Everyone Says That at the End of the World

by Owen Egerton

  Hayden crawled onto his bed/table, exhausted and smiling. He had reached a haven, a place of peace. This mad little monk was kind.

  He could feel peace like the first sip of an excellent cocktail. Hayden had grown up with nagging and sarcasm. He had moved to a community of falseheart and low-soul. Even Jim Edwards with his constant travels didn’t have peace. But this place, mad as it was, had a quality of rest Hayden had never known. He closed his eyes and slept.

  No words

  TWENTY MILES OUTSIDE of Fort Stockton they began seeing the cars. Lines of them, crammed with people and belongings. Pickup trucks and SUVs piled high with furniture, overstuffed suitcases and mattresses strapped on top like turtle shells. Each vehicle was full of faces, frantic faces. The exodus crawled east along I-10. The orange VW whizzed by in the nearly empty westbound lanes.

  “Where can you go to escape the end of the world?” Milton said.

  Rica searched the dial for any news, but the only station coming in was 88.6, still playing Pearl-Swine’s “Who’s Gonna Park the Car.”

  In the approaching distance they could see towers of black smoke like pillars holding up the low sky.

  “I wish we could hear some news,” Rica said.

  “The news doesn’t know what’s happening,” Milton said.

  “What is happening?”

  “All our dreams. All our ideas and beliefs,” Milton said. “We’ve chosen the thousand ways to end the world.”

  Roy groaned.

  “Hold on, Roy,” Rica said. “We’re almost there.”

  “Don’t stop, Rica,” Milton said. “The city is burning.”

  Ignoring Milton, Rica took the exit for the Pecos County Memorial Hospital. Sirens blared and orange flames twisted within the smoke rising from every other building. Pockets of people still remained, some packing up cars, tying down loads. Others smashing in windows of shops, grabbing, and running.

  Rica put a hand on her belly. Her body pressed against her dress, the dress that had been loose the day before. Her womb ached, and fears she refused to name screamed in her head. There’ll be doctors at the hospital, she told herself. They’ll make sure everything is fine.

  White, red, black . . .

  ROY WAS EXHALING long, slow breaths. Milton knew what he was doing. Roy was trying to focus his mind by focusing his breath, trying to look past the pain, trying to meditate through the struggle. Long breath in through the nose, long breath out the mouth. He and Roy had written a song highlighting the practice for the short-lived Lotus Motion called “Don’t Believe, Just Breathe!”

  But despite the breathing, every few minutes Roy’s face cringed in pain and he squeezed Milton’s hand till the bones creaked.

  Rica downshifted and made a quick right. The bus cut the corner and both she and Roy let out a gasp of pain. Milton looked to the front. Rica’s knuckles were white around the steering wheel. Milton scrambled to her side, on his knees by her seat. He placed a hand on her belly and gazed up at her. She was sweating, her cheeks flushed.

  “Rica?”

  “I’m fine,” Rica said. “We’re almost there.”

  The bus passed through a spray of water from a tapped hydrant. For a moment the curtain of water covered the windshield, then cleared to reveal a large stone sign announcing PECOS COUNTY MEMORIAL HOSPITAL. Behind the sign a large off-white building was engulfed in flames. Fire licked upward from the roof and white and black smoke poured from the windows and doors.

  “Ah crap,” she whispered.

  “There, drive there.” Milton pointed to a gold and black oversize pickup backed nearly into the emergency room entrance. Two men were throwing trash bags into the back. Another was running back into the smoke. “Fast! Block them in.”

  “Block them in?”

  “Do it!” Milton called out. “They’re going to help us!”

  Rica pressed on the gas and sped through the parking lot, bouncing over speed bumps. Roy yelled from the back. Rica pulled in perpendicular to the truck and slammed the bus to a halt a foot from of the truck’s front bumper. The two men dropped their bags. One of them hurtled himself into the double cab of the truck.

  Milton crawled past the passenger seat. “Keep it running,” he said. He opened the door, knocking the bumper, and stepped from the bus onto the truck’s hood. Below his feet, covering the hood like a Roman ceiling, was a fierce white stallion with red eyes and black hooves.

