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trinityofoneContinued from Parts I-II
III. Nuclear Fallout
“This would make a good music video,” said Will, and immediately regretted it.
Beside him, Gary put his head in his hands and moaned. He was curled up in a ball on the back seat, his knees drawn up around his ears. He was twisting his wedding ring around and around his finger.
“Sorry, Gar,” said Will, at the same time St. John said, “You’re right: it would make a good music video.”
Will made a quiet, exasperated noise. Gary moaned again. “Although,” said St. John, “if this were a music video, I’d be driving.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Simon, who was.
Will pressed his nose to the glass and watched the scenery fly by. Nothing but a barren wasteland as far as the eye could see. St. John followed his gaze. “Just look at that destruction,” he said.
“Actually, this is Kansas,” said Will. “It always looks like this.”
Three pairs of eyes swiveled to look at him.
“Lovely country you have here, Will.”
“Yes, what a delight.”
“Really, you’ve done wonders with the place.”
“What branches grow out of this stony rubbish? That’s what I want to know.”
“America the Beautiful. What a fucking joke.”
Will had been pretending not to be an American for so long, it was odd to be so forcibly reminded. Odder still, he found himself feeling strangely protective of his country of birth. “Bits of it are really quite nice,” he said. “You guys know that.”
“Right,” said St. John, brightly. “New York, for example. I used to love that town. Pity it’s rubble.”
Gary whimpered.
Simon shot St. John a cool look. “I’m sure she’s fine,” he told Gary. “She’s a survivor.”
“Funny you should say that,” St. John said. “‘Cause I’ve kinda been wondering how the hell we made it out.” He scratched at his scarred cheek. “Thought I’d used up all my second chances.”
“Well,” said Will. “I’m sure it was—”
“We all know what you think it was,” said St. John.
“—Fate,” finished Will.
“Uh-oh, he said the F-word.”
Gary raised his head. “You owe Alice 50p,” he whispered.
“And I’ll give it to her,” said Will, hoping that saying it could make it happen. “I will.”
“Will is my name, destiny’s my game,” St. John sing-songed. “Wanna tell us the future, Tiresias old chap? How long have we got before the chickens all sprout extra heads? Before the acid rain starts pouring down? Before we’re all sterile?” His hand slipped down his chest. “I wanna set my boys swimmin’ before the pool dries up, if you know what I mean.”
“Lovely, as always,” said Simon. Then he lost control of the car.
St. John, who’d had his legs propped up lazily on the dash, caught a knee to the eye. Gary’s head connected with the side of the door with a sickening crunch. Will, the only one besides Simon who was buckled in, grabbed at the dangling leather strap and hung on. The car skittered and spun, sliding helplessly over the shoulder and into a field, where it collided with a fence. “Oof!” said Simon, the airbag exploding in his face. Then there was silence.
“Ouch,” said St. John. “Bloody terrific. Now I’m gonna have a fucking shiner.”
Gary looked dazed. “Blood,” he said. He dabbed at his forehead. “I’m bleeding.”
Will leaned over to help. Meanwhile, Simon was working himself free of the airbag with the tenacity of a soldier under fire extracting himself from his parachute. “I think I hit something,” he said.
“Damn right you hit something,” said St. John. “You hit a fucking fence!”
“No. Back up on the road.”
“I wonder if we should get out of the car,” said Gary, ignoring Will’s attempts to apply pressure to his wound. “It might explode. Sometimes they explode.”
Everyone hastily vacated the car. Once they judged that they were a safe distance away, sudden combustion-wise, they looked back down the road they way they had come. “Bloody hell,” said St. John. Then he burst out laughing.
“It’s not funny,” said Simon.
“Is! You hit a bloody cow!”
“A dead cow,” said Gary. “I mean, even before Simon hit it.”
“They’re all dead cows,” said Will, pointing. “Jesus.”
St. John stopped laughing. He laid a hand on Will’s shoulder. “I don’t think He’s gonna be any help to you now.”
“Maybe we should get back in the car,” said Simon.
They turned to look at the car. It was smoking.
“The fucking car’s dead, mate,” said St. John, kicking a pebble. “We’re fucked.”
“No,” said Gary. Blood had formed a pair of crusting trails down his cheeks. “No, we have to keep going! We can’t give up!”
“Personally,” said Will. “I’d prefer not to die in Kansas.”
Simon said, “I’d prefer not to die.”
They all looked at St. John. “What? I’m not exactly eager to meet my maker!”
“Well, then,” said Simon.
They started walking.
“It’s funny,” said Will, several miles down the road. “My dad always used to promise that we’d take a road trip. Really see America. Experience the heartland. All that.”
St. John snorted. “Yeah, well my aunt always used to threaten me with trips to Wales. There’s one in every family.”
“My parents used to take me to Brighton every summer,” said Gary. “I like Brighton.”
“Brighton’s a dump.”
“Brighton,” said Gary, primly, “is the San Francisco of the North Atlantic.”
“Yeah,” said St. John. “Poofsville.”
“Please shut up,” said Simon. “Both of you.”
“Will, why don’t you sing something for us?” suggested St. John, sounding oddly sincere. “Some American folk song twaddle. What you an’ your old man would’ve sung on that road trip of yours.”
Will considered explaining that they probably would have just listened to the news or his dad’s old Creedence tapes, but instead he coughed, cleared his throat. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one,” he said, attempting to smile. Then he began to sing.
In a cavern, in a canyon,
Excavating for a mine
Dwelt a miner, forty-niner,
And his daughter Clementine.
Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling Clementine!
You are lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry, Clementine.
“Well,” said St. John, when he was done. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I vote that goes on our next album.”
“Shut up!” said Simon, a hiss this time. “For God’s sake, have some decency!”
Gary was crying.
Crying, he sat down at the side of the road. “She’s dead!” he said. Through tears and snot and blood: “I know she’s dead. We’re dead. It’s over.”
They stood in a half circle around him, watching, helpless. Comforting was not something any of them were good at; that, like so many things, had been Alice’s—Alice’s role, Alice’s art.
