Everyone Says That at the End of the World

by Owen Egerton

  Somewhere a television reporter was announcing and reannouncing the news, a monotone loop of white noise.

  Rica crawled behind the counter hunting for a phone. She threw a hand over her mouth to muffle her scream. A woman’s body lay on the floor, a red, wet, coaster-size hole in her head and a handgun two feet away.

  Grab the gun. Just grab it. Rica reached and wrapped her palm around the pistol’s handle. She crawled back to the door, the blood soaking into her pants and shirt. She again pressed her back to the counter and stared out the door. At first she could see no one, then she saw the man and his shotgun near the rear of the bus.

  She made a plan. She’d yell, “Freeze!” If he didn’t freeze, she’d aim for his leg.

  She rose to her feet. Deep breath. Deep breath. Jump. She pushed herself out the door.

  “Freeze!”

  The man did not freeze. He swung the shotgun towards her and fired. Rica could hear glass shatter behind her. She fired the pistol at him—fuck the leg, anywhere. She missed him completely. The man was taking aim. She fired and missed again.

  Then for a moment, hardly a moment, she was glad she had missed. Compassion, like a quick smell. Rica was still clutching her gun. There was no time for the feeling to form a thought or give orders to her muscles. Just an instant of forgiveness. Then a gun blast. The man fell sideways. Rica looked at her gun. Had she fired again? Roy walked out from behind the VW aiming a black pistol at the man’s body, his other hand still pressed against the bloody left side of his face.

  “Roy?” She ran to him. “You’re bleeding.”

  “No shit. Is he dead?”

  Rica turned and looked at the man’s unmoving body. A chunk of his head was missing, like a bite from a plum. “Dead,” she said.

  “I shot him in the head. Why’d I shoot him in the head?”

  “Roy, we need to get you to a doctor.”

  “Is Milton okay?”

  The side of the VW was splattered with pea-size holes. Rica ran toward the door and pulled it open. It was empty.

  “Milton!” she screamed.

  “I’m here,” Milton, his hair peppered with gray, stepped from behind the building. “Let’s fill the tank and go.”

  Cruel beliefs

  FROM INSIDE THE VW, Milton heard Rica’s and Roy’s panicked voices just moments before a spray of pellets ripped through the metal. But the spray froze in mid-flight before Milton’s face. He lurched forward and pulled the door open. A man aimed a shotgun directly at him. But no one was moving. Nothing was moving. It was as if the world were on pause. Roy’s body hovered mid-fling toward the backside of the bus. Pellets had cut into his face and neck, but the blood had yet to flow.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Milton muttered.

  Rica’s face was solidified scream.

  “She’s pretty,” his father said, standing beside the man frozen with the shotgun. The Non-Man stood farther back. “Prettier than your mother, even. A little thin in the hips, perhaps.”

  Milton circled her. He wanted to hold her and carry her and the baby away. The Non-Man walked from behind the bus.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Milton said, stepping toward him. The Non-Man twitched backward.

  “Milton,” his father barked. “Show some restraint. The Floaters aren’t doing anything we didn’t ask for, nothing we didn’t work to believe. That includes you, Milton! You believed in all this.”

  “You’re blaming me?”

  “People expect Raptures, they get it,” his father said. “People await a wrathful god, they’ll get one. Nirvana, Jahannam, hell, Judgment, Apocalypse. Their faith is coming to be. Every faith. Maybe it’s people’s best chance at a cure.”

  Milton cradled Rica’s distorted frightened face. “It’s just . . . cruel.”

  “Cruel beliefs lead to cruel actions,” his father said. “People should be responsible for the beliefs they hold.”

  “This is fucking madness!”

  “Look, Milton.” His father cleared his throat. “She won’t die here. Him either.” He flicked his chin toward Roy. “You’ll all drive away in a few minutes.”

  Milton looked up at his father. “But then the fucking world ends.”

  His father nodded.

  “Can I stop it?”

  “No.”

  He pushed past his father to the Floater. “There must be something you can do. Nudge the planet or build a force field. Something to protect us!”

  The Non-Man stared at Milton, his eyes calm and curious.

  “They wouldn’t even if they could,” his father said. “This is how it is.”

  Milton swung back to his father. “In this universe, right?” He spit out the words. “There’s a billion Earths that won’t end in two days!”

