The End is Now Read online

  “Mrs. Henderson?”

  It was that kid from the police station. “Yes.”

  “I have good news. Your husband’s been let out.”

  “When was he let out?”

  “I think about three hours ago.”

  “Three hours? You couldn’t have called me sooner?”

  “I’m sorry, it’s been very busy around here.” And that’s when Amy slammed the phone down. Jeff’s been out for three hours and he hasn’t come home? Hasn’t even called? Enough of this. Enough sitting around and waiting while her town was falling apart and her family was out there doing God knows what.

  “Will, honey, come on. It’s time to go.”

  Will’s mom wouldn’t tell him where they were going. Wherever it was, she seemed like she was in a hurry to get there. As soon as he was awake, she told him to get ready. As soon as he was ready, they got in the car and drove. On their way to wherever it was they were going, they saw something funny. They drove by Nate Jackson’s house and his whole family was in the driveway. Mrs. Jackson was cramming their car topper and trunk with suitcases, portable appliances, groceries, cats, dogs, hamsters, goldfish, and any other possessions that would fit inside. It looked like they were packing anything they owned that would spoil or die, like they were planning on leaving for a long time.

  His mom pulled the car to a stop, rolled down the window, and asked Mrs. Jackson, “Where are you going?”

  Mrs. Jackson walked up to the car and peeked inside. “Oh, hi, Amy,” she said. “Are you okay? You look — ” Mrs. Jackson, stopped, as if she was searching for the right word, “ — tired.”

  “I’m all right. It’s been a tough couple of days,” his mom answered.

  “That’s why we’re leaving,” Mrs. Jackson said. “We just can’t handle all of this anymore.”

  “You can’t leave now. We need people like you.”

  “I know, but all of this,” Mrs. Jackson said, looking towards the Goodland skyline, “is more than we bargained for. After Paul’s accident and everything else, it’s more than we can handle, Amy. We’re not strong like you are.” Mrs. Jackson looked over towards her husband. He was wearing a neck brace. And their car was packed now. Will could see Nate inside reading a comic. He wondered if he’d ever see his friend again. “Listen, I’ll see you later Amy.”

  “If the Lord tarries,” Will’s mom said.

  “Yes, if the Lord tarries,” Mrs. Jackson said and then got in the minivan with her family.

  “Let’s go, Will.” Amy rolled up the window and sped away from the Jacksons’ house.

  “Why is Nate leaving?” Will asked his mom.

  “I’m not sure, honey. Probably because they’re scared of the unknown. That’s what happens even to people of faith,” she explained. “They get tested. Sometimes it’s too much and they give in to their fears. That’s why we must be brave in these final hours.”

  “Okay, Mom,” Will said. It was in the same tone of voice that he used when he said that he’d brush his teeth or that he’d do his homework. He thought he should use a different tone of voice when it came to being brave about the rapture, but he didn’t have a brave rapture tone yet. He’d have to work on that in the next twenty-four hours.

  After Nate’s, they continued to drive. Even though his mom seemed in a hurry, she also didn’t seem to know where she was going. She turned up Main Street and began to drive through downtown Goodland. That’s when they saw a gathering of people — maybe 250 or 300. It was some sort of rally. A large banner hung over the old movie theater and asked, “Are You Prepared?” There were people ringing enormous bells and wearing sandwich boards that read, “The End Is Now.” Some were handing out pamphlets and fliers. Others in the group preached at people as they walked by. And a few in the group were smiling and handing out flowers and last Christmas’s leftover candy canes as folks walked up to the information booth. Even though everyone was doing something different, to Will it looked like they all had one goal — to attract as much attention to themselves as possible.

  Amy parked the car and started walking towards the rally. Will asked if they should be looking for Dad and Amy answered, “We can’t just sit around and wait for your father anymore. Time is too precious.” She seemed very tired and even more frazzled as she said this. Her eyes were glassy and focused on nothing but the rally. If Will was honest with himself, she didn’t even seem like his mom. He thought he knew why she was acting like this. It was because they weren’t all together, they were only half a family, and what’s the point of being raptured as half a family? In the last few days his mom had talked about how great it would be to lead Goodland though these final turbulent times as a family, but now they couldn’t even lead themselves. And in the process him mom stopped seeming like herself. She was more like some depressed, stressed-out stranger. Will didn’t understand people who could get so depressed. He had a friend at school who often got very sad for long stretches and for no reason at all. He had to take medicine called Prozac.

  “What does Prozac do?” Will asked his friend once.

  “It makes you feel better,” his friend said.

  “So it makes you happy?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Let me explain it like this: Have you ever burned your hand with a lighter just because you were so sad? Just because you wanted to feel something?”

  What kind of person wants to burn their hand on purpose? It can get infected and cause gangrene, and Will learned in Boy Scouts that if something gets infected with gangrene, then it sometimes has to be amputated. Seems pretty stupid to do that to yourself just because you can’t feel anything. If you weren’t sure if you could feel, you should go to the doctor. But Will had the feeling that when his friend asked the question — just because you wanted to feel something — he meant it in the deeper teenager way. It was something one of Emily’s friends would have said. Will didn’t quite understand the deeper teenager questions yet. And because he didn’t want his friend to feel even worse or to get more depressed, he answered, “Yeah, I’ve felt like that before.”