Will knelt in the dirt. “But we can’t give up, you said. We can’t give up.”
“Yeah,” said St. John. “We’re Death by Water! Fear us!”
Gary’s half-hearted chuckle was almost worse than none at all. “I’ve always known I’d be stuck with you gits for the rest of my life.”
“And a long an’ prosperous life it’ll be,” said St. John, offering a hand. “Come on, get up.”
Gary shied away from St. John’s outstretched fingers, but he got to his feet. Simon touched his back lightly, saying nothing, and Will also rose, falling into line next to St. John. “Go West, young man,” St. John whispered, for Will’s ears only. They walked on.
That night they stopped in the shadow of an old barn. They did not go inside: Simon had poked his head in and reported, sotto voce, that there were dead horses. Will summoned his inner boy scout and built a fire; “Now I know why we keep you around,” said St. John, rubbing his hands over the flames in the traditional manner. “Deep as a well, you are.”
Simon lay back against his arms and stared up at the sky. “Stars,” he said.
“Orion,” said Gary.
“Yes.”
“Andromeda.”
“Mm.”
“Cassiopeia.”
St. John got up to take a piss and came back carrying another handful of twigs and humming “When the Man Comes Around.”
“Funny,” said Will.
“I thought so.” He looked down and saw the intent motions of Will’s hands. “I didn’t know you had those on you.”
“I always have them on me.”
They were a pack of Tarot cards. Will had unwrapped them from their purple cloth and spread the cloth out in the dirt. Now he was laying out cards, one by one, building an intricate cross that St. John had seen many times before but never questioned, dismissing it as more of Will’s naff fortune-telling shite.
It was still naff fortune-telling shite. But; “What’s that mean?” he asked, pointing.
Will looked like he had been waiting for someone to ask him that for twenty years. “That’s me,” he said. “I always get that card.”
“Well, you are a great bloody fool.”
Will smiled. “It symbolizes a journey.”
“Sure it does. And what’s that?” He pointed again. “Death? That doesn’t sound good.”
Will shook his head. “It’s a change. That’s all.”
“If you say so,” said St. John.
He waited for Will to turn over the next card. He did not hold his breath.
IV. Asteroid
I’m going to do it. This is the last night of the world. I’m going to tell him.
I don’t like how quiet it is. I don’t know where my parents are; I don’t know if they’ll be back in time. From across the apartment I can hear my brother listening to Marilyn Manson. Hardly seems like the kind of thing you’d want to listen to on the last night of the world, but teenagers are weird. Earlier he was playing that R.E.M. song, but I guess the irony was hitting a little too close to home.
I wonder if he’s listening to anything right now. Maybe he’s playing his cello. He always said he wanted to play at Nero when Los Angeles burned.
I need to tell him. I need to call him. The phone’s not in its cradle. I press the button to page it, and suddenly there’s a loud, insistent beeping breaking through whatever Marilyn’s supposed to be singing. “I’m using it, dipshit!” shouts my brother. I walk down the hall and start banging on his door. “Well, I need it!” I shout back. “It’s important!”
David opens the door. The phone’s pressed to his ear, but even over the music I can hear that he hasn’t gotten through, that there’s just that echoy, mechanical voice pumping again and again through the receiver: “We’re sorry, all our lines are currently busy...”
“Mine’s important, too,” he says. “So fuck off.”
“Fine,” I say. I have a better idea anyway.
Back out in the living room, I’m rooting through my dad’s jacket pockets for the car keys when the music shuts off and David comes out. He makes a big show of holding the telephone out to me before tossing it over his shoulder. I open my mouth, then close it. Everything about his expression is a dare.
Besides, I’ve found the keys.
“What are you doing?” David asks, watching me pull on my own jacket and go to the door.
“Leaving.”
“I need to use the car.”
“Too bad,” I say, “I’m using it.”
“It’s important,” he says, quietly now.
Not as important as what I need to do, I think, but then I realize that it is as important. In fact, it’s the same.
“Please,” David starts to say, but I wave the word away. “Come on,” I say. “I’ll take you to Clare’s.”
Even though no sound comes out, his lips form the words and that’s enough.
The traffic on Wilshire is bad. Really bad.
“Everywhere in L.A. takes twenty minutes,” says my brother, sarcastically. It’s taken us twenty minutes to go four blocks.
He starts fiddling with the radio, hurrying past the news, country, one station where the DJ is sobbing uncontrollably, and the teeny bob channel. He settles on his favorite classic rock station, leaning back in the seat as the DJ finishes announcing the last song: “—Water with ‘Amor Fati.’ And next up, one of my personal favorites by the inextirpable Johnny Cash.”
There’s a man going around taking names...
“Funny,” I say.
“I think so,” says my brother.
I drum my fingers on the wheel. “What are you going to tell Clare?” I ask.
He rolls his eyes at me. “I dunno. What are you going to tell Jack?”
I don’t say anything. David smirks. “Thought so.”
I switch off the radio. David rolls his eyes again, then unbuckles his seatbelt and climbs up on the chair. He unrolls the window and sticks his head out. “Why did you bring that?” I ask, seeing that he’s got his DV at the ready.
He grins at me over his shoulder as he points the camera out the window, up at the dark, rolling sky. “What filmmaker hasn’t dreamed of getting the end of the world on tape?”
“Yeah,” I concede, “but who’s gonna watch it?”
It’s David’s turn not to say anything. Instead he leans out the window, filming the sky and the lights of the buildings and the traffic and the people, all the people. We inch down Wilshire Boulevard. I pick at my fingernails and stare straight ahead. “Can you see it?” I ask.
David is silent for a minute. Then, “Yes,” he says. “It’s getting bigger.”
I want to look. I don’t want to look. A man in a hideous leather jacket darts in front of my headlights, so I can’t look, I have to keep my eyes on the road. From his vantage point somewhat above the traffic, David seems to be surveying the street. “San Vicente looks less gridlocked,” he says. “See if you can get over.”
