The End Has Come (10 page)

The screen went blank.

A strong hand on his arm.

“Mister Pelton, we will now escort you back to your quarters.”

George nodded absently. He stood. “Thank you,” he said, because he was a Midwestern boy and being polite was so ingrained in him he said such things automatically, even to a soldier who would put a bullet in his head if so ordered.

He wondered, as he always did after the check-ins, how many more days could he spend here? He wondered if he had made the right choice, if he should’ve just gone home to his family after saving those kids.

Instead, he had made a phone call. A simple call that had changed the course of human history.

• • • •

In the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, George’s cell phone reception had always been shitty. One bar, if any at all, courtesy of AT&T’s weak network. But on that day at the end of the world, sealed into a room on a crashed starship with little aliens standing around him  —
little aliens,
for God’s sake  — George got
two
bars.

He had to do something. He had to find help. But who could he call?

The invasion had come without warning. At least, no warning that George and his childhood friends knew of. Ships from outer freakin’ space attacking major cities worldwide. One of those ships must’ve got sidetracked, or malfunctioned or something, because it crashed in the deep woods close to the tip of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula.

The hunting cabin where George and his friends had spent two weeks every November for the last thirty years had been close to the crash site, so close that a war machine or mech  — or whatever you called an alien piloting a suit of powered armor  — had attacked the cabin, blown it to pieces. Luckily, George, Toivo, Jaco, Bernie, and Arnold had been outside when that happened. They returned fire against the attacker, killing the alien inside the machine. From there, a hike through the deep snow and the frigid woods, following colored lights, to the crashed ship  — an actual flying saucer, or at least it used to be before a high-speed impact and tumble through the woods turned it into a dented, cracked, smashed thing that had more in common with a T-bone-totaled station wagon than an interstellar vessel.

Inside that ship, bodies. Non-human bodies. Pieces and parts all over, living beings torn to shreds by a crash that gouged a fifty-foot-wide trench through snow-covered ground, pines, and the birches. So many bodies, so many dead. But not
all
dead, as George found out when he opened a sealed door. Inside, a room clearly designed to withstand such crashes: the evidence for that being a dozen alien children, alive and well.

It started out as a dozen, but that number dropped to eleven when George’s friend Toivo shot one in the head. Toivo wanted to kill the rest of them  — as did Bernie and Jaco  — but George put himself between the children and the barrel of Toivo’s hunting rifle.

George still wasn’t sure why he’d protected the alien kids. Maybe it was the fact that they were helpless. Maybe somewhere in his head he knew this was a history-changing event, and that the sane thing to do was preserve these eleven alien lives even though the aliens’ kin had probably killed millions of people.

Or, maybe, it was the crash seats.

He stood in a room with the eleven alien children. The same room with the crash seats, or
chambers
or whatever they were, that had kept those children alive during the crash. The grownup aliens had seen to the kids first, safely strapping them in  — just as George would have done for his own children.

His friends were elsewhere in the ship. He knew Bernie was probably tending to Mister Ekola, keeping the old man warm as winter slowly and surely stole the heat from the ruined hull. George didn’t know what Jaco was doing. Rooting through the ship, probably, because it was an
alien ship,
and would he ever get a chance like this again? The one that worried George, though, was Toivo.

Toivo, who had already killed one of the alien children in cold blood.

Toivo, who clearly wanted to kill the rest of them as well.

Toivo, who had never left the area, who still spoke with the Yooper accent George had shed years ago.
Da
instead of
the,
ending every other sentence with the rhetorical
eh?
If George hadn’t moved away, would he still have that accent? Would he have wanted to shoot the children? So hard to know if his urge to save them was something he was born with, or something cultivated from living somewhere other than this remote, homogenous culture.

A silly time to worry about nature vs. nurture.

The phone buzzed in George’s hand. One bar . . . it had reconnected to the network.

He could dial 9-1-1. But would anyone answer? Had the attacks hit Milwaukee? Detroit? And if he did get through, what would he say?
I’ve got an actual ship here, with survivors.
Who would respond to that? Who would be dispatched?

George looked at the eleven alien children.

Paralyzed with indecision, he imagined how things might play out. If he called 9-1-1, the local police station, or any government office  — and he got through  — word would quickly go up the ladder. George knew where that ladder ended: the Army.

The military would come. These children would be taken away. Hidden. Studied. Interrogated.

What if someone did that to
his
children?

George looked at the phone. A sense of panic crept over him, lodged in his chest, burrowed in his heart. What if he did the wrong thing? A call could get the children killed.
Not
calling could mean they might die, because what the hell did he know about goddamn alien children? What did they eat? What needs did they have?

He was a fucking insurance salesman, for Christ’s sake.

Then, the phone’s single bar blinked out.

Zero bars.

No connection.

George started to shake. He’d missed his chance. How long until the cold pushed its way inside this shattered ship, started to freeze the very children he wanted to protect? Not just them: his friends would freeze as well, the boys he’d grown up with. And the one man who had helped them all understand what it meant to actually
be
a man? Mister Ekola was hurt; he needed help.

One bar re-appeared.

Maybe a chance to make only a single call before that bar blinked off again.

His thumbs worked the smartphone, bringing up a web browser. He had to get a number and get it fast.

One call . . . maybe he could save Mister Ekola and the children both with one call . . .

• • • •

The guard escorted George to his room. Maybe ten minutes to himself, tops, then George had to get to the ship and check on the children. He
always
had to check on the children.

The children.

The
goddamn children.

They had become his entire life, at the expense of the life that had been his before all of this started. Yes, a year ago he had been a simple insurance salesman. Now the face that looked at him from the mirror happened to be the most-recognized face on the planet.

