The End Is Now

Jane and I set the chips and sandwiches on the table. “Go get the soda,” I told her.

“You do it,” she said.

Dad opened the front door a crack, the chain still up. “What do you want?” he demanded.

“Please,” Don said, crying. “I heard people were meeting here. I’m begging you. Just let me in. They’re going to kill me.”

“Sorry,” Dad said, not sorry at all.

“But what about forgiveness?” Don pleaded. It was so quiet around the table you could hear our stomachs gurgling, but outside the door sounded the roar of building chaos: yelling crowds, screaming sirens, squealing tires, and the constant crackle-pop of guns going off. “What about mercy? What about fellowship? What about turning the other cheek?”

“What about it?” Dad said, and slammed the door in Don’s face.

Don shrieked and the mob howled and we heard tussling and scraping and something hard thudding against the door. A shot rang out, then another.

My brother began to move toward the curtains. “Larry,” my dad said, in a dangerous voice, “Don’t you dare look out that window.” Then he returned to the table. “Now. Where were we?”

They scarfed down the sandwiches and planned a war.

Later, when no one was watching, I peeked outside the window. I saw Don, or what was left of Don—a pile of torn clothes and leaking body fluids and splattered brain matter and a lake of blood—and a broken casserole dish, tuna noodles and busted glass mixed together with all the human gore.

That night they boarded up the windows.

When bedtime came, Jane and I took the kids upstairs. Jane led the prayers, but even after she said “Amen,” she continued to pray in silence, her hands folded and her eyes closed, her face turned toward the window and the night sky. I sat with her until the waxing crescent moon rose high and bright.

* * *

By the next morning the power was out, but our generator was on. Later that day the President got on TV and declared martial law, just like Dad had predicted.

Soon the army tanks were rolling down the streets, the soldiers waving, while people came out of their houses to clap and cry and wave the flag. Everyone was mad as hell; everyone was ready for war.

At our house more guys arrived all the time. Soon we had a dozen people living at our house ‘round the clock and another dozen coming in and out, all hours of the day. I wanted to listen to the war plans, but I had to spend all my time cooking, doing the dishes, washing the towels and sheets. I made Larry help me, though he complained the whole time. Jane had an entire nursery going upstairs now with the motherless babies and toddlers that other widowed fathers had brought along.

I folded the laundry and watched the news. It was all overheated talk shows, playing and replaying the blurry footage of the aliens landing in Siberia or Greenland, setting up a massive camp.

“Can’t we shoot them down?” demanded one panelist. “That’s what I want to know. We have the capabilities, right? The most powerful military in the entire world. Maybe the universe, I don’t know. Is the entire Air Force asleep at the wheel?”

“Nuke them from orbit, right.”

“Annette,” my father called. “We’re all starving. Can you put something together?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“And turn that garbage off. You know it’s all a bunch of lies.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

Typical: It was the end of the world and not only did I have to spend it waiting on everybody, I wasn’t even allowed to watch TV.

* * *

Everything was different with Mom gone.

It wasn’t about the practical stuff. I’d always helped with all of that. It was about the purpose. Because Mom always believed, and though the God of her faith was vengeful and cruel, He was always there. Her belief had gotten us through the past couple weeks when everything else began to crumble.

The schism at church happened as soon as the aliens arrived. Half the congregation believed this was false prophesy; there was no god but God, no heaven but His Kingdom, and Planet X was just another end-times distraction, sent to tempt.

The other half believed this might be God, working in His own mysterious way; He was the author of every force in the universe, and no one could understand the working of his hands. So they wanted to pray, and proselytize, and convert as many souls as they could, before the final day.

Of course, this was against alien orders; the aliens had commanded that everyone continue about their business as usual, no special preparations for the apocalypse, and certainly no last ditch efforts to save the world. They’d made one of every thousand people become an enforcer and punish violations. The punishment was instant execution. The punishment for refusing to be an enforcer was also instant execution.

Mom and Dad fought a lot that week, because he didn’t want her to die. “But the Lord has called us,” she patiently explained.

“Can’t He call someone else? For a change?”

They enforced her on Thursday, hand in hand with other martyrs as they prayed beneath the steeple.