The End is Now Page 4

  They went much too slowly for Jeff — they had to take their time so everyone could see using the minimal light the flares cast off — but finally all the teams were found and brought back to where the cars were parked.

  “What just happened?” Mike asked.

  “The flashlights burned out,” Sam said.

  “Thank you Sam,” Mike said. “But how?”

  “They ran out of batteries?” Kevin Grabowski proposed.

  “All at the same time?” Mike asked.

  “It’s possible,” Kevin said.

  “It’s not possible,” Mike said.

  “Electromagnetic storm,” Sam said.

  “And what is that?”

  “It’s a storm, something about the magnetic poles shifting and ions getting into clouds, and it does all sorts of weird stuff to machinery. Shorts it out, and you know, stuff like that,” Sam said. “I saw it on the Discovery Channel.”

  “And we just happen to have an electromagnetic storm here?” Mike said.

  “This is Kansas, man. We have the weirdest storms on the planet,” Sam said.

  Silence. He kind of had a point.

  “Fine, we’ll load up on batteries and go back out there,” Mike said.

  “It won’t matter. I was out there before you got here. Same thing happened to me,” Jeff said.

  “So what do we do?” Mike asked.

  “We need light the old fashioned way. Torches, flares, any kind of fire,” Jeff said.

  “You’re not taking fire into my cornfields,” Fred Johnson said.

  “Are you serious? Crops? You’re worried about your crops?” Jeff said.

  “Since it’s my livelihood, yes I am. But that’s not all I’m worried about. You get one of the dry husks on fire, and you’re not going to be able to contain it. If your boy’s out there, he’ll burn alive. And so will anyone else who’s trapped in the middle of the field.”

  “Maybe I should have the fire department on standby as well,” Sam said.

  Again, silence. This was the worst search party ever assembled — a search party who couldn’t search.

  “Mike, you have extinguishers in your squad cars?” Jeff asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” Mike said.

  “We split up into groups again. One man holds a flare — we won’t use torches, the flames are too hard to control, but a flare should be safe. And if something does catch fire, the other man walks with an extinguisher, puts it out right away.”

  The party stared at Jeff. This was the most half-baked plan they’d ever heard of. They weren’t convinced. Jeff knew what their stares were saying. He took a deep breath and nodded. “Or, I go by myself, which I was ready to do an hour ago anyway. My son is out there. I can’t wait till morning. You guys can. So, I’ll see you later. Thanks for wasting my time.”

  “No, Jeff, I’ll help you find your boy,” Mike said.

  “So will I,” Sam said.

  “So will I,” Kevin Grabowski added.

  At that, there was one “So will I” after another, after another. And that’s what’s so great about a small town like Goodland. Everyone sticks together — they were family. If one person is hurting, everyone is hurting. This was the type of Dead Poets Society moment that would have really touched Jeff if his son wasn’t lost and he wasn’t freaked out of his mind at whatever was causing the bulbs to burn out and if the flare he was holding wasn’t singeing all the hairs on his hand.

  They quickly loaded up with flares and extinguishers and headed back out to the field. Jeff held his flare low to the ground, walking at a sprinter’s pace through the cornfields. He scanned the ground and looked through cornstalks. He listened for cries or screams — for breathing or whimpering. His mind was clear. He was completely focused on the task at hand. This had gone on long enough. He would not be deterred anymore. He would face whatever was in here: storms, demons, or any other unspeakable evil. They would be sorry to cross his path.

  And then, crack. A flare soared through the night sky — it looked as if Tinkerbell was lit on fire and shot out of a cannon. They found him, Jeff thought. All the possibilities rushed through his mind: Will with leg snapped, Will shivering and crying, Will not moving at all, Will hugging an officer and telling his story.

  Crack.

  Another flare shot above them. Jeff ran towards it. He didn’t wait to make sure Sam was following, or that his path was clear. He just ran. He pushed through stalks and anything else that was in his way. And then he burst through one final stalk and saw his son. He was standing there, without a shirt, coated in dirt and gravel, and looking a little cut up. Jeff didn’t run toward him right away, because no one else had. Something didn’t seem right. Instead, the entire search party stood there, creating a circle all the way around the shirtless, cut-up boy. The entire party clutched their flares, creating a neon glow on Will, and his eyes and his teeth seemed to reflect the red light perfectly.

  “Will. Are you okay?” Mike asked.

  Will smiled.

  Jeff went over to Will and crouched next to him. Jeff felt Will’s ribs, his legs, and his face to make sure nothing was broken. And nothing was. Everything was fine. His son was fine. Jeff hugged him and through tears he said, “I was so worried about you.” He let go and looked his son in the eyes. “So worried.”

  Will put a hand on Jeff’s shoulder. It didn’t feel like the hand of a boy, it was much older, firm and confident. “I have a message for you Dad.” Then Will looked past his father and at the entire search party. And with the confidence of a prophet he said, “I have a message for all of you.”

  SERGEANT MIKE FRANK

  Sergeant Mike Frank still remembers a time when students had drills for the apocalypse. However, the apocalypse the elementary students were running drills for had nothing to do with God or Jesus. Rather, the impending doom was a by-product of the United States of America’s inability to coexist with Russia.

