The End Is Now

Nicole didn’t want to go at first, because she said it sounded weird, and kinda lame, but I insisted. I’d been on my feet cooking and cleaning for days. Now the whole house reeked because we couldn’t take showers anymore and the toilets were all backed up. No one was even bothering about it, because they expected the war to begin any day. Their makeshift beds were scattered all over the house, heaped with dirty clothes and damp towels they’d used to clean their privates. I just wanted to get out of the house, away from all the men with their unkempt beards and stinking feet. So I reminded Nicole that she wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me, and finally she agreed to go.

We slipped away just after dinner when the kids had gone to bed and the men were talking by firelight to conserve the generator’s fuel. They’d banned the TV completely, because we couldn’t afford the power, and anyway they said it was nothing but lies.

Now that nearly all the power was gone, night was deeper than it had ever been before. Storm-heavy clouds shifted and scattered across the face of the moon. In Ruth’s backyard, surrounded by overgrown hedges and the low-hanging branches of sycamore trees, it was so dark we could barely see each other. The match flared bright for a moment as Ruth lit three candles, illuminating spooky shadows across her face—for a moment she really did look like a witch.

We stood in a circle with our arms outstretched, while Ruth explained that there is only one goddess, though she goes by different names—different names for different forms. Tonight Ruth called on Hecate, the goddess in three. Hecate was ours: maiden, mother, and crone. She was the goddess of transformations, of endings and beginnings, of birth and death. Here, in this moment, as one world perished and the next came into being, she was the goddess of now.

Then Ruth prayed, though it was not like Jane’s prayers. She prayed for strength, and wisdom, and harmony; she prayed for protection for women everywhere and for peace to come at the crossroads.

I could feel the heat radiating off my white candle, its warmth on my fingers and forehead.

When it ended Nicole was the first to blow out her candle without so much as an “Amen.” She tossed the dripping candle into the grass and said, “So, um, that was fun? I better be getting back. Annette—you’ll be along?” She slipped past the shadows and through the gate.

“And the circle is broken,” Ruth said. She knelt and lodged the three candles upright in a little pile of stones and rocks, and relit Nicole’s candle. She patted the grass beside her. I sat.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” I said. “But the people at my house . . . they’re planning a war. They’re going to attack the army base. Or maybe just the soldiers. I’m not exactly sure.”

“I thought that might be the case,” Ruth said.

“I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“I know,” Ruth said. “They will, though, you know. The army is stronger. So much stronger. Your friends can never win.”

“They’re not my friends.”

“But you still don’t want them to die.”

“Of course not. I don’t want anyone to die.” I wasn’t a hero, not like my mother, not like my father. I just wanted to live.

“If you need anything, Annette, promise me you’ll come to me, alright?”

I promised.

Then she told me to go home, before they started worrying.

* * *

No one had missed me. They were getting updates from Joplin; the uprising there had begun tonight. Most had been killed in the skirmishes, and the rest had fled and gone into hiding. The army base was strong as ever. The rebels had failed.

“We won’t fail, though, will we?” Nicole asked. “We’re stronger. We have more people. We can do this. We can win.”

On the radio there was talk of new cities destroyed, demolished by alien weapons and leveled to cinders and ash. Albuquerque. Florence. Perth. Lahore. The announcers speculated on the next target. “I’ve heard military strategists fear an attack on the financial center of the northeast,” said one. “Or perhaps a psychological strike, aimed at America’s heartland.”

“Omaha? St. Louis? Des Moines?”

“Tomorrow,” my father said. “Dumb fucks in Joplin. Tipped our hand. Tomorrow, before they start doing block sweeps over here. Tomorrow we strike.”

* * *

Jane woke me a couple hours past midnight, gripping my shoulder with her bony fingers. “Annette,” she whispered. “Larry’s missing. Wake up. I can’t find Larry.”

“What time is it?” I groaned, but then I understood and I was up like a shot.

We crept barefoot through the house, over and around the sleeping hulks of men, passed out anywhere and everywhere. We looked in the kitchen, in the backed-up bathrooms that smelled of sewage, in the abandoned backyard, and even in the basement, where a couple guys were still awake, guarding the guns. They looked us up and down as if they barely knew us. “Nope. Haven’t seen the kid.”