Everyone Says That at the End of the World

by Owen Egerton

  A horn boomed outside the bus. An oversize pickup truck rumbled past.

  “I’m going as fast as I can, damn,” Roy muttered as the bus shuddered.

  Rica did not want the world to end. She wanted to meet her baby. Tears came to her eyes. Don’t be silly, Rica, she thought. The world is not ending. But the tears kept coming.

  Milton sat up beside her, pulling his hand from his hair and rubbing his face. “Hey,” he said drowsily.

  Rica turned her head to the window. She watched the world pass through the double blur of speed and tears.

  “Can you pull over, Roy,” Milton said through a yawn. “I’ve got to pee.”

  Pretty fucking amazing

  MILTON STEPPED FROM the van toward the thick brush of cedars and grass beside the road. Insects chirped in chorus. He peed into the darkness and bent his neck to watch the stars. Looking forward again he saw a face. Half hidden in the shadow of cedars was the blue face with its frozen gasp.

  Milton could not explain why he did not sprint back to the bus. He was not afraid. It felt more like coming upon a doe in the forest. A sense of luck, a sense that the moment was charmed.

  “Hello again,” Milton said. With one smooth hand, the Non-Man gestured for Milton to follow. The Non-Man turned and moved farther into the trees, a blue glow revealing his path. Milton stepped over the shallow ditch and into the brush.

  “Milton?” he heard Rica call out. “Where are you going?”

  The low, thick branches hid the stars and soon the bus as well. Milton was encased by the close feel of night and the scented trees as he walked toward the blue glow, branches scraping his skin and snagging his hair. Pushing through a clump of thorny brush, he came into a clearing. There stood the Non-Man and beside him, illuminated by the blue glow and dim starlight, stood Milton’s father.

  “Dad?”

  “Pretty fucking amazing, am I right?”

  His father wore the same black pants and button-down white shirt, the same blue tie and black-rimmed glasses he’d worn most days of his life. And even in the weak light, Milton could make out the black X on his forehead.

  “You’re dead,” Milton mumbled, his lips feeling heavy and numb. “I saw.”

  “You know better than that,” his father said.

  “So, it worked? Quantum suicide?”

  “Yes. And no. I got a lot wrong.” A corner of his father’s mouth raised in a crooked grin. As he spoke, he seemed to flicker in the dark like a shadow of a candle.

  “Are you here?” Milton asked.

  The crooked grin grew. “I’m not not here.”

  “And him?” Milton glanced at the Non-Man. The Non-Man moved his mouth—open and closed—but no sounds came out.

  “Listen, Milton, try and ask only quality questions, okay? I’d like to say there’s not much time. But, of course, time doesn’t work that way. There’s always the same amount of time. But if you don’t know that, or experience it, well then, right now there really isn’t much time to spare.”

  Something was different, a new stillness. The insects’ constant whirring had fallen silent. The wind seemed to have stopped. The low light in the clearing shimmered. Milton could see light as particles, a billion particles, each slowly wiggling, each with a glow bleeding into the others. A single oak leaf hovered midfall three feet above the ground.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Call that a quality question? Jesus, Milton, work with me here. How about this; How about you ask why life on Earth is ending?”

  “Why is life on Earth ending?”

  “Stupid question,” his father said. “Does it matter? Really? What are you going to do? Share with the world the mechanics of their death? What good is that? I’ll answer that. No good, Milton.” He pointed up to the circle of sky above the clearing. “WR 104. That’s what will kill you.”

  “The star?”

  “Former star. It collapsed on itself seven thousand four hundred and eighty-two years, three months, and six days ago. Imploded into a black hole and, like a jelly donut under a car tire, shot out a beam of gamma rays.”

  “GRB,” Milton said. “A gamma-ray burst.”

  “That burst is due to hit Earth tomorrow evening. Smack! Bye-bye, ozone layer. Smack! Hello, radiation; hello, muons showering into every thin human skull; hello, boiling oceans; hello, acid rain; hello, end times.”