Working my way into the left lane takes up all of my concentration. Cars are honking wildly now, a marked contrast to the deadly silence that pervaded the scene when we first started out. People’s emotions must be spinning faster than a supersonic top, I think. Odd that I feel so flat.
David slips back into the car as I make the turn onto San Vicente and start heading north. “Good footage?” I ask. He gives me his usual look, the one that says, I shot it. Of course it’s good. “Funny,” he says, “while I was shooting, I was thinking just like I always do, planning how I was going to edit it, where the cuts should be, even considering ideas for a backing track. But I’m not going to do any of that. It’s just going to sit there in the camera. And then it won’t be there at all.”
I look over at him. He’s facing forward, his expression neutral. Perhaps a slight tremor in his jaw. Other than that, nothing.
“Are you scared?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nah, it’ll all be over too quick for it to hurt.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
He glances at me, his neck staying rigid and his eyes darting almost imperceptibly to the left. Then, his gaze back on the camera in his lap: “Yes.”
“Maybe she won’t be home.”
“Worse,” he says. “I need to know.” An abrupt shake of the head. “And hey, if she laughs at me—” He laughs himself, and its worse than no laughter at all. “Well, I won’t have long to feel bad about it, will I?”
We’re nearing her street. “David,” I say. “David—”
“It’s all right, Morgan,” he says. “Thank you.” Then he gets out of the car.
I watch him walk up the path to the house. The lights are off, but from the living room there’s the blue glow of a television, and maybe a shadow, a shape, a silhouette. Maybe Clare. I watch my brother open the door and step inside. Then I’m alone.
I drive off before I can see any more, some shadowplay of reunion or rejection behind the bluelit curtains. It’s only a few blocks to Jack’s house, and the side streets are mostly empty. Why do people take to their cars, I think. Where do they think they’re running?
I wonder what Jack will think when I tell him. I wonder what he’ll say. I wonder if he’ll touch me: my face, my hair, my body.
I wonder if he’ll let me touch him. Just his shoulder. Just so I know he’s real.
Jack’s house is also dark. No television. No shadowy shapes behind the windowblinds. I shut off the car. It’s quiet again, that same deadly quiet. But...I think I might hear cello music.
I open the door and get out of the car.
I get out of the car.
I get out of the car.
Funny that I’m not moving.
I’m going to do it, I tell myself. It’s the last night of the world. I’m going to tell him.
Soon.
Soon enough.
Soon.
I close my eyes. From the sky comes a sound of thunder.
V. Aliens
“There’s a spaceship in the parking lot,” said Bryan.
“Uh-huh.” Jeremy did not look up from his novel.
“No, really. It landed on Mr. Jackson’s car.”
“This is my break time right now,” said Jeremy, still not raising his eyes. “Please do not interrupt it with your puerile attempts at humor.”
“Holy shit you guys,” said Jenny, running into the back room. “There’s a fucking spaceshipin the parking lot.”
Jeremy lowered his book. “What kind?”
“Kind?” spat Bryan, obviously annoyed at not having been believed.
“Yes,” said Jeremy. “Disc? Sphere? Cylinder?”
Jenny scrunched up her nose in thought. “Have you seen Independence Day? Kinda like that.”
Jeremy put his book down. “Really.”
“Yeah. Come and see.”
He got to his feet. Bryan was still hovering over him, so close that when Jeremy stood, the top of his head almost connected with Bryan’s chin. “Excuse me,” said Jeremy, with dignity. “I need to get by.”
“You’re gonna go be our ambassador to the aliens? When they say ‘Take me to your leader,’ you want me to send ‘em to you?”
“I doubt they will speak English, or request to see this country’s leadership. No,” said Jeremy, pushing his glasses up his nose, “I suspect they are here to kill us.”
“Shit,” said Jenny.
Bryan prodded Jeremy’s shoulder with two beefy fingers. “How do you know they’re not here about peace and love and cosmic harmony? Huh?”
“Don’t touch me,” said Jeremy. “And I just do.”
“Ten bucks says you’re wrong.”
Jeremy scratched his chin. “I’m afraid that’s not a very good bet for me because if I’m right—and I am—you’ll probably end up a scorchmark on the sidewalk, and scorchmarks don’t pay up.”
Bryan folded his arms across his massive chest. “Twenty bucks.”
“You’re on.”
“Witness!” said Jenny. “Though frankly, I’m with Jeremy. Those fuckers look mean.”
“Wait, do you mean to say you’ve seen the actual creatures?”
They were walking carefully through the juniors’ section, where Wal-Mart was offering the latest in spring fashions at competitive prices. Bryan paused to examine a strappy tank with a built in bra; “Stop that,” said Jenny, slapping his hand away.
“No,” she said, returning her attention to Jeremy, who guiltily looked away from the top Bryan was still toying with behind her back. “Just the spaceships themselves. They have lots of little sharp pokey bits.”
“Spaceships?” said Jeremy.
“Yeah,” said Bryan. “The one in the parking lot and the one that’s still darting around in the sky.”
Jeremy stared at him.
“I tried to tell you.”
Jeremy began to run.
At the front of the store, several rows of customers and blue-vested employees were pressed up against the big plate glass windows, ogling the interstellar phenomenon that had settled down, like a dog preparing for a nap, atop many of their SUVs. Jeremy, who was somewhat vertically challenged, couldn’t see over the mass of bodies. “Wanna stand on my shoulders?” Bryan asked. Jeremy glared at him.
“No, thank you,” he said, climbing up on one of the checkout stands. Then he said, “Wow...”
The spaceship was huge, a massive elliptical structure with lots of spiny brass towers—almost minarets—sticking out of the top. It looked rather like a sea anemone. A sea anemone that had swallowed about a dozen of Alice’s ‘EAT ME’ cakes.
Jeremy glanced up, looking for the second spaceship, but the sky was empty of so much as a cloud. The spaceship on the ground was similarly quiescent: other than the glint of the sun off the golden minarets, it was completely lifeless and grey. If the crowd was expecting it to start flashing lights and making musical messages like the vessel in Close Encounters, Jeremy suspected that they were going to be very disappointed indeed.
He got down off the counter. “Yep, they’re evil.”
