A group of kids trooped into the bar. It was a regular’s bar, filled with old timers quietly mourning the world’s slow decline and their own gradual loss of hope; it had been that way for a long time, long before the aliens arrived. These kids were out of their element, but too drunk to notice. There were six or seven of them: white kids, the girls so young they looked like children, dressed in their spangled thrift-store finds, their gladiator sandals and embroidered leather cowboy boots. They gulped PBR and downed double shots. They were celebrating a wedding. The bride pulled the groom up onto a table and they began to dance. The wedding party cheered them on while the rest of the patrons looked on in disapproval; it was not that kind of bar.
“Just married, huh?” the bartender said to the friend who was buying a fresh round of drinks.
“Yeah,” she shouted, her voice hoarse. “We said—we don’t know if we’ll ever be able to like, get married, or do it, or anything like that, in that other place, so we’re all getting married this week.” She pushed her bangs away from her eyes. “We’re taking turns. They just did it today. Tomorrow it’s me and Pete.”
I pulled out my mister and enforced them all.
After that, the bar was much quieter. The frumpy white guy spit on me and walked out. I sipped my drink and watched the door, waiting for Sara Grace.
• • • •
Sara Grace was a nursing student at Columbia. She’d been raised in the suburbs of some sleepy Minnesota town. She hated New York.
We’d been assigned to each other randomly, like everyone else. It was part of the deal: all enforcers had a partner. That way, if anyone got squeamish, there was always someone to do the deed.
Sara Grace was dressed in a pink cardigan, khaki slacks, and kitten heels. Her blonde hair was tied away from her face with a silk polka-dotted scarf. Her mister hung at her waist.
“May I have a Cosmopolitan, please?” she asked the bartender. “Easy on the vodka, and could I have an extra slice of lime, if you wouldn’t mind?”
She sat beside me and we went over our numbers for the day.
“I just enforced an entire family,” she said, sipping her Cosmo. “The husband was buying a bunch of those suicide kits out the back of a van on Flatbush. They were planning to do it all together. Mom, dad, two girls, a little boy, even the dog and cat! Like, hold hands, pray, and die.”
“So what happened?”
“Oh, I followed him home. Then I enforced them all. Even the dog and cat. I wish I knew what happens to dogs on Judgment Day.”
“I wish you would stop calling it that.”
“Sorry, just a reflex from Bible school. We’re due for a meeting at headquarters, you know,” she said, checking her slender watch and suggestively eyeing my full drink.
“I know, I know,” I said. “I’m chugging.”
I chugged.
• • • •
Headquarters was set up inside a warehouse in Red Hook. Twenty thousand square feet of concrete floors, and the ceilings yawned high overhead so the acoustics were terrible. The Brooklyn Division Enforcement Team gathered here to report our numbers and receive feedback on our performance. Our managers gave us little pep talks about how essential our efforts were toward ensuring a smooth and pleasant transition toward the end of the world.
On one wall was a whiteboard scribbled with encouraging messages and enforcement data. On the opposite wall was a countdown clock.
There were several thousand team members in our division. We filled the room to the brim with breathing and sweat and chatter and stink. We divided our attention between the stage at the front and the countdown clock, which was a handy measure of how late we were getting started.
Finally the meeting was called to order.
“Your numbers are down,” the boss shouted at us. He had reason to be nervous; managers with poorly performing teams tended to find themselves on the wrong end of the ray gun. “You’re down compared to Manhattan; you’re down compared to Queens. Shall I go on?”
There was a muttered undercurrent of rebellion.
“I don’t care, I don’t care, from now on I don’t want to hear any excuses,” he bellowed into the microphone. “We’re almost there. Three days from now—we’re in paradise. Seven virgins, clouds and harps, free beer, gold-plated toilet seats—whatever floats your boat. Just keep your goddamn numbers up.”
From now on, we’d be reporting every hour. Checking in, every hour, on the hour, and if we hadn’t enforced anyone, there would be some explaining to do.
