The End Is Now

“Never mind about Ruth,” I said. “I was just listening to the radios. I think Dad’s gone.”

“Not gone. Dead. I’m not a child anymore, you know, Annette.”

“I know,” I said. “Now go pack up whatever food is left. I’m going to drain the fuel from the generator. Then we’ll wake up Larry and Timmy and Sylvie. We’ve got to get out of here if we want to survive.”

“What about the other babies?”

“Jesus will take care of them,” I said. “We’ve got to care for our own. Let them sleep.”

Jane understood, as I knew she would.

I stood there with my sister at the crossroads, ready to call on goddesses vengeful and bloody, selfish and cruel . . . whatever it took to live. It didn’t matter what name she went by; for us she was the goddess of now, and we would make her power our own.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Desirina Boskovich’s short fiction has been published in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Kaleidotrope, Triptych Tales, PodCastle, and more, along with anthologies such as The Way of the Wizard and Aliens: Recent Encounters. Her nonfiction pieces on music, literature, and culture have appeared in Lightspeed, Weird Fiction Review, Wonderbook, and The Steampunk Bible. She is also the editor of It Came From the North: An Anthology of Finnish Speculative Fiction (Cheeky Frawg, 2013), and together with Jeff VanderMeer, co-author of The Steampunk User's Manual, forthcoming in October of 2014. Find her online at desirinaboskovich.com.

IN THE MOUNTAIN Hugh Howey

“Carry on,” one founder would say to another. To Tracy, it had become a mantra of sorts. Igor had started it, would wave his disfigured hand and dismiss the other founders back to their work. What began as mockery of him became a talisman of strength. Carry on. Do the job. One foot forward. A reminder to forge ahead even when the task was gruesome, even when it seemed pointless, even when billions were about to die.

But Tracy knew some things can only be carried so far before they must be set down. Set down or dropped. Dropped and broken.

The world was one of these things. The ten founders carried what they could to Colorado. An existing hole in the mountain there was burrowed even deeper. And when they could do no more, the founders stopped. And they counted the moments as the world plummeted toward the shattering.

The rock and debris pulled from the mountain formed a sequence of hills, a ridge now dusted with snow. The heavy lifters and buses and dump trucks had been abandoned by the mounds of rubble. There was a graveyard hush across the woods, a deep quiet of despair, of a work finished. The fresh snow made no sound as it fell from heavy, gray clouds.

Tracy stood with the rest of the founders just inside the gaping steel doors of the crypt they’d built. She watched the snow gather in yesterday’s muddy ruts. The crisscross patterns from the busloads of the invited would be invisible by nightfall. Humanity was not yet gone, the world not yet ruined, and already the universe was conspiring to remove all traces.

Anatoly fidgeted by her side. The heavyset physicist exhaled, and a cloud of frost billowed before his beard. On her other side, Igor reached into his heavy coat and withdrew a flash of silver. Tracy stole a glance. The gleaming watch was made more perfect in his mangled hand. Igor claimed he was a descendant and product of Chernobyl. Anatoly had told her it was a chemical burn.

Between Igor’s red and fused fingers, the hours ticked down.

“Ten minutes,” Igor said to the gathered. His voice was a grumble of distant thunder. Tracy watched as he formed an ugly fist and choked the life out of that watch. His pink knuckles turned the color of the snow.

Tracy turned her attention to the woods and strained one last time to hear the sound of an engine’s whine—the growl of a rental car laboring up that mountain road. She waited for the crunch-crunch of hurrying boots. She scanned for the man who would appear between those gray aspens with their peeled-skin bark. But the movies had lied to her, had conditioned her to expect last-minute heroics: a man running, a weary and happy smile, snow flying in a welcome embrace, warm lips pressed to cold ones, both trembling.

“He’s not coming,” Tracy whispered to herself. Here was a small leak of honesty from some deep and forgotten place.