The End Has Come (40 page)

How was I going to play that, in a way that preserved the integrity of Horace and his innocent love of sportsmanship? In fact — I reflected, as I raised a baseball and prepared to hurl it at the shaved head of the red bandana standing on the nearest corner in front of a shuttered florist — that might be the reason why people root for the comic hero after all: the haplessness. This fresh white baseball was emblazoned with a slogan about bringing back the greatest game, and the story called for Horace to toss them out as a promotional thing, and to hit a militia member in the head purely by accident. So it was important for the story that I not look as though I were aiming. But I also couldn’t afford to miss. Horace is a good person who just wants to bring joy to people, and he gets caught up in a bad situation, and the moment you think Horace brought this on himself through meanness or combativeness, that’s the moment you stop pulling for him.

The baseball hit the teenager in the jaw, over the neatly tied red cloth that looked too big for his skinny neck, and he whipped around and fired off a few shots with his Browning Hi Performance, while also texting his comrades with his free hand.

I tried to wear a convincing look of friendly panic, like I hadn’t meant to wake a thousand sleeping dogs with one stray baseball, and danced around on the front of the hot dog so hard I nearly fell under the wheels. I slipped and landed on my crotch on the very tip of the hot dog, then pulled myself back up, still trying to toss out promotional baseballs and spread goodwill, and it occurred to me for the first time that I had spent so much time worrying that I was going to hurt someone by accident, it never even occurred to me that I would finally reach a point where I would decide to cause harm on purpose.

Our hot dog had red bandanas chasing us, with two motorcycles and some kind of hybrid electric Jeep. I had no idea if anybody was still shooting at me, because I couldn’t see anyone aiming a gun from where I stood on one foot and I couldn’t see any bullets hitting anything —

 — until a bullet hit me in the thigh just as the hot dog swerved without slowing and we released the blow-up dolls in their makeshift baseball uniforms. The blow-up dolls flew behind us, and I saw one of them hit a motorcyclist right where the red bandana tucked under his round white helmet, so that he lost his grip on his handlebars and went somersaulting, and I felt the blood seeping through my pants like maybe it had missed the bone but hit an artery and I was cursing myself for forgetting to bring a giant comedy bottle of ketchup to squirt at people, because ketchup is like fake blood only more cheerful, when Ricky Artesian climbed on top of the third car of the five that were now chasing us and held up a big flatscreen TV that read “YOU MADE YOUR CHOICE ROCK TIME TO PAY.” And another bullet tore through my side just as the hot dog made another sharp turn and we disappeared into the tunnel from the abandoned Back Bay T extension project.

The hot dog came to a stop in a dark hutch Xed in by fallen rusted steel girders, just as one of our bready tires gave out and the whole vehicle slumped on one side, and our support crew set about camouflaging the Wienermobile with rocks and planks. Janelle climbed out of the cab and came over to show me the vumble, the insane number of hits we were getting right now and the footage, in a loop, of me hurling baseballs at the red bandanas.

Janelle noticed that I was pissing blood from my leg and my side, and started trying to get me to lie down. Just then a message came through from Sally, who was still masterminding the filming from a remote location:
“theyre not taking the bait.”
The bandanas were staying on their side of the line and not trying to chase us into the army barricades like we’d hoped.

I slipped out of Janelle’s grasp — easy when you’re as slick as I was, just then — and leapt onto Zapp’s bicycle. Before anybody could try to stop me, I was already pedaling back up the ramp the way we’d come, past the people trying to seal and camouflage the entry to the tunnel, leaping from darkness into the light of day. I raced close enough to Ricky Artesian to make eye contact and hurl my last baseball — absolutely coated at this point with my own blood — at his pinstripe-suited torso. And then I spun and tore off in the direction of Storrow Drive again, not looking back to see if anyone was following me, racing with my head down, on the ramp that led up to the Turnpike.

My phone thrummed with messages but I ignored it. I was already reaching the top of the ramp, all thoughts of Horace Burton, and lovable fall guys in general, forgotten. The checkpoint was a collection of pale blobs at ground level, plus a swarm of men and women with scorpion heads rushing around tending their one statuesque mecha and a collection of mustard-colored vehicles. My eyesight was going, my concentration going with it, and my feet kept sliding off the pedals, but I kept pedaling nonetheless, until I was close enough to yank out my last limited edition promotional baseball, pull my arm back and then straighten out with the hardest throw of my life.

Then I wiped out. I fell partway behind a concrete barrier as Ricky and the other bandanas came up the ramp into the line of fire. I saw nothing of what came next, except that I smelled smoke and cordite and glimpsed a man with the red neck-gear falling on his hands and rearing back up, before I crawled the rest of the way behind my shelter and passed out.

• • • •

When I regained consciousness, I was in a prison camp, where I nearly died, first of my wounds and later of a fiendish case of dysentery like you wouldn’t believe. I never saw Sally again, but I saw our last movie, once, on a stored file on someone’s battered old Stackbook. (This lady named Shari had saved the edited film to her hard drive before the Internet went futz, and people had been copying
Ballpark Figure
on thumb drives and passing it around ever since, whenever they had access to electricity.)

The final act of
Ballpark Figure
was just soldiers and red bandanas getting drilled by each other’s bullets until they did a terrible slamdance, and I have to say the film lost any of its narrative thread regarding Horace Burton, or baseball, or the quest to restore professional sports to America, not to mention the comedy value of all those flailing bodies was minimal at best.

The movie ended with a dedication: “To Rock Manning. Who taught me it’s not whether you fall, it’s how you land. Love, Sally.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charlie Jane Anders
is the author of
All the Birds in the Sky,
a novel coming in early 2016 from Tor Books. She is the editor in chief of
io9.com
and the organizer of the Writers With Drinks reading series. Her stories have appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Tin House, ZYZZYVA,
and several anthologies. Her novelette “Six Months, Three Days” won a Hugo award.