  “That explains the hail. The animals going nuts.”

  “Hell no.” His father gave the impatient flurry of his arms that Milton remembered so often from his childhood. “Gamma rays travel at the speed of light. It won’t hit until it hits. No warning.”

  “But things are already happening. A nutria bit my face.”

  “Yeah,” his father rubbed his chin. “That would be the Floaters and the fetter field.”

  “Fetter field. You said that before. In my bedroom. I don’t know what that is.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. No shame in that.” His father nodded. “You’ve got the magnetic field, right? Nice little shell surrounding the planet, keeping nasty solar winds out. Well, the fetter field is woven through it like thick yarn. Keeps people on the planet. Like a force field for souls. We can stretch it. That’s all NASA ever did . . . stretch the fucking fetter field. Like pushing out the sides of a bag. But you can’t stretch it far. No soul can. Otherwise we’d have mad souls wandering the universe! But there are moments when you can escape. Tiny moments like death or the moment of birth. But overall, it’s a tight net. Right?” His father looked to the Non-Man, who slowly nodded his blue head.

  “What does that have to do with nutria and hail and people in my shower?”

  “This morning, your morning, the Floaters removed the field. Just took it out. It left thousands of holes in the magnetic field. So radiation is pouring in, the crust is heating, satellites are failing, hail is falling, animals losing their minds.”

  Milton pointed at the Non-Man. “They’re doing this to us?”

  “It’s all side effects. Well, not the man in your shower. That’s different.”

  “You’re fucking right, it’s different!” Milton threw his arms in the air.

  “Wait! Wait!” His father put both hands up. “The exciting thing here, Milton, the crucial thing, is that the fetter field is open. Gone!”

  “I don’t understand,” Milton said.

  “Yes. Your incredibly blank expression makes that clear. Jesus.” His father rubbed his eyes. Milton noted how very little death had changed him. “Let’s say you run a prison, a prison for the mentally insane, and it’s built on a coastal cliff. Let’s say a tsunami is heading directly toward the prison. What do you do? You unlock the doors! You open the cells. Let the prisoners run for their lives.”

  “So we can go? We can leave Earth?”

  “Yes. Anyone can! But no one is, Milton. Nobody.”

  “Why not?”

  “The prisoners don’t get it! Have no idea what it means to walk free. No idea. They just stay holed up in their cells staring at the open door. And there’s no way to tell them. Because they’re crazy and institutionalized. But maybe, maybe just the act of freeing themselves will bring about a cure. If they’d just leave their cell. Maybe finding their freedom will be finding their sanity. What do you do?”

  Milton shook his head.

  “You set their mattresses on fire!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve been predicting the Apocalypse for millenniums. These guys are just making all our dreams come true.”

  The Non-Man’s mouth moved into what Milton presumed was a smile.

  “And what? We’ll just fly away?”

  “It’s not flying,” his father said. “It’s spatting. It’s different.”

  “Spatting? How do you spat?” Milton said.

  “What do you think you’re doing right now?” his father said.

  The Non-Man reached out his long arm toward Milton. Milton watched in a daze as specks of blue light floated from his skin and smea
red against the dark. The Non-Man touched Milton’s bare arm. His hand was warm.

  “Brace yourself for travel,” his father said. “I want to introduce you to some people.”

  Where the hell?

  EVERY HORN OF every eighteen-wheeler in the rest stop blasted at the same moment.

  Hayden opened his eyes, nearly rolling off the table.

  “My husband’s gone. Help!” someone screamed.

  Hayden rubbed his eyes and tried to make some sense of the chaos. People ran from truck to truck. A dog was howling.

  “Hayden. Hayden.” Jim Edwards limped toward him. “Let’s get out of here. People are freaking out.”

  The woman yelled again. “Don’t touch me! Where’s my husband?” Hayden sat up on the picnic table and looked over to the rest stop restrooms. Under the florescent light a large woman was jumping up and down and screaming at a small group of truckers surrounding her.

  “It’s Grit’s wife,” one of them said. “Somebody find him.”

