The End Is Now

If they’re really your friends, they’d understand. You’ve got kids, just ask them if you can—

“Can’t stay here, you say,” Toivo said. “We sure as hell can’t leave, Georgie.”

Toivo had sobered up. Mostly. His eyes still looked tired, hungover-tired, and a bit of gleaming snot stuck to his mustache. Dressed in a full snowsuit over two sweaters, he looked like a brown Pillsbury Doughboy. So did George, for that matter. So did everyone else.

Toivo gestured to the cabin’s ratty wall. “What da fuck do you think we’re gonna do outside, Georgie? Hide in da woods? It’s fuckin’ forty below out there.”

George nodded. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Cold was one thing. He was a grown man—he could handle cold—but forty below wasn’t cold, it was something else altogether. And then there was the snow. Still falling steadily from the night sky, increasing the thick whiteness that covered bare branches and pine boughs alike, adding to the three feet already on the ground. That snow hid all the sticks and logs and foot-snapping holes around the shack.

But . . . there were no trees or sticks on the road. Nothing there but snow. The road would take them away. They needed to be on that road, and the sooner the better.

Get them all moving, it doesn’t matter, get them out of here and find a way to get home . . .

“That ship is close,” George said. “We’re the only building in the area.” He pointed to the cabin’s small, black, wood-burning stove, which gave off heat that seemed far more delicious now that he knew he’d soon leave it behind. “The stove is putting out smoke. If they have IR, they’ll see the shack lit up all red, or whatever, and know that people are here.”

Arnold’s wrinkled face furrowed. “IR? What da hell is that?”

“Infrared, Pops,” Bernie said. “Like in Predator.”

Arnold’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Ah, yeah. Like Predator.”

Those two, Arnold and Bernie, had such a strong father-son resemblance they looked like a before-and-after picture: this is you before you start to smoke, kids, and this is you after. Bernie, over forty, same age as George and Jaco and Toivo, with a full “hunting cabin beard” that had taken him only a week to grow. Arnold, white stubble in and on the folds of his face, tired eyes peering out from behind thick glasses.

“This ain’t a movie,” Toivo said. “This ain’t about IR. Georgie, I love ya, but stop lying—you think you can get back to Milwaukee.”

A stab of guilt, like George had been caught in a crime. He couldn’t lie to these men, at least not convincingly. They knew him too well.

“I do,” George said. “We have to get out of here, you guys. At least out of the cabin. If they’re killing people all over, they’ll come here, and if they find us, they’ll probably kill us, too.”

Bernie walked to the stove. “We should put da fire out, anyway. If there’s no fire they can’t see us, maybe. We’ll lose heat, but at least we’re protected from da wind.”

Jaco shook his head. “Putting it out makes way more smoke. Just let it burn out on its own.”

He was right about the smoke, but the tone in Jaco’s voice made it clear he was more worried about the cold.

Everyone looked worried, scared, but Jaco more than the rest. His oversized glasses framed wide eyes made wider by the thick lenses. He was the smallest of the five, always had been, so small that his rifle made him look like a preteen boy dressing up as a hunter for Halloween. He had children, too, a pair of daughters. At five and seven, they were the same ages as George’s boys. George had often teased Jaco that his boys would someday date those girls.

Toivo tried to sling his rifle over his shoulder, but his snowsuit’s bulk blocked him.

“We’ve got guns,” he said. He tried to sling the weapon a second time, succeeded. “We can defend ourselves, eh? We stay here, we won’t die from da cold. Maybe you forgot what it’s like living in a big city, Georgie, but in da woods, you don’t fuck with forty below.”

Jaco righted a folding chair that had been knocked over when the alien ship had screamed overhead—so close and loud the cabin rattled as if struck by artillery. He sat.

“Defend ourselves,” he said. “Toivo, those things are blowing up cities. From what those websites said, they’re taking on the military, and winning. You think hunting rifles are going to do anything?”

Toivo shrugged. “I’m not a physedicist,” he said. “But bullets will probably kill those things just like they kill us.”

“Physicist,” Jaco said, shaking his head. “You dumb-ass, phys-ed is gym.”

George didn’t want to listen to them jabber. His sons were probably terrified, wondering where their father was. His wife was . . . well, she was probably loading the shotgun and getting the boys into the basement. No trembling flower, his wife.