  His father smiled. “So you were listening. Good boy.”

  “Jesus, Dad!” Milton flung his hands in the air, tracers of color following his movements. “Can I warn them? Can I tell people?”

  “Yes,” his father said. “But they won’t hear you.”

  “Then why the fuck are you telling me all this? Why are there television actors in my shower and turtles talking to me?”

  A warm hand touched Milton’s shoulder. The Non-Man’s hand rested there. Milton recognized something like compassion on his long face.

  “Follow me,” his father said, and began walking around the corner of the building.

  Milton hesitated, staring at Rica.

  “She’ll be fine, Milton. He’ll keep an eye on them,” his father said, nodding to the Non-Man.

  Milton followed his father. Fifty feet behind the building, up a slight incline, stood a double-wide trailer. His father moved toward it.

  “You know what really fascinates those Floaters? Really just blows their world-hopping minds? Us. Humans. Something about our madness they abhor and love. Do you know that of all the creatures in the entire universe, we are the only ones willing to believe what we know to be untrue?”

  “Lies?”

  “Stories.” His father pulled open the trailer door and stepped inside. Milton followed. It was homey, with thick carpet and large armchairs. Unmoving black smoke hung above a pan on the stove. His father moved the pan from the stove to the sink. “We scream at a monster on the screen. We cry for characters in a book. We allow ourselves to believe what we understand to be not real. It’s unique to us. Maybe a consequence of our confinement.” With his eyes, his father motioned back to the door. “Some of them want what we have.”

  “Madness?”

  “Stories. Faiths. Suspension of disbelief. All of it. I know, I know. Why? But there you are,” his father laughed. “That fella out there. You wouldn’t believe this, but that blue fella who has been to all places, been to all times. He’s jealous of you. Jealous of your mad, crippled soul. It just cracks me up.” His father tapped his foot on the carpeted floor. “You’re out of gas. You’ll be needing this.”

  Milton looked down to see a small padlock key by his father’s foot.

  Jesus-18

  JESUS-18 STUMBLED FROM the dome’s glow—larger than the temple, larger than Jerusalem itself. The cold bit into his now bare feet. He winced and prayed with each step. The landscape had boulders and dead grass and iced-over snow clumps. The clouds were thick, but Jesus-18 could tell that the sun was low. An hour, maybe less, and it would be night.

  He liked night. From the fishermen he had learned to walk at night. They woke hours before the sun’s rising. They knew night. God gave us half-light and half-dark. We should know the dark. He hides in darkness. Then, like the sunrise, he is there. And it is nothing like you had remembered or had thought or had described.

  Falling every few steps, Jesus-18 trekked on. He reached the road. It was like no road he had ever seen. One long flat stone. Only Rome would build such a road. A cloud of fog rolled onto the road and even more of the world was gone from his sight. Jesus-18 was not anxious. He hardly ever was. He had realized at an early age that not knowing was part of the ca
ll. Like Father Abraham who had no law, no book. Only a voice. And that voice said walk.

  Jesus-18 walked in the empty road. It was easier than the sharp earth. The sky was darker now. Wind gusts from different directions whipped around his body. He felt the wind was trying to tie him in knots, like the questions of the scribes coming from here and there, with no desire but to confuse and convict. Others had honest questions. They’d sit close and whisper, “Tell us of the King.” What could he do? He told stories. God is Father. God is Farmer. God is Mother Bird. Only stories could come close to describing God. And even the stories fell short.

  Sometimes he tried to tell more than he knew. Tried to describe what he didn’t understand by telling stories they could not understand.

  Behind Jesus-18 came a loud rumble. He turned and saw a long beast sprinting down the road. Blazing eyes and a roaring moan. Was it an angel or a demon? Jesus fell to the wet road. The creature shrieked and stopped before him. It was larger than any beast, larger than a house. He could hear its rattling breaths, could smell its smoky stench. Jesus pulled himself to his feet and stared into the demon’s white, fiery eyes.

  “Leave here, demon. In my Father’s name, leave!”

  The demon’s ears shot out from the side of its head. It was listening.

  “Leave here!”

