The End of the World As We Know It Read online

“Charming, Teena. There are,” Leo said, a little sheepishly. “Just past that tree stand there. They’re fifty cents, though.” He fished some change from his pocket and dropped a few warm quarters into Sarabeth’s cool hand.

  Her fingers closing around the change, Sarabeth made her way up the hill a bit more, where two sets of standing binoculars faced the ship and town. She dropped in Leo’s money and peered through the viewfinder, hoping to see something that she could get excited about.

  As she focused the lenses and trained them on the ship, she saw something that made her feel like they stood a chance. A long shot of a chance, but a chance nonetheless.

  “We shouldn’t give up hope!” Sarabeth yelled back toward the group, still looking down at the ship. “The ship may be big, but it’s not all space-age technology.” She felt a grin spread across her face behind the cold metal of the binoculars. It wasn’t what she saw, so much as what she felt that made her feel a little optimistic.

  She peered back at the group, who’d gathered around her. “For as intimidating as the ship is”—she peeked back, wondering how many people were imprisoned in the ship—“it has a front door. And it’s open. There are guards, maybe twelve aliens, and who knows what on the other side. But here’s the thing. We have an opportunity to save the world.”

  Leo stepped closer, gesturing to have a look through the lenses. “I’ll take it,” he said.

  “Yeah, we did make it this far,” Evan added.

  “Great, I’m so glad you’re all pumped up,” Teena said, turning away to glance at the ship. She gnawed on the inside of her lip. “But take it from a real cheerleader that a team without a playbook isn’t going to win.”

  Sarabeth bristled at Teena’s cynicism but let it roll off her. “Well, there’s one other thing that might help, but I don’t know. I mean, I could be way off base—I probably am way off base. But the ship is like a wheel, with spokes coming out of a central hub, that diamond in the center. I think that’s the power source. The only power source. It’s a dumb design. If we could get inside, we might be able to shut it all down.”

  “Like a self-destruct button?” Evan said.

  “More like a self-delusion button,” Teena sighed.

  “What’s your problem, Teena? It’s just a guess, but it’s something. Better than guns that don’t work,” Sarabeth sniped back, pulling herself up to her full five-eleven and feeling like a different person from the slightly slouched girl who’d tried to shrink into her new sweater on Teena’s doorstep earlier that night.

  “Yeah, let up, Teena. We probably could have saved that family if you hadn’t insisted on fighting the aliens,” Leo said, stepping between the girls.

  “Whatever, Leo,” Teena fired back, starting toward the van. “You’re only here because you’re in need of new vagina.”

  Sarabeth blushed beet-red, realizing that she was the new vagina. Did that make Teena the old vagina? “You’re only good for firing off your gun and your mouth,” Sarabeth said, but too quietly.

  “You’d be dead if it weren’t for me,” Teena growled. When she reached the van, she grabbed her guns from the front seat, then started down the hill. “Whatever. I don’t need you people. You losers. I hope you all have a good time blowing up a spaceship with a baseball bat!”

  Teena stalked toward the trees. A distressed Evan looked from Leo and Sarabeth to Teena’s small retreating figure. “She can’t be out there alone,” he said, before taking off behind her. Sarabeth and Leo were alone on High Point. And it sucked, because Sarabeth knew Evan was right. They couldn’t split up, not now, no matter what.

  “Well, this is the weirdest set of circumstances that’s brought me up here with a girl,” Leo said lightly, kicking his foot anxiously against the ground. “Though there was this one time I was seeing this chick obsessed with leprechauns, and it was St. Patrick’s Day .… ”

  Sarabeth ignored this. She knew Leo went out with a lot of girls; sometimes in string ensemble, she’d hear him on his phone in the corner, making plans in a low, sexy voice. “Evan’s right,” she said, cutting him off. “We need her. She may be a bitch, but she’s the only bitch we’ve got.”

  Leo peered once more at the ship below. “Check it out, it’s glowing,” he said. Sarabeth cast a sidelong glance at the ship, which was illuminated by a deeper purple light than before. Suddenly, a pulsing bright purple lit the sky, and a surge of energy practically burned the horizon. A laser beam shot out from the ship and headed straight for them. Sarabeth and Leo ran, jumping in the van and starting it just as the surge singed the earth below.

