by Carrie Ryan
The air in the lodge wavers before my eyes, thrumming in time to the rhythm of the hymns. Around me, the righteous sit with their families, hands clasped together, faces turned toward the rafters. Others stand, swaying to the beat of the music that’s been playing ceaselessly since sunset. At least two of my sisters lie prostrate on the ground, overcome by the spirit. Earlier, they spoke with the voice of angels, but now they’re spent. I’m sorry for them, sorry they’ll be asleep and miss feeling the moment when we’re all swept away into the firmament, to glow forever among the ranks of the blessed.
“Any hour, any minute, any moment,” my father croaks into the megaphone. “Judgment will come.” His voice is beginning to fail him at last. In sixteen years, I’ve never known my father to lose his voice, and he’s preached for longer than this many times. I wonder if it’s a sign. Perhaps his voice will go first, and then his soul. “And then … we will be vin … dicated.”
He pauses, trying to summon enough moisture in his mouth to continue. He’s been fasting all day—the whole family has, since hunger brings clarity to our righteous purpose. It burns within me now, shining like a spotlight to illuminate my father and the faithful, dimming at the edges of my vision so as not to distract me from my focus.
I look around the room, shining this supernatural focus on the faces of each of the faithful, one by one. I know them all so well. I love them all and am grateful they’re joining us in the kingdom of heaven. There is Bethany, who cared for me in the nursery. There’s Sam, who always smiles at me in prayer circles, and little Erin, who never regained her sight after the illness that swept through the compound when she was a baby. I look at them all in turn, old and young, sick and well, happy, sad, anxious, joyful. Their faces shimmer with sweat, their hair hangs in wet snakes on their brows or frizzes up around them like the halos they’ll soon wear. Tonight, they’ll all be saved, and I’m so ecstatic with it I could burst. Spirit rises within me and I feel the need to cry out. I hold up my arms and my father gestures to me from across the stage. Of all his children, he knows I am the most holy, the most committed to his cause.
“Come here, Bright.” His voice, ragged as it is, envelops me like a hug, carries me aloft to his side. “You have something to say?”
The words pour from my mouth into the microphone, but they’re not coming from me. They’re coming through me, filling my lungs and rushing forth by the mercy of a might not my own. My tongue is not equipped to shape the language of the angels and it comes out gibberish, but the meaning is clear in my mind:
“It’s coming. Can you feel it? Can you feel it coming? Judgment, coming, sweeping over this earth. We few, we here, we present now, we’re the only ones who have seen the light. Come to us now, and you will be saved. Join us, and you will be spared. This is the last day of Last Days, this is the night that will never give way to a day. The hour is near. The time is now. Declare your faith and live forever among the blessed!”
Hands are there to catch me as I fall, and the spotlight narrows, blackness closing in. Is it time? Is it now? Were those the last words I’ll ever speak? My limbs are shaking as the spirit gushes through me. I try to fight it, but it’s like fighting the current of a river.
No! I wanted to be awake. I wanted to be awake to witness the end.
The spotlight vanishes and I’m plunged into black.…
My skull feels like it’s been cracked with a hammer. I reach my hand to my head and try to sit, but the pounding increases as I change position. A wan, uncertain light comes from gaps in the wooden walls, and the slits beneath the eaves. I’m still on the floor of the lodge.
I’m still here. On earth. Alive.
The hammer moves down from my head, slams into my stomach with enough force to shatter my spine. I retch, hunched over, but there’s nothing to bring up, not even bile.
I’m still here. I’m still here. This can’t be happening.
I lift my head again and look around. There are a few other unconscious people scattered about the floor of the lodge, but the building is otherwise empty. The others must have gone to heaven, body and soul. And left me behind.
With effort, I push to my feet and stagger toward the door of the lodge, hands pressed to my head to reduce the pain of each jarring step. Outside, everything is white with mist. It must be dawn, if there’s still a dawn. I shuffle through the dust toward the creek—or where the creek used to be. Who knows anymore? My throat is desert dry. If the water hasn’t turned to blood, I’ll drink. I’ll drink, then figure out what to do next.
I wasn’t supposed to be here, to watch the world end. I was supposed to be saved. My father promised we’d all go to heaven together.
What did I do wrong?
SAM
The fog seems to part for her feet as she walks toward the creek, one hand pressed to her temple, the other held out as if for balance. She’s beautiful, even with her tangled hair and dirty face and chapped lips. Beautiful, beautiful Bright. I never let myself think about it before. After all, we’d be gone from this earth long before it would have a chance to matter.
It would be easy to be angry. Erin’s furious. But I’m not. Everyone makes mistakes. I walk toward Bright through the fog and she looks up at the sound of my shoes on the gravel.
“Sam!” she cries, and takes a few halting steps in my direction. “You’re still here, too.” She clutches at my elbows, putting more weight on them than I expected. I stand firm to give her support. “I’m so sorry, Sam. This wasn’t supposed to happen. We were all supposed to go to heaven together.” Her beautiful eyes are welling with tears, and they leave trails of color on her dusty cheeks as they spill down onto her chapped lips. She’s dehydrated—she must be after her fast, and yet she still weeps tears she can’t afford. For us.