Don Willis is forty five years old and has just finished loading his grocery cart. He bypasses the cash registers but pauses at the entrance. A man and woman are fighting over a can of baby formula, blocking the doors. The man punches the woman in the face, grabs the formula, and shoves his overloaded cart through the doors to the parking lot.

A mass of bodies surge forward, their own overloaded carts banging together as they are pushed through the bottleneck. The woman is gone by the time Don makes it to the doors. He takes care not to slip in the puddle of blood she left behind.

• • • •

Donnie Willis is ten years old and watching a TV show, long forgotten, about rich people doing rich things, and there is a feature about a yacht. It is majestic, with billowing white sails, and colorful flags that adorn a line from the cabin to the bow. Donnie scrambles closer to the TV, as if he could crawl through the screen and onto the boat, surrounded by the sea, the sun, and the beach.

“That’s the home I want,” he tells his dad, who walks over, kneels down next to him, and smiles. He squeezes Donnie’s shoulder and asks, “What do you like about it?”

Donnie explains about the flowing sails, the blue water, the freedom of being alone, the golden beach, and — more than anything — the excitement of being free under the sun and the sky and how he could sail anywhere. “That’s a good dream, Donnie. Don’t let go of it. Live your life in a way to achieve it, and you’ll never regret it.”

Falling asleep that night, Donnie dreams of waking up before the dawn, standing on the deck of his yacht, and watching the sun rise, the sound of seagulls and waves and flapping sails his only company.

• • • •

It’s too late.
The bags of groceries are shaking in Don’s arms.
Please don’t make it be too late.
Even without official confirmation, the word is spreading everywhere that the asteroid is going to hit North America. Escape is their only hope. He rushes up to his son’s room. They have no time. How desperate will people be?

He walks into Zack’s room. His son is playing a video game, looking bored. “Son, I’m sorry. You know what’s going on, and I’m afraid we don’t have much time. We need to start packing.”

Zack shoots him a glance but pays most of his attention to his video game. “Is this about the asteroid?”

“What kind of question is that?” Don walks over, grabs the VR controller from his son’s hand, and tosses it on the bed. “Of course this is about the asteroid. We need to get to safety. We’re leaving tonight on the
Southern Cross.”

“God, Dad. You know I hate your boat.”

Don stares. “What do you mean ‘I hate your boat?’ We need to get away, Zack!”

His son shrugs.

Closing his eyes, Don gets his anger and fear under control. “Zack, this is not a game. We don’t even have time to track down your mom or my family in Austin. We need to get to safety
now.”

“Sure, Dad. Whatever.” Zack moves to put his VR controller back on.

“Whatever?
Do you have a better idea?” He had worked two full-time jobs over ten years to achieve his dream, and that dream would now save their lives, and Zack’s response was
“whatever?”

Zack shrugs. “I just assumed we’d die.”

Don’s anger collapses under the casual acceptance in his son’s voice. “Zack, we can make it. You know that, right?”

A painful pause and then Zack replies, “I guess.”

“Think of the future, Zack.” Don sits down next to his son. “We
can
get away, and we
can
survive.” Zack nods, but there isn’t much heart in it. “Think of the future, son. Where do you want to be? What do you want to do? We have to put all this —” Don taps the controller. “ — behind us.” His son’s face is still blank, emotionless. “Don’t you have a dream?”

“I don’t know.” A nonchalant shrug. “To live. I guess.”

• • • •

Donnie is sixteen and gets through the pain of junior high by clinging to his dream.

The yacht is no longer under his feet; it is moored in the middle of the bay, white and majestic. The sails are furled up and the mast and mooring are elegant in their angles and geometry, a different beauty than the billowing sails. The sky is a sun-washed blue, and the sun itself is bright enough that he can’t really judge its size. It is high above, a background piece that shines light on the new additions to his dream: The girls in bikinis arrayed in front of him on large beach towels with bright blue, white, and yellow patterns.

It is just him and them. They don’t have names, but it doesn’t matter to Don. They adore his yacht, his private beach — and him.

He hasn’t met the girl of his dreams, so these girls are like the sun, the beach, the sea, and the yacht itself — abstractions of what could be. Don looks at the yellow bikini bottom of one of the girls. It is tugged up and reveals her butt in a way that is so much better than a thong, revealing what is supposed to be hidden.

Donnie knows his dream will come true some day. He just
knows
it.

• • • •

Don has never seen the marina so full of people. He walks past old dusty boats that had been in long-term storage being cleaned and prepped for use. Larger boats are being loaded with supplies. There is activity at every slip, and the water is crowded with boats heading out to sea.

He stops and holds his hand out in front of Zack. There is a stranger loading up Don’s sailboat.

“Zack, go back to the truck and bring my rifle.”

Zack nods, drops the big military-style duffelbag, and rushes back up the cement path.

He returns a minute later and hands his father the thirty-ought-six. “I loaded it,” he adds.

“Stay here and watch the supplies,” Don says.

“What’s he doing?”

“He thinks he’s stealing our yacht.”

Don checks the chamber as he strides toward the slip. No one notices him, their attention all on the same thing — loading up and getting out. There is a man tossing a few plastic bags onto the back of the boat. There is a small pile on the boat and a larger pile on the dock.

“Okay, buddy,” Don says. The man glances up mid-throw to see Don pointing the rifle at his chest. “Just drop that and get the rest of the bags and toss them back to the dock.” The man looks scared, but doesn’t seem desperate enough to do anything stupid.