  In the backseat, Abe shook out of a deep sleep. “Is it the commies?”

  Sarabeth slammed on the gas pedal, and the van rumbled down the hill. Teena and Evan were straight ahead. Teena was having trouble negotiating the hill in her boots, and Evan was just steps behind her.

  Evan turned and must have instantly recognized the terror in Sarabeth’s eyes. Leo pushed open the door, even as the van skidded along the tree line. “Get in, get in, get in now!” he yelled, reaching out for Evan, who grabbed Leo’s arm with one hand and scooped up Teena with his other arm. Pushing off the ground with one foot, Evan launched himself and Teena into the van. They toppled in, sending Abe sprawling on the floor of the backseat with them. Sarabeth swung a hard right, and the van careened into a ditch along the road. The trees they’d just sped by burst into flames.

  She didn’t let up on the gas the whole way down the hill, until the smell of burnt earth grew faint in her nostrils. Then she slammed on the brakes dramatically at the intersection of 183rd and Edgar Road, stopping at the center of what had been the Tinley Hills’s busiest intersection.

  “Nice driving, Legs,” Abe said, looking up at her from where he lay on the floor.

  No one laughed, or spoke. Almost dying kind of took the words right out of your mouth.

  “This isn’t working for me,” Sarabeth finally said in a strong, sure voice. “Look, I don’t know if I’m right. I don’t know if we stand a chance against these things. But we have to try to find out who they’ve got on that ship, and the only way we’ll survive for more than a second is if we stick together. This is do or die. Or do and then run and hide. But either way, we’re all we’ve got. So let’s make a pact right now that we try to calm our hormones, forget our cliques, and stop with the petty personal grievances. Because I don’t know about you all, but I don’t want to die.” She wondered where her oratory capabilities had come from. Probably Cameron.

  She didn’t say it, but she thought, Because I think I just got a life.

  Teena was the first to speak, even though she was still taking shallow, nervous breaths. “She’s right,” she said. And she extended a hand that Sarabeth shook.

  Sarabeth might have been making a deal with the devil, but going to hell still seemed safer than staying on Earth.

  13

  STRANGE BREW

  Leo Starnick, 7:11 A.M. Sunday, IHOP

  “Story of my life,” Leo said from behind the counter of the IHOP, where he was brewing some industrial-strength coffee. “The more fucked-up my night, the more likely it is that I wind up here at some ungodly hour. Only usually, I don’t have to make my own coffee.”

  They’d come here to eat, finally, and to strategize. Teena, Evan, and Sarabeth sat at a booth just outside the kitchen, not speaking but not angry anymore, either. Everyone was quiet but okay. Humbled was probably the right word for it. Leo had to hand it to Teena. It took her outburst—and okay, that thing where they were all almost fried to death—to get them to acknowledge the necessity of functioning as a team. Sarabeth’s speech helped, too. He grinned. He knew she had it in her. It was always the quiet ones.

  “Janie’s got some whiskey that’ll go good with that brew,” called Abe, emerging from the men’s room at the back of the restaurant. Leo chuckled as he jogged past. He was comically fast for an old guy. With a merry wave, like some kind of demented Santa Claus, he disappeared outside.

  Sara
beth looked up from the table and smiled at Leo. Something had happened between them on top of High Point. It was like, after years of occupying adjacent cello chairs and sharing the same sheet music, they were finally in tune.

  “Want help?” Evan asked, getting up from the table and coming around the counter. “I could use some toast. Maybe some eggs. I’ll make them for everyone.”

  “Good idea, Brighton,” Leo said, trying to help him along. “I saw a shitload of eggs in that giant fridge.” He pointed to the walk-in next to the prep counter.

  At the table, Sarabeth, with a serious expression, was inspecting the purple alien jizz she’d gathered at her house, while Teena flipped idly through a Gussy Me Up catalog, still holding her gun. They’d told her to put the gun away, but she claimed it was like a security blanket and promised not to shoot any more aliens in the throat. Chicks are weird, Leo thought. Teena was Miss Killer Instinct unless she broke a nail, and Sarabeth could probably run the world but didn’t want to speak up.