“Just three more days,” he said. “Just three more days and this will all be over. Now go home, get some rest, and I want to hear from everyone at 9 a.m. sharp.”
Sara Grace and I walked to the subway together. “Wanna come over for a nightcap?” I asked. “I bet you need one. I sure as hell do.”
“Thank you,” she sighed. “I really shouldn’t. I need to get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yeah. No problem. See you then.”
That night I lay awake thinking about her. It had been a long time since I’d let myself fall for anyone. Now I had it bad. And I didn’t have much time left.
• • • •
The Aliens: most people called them The Travelers, but I thought of them as The Mickey Mouse Club, because of the human mouthpieces they’d chosen. They were all washed-up child actors and stars of reality TV shows. They all had those bland good looks, and none of them had ever said anything remotely interesting on their own terms, so they were the perfect avatars to relay the message.
Apparently, the aliens’ physical manifestations were repulsive to human sensibilities; I’d never seen one in the flesh, but I’d heard stories. These long-lived rumors started and spread with a twisty life of their own. From what I’d gathered, the aliens resembled something like scaly seahorses or obese horned toads.
But no one ever saw these bodies, at least not on TV. It was spectacle; it was all smoke and mirrors. They had technology we couldn’t even begin to comprehend. The universal translator, the ray gun, the spaceship, the empathetic mind links. So they hung back and spoke through their human avatars, and even if those actors were lost without their laugh tracks, they looked just like what you’d expect.
Of course, the government’s dormant propaganda wing swung into full gear. There was no time for Victory Gardens, but citizen safety patrols were in business.
And enforcers, of course.
• • • •
The next morning I woke with dark circles under my eyes. I’d stayed awake too long, obsessing about Sara Grace and imagining a way out of all this. As far as I could tell, there was none.
I showered, made myself presentable, and headed to the nearby diner where Sara Grace and I met for breakfast every morning. The local clientele was pretty depleted, so service was fast, and we always got our waffles for free.
Sara Grace was late. Maybe she’d had a rough night too.
I was sitting there sipping my coffee when a guy I’d never seen before strolled in. He was tall and craggy, wearing tight blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a leather jacket that had seen better days. He obviously hadn’t encountered the inside of a barbershop in some time. He slid into a booth and ordered the number five.
My first check-in was in thirty-two minutes, and I hadn’t enforced anyone yet, so I went over to see what was up. “You mind?” I asked.
“Not at all,” he boomed, and I slid into the booth across from him. He stank of cigarettes and the open road.
“So what brings you to the neighborhood?” I asked idly, taking one of his sugar packets and dumping it into my own coffee.
He laughed, a big laugh that filled the diner. The other patrons glanced over, then quickly averted their eyes. “I stick out that much, do I?” he said. “Like a sore thumb, I bet.”
I shrugged in a noncommittal way. “Hey,” I said. “I’m sure I’d stick out in your hometown, too.”
“That you would,” he agreed. “Well, it’s kind of a
funny story. I’m from Oklahoma, you see. Place called Muskogee. You probably wouldn’t have heard of it. Anyway, spent most of my life working on a warehouse floor, stacking crates. Got married, got divorced, got married again, divorced again. Had a couple of kids. Always one thing or another. I went on this road trip when I was real young, a couple of buddies and me, right before Susie, that’s my first wife, got knocked up. After that, you know, life happens. So when the news came down, I figured, it’s now or never, right? Quit the job, bought a Harley, hit the road.”
I wondered idly how he’d made it this far. Sounded as if the team in Muskogee was slacking off.
He told me about his trip, and I listened. His eyes shone as he described the breathtaking vastness of the Grand Canyon, the stunning beauty of the Nebraska plains. The St. Louis arch, that gateway to the west. The mist hanging spectral and ghostly over the Smoky Mountains, and the twisting, narrow roads winding their way through the foothills. The Carolina low country, the sun rising like a tangerine over the glittering ocean and the Outer Banks.