“How do you know?” asked Bryan. “You looked for two seconds!”
“I just know, all right?” His eyes darted back and forth, like those of a rabbit peeking its head out of the tall grass—right before it gets shot or gobbled up by something with very sharp teeth. “Come on,” he said. “We need to come up with a plan.”
He dashed off toward the toy firearm aisle. Bryan and Jenny trailed after him, like an aged rock star’s much beleaguered handlers. “What plan?” Bryan asked. “What can we do?”
“We can stop them!” said Jeremy. “Prevent them from doing whatever dastardly deed they’ve deemed it their duty to do!”
Bryan and Jenny exchanged a look. The moment was quickly shattered by Jeremy hurtling a pair of plastic guns at them. “Jeremy,” said Jenny, seeing that he was cocking the barrel of a SuperSoaker like it was an AK-47, “you do know these are fake guns, right?”
“The aliens aren’t going to know that!” said Jeremy. “Now come on! We’ll sneak out the back.”
They filed out through baby clothes and lingerie, then made their way into the warehouse, where Jeremy stopped off at his office to discard his vest. “I am not going down wearing that,” he said, chucking it on the floor.
“Wait,” said Bryan, “going down?” But Jenny was already shucking her vest as well, even going so far as to grind her yellow smiley face pin beneath the heel of her shoe. “Going down?” Bryan repeated, awkwardly tugging at his buttons. “Are we talking self-sacrifice here? Because that may be part of your plan, but it is not part of mine. I’ve got my five-year plan right here—” He pulled a piece of notebook paper out of his pocket. “—And see, it says ‘Get promoted to Shift Manager, get promoted to Assistant Manager, get promoted to General Manager...’ Nothing about dying battling aliens with squirt guns.”
Jeremy reached out, obviously intending to snatch the paper from Bryan’s fingers and dramatically rip it to shreds. Bryan, no stranger to ‘To the side, too slow,’ hastily yanked it away. “Hey,” he said. “Nobody touches the five-year plan. The five-year plan is sacred.”
“Speaking of years,” said Jenny, “I’m surprised the aliens haven’t blown us all to bits already.” She gestured toward the exit with her gun. “Shouldn’t we be...?”
“Fine,” said Bryan, stomping toward the door. “I just wanted to establish that if anyone here’s going to be dying heroically, it isn’t going to be me.”
“That’s okay,” said Jeremy, lifting his chin in his best Sidney Carton impersonation. “I’ve been waiting to die heroically all my life.”
Behind the alien spacecraft was a Longs Drugs the size of some small countries; behind that was a tiny rise, a patch of green that looked very frightened and alone. Jeremy, Jenny, and Bryan crept up it, Jeremy flicking his gun back and forth like a hyperactive member of a SWAT team, Jenny picking at the sticker on hers with a long and deadly nail, and Bryan bringing up the rear, his gun dragging behind him like a caveman’s club. “This is stupid,” he said. “This is the worst plan ever.”
Abruptly he stopped walking and sat down in the grass. He waited until he had Jeremy’s attention (this took several minutes); then he started ticking off points on his fingers. “First of all, we don’t even know if they’re hostile. What if they’re not, but when we start squirting at them, we accidentally kick off an interstellar war? Second, even if they are evil, what good are water guns going to do? Are they aliens from the Wicked Witch of the West’s home planet? I don’t think so. And finally...” He paused, his brow creased in thought. “Okay, I only have two points. But that’s enough. I’m not moving another inch.”
Suddenly, the spaceship roared to life, the golden minarets jerking forward until they lay flat against the hull and then expanding, telescoping outward. “Holy shit!” said Jenny, dropping to the grass next to Bryan. “We’re all gonna die!”
“Ha!” shouted Jeremy, levelling his gun at the spacecraft and racing forward. “Give me liberty or give me death! I will not go quietly into the night! I will not finish—ack!”
Bryan had grabbed the back of his shirt.
“Hey!” said Jeremy, from where they’d landed in an ungainly pile of limbs. “Leggo! I have to stop them! I have to—”
“Sorry,” said Bryan, using the full extent of his 60-pound advantage. “That doesn’t fit with the five-year plan.”
Then the world exploded.
“Crap,” said Jenny. “I swallowed my gum.”
Bryan raised his head. “Oh my God.”
“You said it.”
“Sweet God in heaven.”
“Yep,” said Jenny. “That’s really...really...”
“What?” cried Jeremy. “I can’t see! Get this big goon off of me!”
“...Beautiful,” Jenny finished.
Jeremy squirmed out from under Bryan. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes yes yes.”
“They vaporized the Wal-Mart!”
“Indeed they did.”
“They flew down here, landed on Mr. Jackson’s car, vaporized the Wal-Mart, and then they just flew away?”
“Seems like.”
Jeremy chucked his gun over his shoulder. “Does that make them evil or not evil?”
Jenny shrugged. “I think it’s a toss up.”
“Good, because I don’t have twenty bucks.”
They sat on the hill and watched the smoking remains of their former place of employment.
“I wonder if all the people got out in time,” said Bryan.
“I wonder if we’ll get paid for a full day today,” said Jenny.
“I wonder if I could have gone through with it,” Jeremy said. “Died trying to stop them. Gone out with a bang.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” said Bryan. “You have the rest of your life to die heroically. Why rush?”
They watched the sun set over the hazy rubble. Though they didn’t know it, across the country a dozen more soulless shopping centers were meeting their demise at the hands of the alien visitors. The smoke rose and drifted among the stars, twinkling above their heads like a myriad of possibilities.
CREDITS
or Coming Not-at-All Soon to a Bookstore Near You!
Part I: The Chambers of the Sea
Part II: a sorta fairytale*
Part III: The Hanged Men
Part IV: The Summer of Love
Part V: Heroes & Villains*
*Working title
I hope that was all at least mildly distracting. I just couldn't write all that and never let it see the light of day, you know? Anyway. Have a happy apocalypse.
III. Nuclear Fallout
“This would make a good music video,” said Will, and immediately regretted it.
