The End Has Come

by John Joseph Adams

  Teale flashed back to those terrible days when the nodding virus was raging, the hushed conversations about painless ways to release loved ones from their suffering. How much Oxycodone or Valium you needed to mix into their water. Teale had been there, a scarf pressed over her nose and mouth, when their friend and neighbor Mark Melancon gave his son Valium-laced grape juice. She could still see the tears rolling down Mark’s cheeks as Jeremy drank. A few days later, Vanessa Melancon held the cup while Mark drank.

  “If I was in their situation, I’d be grateful if Season slipped a dozen Oxycodone tablets into my juice,” Gill said. “If I didn’t know I was about to die? If I just drifted off gently? That would be the kindest thing she could do for me.”

  “Then why don’t you?” Teale asked softly. She never asked survivors what had happened to their families, why most of them were alone, with no diapers to change. They’d made a different decision than Teale. She wouldn’t judge.

  Gill stared at the ground between them. “I know it would be a kindness. I’m not sure I can do it, though.”

  I’m not sure I can do it. A month ago he’d said he couldn’t do it.

  “I’m not sure I could, either,” Teale said.

  Out in the street, something hurried past — a groundhog, or a raccoon. Gill turned around to see what she was looking at.

  “Are we saying —” Gill’s voice hitched. He cleared his throat. “Are we saying we should do this?”

  “I don’t know what we’re saying.” Teale looked up at the window where her children were sleeping. Her lips were numb, her chest aching. She didn’t want to have this conversation; she wanted to go to bed, and stay there for days.

  “Maybe this is the push we needed, to finally do the right thing,” Gill said. “Maybe we’ve been selfish, keeping them this way with no hope of recovering.”

  It was a bizarre thought, but in a brain-twisting way it made sense: they’d needed some selfish motive to goad them into doing the right thing for the wrong reason. The reason wasn’t what mattered; what mattered was to do what was best for her kids.

  And there — another illusion had just fallen away. It was all about Elijah and Chantilly, wasn’t it? If not for the kids, Teale would have put Wilson out of his misery long ago.

  Yes. That felt true. Fuck Wilson. Were Elijah and Chantilly better off alive or dead? That’s what it boiled down to. Teale closed her eyes, tried to forget Gill, Wilson, everything, and just listen to her heart.

  Finally, she opened her eyes. Between hitching breaths, she managed to get the words out.

  “I think we have to let them go.”

  • • • •

  Teale put earbuds in Elijah’s ears, turned on Iggy Azalea. While he listened, she brushed his teeth, then combed his hair. His hair was getting long again. She’d have to cut it again soon —

  The thought formed in an instant of forgetfulness that was followed by a plunging despair as she remembered. It was time to let them go. Today. Today she and Gill would be strong, would let their families go, out of love for them.

  Elijah’s eyes were darting around again — his pupils bouncing like twin superballs on concrete. Just as they’d done when she put on Rich Homie Quan in the minivan, and a dozen times before that. Teale caressed his cheek, which was sprouting adolescent peach fuzz. She smiled wide, determined not to give the slightest hint that this day was different from any other. It was crucial they not suspect anything. Teale wanted them to drift off, nice and easy. No pain, no fear.

  Elijah’s eyes went on dancing as Teale got Chantilly ready for the day, choosing her white pants and an Olaf the snowman sweatshirt —

  She froze, one of Chantilly’s arms in the sweatshirt, the other out.

  Dancing.

  That’s what Elijah was doing. He was dancing, with his eyes.

  How many times had Teale tried to get them to use their eyes to communicate? Look left for yes, right for no. But they couldn’t; they couldn’t move their eyes voluntarily. Their eyes tracked reflexively toward movement, the same way their lips wrapped around a straw.

  But Elijah’s eyes could dance. For him dancing was as reflexive as drinking. And reflex or not, he was enjoying the music. Her son was feeling pleasure.