  From the demon’s head appeared two figures like men. They approached Jesus-18. They were tall, large. They spoke and smiled. Jesus-18 did not know what to do. The two manlike creatures lifted Jesus-18 and carried him into the demon’s head. What are you up to now, Father? thought Jesus-18.

  Poverty sucks as much as wealth

  JIM EDWARDS WAS racing his new Lexus through the desert roads of the Davis Mountains. Hayden was riding passenger. It was not his car. Both were incredibly pleased.

  “Beautiful day,” Jim said, squinting his eyes at the sky.

  “Beautiful,” Hayden said, watching the blur of orange cliffs out the passengerside window. He only turned forward when Jim slowed behind a small beatenup red pickup truck loaded down with boxes of groceries.

  “Must be a nice life out there in L.A. Sun and women all day,” Jim said.

  “Maybe,” Hayden said. “I never felt it. Never felt really good. I had plenty of sun, plenty of women, plenty of all the stuff I wanted. It was great in that way, but I’m happier now. I think in L.A. I was too happy to be truly happy.”

  “Hayden,” Jim said, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “You are a red, white, and blue pussy.” On the incline the pickup slowed to nearly fifteen miles per hour. Jim honked. “And just so you know, poverty sucks as much as wealth. Maybe more. You’re just enjoying something new.”

  “You’re wrong, Jim. I’m free now.” Hayden could just make out the head of the truck’s driver. It made Hayden cringe. A huge bald spot in the center of an otherwise full head of hair. A personal nightmare of Hayden’s.

  “You’re not even free, Hay. You’ll go back. You’ll tell yourself, ‘How could I not go back?’ That’s how free you are.” Jim laid on the horn again. “Damn this guy is slow.”

  “No fear of that,” Hayden said. “Nothing to go back to.” An arm in a loose brown sleeve came out of the pickup’s driver window and signaled a left turn. Something in the weight of the sleeve was familiar to Hayden.

  “What? The fake leg thing? Come on. You’ll get an L.A. lawyer to get you a week of charity work. Easy.” Jim pressed on the gas to pass the pickup on the right.

  “I don’t want to go back, Jim. No soul there. How can I be a saint with no soul?” As the Lexus accelerated past, Hayden caught a glimpse of the pickup’s driver. Young and pale, he wore a heavy brown frock like some throwback to the Middle Ages, but driving a pickup truck through West Texas. Hayden turned in his seat to see the boy steer the pickup from the road onto an unpaved track.

  “Jim, monks are Catholic, right?”

  “Never met a Baptist one.”

  “Pull over.”

  Jim yanked the Lexus onto the shoulder, kicking up a cloud of brown sand.

  “I’m getting out here.”

  “Hey, Hay, I didn’t mean to offend you.” Jim turned to Hayden. “There’s nothing out here.”

  “There’re Catholics.” Hayden patted the armadillo and opened the door.

  “They’ll think I killed you and stole your car.”

  Hayden nodded. He took a napkin from the dashboard and pen from the glove box. He scribbled a note:

  Jim Edwards did not kill me. He earned this car.

  He is my friend.

  Hayden Brock.

  He handed it to Jim. Jim smiled and tucked the napkin in his front shirt pocket.

  “I’m taking my wallet and the leg. The rest is yours.” Hayden climbed from the car and lifted the prosthetic leg from the backseat. “Get yourself to Houston and cut that thing off your back.”

  “There’s more than one.”

  Hayden reached out his hand. Jim took it in his.

  “Good-bye, Jim Edwards.”

  “Pleasure riding with you, Mr. Brock.”

  Hayden closed the door and watched what was formerly his Lexus speed up a desert hill and out of sight. Then he turned back to the unpaved road and started walking.

  I’ve been gone for years

  RICA WAS DRIVING, her clothes sticky with both Roy’s and a stranger’s blood, her foot pressing hard on the gas pedal. She could feel panic running through her veins like lighter fluid waiting to ignite.

  “You’ve lost blood, Roy,” she said. “Stay awake and we’ll find a hospital,” Rica said.

  “I shouldn’t have shot him in the head. I shouldn’t,” Roy mumbled from the mattress in the back. “I lost my pipe.”