  And vice versa.

  Both sides had been arming themselves with nuclear warheads for years. And soon everyone had too many weapons. The governments of these powerful countries couldn’t just buy all of those weapons for nothing. That would be frivolous, a waste of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money. Therefore, the responsible thing to do would be to attack. It would go like this: Once one country (Mike was pretty sure Russia was going to attack first) launches their weapons high into the air, the other country would have to respond, they would have to rain down retribution, and in the end, if everything went according to plan, most of the planet would be a lifeless, smoldering, radioactive wasteland.

  To protect against nuclear blasts, teachers had students hide underneath their desks. This was the great plan for safety. Even at the age of eight Mike was pretty skeptical of a small wooden desk’s ability to shield him from an atomic bomb. He tried to bite his tongue. He tried to obey every other Thursday as the drill bell rang and everyone put down their classwork to crouch under their desks. But one Thursday, towards the end of the third grade, he couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t willingly just accept that this was worth anyone’s time. So, while the other kids slid under their desks, Mike just sat up, proud, with his hands folded in front of him. When Mrs. Peacock looked up from underneath her own desk she was horrified.

  “Michael, what are you doing?”

  “I’m not going on with this charade anymore,” Michael said. Charade was a new word that Michael had just added to his vocabulary. He learned it from playing the game Charades.

  “Charade?” Mrs. Peacock squawked, wondering where he learned that word. That was a fourth grade word.

  “We’re going to die anyway so why does it matter if I hide under my desk,” Michael said.

  Mrs. Peacock walked over to Michael, seized his arm, and tugged him into the hallway. “What has gotten into you Michael Frank?” she asked.

  “I just don’t know why we’re charading around with this desk drill,” Michael answered. He still hadn’t mastered his new word.

  �
��Because if something does happen, and God forbid it does, we need the students safe. The blast probably isn’t going to hit our town, which means parents will be looking for students, which means there will be lots of fear and we’ll need order — ”

  Order.

  Now, thirty years later, it made a lot of sense to Mike. The desks weren’t about safety — they were about order. Keeping things under control was the highest priority. Because truthfully, when it came to the masses, people were cattle. The entire town could be easily spooked, and if that were to happen, disorder and looting and lawlessness bring just as much damage as the original disaster ever could.

  And as rumors and gossip about the impeding Goodland rapture started to spring up, Mike knew that soon his primary job would be to keep Goodland orderly.

  Tonight, the battle against hysteria would start with figuring out what to do about Jeff Henderson’s boy. Will said some weird things in that cornfield, and it wasn’t just what he said, it was the way he said things that had riled everyone up. Just an hour ago Mike had seen grown men — calloused brave men — turn stark white at some of the things Will was saying. Heck, Curt Benson, a twice-decorated veteran from the Korean War, looked like he’d wet himself by the time Will finished —

  (prophesying)

  — talking.

  The key to keeping things under control would be keeping their stories straight. They needed to be careful about what they said, especially to their wives. Mike had already briefed the other men in the cornfield. He told them, “Will was lost and we found him sleeping. That’s all anyone else needs to know.” He hadn’t discussed things with Jeff yet because he was so emotional. And rightfully so. His son had been lost.

  But after they found Will, Mike convinced Jeff to let him take them home. He’d have one of the other men take Mike in his car later on. And now that they were getting close to Jeff ’s house they needed to decide how they were going to frame the story to Amy.

  “What exactly are we going to tell Amy?” asked Mike.

  “What do you mean?” Jeff asked.

  “Well, about what happened. What are we going to tell her?”

  “We’ll tell her the truth.”

  “The truth, sure,” Mike said. “But what version of the truth?”

  AMY HENDERSON

  Amy clutched her lukewarm cup of coffee and stared out the window. There wasn’t much to look at outside. Right in front of the house there was a large elm tree lit up from the glow of the front porch lights. The leaves had fallen off the tree so all that was left were branches twisted and stretching in every direction. A little past the tree Amy could see the silhouette of the windmill as the blades slowly spun. And beyond the windmill there was nothing but blackness. It looked like it engulfed everything. All the lights in Goodland and everywhere else on the planet seemed to have been shut off.

  Her son was out there somewhere in the darkness.

  She prayed that nothing had happened to him. But even as she was praying it seemed impossible. How could something have actually happened? Will was her little miracle baby. He was the special guy who’d given her life purpose. After Emily had gone to kindergarten Amy could remember how depressed she was. Emily was always so independent already, and when Amy dropped her off for her first day she thought Emily might cry. She thought Emily might clutch on to her and say, “Don’t leave me Mommy!” All the other kids were doing things like that. But Emily just grabbed her Barbie lunchbox and sprinted onto the playground. She shouted “Bye, Mommy!” as she ran, but she never looked back.

  Six weeks later Amy was pregnant again.

  Only this time it was planned. This time she knew the hardships the upcoming months and years had in store, but she also knew how special they would be.

