Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Now

More murdered and mutilated children on TV.

Scientists fought back. On Understanding the News, Ian took his turn explaining that the biology of Sweets “as it is understood now” simply made such violence impossible to them. It was this objective fairness that sunk him. Fifteen minutes after Ian’s broadcast, Louis William Porter proclaimed triumphantly, practically licking his lips, that “science as it is understood now” implied both incomplete understanding and the possibility of change. The Sweets had changed, and the aliens had caused it. (Porter had changed his mind about their existence—they were now not only allies of the Chinese but were in fact controlling Sweets “like the soulless puppets they are!”)

When Ian got home, I turned on him. “Why the fuck did you say that?”

He stood in the doorway to our apartment, and for a moment I saw it through his eyes: blaring wallscreen to keep me awake, dirty dishes with the bizarre food combinations left in the pantry, myself even dirtier than the dishes. It had been days since I showered. The place reeked. But Ian didn’t look all that great, either: pale, heavy-eyed. He knew he’d screwed up.

He said, too evenly, “I said it because it’s true.”

“Ian McGill, the great acolyte of Truth! And now more people will die because you needed to preserve your scientific purity!”

He took a step forward, and for a moment I thought he was going to hit me. Ian, who was never violent. But neither was he a Sweet, and I knew that in my anger I’d crossed an important line. But he mastered himself, threw me a look so terrible that it seared itself onto my brain, and went into the bedroom. I heard the door lock.

I picked up my cell, called Carrie, and hung up when I heard her voice.

A few days later, the attack came. Not on Carrie’s settlement—the other attack I’d been waiting for.

Only cynics like me believed that what was left of the United States government was mistaken about China’s space capabilities. Was mistaken, or was lying, or was protecting diplomatic secrets—in the end, all three came down to the same thing. NASA said no one on Earth had nuclear missiles that could accurately reach the alien ship, but at 2:47 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on May 14, China hit the alien spacecraft with enough nuclear power to blow up greater Los Angeles.

Our one remaining orbiting telescope caught the attack on camera. The missile exploded and the ship did not. The photo wasn’t a close-up, but it was clear enough to see that the ship emitted a blue haze a nanosecond before the missile hit, the missile disappeared, and the ship floated serenely in the void, its fragile-looking and oddly-shaped projections still intact.

The news feeds erupted. Theories, accusations, counter-theories, counter-accusations, defenses and offenses—it was a fucking law court on the airwaves. Somewhere a few hours in, I stopped listening. I no longer knew if the aliens had caused the biological changes in the Sweets, or the volcano, or the Big Bang that began the universe. I was sure of only one thing: They were waiting. They would wait for decades, if necessary. Until everyone over thirty-five, every nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw, pre-Sweet human was dead.

But why? Were they waiting for the planet to hold only cooperative humans to ally with, or passive humans to easily conquer?

Suddenly I was very tired. I wanted to sleep, and I wanted it with the passionate intensity of a five-year-old lusting for ice cream. Since our fight, Ian had been staying at the lab. I staggered toward the bedroom.

The doorbell rang.

Ian? Wanting to reconcile? That would be the only thing better than sleep. Tears blinded me as I stumbled to fling open the door.

My mother stared at me, white-faced and clutching her two canes, before one of them gave way and she collapsed into my arms.

“You . . . wouldn’t . . . an . . . answer . . .”

Shame flooded me, followed immediately by anger. It felt old, the same anger that we had passed back and forth since I was ten years old. I snapped, “Of course I wouldn’t answer. You were harassing me sixteen times a day. Nobody sane could deal with that! And are you an idiot, coming all the way over here in your condition—how did you even get here?”

“Ar . . . armored . . . cab . . .”

“For chrissake, sit the fuck down!” I eased her to the sofa, got her a glass of water, stared at her trembling legs and twitching face as if a hard gaze could drill sense into her equally hard skull. An armored cab cost a small fortune. The trip cost my mother even more in strength. And I knew what was coming.

“Sophie,” she said when she’d recovered enough to speak, “you have to go!”

“To the settlement,” I said. Stupid—of course to the settlement. Carrie was what mattered, was what had mattered most to my mother for our entire lives. I shifted to the balls of my feet, like a fighter.

But my mother had a momentary distraction. “This place is a wreck. It smells. So do you.” And then, “Where’s Ian?”

I didn’t want to discuss Ian. “What’s happening at the settlement? More random attacks?”

“Not yet. No—it’s bears!”

“ Bears ?”

“A whole herd of them! They come into the buildings and take food and then yesterday one of them killed one of Carrie’s friends! Mauled him to death!” My mother started to cry.

She cried easily now, since the MS got so bad, this woman who had never cried when I was a kid. Back then she’d been stronger than diamond cable, and her present tears struck me as deeply wrong on a physical level, as if she’d just grown a second nose. But even I, a city woman, knew that bears can usually be scared off by making noise and waving your arms. And anyway—

“Mom, are you telling me that Carrie’s demented pacifists won’t even do violence to animals? To bears or wildcats or even tigers if one should happen to show up in Erie County?”

“Of course they would. But they have no guns, nothing to fight bears!” Suddenly the terror of an old woman was replaced with an odd dignity. She said quietly, “All I want you to do is go out there and give them a gun. A big one. That’s all.”

“They won’t take it.”

“Not before. But maybe they will now. For the bears.”

She looked at me then, her gaze steady in her exhausted face, her failing body held as upright as she could manage on my hideous sofa in my stinking apartment. She’d worked all kinds of crappy jobs to give Carrie and me as decent a life as she could. Back in another world, when decency was still possible for people who were not Sweets.

“Okay, Mom,” I said wearily. “When it’s daylight, I’ll take Carrie a gun.”

I took Ian’s twelve-gauge shotgun, a lot of ammunition, and a .45 sidearm; the .50 caliber had too much recoil for me to manage it well. I hesitated over the AK-47—did you need that much power to stop a bear?—but then left it.

The day was clear and warm. A whole encampment of people had appeared in a field about half a mile from the Sweet settlement; they hadn’t been there a few weeks ago. Last summer the field had held cows; I didn’t know what happened to them. Eaten, maybe. Now there was a collection of patched tents, a few cars, an ancient RV. This far out from Buffalo, tent towns were rare until crops were ready to harvest, or steal. It was only May.

And then there was the flag.

It was the only new thing I saw as I slowed down for a tent count. Twenty, maybe, and no kids playing on the trampled weeds. This wasn’t a camp of refugees. The flag flapped above it atop a tall pole that might have been the mast of an old boat. Clean white cloth with bright red appliquéd letters: NO ALIEN SWEETS. Each letter dripped blood.