Beside him, Gary put his head in his hands and moaned. He was curled up in a ball on the back seat, his knees drawn up around his ears. He was twisting his wedding ring around and around his finger.
“Sorry, Gar,” said Will, at the same time St. John said, “You’re right: it would make a good music video.”
Will made a quiet, exasperated noise. Gary moaned again. “Although,” said St. John, “if this were a music video, I’d be driving.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Simon, who was.
Will pressed his nose to the glass and watched the scenery fly by. Nothing but a barren wasteland as far as the eye could see. St. John followed his gaze. “Just look at that destruction,” he said.
“Actually, this is Kansas,” said Will. “It always looks like this.”
Three pairs of eyes swiveled to look at him.
“Lovely country you have here, Will.”
“Yes, what a delight.”
“Really, you’ve done wonders with the place.”
“What branches grow out of this stony rubbish? That’s what I want to know.”
“America the Beautiful. What a fucking joke.”
Will had been pretending not to be an American for so long, it was odd to be so forcibly reminded. Odder still, he found himself feeling strangely protective of his country of birth. “Bits of it are really quite nice,” he said. “You guys know that.”
“Right,” said St. John, brightly. “New York, for example. I used to love that town. Pity it’s rubble.”
Gary whimpered.
Simon shot St. John a cool look. “I’m sure she’s fine,” he told Gary. “She’s a survivor.”
“Funny you should say that,” St. John said. “‘Cause I’ve kinda been wondering how the hell we made it out.” He scratched at his scarred cheek. “Thought I’d used up all my second chances.”
“Well,” said Will. “I’m sure it was—”
“We all know what you think it was,” said St. John.
“—Fate,” finished Will.
“Uh-oh, he said the F-word.”
Gary raised his head. “You owe Alice 50p,” he whispered.
“And I’ll give it to her,” said Will, hoping that saying it could make it happen. “I will.”
“Will is my name, destiny’s my game,” St. John sing-songed. “Wanna tell us the future, Tiresias old chap? How long have we got before the chickens all sprout extra heads? Before the acid rain starts pouring down? Before we’re all sterile?” His hand slipped down his chest. “I wanna set my boys swimmin’ before the pool dries up, if you know what I mean.”
“Lovely, as always,” said Simon. Then he lost control of the car.
St. John, who’d had his legs propped up lazily on the dash, caught a knee to the eye. Gary’s head connected with the side of the door with a sickening crunch. Will, the only one besides Simon who was buckled in, grabbed at the dangling leather strap and hung on. The car skittered and spun, sliding helplessly over the shoulder and into a field, where it collided with a fence. “Oof!” said Simon, the airbag exploding in his face. Then there was silence.
“Ouch,” said St. John. “Bloody terrific. Now I’m gonna have a fucking shiner.”
Gary looked dazed. “Blood,” he said. He dabbed at his forehead. “I’m bleeding.”
Will leaned over to help. Meanwhile, Simon was working himself free of the airbag with the tenacity of a soldier under fire extracting himself from his parachute. “I think I hit something,” he said.
“Damn right you hit something,” said St. John. “You hit a fucking fence!”
“No. Back up on the road.”
“I wonder if we should get out of the car,” said Gary, ignoring Will’s attempts to apply pressure to his wound. “It might explode. Sometimes they explode.”
Everyone hastily vacated the car. Once they judged that they were a safe distance away, sudden combustion-wise, they looked back down the road they way they had come. “Bloody hell,” said St. John. Then he burst out laughing.
“It’s not funny,” said Simon.
“Is! You hit a bloody cow!”
“A dead cow,” said Gary. “I mean, even before Simon hit it.”
“They’re all dead cows,” said Will, pointing. “Jesus.”
St. John stopped laughing. He laid a hand on Will’s shoulder. “I don’t think He’s gonna be any help to you now.”
“Maybe we should get back in the car,” said Simon.
They turned to look at the car. It was smoking.
“The fucking car’s dead, mate,” said St. John, kicking a pebble. “We’re fucked.”
“No,” said Gary. Blood had formed a pair of crusting trails down his cheeks. “No, we have to keep going! We can’t give up!”
“Personally,” said Will. “I’d prefer not to die in Kansas.”
Simon said, “I’d prefer not to die.”
They all looked at St. John. “What? I’m not exactly eager to meet my maker!”
“Well, then,” said Simon.
They started walking.
“It’s funny,” said Will, several miles down the road. “My dad always used to promise that we’d take a road trip. Really see America. Experience the heartland. All that.”
St. John snorted. “Yeah, well my aunt always used to threaten me with trips to Wales. There’s one in every family.”
“My parents used to take me to Brighton every summer,” said Gary. “I like Brighton.”
“Brighton’s a dump.”
“Brighton,” said Gary, primly, “is the San Francisco of the North Atlantic.”
“Yeah,” said St. John. “Poofsville.”
“Please shut up,” said Simon. “Both of you.”
“Will, why don’t you sing something for us?” suggested St. John, sounding oddly sincere. “Some American folk song twaddle. What you an’ your old man would’ve sung on that road trip of yours.”
Will considered explaining that they probably would have just listened to the news or his dad’s old Creedence tapes, but instead he coughed, cleared his throat. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one,” he said, attempting to smile. Then he began to sing.
Excavating for a mine
Dwelt a miner, forty-niner,
And his daughter Clementine.
Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling Clementine!
You are lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry, Clementine.
“Well,” said St. John, when he was done. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I vote that goes on our next album.”
“Shut up!” said Simon, a hiss this time. “For God’s sake, have some decency!”
Gary was crying.
Crying, he sat down at the side of the road. “She’s dead!” he said. Through tears and snot and blood: “I know she’s dead. We’re dead. It’s over.”
They stood in a half circle around him, watching, helpless. Comforting was not something any of them were good at; that, like so many things, had been Alice’s—Alice’s role, Alice’s art.
Will knelt in the dirt. “But we can’t give up, you said. We can’t give up.”
“Yeah,” said St. John. “We’re Death by Water! Fear us!”