  But then again, maybe dudes were weird, too. Here, Evan had pummeled, like, a hundred of those greenies but lost all testicle strength when it came to talking to Teena, while he, Leo, had bagged Teena easily (emphasis on easy) but had barely bruised one of the aliens.

  Evan got to work cracking eggs onto the griddle just as the big, commercial-grade coffee brewer sputtered to life. The smells of breakfast filled the air, and Leo stood back and admired their little group. They were going to be okay. Well, okay with each other, anyway.

  “Do you think Abe should be back by now?” Evan asked Leo as he flipped an egg off the griddle and onto a blue-and-white plate.

  “I wouldn’t worry about him. That guy will still be around when these fuckers kill us all. He’s got the ultimate plan. Stay in the Winnebago.”

  “It’s not a Winnebago, remember? And anyway, I think he likes riding with us better.” Teena smiled, thumbed down the corner of a page featuring glittery red nail polish, and inhaled. “The coffee smells so good.”

  She was right. It did. IHOP coffee was lucky to smell like hot, dirty water. And this coffee smelled really good. Great, in fact. Like a Kona blend or a French roast or something.

  “Brighton, let’s go!” Leo shouted, and jumped over the counter, grabbing both Teena and Sarabeth by the wrists. “They’re here. They’re here.”

  “I don’t see anything!” Sarabeth screamed, reaching for the container of alien goo as Leo yanked her out of the booth. Evan had traded his spatula for a bat and was right behind him.

  “Dead giveaway. The coffee smells too good,” he said in a panic. They all ran past the hostess counter, knocking it to the ground. Pastel after-dinner mints rolled in a rainbow across the floor, stopping at the slimy purple feet of two aliens pushing through the narrow door, trailing slime on the glass.

  “The back, go out the back,” Teena directed, barely paying attention as she unloaded a firestorm into the aliens before anyone could stop her. Bullets hit the aliens’ throats with a squishy “splurt.”

  “You said you wouldn’t shoot!” Evan shouted, pulling Teena’s gun arm back as the purple aliens vomited onto the floor and the green liquid instantly sprang to vicious greenie life. A gaggle of snapping, buzzing, teeth-baring greenies was on them, swarming the restaurant and forcing them into the back of the building.

  “I forgot!”

  “Put the gun away,” Leo said.

  “It works on greenies!” Teena said, proving it by bringing down a half dozen with just a few shots. She tossed Sarabeth the semi-automatic from the waistband of her jeans.

  So it goes, Leo thought as he charged back into the kitchen, egging the little monsters on. “Come on, you want a piece of me?” he yelled. The little beasts took the bait and surged toward him. He yanked a mop out of the corner, swirled it in cooking grease, and lit it on fire with his purple Bic. Insta-torch. He shouted to the group, “Get down!” and they dove beneath booths just as he swung his flaming mop at the greenies, igniting at least twenty of them at once. Some screeched and fell to the floor. Others continued the charge.

  Evan stepped in behind Leo, swatting greenies away with his bat, smashing them to putrefying bits. Teena and Sarabeth fired when they had clear shots, bringing some more down. Some of the burning greenies flew about clumsily, setting fire to the walls and the tables. The fatter, slower ones swarmed beneath the lamps over the tables like giant, evil moths.

  Leo ran ahead and kicked open the back door to the alley. “Go, go, go,” he said. Teena and Evan skittered out, ducking their heads to avoid the onslaught. Sarabeth stopped right in front of him, her eyes as wide as IHOP’s oversize breakfast-platter plates. She held up her lady gun and pointed it right at Leo. What the fuck? She’d been smiling at him, and now she was going to kill him? Did these things have mind-control powers, too? She fired. The bullet whizzed so close to his head he could hear it. With a horrible high-pitched squeal, one of the greenies fell to Leo’s feet like some kind of amphibious bird. Sarabeth took his shaking hands in hers and pressed the van keys into it.

