Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Now

George didn’t want to be the one to say it, but it had to be said: “We can’t stay here.”

They all looked at him. Gloved hands flexed on hunting rifles. Jaco gave a tiny, weak shake of the head. Bernie closed his eyes and sighed. Toivo glared. Only Arnold nodded: older, wiser, but even he clearly wasn’t crazy about the idea of leaving.

The impossible had happened: an actual alien invasion. George and his three boyhood friends—and the man who had been a father figure to them all—were sitting in the same cabin they’d come to every November for almost three decades. A remote spot in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the middle of nowhere, really, and something had crashed here, something that wasn’t a plane or a jet or anything else they knew.

That something was out in the woods, the deep woods, behind the cabin, among the pines and spruces and birch and several feet of snow. They had seen it, a vague shape through the trees, red and green and blue lights filtering through the darkness and the wind-driven white. It was out there, this ship, and, according to the internet stories they’d read on Bernie’s phone, ships similar to it were attacking major cities all over the world.

That was all the info they had to go on. Cell phones weren’t working anymore—voice or internet—and even back in the day when landlines were all there were, the cabin hadn’t had one.

Why that ship had crashed here, George didn’t know. Neither did his friends. What they did know was that three days of steady snow had choked the narrow, back-country roads, making them impassible by car. They could walk out on foot, sure, if they could survive the cold long enough to reach shelter elsewhere. The very reason they came to this cabin year after year was because there was nothing near it—in this weather, with the snowpack, it was at least an hour’s walk to another cabin.

There was one snowmobile, an old thing that had sat idle this year and last. George remembered someone firing it up three years back. Would it even start? If it did, it could get one man out, maybe two, but not five.

Just say it . . . just tell them you should take the snowmobile because you have to get out of here, get to your sons, your wife.

That little voice nagged at him, told him to use the parent trump card that all parents of young children used. But this wasn’t getting out of work a little early to pick the boys up from soccer practice, this wasn’t asking someone else at the office—someone who didn’t have kids—to stay late because you had to get the babysitter home . . . these were his closest friends, men that he loved, and leaving them would be the most selfish thing.

If they’re really your friends, they’d understand. You’ve got kids, just ask them if you can—

“Can’t stay here, you say,” Toivo said. “We sure as hell can’t leave, Georgie.”

Toivo had sobered up. Mostly. His eyes still looked tired, hungover -tired, and a bit of gleaming snot stuck to his mustache. Dressed in a full snowsuit over two sweaters, he looked like a brown Pillsbury Doughboy. So did George, for that matter. So did everyone else.

Toivo gestured to the cabin’s ratty wall. “What da fuck do you think we’re gonna do outside, Georgie? Hide in da woods? It’s fuckin’ forty below out there.”

George nodded. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Cold was one thing. He was a grown man—he could handle cold—but forty below wasn’t cold, it was something else altogether. And then there was the snow. Still falling steadily from the night sky, increasing the thick whiteness that covered bare branches and pine boughs alike, adding to the three feet already on the ground. That snow hid all the sticks and logs and foot-snapping holes around the shack.

But . . . there were no trees or sticks on the road. Nothing there but snow. The road would take them away. They needed to be on that road, and the sooner the better.

Get them all moving, it doesn’t matter, get them out of here and find a way to get home . . .

“That ship is close,” George said. “We’re the only building in the area.” He pointed to the cabin’s small, black, wood-burning stove, which gave off heat that seemed far more delicious now that he knew he’d soon leave it behind. “The stove is putting out smoke. If they have IR, they’ll see the shack lit up all red, or whatever, and know that people are here.”

Arnold’s wrinkled face furrowed. “IR? What da hell is that?”

“ Infrared, Pops,” Bernie said. “Like in Predator. ”

Arnold’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Ah, yeah. Like Predator. ”

Those two, Arnold and Bernie, had such a strong father-son resemblance they looked like a before-and-after picture: this is you before you start to smoke, kids, and this is you after. Bernie, over forty, same age as George and Jaco and Toivo, with a full “hunting cabin beard” that had taken him only a week to grow. Arnold, white stubble in and on the folds of his face, tired eyes peering out from behind thick glasses.

“This ain’t a movie,” Toivo said. “This ain’t about IR. Georgie, I love ya, but stop lying—you think you can get back to Milwaukee.”

A stab of guilt, like George had been caught in a crime. He couldn’t lie to these men, at least not convincingly. They knew him too well.

“I do,” George said. “We have to get out of here, you guys. At least out of the cabin. If they’re killing people all over, they’ll come here, and if they find us, they’ll probably kill us, too.”

Bernie walked to the stove. “We should put da fire out, anyway. If there’s no fire they can’t see us, maybe. We’ll lose heat, but at least we’re protected from da wind.”

Jaco shook his head. “Putting it out makes way more smoke. Just let it burn out on its own.”

He was right about the smoke, but the tone in Jaco’s voice made it clear he was more worried about the cold.

Everyone looked worried, scared, but Jaco more than the rest. His oversized glasses framed wide eyes made wider by the thick lenses. He was the smallest of the five, always had been, so small that his rifle made him look like a preteen boy dressing up as a hunter for Halloween. He had children, too, a pair of daughters. At five and seven, they were the same ages as George’s boys. George had often teased Jaco that his boys would someday date those girls.

Toivo tried to sling his rifle over his shoulder, but his snowsuit’s bulk blocked him.

“We’ve got guns,” he said. He tried to sling the weapon a second time, succeeded. “We can defend ourselves, eh? We stay here, we won’t die from da cold. Maybe you forgot what it’s like living in a big city, Georgie, but in da woods, you don’t fuck with forty below.”

Jaco righted a folding chair that had been knocked over when the alien ship had screamed overhead—so close and loud the cabin rattled as if struck by artillery. He sat.

“ Defend ourselves, ” he said. “Toivo, those things are blowing up cities. From what those websites said, they’re taking on the military, and winning. You think hunting rifles are going to do anything?”

Toivo shrugged. “I’m not a physedicist,” he said. “But bullets will probably kill those things just like they kill us.”

“ Phys icist,” Jaco said, shaking his head. “You dumb-ass, phys-ed is gym. ”

George didn’t want to listen to them jabber. His sons were probably terrified, wondering where their father was. His wife was . . . well, she was probably loading the shotgun and getting the boys into the basement. No trembling flower, his wife.