Gary’s half-hearted chuckle was almost worse than none at all. “I’ve always known I’d be stuck with you gits for the rest of my life.”
“And a long an’ prosperous life it’ll be,” said St. John, offering a hand. “Come on, get up.”
Gary shied away from St. John’s outstretched fingers, but he got to his feet. Simon touched his back lightly, saying nothing, and Will also rose, falling into line next to St. John. “Go West, young man,” St. John whispered, for Will’s ears only. They walked on.
That night they stopped in the shadow of an old barn. They did not go inside: Simon had poked his head in and reported, sotto voce, that there were dead horses. Will summoned his inner boy scout and built a fire; “Now I know why we keep you around,” said St. John, rubbing his hands over the flames in the traditional manner. “Deep as a well, you are.”
Simon lay back against his arms and stared up at the sky. “Stars,” he said.
“Orion,” said Gary.
“Yes.”
“Andromeda.”
“Mm.”
“Cassiopeia.”
St. John got up to take a piss and came back carrying another handful of twigs and humming “When the Man Comes Around.”
“Funny,” said Will.
“I thought so.” He looked down and saw the intent motions of Will’s hands. “I didn’t know you had those on you.”
“I always have them on me.”
They were a pack of Tarot cards. Will had unwrapped them from their purple cloth and spread the cloth out in the dirt. Now he was laying out cards, one by one, building an intricate cross that St. John had seen many times before but never questioned, dismissing it as more of Will’s naff fortune-telling shite.
It was still naff fortune-telling shite. But; “What’s that mean?” he asked, pointing.
Will looked like he had been waiting for someone to ask him that for twenty years. “That’s me,” he said. “I always get that card.”
“Well, you are a great bloody fool.”
Will smiled. “It symbolizes a journey.”
“Sure it does. And what’s that?” He pointed again. “Death? That doesn’t sound good.”
Will shook his head. “It’s a change. That’s all.”
“If you say so,” said St. John.
He waited for Will to turn over the next card. He did not hold his breath.
IV. Asteroid
I’m going to do it. This is the last night of the world. I’m going to tell him.
I don’t like how quiet it is. I don’t know where my parents are; I don’t know if they’ll be back in time. From across the apartment I can hear my brother listening to Marilyn Manson. Hardly seems like the kind of thing you’d want to listen to on the last night of the world, but teenagers are weird. Earlier he was playing that R.E.M. song, but I guess the irony was hitting a little too close to home.
I wonder if he’s listening to anything right now. Maybe he’s playing his cello. He always said he wanted to play at Nero when Los Angeles burned.
I need to tell him. I need to call him. The phone’s not in its cradle. I press the button to page it, and suddenly there’s a loud, insistent beeping breaking through whatever Marilyn’s supposed to be singing. “I’m using it, dipshit!” shouts my brother. I walk down the hall and start banging on his door. “Well, I need it!” I shout back. “It’s important!”
David opens the door. The phone’s pressed to his ear, but even over the music I can hear that he hasn’t gotten through, that there’s just that echoy, mechanical voice pumping again and again through the receiver: “We’re sorry, all our lines are currently busy...”
“Mine’s important, too,” he says. “So fuck off.”
“Fine,” I say. I have a better idea anyway.
Back out in the living room, I’m rooting through my dad’s jacket pockets for the car keys when the music shuts off and David comes out. He makes a big show of holding the telephone out to me before tossing it over his shoulder. I open my mouth, then close it. Everything about his expression is a dare.
Besides, I’ve found the keys.
“What are you doing?” David asks, watching me pull on my own jacket and go to the door.
“Leaving.”
“I need to use the car.”
“Too bad,” I say, “I’m using it.”
“It’s important,” he says, quietly now.
Not as important as what I need to do, I think, but then I realize that it is as important. In fact, it’s the same.
“Please,” David starts to say, but I wave the word away. “Come on,” I say. “I’ll take you to Clare’s.”
Even though no sound comes out, his lips form the words and that’s enough.
The traffic on Wilshire is bad. Really bad.
“Everywhere in L.A. takes twenty minutes,” says my brother, sarcastically. It’s taken us twenty minutes to go four blocks.
He starts fiddling with the radio, hurrying past the news, country, one station where the DJ is sobbing uncontrollably, and the teeny bob channel. He settles on his favorite classic rock station, leaning back in the seat as the DJ finishes announcing the last song: “—Water with ‘Amor Fati.’ And next up, one of my personal favorites by the inextirpable Johnny Cash.”
“Funny,” I say.
“I think so,” says my brother.
I drum my fingers on the wheel. “What are you going to tell Clare?” I ask.
He rolls his eyes at me. “I dunno. What are you going to tell Jack?”
I don’t say anything. David smirks. “Thought so.”
I switch off the radio. David rolls his eyes again, then unbuckles his seatbelt and climbs up on the chair. He unrolls the window and sticks his head out. “Why did you bring that?” I ask, seeing that he’s got his DV at the ready.
He grins at me over his shoulder as he points the camera out the window, up at the dark, rolling sky. “What filmmaker hasn’t dreamed of getting the end of the world on tape?”
“Yeah,” I concede, “but who’s gonna watch it?”
It’s David’s turn not to say anything. Instead he leans out the window, filming the sky and the lights of the buildings and the traffic and the people, all the people. We inch down Wilshire Boulevard. I pick at my fingernails and stare straight ahead. “Can you see it?” I ask.
David is silent for a minute. Then, “Yes,” he says. “It’s getting bigger.”
I want to look. I don’t want to look. A man in a hideous leather jacket darts in front of my headlights, so I can’t look, I have to keep my eyes on the road. From his vantage point somewhat above the traffic, David seems to be surveying the street. “San Vicente looks less gridlocked,” he says. “See if you can get over.”
Working my way into the left lane takes up all of my concentration. Cars are honking wildly now, a marked contrast to the deadly silence that pervaded the scene when we first started out. People’s emotions must be spinning faster than a supersonic top, I think. Odd that I feel so flat.
