The End is Now Read online

  Emily had never seen anything like it. Windows shattered, the plastic paneling on the sides peeled off, and then it was hard to tell exactly what was going on. There were bricks and plastic and glass and God knows what else being spit out by the tornado. It seemed like the tornado was swallowing the school.

  Nancy Palmer was trying to comment on what she was watching, but it was impossible to hear her. There was too much screaming. Even through the rushing wind, the screaming children could be heard.

  “All those kids!” Some girl in the class was crying. “My — ”

  “ — friends are in there! I tried to tell them!”

  Will thought about everyone. Jane, who was so pretty and nice and who looked like such a babe with those blonde pigtails; Nate probably had all of his cool new graphic novels with him; and Mrs. White who always put smiley faces on his papers when he did a good job and wrote “You can do better” when he didn’t try very hard.

  Was the face killing them all?

  Were they all dying right now?

  The thought made Will sick. He wanted to turn away —

  — but he couldn’t. He had to see what was happening.

  No one in the breakroom was saying a word. Some of the guys at Hansley had kids who’d gone to school today. Hours before, they’d told Jeff, “Sorry, I just can’t believe what your kid’s saying. I’m not keeping my kids from school two days in a row. That’s ridiculous.” And now Jeff looked at those same guys (a lot of them soulless sharks who told crass jokes, ripped off customers every chance they got, and compared their own wives to livestock) and watched as tears rolled down their cheeks. Jeff thought some of those guys probably hadn’t cried in fifteen years.

  And then sunlight started to rip through the black clouds. The whooshing and crashing began to dissipate and the tornado quickly followed. Quickly as it had appeared, the whirlwind was gone. But it had done its damage. Entire pieces of the school were missing. The playground had been ripped apart to where only metal poles of the swing sets and half the monkey bars were still intact.

  It looked like a bomb had gone off.

  Moments later every person in the room was on their phone. They were trying to get through to anybody: their wives, their kids, the school. They were trying to get word of what had happened. Some were trying to find out if there were tornados anywhere else in Goodland.

  Jeff didn’t take out his phone. He ran into the bathroom, leaned over the toilet, and let everything go. And in between heaves, he thought to himself, How is this possibly happening? How could he know? What are they going to do to him?

  What will happen to my son?

  Amy put her arm around Will. She brushed the hair off his face and kissed him on the forehead. She said, “It’s going to be okay.”

  And it was going to be okay, Amy thought. They said he was wrong. They said he was crazy and he was makings threats. But God, they all looked foolish now. Because he was right.

  Her baby boy had been right about everything.

  THE MIDDLE

  Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.

  JESUS SPEAKING TO THE DISCIPLES,

  MATTHEW 24 : 40 – 42 NIV

  There is something undeniably attractive about becoming a born-again Christian… Every moment of your life is a search and rescue mission: Everyone you meet needs to be converted and anyone you don’t convert is going to hell, and you will be partially at fault for their scorched corpse.

  CHUCK KLOSTERMAN,

  SEX, DRUGS, AND COCOA PUFFS

  THE PREPARED

  For as long as Goodland has existed, there have been those who knew the Goodland rapture was coming. But they didn’t start calling themselves the Prepared until after the tornado hit Jefferson Elementary. And even before they called themselves the Prepared, they understood that God didn’t need the test market for the rapture. After all, He is God. He already knows everything. He was, is, and forever will be omnipotent. And you don’t just lose omnipotence.

  The Prepared made it very clear to new members that just because they thought Goodland might be the test market for the rapture, they were not saying that God had lost a step. Nor were they saying that the creator of heaven and earth now needed market analysis rather than just flooding the earth or raining down fire and brimstone with the snap of His fingers like He did during His prime in the Old Testament days.

  But there were other factors to consider.

  For instance, maybe the testing was more for all of us. Especially in this day and age where human beings test everything. We measure and remeasure and read consumer reports before we make any decisions. And God understands this, so perhaps He’s being culturally relevant by testing out the rapture in Good-land. After all, in the twenty-first century, people won’t just believe something because everyone else does. This is the age of skepticism. This is the age where the answers to any of life’s great questions are just a Google search away. So perhaps humankind will need a sneak preview of what the rapture looks like so they can know how to respond.

  And there’s also free will to consider. The Prepared don’t like to talk too much about this because who really knows just where free will starts and stops? Who knows when a decision is made how much free will has to do with the decision and how much God has intervened? That’s for theologians and heads of denominations to debate.

  But that’s beside the point.

  The fact is, once the rapture starts, there are decisions that people will make in how it plays out. With human beings playing a part in the equation, it is possible things can get messed up. There is a chance that God’s best-laid plans and intentions can go awry. So wouldn’t God want to test out the rapture with the one variable — people — before he took it global? It’s not like you get a second chance at the apocalypse after all.

  With all of this in mind, one of the main reasons for the Prepared to exist was to make preparations for the rapture in Goodland. There was so much to do. Tree branches that hung over tombstones in graveyards had to be trimmed. What could be worse than the great ancestors of Goodland rising from their tombs and thwacking into tree branches on the way to their immortal destiny? Of course it was entirely possible that the souls would just pass through the tree branch like Patrick Swayze walking through a door in Ghost, but the Prepared weren’t willing to take that chance.

