Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Nigh

“I’m just curious,” I say. “I mean, I don’t even know if they made it to Nebraska.”

Jules hip-checks my locker so it rattles. She’s got this rage she doesn’t know she’s carrying—it’s made her heavy-footed and graceless. “Here’s what you do…” She pretend-cranks a gear at her temple. “You just delete. Done! They’re dead.”

“Yeah. Okay,” I say. Like that’s possible. They’ve been my parents for seventeen years. Not to mention my baby sister Cathy, who they totally don’t deserve. And by the way, I know it’s whom. I’m just not an asshole, like you.

“Chillax! You think too much. I did the same thing with my ex until I figured it out. Then I just pretended he died and it was his robot clone I had to sit next to in Mrs. Viotes’ art. Delete!”

“Colby Mudd?” I ask.

“Don’t even say his name. Can you believe he’s still here? I mean, half the town is dead, but he’s still noshing turkey jerky? Jeez! My God! What does he see in that spoiled princess? You’re bringing me down. Point is, fuck your family! I’m your family!”

“Sure. I’ll just change my last name or some nonsense. How was the rest of last night?”

Jules blushes, giggles. Glitter abraids the whites of her eyes, making them red.

“That good?”

I left around midnight. Home brew drugs are for hicks, case in point: As soon as Avery Ryan from the bowling team broke out the meth, everybody went native. They dragged this black-light-painted hunk of granite to the middle of the factory floor and prayed to it like it was weeping Jesus on the cross. For the big finale, a mirror-clad priestess offered herself up. She shattered her mirrors against it, cutting herself bloody. Then everybody started screwing. Clothes off in negative-ten degree weather, spilled corn whisky turned black ice on the floor. Kids, grown-ups, pipeline scabs and militia, all partying together like some prediction straight out of Revelation.

I mean, what the hell?

Growing up, my dad’s job in resource excavation took us all over, and every place was the same: falling apart. It got a lot worse two years ago, when an astronomer played with some numbers and reconfigured Aporia’s trajectory. He predicted a direct hit somewhere near Chicago. We’d all known a big one was due, give or take a billion years. But nobody could agree on what to do about it. Since the Great Resources Grab of the ’20s, the colonies weren’t talking to each other. Asia was all messed up. And you know the French. I mean, they see a problem and they step over it and blame the dog.

Anyway, some private multinationals got together, which goes to show you they’re not all bad. They tried redirecting Aporia by attaching rockets. They tried spattering its far-side with black paint, so the sun’s rays altered its trajectory. They tried opening a black hole, which wound up swallowing most of Long Island before it collapsed.

Then President Brett Brickerson, the former child actor from Nobody Loves an Albatross , got on the Freenet last month and announced that we had one last hope: shooting a nuke rocket at it, head on. He laid down Martial Law in all of America’s sixteen colonies. Pipeline towns like Pigment saw the heaviest military occupation. It’s supposed to be our job to siphon every last drop for the rocket.

Pretty soon after that, the refinery guys striked. They said the government wasn’t playing fair. President Brickerson accused them of holding the entire planet hostage. Next thing, they were all dead and buried in mass graves. The scabs took their place—guys from all over, paid in gold bars. Like the hired guns, they did whatever they wanted, to anybody they wanted, for the simple reason that nobody was around to stop them.

The locals started leaving for Antarctica and Australia. The ones stuck here once the law clamped down got hysterical, suicidal, and shot, not necessarily in that order. “What’s the point of going on like this?” I overheard my mom asking my dad, which I found pretty insulting. I mean, I’m the point, right? Me and Cathy. We’re the whole goddamned point.

The stores sold out of supplies and the school’s cafeteria just served jerky and canned corn, a donation from the heartland. You can’t be seen on the streets without the militia messing with you for vagrancy. Non-compliants hide in their shelters at the old Chevy Factory. It’s quiet during the day, while everybody sleeps off their rave.

Last night’s theme was cosmic mirrors, hence the shattered priestess. I didn’t bother with that nonsense. I just wore my uniform: jeans and an ironic Dead Man’s Plaid t-shirt, plus two denim jackets since some burnout stole the winter coat out of my locker. Jules wrapped herself in tin foil and glitter, teeth chattering the whole walk there. Some of the really popular kids showed up in fancy stolen cars they’d made the underclassmen push. Total Mad Max shit.

Used to be, only the locals knew about the raves. But then the militia and scabs started showing up. They’re bad people. I read my Faulkner and I know what you’re thinking: nobody’s absolutely good or absolutely bad. But ask yourself this: what kind of sociopaths occupy America’s fourteenth colony, imprisoning its citizens inside ground zero, under the pretense of “maintaining order for urgent oil extraction?”

Let me explain something to you, because I’m taking basic physics this year, so I know. Aporia is one mile-wide and more dense than iron. Nukes will crack her, but at this point, she’ll hit Earth no matter what. Only, if she breaks into pieces, she’ll be more democratic about impact. She’ll slide into the President’s bunker in Omaha, or the shelters in Rio, or the Sino-Canadian stockpiles under the glaciers. So what do you think? Do you think that’s the plan?

Or do you think President Brickerson and all the other world leaders are lying, and there is no nuke rocket? Do you think the governments and corporations joined forces, and built escape shelters? Do you think the pipelines are heading straight for those shelters, for use after the apocalypse, for the lucky survivors with tickets to the show?

Thanks, Mr. President.

Thank you, too, dear reader.

No, wait. Scratch that. Fuck you, dear reader. Seriously, Fuck you.

So, yeah, back to the militia and pipeline scabs. What kind of morons suck the oil from a dying civilization’s veins for a few worthless pounds of gold? They show up at high school parties and screw girls thirty years younger. Screw guys like me, too, when they can get me loaded enough. How many prisons did they crack open to staff this operation? How many pedophile dormitories did they raid? You think I’m kidding, but seriously, who else do you think they could get?

So yeah, I read my Faulkner. But did that dude ever live in Pigment three days before human annihilation?

I used to be so into the zombie apocalypse. I figured I’d be this hero in a society risen from ashes. Me, the phoenix of the new world order. But the real thing sucks. Because I’m going to die, and I can’t figure out which is more cowardly; resigning myself to that fate or fighting against it.

At my locker, glittering Jules grins. It’s eerie. Why’s she happy? “Last night. After you left. Here’s what happened,” she says, then lifts her fuck finger at me, holds it. Then her index and thumb rise as she mouths: one, two, three .

“What?” I ask, but I already know. Jules is such a wreck.

“A three-way,” she says. “One of ’em stuck a rifle up my cooter!”

“I guess you can scratch that off your bucket list.”

“Right on the dance floor. Everybody was clapping. Don’t give me that concerned dad look, Crawford, he shot it empty first…”

“Discharge.”