The End is Now Page 27

  “You’ll never believe the story this guy’s telling me.”

  “Tornado, cornfields, and Armageddon?” the younger officer replied.

  The older officer looked surprised.

  “His wife had the exact same story.”

  “What do you think? You believe them?”

  “Sarge, I don’t know what to believe. But I’ll tell you this, I ran away from home once when I was a teenager. When I got back, my ma had that same look in her eyes. Whatever’s going on, that woman really believes her son’s in trouble. Only a mother can have that look.”

  “Take us back to Goodland,” Jeff begged. “If everything’s not exactly how we say it is, then lock me up for as long as you want.” The officers just looked at Jeff. But he could tell they were considering it. “I’m just trying to save my family.”

  EMILY HENDERSON

  Emily couldn’t stay at homecoming any longer. It wasn’t right. It didn’t matter how crazy her parents were. They wouldn’t lie about Will, and that meant Will was out here somewhere. That meant she had to be his big sister and protect him. She should have been protecting him this whole time. She knew that now. He didn’t have anyone else and he needed her. But she had been so obsessed with Curtis and homecoming — well, it was more than obsession. It was her image. If she couldn’t control that, if she couldn’t make something of herself while she was in high school, how did she ever hope to make something of herself once she graduated? There were just a couple of pretty girls she had to compete with in high school, but in the real world she’d have to compete with everybody. If she couldn’t be homecoming queen in a small town, what did that say about her chances of ever doing something anywhere?

  Emily cleared her thoughts.

  She had to stop it.

  Homecoming was over now. There was only the future. And what would the future be like without her brother? Saving Will, that was the important thing. Because if something happened to him, if he got scarred or damaged for life or worse, she’d never forgive herself. She wouldn’t deserve forgiveness.

  She wasn’t going to let that happen. She was going to find him. Problem was, she didn’t know where to look for him. Luckily, Goodland wasn’t that big of a town, so she just combed one street after another until she ended up near the cornfields, where she found hundreds of people gathered. There were bonfires, flashlights, a few torches, and a giant herd of people. And most of them were looking up at the billboard that read, “THE END IS NOW.”

  And sitting underneath the “O” of “NOW” was a boy gagged with duct tape and tied to a chair. Emily hopped out of her car and glided with remarkable grace and quickness (considering she was wearing three-inch high heels) up to the crowd. She looked closer at the boy.

  Who else could it have been but Will?

  Emily could see he was struggling. He was using all of his strength to pull against the ropes, but they weren’t going to budge. It must have been ripping his arms up to be pulling like that against the ropes, she thought. And as Emily stared at her baby brother she could see that he was crying, and not just a single tear running down his face, but tears and snot and everything else. He was in hysterics. How long had he been up there?

  The whole crowd was silently staring at him. Emily had noticed that whenever crowds had gathered over the last week, they were either bubbling with enthusiasm or brewing with anger. But this crowd was lifeless as a stadium during the national anthem. It was almost as if putting Will up on the billboard was an unpleasant but necessary chore for the crowd.

  “What is he doing up there? Let him down!” Emily screamed. It just kind of burst out of her. And the crowd quickly turned to look at her. She suddenly felt extremely uncomfortable in her high heels and silver gown, glitter on her eyelashes and her hair loaded up with so much spray that every piece was cemented into place. This was not the way she imagined people staring at her in her homecoming gown. She always thought they’d look at her with jealousy, she always thought they’d be awestruck by her beauty. And they were awestruck. But her beauty didn’t seem to be the primary reason.

  Still, since Emily already had everyone’s attention, she said, “What kind of sicko freaks are you? He’s just a kid.”

  “We’re not trying to do him any harm,” a voice said. And then a man stepped out from the crowd. Emily didn’t expect to see someone in his position here — a part of all of this. But he seemed to be more than a part. He seemed to be leading the crowd. “But we can’t let him down. He’s the messenger for all of this, Emily. He spreads fear and ignorance. He gives them permission to act this way. Permission to destroy the town, to act out, to bring everything to a halt in the name of doom and gloom.”

  “What he is is a kid in the fifth grade. You can’t do this to him,” Emily shouted.

  “I’m afraid we can.” the leader said.

  AMY HENDERSON

  Amy was in the back of the police car biting her fingernails. There was so much nervous energy coursing through her veins. She’d tried to call Emily at least fifty times and she had only answered once. And that one time she answered all she said was, “They’re about to announce homecoming queen.” Amy could picture Emily standing there with a big smile and a sash holding a dozen roses while God knows what was happening to Will.

  “Jeff, she’s still not answering,” Amy said.

  “She probably turned her phone off,” Jeff said.

  “Well, she needs to turn it back on.”

  “I know that, honey, but there’s nothing we can do about that now.”

  “Wow, that is a really helpful attitude. Thank you, honey. Thank you so very much,” Amy said. Or maybe she screamed it. She was getting so tired it was tough to control the tone of her voice. It was tough enough to control what she said, and after this many hours/days with so much fear yet not much sleep, it was impossible to control how she said it.

  “What do you want me to say?” Jeff shouted back.

  “I want you to think of something helpful, not just criticize me.”

