Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Now

Cover Art by Julian Aguilar Faylona

Cover Design by Jason Gurley

The Apocalypse Triptych was conceived as a series of three anthologies, each one covering a different facet of the end of times. Volume one, The End is Nigh, contains stories that take place just before the apocalypse. This volume, The End is Now, focuses on stories that take place during the apocalypse. And, naturally, volume three, The End Has Come, will feature stories that explore life after the apocalypse.

But we were not content to merely assemble a triptych of anthologies; we also wanted story triptychs as well. So when we recruited authors for this project, we encouraged them to consider writing not just one story for us, but one story for each volume, and connecting them so that the reader gets a series of mini-triptychs within The Apocalypse Triptych. So several of the stories contained in this anthology—seventeen of the twenty tales—have related stories in The End is Nigh, and many will continue on in The End Has Come as well.

If you’re one of the readers who read and enjoyed volume one: Thank you! We’re glad to see you returning for volume two. You made the first volume a resounding success, and we couldn’t be more thrilled with both how well the book’s done in the marketplace—it got all the way up to #11 on the Amazon bestseller list—and with how well it’s been received by readers and critics.

If you’re a reader who has not read The End is Nigh: Welcome! And fear not: You needn’t have read the first volume in order to enjoy the stories in this one. Although several of the stories in The End is Now are continuations of storylines that began in The End is Nigh, we’re confident that the authors have provided sufficient context that you can jump into these stories without any prior knowledge.

The viruses have become pandemics. The aliens have invaded. The zombies have risen. The asteroids have collided. The revolutions have been televised.

This is the end.

It is happening now.

Cataclysm.

Apocalypse.

The end of the world as we know it.

Armageddon, the end of everything.

As civilization falls apart.

As the world burns.

Now behold the conflagration.

A man was far ahead of her on the road. Walking and breathing. So far, so good.

That he was a man, Nayima was certain. His silhouette against the horizon of the rising roadway showed his masculine height and the shadow of an unkempt beard. He pulled his belongings behind him in an overnight suitcase like a business traveler. Maybe she trusted him on sight because of the unmistakable shape of a guitar case slung across his back. She’d always had a thing for musicians.

“ Hey !” she screamed, startling herself with her bald desperation.

He paused, his steady legs falling still. He might have turned around. She couldn’t quite make out his movements in the quarter-mile or more that separated them. The two of them, alone, were surrounded on either side by the golden ocean of central California farmland, unharvested and unplowed, no trees or shade in sight as the road snaked up the hillside.

His attention gave her pause. She hadn’t seen anyone walking in so long that she’d forgotten the plan that had kept her alive the past nine months: Hide. Observe. Assess.

But fuck it.

She waved and called again, so he would be certain she wasn’t a mirage in the heat.

“Hey!” she screamed, more hoarsely. She tried to run toward him, but her legs only lurched a stagger on the sharp grade. She was dizzy from heat and modulated hunger. The sky dimmed above her, so she stopped her pathetic chase and braced her palms against her knees to calm the cannon bursts from her heart. The world grew bright again.

He walked on. She watched him shrink until the horizon swallowed him. She remembered a time when terrifying loneliness would have made her cry. Instead, she began following him at the pace her body had grown accustomed to. He didn’t seem afraid of her; that was something. He hadn’t quickened. He was tired and slow, like her. If she was patient, she would catch up to him.

Nayima hadn’t planned to stay on State Road 46 toward Lost Hills. She had wanted to follow the last highway sign—one of the few conveniences still in perfect working order—toward a town just ten miles east. But she decided to follow the man instead. Just for a while, she’d told herself. Not so far that she’d run too low on water or go hungry.

Nayima followed him for three days.

She wasted no energy or hope checking the scattered vehicles parked at odd angles for fuel or food, although most still had their keys. She was far too late for that party. Cars were shelter. Handy when it rained. Or when it was dark and mountain lions got brave, their eyes glowing white in her flashlight beam. (“Bad, bad kitty,” she always said.)

The cars on SR-46 weren’t battered and broken like the ones in Bakersfield, witnesses to riots or robberies. For a time, carjacking had been the national hobby. She’d jacked a car herself trying to get out of that hellhole—with a sprained ankle and a small mob chasing her, she’d needed the ride more than the acne-scarred drunk sleeping at the wheel. On the 46, the pristine cars had come to rest, their colors muted by a thin veil of burial dust.

Nayima missed her red Schwinn, but she’d hit a rock the day before she’d seen the man on the road—the demon stone appeared in her path and knocked her bicycle down an embankment. She’d been lucky only to bump her elbow hard enough to make her yell. But her bike, gone. Crumpled beyond salvage. Nayima didn’t allow herself to miss much—but damn. And this man, her new day job, meant she didn’t have time to peel off to look for tucked-away farmhouses and their goodies. Too risky. She might lose him. Instead, Nayima walked on, following her ghost.

She imagined how they would talk. Testify. Teach what little they knew. Start something. Maybe he could at least tell her why he was on the 46, what radio broadcast or quest had beckoned. She hadn’t heard anything except hissing on radios in three months. She didn’t mind walking a long distance if she might arrive somewhere eventually.

Each morning she woke from her resting place—the crook of a tree, an abandoned car that wasn’t a tomb, in the cranny beneath the inexplicably locked cab of an empty eighteen-wheeler parked ten yards off the road like a beached whale—and wondered if the man had gone too far ahead. If he’d walked the whole night just to shake her. If he’d found a car that had sung him a love song when he caressed her and turned the key.

But each day, she saw signs that he was not lost. He was still walking ahead, somewhere just out of sight. Any evidence of him dampened her palms.

He left a trail of candy wrappers. Chocolate bars mostly; always the minis. Snickers, Twix, Almond Joy (her favorite; that wrapper made her stomach shout at the sight). Her own meals were similarly monotonous, but not nearly as colorful—handfuls of primate feed she’d found overlooked at a vet’s office outside Bakersfield. Her backpack was stuffed with the round, brown nuggets. Monkey Balls, she called them. They didn’t taste like much, but they opened up her time for walking and weren’t nearly as heavy as cans.