  “Well, that’s what Prozac does. It keeps you from feeling like that.”

  “That makes sense,” Will said, even though it didn’t make a bit of sense. But what also didn’t make sense was his mom being so sad. She’d gotten what she wanted. He gave the prophecy in front of the entire town last night and she was so excited about that, and yet ever since then she’d seemed hopeless. It was probably because his dad got arrested. But if that was the case, they should be looking for him. They should get him out of jail. But she didn’t seem interested in doing that. The only thing she seemed interested in was being sad. Sad enough to burn her hand with a lighter.

  Maybe she needed Prozac.

  When Will and his mom came up to the rally they were greeted by a man in a white cowboy hat with a raspy voice. “Well, if it isn’t the little prophet,” the man said. He grasped Will’s hand and gave it a violent shake. Quickly everyone noticed Will. They dropped their flowers, pamphlets, and candy canes and gathered around him. They all wanted to shake his hand and hug him. They said things like, “Thank you for being so brave last night. Thank you for being so wise. So fearless. Thanks for sharing everything you’ve seen. Did you know that was going to happen to the mayor? That he was going to die just like that? How did you know? What’s going to happen next?”

  “I didn’t know he was going to die, and I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Will answered. “I gave the final sign last night.”

  The crowd seemed deflated by this admission.

  “Do you think today is our last day in Goodland?” someone asked.

  “Last day?” Will replied.

  “The rooster crows before the harvest. The corn harvest begins tomorrow, right?”

  “I think so,” Will answered. He wished people would keep their questions to only the prophecies. Even though he didn’t know much about the prophecies, he knew a lot
less about the corn harvest or anything else farming related.

  “Well, the harvest is tomorrow,” another voice explained.

  “Okay,” Will said.

  “And the rooster always crows at sunrise,” the person stated.

  “Right,” Will answered, though he’d have to take this person’s word for it. They didn’t have a rooster so Will didn’t know exactly how they worked.

  “Well, if the rooster crows at sunrise, and the end is before the harvest, then we can pinpoint exactly when the rapture is.”

  “Really?” Will said, finally finding himself curious for the first time in this whole conversation.

  The person went on to explain, “The almanac has sunrise at 6:11 on Sunday, the day the harvest begins. If that’s the case, then we can know exactly when the rapture will hit. We can give people that moment to prepare themselves.”

  “That’s why we’re here today,” the man with the raspy voice and white hat said. “We want Goodland to know they can now set their clocks, and if they do not get things right before 6:11 on Sunday morning, then they will be separated from God and perhaps from their own families for all of eternity.”

  Will was ready to respond, but he noticed the eyes of all who were just looking at him were now looking past him. Will turned around and he saw that police cars and members of the EPF were everywhere. Sirens blared. Their cars were coming up in force and circling around the movie theater. They were barricading the rally. Officers with giant shields, clubs, gas grenades, helmets, and face masks started to get out of their cars. One officer shouted into a megaphone, “Disperse immediately. This meeting is in violation of the mayor’s assembly code.”

  “We’re not listening to any code that comes from the Antichrist!” one person shouted. And then he threw something.

  That was all it took.

  The officers charged, and everyone in the rally grabbed something to fight back with. It looked like one of those scenes from Braveheart or The Patriot where two armies collided with each other at full speed. Those movies were rated R, but Will was only allowed to watch them because they had Mel Gibson in them and his mom said anything with Mel Gibson in it didn’t actually count as being rated R. But Will was glad he’d seen those movies because it helped him make sense of what this scene looked like.

  He knew from those movies that he could get attacked from anywhere and he should duck for cover. But before Will could think of where to go he was grabbed by an EPF officer and thrown into a police car. The officer slammed the door. Will was forced to watch the scene through the window of the car. He watched as a bottle smashed off the head of an officer. One man got hit with a club. The man in the white hat grabbed a folding chair and cracked it over the back of an officer. Then one family who was just standing by got plowed down by officers with police shields.

  Things were out of control. And that might have been why the officers uncorked their gas bombs and threw them into the crowd.

  Everyone was coughing, gagging, and covering their mouths and eyes. The masses were screaming and running into each other as they scattered for cover. The clouds got so thick that Will could no longer see what was going on. And then through the clouds another officer appeared, dragging Will’s mom. He opened the door and threw her inside.

  She was coughing and crying and she threw up on the floor of the car. Will had never seen his mom throw up before. But every time he was sick, she sat there with him, rubbed his back, and held his hair off of his forehead. It always made him feel better. So he parted his mom’s hair to one side, held it out of her face, and patted her on the back.

  “It’s going to be okay, Mom,” he said. She threw up again. It smelled like coffee. Will wanted to do something more for her and he remembered that whenever he was sick, his mom always got him some Sprite. Will pressed his face against the cage separating the back from the front of the police car and shouted, “We need to get some Sprite!”

