The End Has Come (9 page)

“Or? Is there a third option besides talking about it or not talking about it?”

He smiled. He was nervous, not meeting her gaze. “Help me out here — I’m kind of lost.”

Teale gave a dry, bitter laugh. “You think I’m not?”

That wasn’t fair, though — she’d kissed him, not the other way around. She truly was lost, though. In the other world, before, she’d never kissed another man, even when she was drunk. Even after she learned about Wilson’s affair with Beth Edwards.

“I can’t touch Season. In a sexual way, I mean. I tried once. It felt like I was molesting her, not making love.” Gill pressed a hand over his eyes. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

“I haven’t had the courage to try with Wilson. I know it’s not Wilson’s fault, but it’s hard to get in the mood when your partner is wearing an adult diaper. Once in a while I, you know,
relieve
him. With my hand.”

With everything else that had been happening in the aftermath of the virus, Teale hadn’t realized how much the silence, the isolation, had worn her down. What a simple pleasure, to say something, anything, and have another human being respond to it.

Smiling, Gill said, “You’re a good wife.”

“I
thought
I was.” Teale realized the problem wasn’t so much that she’d kissed Gill, it was that she wanted to kiss him again.

There was an orange glow in the distance, over the rooftop of the muffler shop. Someone must have built a bonfire in their backyard.

“I should probably go in,” Teale said.

This time it was Gill who kissed her.

• • • •

Someone whispered Teale’s name, jolting her awake. “Wilson? Is that you?”

Wilson lay beside her, his eyes closed, arms at his sides, just as she’d positioned him.

“Please say it was you.” She watched his face, looking perfectly normal in sleep, as if he might open his eyes at any moment and give her a big, warm Wilson smile.

Did he know? Did he suspect? And if he did, did he understand, or was he inside there, screaming in jealousy and anguish? Teale never had to lie, because Wilson couldn’t ask.

“Teale.”
An urgent whisper from outside. Teale went to the window.

Gill was standing in the darkness, hands buried in his pockets.

Teale padded out of the room, checked on Chantilly and Elijah before pulling on a coat and heading outside.

She melted into Gill’s arms. “How’re you?”

“Good, now.”

“You making any progress on the grand City Council project?”

“I don’t know about progress.” Gill kissed her neck. “I finished the census, at least. There are officially sixty-nine residents of Gunnison, Colorado.”

“Interesting number.”

“I thought you’d like that.” Gill let her go, took her hands. “Listen, I have something I want to ask.” He licked his lips. He looked nervous.

“O-kay.”

Letting go of one of her hands, he drew a little white box out of his coat pocket, flicked it open with his thumb.

A diamond ring sat nestled in the box. Marquis style, the diamond three carats, at least. “I want to ask you to marry me.”

Teale reached down, touched the ring already on her finger, with its half-carat diamond. She twisted it, struggling to make sense of what was happening.

“I love you,” Gill said. “I don’t want to hide it any more. I
can’t.
I can’t sneak around behind Season’s back. I know it bothers you, too.”

Yes, it bothered her. She’d walked around for the last month with a perpetual knot in her stomach. Sometimes she felt sure Wilson knew where Teale was going when she said she was going for a walk.

“But what’s the alternative?
Tell
them?” Teale tried to imagine telling Wilson she was marrying Gill. He wouldn’t react, of course. Neither would Chantilly and Elijah. How would they
feel,
though, when Mommy explained that she loved Gill? “Imagine having to sit, frozen, day after day, while your wife kisses some other man. I’d rather be dead.”

Gill looked at the ground. “For all we know, they’d rather be dead anyway.”

Teale flashed back to those terrible days when the nodding virus was raging, the hushed conversations about painless ways to release loved ones from their suffering. How much Oxycodone or Valium you needed to mix into their water. Teale had been there, a scarf pressed over her nose and mouth, when their friend and neighbor Mark Melancon gave his son Valium-laced grape juice. She could still see the tears rolling down Mark’s cheeks as Jeremy drank. A few days later, Vanessa Melancon held the cup while Mark drank.

“If I was in their situation, I’d be grateful if Season slipped a dozen Oxycodone tablets into my juice,” Gill said. “If I didn’t
know
I was about to die? If I just drifted off gently? That would be the kindest thing she could do for me.”

“Then why don’t you?” Teale asked softly. She never asked survivors what had happened to their families, why most of them were alone, with no diapers to change. They’d made a different decision than Teale. She wouldn’t judge.

Gill stared at the ground between them. “I know it would be a kindness. I’m not sure I can do it, though.”

I’m not
sure
I can do it.
A month ago he’d said he
couldn’t
do it.

“I’m not sure I could, either,” Teale said.

Out in the street, something hurried past — a groundhog, or a raccoon. Gill turned around to see what she was looking at.

“Are we saying —” Gill’s voice hitched. He cleared his throat. “Are we saying we should do this?”

“I don’t know what we’re saying.” Teale looked up at the window where her children were sleeping. Her lips were numb, her chest aching. She didn’t want to have this conversation; she wanted to go to bed, and stay there for days.

“Maybe this is the push we needed, to finally do the right thing,” Gill said. “Maybe we’ve been selfish, keeping them this way with no hope of recovering.”

It was a bizarre thought, but in a brain-twisting way it made sense: they’d needed some selfish motive to goad them into doing the right thing for the wrong reason. The reason wasn’t what mattered; what mattered was to do what was best for her kids.

And there — another illusion had just fallen away. It was all about Elijah and Chantilly, wasn’t it? If not for the kids, Teale would have put Wilson out of his misery long ago.