“It’s been a life-changing experience,” he said, mist in his eyes. “I’ll tell you what. I just wish I had more time.”
“I think we all do,” I said.
I let him finish his breakfast and pay his check. He’d made it this far, and I still had a few minutes before my first check in. It was the least I could do.
I enforced him on my way out the door.
“Epic road trip?” Sara Grace asked. We’d developed a sixth sense for these kinds of things.
“Yeah.”
“I always wanted to go to Newfoundland,” she said. “And see the whales. A blue whale. Can you imagine? This vast, majestic creature. You’d feel so small. But at the same time, so meaningful. To be part of all of this.”
“Yeah. It’s a trip, all right.”
We both dialed the number and checked in. She had enforced someone on the way over, so we were in the clear.
“You know what I was thinking,” Sara Grace said. “And this just sort of occurred to me. But isn’t it kind of funny how we’re basically getting rid of all the people who want to ask questions? Who don’t follow directions? Who, you know, have like, a mind of their own?”
“Weeding out the troublemakers.”
“Exactly.”
“Yeah. It’s funny, alright,” I said. “Sara Grace? I know you were raised in Bible school and all that shit.”
“You were, too.”
“Yeah, I know.” (It was true: church every Sunday, sitting on the hard pew, sandwiched between my mother and her mother, who still gave me a hard time that I refused to go anymore.) “So when did you start thinking, this whole God thing, maybe it’s all made up? Maybe there’s no such place as heaven, or hell, except for the one we manage to make for ourselves here on Earth?”
“I don’t know, actually,” she said, uncomfortable. “I guess I’m just not sure.”
Part of her, I think, still believed in all that: baby Jesus, right and wrong, redemption and faith.
And crucially, she still believed that whatever long look or tense moment or charged laugh we shared was just circumstance, just the pressure of surfing the harshest days in history and being the most hated people alive.
Because she wasn’t raised that way, and maybe it wouldn’t be right.
Neither was I.
But I’d given up on all that a long time ago.
• • • •
It was 2:11 p.m. on Wednesday.
We took a long walk through Prospect Park. It was a good place to find people who’d given up.
A man lying on his back in the grass looked like a good candidate. He was dressed in slacks and a button-down, hands interwoven behind his head, as he stared up at the blue skies and the rustling leaves. His shoes and socks lay haphazardly beside him.
We sat down.
“Hello,” he said, without looking at us, still staring up at the sky. “You must be enforcers. You’re probably wondering if I do this every day, or if I’m currently having some kind of nervous break.”
We didn’t say anything. Sometimes, it was better to just let them talk.
“Well, as a matter of fact,” he said, with a little chuckle, “I’m a scientist. So I’ve been overwhelmed with despair for the last ten years at least. It’s all seemed pretty hopeless for a while now.”
“A scientist! Where do you work?” Sara Grace asked eagerly.
“Columbia,” he said. “Physics department. Astronomy, actually.”
“Columbia? Me too! I’m in the nursing program. Or I was. I had to quit in order to fulfill my enforcing duties.”
“You know,” he said, musing. “It’s funny how you guys are the only ones allowed to make those breaks with your former lives. In fact, you were actually forced to. Ever think about that?”
“Well,” she said, rehearsed. She’d been over all this before. “It may seem that way, and we did have to stop doing our old jobs, but in everything else, we’re held to the same strict requirements as the rest of you. No calling up old friends, no making up with old enemies, no visiting family members one last time. No crazy spending sprees, no desperate partying. No out-of-character romances.”
I felt like her eyes met mine when she said this last part, but I wasn’t quite sure.