“Don’t cry, Bright,” I say, hardly believing the words coming from my mouth. How can I offer comfort to Bright Child? She’s the daughter of the prophet. Her very purpose on this earth is to provide us with the comfort of his prophecies.
Even if they’re no help to us now.
“You’re right.” She sniffles and then forces a smile. “Is there anyone left other than you and me and the people sleeping in the lodge?”
“Where?”
“Anywhere.” She shrugs. “We have to round them up, protect them. Things are going to get pretty bad out there, before the end.”
“They’re already bad,” I reply. There’s violence like I’ve never before seen in the compound—stuff that Jeremy Bright would never have allowed before. Everyone is blaming everyone else, everyone looking for the root sin that kept us earthbound.
“Are they?” She makes a little choking sound in her throat. “Oh, Sam, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you’re here with me, that you didn’t go to heaven with the others!”
I step back from her, which is when she reaches out and captures both my hands with her own. Her skin is dry as parchment but warm—warmer than any hands I’ve ever held. Her touch seems to burn right through my flesh. She’s held my hand before—in prayer circles, during the greeting at worship, but this is different.
“I don’t know why we’re still here,” she says, and there are tears choking her voice. “But there must be a reason. My faith is strong. Is yours?”
“I—” I don’t know what to think anymore, not with Bright Child hanging on to me like I might dissolve and her eyes dancing with those strange lights and the hitch in her voice that makes it sound like she’s pleading—with me.
“Maybe we’re here to minister to those who are left,” she says. “Are there very many? Anyone from your family? Maybe we remain to help guide them through the coming tribulation and onto the path to redemption before the very end of days.” She perks up a little. “That must be it. There’s still a place for us in heaven. We’ll be reunited with our families again. We just have to make it through the end of the world.”
I blink and do my best to keep my mouth shut as I realize what she’s saying. What she believes.
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“And I know we can do it.” Her voice has taken on that tone, that special Child tone that only the prophet and his family know how to use. The one that makes my heart pound and my breath catch. But none of the others affect me as much as Bright, and never before as much as when she interlaces our fingers and adds, “Together.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
She straightens, and she hasn’t had a drop of water, but she looks alive again. She has a purpose. That’s Bright. “We should gather up the survivors. There are some in the lodge. Do you know where the others are?”
I do, but in the split second before the words cross my lips, I reel them back and recast them. “Yes. But I was running away from them when I found you.”
“Why?”
I don’t know if I can lie to her, no matter how much I want to. “They’ve changed, Bright. They’re angry … dangerous.”
She takes it all in, and her lip trembles until she clamps her mouth together to stop it. I caused that. I hurt her.
But they would hurt her more.
“My father’s prophecy warned of the changes that would come at the end of days. I never thought it would start so soon.”
My head bobs in agreement. I’ve heard Jeremy Child’s promises for years. War: not just the standard fight of country against country that’s been going on since the beginning of time, but war within nations, within families. People’s hearts would grow hard and hating, and they’d become savages and turn upon their own. Bright has a point. What I saw this morning definitely looked like the end of the world.
Bright closes her eyes and goes still, so still the fog starts curling in to reclaim her, but then she opens them again and stares at me. Her gaze is as gray as the mist. “Okay, then,” she says. “We have to do our best to prevent anything worse. Come with me.”
She tugs on my hand, and seconds later, we’re splashing across the creek and toward the woods. I look behind us at the water and beyond that, the compound. The mist is beginning to clear and I can just barely make out the outline of the buildings. They’re still and silent, for now.
There’s no turning back.
BRIGHT
My father’s prophecies were quite clear: before the end of days, we chosen few would be lifted into heaven and spared the pain and suffering the rest of humanity would experience as the world was consumed. He wasn’t the only one who thought that, of course, but his was the only path that was right. He was the only one who knew the hour of our salvation, his followers the only ones who’d be included.
The apocalypse would never touch us. We spent a lot of time talking about what we’d be missing so we’d better be able to communicate to our recruits the dangers they’d face if they didn’t join us. The dangers that face us now—me and Sam, and anyone else left earthbound. Wars, plagues, famines, and other terrors beyond our reckoning. Demons with human faces. Hell on earth.
I used to pity the nonbelievers. They were foolish, and ignorant, and they deserved whatever they’d get when the end times came. But now, as I walk with Sam through a silent forest on the face of our doomed world, I wonder at my own sense of superiority. After all, as hard as my father tried for all those years, there were people his message couldn’t reach. Perhaps, if they’d heard him, they would have joined us. And there are babies and children, too. They don’t all deserve to suffer—and neither do Sam and I. But we will suffer, here on this earth, and I can mope about it, or I can mobilize and prove that I am equal to the task set before me—that of shepherding the innocent and the righteous who’ve been left here with me. People like Sam.
