The End Is Now

“What the hell was that?” Angie demanded. She looked furious.

“I figured I would give them a choice.”

“Those people are scared out of their minds! Why on Earth would you tell them there are no boats?”

That, he could have answered. But he looked up, then, just in time to see the roadblock come into view ahead.

* * *

There wasn’t much traffic on the road, and the military hadn’t committed much to stopping what little there was. Just a single armored personnel carrier with a shovel-shaped nose, sitting so it blocked both lanes. A soldier with a rifle stood in front of it, flagging them down.

Whitman could see more soldiers through the APC’s windows.

“Don’t stop,” he said.

“Fuck you. After that stunt you just pulled, undermining me? I’ll take my chances with the Army.” Angie said. “They can help us—give us an escort down to the beach.”

“Turn around,” Whitman said. “Back up.”

She must have heard the agitation in his voice, seen it in the way he craned forward, peering through the windshield, staring at the soldier with the rifle.

“They’re not zombies,” she said, sounding exasperated. “They’re better than zombies, at the very least.”

“For God’s sake, just back up,” Whitman pleaded. The soldier was coming closer, saying something Whitman couldn’t make out. He tried to give the soldier a cheery wave, an apologetic shrug: Sorry, we didn’t know this road was closed.

The soldier started miming at him. Turning his hand, as if he were shutting off the truck’s ignition.

“Please,” Whitman said.

“You gonna tell me why?” Angie asked.

“Yes! Yes, later, just—”

The soldier raised his voice until Whitman could finally hear him. “Switch off your engine! Then come out one at a time, with your left hand visible!”

“Go!” Whitman screamed.

Angie shoved the gearshift lever hard as she stamped on the pedals. The truck didn’t want to switch directions. It didn’t want to move backwards—took forever to start accelerating, to get rolling away from the soldier and the APC. Through the windshield Whitman could see the soldier raising his weapon. The soldier was still shouting but not at Whitman or Angie, now—he was shouting at his buddies back in the APC. The armored vehicle had enough machine guns mounted on its roof to shred their truck, to turn it into strips of bright metal in the space of a minute. What that would do to all the bodies inside wasn’t worth considering.

He shouted for Angie to hurry up, to get the truck moving.

The soldier opened fire before they’d even rolled back ten feet. His assault rifle tore through the truck’s grille, into the engine compartment. Whitman could hear bullets rattling around in there like BBs in a cup. The windshield starred and turned white.

But the truck moved. Angie stared at her side mirror and spun the wheel and they were accelerating, gaining speed. She fishtailed the truck and got it turned around, and there were more shots, a lot more, and someone screamed.

But they were gaining speed.

* * *

The truck died fifteen minutes later.

Whitman had to give it to the truck’s makers—the ponderous thing wheezed and rattled and screamed, but it kept running long after its radiator was shot full of holes. It bled coolant across ten long Brooklyn avenues and got them clear of the soldiers who were chasing them.

Working together, the bunch of them managed to push the truck into an abandoned taxi garage. Whitman felt it was important to get a roof over it, just in case anyone was tracking them with satellites or drones.

“Why would anyone do that?” Angie asked. “Are we so important?”

Whitman shook his head and bent over the steaming radiator again. The guy in the coveralls said he was a mechanic. He’d taken one look at the truck’s engine, though, and started swearing. Now it was Whitman’s turn to stare at the damage and try to pretend like there was something they could do.

Angie picked up a wrench and pointed it at him. “Maybe it’s you. Maybe you’re the one they’re looking for,” she said.

“I’m nobody.” He poked his finger through a bullet hole in the manifold, because he didn’t want to look at her.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Angie asked. “I need to make a plan if I’m going to help these people. To make a plan I need information.”

Whitman rubbed at his head. “I don’t know anything. How could I? I’m out here just like you.”

“You’re lying to me.”

“I don’t know anything,” he repeated.

She lifted the wrench as if she would club him to death. He didn’t even know if he would resist if she tried.

But then, after a second, she lowered the wrench again.

Did she believe him? She didn’t say anything more.

The baby in her arm gurgled and reached for her hair with its tiny fist. A tiny fist with a tiny plus sign inked on the back.

“Your kid’s adorable,” Whitman said. Even to his own ears it sounded like he was trying to change the subject.

“He’s not mine,” Angie said, staring daggers at him.

“No?”