  “I looked everywhere.”

  “There’s Clement’s truck. Wake him. He’ll know what to do.”

  “His truck’s empty.”

  “Where the hell is everybody?”

  Hayden rubbed some wakefulness into his face as Jim handed him his bag.

  “Should we try and help?” Hayden said through a yawn.

  “They’ve called the police, Hay.”

  “Oh,” Hayden said. “Let’s go.”

  The air was sweet, the world was crunchy

  CLICK WAS WITH Seal. Seal was with Click. The air was sweet, the world was crunchy. Click could not remember another world. Nothing existed past the puffs and the smooth gray boundaries. There was Click and Seal. Even their dot of light was gone, leaving them alone in a warm darkness. The world quietly rumbled around them.

  Click nibbled on a puff. He touched Seal’s red lips with the sweet dust that cover each puff, but Seal was not hungry. Oh, she was beautiful. Even in the dark he could feel her beauty. Click had never been so happy.

  Something very else

  “WHERE THE HELL is he going?” Rica asked as Milton disappeared into the cedars.

  “You’ve been crying,” Roy said.

  “People are dying, Roy. I’m freaking out here.”

  Roy nodded.

  “And Milton is . . . ” Rica swallowed. “Roy, where the hell are we driving to? He’s talking insane stuff.”

  “I wouldn’t worry, Rica,” Roy said. “Milton’s a little too crazy to go mad.”

  “I just want to be careful, you know?”

  Before Roy could answer, the VW door slid open and Milton climbed back in.

  “That was fast,” Roy said.

  Milton sat, his mouth ajar.

  Roy pressed on the gas and the VW lumbered back to speed.

  “I had a dream,” Milton said.

  “While peeing?”

  “No. It wasn’t a dream. It was something else. Something very else.” Milton slapped his forehead with both palms. “I traveled. I went with the Floater. And my dad. My dad is alive.” Milton stood, crouching over. He paced the five feet of mattress and spoke in rapid bursts. “They showed me things. Hidden things. The universe. We’re moles, all blind. So blind, all of us, so blind we don’t know we’re blind. The space right in front of you isn’t empty. It’s packed. It’s full of life and worlds and doors and timelines. You swallow entire histories with each breath. Rub your chin, and you destroy worlds twice as old as Earth with their own Shakespeares, Buddhas, Holocausts. Don’t move! Don’t move!” Milton froze in midstride, only his beard still waving. “We’re killing the children of other worlds,” he whispered. He dropped to the mattress and grabbed Rica’s thigh. He stared at his hands on her leg. “What do we do?”

  “Calm down, Milton,” Rica said. “It was a dream.”

  “Dreams are real, clouds are illusions, rain really is the tears of gods.” Milton coughed. “I’m choking on a Gandhi, on an Athens.”

  “Keep it coming, friend. What else did you see?” Roy yelled from the front of the bus.

  Milton lifted his eyes from his hands and stared at Rica’s face. “Rica, you are so very beautiful.”

  “Milton,” she said, softly. “You were gone only a minute. You couldn’t have—”

  “Oh, oh. I was spatting. So for you it took no time at all.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Spatting. It’s how Floaters travel. My dad was right about that one.”

  “You’re going to have to explain,” Roy said.

  “Fine, fine. I will. You’ll like it, Roy. Right up your alley.” Milton pulled his legs under himself. “On the quantum level each moment is simply another world. Every sliver of moment, a separate world. We move in one direction because that’s all we’re capable of. Like rocks thrown in the ocean, we can’t swim or float. We just sink down and think that’s the only possible direction. Time doesn’t pass, we pass through time.”

  “So spatting is swimming?” Roy asked.

  “Yes!” Milton jumped back to his feet. “There’s all these tiny wormholes opening and closing. They just spat through them.”

  “Milton, are you saying you’re the world’s first time traveler?” Rica asked.

