Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Nigh

But the kid didn’t cry, didn’t beg, didn’t even suggest. He nodded, an adult’s gesture of grave acceptance. “God’s ways are mysterious, but they are just and they are right. I’ll explain it to the Children.” He said it as calmly as if I’d confessed I accidentally spilled some canned beans. “You can be sure I’ll raise them well for you, and make certain they never forget your sacrifice. Goodbye, Father.” He said Father exactly like my other Children said it, like he was one of them, like he’d never been mine.

He touched his fingers to my forehead like a benediction, and that was the end of it. The kid was exactly what I’d made him. A believer.

And so it was for the best when the bulletproof door shut between us; a believer was of no use to me.

He was better off without me, I told myself as I bugged out. Maybe he’d even go back to normal. Get himself adopted by one of the Children once they weren’t my Children anymore, once they’d resurfaced after a lonely month or two inside, only to realize that they were the worst kind of fools, the bankrupt kind. But I knew better: Can’t bullshit a bullshitter. I knew what happened to a weird kid no one wanted, and it was a sure thing none of the Children would want anything to do with him, not once they realized what he’d made them do and what his father had made them believe. He’d be lucky if they didn’t lynch him.

Fuck him up all you want, just don’t kill him, Hilary had told me, and in all likelihood, I hadn’t even managed that.

That’s what I was thinking about while I drove south—that and the plump bank account that was waiting for me, and the long stretches of beach with all the bikinis and the days to come. Nothing lasts forever, not even guilt. I could wait it out, I figured.

I figured I had plenty of time.

It happened the next day, just like I said it would.

I don’t exactly know what happened, because the power grid crapped out damn quick, along with the radio, and there went any prayer of knowing what was going on, just like the kid said it would.

Thanks to him, I knew enough to make a few guesses, or at least eliminate some options. Not a superbug, obviously, not global warming, not—sorry kid—a robot revolution. Not God. Not a divine Judgment, not my prophecy coming to pass. That one, at least, I could be sure of.

Not a divine judgment, but easily mistaken for one, that blaze of light like the sun gone supernova, the sonic boom and answering shudder from deep in the Earth that shook branches from the trees, the thousand points of light streaking through the clouds, like a fleet of alien invaders, like the sky was falling, like every disaster movie I’d ever seen with a special effects budget ratcheted up to the billions, because this was an assault on the senses enough to make you believe the impossible, that this was real: the thunder and the silence, the taste of scorched chemicals, the rush of wind and spray of dust, the divine light—and then, switch flipped for good, central fuses blown—darkness at noon.

Dust and dirt and all manner of crap blocking out the sun, the kid had taught me. Suggesting something big enough—asteroid, bomb, whatever—to blow a whole shitload of earth into the sky. A smell in the air, something bad, something wrong. Something coming .

It’d be a prettier picture if I could say I wasn’t surprised, that some part of me felt it coming, felt some high power speaking through me with the not-so-bullshit prophecy, guiding my finger to the most fateful of dates—that I had a feeling about this one, tasted something off about it, some acrid undertone of Absolute Truth.

Surprised? The only surprise is I didn’t have a fucking heart attack at the wheel. They haven’t got a word for what I was when the sky fell down. Or when I hit the point where the Philly skyline should’ve come into view… and didn’t. Maybe it was lurking out there in the dark, its power failed, its spires hidden in a thicket of dust, but I don’t think so. I think it’s not there anymore. I think the end came, just like I said it would, and I think it’s better not to think too much about that.

I kept driving, long as I could, because what else was I supposed to do? Not north, back toward the compound—nothing was getting into that fortress, not for months, maybe not for years, and they’d shoot me if I tried. East, toward the ocean. Tsunamis or not—and the kid had made it clear not was far less likely—I wanted to see it before the end.

Didn’t make it that far.

Didn’t make it very far at all. Cars swamped the highways, and somewhere in the distance, on the black of the horizon, a bloom of fire that said, pretty clearly: Wrong way .

I was no sign reader before, but the kid taught me well. I know what happens now. Destruction, devastation, cities vaporized, millions incinerated, gutted infrastructure, rotting corpses, starving orphans, endless winter, food riots, armed bandits, crime, punishment, plague, famine, hellfire and damnation. If we didn’t need God to end the world, we surely won’t need him to turn the wreckage into hell on Earth. Humans are capable creatures; we can do most anything ourselves.

It wasn’t a bad stretch of road—concrete ribbon winding through lush woods—so I left the car in its jam and took off into the trees, and I waited, like I’m still waiting, for what comes next.

There wasn’t anything special about Hilary, nothing more or less special than any of them, and I never led her to believe any different. That wasn’t for me, the wining and dining shtick, and I certainly knew better than to tease a girl like her with a future. You’ll notice those same people who turn their nose up at my methods don’t hesitate to tell a few stories of their own when it comes to love and lust, parading around their sad little pretense of commitment, promising nothing will ever change when change is the only sure thing we’ve got. The Hilary episode was brief. It was fun. And then, when it wasn’t anymore, it was over—but I guess everything has its moments.

There was this one night, same shitty motel room with its stiff sheets and unnamable perfume, same crap box wine and love handles, same greasy Chinese and sour breath, even the same routine, a little for her, a little for me, finish with her on top then finish her off with the same tired flourish, not an iota of difference from any of the hundred some nights we spent before the sight of each other made us both sick, but that night, after, she fit perfectly against me, a puzzle piece with sad eyes and downy blond peach fuzz up and down her arms—that night, I couldn’t stop touching her, and we fell asleep together, like a couple of spooning teenagers. That night, and that night only, for no reason whatsoever, she smelled like home.

It’d be convenient to imagine that was the night we conceived the kid, because wouldn’t that suggest there was some higher purpose to the whole thing, not just the sad motel sex, but fifty-six years of eating, sleeping, shitting, enduring one minute after the next? This kid, my kid, and all the Children he saved, our little ark up in the hills where, no matter what happens to the rest of it, some righteous sliver of the human race will survive. That’s what the kid believes, and if he’s right, it’s a nasty joke for God to play on me, but I can’t say I’d blame Him.

It’d be convenient, and it’d be easier—especially now. If I could believe in something aside from my own rotten luck. That after all these years of playing the odds, my number finally came in, the one jackpot that does me no good whatsoever. If I could believe that there really is a puppet master, some holy ghost guiding the chess pieces across the board, that this one time he broke with tradition and sacrificed the father instead of the son. But that isn’t His way, and believing in it isn’t mine.