Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalipse

Jody looked up at me, her face mirroring the concern in my own. “Damn,” she said, then she took off running for the chapel. I took off after her, both of us shouting, “Gwen! Gwen, wait up!”

#

Running in snow isn’t easy. Our feet punched right through the crust that had supported us when we’d been walking, and we wound up struggling for every step. We were both sweating and panting when we burst into the chapel, gasping for enough breath to cry out, “Don’t pray!”

Gwen was standing behind the pulpit, wearing a long white robe with gold hems a hand’s width wide. She’d found it in a closet in the priest’s sacristy. The wall behind her was mostly window, affording the congregation—Dave and Maria and Hammad and Arjuna and Keung in the front pew—a fantastic view of the Tetons behind her own splendor. Everyone turned and looked at us as Jody said again, “Don’t pray. We’ve got to think this through first.”

Gwen frowned. “What’s there to think through? We’ve got to contact God.”

“Do we?”

“What do you mean? Of course we do. He left us behind!”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.” Tugging off her mittens, stocking hat, and coat as she talked, Jody told her what she’d told me, ending with, “So maybe we ought to just keep quiet and go on about our business.”

Gwen had been shaking her head the whole time Jody had been speaking. She was a big woman, with a thick halo of curly black hair that wagged from side to side as she shook it. Now she said, “We don’t know what that business is. This could just as easily be a test of some sort.”

“Exactly! It could be a test, so I think we’d be smart to be careful what we ask for. We might get it.”

Dave had been listening with as much impatience as Gwen. Before she could answer, he said, “If God intends for us to repopulate the Earth, wouldn’t He have told us so? He told Noah what He wanted him to do.”

Jody shrugged. “God was a lot more talkative in those days.”

“If you believe the Judeo-Christian bible,” Hammad put in.

“The Christian day of judgment has come and gone,” Gwen said. “What else are we supposed to believe?”

Hammad spread his hands to indicate the chapel, and by implication everything beyond it. "We should believe what we have always believed: the evidence of our own senses. The Earth has been depopulated. Newspapers left behind tell us a being calling himself Jesus Christ claimed responsibility. Beyond that we can only speculate."

"Wait a minute" Maria said, but before she had a chance to finish her thought Arjuna said, "We can too—" and Keung said, "Yeah, what about—" and the room descended into babble.

Gwen hadn’t been chosen captain for nothing. She let it go on for a few seconds, then shouted at top volume, "Quiet!"

The chapel grew quiet.

"All right," she said into the silence. "I obviously made a false assumption when I thought we all wanted to ask God to come back for us. Jody doesn’t think we should try to contact Him at all. What do the rest of you think?"

A chorus of voices nearly drowned her out again. "One at a time," she yelled.

"You, Dave."

"I think we should ask His forgiveness and ask Him to take us with Him."

"Hammad?"

"Ask what He wants us to do, rather than just assume."

"Maria?"

"I…uh, I definitely think we should try to contact Him, but I think Hammad kind of makes sepse, actually."

"Thank you," said Hammad. Gwen looked at me. "Gregor?"

I looked at Hammad, then at Jody. "I’m not sure it’s a good idea to call His attention to us at all. Depending on whose version of Christianity is true, we could do a lot worse than where we are now."

"Arjuna?"

Arjuna said, "I kind of agree with Jody and Gregor, except I wonder what we’d do if God decides to turn out the lights."

"It’s been four years," Hammad said.

"That doesn’t mean—" Dave said, and the babble started up again.

"Quiet!" shouted Gwen. She snatched the wooden cross from the front of the pulpit and banged it down like a gavel on the angled top. "All right," she said when we’d quieted down, "let’s try this again. Keung, what do you think?"

Keung shrugged. "I don’t think it matters. If we can reach Him with prayer, then one of us would have done it already. I think if we can get His attention at all, then there’s no point in hiding out because He’ll eventually realize we’re here."

"Is that a vote for or against praying to Him?"

"It’s an don’t care.’"

Gwen nodded. "Well then, it looks like the prayer contingent wins, but I don’t see anything wrong with asking politely what God intends for us to do before we start begging for divine intervention. Can we all agree on that?"

"No," Jody said, but Dave’s and Maria’s and Hammad’s assent was louder.

Gwen said, "Jody, Keung’s right; if prayer works, then somebody’s bound to get God’s attention sooner or later."

"No they’re not," Jody said. "There’s millions of guns lying around, but that doesn’t mean we have to start shooting each other with them. We don’t have to pray."

"I do," Dave said.