  “I wasn’t trying to criticize.”

  “Not what it sounded like to me.”

  “Could you two please stop yelling?” the older officer asked. At that Jeff and Amy slouched back to their sides of the police car. The older officer looked at Jeff, “Is there anyone you could call in Goodland to check on your kids?”

  “Yeah, but he’s really not going to want to talk to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s a sergeant on the Goodland police force. And I stole the police car,” Jeff said.

  “Let him know that the car’s being towed back to Goodland at your expense.” It had to be expensive to tow a car all the way to Goodland. Amy almost hoped that they would be raptured just so they wouldn’t have to pay that bill. But she didn’t bring that up to the police officers when they negotiated that as part of the agreement to get back to Goodland. She thought the not-paying-the-bill-because-of-the-rapture thing was best left unsaid.

  Besides, at the moment she wasn’t sure if she still believed the rapture was going to happen. The further away she’d gotten from Goodland, the more the rapture seemed dreamlike. She didn’t know how it was possible. How one thing could seem so real and true at one moment, yet at the next seem so empty and hollow.

  Naïve even.

  She suddenly couldn’t remember why she was so sure the rapture was ever going to happen. Maybe because it seemed like it was time for things to end. The streets were crawling with immorality, and the news every day talked about the threat of nuclear war, terrorist bombings, school shootings, and natural disasters. It was almost like God was allowing all of this to happen because he was ready. It was as if it would be better for everyone if the world just stopped. But she’d started to question all of that in the last hours as she’d grown so nervous for her kids. Because if she actually believed that tomorrow morning they’d be raptured and in heaven with Jesus where he could wash all of the bad memories away, then none of this should matter.r />
  But that was the problem. It did matter.

  It mattered so much that the Goodland rapture seemed like the second most important thing in her life. A distant second. Making sure her kids were okay was first. And she really hoped Jeff could get ahold of Mike so that he could help them.

  “He’s still not answering,” Jeff said.

  “Is there anyone else we can call?” Amy said, reaching across the chasm between them and grabbing his hand. He squeezed her hand back. Relief rushed through her body. It reminded her suddenly of being back in high school and being so nervous about having a baby. Her life seemed over. But Jeff grabbed both of her hands and looked her right in the eyes and said, “I love you, Amy. Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.” It was the first time he’d even ever said “I love you.” When he said that, it was weeks after she found out she was pregnant and it was the first time in the whole process that she felt like things were okay. Like there was an ounce of hope.

  And, now, the way he squeezed her hand and looked at her this moment, it was like he was ready to be her hero one more time.

  “Yeah, there’s got to be someone at Hansley that can help.” Jeff said as he dialed a number. And then he added, “Everything’s going to be okay.” Amy was waiting for an I promise to follow and it didn’t. She understood why. He couldn’t promise anything.

  JEFF HENDERSON

  Jeff was still trapped in the back of the squad car and his skin was sticking to his clothes. I must stink, he thought. He hadn’t been home for days, his eyes were bloodshot, and there was this constant buzzing in his head. It was like his brain had overloaded from processing and worrying too much. It reminded him of high school when he went to see Poison, the greatest hair band of all time, in Kansas City. The show was so amazing, but so loud. When he lay in bed that night after the show, there was this ringing in his ears that wouldn’t stop. It never got louder or quieter, it was just a constant, high-pitched hum. He later learned that the ringing meant part of his hearing was dying. Now, in the back of the police car, Jeff felt like his thoughts seemed to have the same high-pitched ringing. He wondered if part of his brain was dying.

  It probably was.

  The last road sign said they were forty-seven miles from Goodland. Still too long to just sit and wait. But what choice did he have? So Jeff looked out of the window and stared at the moon. It was unusually bright and cast a white pasty glow onto every corner of Kansas. It was as if God was using it as a flashlight so he could clearly see every corner of the stars to ensure that everyone was behaving. He wondered if God was happy or angry with what he saw.

  Not that it mattered; even if you were a firm believer in the Goodland rapture, God wasn’t going to do anything until morning. God was going to take the people who were ready and leave the people who weren’t. Happy and angry had very little to do with it. So, in the meantime, Jeff continued to stare out the window with his mind flashing between thoughts of God, his children, and his wife. None of his thoughts were very clear. It was as if the ringing in his brain was keeping him from feeling much.

  Then finally he saw the most important sign, the one that read “Goodland City Limits.” The officer pulled off I – 70 and Jeff directed him to the cornfields. Jeff had called Kevin Grabowski who’d just gotten out of jail, and Kevin told Jeff that’s where he should go. There was some sort of big rally outside of the cornfields and Kevin had heard that Will was there. Maybe Will was there with Emily celebrating or praying with a group from the Prepared on the night before the rapture.

  When they got to the cornfields, they saw a crowd, a frighteningly large crowd, standing amidst bonfires and looking up at a billboard. They looked so interested in what was on the billboard. They were pointing and shouting at it. The billboard had been there for days with its simple, foreboding message, “The End Is Now.”

  But then Jeff could see what they were yelling at. There was a girl with black hair wearing a shiny silver dress. Two men were carrying her up a ladder like King Kong climbing the empire state building. Everyone in the crowd was yelling and pointing at this girl.

