The End is Now (15 page)

Most of all, there was getting the message out. Sure, the Prepared had their souls in good standing with eternity, but many
in Goodland did not. So the number one reason they existed was to let people know the end was coming when it was time. And
once the tornado hit the elementary school, every member of the Prepared knew how close they really were to the end. Moments
after it happened they sprung into action, trimming branches, affixing bumper stickers, finalizing their Rapture Will and
Testaments, and sending the message out that the apocalypse was coming soon. They sent out emails and made easy-to-read pamphlets
with bright, colorful illustrations explaining what would happen in the upcoming days. One of the wealthy members of the Prepared
owned some of the billboards in Goodland. So he had the biggest billboard in town painted black with blocky white letters
that read
The End Is Now
. It was a message for all of them. It was a reminder for the skeptics in the town of Goodland to drop their cynicism and
get their souls ready for the end.

Because it was time to get ready. One of the Henderson boy’s prophecies had come to fruition. There were only two left. And
once they came to pass, the test would begin. The Prepared were going to do everything within their power to make sure all
of Goodland passed with flying colors.

From the beginning, the idea of the rapture didn’t make very much sense to Jeff. He’d never even heard of it before the first
time he’d gone to church with Amy. And he’d never been a regular attendee at church before he’d gotten married.

Before Amy, Jeff didn’t have strong feelings about religion one way or another. He felt about church the same way he felt
about NASCAR racing — it wasn’t really his thing but he was cool with other people being passionate about it. Still, like
NASCAR racing, there were so many nuances about church that Jeff didn’t understand. So many cultural differences. Jeff didn’t
know what they all were; truthfully he knew very few of them, but even the little bit he did know weirded him out.

For instance, Amy didn’t listen to the rock groups he was into like The Cure and Aerosmith and Def Leppard. She listened to
Petra and Stryper and Whitecross, which were sort of the same except for all of the songs were about Jesus and the music wasn’t
quite as good. She said she listened to Stryper because
secular
songs were bad. Jeff didn’t even know what a secular song was. The best he could tell, the only difference between secular
and Christian songs was that secular songs weren’t about Jesus and their music was a little better. But this was just the
tip of the iceberg of what Jeff didn’t understand about Christianity.

Still, it didn’t matter. He’d married into Christianity. And on the first Sunday after they’d gotten married, Jeff promised
Amy he’d go to church. He wished he hadn’t. He felt completely uncomfortable there. The stained glass windows had all of these
freaky images of saints and disciples looking at Jesus. The stories on the stained glass were distorted, colorful, animated
versions of the Bible stories he remembered hearing growing up. Jeff felt like a foreigner. Everyone inside the church was
(and always had been) passionate, and even fanatical, about church and religion and God and Jesus. And not only was he not
one of them, he was the evil wicked teenager who’d impregnated Amy Jones, one of their own — the innocent flower of a girl
who spent her summers in their youth camps and on their mission trips. But now, in sort of his own sinful, messed-up, heathen
way, he’d married into the church family.

That’s how things are in marriage, Jeff realized. You assimilate your spouse’s traditions and pastimes into your own life.
For instance, at Jeff’s house at Christmas it was, “On your marks, get set, go!” and everyone tore into their presents as
fast as they could. But at Amy’s house they tore into them slowly, one at a time, going around in the circle and admiring
and ooing and ahhing about all the wonderful sweaters and toys and Chinese message contraptions. Jeff and Amy agreed that
every other Christmas they would rotate how they opened presents, honoring both family traditions.

Jeff ’s only Sunday tradition was making waffles and fresh-squeezed orange juice. So they decided to merge their traditions.
Jeff would go to church. And afterwards Amy would make waffles and fresh-squeezed OJ.

It was only fair.

On his first morning at church as a married man, he walked through the giant oak doors trying to pretend everyone wasn’t staring
at him. He actually couldn’t tell if they were staring at him or his wife, who was with child, or if they were staring at
this whole scene. Jeff couldn’t tell if people thought that maybe he and Amy were there to make a scene, to flip over the
communion tables and snatch handfuls of cash from the offering plates. So he tried to ignore them. He took Amy to find a seat
and sat there with a confident smile as if he were completely used to going to church. As if this was what he did every Sunday.