“Interesting,” he said. “I’m Paul, by the way,” and he shook our hands without sitting up. “Don’t let me keep you from your work. I know I look suspicious, but the truth is I’ve been coming here for years, both day and night. I like to lay in the grass and look up at the sky and think about everything that’s out there. It’s so endless, space . . . so full of promise and mystery. All the things we just don’t know. Now we know a little more, of course, or at least we think we do. But this is my routine, so I like to keep it up. You know, it clears the mind.”
“What do you mean, ‘At least we think we do’?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing,” he said, and chuckled, again. “It’s just—my colleagues and I, we’ve had our telescopes trained at the sky for a long time. A long time. A lot of telescopes. If someone was out there . . . if those laser cannons were out there . . . I think we would have seen them. Maybe. You know? But governments don’t listen to scientists. They never have. And like I said, there are a lot of things we just don’t know. Like how it’s possible that billions of souls could instantly be transported to another location within our physical plane. That would seem to defy the laws of physics. But there’s always more. If we know one thing, it’s that there’s always more.”
“Do you believe in God, Paul?” Sara Grace asked.
He brushed away the wispy brown hair from his receding hairline. “I’m not really sure,” he said, after a long pause. “I can’t one hundred percent rule out the existence of a deity. I would say, at this point, that it strikes me as a very low possibility.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Hmm.” She was thinking deeply about all this.
I was thinking about the empty skies.
“We should probably keep moving,” I said. “Next check in is in twenty-three minutes.”
• • • •
Sara Grace was wrong, though.
We weren’t like everyone else. Everyone else was supposed to go about their business, pretending like the end of the world wasn’t right around the corner.
But for us, it was the opposite. It was all we thought about, day and night. Because the only way that we could do what we were doing—the obscene, revolting, monstrous thing we were doing—was to remind ourselves constantly that this was not Real Life. None of this had anything to do with reality. For us, life as we knew it was already over.
The end was nigh, except it had already come and gone.
Otherwise it was too terrible. You couldn’t live with that kind of thing. That horror. That brutality. That inhumanity. You had to disconnect. You had to turn off.
And another thing, too. Everyone else was supposed to maintain their same old routines. See the same people. Say the s
ame things. But thanks to some random lottery, the two of us—people who never would have had any particular reason to meet—we’d been thrown together into the most intense experience of our lives.
So for us everything had changed. And they were the ones who changed it.
• • • •
Last week—which seemed like another lifetime—when the enforcing first began, we’d each had our own kind of breakdown.
For Sara Grace, it was when she enforced a nineteen-year-old girl who’d showed up in the city looking for her mother. The girl had been put up for adoption as an infant, had never met her biological mom, and now she was afraid she’d never have the chance. “What if I get to the paradise planet, and everyone looks different, we’re all in different bodies, we all have amnesia, whatever, nothing is the same. I’ll never find her. I just had to take a chance,” she’d said. (Sara Grace recounted this whole thing to me later, sobbing so hard she could hardly talk.)
“Maybe,” the girl had said, “maybe all this time she’s been wondering about me, too. What happened to me. How I look. How I grew up. All I have is her name. There’s a lot of people with her name here. I was just going to go down the phonebook and see what I can find. I think, when I hear her voice, I’ll know.”
“She said that,” Sara Grace screamed and hiccupped at me, crying hysterically, the tears and snot running down her face and mixing together in her mouth. “She said, ‘When I hear her voice, I’ll know.’ Just like that.”
Sara Grace’s own mother had passed away two years before, dead of breast cancer at age 53, nine months before Sara Grace applied for nursing school.
This meant one of two things.
The first possibility was that Sara Grace’s mother would never make it to Planet Xyrxiconia, because only those who were alive and breathing at the moment of transition—the moment the laser cannons fired—would be reincarnated in this distant place.
The second possibility was that she was already on Planet X, that all our lost loved ones from eon after eon were already there, that they’d gone before us to prepare the way and would be there to greet us when we arrived.
The aliens had been somewhat unclear on this point, perhaps intentionally.
The End is Nigh (The Apocalypse Triptych) Page 4
