Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Nigh

Suicide hadn’t even crossed Neta’s mind. She waited to feel anger or betrayal that the quiet young man would do that, would go without saying goodbye to her, to them, but she couldn’t find it in her to blame him. He had faced death his way. She had to face it in her own.

“The others will be well clear of the moon now,” Ray said.

“Going home,” Neta said softly. She appreciated Ray’s attempt to bring good news in the room.

“Vodka?” Kirill offered her the remaining bottle.

“You’re a walking cliché, Kirill,” she said with a smile.

“Some clichés are for reasons,” he said, playing up his accent and waggling his bushy eyebrows at her.

He poured a generous measure into her tin cup and then picked up his cards again. Neta watched them play in silence, cupping the alcohol between her hands as though she were warming them, but didn’t drink. It was strange, but she found she wanted to face the end sober, calm.

“I’m glad,” she said, as Ray dealt her into a new game of Rummy. “I’m glad I’m not alone.”

“I will drink to that,” Ray said.

“I too,” Kirill said.

The whole Den shook, a tremor like an earthquake rattling dishes and jouncing them well out of their chairs.

Neta left her cup after the shaking stopped and went to sit on the floor. Kirill and Ray joined her. They sat knee-to-knee in a tight circle as another tremor began. When she reached out her hands, Ray and Kirill took her cold fingers in their own warm ones.

“It’s the middle of the night in Montana,” she said. “I bet there is a warm wind coming from the Southeast. I wish I could tell Paul goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Neta,” Ray said, squeezing her hand.

“Goodnight, Ray,” she said. “Goodnight, Kirill.”

“I love you both,” Kirill said with a hitch in his voice. “Goodnight.”

As the Den shook, Neta closed her eyes and held on to their hands with all her strength forever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Annie Bellet is the author of the Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division and the Gryphonpike Chronicles series. She holds a BA in English and a BA in Medieval Studies and thus can speak a smattering of useful languages such as Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Welsh. Her short fiction is available in multiple collections and anthologies. Her interests besides writing include rock climbing, reading, horse-back riding, video games, comic books, table-top RPGs and many other nerdy pursuits. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and a very demanding Bengal cat.

Taking it slow so the ruts in the dirt drive didn’t ruin his Mustang’s suspension, Johnny cruised past the Lakeshore Drive-In’s worn neon sign, past the faded and battered red and white ticket booth, into the big open field.

Dad was at the snack bar getting the popcorn popping, putting hot dogs in their aluminum sheaths for no one. It was a half hour before showtime, the sky halfway between blue and black, and there were no customers yet. Toward the end of the second feature, Johnny and his dad would end up eating dried-out hot dogs. He was so sick of hot dogs. Every night, Dad prepped the snack bar like they were going to have a full house, and every night, maybe half a dozen vehicles rolled through the gate.

Tonight they’d be lucky to get anyone. Everybody was glued to their TV sets, watching the news, scared shitless by the nodding virus. Johnny was scared shitless too, but he still had to drag his ass out to babysit his father.

Every time he took the hard right off Route Forty-Six and passed that old neon sign, it gave him a sick feeling of indigestion. When the Alzheimer’s finally took his father, Johnny would inherit 11.27 acres of useless land, a snack bar refurbished to resemble a 1950s diner, a shiny new movie projector, and a shitload of frozen hot dogs. He would also inherit a sixty-six thousand dollar business loan at eight percent interest, the loan guaranteed by the house he’d lived in his entire life.

Kicking up dust as he pulled in, Johnny parked by the walk-up window. He slammed the Mustang’s door, strode past old picnic benches squatting under a roof that extended from the squat building like the bill of a cap.

“Don’t park there,” Dad said as he set boxes of fresh popcorn beside the machine. “You don’t want anything obscuring the customers’ view of the snack bar. I read that on the internet.”

“I’ll move it when the movie starts.”

Dad put his hands on his hips. “People buy half of their snacks before the movie starts.”

Johnny wanted to point out that half the snacks they sold on an average night amounted to about twelve bucks’ worth. It was on the tip of his tongue, but he let it go. At least his dad was making sense. When he’d dropped him off that afternoon, Dad had been sure it was nineteen seventy-six, and was contemplating decorating the drive-in to commemorate the nation’s bicentennial.

“You watching the news?” Johnny asked. “The virus broke out in Wilkes-Barre. Something like two thousand people have it.”

“Is that the swine flu? Or the bird one?”

Maybe Dad wasn’t having such a good evening after all. “No, Pop. The new one, the nodding virus.”

Dad took it in like it was the first time he’d heard about it. “How many dead?”

“Hard to say. It doesn’t kill you, it paralyzes you. You can’t move.”

Johnny would be less scared of the virus if it killed you outright. The thought of being aware of what was going on, able to breathe, even eat if someone fed you, but not able to move…Johnny didn’t even want to think about it.

“You remember seeing Spaceballs here?” Dad asked.

“I remember, Pop.” Here we go, off on a ride down memory lane.

Johnny was so tired. So sick of giving up four nights a week for nothing. He spent all day walking on that greasy floor, listening to people’s complaints about their fucking fish sandwiches while his back ached. He resented having to waste all his time off so his father could live out his dream and reminisce about how much better the world was when everyone loved to watch movies through their dirty windshields while mosquitoes ate them alive.

Dad looked at the big white screen. On the day he’d brought Johnny out here to tell him he had Alzheimer’s—and that he was buying this beat-up drive-in as some sort of big carpe-diem fuck you to the universe—the screen had been peeling away in squares, exposing the rusting steel latticework underneath. Now it was bright white and flawless.

“The day after this place closed, the marquee out front said, ‘The End. Thanks for thirty years.’” Dad shook his head. “It broke my heart, to think your kids would never get to go to the drive-in.”

“Tiffany moved the kids to Baltimore before they were old enough to go to the drive-in,” Johnny said, bitterness leaking into his tone. He wanted to go home, crawl under a blanket with a six of Pabst and watch porn until he fell asleep.

A truckload of teen-agers pulled through the gate. Johnny headed off to collect their admissions. If they were super-lucky, the kids would smoke some weed and get the munchies. They could sell some hot dogs for a change.

In the car on the way home, the radio played some Springsteen then gave way to the news. Johnny wasn’t in the mood to hear any more about the outbreak, so he stabbed one of the preset buttons and caught a Charm City Devils song in progress.

The sound of their success only reminded him of his own faded rock star dreams. He turned the radio off.