David slips back into the car as I make the turn onto San Vicente and start heading north. “Good footage?” I ask. He gives me his usual look, the one that says, I shot it. Of course it’s good. “Funny,” he says, “while I was shooting, I was thinking just like I always do, planning how I was going to edit it, where the cuts should be, even considering ideas for a backing track. But I’m not going to do any of that. It’s just going to sit there in the camera. And then it won’t be there at all.”
I look over at him. He’s facing forward, his expression neutral. Perhaps a slight tremor in his jaw. Other than that, nothing.
“Are you scared?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nah, it’ll all be over too quick for it to hurt.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
He glances at me, his neck staying rigid and his eyes darting almost imperceptibly to the left. Then, his gaze back on the camera in his lap: “Yes.”
“Maybe she won’t be home.”
“Worse,” he says. “I need to know.” An abrupt shake of the head. “And hey, if she laughs at me—” He laughs himself, and its worse than no laughter at all. “Well, I won’t have long to feel bad about it, will I?”
We’re nearing her street. “David,” I say. “David—”
“It’s all right, Morgan,” he says. “Thank you.” Then he gets out of the car.
I watch him walk up the path to the house. The lights are off, but from the living room there’s the blue glow of a television, and maybe a shadow, a shape, a silhouette. Maybe Clare. I watch my brother open the door and step inside. Then I’m alone.
I drive off before I can see any more, some shadowplay of reunion or rejection behind the bluelit curtains. It’s only a few blocks to Jack’s house, and the side streets are mostly empty. Why do people take to their cars, I think. Where do they think they’re running?
I wonder what Jack will think when I tell him. I wonder what he’ll say. I wonder if he’ll touch me: my face, my hair, my body.
I wonder if he’ll let me touch him. Just his shoulder. Just so I know he’s real.
Jack’s house is also dark. No television. No shadowy shapes behind the windowblinds. I shut off the car. It’s quiet again, that same deadly quiet. But...I think I might hear cello music.
I open the door and get out of the car.
I get out of the car.
I get out of the car.
Funny that I’m not moving.
I’m going to do it, I tell myself. It’s the last night of the world. I’m going to tell him.
Soon.
Soon enough.
Soon.
I close my eyes. From the sky comes a sound of thunder.
V. Aliens
“There’s a spaceship in the parking lot,” said Bryan.
“Uh-huh.” Jeremy did not look up from his novel.
“No, really. It landed on Mr. Jackson’s car.”
“This is my break time right now,” said Jeremy, still not raising his eyes. “Please do not interrupt it with your puerile attempts at humor.”
“Holy shit you guys,” said Jenny, running into the back room. “There’s a fucking spaceshipin the parking lot.”
Jeremy lowered his book. “What kind?”
“Kind?” spat Bryan, obviously annoyed at not having been believed.
“Yes,” said Jeremy. “Disc? Sphere? Cylinder?”
Jenny scrunched up her nose in thought. “Have you seen Independence Day? Kinda like that.”
Jeremy put his book down. “Really.”
“Yeah. Come and see.”
He got to his feet. Bryan was still hovering over him, so close that when Jeremy stood, the top of his head almost connected with Bryan’s chin. “Excuse me,” said Jeremy, with dignity. “I need to get by.”
“You’re gonna go be our ambassador to the aliens? When they say ‘Take me to your leader,’ you want me to send ‘em to you?”
“I doubt they will speak English, or request to see this country’s leadership. No,” said Jeremy, pushing his glasses up his nose, “I suspect they are here to kill us.”
“Shit,” said Jenny.
Bryan prodded Jeremy’s shoulder with two beefy fingers. “How do you know they’re not here about peace and love and cosmic harmony? Huh?”
“Don’t touch me,” said Jeremy. “And I just do.”
“Ten bucks says you’re wrong.”
Jeremy scratched his chin. “I’m afraid that’s not a very good bet for me because if I’m right—and I am—you’ll probably end up a scorchmark on the sidewalk, and scorchmarks don’t pay up.”
Bryan folded his arms across his massive chest. “Twenty bucks.”
“You’re on.”
“Witness!” said Jenny. “Though frankly, I’m with Jeremy. Those fuckers look mean.”
“Wait, do you mean to say you’ve seen the actual creatures?”
They were walking carefully through the juniors’ section, where Wal-Mart was offering the latest in spring fashions at competitive prices. Bryan paused to examine a strappy tank with a built in bra; “Stop that,” said Jenny, slapping his hand away.
“No,” she said, returning her attention to Jeremy, who guiltily looked away from the top Bryan was still toying with behind her back. “Just the spaceships themselves. They have lots of little sharp pokey bits.”
“Spaceships?” said Jeremy.
“Yeah,” said Bryan. “The one in the parking lot and the one that’s still darting around in the sky.”
Jeremy stared at him.
“I tried to tell you.”
Jeremy began to run.
At the front of the store, several rows of customers and blue-vested employees were pressed up against the big plate glass windows, ogling the interstellar phenomenon that had settled down, like a dog preparing for a nap, atop many of their SUVs. Jeremy, who was somewhat vertically challenged, couldn’t see over the mass of bodies. “Wanna stand on my shoulders?” Bryan asked. Jeremy glared at him.
“No, thank you,” he said, climbing up on one of the checkout stands. Then he said, “Wow...”
The spaceship was huge, a massive elliptical structure with lots of spiny brass towers—almost minarets—sticking out of the top. It looked rather like a sea anemone. A sea anemone that had swallowed about a dozen of Alice’s ‘EAT ME’ cakes.
Jeremy glanced up, looking for the second spaceship, but the sky was empty of so much as a cloud. The spaceship on the ground was similarly quiescent: other than the glint of the sun off the golden minarets, it was completely lifeless and grey. If the crowd was expecting it to start flashing lights and making musical messages like the vessel in Close Encounters, Jeremy suspected that they were going to be very disappointed indeed.
He got down off the counter. “Yep, they’re evil.”
“How do you know?” asked Bryan. “You looked for two seconds!”
“I just know, all right?” His eyes darted back and forth, like those of a rabbit peeking its head out of the tall grass—right before it gets shot or gobbled up by something with very sharp teeth. “Come on,” he said. “We need to come up with a plan.”