  She just didn’t expect that the hardships would start right away. Will was born six weeks early. He was in an incubator for the first month of his life. Amy stood outside the window of the nursery every single day. She spent hours looking at her son bathed in that ultraviolet light and watching those little ribs rise up and down with every breath.

  But she never feared the worst. Even then she could see what a fighter he was. Because from the day he was born she could see the glint and purpose in his eyes. She knew how special he was.

  When they finally took him home Amy spent the first night with him in the nursery. She rocked for hours with him cradled in her arms and she just stared at her perfect little miracle. She felt so proud. It was probably how Mary felt the first time she held baby Jesus.

  There had been other scary moments. The time he’d fallen out of the tree and snapped his arm in half. The day he came home with his first black eye. The afternoon he’d wrecked his bike into a chain-link fence. Amy worried about Will, took care of him, and mothered him after every one of those incidents. But she always knew there was nothing to worry about.

  There was something special about her son.

  And God doesn’t just let special people die somewhere out in the black darkness of a Kansas night, does he? If he was going to do that, why would he have made them special in the first place?

  He wouldn’t have. That’s why Amy knew her son was going to be okay. That’s why when other mothers would be frantic and fearing the worst, Amy just sipped on her coffee and stared out in the darkness.

  And as if God himself were answering Amy’s thoughts and fears, a police car pulled up the driveway right as Amy finished her last sip of coffee. She knew who was inside the car. And she was so excited to see them that she didn’t even put her empty cup of coffee down as she walked outside.

  Will jumped out from the police car and ran up the driveway. For some reason he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He was also nicked and cut and bruised but he didn’t seem to have any serious injuries. No broken arms or legs or anything like that. He ran into Amy’s arms and hugged her tightly.

  It felt so good to have her son back.

  Amy had already planned what she was going to say to Will when she first saw him. She was going to tell him how much she loved him. She was going to tell him how very much he meant to her. She was going to explain, probably as the tears rolled down her cheeks, how she didn’t say kind, loving things often enough. But for some reason none of that came out of Amy’s mouth after they hugged.

  For some reason Amy firmly grabbed Will on both of his arms and asked, “Where were you? What happened? Do you have any idea how worried I was about you? You said you were going over to Nate’s for just a few minutes. How did that turn into hours?”

  “I got lost,” Will answered.

  “Lost?”

  “In the cornfields.”

  “You cut across the cornfields?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though we’ve talked over and over again about not going in there?”

  “I was running late. I knew I’d get in trouble if I was late for family dinner.”

  “You get in more trouble for getting lost in the cornfields.”

  “I didn’t mean to get lost. Am I grounded?”

  “You are beyond grounded,” Amy said, though she didn’t really know what there was beyond grounded. The electric chair? There’s only so much punishment a mother can deliver before she reaches her limits. And besides, she wasn’t really trying to deliver punishment, she was trying to let her son know how much she loved him. But he needed to know how dangerous things were. He needed to know there were consequences for his actions. She wasn’t just making rules like don’t go into the cornfields because she was the wicked witch of the west and she laughed with her flying monkeys at the thought of taking away all of his fun. She was making those rules to protect him.

  Amy looked again at her son, unsure of what to say or do next. “Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?”

  “It got dirty from running.”

  “What were you running from?”

  “I’m not exactly sure.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. There were bad things in the cornfield. But t
here were also good things.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not really supposed to tell you.”

  “You’re not?” Amy asked.

  “No. Officer Mike said he wanted to fill you in on everything that happened.”

  Amy suddenly felt nauseous. It was kind of like morning sickness, at night, without being pregnant. “Honey, I’m your mother. You can tell me anything.”

  “Officer Mike was pretty serious about me not telling anyone anything. I mean, I want to tell you, but I don’t want to get grounded and arrested.”

  As Will finished talking, Amy realized her husband was suspiciously absent. He should have jumped out of the police car and followed right behind Will. He should have been telling her everything that had happened since they’d last seen each other. It had been a nightmare of a night; they’d faced their worst fear, and so why didn’t he come inside and fill her in on everything?

  Amy looked back towards the police car and she could see Jeff and Mike standing right in front of the car engaged in some sort of serious conversation. It seemed like Mike was trying to convince Jeff of something. Mike’s face was stern and serious while Jeff looked tired and defeated. Even from where Amy was standing she could see the bags under Jeff’s eyes. So what was Mike telling Jeff? Was he trying to keep Amy out of the loop just like Will? Why would they be doing that? What could have happened out there? What didn’t they want her to know?

  It didn’t matter. They were kidding themselves if they thought they could hide the truth from her. “Go inside honey,” Amy told Will. “Get those cuts cleaned out and get a shirt on.”

  “Okay,” Will said and went inside.

  Amy walked towards the police car and she heard the tail end of the conversation as Mike said, “ — not the parents at the school. And especially not your wife.”

  “Especially not your wife what?” Amy asked.

  Amy walked out of the kitchen holding a kettle full of blisteringly hot Earl Grey tea. She poured Mike and Jeff a cup. They would need tea. Kansas days in the early fall are still warm, but by night things begin to frost over, making summer seem like a distant memory. The tea would make them warm and rational and calm enough to tell her what had happened.