Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Now

“I’m sure you’ll see your aliens soon,” said Ruth.

“I hope so,” he said. He seemed eager to talk to us, and who wouldn’t be, so young and suddenly far from home? “I heard there might be a big attack soon. Somewhere close. Like Chicago. Or St. Louis. We’ll be ready! You can count on that!”

The rest of us bedraggled, half-starved people waiting for white bread and government cheese weren’t so happy about the idea, and a low moan of dread ran through the line. It was bad enough with no power, and half the city a burnt-out wreck, and our kin dead and gone with no bodies to bury, but to be attacked by aliens, too? It was getting absurd.

“But you know what else?” the young soldier continued. “I heard there’s rebels. People who don’t even believe in aliens at all. So we got that, too. It’s a war on two fronts. Don’t make sense to me, though. We got an enemy, a real enemy. Like Nazis, but worse, you know? I heard they look like walking frogs.”

“Okay, okay,” his commander said, coming up behind him and clapping him on the shoulder. “That’s enough storytelling. Let’s keep it moving.”

Our soldier grinned sheepishly, half-saluted at Ruth, and headed up the line.

That night there were attacks on cities in India and China and Brazil. They showed it all on the news: crumbling buildings, burning foliage, eroding skylines. Raging lakes of fire and flame. And terrified people, as they ran and cried, everything they’d loved reduced to ash. The news announcers didn’t talk. They just watched with the rest of us, pale and afraid.

Nicole had followed me home, after the bread line. At first I was worried to bring her, but she was young and pretty and the rebels were mostly men, so they didn’t seem to mind. Right away she handed her baby off to Jane and the men gave her a gun. Now she was leaning into their circle with a thirsty look on her face, watching the wreckage on TV.

They weren’t afraid. They claimed it was all manufactured, nothing but fake. A false flag operation, they said.

“What’s that mean?” Nicole demanded, and Big Doug explained.

“But aren’t the dead people still dead?” I wanted to know. No one had an answer for that.

I brought dinner to Jane and the kiddies upstairs. They were all of ’em starving, because there’d been no one around to fix lunch, and nothing to fix. Timmy dove toward the plate like a hungry wolf, but quick as could be, Jane slapped him away. “ Timmy,” she said. “We haven’t had time to pray. Close your eyes, Annette,” she commanded, so I did.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood,” she said, quoting from the Bible, a verse I once knew too. “But against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places . . .”

I didn’t want to listen. Eyes still closed, I slipped away.

The next day I had to go back to the ration station all over again. There were too many people at my house, eating too much food, but we had to keep it secret, or the soldiers would get suspicious. Someone else should wait in the line, but no one wanted to do that, because it was boring. It was way more fun to sit in the basement counting the hand grenades some lunatic from Rolla had brought in under cover of night. So food duty fell to me, again.

The baby-faced soldier recognized me; he came up and said hello. “Didn’t I just see you yesterday?” he asked. “Did they give you enough?”

“I, um, I’ve got a big family,” I said, which wasn’t exactly a lie.

He lit up. “Oh yeah? Me too. How many you got?”

“Well, there’s me, and Jane, and Larry, and Timmy, and Sylvie,” I said. “And Dad. And Mom, but she got enforced.”

“So did my sister Rae Ann,” he said. “And my big brother Jack, and he had two kids. I like to think I’m here for him. Those people, the ones who fought back at the very beginning, they were the real heroes, don’t you think? My momma says we should be grateful to them all. She’d say your momma was a hero too.”

Then his commander was giving him a look, so he moved on, down the line.

On the way back I ran into Ruth. “Oh, you again,” she said. “Listen, do you want to come by my house tonight? It’s a full moon and seeing as how the world was supposed to end and then didn’t, I figured some thanks to the goddess would probably be in order, don’t you agree? Bring your friend, too. It would help complete the circle.”

“I, um, okay,” I said. “That sounds good. I’ll see what I can do.”

Nicole didn’t want to go at first, because she said it sounded weird, and kinda lame, but I insisted. I’d been on my feet cooking and cleaning for days. Now the whole house reeked because we couldn’t take showers anymore and the toilets were all backed up. No one was even bothering about it, because they expected the war to begin any day. Their makeshift beds were scattered all over the house, heaped with dirty clothes and damp towels they’d used to clean their privates. I just wanted to get out of the house, away from all the men with their unkempt beards and stinking feet. So I reminded Nicole that she wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me, and finally she agreed to go.

We slipped away just after dinner when the kids had gone to bed and the men were talking by firelight to conserve the generator’s fuel. They’d banned the TV completely, because we couldn’t afford the power, and anyway they said it was nothing but lies.

Now that nearly all the power was gone, night was deeper than it had ever been before. Storm-heavy clouds shifted and scattered across the face of the moon. In Ruth’s backyard, surrounded by overgrown hedges and the low-hanging branches of sycamore trees, it was so dark we could barely see each other. The match flared bright for a moment as Ruth lit three candles, illuminating spooky shadows across her face—for a moment she really did look like a witch.

We stood in a circle with our arms outstretched, while Ruth explained that there is only one goddess, though she goes by different names—different names for different forms. Tonight Ruth called on Hecate, the goddess in three. Hecate was ours: maiden, mother, and crone. She was the goddess of transformations, of endings and beginnings, of birth and death. Here, in this moment, as one world perished and the next came into being, she was the goddess of now.

Then Ruth prayed, though it was not like Jane’s prayers. She prayed for strength, and wisdom, and harmony; she prayed for protection for women everywhere and for peace to come at the crossroads.

I could feel the heat radiating off my white candle, its warmth on my fingers and forehead.

When it ended Nicole was the first to blow out her candle without so much as an “Amen.” She tossed the dripping candle into the grass and said, “So, um, that was fun? I better be getting back. Annette—you’ll be along?” She slipped past the shadows and through the gate.

“And the circle is broken,” Ruth said. She knelt and lodged the three candles upright in a little pile of stones and rocks, and relit Nicole’s candle. She patted the grass beside her. I sat.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” I said. “But the people at my house . . . they’re planning a war. They’re going to attack the army base. Or maybe just the soldiers. I’m not exactly sure.”

“I thought that might be the case,” Ruth said.

“I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“I know,” Ruth said. “They will, though, you know. The army is stronger. So much stronger. Your friends can never win.”

“They’re not my friends.”