What was it now . . . four billion YouTube views and counting? The interview had been downloaded and re-uploaded so many times no one really knew for sure just how many total views there were. A million views the very first day, he was told. Within two weeks, the interview had passed by that Korean guy with the funny glasses  — and that one pop-singer girl who wore crazy outfits  — to become the most-viewed video in the history of mankind.

The guard stopped at the door to George’s small room. Seemed like a nice enough kid, but he didn’t say much. None of the guards did. They were ordered not to, probably. Loneliness, lack of communication with other people  — just more tools for the government to isolate the thorn in its side.

George entered. The guard stayed at the door.

Twelve feet by twelve feet. A twin bed. A small desk with a computer that let him send and receive screened email. Email, and nothing else. The irony was hard to process: the Internet’s most popular person wasn’t allowed to use the Internet.

He checked email. Like clockwork, the daily missive from his wife, Mary. This one started the way all of her emails started. First line, two words:
Come home.

Then, a picture of the boys. Dressed in spandex singlets this time. Youth wrestling must be starting up. God, but they were so beautiful.

Michael and Luke had grown so much. When George had left for his two-week hunting trip, Michael had been six, Luke, eight. Now they were seven and nine. George had missed an entire year of their life. A year and counting that he would never get back.

Luke had stopped smiling for pictures. George wasn’t sure when. A year ago, the boy had been all giggles and squeals. Now every shot of him showed a scowl, a frown. Was that normal for a growing boy, or was it because his father was gone? Mary said it was a phase, but George knew the meaning behind her words  — the phase wouldn’t have happened if George had been around.

After
come home
and the picture, the usual update. The boys’ grades were slipping. Luke had gotten into a fight at school. Both of them were being more and more disrespectful at home.

How much of that was boys growing up, and how much of it was Mary, unintentionally easing up on the reins, letting the boys run wild because it would carve at George, make him want to give up this fool’s quest and come home? He hoped he was wrong about that, but he had been with Mary most of his adult life; deep down inside, in the places he tried to ignore, he knew of his wife’s expertise at subtle manipulation.

He closed the email without replying. As the weeks rolled on, there was less and less to say. In his head he knew he was doing the right thing, that he was standing up for the faceless masses who didn’t trust their governments, their police, their military. He was preserving a cultural touchstone that wouldn’t come again in his lifetime, in his children’s lifetime . . . perhaps in all the human lifetimes to follow. It was
important.
In his head he knew that, but in his heart, he was just a man who desperately missed his family.

And if he left this place to see them, he would never be allowed to return.

George rubbed at his face.

It was time to check on the children.

He left his room. The guard turned sharply on one heel, knowing where George was going and leading the way without being told. George followed, amazed as always that this had all begun with one simple phone call.

• • • •

George finished his call. Or, rather, the call finished for him when the signal dropped. The bars vanished and didn’t return. He was pretty sure he’d given good directions before he’d been cut off. If so, he would find out soon enough.

Through the hull’s cracks, the wind eased from a howl to a moan. The storm died down, like all storms do.

He heard Toivo arguing with Bernie. George couldn’t make out the words. Toivo sounded pissed. Maybe he was campaigning for the others to join him, to murder the children.

Exactly how far was George willing to go to stop that from happening?

“Don’t know what to do,” he said.

The children didn’t answer.

“You guys are a big help.”

The words turned to white as they left his mouth.

Temperature dropping. Winter’s fist was slowly squeezing tight around the wreck, snatching away what heat remained.

The children . . . they were shivering.

From the cold? Maybe. Or, maybe, from fear.

He terrified them.

Which was fine, because they terrified him.

A human shape that could never be mistaken as actually
human.
Two arms and two legs, but thin,
so
thin, tree branches come to life with fluid motion. Black eyes  — three, not two  — set in heads too big for the deathcamp-skinny bodies. And those mouths . . . George did all he could not to look at their mouths.

An hour passed.

A banging on the door. The sound reverberated through the room, bounced off the twelve crash chambers, or shock seats, or whatever the capsules were that had kept these children alive while their parents had been turned into paste. The children flinched at the sound, huddled together, made noises that sounded frightened and pathetic.

George unslung his rifle. He held it nervously in both hands. He thought of slinging it again  — was he going to
threaten
his lifelong friends or something? The pounding came again. George decided to hold onto the weapon.

He pushed the door open.

There stood Toivo and Jaco. Toivo, who had already executed one of the children, and Jaco,
little Jaco,
who had shown more bravery than George and the others combined.

“Give me your phone,” Toivo said.

George didn’t move.

Jaco stared past George, at the children. He hadn’t seen them yet. The man seemed oddly calm in light of the situation. George wondered if Jaco wanted to kill them, just like Toivo did.

“The phone,” Toivo said, holding out a hand palm-up. “Bernie’s phone ain’t got shit for signal. Mister Ekola isn’t doing great, we need to try and get help.”

George nodded absently. “Already called someone,” he said.

That caught Jaco’s attention. “Who?”

“Ambulance,” George said. “That’s part of the deal.”

“What deal?” Toivo said.

George was suddenly unsure if he’d given enough info before the call cut off. Did they know where to go?

“I had a signal but it’s gone,” George said. “I made a call. Help is coming.”

Toivo’s eyes hardened. “For the last time, Georgie  — give me your phone.”

Any pretense of friendship had evaporated. Three decades they had known each other, come here every year to reconnect, shared all the experiences life had to offer. It was all gone. If George had raised his rifle as Toivo had, if, together, they had slaughtered these helpless beings, that friendship would have been strengthened beyond any measure  — but George had chosen otherwise.

He pulled the phone out of his pocket and handed it over. Jaco and Toivo huddled over it as if it had a secret warmth that might chase away the encroaching winter.