The End Is Now

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Seanan McGuire was born and raised in Northern California, resulting in a love of rattlesnakes and an absolute terror of weather. She shares a crumbling old farmhouse with a variety of cats, far too many books, and enough horror movies to be considered a problem. Seanan publishes about three books a year, and is widely rumored not to actually sleep. When bored, Seanan tends to wander into swamps and cornfields, which has not yet managed to get her killed (although not for lack of trying). She also writes as Mira Grant, filling the role of her own evil twin, and tends to talk about horrible diseases at the dinner table.

BLACK MONDAY Sarah Langan

On Display at the Amerasian Museum of Ancient Humanity, 14,201 C.E.

Aaaaroooaaah! Aaaaroooaaah! Aaaaroooaaah!

It’s dusk on Black Monday. In six hours, Aporia Minor crashes into Antarctica. Three hours after that, Aporia Major obliterates the Ivory Coast. Anybody less than ten feet below ground dies in the hot dust showers. The one percent of humanity lucky enough to nab tickets to underground shelters is stuck there until the air clears—about a thousand years.

Aaaaroooaaah! Aaaaroooaaah! Aaaaroooaaah!

The Northern Lights splatter-paint the sky like a Jackson Pollock. I’m about a hundred feet outside the front steps to the old Strategic Air Command installation in Offutt, Nebraska—the heartland of America. There’s this sweet spot right next to this retired B-52 that relays unsecured satellite waves.

Aaaaroooaaah! Aaaaroooaaah! Aaaaroooaaah!

“What’s that? What’s happening?” my husband Jay asks.

“Air raid for the 55th Battalion. I heard the war moved into North Korea. It’s breaking down . . . Everybody’s been leaving their posts.”

“Same here. The Schwandts slaughtered their cattle,” Jay tells me. “Two thousand heads.”

“God, why?”

“They joined that rapture cult—the Dorothys. I think it was an offering to God.”

“I never liked those people. All that chintz in her kitchen,” I say.

Above me, behind me, in front of me, the Aurora sets the world aglow.

“What time do your Shelter Nine Tickets say you’re supposed to rendezvous?”

“They never delivered them,” Jay says.

I get this lump in my throat. “What do you mean you’ve got no Tickets?”

“I watched by the door since you left yesterday morning. No one’s come.”

“When were you going to tell me? After the Aporia Twins hit and you’re all dead?”

Under the sirens, I can hear Myles’ and Cash’s high-pitched hoots. Myles wants to say hello (Momma? Is that Momma? Give me the phone!). Cash is bouncing on the couch. “Jumpy-jump! Jumpy-jump!” he cries. Their voices are sweet confections I could lick.

“I’ve been calling you three times an hour for the last twenty-four hours,” Jay says, and I can tell he’s trying to be calm, not lash out, like I’m doing—like our marriage counselor told us is corrosive. This makes me totally crazy, because I am not calm.

“Fuck it. They made a mistake. There’s supposed to be a Bluebird on Crook Road tonight,” I say. “It’s the last one from outside. We’re a military family. They have to let you on.”

“Sounds like a plan. We’ll go as soon as I get the kids in shoes.” There’s no gas anymore. I realize they’ll be walking three miles through God knows what.

“Why did we rent off-base? I should be with you right now. I’m an idiot,” I say, and in my mind I’m holding one of the kids. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Myles or Cash, just so long as I’ve got something beloved in my arms.

“We’ve got this under control. You save the afterworld,” my husband hollers over the sirens. “I love you, Nicole.”

Aaaaroooaaah! Aaaaroooaaah! Aaaaroooaaah!

I’m terrified all of a sudden. It’s because he said my name.

“Squeeze them for me. And yourself. I love you, too, Jay.”

* * *

By the time I’m back at my lab, the sirens are dead, and an RC-135 has crashed into a block of townhouses on General’s Row.

“Your family get Tickets?” I ask the rest of my crew in cybernetics. There’s six of us left. The rest of the building has been evacuated. We’ve volunteered to keep working because we think this is important.