The End Is Now

She is untying the next body from the cart. A neighbor: Mrs. Tyler. She babysat Pea many times when Pea was very young.

Pea is thinking about all they will have to do. They will have to learn how to run the power station, how to automate it, perhaps. They will have to learn how to use the greenhouses, how to plant and harvest.

She looks at Robert. He is reluctantly cutting loose another of the corpses from the cart.

They will have to have sex. To repopulate the species. Pea at thirteen years old has no experience of sex. She has a concept of the anatomy, a basic understanding, but no tactile experience. She’s never kissed a boy. Once she had a dream that was exciting and scary.

But now, standing here at the edge of the livable world, before a cart full of death, nothing feels scary. Nothing feels overwhelming. They’ll just do whatever comes next. Whatever has to come next, they’ll do.

* * *

Robert gazes with aching tenderness at this girl, this magical creature, standing beside him on the ragged edge of the world. He enjoys a long moment of astonishment at the strength she seems suddenly to possess—laboring these frozen dead bodies, her own parents, off the cart, pushing them down over the side, doing what has to be done—and he knows that he loves her, that he was made to love her. And then the voice returns.

NOW.

No. His stomach jerks inside of him. His head throbs with pain.

NOW.

No. Please—

But there is nothing else to say, or to do. If God can manifest in his mind, God can manifest in his body, and He manifests in his body now, yelling NOW again even as He sets the child’s body in motion. Robert had taken the electric slicer from Pea’s apartment, from the table where Pea’s parents had left it—Robert had not remembered taking it, but now here it is, it’s in his hand, and his boots crunch on the gravel and sand as he moves.

* * *

Pea feels the heat before she feels the pain; she feels the heat and then she smells it, the sickening smoky metallic smell of her own flesh burning, as her friend buries the electrified knife in her back. She screams and wheels around and says “Robert,” and understands right away what’s happening—understands the terrified powerless expression in his eye, understands the strange reluctant attitude he has worn all day—it’s here, it’s still here, walking among them now, the terrible voice of God commanding Robert even now, and she feels forgiveness for him and she feels fear, even as the boy swings again with all his strength, his heel dug into the sand at the fence wall, his hand clutched around the handle of the slicer.

His glasses fly off and he grunts as he hurls himself forward, and—

—and Pea opens her mouth and screams, and an intensity surges through her and out of her mouth and a powerful and terrible force roars forth from her and a strange hot power explodes from her eyes—

—and the boy Robert is lifted up into the air and thrown upwards and backwards—

—and Pea raises her hands in wonderment at what she has done—

—and the boy Robert is gone, over the edge and into the hot lands, beyond the wall of the world—

And the girl Pea, Pea falls trembling to her knees—her hands trembling, her forearms shaking and the muscles of her thighs quivering. God begins to speak and immediately she mourns the silence, immediately she longs for her former deafness and the old quiet world—

—and it’s too late because God is speaking now,

—and God says NOW YOU ARE WHOLE AND NOW THE WORLD CAN BEGIN.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ben H. Winters is the winner of the Edgar Award for his novel The Last Policeman, which was also an Amazon.com Best Book of 2012. The sequel, Countdown City, won the Philip K. Dick Award; the third volume in the trilogy is World of Trouble. Other works of fiction include the middle-grade novel The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman, an Edgar Award nominee, and the parody novel Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, a New York Times bestseller. Ben has written extensively for the stage and is a past fellow of the Dramatists Guild. His journalism has appeared in Slate, The Nation, The Chicago Reader, and many other publications. He lives in Indianapolis, Indiana and at BenHWinters.com.

TWILIGHT OF THE MUSIC MACHINES Megan Arkenberg