Then, when the service started, Jeff stopped thinking about the other people and started to consider what the preacher was
saying. Jeff couldn’t tell what Pastor Colby (the former youth pastor who was now the Senior Pastor) was talking about. Jeff
didn’t know what the preacher meant when he said you have to make
an eternal impact
. That’s how he kept saying it. “Live your life to make an eternal impact.” Jeff assumed Pastor Colby was talking about taking
care of the environment.

But he wasn’t.

He was talking about heaven and hell and the fact that people will spend an eternity in one place or another. He was talking
about how your actions will get you close to heaven or hell.

Pastor Colby went on, “You see, someday Jesus will come back for all of us. We will be raptured, and we will be held accountable
for every decision we’ve made on earth. Don’t you want to be able to stand there, in front of the Father, and feel proud?
Don’t you want to hear Him say, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant’?”

Jeff thought it would probably be nice to hear Jesus say that. But he had the feeling that for everyone around him, Jesus’
saying this wasn’t a nice thought — it was a goal. They lived every single day facing the reality of heaven and hell. And
Jeff suddenly wondered how everyone lived like this. He looked around the sanctuary and wondered how they all woke up, scanned
their offices, schools, the bus stops and supermarkets, knowing that everyone around them was going to one place or the other.
Sure, Jeff knew it was possible everyone would end up in heaven or hell, but he also knew it was possible that the ozone layer
could melt away; it was possible the local nuclear power plant could melt down; it was possible that on his next checkup he
could get diagnosed with cancer and only have six months to live. There was a chance all those things could happen. But you
can’t live your life in fear of a chance that something
could
happen. It would paralyze you. But for the people in the church, there wasn’t the
chance
heaven and hell could happen; they knew better, they knew it was only a matter of time.

“You see, guys, it’s real simple. The Bible says nobody knows the day or the time. So one day we’re just going to be going
along, business as usual, and then BAM,” the minister snapped his fingers. “And like that we’ll be gone. So we need to live
our lives holy and righteous. We need to live as if Jesus actually were coming back any second.”

After the service Jeff and Amy mingled with some church members. Jeff was surprised at how friendly everyone was. He was invited
to the next week’s potluck; he was hugged, smiled at, introduced to everyone, and overall it seemed like he was being welcomed
into the church family.

On the car ride home things were better. He drove through the neighborhoods with Amy snuggled up to him, resting her head
on his shoulder. It was a spring day and he slowly drove past the kids playing jump rope and hopscotch, past the fathers grilling
bratwursts in their “kiss the cook” aprons, past the blossoming trees, singing birds, and elderly couples drinking freckled
strawberry lemonade on the porch. Jeff rolled down his window and the breeze tussled his hair, almost reassuring him that
everything was going to be okay from here on out. And for a moment he blinked, took a deep breath, and let everything soak
in.

But when he opened his eyes, they were all gone.

The kids had vanished and the jump rope slowly fell to the ground. The elderly couple had disappeared and their freckled strawberry
lemonade fell to the porch, shattered, and red juice crept across it. Around him he could smell the bratwursts as their skin
started to blacken and burn. And when Jeff looked over at Amy she wasn’t there. She had vanished along with everyone else.
When he felt the place where she was just sitting, it was still warm. He couldn’t bring himself to lift his hand up because
he didn’t want to stop feeling the warmth. He knew it was the last of piece of Amy he would ever have.

Then Jeff shook his head and they were all back: the children, the fathers with grilling utensils, the elderly couple, and
Amy. She didn’t even notice anything was wrong. She was staring out the window, humming along with the radio.

This was the first paranoid flash Jeff ever had. He thought everything he was seeing was real because he wasn’t used to these
flashes/paranoid-visions-of-the-future. So at that moment he couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing.