  Then there were their personal lives and possessions to think of. This is why most of the Prepared drew up a document called “The Rapture Will and Testament.” This document would bequeath all earthly possessions in case of the rapture. The person who was drawing up this document would usually leave all of his or her goods to the friend or family member who was least likely to be raptured. Along with possessions, the inheritor(s) would also receive a note that explained why the rapture had happened and how it was not too late to save their immortal soul.

  Most of all, there was getting the message out. Sure, the Prepared had their souls in good standing with eternity, but many in Goodland did not. So the number one reason they existed was to let people know the end was coming when it was time. And once the tornado hit the elementary school, every member of the Prepared knew how close they really were to the end. Moments after it happened they sprung into action, trimming branches, affixing bumper stickers, finalizing their Rapture Will and Testaments, and sending the message out that the apocalypse was coming soon. They sent out emails and made easy-to-read pamphlets with bright, colorful illustrations explaining what would happen in the upcoming days. One of the wealthy members of the Prepared owned some of the billboards in Goodland. So he had the biggest billboard in town painted black with blocky white letters that read The End Is Now. It was a message for all of them. It was a reminder for the skeptics in the town of Goodland to drop their cynicism and get their souls ready for the end.

  Becaus
e it was time to get ready. One of the Henderson boy’s prophecies had come to fruition. There were only two left. And once they came to pass, the test would begin. The Prepared were going to do everything within their power to make sure all of Goodland passed with flying colors.

  JEFF HENDERSON

  From the beginning, the idea of the rapture didn’t make very much sense to Jeff. He’d never even heard of it before the first time he’d gone to church with Amy. And he’d never been a regular attendee at church before he’d gotten married.

  Before Amy, Jeff didn’t have strong feelings about religion one way or another. He felt about church the same way he felt about NASCAR racing — it wasn’t really his thing but he was cool with other people being passionate about it. Still, like NASCAR racing, there were so many nuances about church that Jeff didn’t understand. So many cultural differences. Jeff didn’t know what they all were; truthfully he knew very few of them, but even the little bit he did know weirded him out.

  For instance, Amy didn’t listen to the rock groups he was into like The Cure and Aerosmith and Def Leppard. She listened to Petra and Stryper and Whitecross, which were sort of the same except for all of the songs were about Jesus and the music wasn’t quite as good. She said she listened to Stryper because secular songs were bad. Jeff didn’t even know what a secular song was. The best he could tell, the only difference between secular and Christian songs was that secular songs weren’t about Jesus and their music was a little better. But this was just the tip of the iceberg of what Jeff didn’t understand about Christianity.

  Still, it didn’t matter. He’d married into Christianity. And on the first Sunday after they’d gotten married, Jeff promised Amy he’d go to church. He wished he hadn’t. He felt completely uncomfortable there. The stained glass windows had all of these freaky images of saints and disciples looking at Jesus. The stories on the stained glass were distorted, colorful, animated versions of the Bible stories he remembered hearing growing up. Jeff felt like a foreigner. Everyone inside the church was (and always had been) passionate, and even fanatical, about church and religion and God and Jesus. And not only was he not one of them, he was the evil wicked teenager who’d impregnated Amy Jones, one of their own — the innocent flower of a girl who spent her summers in their youth camps and on their mission trips. But now, in sort of his own sinful, messed-up, heathen way, he’d married into the church family.

  That’s how things are in marriage, Jeff realized. You assimilate your spouse’s traditions and pastimes into your own life. For instance, at Jeff’s house at Christmas it was, “On your marks, get set, go!” and everyone tore into their presents as fast as they could. But at Amy’s house they tore into them slowly, one at a time, going around in the circle and admiring and ooing and ahhing about all the wonderful sweaters and toys and Chinese message contraptions. Jeff and Amy agreed that every other Christmas they would rotate how they opened presents, honoring both family traditions.

  Jeff ’s only Sunday tradition was making waffles and fresh-squeezed orange juice. So they decided to merge their traditions. Jeff would go to church. And afterwards Amy would make waffles and fresh-squeezed OJ.

  It was only fair.

  On his first morning at church as a married man, he walked through the giant oak doors trying to pretend everyone wasn’t staring at him. He actually couldn’t tell if they were staring at him or his wife, who was with child, or if they were staring at this whole scene. Jeff couldn’t tell if people thought that maybe he and Amy were there to make a scene, to flip over the communion tables and snatch handfuls of cash from the offering plates. So he tried to ignore them. He took Amy to find a seat and sat there with a confident smile as if he were completely used to going to church. As if this was what he did every Sunday.

  Then, when the service started, Jeff stopped thinking about the other people and started to consider what the preacher was saying. Jeff couldn’t tell what Pastor Colby (the former youth pastor who was now the Senior Pastor) was talking about. Jeff didn’t know what the preacher meant when he said you have to make an eternal impact. That’s how he kept saying it. “Live your life to make an eternal impact.” Jeff assumed Pastor Colby was talking about taking care of the environment.