  Maybe this wasn’t all hell for them, after all.

  • • • •

  Sunlight peeked through the distant Rockies as Teale slid the note under Gill’s hotel room door and headed outside.

  She climbed into the Honda Odyssey, which was already running, her family loaded up. Choking back tears, she put on her fake cheery tone. “Here we go. Just a few hours’ driving, then we’ll find another hotel.”

  Thankfully, Gill was nowhere in sight. If he came running outside now she knew she’d break down, and if Wilson didn’t already know, he’d know then.

  “Who gets to pick the first CD?”

  As she pulled out onto the street, she grabbed a jewel case at random. Rich Homie Quan.

  “In the spring we’re going to see the country. Starting with the Grand Canyon, then the redwoods, the Pacific Ocean, up the coast. On from there.”

  In the rear view mirror, she watched the town fade, and she could see Elijah’s eyes dancing.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Will McIntosh is a Hugo award winner and Nebula finalist whose debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, was a finalist for a Locus Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Compton Crook Award. His latest novel is Defenders (May, 2014; Orbit Books), an alien apocalypse novel with a twist. It has been optioned by Warner Brothers for a feature film. Along with four novels, he has published dozens of short stories in venues such as Lightspeed, Asimov’s (where he won the 2010 Reader's Award), and The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy. Will was a psychology professor for two decades before turning to writing full-time. He lives in Williamsburg with his wife and their five year-old twins.

  THE SEVENTH DAY OF DEER CAMP

  Scott Sigler

  “Have you been harmed in any way?”

  They asked it every time, during the thrice-daily videoconferences. George had a dozen different ways to answer that question. Had they physically hurt him? No, they had not. Had they emotionally hurt him? Yes: a year gone by without seeing his boys in person, without touching his wife, without satisfying the simple yet overpowering need of spending time with his family. But that was the trade-off — those in control wanted him gone, and preventing his family from seeing him was one of the many tools they used to try and get their way. If George really wanted to see his wife and sons, all he had to do was leave.

  “No,” George said. “They haven’t hurt me.”

  “And are the children still alive? Are they unharmed?”

  The children. That phrase used to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but since that first moment George had stood in front of a news camera, it had taken on one specific definition.

  “The children are fine,” he said. “Unharmed, so far.”

  George wished he could drop the so far bit, but he could not. The world was watching him. As far as he knew, he was the only thing standing between the children and knives, microscopes, autopsy tables, and secret facilities of the United States government.

  “Good,” the mask said. This one sounded French. Maybe French-Canadian, George wasn’t sure. The voice changed every day, but the mask was always the same: Guy Fawkes. The symbol of the Anonymous movement, a movement that had grown to a hundred times its original size following the alien attack that had shattered cities, killed millions. A movement that had grown because of the children, because of a rampant distrust of governments, of militaries and the police, because of the world’s need to know something positive could come out of that tragedy.

  Three times a day, he reported in. If he missed an appointment, shit hit the fan: Hackers from America, China, Russia and more would go to work, sabotaging targets that had been pre-selected and pre-qualified. There was no mistaking the correlation between George not a
ppearing for an update and the instant retaliation against multiple targets from multiple sources.

  And if there were no online targets, pre-programmed physical demonstrations happened within minutes: flash mobs that blocked the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel; a thousand people climbing the White House fence for a calm stroll across the lawn; bomb threats at airports; instant sit-ins at police stations with hundreds of individuals willing to be arrested, willing to go to jail, willing to take a nightstick to the head in order to send a message. That message? George was not to be touched, not to be harmed, not to be delayed from talking to the world in any way for any reason.

  “Good,” the mask said. “Is there anything else you need to tell us?”

  George shook his head. “Nothing else. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be back online for the next update in four hours.”

  “Very well. Keep up the good work. We are watching.”

  That last bit wasn’t meant for him: It was meant for his hosts. Maybe captors was a better word for them.