  The officer didn’t acknowledge Will. He just flicked on his sirens, put the car in drive, and sped away from the scene. “Did you hear me? My mom’s sick. We need some medicine. Or at least some Sprite.”

  The officer still didn’t answer. He was completely focused on the road, on speeding away from the scene. Amy was still coughing and hunched over. It seemed like she’d gotten really hurt out there. The officer didn’t seem to notice or care.

  Once they’d driven for a few more minutes, Will asked, “Where are you taking us?”

  The officer slammed on the brakes. He took off his helmet, slowly, like Darth Vader would. But when the man turned around, it wasn’t an officer at all.

  It was Will’s father.

  “I’m taking you and your mother away from Goodland. We’re getting out of here forever. They can have this rapture without us.”

  Jeff Henderson put his helmet back on, stomped on the gas, and the police car sped down the highway like a bat out of hell.

  THE END

  The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

  1 THESSALONIANS 4 :16 – 17

  It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts that I do understand.

  MARK TWAIN

  THE REALISTS

  The Realists had a bumper sticker of their own. It read, “In case of rapture, can I have your car?”

  They wanted the rapture to just go away. But it wouldn’t. One Realist had counted eighteen rapture predictions in the two-hundred-year history of Goodland. Nearly one every ten years. But even the oldest members of Goodland couldn’t remember the town being this worked up before. Sure, there’d been predictions that they’d seen in their lifetime. But nothing like this. They’d never seen the whole town get so wrapped up, shut down, and halfway destroyed.

  Which made every member of the Realists think the same thing — this has to stop. Now. The religious paranoia that has cast a shadow over Goodland must come to an end. This was the twenty-first century. Hadn’t we moved past thinking the world is flat, burning witches, and worrying about the sky falling?

  The Prepared would say no, and insist that the floods, storms, fires, and violence were just getting more and more intense as the years went on and would eventually lead to The End.

  But this was nonsense. There were no facts to back this. If you looked back a short time ago you could see much more catastrophic earthquakes, floods, fires, bubonic plagues, and wars where an uncountable amount of lives were lost.

  The Prepared would also insist that, more than anything, morality was worse than ever.

  But some Realists could remember a day not too long ago where segregation, racism, and sexism were common, if not encouraged, practices. In those days so many people were treated like animals. Immorality was just manifesting in different ways nowadays.

  The only thing that has changed has been the Prepared’s reaction to all these things. They have been getting more and more adamant that the end is near. This time, they have been vocalizing every fear, and this lack of reality has affected public policy and created an unstable economy. The Prepared were acting like a rock band, trashing the hotel room of Goodland because they’d be checking out tomorrow.

  The Realists were tired of it. It was time to push back. It was time to take a stand. It was time to send a message so that tomorrow, when the rapture didn’t come, the Prepared would see how destructive and foolish this all was. So that they wouldn’t try to pull this stunt again. Or maybe that was too much to ask, but at the very least, the Realists wanted to send a message so the Prepared wouldn’t try something like this again in their lifetime.

  That seemed fair.

  THE HENDERSONS

  Amy and Will had been sleeping for an hour or so after giving in t
o sleep about twenty miles on the other side of Hayes. At first they didn’t want to sleep. They used all the energy they had left protesting. “Turn around!” “What are you doing?” “Let us go!” “Take us back!” “Stop this!” and things like that. Jeff didn’t say anything. He just stared straight ahead.

  Because what was there to say?

  He had to get them out of Goodland. The time for discussion was over. Maybe if they said, “Dad, thank you so much for taking us from Goodland!” or “Honey, you are so wise for rescuing us from that horrible, horrible place!” then Jeff would have said something like, “You’re welcome.” But no one seemed to be in the complimenting mood. They couldn’t understand the bigger picture.

  After a while no one said a thing. The only sound was the hum of the car sailing down the road. But once Amy was asleep, Will asked a question Jeff knew he should answer.

  “What’s going to happen to Emily?”

  This was a fair question. Jeff had thought about stopping to get Emily, but she was at the mayor’s house. Lord knows what stopping there would have meant. In his short time on the Emergency Police Force, Jeff had heard about Mayor Clayton’s place. It was surrounded by rottweilers, armed guards, and infrared cameras. He couldn’t risk taking Amy and Will there in a stolen police car. They were too high-profile. The guards would recognize them and they’d all be back in jail.

  So Emily had to be left behind.

  Jeff would call and check on her as soon as he could. She had chosen to leave the family. So be it. No one would harm a hair on her head as long as she was in the mayor’s fort. That’s all he could hope for. He’d get his family out of Goodland for a while, and in a couple of weeks he’d go back for Emily. But he couldn’t explain all of that to Will. The poor kid already had been through so much. There was no need to worry him more. It was time to rest, time to look forward. They’d escaped from Goodland and if they looked back they’d turn into pillars of salt. So he just told his son, “I know you’re worried about your sister, but trust me, she’s going to be all right.”