  “Get in, Crutch! Let’s go!” the man in the cab of the truck yelled. But the other man wasn’t moving.

  “Cool it, Bones,” he said, pulling a pistol from his back pocket. He was staring at Milton. His eyes, shaded by a bent baseball cap, were narrow and mean. He had a wispy blond beard and a toothless smile that turned Milton’s stomach like the smell of rot. “Let’s see what they want.”

  “All we want is some Vicodin. We’ve got an injured man.”

  “You got a prescription?” the blond said.

  His friend, skin black as asphalt, climbed back out of the truck. He was tall, taller than Milton, and so thin Milton thought he might snap as walked. He glanced back and forth from the pistol to Milton in nervous jerks. “Don’t shoot him, Crutch. Don’t do that.”

  Milton looked down again at the painting below his feet. The stallion was in midsprint, wind blowing back its mane, an orange and gold sunset, or sunrise, blazing behind it.

  “He won’t shoot me,” Milton said, looking up at the blond. “You can’t shoot me.”

  “Why not, motherfucker?” He cocked the gun. Milton could see the man’s finger twitching against the trigger. But Milton spoke calmly, almost a whisper.

  “I know who you are.”

  “Okay, hippie-shit, off the truck.”

  “The first seal has been broken. You’re Pestilence. You ride first and your brothers follow. You carry a bow and no arrows. You have no bullets.”

  The blond frowned. He smacked his toothless gums and pushed a breath of air from his nose. “Well,” he said, “I know how to get some bullets real fast.”

  “Hey, get the fuck off my truck!” A man was pushing through the glass ER doors, a puff of hot air and smoke following him. He was broad, muscles like veined stones pressing from under his red skin. His hair was pulled into a tight, black silk ponytail. He shook his head at the other two, placed his trash bag in the back of the truck, and pulled a six-inch hunting knife from his belt.

  “You’re the second rider,” Milton pointed and chuckled. “You’re War. Look, you’ve been given a large sword.”

  “I wasn’t given this,” he said. “I took it.” He stepped closer to the hood.

  “Ah Jesus, ah Jesus,” Bones said, shifting back and forth on his long, thin legs, looking like a cartoon skeleton with a full bladder.

  “And you,” Milton turned to him. “Ha, it’s all clear. You’re the third. You’re Famine.”

  “Come on, man. No, I’m not.”

  “Yes,” Milton said, nodding and grinning. “You’re Famine.”

  “I got a thyroid problem, okay? It’s medical.”

  “White, red, black . . . ” Milton squatted down and shuffled off the hood, searching the area. “Pale. Where is he?”

  “Where’s who?” Pestilence asked.

  “Death.”

  The three men glanced at each other.

  “Where is he? The fourth rider.”

  “Yeah, well,” War started, lowering the knife. “He’s not doing so good.”

  “That’s why we’re here, man,” Famine said in a high voice. “We’re bringing him penicillin and shit. Taking it back to Alpine.”

  “They got a triage set up there. A doctor, but not much stuff,” War said.

  “You said you got a hurt man?” Pestilence asked.

  “Yes,” Milton looked back to VW. Rica was staring out, her eyes wide, her hands wrapped around the steering wheel as if it might fly away if given half the chance. “And a pregnant woman.”

  “Shit, man,” War said. “Why didn’t you say
so? We’ll take you to Alpine.”

  Milton looked back to Rica, smiled, and gave her a thumbs-up. She didn’t smile back.

  “Should we follow you?” Milton asked.

  “In that piece of shit? Hell no.” Pestilence spit. “We’ll drive you. We got room. We’ll be in Alpine in fifteen minutes.”

  “Great!” Milton said. “Thanks.” Milton hopped over to the driver’s side of the VW and opened the door. “Okay, babe. We’re riding with them.”

  Rica shot a glance back at the three men and leaned into Milton. “Are you sure?”

  “Rica,” Milton said with a grin. “They’re the Riders of the Apocalypse. We can trust them.”

