stop asking his mom about, knowing that it made the softness in her face go hard.

  There was a touch like feathers on his hand, and he looked up to find Luna’s fingertips on his knuckles. Her eyes were vernal pools basking under a spring sun.

  “It’s okay,” she said, not unkindly. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? The God of the Earth is our father. And once we carry out his plan, we’ll meet him face to face, and it’ll be more beautiful than any experience you can imagine.”

  Owen shook his head disbelievingly. He had the same sad knot in his stomach as the Christmas Eve he’d snuck downstairs to catch Santa in the act, only to find his stepdad placing presents under the tree. The more Luna talked, the more it sounded like the Children of the Earth were just a bunch of dirty hippies making up excuses to do perverted things in the woods.

  No wonder his mom had always refused to talk to him about the place he was born. She’d been young, and stupid, and probably on drugs. He suddenly regretted all the times he’d pestered her for answers: She was just trying to keep him from turning out like Luna. The strange, troubled girl across from him—his Earth Sister, or whatever—had grown up on the commune his mom had escaped, believing that their orgies were beautiful rituals and Galen Murdock’s hackneyed hippie dogma was the truth. She’d been duped.

  Stop it! a gravelly voice thundered.

  Owen sat up straight, his heart pounding as his eyes darted around the restaurant. Everyone else was oblivious, the waitress trading gripes with the line cook while the lone lumberjack at the end of the bar quietly drank his coffee and Luna drowned a forkful of hash browns in ketchup.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  “Hear what?” Luna cocked her head.

  Blood slammed through his veins. There was no question that someone had spoken to him—or that it was the same deep and terrible voice from his dreams. But he was the only one who had heard it; it had almost sounded like it was coming from inside his head. He gulped down the dregs of his coffee, not caring that it was still hot enough to scald his throat, and wondered if he was going crazy for real.

  “Nothing.” He looked down at his plate, trying to shake away the echo of the voice still vibrating in his mind. “So, any idea how we’re going to pay for this feast?”

  “Leave it to me.” Luna winked, then slipped out of her seat and onto a stool at the end of the bar, next to the lumberjack. Owen watched as she tapped him on the shoulder and he turned to look at her, his gaze registering surprise and then something more opaque, a cross between curiosity and desire. Luna’s skimpy dress hung low on her chest as she said a few words in his ear, casting her eyes downward as scarlet blooms of embarrassment rose in her cheeks.

  Owen stared, shaking his head. He’d known Luna for only a few days, but she’d told him the most bal
d-faced, shocking truths about herself—like how she’d lost her virginity at thirteen, about the older man she’d met at a show who sent her a hundred dollars each month in exchange for mailing him a pair of her used panties—without even the slightest hint of shame. But as she talked to the lumberjack, her whole face seemed to transform, from a self-possessed seductress with a banging body and a free-love vibe to a lost and innocent waif who’d gotten herself in over her head.

  The lumberjack nodded, the desire in his eyes fading to pity—but not, Owen noticed, disappearing entirely. He placed a reassuring hand on Luna’s bare shoulder as she looked up at him gratefully, a single tear slipping chastely down her cheek. With his other hand, the lumberjack reached into his back pocket and extracted two twenties, folding both into Luna’s palm.

  Luna’s face blossomed into a smile of gratitude. She planted a kiss on the lumberjack’s cheek, turning his cheeks pink with lust and pleasure before she flitted back to their table.

  “See?” she said, tossing both twenties on top of the bill. “I told you I got this. Now stop doubting me, and let’s hit the road.”

  TOWARD the end of a lazy June afternoon, Daphne borrowed Uncle Floyd’s truck and made a run to Elmer’s Gas ’n’ Grocery, promising to return with the jalapeño Doritos Janie had been craving. Golden light radiated off the cars on Buzzard Road, and Daphne felt loose and content after spending the better part of the day down by the swimhole, relaxing away the aches and blisters of her first week as a roustabout while Janie and Hilary giggled over Janie’s gossip magazines.

  Elmer’s parking lot was more crowded than she’d seen it since she arrived in town, all of the spaces up front packed with vehicles that had out-of-state tags, prospectors come to try their luck at striking oil. She pulled into a spot near the road and started toward the entrance, shielding her eyes from the sun’s low, late-afternoon glare.