  The screen went blank.

  A strong hand on his arm.

  “Mister Pelton, we will now escort you back to your quarters.”

  George nodded absently. He stood. “Thank you,” he said, because he was a Midwestern boy and being polite was so ingrained in him he said such things automatically, even to a soldier who would put a bullet in his head if so ordered.

  He wondered, as he always did after the check-ins, how many more days could he spend here? He wondered if he had made the right choice, if he should’ve just gone home to his family after saving those kids.

  Instead, he had made a phone call. A simple call that had changed the course of human history.

  • • • •

  In the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, George’s cell phone reception had always been shitty. One bar, if any at all, courtesy of AT&T’s weak network. But on that day at the end of the world, sealed into a room on a crashed starship with little aliens standing around him — little aliens, for God’s sake — George got two bars.

  He had to do something. He had to find help. But who could he call?

  The invasion had come without warning. At least, no warning that George and his childhood friends knew of. Ships from outer freakin’ space attacking major cities worldwide. One of those ships must’ve got sidetracked, or malfunctioned or something, because it crashed in the deep woods close to the tip of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula.

  The hunting cabin where George and his friends had spent two weeks every November for the last thirty years had been close to the crash site, so close that a war machine or mech — or whatever you called an alien piloting a suit of powered armor — had attacked the cabin, blown it to pieces. Luckily, George, Toivo, Jaco, Bernie, and Arnold had been outside when that happened. They returned fire against the attacker, killing the alien inside the machine. From there, a hike through the deep snow and the frigid woods, following colored lights, to the crashed ship — an actual flying saucer, or at least it used to be before a high-speed impact and tumble through the woods turned it into a dented, cracked, smashed thing that had more in common with a T-bone-totaled station wagon than an interstellar vessel.

  Inside that ship, bodies. Non-human bodies. Pieces and parts all over, living beings torn to shreds by a crash that gouged a fifty-foot-wide trench through snow-covered ground, pines, and the birches. So many bodies, so many dead. But not all dead, as George found out when he opened a sealed door. Inside, a room clearly designed to withstand such crashes: the evidence for that being a dozen alien children, alive and well.

  It started out as a dozen, but that number dropped to eleven when George’s friend Toivo shot one in the head. Toivo wanted to kill the rest of them — as did Bernie and Jaco — but George put himself between the children and the barrel of Toivo’s hunting rifle.

  George still wasn’t sure why he’d protected the alien kids. Maybe it was the fact that they were helpless. Maybe somewhere in his head he knew this was a history-changing event, and that the sane thing to do was preserve these eleven alien lives even though the aliens’ kin had probably killed millions of people.

  Or, maybe, it was the crash seats.

  He stood in a room with the eleven alien children. The same room with the crash seats, or chambers or whatever they were, that had kept those children alive during the crash. The grownup aliens had seen to the kids first, safely strapping them in — just as George would have done for his own children.

  His friends were elsewhere in the ship. He knew Bernie was probably tending to Mister Ekola, keeping the old man warm as winter slowly and surely stole the heat from the ruined hull. George didn’t know what Jaco was doing. Rooting through the ship, probably, because it was an alien ship, and would he ever get a chance like this again? The one that worried George, though, was Toivo.

  Toivo, who had already killed one of the alien children in cold blood.

  Toivo, who clearly wanted to kill the rest of them as well.

  Toivo, who had never left the area, who still spoke with the Yooper accent George had shed years ago. Da instead of the, ending every other sentence with the rhetorical eh? If George hadn’t moved away, would he still have that accent? Would he have wanted to shoot the children? So hard to know if his urge to save them was something he was born with, or something cultivated from living somewhere other than this remote, homogenous culture.

  A silly time to worry about nature vs. nurture.

  The phone buzzed in George’s hand. One bar . . . it had reconnected to the network.

