The End Is Now

We used to be homeschooled, before all this started. Now, Jane wanted to continue the lessons. “I’ll just start where we left off,” she said, but every time I went to check on them, they were listening to radio preachers and studying the Bible.

* * *

We’d been stockpiling food for a long time, in case the end of the world happened. Then, luckily, it actually did, so all that rice and creamed corn wouldn’t have to go to waste.

I expected the pantry stores to last a long time. But with the people coming in and out, making war plans and gobbling down all the stew, our food was gone in less than a week. Everyone kept saying the grocery stores were cleaned out, but somehow we’d have to find something to eat.

I went down to the basement and tried to get some help, but they were all busy and distracted, arguing over a pile of illegally encrypted two-way radios and a stack of hand-drawn maps, telling each other to shush so they could hear the news from Joplin, another rebel cell. Someone paused long enough to tell me they’d passed a ration station, just a mile down the road. So I grabbed a .22 pistol, tucked it in my purse, and set out on my own.

I hadn’t been outside in a while. The whole neighborhood looked pretty bad. There were cars stranded in the street where they’d run out of gas, after thieves had come in the night to siphon it away. There was trash everywhere, battered furniture, shell casings, burned siding, broken glass.

A neighbor girl stopped me three doors down. She stood in the doorway with her baby on her hip, waving frantically and calling my name.

“Nicole,” I called. “Are you okay?” My parents never let me talk to her; they said she’d be a bad influence.

“Yeah,” she called back. “But we don’t got no food in the house and James went out three days ago to get some and he never came back, and I’m starving and the baby won’t quit crying. I’m so scared and I dunno what to do.”

“You can come with me. I’m looking for food.”

“Scared to come outside,” she said.

“It’s okay. I got a gun.” I showed her the pistol in my purse, and we set out toward the corner where they said the ration station would be.

“They steal your gas?” Nicole asked, bouncing her baby a bit.

“We siphoned it off for the generator,” I said, before I thought.

“Generator. So you still got lights and stuff.”

“Yeah. They boarded up the windows so nobody would know.”

“Smart,” she said. Then she started crying. “I’m so glad you came outside,” she said. “I saw what they did to that guy standing on your doorstep. And the fires, and the fights, and the soldiers came through on tanks and hauled a whole bunch of people off. Then James boarded up our windows, and he disappeared. I guess they got him, too.”

“It’s all right,” I said, awkwardly patting her shoulder. “That guy on the steps was an enforcer. I’m sure they didn’t do that to James.”

“Maybe they just killed him. Because they wanted our food.”

This did seem kind of likely, so I didn’t know what else to say.

We reached the main road, and saw a group of people coming our way, eight or nine of them. They skipped along the yellow stripe, singing and clapping and shaking a tambourine, laughing like babies. They carried flowers and wore flowers in their hair . . . and those flowers were all they wore.

“What’s up with that?” I asked, but Nicole didn’t know.

“Hey!” I called out. “Whatcha doin’?” They didn’t seem to notice. We watched as they jiggled past in the nude.

An older woman followed a few paces behind them, dressed in normal clothes. Instead of flowers she carried a large stick.

“Oh, hello,” she said. “I’m Ruth. Don’t I know you girls?”

She lived down the street from us, but my mother would never let any of us kids talk to her, or even walk past her yard, on account of the pentagram she had hanging in her window. I was beginning to see that the end of the world might have its perks—for the first time I could talk to anyone I pleased.

“I’m Annette,” I said. “And this is Nicole. What are they so happy about?”

“Well,” Ruth said. “Bless their hearts, but they’re in paradise. Or at least they think they are.”

“They think this is Planet X?”

“It’s called seeing what you want to see. We all do it. Some more than others.”

“That’s fucked,” Nicole said. “Fucked up. Fucked in the head.”

“It’s no worse than setting half the city on fire. Are you girls headed to the bread lines? Let me walk with you. I like to follow the loonies, since they’re harmless. But you seem like better conversationalists.”

“Okay,” I said.

“We’ve got a gun,” Nicole added.

The ration station was nothing more than a big messy row of folding tables, guarded by military and manned by city workers and volunteers. We waited in line, while the soldiers strode back and forth alongside, their heavy rifles slung across their chests.

Ruth wasn’t intimidated by any of it. Straightaway she struck up a conversation with a baby-faced soldier lingering nearby: “Young man,” she said, “You hardly look old enough to be in the army at all.”

“I’m eighteen, ma’am,” he said, half-smiling.