Yes. That felt true. Fuck Wilson. Were Elijah and Chantilly better off alive or dead? That’s what it boiled down to. Teale closed her eyes, tried to forget Gill, Wilson, everything, and just listen to her heart.

Finally, she opened her eyes. Between hitching breaths, she managed to get the words out.

“I think we have to let them go.”

• • • •

Teale put earbuds in Elijah’s ears, turned on Iggy Azalea. While he listened, she brushed his teeth, then combed his hair. His hair was getting long again. She’d have to cut it again soon —

The thought formed in an instant of forgetfulness that was followed by a plunging despair as she remembered. It was time to let them go. Today. Today she and Gill would be strong, would let their families go, out of love for them.

Elijah’s eyes were darting around again — his pupils bouncing like twin superballs on concrete. Just as they’d done when she put on Rich Homie Quan in the minivan, and a dozen times before that. Teale caressed his cheek, which was sprouting adolescent peach fuzz. She smiled wide, determined not to give the slightest hint that this day was different from any other. It was crucial they not suspect anything. Teale wanted them to drift off, nice and easy. No pain, no fear.

Elijah’s eyes went on dancing as Teale got Chantilly ready for the day, choosing her white pants and an Olaf the snowman sweatshirt —

She froze, one of Chantilly’s arms in the sweatshirt, the other out.

Dancing.

That’s what Elijah was doing. He was dancing, with his eyes.

How many times had Teale tried to get them to use their eyes to communicate? Look left for yes, right for no. But they couldn’t; they couldn’t move their eyes voluntarily. Their eyes tracked reflexively toward movement, the same way their lips wrapped around a straw.

But Elijah’s eyes could dance. For him dancing was as reflexive as drinking. And reflex or not, he was enjoying the music. Her son was feeling pleasure.

Maybe this wasn’t all hell for them, after all.

• • • •

Sunlight peeked through the distant Rockies as Teale slid the note under Gill’s hotel room door and headed outside.

She climbed into the Honda Odyssey, which was already running, her family loaded up. Choking back tears, she put on her fake cheery tone. “Here we go. Just a few hours’ driving, then we’ll find another hotel.”

Thankfully, Gill was nowhere in sight. If he came running outside now she knew she’d break down, and if Wilson didn’t already know, he’d know then.

“Who gets to pick the first CD?”

As she pulled out onto the street, she grabbed a jewel case at random. Rich Homie Quan.

“In the spring we’re going to see the country. Starting with the Grand Canyon, then the redwoods, the Pacific Ocean, up the coast. On from there.”

In the rear view mirror, she watched the town fade, and she could see Elijah’s eyes dancing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Will McIntosh
is a Hugo award winner and Nebula finalist whose debut novel,
Soft Apocalypse,
was a finalist for a Locus Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Compton Crook Award. His latest novel is
Defenders
(May, 2014; Orbit Books), an alien apocalypse novel with a twist. It has been optioned by Warner Brothers for a feature film. Along with four novels, he has published dozens of short stories in venues such as
Lightspeed,
Asimov’s
(where he won the 2010 Reader's Award), and
The Year’s Best
Science Fiction & Fantasy.
Will was a psychology professor for two decades before turning to writing full-time. He lives in Williamsburg with his wife and their five year-old twins.

“Have you been harmed in any way?”

They asked it every time, during the thrice-daily videoconferences. George had a dozen different ways to answer that question. Had they physically hurt him? No, they had not. Had they emotionally hurt him? Yes: a year gone by without seeing his boys in person, without touching his wife, without satisfying the simple yet overpowering need of spending time with his family. But that was the trade-off  — those in control wanted him gone, and preventing his family from seeing him was one of the many tools they used to try and get their way. If George really wanted to see his wife and sons, all he had to do was leave.

“No,” George said. “They haven’t hurt me.”

“And are the children still alive? Are they unharmed?”

The children.
That phrase used to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but since that first moment George had stood in front of a news camera, it had taken on one specific definition.

“The children are fine,” he said. “Unharmed, so far.”

George wished he could drop the
so far
bit, but he could not. The world was watching him. As far as he knew, he was the only thing standing between the children and knives, microscopes, autopsy tables, and secret facilities of the United States government.

“Good,” the mask said. This one sounded French. Maybe French-Canadian, George wasn’t sure. The voice changed every day, but the mask was always the same: Guy Fawkes. The symbol of the Anonymous movement, a movement that had grown to a hundred times its original size following the alien attack that had shattered cities, killed millions. A movement that had grown because of
the children,
because of a rampant distrust of governments, of militaries and the police, because of the world’s need to know something positive could come out of that tragedy.

Three times a day, he reported in. If he missed an appointment, shit hit the fan: Hackers from America, China, Russia and more would go to work, sabotaging targets that had been pre-selected and pre-qualified. There was no mistaking the correlation between George not appearing for an update and the instant retaliation against multiple targets from multiple sources.

And if there were no online targets, pre-programmed physical demonstrations happened within minutes: flash mobs that blocked the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel; a thousand people climbing the White House fence for a calm stroll across the lawn; bomb threats at airports; instant sit-ins at police stations with hundreds of individuals willing to be arrested, willing to go to jail, willing to take a nightstick to the head in order to send a message. That message? George was not to be touched, not to be harmed, not to be delayed from talking to the world in any way for any reason.

“Good,” the mask said. “Is there anything else you need to tell us?”

George shook his head. “Nothing else. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be back online for the next update in four hours.”

“Very well. Keep up the good work. We are watching.”

That last bit wasn’t meant for him: It was meant for his hosts. Maybe
captors
was a better word for them.