The End Is Now

He stood in the middle of his own street with a sword in his hands as everyone he knew in his neighborhood came at him. To kill him.

Video games don’t prepare you for this.

Watching movies doesn’t prepare you.

No training prepares you.

Nothing does.

Nothing.

He said, “Please . . .”

The people with the dead eyes and the slack faces moaned in reply. And they fell on him like a cloud of locusts.

The sword seemed to move of its own accord.

Distantly, Tom could feel his arms lift and swing. He could feel his hands tighten and loosen as the handle shifted within his grip for different cuts. The rising cut. The scarf cut. The lateral cut.

He saw the silver of the blade move like flowing mercury, tracing fire against the night.

He felt the shudder and shock as the weapon hit and sliced and cleaved through bone.

He felt his feet shift and step and pivot; he felt his waist turn, his thighs flex, his heels lift to tilt his mass into the cuts or to allow his knees to wheel him around.

He felt all of this.

He did not understand how any of it could happen when his mind was going blank. None of it came from his will. None of it was directed.

It just happened.

The moaning things came at him.

And his sword devoured them.

-4-

Three terrible minutes later, Tom unlocked the trunk and opened it.

Benny was cowering in the back of the trunk, huddled against Tom’s gym bag. Tears and snot were pasted on his face. Benny opened his mouth to scream again, but he stopped. When he saw Tom, he stopped.

Tom stood there, the sword held loosely in one hand, the keys in the other. He was covered with blood. The sword was covered with blood.

The bodies around the car—more than a dozen of them—were covered with blood.

Benny screamed.

Not because he understood—he was far too young for that—but because the smell of blood reminded him of Dad. Of home. Benny wanted his mom.

He screamed and Tom stood there, trembling from head to toe. Tears broke from his eyes and fell in burning silver lines down his face.

“I’m sorry, Benny,” he said in a voice that was as broken as the world.

Tom tore off his blood-splattered shirt. The t-shirt he wore underneath was stained but not as badly. Tom shivered as he lifted Benny and held him close. Benny beat at him with tiny fists.

“I’m sorry,” Tom said again.

All around him it was as still and silent as a slaughterhouse.

And then it wasn’t.

From the sides streets, from open doors, more of them came.

More.

More.

Mr. Gaynor from down the block. Old Lady Milhonne from across the street, wearing the same ratty bathrobe she always wore. The Kang kids. Delia and Marie Swanson. Others he didn't know. Even two cops in torn uniforms.

“No more,” Tom said as he buried his head in the cleft between Benny’s neck and shoulder. As if there was any comfort there.

No more.

But there was more, and on some level Tom knew they were would always be more. This was how it was now. They hinted about it on the news. The street where he lived proved it to be true.

-5-

He kicked his way through them.

He kicked old Mr. Gaynor in the groin and watched the force of the kick bend him in half. It should have put him down. It should have left him in a purple-faced fetal ball.

It didn’t.

Gaynor staggered and went down to one knee. His face did not change expression at all. Nothing. Not even a curl of the lip.

Then Gaynor got heavily, awkwardly to his feet and came forward again. Reaching for Benny.

Tom kicked him again. Same spot, even harder.

This time Gaynor didn’t even go down to one knee. He tottered backward, caught his balance, and moved forward again.

Tom cursed at him. Shrieked every foul thing he could muster at him.

Benny squealed each time Tom kicked and he hoped he wasn’t crushing his brother as he exerted to lash out at the things around him.

He kicked once more, changing it from a front thrust to a side thrust. Lower. To the knee instead of the groin. The femur broke with the sound of a batter hitting a hard one down the third base line.

Sharp.

Gaynor went down that time. Not in pain, not yelling. But down. Bone speared through the cotton of his trousers, jagged and white. Tom stared at him, watching the man try to get back up again. Saw gravity pull him down, saw how the ruined scaffolding of shattered bone denied him the chance to stand.

Not pain.

Just broken bone.

Tom backed away, spun. Ran. Holding Benny, who kept screaming.

He dodged between parked cars, jumped over a fallen bike, blundered through a narrow gap in a row of privet hedges, staggered onto the pavement. Two teenagers, strangers, were there on their knees, faces buried in something that glistened and steamed.

A stomach.