Still, he’d had fears before and he knew a little bit about dealing with them. He knew the best way to battle paranoia was
to use logic and reason. And when he had the rapture vision he used the same sort of reason. He told himself the rapture wasn’t
going to happen because, in all honesty, it was nonsense. Was he really supposed to believe that one day every Christian in
Goodland would really just vanish? There were so many logistical problems in this line of believing alone. How would God know
exactly who to rapture? And if he was doing it all at the same moment, couldn’t there be a little confusion and chaos? What
if some of the wrong people were raptured? What if God scooped up a few sinners and pagans and heathens by mistake just because
the whole thing was happening so fast? What if God grabbed some Mormons and Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses because they were
all in
some
sort of church? Would they have to be sent back to earth? Would there have to be a second rapture to grab all the people
who’d been inaccurately left behind?

As Jeff pulled into his apartment complex he decided that if he was going to go to church, he would no longer put any stock
or thought or faith in the talk of the rapture. From that point forward the rapture was just an odd footnote in the Christian
belief system that he would ignore.

And through the years, Jeff’s Sunday morning ritual began to change — once the baby was born, the fresh-squeezed orange juice
came from cartons and the homemade waffles became Eggos. “There just isn’t time to make everything from scratch,” Amy would
say. And then a couple of years later the Eggos became Frosted Shredded Mini Wheats because they were high in fiber, and the
OJ became grapefruit juice because there wasn’t all that needless sugar — but that was okay. He had more important things
to worry about than breakfast now. He had become a responsible adult and a reliable parent. He went to church and provided
for his family. These were monumental accomplishments he never thought he’d be able to do when Amy first announced her pregnancy.
And as part of his new life he even learned that church could give him some of the right things to worry about. He began to
concern himself with the importance of being kind to his neighbor. He learned to make sure he never committed any of the horrendous
sins like stealing or killing or committing adultery.

He could worry about those things. Those seemed like good, sensible, adult things to be worrying about. Just as long as he
didn’t have to worry about thousands and millions of souls vanishing in the blink of an eye; graveyards coming to life with
all the dead Christians; seven years of hellish tribulation; a one-world government; and last, but certainly not least, just
as long as he didn’t have to worry about the Antichrist.

As long as he didn’t have to worry about any of that, everything would be fine.

Eighteen years later, Jeff suddenly had no choice. The first of the signs of the impending rapture had happened. But before
he (and everyone else) could start worrying about the philosophical/ apocalyptic ramifications of the tornado that shredded
Jefferson Elementary, he had to worry about the practical ones first. That started with getting home and making sure his family
was okay.

This would not be an easy task.

Once he pulled out of Hansley Automotive’s parking lot and onto the normally quiet streets of Goodland, Jeff realized he was
trying to do the same thing everyone else was.
Everyone
was trying to get home. Or at least they were all, in some way, trying to get to their families. Husbands had to find their
wives, mothers had to rescue their children, even couples who’d only been casually dating for a month or two were trying to
find each other. At that moment everyone needed to hug and hold and talk with and see the people that mattered most to them.
And because the tornado hit in the middle of the workday on a Thursday afternoon, it meant everyone was apart — children were
at school, homemakers were at home, and fathers and mothers were at their jobs. Everyone had to drive across town to get to
their families.

It was chaos.

Jeff couldn’t believe all the people on the roads. He’d never seen anything like it. The streets of Goodland just weren’t
designed to hold the amount of traffic that was on them. It seemed like everyone who had a car was driving it. And even though
the drivers of Goodland were normally very cautious and courteous — State Farm had ranked it the fourth safest city in America,
and the citizens of Goodland enjoyed some of the lowest insurance premiums in the country — today all that was thrown out
the window. Everyone behind the wheel of a car was driving in a panicked frenzy. The streets of Goodland looked like a third-world
country. Not that Jeff really knew what driving in a third-world country looked like. He’d seen movies where there were bikes,
carriages, horses, mopeds, small cars and trucks that were honking and crisscrossing and zigzagging through the streets of
Bangkok. And this is how Goodland felt.