  She and Milton had cleaned most of the blood from Roy’s wound, revealing a sprayed pattern of small holes covering the lower right side of his face. Two holes in his neck, like a vampire’s bite, bled ceaselessly. Rica had found an old shirt in the VW and ripped it into strips. As best as she could, she wrapped one strip around the wounds on Roy’s face and tied another around his neck. The blood quickly soaked through. Milton knelt beside him, holding a dirty towel against Roy’s neck.

  “I’ve got metal in my face. I’m swelling up,” Roy muttered.

  “Fort Stockton will have something. A clinic. A hospital. That’s not far,” Rica said, trying her best to sound sure. “You’ll be fine.”

  “We can’t stop. Not yet,” Milton said. “We need to go farther west.”

  “Milton,” Rica yelled. “Roy’s been shot in the face.”

  “I think the one Floater, the one with my father is a renegade. I don’t think he’s supposed to be helping us. The Floaters want us all dead.”

  “I don’t give a fuck, Milton,” Rica said, squeezing the steering wheel. “We’re going to the nearest hospital!”

  “Maybe our madness is spreading. Spreading to the Floaters. And they don’t want it getting off the planet.”

  “Shut up, Milton. Shut up,” Rica said.

  “It’s spreading?” Roy asked. He tried to sit up but winced and fell back.

  “Like a good joke!” Milton said. “It gets into the Floaters’ heads. Maybe. Maybe. This one . . . this Non-Man, he wants to become like us. Imagine a nurse checking herself into the mental ward. Ha!”

  “Milton, I want you to stop this now. Just stop,” Rica said through clenched teeth, staring back in the rearview mirror. “There’re no Floaters. Roy’s been shot. That’s it. That’s real.”

  Milton gazed at her through the mirror. “You don’t believe me?”

  Rica swallowed. Milton looked different. His hair was more gray than brown now and the skin around his eyes was lined with new, deep wrinkles. “Milton,” Rica said, her voice softening. “Baby, we’ve got to find some help.”

  Milton ran a hand through his hair and strands of gray came loose in his fingers. She watched him hold the clump of hair in front of his face, examining it like an artifact.

  “Baby, what’s wr
ong with you?” Rica said, her voice cracking.

  “I’m not the best spatter,” Milton sighed. “It cost me some time.”

  “I don’t understand . . . ”

  “I’ve been gone for years.”

  “Milton,” Roy said, clutching at Milton’s shirt. “I’m in a bad place. I’m going to start screaming soon.”

  “Okay, okay, Roy,” Milton said. “I’ll scream with you.”

  Christian Heaven Domes

  JESUS-18 WASN’T THE only Jesus making his way through the cold climes of Western Canada. In all, there were twenty-eight Jesuses. One for each Christian Heaven Dome.

  The Floaters had always been intrigued by the religious beliefs of the humans. Sometimes the beliefs seemed to offer hope of cures. But more often they led only deeper into insanity. As the end approached a radical plan was green-lit. Satisfy their beliefs. See what happens if everything a person believes comes true.

  They began by building a huge Christian Heaven Dome in the wilderness of Western Canada for the Christian population of North America. But a quick examination of the tension between the different Christian sects led them to conclude that they would, in fact, need several Heaven Domes, one for each major denomination.

  As the domes were being completed, the Floaters took a blood sample from the Shroud of Turin and, using the DNA, cloned a Jesus of Nazareth for each dome. Next the Floaters orchestrated a Rapture.

  The Baptists took to their dome immediately. The wide-open spaces, the basketball courts and baseball fields, the buffet of summer picnic delights. Upon finding Jesus on a golden throne, they circled up and sang hymns of worship. Jesus, who spoke Aramaic, understood none of it, but he did like the melodies, especially the more upbeat ones. He rose to his feet and danced to the singing. The Baptists stopped singing and gave Jesus a stern look.

  “No dancing?” Jesus asked in Aramaic. The Baptists continued staring. Jesus sat back down. The Baptists started singing again. Jesus decided this party needed a helping hand. Not far from his throne was a fast-flowing waterfall. With a quick prayer Jesus turned the waterfall into a fountain of rich, aromatic red wine. Everyone pointed and cheered, until one young man used his hands to sample the wine. He spit it out and yelled something. Now they all looked horribly upset. Jesus was confused. He raised his arms in question. The Baptists shook their heads at him. With a shrug Jesus turned the winefall back into water.