  “What are they doing?” the older officer asked.

  “Are they about to sacrifice a virgin?” the young officer asked.

  “Is that what you do in this town? Virgin sacrifices?” the older officer said.

  “No, we don’t sacrifice virgins,” Jeff said. Though, by the way things had been going the last couple of days, he knew it could be entirely possible that a virgin was about to be sacrificed.

  “Well then, what are they doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Jeff said.

  They were so far away that Jeff couldn’t make out who the girl was. But then Amy shouted, “That’s Emily!”

  “That’s not Emily. How can you tell that’s Emily?” Jeff asked. Amy was probably just being paranoid.

  “That’s her homecoming dress.”

  “Someone else probably just has a dress like hers.”

  “No. No one does. Emily made sure of that. She ordered it from New York,” Amy said.

  “So, your son’s been kidnapped and now they’re about to sacrifice your daughter,” the young officer said.

  “They’re not going to sacrifice my daughter.”

  “Then what are they doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Jeff said, pulling on the handle of the back of the police car. “Let us out and I’ll see.”

  “We need to call for backup,” the young officer said.

  “We’re in Goodland. We’re hours away from backup,” the older officer said. “Get the shotguns.” He opened the back door of the police car. “Come on.”

  Jeff helped his wife out of the car and they ran with the officers down the trail. Jeff could see the young officer’s hands were wrapped tightly around his gun, and he was breathing heavily.

  As they approached the mob, Jeff could hear members of the crowd yelling at the billboard, “You see what happens? No more of your fear and ignorance. That’s what happens to fear and ignorance.” On the billboard, Jeff saw Will sitting on a chair. He was tied to it and had duct tape over his mouth. Emily was next to Will in her silver dress and tied in the exact same way. Amy shouted, “Will! Emily!”

  Every set of eyes spun around and stared at them. Amy might have run into the crowd and climbed up the side of that billboard if Jeff hadn’t grabbed her. He held onto his wife tightly to make sure she didn’t make things any worse for them. But things were about to get worse anyway. The crowd was starting to circle around them like hungry zombies. They didn’t say anything, but they were thirsty for something.

  The older officer could see the crowd closing in. He held up his shotgun like an action hero and shouted, “Everyone needs to go home. Now. There will be no virgin sacrifices tonight!”

  “We aren’t going to sacrifice a virgin. But we’re not going home either,” Mike said, stepping through the crowd. He was in his uniform, but he was not himself. Jeff couldn’t believe he was here. He was always holding up law and order at all costs, but at the moment he didn’t seem like a man who was only concerned with the law. He had this cold determination in his eyes that Jeff had never seen before.

  The older officer seemed to have a more difficult time aiming the 12-gauge at someone with a badge.

  “What’s going on here, Mike?” Jeff asked.

  “Hello, Jeff. Glad you could make it.”

  “What have I made it to? Why are my children up there?”

  Mike looked at his watch. “Because in about two hours now, the rapture is going to occur. Only, something funny’s going to happen. There’s not going to be any rapture. Time will go on like it always has. God will not scoop up even one person from our town unless he does so through death, the good, old-fashioned way.”

  “So why not just let it come and go? Why tie up my kids and create bonfires and a demonstration?” Jeff asked.

  “Because Jeff, once the rapture doesn’t happen, all we’ll have to show for our misery here is a wr
ecked town. Businesses and homes and college funds will have been destroyed. And we’re going to have to clean it up once again. Sure, that will calm everyone down for a while. But then some of the Prepared will begin to forget and soon enough, in no time at all, there will be another prophecy. I can’t take it anymore, Jeff. I can’t keep cleaning up this mess. Goodland would be a great town if it wasn’t for this fascination with the rapture. And sure, tomorrow will come and go, but this is all going to start again because no one has the courage to say enough. I didn’t want it to come to this.

  “But these are desperate times and my men have convinced me they’re going to take desperate measures. And when nothing happens, we have your son up there so we can say to everyone, ‘Remember this. Next time you want to spread your fear and paranoia, remember his face.’ And hopefully they will, Jeff. Hopefully this will make them think twice and Goodland can be the great town it was meant to be.”

  Mike’s speech seemed to have pacified the older officer. Maybe he’s won him over, Jeff thought, because by the time Mike’s speech was over the officer’s shotgun was almost aimed at the ground.

  And that was all the invitation someone in the crowd needed. One in the faceless mob reached out and punched the older cop and knocked the shotgun out of his hands. Another man lunged at the young officer, but the officer ducked and dodged the tackle. Instead of drawing his gun and fighting back, the young officer burst through the crowd and sprinted down the road, toward the squad cars, and out of sight.

  This all happened in seconds, but it seemed like slow motion. And by the time the dust settled, the older officer was being held hostage, and the crowd started to close in on Jeff. But somehow the officer’s shotgun lay lifelessly on the ground near Jeff’s feet. Jeff lunged at it, picked it up, and fired a blast in the air. Everyone froze. Jeff then took the barrel of the gun and pressed it against Mike’s forehead.