  Larger Than Life

  COLD AIR PUMPED from the truck’s air-conditioning. Rica leaned in and pushed her face to the air like a drought victim to water. She hadn’t realized the heat until feeling the cold. The bus had no AC and poor ventilation, and her body was pumping more and more hot blood to build this baby.

  “So is that guy your dad?” the driver, the one Milton called War, asked. The skinny one, Famine, sat in the center playing with the stereo.

  “My boyfriend.” She kept her face in the flow of cold air. She could sense their surprise but said nothing.

  “He give you that baby?”

  Rica nodded.

  “So, what, are you guys hippies?”

  “I make soup,” Rica said, leaning back.

  “Cool,” War said, staring coldly out the front window. “I cook, too.”

  “He works at Dairy Queen,” the skinny man said.

  “Shut the fuck up, Bones,” War barked.

  “Well, you do, Blade.” The skinny man pressed a button on the stereo and “Larger Than Life” by the Backstreet Boys pounded out of the stereos.

  “Turn that shit off,” War said, shaking his head.

  “It’s good,” the skinny man said, turning the volume down to a low notch. “It’s encouraging.”

  “I cook and I work at Dairy Queen,” War explained.

  “No shame in working at DQ,” Famine mumbled to himself. “I wish I worked there.”

  “Any news about what’s happening?” Rica asked.

  “Everything’s out. No Internet, no cable, no radio except for that one fucking Jesus station,” War said. “They say we’re under martial law, but I haven’t seen no marshals. The rest of the world seems pretty fucked up, too. I heard something about Jerusalem being bombed.”

  “Who by?”

  “Spain, I think. Maybe China. The news was all jumbled. Hell, CNN was like a comedy show. Some giant wolf thing is running around eating people in Asia. The president of Iran gave a press conference and he was glowing. I mean really, giving off light. Someone said it was faked, but I don’t know. And the whole thing in England . . . ”

  “What England thing?” Rica said.

  “Some guy in chain mail broke into Buckingham Palace and cut the queen’s head off. Says he’s king now.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Jesus is coming,” Famine said, nodding as if he were agreeing with someone.

  “Jesus isn’t coming,” War said. “It’s just a crazy time. Crazy times happen all the time.”

  Famine’s thin shoulders twitched in a shrug. “Jesus is coming,” he said under his breath. He turned the stereo back up and nodded to the beat.

  The two-lane road was long and smooth, empty barbed-wire fields on either side. For some miles there was peace. Nothing to show that a city was burning a short drive away.

  “Where you guys from, anyway?” War asked.

  “Austin,” Rica said. She was gazing out the window watching the patches of green and brown, the low trees, the distant sharp mountains. It was beautiful. She had passed this way once before when her family had moved from California. Driving across half the nation, she and her brother bickering in the backseat as the southwestern quarter of the country passed by their windows. Her memories of that trip were dominated by fast-food diners and stiff hotel sheets. Her brother was stationed in Virginia Beach now, a career military man. He had two children, two little boys. Her parents had moved out there just after the first one had been born. They had been dreaming of being grandparents ever since their children left home. She hadn’t talked with any of them in over a month. No real reason, just a hectic few weeks. She wished to God she could talk to them now.

  The road climbed a plateau topped with rocky hills and scatterings of cedar and piñon pines.

  “Not far now,” War said. “They’ve set up medical aid at a church. That’s where our friend is.”

  As they approached the outskirts of Alpine, they saw the people. Small pockets walking along the road or out toward the hills. Groups of no more than a dozen. Bags weighing down their backs, children pulling on their parents’ arms.

  “Where are they going?” Rica asked.

  “They’re climbing,” War said, pointing to a few distant figures standing on the towering ridges. “Higher ground, I guess. Going to the caves.”

  Passing through a series of jagged outcrops of rock, they came upon the town of Alpine.

  Squid

  VICODIN WAS GOOD. Very good. Roy lay in the back of the pickup on a bed of bulging trash bags. He watched the sky as the painkillers covered his body, seeing the smoke clear to blue as they sped from the hospital. Tiny white clouds floated up there. Happy in the blue. Ducks were flying south in a V formation. In another section of sky a different flock was flying west and still another north. One lone duck, far off in the sky, was flying in erratic circles.