  He could dial 9-1-1. But would anyone answer? Had the attacks hit Milwaukee? Detroit? And if he did get through, what would he say? I’ve got an actual ship here, with survivors. Who would respond to that? Who would be dispatched?

  George looked at the eleven alien children.

  Paralyzed with indecision, he imagined how things might play out. If he called 9-1-1, the local police station, or any government office — and he got through — word would quickly go up the ladder. George knew where that ladder ended: the Army.

  The military would come. These children would be taken away. Hidden. Studied. Interrogated.

  What if someone did that to his children?

  George looked at the phone. A sense of panic crept over him, lodged in his chest, burrowed in his heart. What if he did the wrong thing? A call could get the children killed. Not calling could mean they might die, because what the hell did he know about goddamn alien children? What did they eat? What needs did they have?

  He was a fucking insurance salesman, for Christ’s sake.

  Then, the phone’s single bar blinked out.

  Zero bars.

  No connection.

  George started to shake. He’d missed his chance. How long until the cold pushed its way inside this shattered ship, started to freeze the very children he wanted to protect? Not just them: his friends would freeze as well, the boys he’d grown up with. And the one man who had helped them all understand what it meant to actually be a man? Mister Ekola was hurt; he needed help.

  One bar re-appeared.

  Maybe a chance to make only a single call before that bar blinked off again.

  His thumbs worked the smartphone, bringing up a web browser. He had to get a number and get it fast.

  One call . . . maybe he could save Mister Ekola and the children both with one call . . .

  • • • •

  The guard escorted George to his room. Maybe ten minutes to himself, tops, then George had to get to the ship and check on the children. He always had to check on the children.

  The children.

  The goddamn children.

  They had become his entire life, at the expense of the life that had been his before all of this started. Yes, a year ago he had been a simple insurance salesman. Now the face that looked at him from the mirror happened to be the most-recognized face on the planet.

  What was it now . . . four billion YouTube views and counting? The inte
rview had been downloaded and re-uploaded so many times no one really knew for sure just how many total views there were. A million views the very first day, he was told. Within two weeks, the interview had passed by that Korean guy with the funny glasses — and that one pop-singer girl who wore crazy outfits — to become the most-viewed video in the history of mankind.

  The guard stopped at the door to George’s small room. Seemed like a nice enough kid, but he didn’t say much. None of the guards did. They were ordered not to, probably. Loneliness, lack of communication with other people — just more tools for the government to isolate the thorn in its side.

  George entered. The guard stayed at the door.

  Twelve feet by twelve feet. A twin bed. A small desk with a computer that let him send and receive screened email. Email, and nothing else. The irony was hard to process: the Internet’s most popular person wasn’t allowed to use the Internet.

  He checked email. Like clockwork, the daily missive from his wife, Mary. This one started the way all of her emails started. First line, two words: Come home.

  Then, a picture of the boys. Dressed in spandex singlets this time. Youth wrestling must be starting up. God, but they were so beautiful.

  Michael and Luke had grown so much. When George had left for his two-week hunting trip, Michael had been six, Luke, eight. Now they were seven and nine. George had missed an entire year of their life. A year and counting that he would never get back.

  Luke had stopped smiling for pictures. George wasn’t sure when. A year ago, the boy had been all giggles and squeals. Now every shot of him showed a scowl, a frown. Was that normal for a growing boy, or was it because his father was gone? Mary said it was a phase, but George knew the meaning behind her words — the phase wouldn’t have happened if George had been around.

  After come home and the picture, the usual update. The boys’ grades were slipping. Luke had gotten into a fight at school. Both of them were being more and more disrespectful at home.

  How much of that was boys growing up, and how much of it was Mary, unintentionally easing up on the reins, letting the boys run wild because it would carve at George, make him want to give up this fool’s quest and come home? He hoped he was wrong about that, but he had been with Mary most of his adult life; deep down inside, in the places he tried to ignore, he knew of his wife’s expertise at subtle manipulation.