I lead Sam through the forest in silence. The only sound is our feet shuffling through the carpet of yellow and orange leaves. I’m lost in thoughts and plans for the dreadful future, and he’s staring at me. They used to be shy and furtive, these looks of his, but now they’re more open. Yet the reason is the same—he’s waiting for me to lead him, to guide him. Father always said I was a model to all the children in the compound. I can’t let him down now that I’m all that’s left.
Mist still clings to the tops of the trees and pools in the hollows along the path. Tree trunks the same pale shade of gray stand like ghosts in golden gowns and watch us as we walk. I used to love the trees, and though I know they have no souls, I’m sorry they will be lost when the world goes dark. I’m sorry for the animals, too. I wonder if there are forests in heaven.
“Where are we going?” he whispers at last, and in the stillness of the forest, it sounds like a shout.
Father’s stockpile is stored in the side of a hill three miles into the woods. He made all his children memorize the location in case the police ever came and we needed to protect ourselves. In case they ever took him away. I bet he never thought we’d have to use it like this. Or maybe he did—a gift for those of us left to fight. A final miracle for the righteous to carry us through the end of days. After all, he was granted the prophecy. He must have known there would be some of us left behind after it was fulfilled.
Maybe he even knew it would be me.
There’s food and water there, medicine and fuel and blankets—enough for the entire congregation to last six months, and I’m sure longer when it comes to supplying only the people who are left.
Sam’s eyes are wide as spotlights when I unlock the door and he sees the shelves and the cans and the storm lanterns arrayed along the wall. They go even wider when he sees the guns.
“What are those for?”
I shrug. People used to say horrible things about Father and the rest of us. They called us a cult. They accused him of lying to us, and made all these dire and false predictions about how he planned to make us all commit suicide with poison pills or lethal Kool-Aid. It was ridiculous. Why would we commit suicide and risk the eternal life we were promised?
Sometimes they even made threats. I remember times when Father had to lock the gates outside the compound against people who wanted to break in and kidnap their family members or friends who had heard the truth and decided to come live with us. They wanted to hurt our followers, to kill Father. We needed to protect ourselves, protect what we’d created out here.
Of course, it never came to that. And the government left us alone, no matter what the critics said. Father always supposed it was because at least some of the people in the government knew his prophecies were true.
And though the occasional doubter did manage to turn a follower away from our righteous path, it never led to violence. In fact, the worst violence I ever heard of was from one of the followers who had been kidnapped by his family. They’d locked him in a room for weeks, interrogating him, starving him, trying to break him. He finally recanted all his beliefs in Father and in us so they’d let him free. As soon as he was able, he came home and told us what had happened to him.
People on the outside can be so evil. No wonder this wretched earth needs to be washed clean.
Obviously we can’t carry too much with us, but at the same time, we need to bring enough to fulfill any immediate needs, as well as to convince the remaining people on the compound that I have their best interests at heart, and that I’m fully prepared to provide for them. Sam watches me gather supplies for a little while, then places his hand over mine.
“You know, Bright … maybe we shouldn’t go back right away.”
“Why not?” I ask. “What’s to gain from letting people suffer?”
He looks at me. “You don’t think you can stop their suffering, do you?”
He has a point. The end times will be terrible, no matter what I do.
“And,” he continues, snatching his hand back and looking about the storeroom wildly, “everyone is so angry right now. I think maybe it’s not safe.…”
Safe? Sam must have seen something awful to run away. How fitting that the violence everyone assumed we were capable of arrives only after our truth has come to pass. My father was right to teach me how to use the guns.
“Like if we wait a few days, maybe people will be calm
er, more willing to listen to what—to whatever you plan to tell them.” He meets my eyes. “Do you know what you plan to tell them?”
I bite my lip. “No. But you’re right. A plan would be good.”
SAM
A plan would be good. Unfortunately, I don’t have one either. It’s been two days since Bright Child led me into the woods. Two days of camping out in Jeremy’s stupid storeroom, watching Bright pray and plan and eat, and two nights of lying beside her while she sleeps, listening to her breathe and feeling the heat pour off her skin and smelling her hair when I pretend I’m just rolling over.
She wants to go back to the compound. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I wasn’t thinking ahead—I don’t even think I know how. Before, there was no point. Bright’s father, Jeremy Child, already told us what was going to happen. Don’t bother studying—the world will end before we ever go to college. Don’t bother brushing your teeth—you won’t have to worry about cavities in heaven. Don’t look at that girl—you’ll die long before you ever get your first kiss.
Lies. All lies.
Being here with Bright has pushed it out of my mind, but in the night, when all is still and the earth is turning and I can hear the sound of helicopter blades whirring high above the treetops, the truth comes blaring back to me. Everything is a lie. I’ve been lied to by everyone—my parents, my teachers, my friends. And they’ve been deceived, too, by Jeremy Child. We were supposed to be in heaven. We were promised heaven.
But instead, I’m in hell. Hell is Bright Child, two inches away from me, softly sighing, with her shirt riding up as she tosses and turns on the hard ground. I can see the strap of her bra and the curve of her back.