  Milton was sitting near, looking old and wild. Across from Milton sat a man in a bent hat with no teeth. He came with the truck, Roy guessed. Things were still unclear. The past hour was murky for Roy. Pain had been the primary sun in the sky, outshining any star or moon. But now the Vicodin was tinting the sky, pacifying the pain, and allowing dulled thoughts. They were driving west, moving fast. He could feel the road smooth beneath him.

  He didn’t want to dwell on what he had seen and what he had done that day. The gas station man lying in blood, his head half gone. His wife inside. Instead, Roy watched the sky and meditated on the giant squid.

  He often thought of the giant squid, pictured the smooth, elongated body gliding a mile below the ocean waves, as far from the air as Roy was from the airless above. A graceful monster with unblinking liquid eyes the size of hubcaps, slowly massaging grasps of ocean. Did these land storms touch her at all? Or was she still spending her hours skirting ocean canyons and picking fights with grumpy gray whales? For the clouds and the squids this was just another day.

  That would be a way to die . . . giant squid. Swimming along in the middle of the Pacific. You see the bubbles first, the water swirling, then a suction cup the size of a tire latches onto your torso and pulls you down.

  Roy had a mental list cataloging the many thousands of ways a person might die. Every morning for the last decade Roy sat still on a rock in his front yard for ten minutes and imagined his own death. Each time a different scenario. This was neither a morbid obsession nor a death wish; it was a meditation. A reminder to not hold too tightly to anything. It was Roy’s way of making friends with the inevitable.

  He looked to Milton, the wind pushing his hair around his face, whipping like a thousand thin tentacles. The sky was a blue and white sea.

  He was talking, yelling words to the other man. Roy couldn’t make out the words. The other man didn’t look happy to hear whatever it was Milton was saying.

  This had once been a sea, all West Texas had been a sea. You can still find shellfish fossils scattered though the sand. A sea miles long, miles deep. That world ended. Dried to desert, all life turning to dust and stone.

  Through the hair Roy could see a laugh on Milton’s face. Roy found that ridiculously amusing. All this and Milton was laughing. Old and laughing.

  No longer labeled

  THE PICKUP TRUCK roared into the Texas desert, the flames of Fort Stockton disappearing behind the
rising terrain. Milton sat in the corner leaning against the outside of the cab while Pestilence stared out at the passing landscape from the other side of the bed. A recently doped Roy lay between the two on a mattress of bagged pharmaceuticals. Milton placed a hand on his chest and Roy smiled groggily.

  The wind churned Milton’s hair; he could see the gray streaks overtaking the brown. He could feel the age in his bones and throat. He felt wonderful. The oversize engine and the wind made conversation nearly impossible, and Milton was glad. Had it been quieter, he would have been tempted to explain his exhilaration to Roy. But he would have failed. He knew that. It was all too strange. His visions, the strings of knowledge spiraling into his mind, the images of fire and falling skies . . . he didn’t fear them, didn’t try to understand them . . . he accepted them. He no longer labeled them, no longer attributed value to the visions or even attempted to distinguish real from unreal. He let each picture, each idea, wash through him. A baby was coming, a world was ending, a wind was blowing, a friend was hurting, a sun was shining. Life was happening. He was not its judge. And now that he was free from judgment, he felt more alive than ever.

  “Why you smiling?” Pestilence yelled over the wind.

  Milton shrugged. “End of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.”

  “End of the world, huh?”

  “Yep. Days are coming to a close. And you know what they’re doing, Pestilence? You know what their last attempt to cure our mad, mad souls is?”

  Pestilence shook his head.

  “Listening to the patients!” he yelled, throwing his arms into the air. “This is all stuff we made up. Our scriptures, our religions, our Rapture, our fires. We’ve been prescribing the Apocalypse for ourselves for centuries.”

  Pestilence stared at him. If he had teeth, Milton thought, he’d be gnashing them.

  “You’re fucking nuts,” Pestilence spit.

  “Yeah!” Milton laughed.

  Milton looked down and saw Roy grinning up at him. He leaned down to Roy’s ear.

  “Roy,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here.”