John Adams - Wastelands - Stories of the Apocalipse

Gwen hadn’t been chosen captain for nothing. She let it go on for a few seconds, then shouted at top volume, "Quiet!"

The chapel grew quiet.

"All right," she said into the silence. "I obviously made a false assumption when I thought we all wanted to ask God to come back for us. Jody doesn’t think we should try to contact Him at all. What do the rest of you think?"

A chorus of voices nearly drowned her out again. "One at a time," she yelled.

"You, Dave."

"I think we should ask His forgiveness and ask Him to take us with Him."

"Hammad?"

"Ask what He wants us to do, rather than just assume."

"Maria?"

"I…uh, I definitely think we should try to contact Him, but I think Hammad kind of makes sepse, actually."

"Thank you," said Hammad. Gwen looked at me. "Gregor?"

I looked at Hammad, then at Jody. "I’m not sure it’s a good idea to call His attention to us at all. Depending on whose version of Christianity is true, we could do a lot worse than where we are now."

"Arjuna?"

Arjuna said, "I kind of agree with Jody and Gregor, except I wonder what we’d do if God decides to turn out the lights."

"It’s been four years," Hammad said.

"That doesn’t mean—" Dave said, and the babble started up again.

"Quiet!" shouted Gwen. She snatched the wooden cross from the front of the pulpit and banged it down like a gavel on the angled top. "All right," she said when we’d quieted down, "let’s try this again. Keung, what do you think?"

Keung shrugged. "I don’t think it matters. If we can reach Him with prayer, then one of us would have done it already. I think if we can get His attention at all, then there’s no point in hiding out because He’ll eventually realize we’re here."

"Is that a vote for or against praying to Him?"

"It’s an don’t care.’"

Gwen nodded. "Well then, it looks like the prayer contingent wins, but I don’t see anything wrong with asking politely what God intends for us to do before we start begging for divine intervention. Can we all agree on that?"

"No," Jody said, but Dave’s and Maria’s and Hammad’s assent was louder.

Gwen said, "Jody, Keung’s right; if prayer works, then somebody’s bound to get God’s attention sooner or later."

"No they’re not," Jody said. "There’s millions of guns lying around, but that doesn’t mean we have to start shooting each other with them. We don’t have to pray."

"I do," Dave said.

Jody stared at him a moment, then shook her head and picked up her coat and hat and mittens again. "I’ll wait outside, then," she said, brushing past me toward the door. "Maybe He’ll miss me again when he comes for you idiots."

I followed her out. I hadn’t taken my coat off, just unzipped it; the cold air felt good through my shirt.

"Idiots," Jody said again when we were alone. "They’re playing with dynamite in there. Worse. Antimatter."

"Maybe literally," I said. "Who knows what God might be made of?"

"Aaahhh, God, God, God," she growled. "I’m sick of the whole subject. I wish He’d just stayed the hell out of my life."

I poked a finger in her ribs. "He did, silly."

"It’s not funny."

"Sure it is. We’ve spent our whole lives saying it didn’t matter what we thought or did about religion, since the truth is inherently unknowable, and now we’re afraid somebody is going to pray us out of existence. I think it’s hilarious."

We were walking back toward the guest lodge along a path surrounded by pine trees and snow banks. On impulse I reached up and slapped a branch just as Jody walked under it. "Yow!" she screamed as a clump of snow went down her neck, and before I could back out of range she bent down, scooped up a handful, and hurled it at my face. I stumbled backward and sat down unexpectedly in a snow bank, which saved me from another faceful that flew over my head instead.

As long as I was on the ground I figured I might as well defend myself, so I started throwing snow back at her as fast as I could scoop it up. It was too cold to stick into balls, so we just shovelled it at each other, shrieking and laughing like fools while the rest of humanity prayed for a miracle.

The prayer meeting broke up a half hour or so later. By then Jody and I were snuggling on the bear rug in front of the lodge’s main fireplace, an enormous flagstone construction with a firebox big enough to roast a hover car in. Hammad found us first.

"We seem to have failed in raising the deity," he said as he stripped off his coat and hung it over a peg on the wall. "Unless of course there’s a time-lag involved."

"Oh great," said Jody. "Now I’ll be waiting all night for the skies to open and a choir of angels to wake me up."

"By the looks of you two, you won’t be sleeping much in the first place, unless it’s from exhaustion." He sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs beside us and stuck his feet toward the flames. "You know, I think you have the right of it," he said. "We should get on with our lives, and let God get on with His. I have to admit I feel greatly relieved to have missed all the commotion."

"Me too," I said. "Ever since we found out He exists, I’ve felt like an outsider in gang territory. I keep waiting for the tap on the shoulder that means I’m in big trouble."

"I wonder if that’s how religious people normally get through life so they wouldn’t attract the wrong kind of attention."

Hammad shook his head. "I doubt if most people even considered it that way. They probably—"

The solid wood door banged open and Dave, Gwen, and the others came in, stomping snow from their boots and talking. Dave glared at Jody and me and took off for his room or somewhere, but Gwen, Maria, Arjuna, and Keung took off their coats and joined us by the fire.

"Well, at least we can say we tried," Gwen said as she presented her backside to the flames. She had left the robe in the chapel and was wearing a regular shirt and pants.

"So what now?" asked Jody. "Travel? Sightsee? Play with the leftover toys before they all rust back into the ground? Or do we get straight to work starting a colony?"

Arjuna said, "No offense, but after twelve years of close contact with you guys I’m ready for some time alone."

Keung edged playfully away from her, but he said, "My sentiments exactly. I wouldn’t mind having a whole continent to myself for a while."

Maria looked shocked. "Wait a minute. Splitting up could mean some of us might get left behind again if God comes back."

"He’s not coming back," Keung said.

"What makes you so sure?"

He shrugged. "I’m not, actually, but I didn’t spend my whole life disregarding the issue just to start worrying about it now. If He comes for me, He comes, and if not, that’s fine too. I’ve got plenty to do on my own."

"That’s kind of how I feel about it," I said. "I’d like to see the world a little while I’ve got the chance."

"Me too," said Jody.

Gwen turned around to face the fire, saying over her shoulder, "The satellite phone system still works, so it shouldn’t be too hard to stay in touch. There’s hundreds of cell phones right here in the hotel, and I’ll bet at least some of them still have active accounts, paid automatically every month by credit card. It shouldn’t be hard to find a working phone for each of us. Of course we don’t all have to play tourist. Whoever wants to could start setting up the colony."

"Where?" Hammad asked.

"The Mediterranean," Arjuna said, just as I said, "California." We looked at each other for a moment, then I shrugged and said, "Okay, the Mediterranean." A sharp bang sounded from the back of the lodge.

"That sounded like a gun," Gwen said, and she took off running down the hallway, shouting, "Dave! Dave!" the whole way. The rest of us followed close behind her, but I took the time to grab the fireplace poker. Maybe he’d committed suicide and maybe he hadn’t. A poker wasn’t much of a weapon against a gun, but it felt better than nothing.