  “Worlds traveler!” he said, slapping the sides of his head. “And not the first. Some people got it. Mystics spat. Musicians spat. Soloists do it all the time. The crowd hears a three-minute jam, but the musician is playing a solo for years across the cosmos. Or playing one note, but in that note . . . or between two notes is a lifetime. Or no time. Just spat.” Milton threw his arms out. “People make accidental spats all the time. Like when you fall asleep and it feels like it’s been hours, but it’s only been two minutes. That’s sleeping spats. But even when you’re awake people take tiny spats.”

  “What does it feel like?” Roy said, craning his head back.

  “Like . . . like an orgasm. But not an average one. A really spectacular orgasm. When you have one of those, you usually spat a little, too.”

  “Nice,” Roy said.

  “But we’ve been stuck! Stuck here. All this time we’ve been blinded by the guards, shackled. Shackled like prisoners. That’s why we have such a hard time spatting,” Milton said, grabbing his hair. “I understand now. Last night when I yelled at you, Rica. I was out of my head. The Non-Man, he unshackled me. Unchained my brain so they could show me things, take me places. No wonder I freaked out. And now the fetter field is gone. Now we can spat wherever, whenever. All of us. If we could just learn how!” Milton bounced up and down, rocking the entire bus. “Don’t you see it, Rica? You were closer to the truth of things with your jazz. With your soup. You didn’t know it, but you’ve always been so close to it all. I never tasted it. Half alive. Half alive.” He trod in circles around the mattress. “Let’s stop and eat!”

  “We ate two hours ago.”

  “But I wasn’t tasting all the way. Might as well have been talking about food. I can taste now. Rica, let’s make love.”

  “What, now?”

  “Roy, you don’t mind, do you?”

  “Go ahead,” Roy said, smiling into the rearview mirror.

  Milton knelt down beside Rica. “Rica, let’s make love. Real love.”

  “Milton, you look tired. Calm down a little.”

  “No, no, no!”

  “Go for it, Rica,” Roy said. “I’ll turn up the radio.” He clicked the dial and a news anchor’s voice was belching headlines.

  “Milton,” Rica whispered, “I’m scared by all this.”

  “A wave can knock you down only if you’re trying to stand.”

  “I’ve got a baby in me. I am trying to stand.’

  “Babies float,” he said. “She floats.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hey, guys,” Roy said, “you should hear this.” He turned up the radio.

  “Again, thousands have disappeared and the count continues to grow. The vice president has declared a national sta
te of emergency. The president and the First Lady have been missing for approximately two hours. Four planes have crashed over the United States in the last two hours. Reports from Europe are equally extreme. Terrorism has not been ruled—”

  Roy fiddled with the tuner.

  A woman’s voice crackled through. “I saw him there and then he was gone. He was sitting right there and then, just gone!”

  Roy twisted the dial again. Snippets came through the static.

  “ . . . confirmed that none of the prisoners have been found as of yet, but sources . . . ”

  “ . . . only nine years old. Wearing a blue tank top and last seen . . . ”

  “ . . . no bodies have been found, but searchers are still . . . ”

  Roy kept turning the dial, listening for a moment and turning. At the end of the dial, 88.6, they heard a familiar sound. Roy’s voice coming through the radio. He was singing. Milton’s rhythm guitar was playing.

  Who’s going to park the car tonight . . .

  The song played through with no interruption from the three travelers. When it ended, it immediately started playing again.

  “Milt?” Roy said, swerving the van a little as he looked back.

  “Keep driving.”

  Wheezing the whole time

  THANKS TO THE armadillo-wielding trucker, Hayden Brock’s Lexus possessed only one working headlight. That single light cut a thin slice out of the black night as they raced east. At Jim Edwards’s suggestion the two had left the interstate for the New Mexican back roads. “Less traffic,” Jim had said. “Less authorities.”

  The armadillo sat between them like a Jurassic lapdog.

  For two hours they rolled through the dark landscape, occasionally passing through small, half-built towns. A few trailers, a few cinder block homes, a decrepit store or gas station with one sad outdoor light glowing an anemic reprieve from the surrounding night.