  But he wasn’t.

  He was talking about heaven and hell and the fact that people will spend an eternity in one place or another. He was talking about how your actions will get you close to heaven or hell.

  Pastor Colby went on, “You see, someday Jesus will come back for all of us. We will be raptured, and we will be held accountable for every decision we’ve made on earth. Don’t you want to be able to stand there, in front of the Father, and feel proud? Don’t you want to hear Him say, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant’?”

  Jeff thought it would probably be nice to hear Jesus say that. But he had the feeling that for everyone around him, Jesus’ saying this wasn’t a nice thought — it was a goal. They lived every single day facing the reality of heaven and hell. And Jeff suddenly wondered how everyone lived like this. He looked around the sanctuary and wondered how they all woke up, scanned their offices, schools, the bus stops and supermarkets, knowing that everyone around them was going to one place or the other. Sure, Jeff knew it was possible everyone would end up in heaven or hell, but he also knew it was possible that the ozone layer could melt away; it was possible the local nuclear power plant could melt down; it was possible that on his next checkup he could get diagnosed with cancer and only have six months to live. There was a chance all those things could happen. But you can’t live your life in fear of a chance that something could happen. It would paralyze you. But for the people in the church, there wasn’t the chance heaven and hell could happen; they knew better, they knew it was only a matter of time.

  “You see, guys, it’s real simple. The Bible says nobody knows the day or the time. So one day we’re just going to be going along, business as usual, and then BAM,” the minister snapped his fingers. “And like that we’ll be gone. So we need to live our lives holy and righteous. We need to live as if Jesus actually were coming back any second.”

  After the service Jeff and Amy mingled with some church members. Jeff was surprised at how friendly everyone was. He was invited to the next week’s potluck; he was hugged, smiled at, introduced to everyone, and overall it seemed like he was being welcomed into the church family.

  On the car ride home things were better. He drove through the neighborhoods with Amy snuggled up to him, resting her head on his shoulder. It was a spring day and he slowly drove past the kids playing jump rope and hopscotch, past the fathers grilling bratwursts in their “kiss the cook” aprons, past the blossoming trees, singing birds, and elderly couples drinking freckled strawberry lemonade on the porch. Jeff rolled down his window and the breeze tussled his hair, almost reassuring him that everything was going to be okay from here on out. And for a moment he blinked, took a deep breath, and let everything soak in.

  But when he opened his eyes, they were all gone.

  The kids had vanished and the jump rope slowly fell to the ground. The elderly couple had disappeared and their freckled strawberry lemonade fell to the porch, shattered, and red juice crept across it. Around him he could smell the bratwursts as their skin started to blacken and burn. And when Jeff looked over at Amy she wasn’t there. She had vanished along with everyone else. When he felt the place where she was just sitting, it was still warm. He couldn’t bring himself to lift his hand up because he didn’t want to stop feeling the warmth. He knew it was the last of piece of Amy he would ever have.

  Then Jeff shook his head and they were all back: the children, the fathers with grilling utensils, the elderly couple, and Amy. She didn’t even notice anything was wrong. She was staring out the window, humming along with the radio.

  This was the first paranoid flash Jeff ever had. He thought everything he was seeing was real because he wasn’t used to these flashes/paranoid-visions-of-the-future. So at that moment he couldn’t ma
ke sense of what he was seeing.

  Still, he’d had fears before and he knew a little bit about dealing with them. He knew the best way to battle paranoia was to use logic and reason. And when he had the rapture vision he used the same sort of reason. He told himself the rapture wasn’t going to happen because, in all honesty, it was nonsense. Was he really supposed to believe that one day every Christian in Goodland would really just vanish? There were so many logistical problems in this line of believing alone. How would God know exactly who to rapture? And if he was doing it all at the same moment, couldn’t there be a little confusion and chaos? What if some of the wrong people were raptured? What if God scooped up a few sinners and pagans and heathens by mistake just because the whole thing was happening so fast? What if God grabbed some Mormons and Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses because they were all in some sort of church? Would they have to be sent back to earth? Would there have to be a second rapture to grab all the people who’d been inaccurately left behind?

  As Jeff pulled into his apartment complex he decided that if he was going to go to church, he would no longer put any stock or thought or faith in the talk of the rapture. From that point forward the rapture was just an odd footnote in the Christian belief system that he would ignore.

  And through the years, Jeff’s Sunday morning ritual began to change — once the baby was born, the fresh-squeezed orange juice came from cartons and the homemade waffles became Eggos. “There just isn’t time to make everything from scratch,” Amy would say. And then a couple of years later the Eggos became Frosted Shredded Mini Wheats because they were high in fiber, and the OJ became grapefruit juice because there wasn’t all that needless sugar — but that was okay. He had more important things to worry about than breakfast now. He had become a responsible adult and a reliable parent. He went to church and provided for his family. These were monumental accomplishments he never thought he’d be able to do when Amy first announced her pregnancy. And as part of his new life he even learned that church could give him some of the right things to worry about. He began to concern himself with the importance of being kind to his neighbor. He learned to make sure he never committed any of the horrendous sins like stealing or killing or committing adultery.