He dashed off toward the toy firearm aisle. Bryan and Jenny trailed after him, like an aged rock star’s much beleaguered handlers. “What plan?” Bryan asked. “What can we do?”
“We can stop them!” said Jeremy. “Prevent them from doing whatever dastardly deed they’ve deemed it their duty to do!”
Bryan and Jenny exchanged a look. The moment was quickly shattered by Jeremy hurtling a pair of plastic guns at them. “Jeremy,” said Jenny, seeing that he was cocking the barrel of a SuperSoaker like it was an AK-47, “you do know these are fake guns, right?”
“The aliens aren’t going to know that!” said Jeremy. “Now come on! We’ll sneak out the back.”
They filed out through baby clothes and lingerie, then made their way into the warehouse, where Jeremy stopped off at his office to discard his vest. “I am not going down wearing that,” he said, chucking it on the floor.
“Wait,” said Bryan, “going down?” But Jenny was already shucking her vest as well, even going so far as to grind her yellow smiley face pin beneath the heel of her shoe. “Going down?” Bryan repeated, awkwardly tugging at his buttons. “Are we talking self-sacrifice here? Because that may be part of your plan, but it is not part of mine. I’ve got my five-year plan right here—” He pulled a piece of notebook paper out of his pocket. “—And see, it says ‘Get promoted to Shift Manager, get promoted to Assistant Manager, get promoted to General Manager...’ Nothing about dying battling aliens with squirt guns.”
Jeremy reached out, obviously intending to snatch the paper from Bryan’s fingers and dramatically rip it to shreds. Bryan, no stranger to ‘To the side, too slow,’ hastily yanked it away. “Hey,” he said. “Nobody touches the five-year plan. The five-year plan is sacred.”
“Speaking of years,” said Jenny, “I’m surprised the aliens haven’t blown us all to bits already.” She gestured toward the exit with her gun. “Shouldn’t we be...?”
“Fine,” said Bryan, stomping toward the door. “I just wanted to establish that if anyone here’s going to be dying heroically, it isn’t going to be me.”
“That’s okay,” said Jeremy, lifting his chin in his best Sidney Carton impersonation. “I’ve been waiting to die heroically all my life.”
Behind the alien spacecraft was a Longs Drugs the size of some small countries; behind that was a tiny rise, a patch of green that looked very frightened and alone. Jeremy, Jenny, and Bryan crept up it, Jeremy flicking his gun back and forth like a hyperactive member of a SWAT team, Jenny picking at the sticker on hers with a long and deadly nail, and Bryan bringing up the rear, his gun dragging behind him like a caveman’s club. “This is stupid,” he said. “This is the worst plan ever.”
Abruptly he stopped walking and sat down in the grass. He waited until he had Jeremy’s attention (this took several minutes); then he started ticking off points on his fingers. “First of all, we don’t even know if they’re hostile. What if they’re not, but when we start squirting at them, we accidentally kick off an interstellar war? Second, even if they are evil, what good are water guns going to do? Are they aliens from the Wicked Witch of the West’s home planet? I don’t think so. And finally...” He paused, his brow creased in thought. “Okay, I only have two points. But that’s enough. I’m not moving another inch.”
Suddenly, the spaceship roared to life, the golden minarets jerking forward until they lay flat against the hull and then expanding, telescoping outward. “Holy shit!” said Jenny, dropping to the grass next to Bryan. “We’re all gonna die!”
“Ha!” shouted Jeremy, levelling his gun at the spacecraft and racing forward. “Give me liberty or give me death! I will not go quietly into the night! I will not finish—ack!”
Bryan had grabbed the back of his shirt.
“Hey!” said Jeremy, from where they’d landed in an ungainly pile of limbs. “Leggo! I have to stop them! I have to—”
“Sorry,” said Bryan, using the full extent of his 60-pound advantage. “That doesn’t fit with the five-year plan.”
Then the world exploded.
“Crap,” said Jenny. “I swallowed my gum.”
Bryan raised his head. “Oh my God.”
“You said it.”
“Sweet God in heaven.”
“Yep,” said Jenny. “That’s really...really...”
“What?” cried Jeremy. “I can’t see! Get this big goon off of me!”
“...Beautiful,” Jenny finished.
Jeremy squirmed out from under Bryan. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes yes yes.”
“They vaporized the Wal-Mart!”
“Indeed they did.”
“They flew down here, landed on Mr. Jackson’s car, vaporized the Wal-Mart, and then they just flew away?”
“Seems like.”
Jeremy chucked his gun over his shoulder. “Does that make them evil or not evil?”
Jenny shrugged. “I think it’s a toss up.”
“Good, because I don’t have twenty bucks.”
They sat on the hill and watched the smoking remains of their former place of employment.
“I wonder if all the people got out in time,” said Bryan.
“I wonder if we’ll get paid for a full day today,” said Jenny.
“I wonder if I could have gone through with it,” Jeremy said. “Died trying to stop them. Gone out with a bang.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” said Bryan. “You have the rest of your life to die heroically. Why rush?”
They watched the sun set over the hazy rubble. Though they didn’t know it, across the country a dozen more soulless shopping centers were meeting their demise at the hands of the alien visitors. The smoke rose and drifted among the stars, twinkling above their heads like a myriad of possibilities.
CREDITS
or Coming Not-at-All Soon to a Bookstore Near You!
Part I: The Chambers of the Sea
Part II: a sorta fairytale*
Part III: The Hanged Men
Part IV: The Summer of Love
Part V: Heroes & Villains*
*Working title
I hope that was all at least mildly distracting. I just couldn't write all that and never let it see the light of day, you know? Anyway. Have a happy apocalypse.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-04 07:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-05 03:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-04 09:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-05 02:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-05 04:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-04 10:29 pm (UTC)II. I know Kit-Kat siblings--they're not twins though.
III. Kansas is more planar than a pancake.
IV. This one's also my favorite.
V. This one's also my favorite.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-05 03:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-05 06:20 am (UTC)