  “You drive,” she said, looking deep into his eyes. He’d never felt more like a man; she was putting her life into his unsteady hands.

  They raced to the van, where Evan and Teena were still fending off a seemingly never-ending supply of greenies, which clung to the van like barnacles on an ancient ship. Leo dove in and started the engine as the girls leaped into the backseat and Evan took the front passenger seat.

  “What about Abe?” Sarabeth yelled in the commotion.

  “He said he would be in the trailer,” Evan said.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Leo saw a buzzing cluster of greenies at the edge of the IHOP parking lot. Leo’s intestines unfurled in his stomach as he realized that beneath the greenies was Abe’s reedy shape. The greenies had their teeth and claws in him, and through the mess, Leo could just make out blood dripping onto his yellowish beard. It was too late to help him. “So much for our end-of-the-world party, old man,” Leo said sadly.

  “Should we leave the trailer? Lose the weight?” Teena asked. Leo could swear he saw tears in her eyes.

  “No,” Leo said. “Janie stays. I’m not going to let the aliens get her.”

  “You’re right,” Teena agreed, without an ounce of sarcasm.

  “We’re sorry, Abe,” Evan added, sounding as dejected as Leo felt. “But we have to go.” He pointed to the greenies, which were detaching from Abe’s carcass and starting to speed toward the van.

  Leo floored the gas pedal. “We need a base. We’ll use the mall until we figure out how to take them out. These fuckers are going down.”

  The van didn’t handle like Leo’s usual piece of shit. It was like driving a much larger, more cumbersome piece of shit, only this time he was driving it while towing a silver motor home while under attack by vicious outer-space birds. The greenies kept launching themselves at the van, only, unlike smaller pests, most of them didn’t smash and die when they made impact with the windshield.

  “I can’t see!” he yelled. Evan was already doing his best. He’d rolled down his window and was half out of the van, swatting every greenie he could. In the back, Teena and Sarabeth fastened their seat belts, swung open the doors and began firing, annihilating greenie after greenie, even though the little jerks just kept on coming. At least guns worked on greenies, though their existence could have been prevented if guns had never entered the picture.

  A greenie flew up behind the driver’s-side mirror, and, keeping just his right hand on the steering wheel, Leo grabbed a handful of Gussy Me Up flyers that were stored in the door pocket. Flicking his lighter with the hand on the wheel, he held the papers to the flame, then rolled down his window and held out his newest torch. Two goblins flew right into the trap, exploding slime all over Leo’s hand. A third came at him, teeth bared, and nicked his arm before it caught fire and flew away, burning, into a billboard for the new Martin Scorsese movie. In the mirror, a barrage of greenies kept laying siege. Sarabeth, Teen
a, and Evan were doing their best, but the troops needed a break.

  Leo struggled to keep the van on LaGrange, heading toward the mall. There were tons of places to hide there, to find supplies, and to get some food and rest. He just wished they knew how to kill the purple guys without starting a greenie explosion.

  His torch died out at the same time he heard a hissing pop. Looking like it was wearing a shit-eating grin, a greenie flew away from the van’s now-busted front tire. Sparks flew from the dull rim as it ground against the asphalt. They were still two miles from the mall, and Leo strained to see through the windshield. It was a Jackson Pollock painting of greenie guts. He turned on the wipers. They almost bent backward against the layer of gunk. After what felt like a million tries, they finally pushed through, trailing green slime.

  When his view was somewhat clear, he discovered he couldn’t go any farther. What he saw was:

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  A row of aliens stood in a line like toy soldiers from another awful dimension. Together, they formed a nearly airtight perimeter along Fordham Avenue and as far as the eye could see. They must have been protecting their spaceship, which Leo had figured was a possibility. He hadn’t thought they’d also be blocking his way to the mall. But now the four of them were stuck. If he drove through the perimeter, the aliens would be on them in seconds. If they stopped, the remaining greenies would overtake them.

  The only good thing was that it didn’t appear the aliens had spotted them yet. “Roll up your windows and get down, everyone,” he ordered.

  “But there are still greenies out there,” Evan protested.