The End of the World As We Know It Read online

  As she fluttered her eyelashes at Evan, his Adam’s apple rose and fell with his nervous gulp. Too easy.

  “So, here’s my idea,” Teena said with authority. “Let’s find these motherfuckers’ ship.”

  Leo flashed Teena one of the grins he’d been giving Sarabeth all night. That would show her. Leo put the lid on the gnocchi and then grinned at Sarabeth. The same grin he’d just given Teena. “As long as I can take this gnocchi for the road.”

  Whatever. Teena was cheerleading for him, and all he cared about was Sarabeth’s stupid food. Teena collected her stuff, plus an extra Diet Coke, and led them all to the door. Sarabeth took one last sad look around her empty house, and Teena almost felt bad for her, before she remembered what her own house looked like.

  Teena marched like a general out to the van, glad to have everyone following her plan, even if they didn’t all agree with it. Leo did, and that was what mattered. And Evan might have been tentative, but she knew he’d choose her over Sarabeth any day.

  Sarabeth was still driving, but riding shotgun actually made Teena feel more in control. She leaned back in her seat, scanning the horizon for signs of life

  At the end of her block, Sarabeth put on the brakes.

  “Why are you stopping?” Teena asked.

  “Stop sign,” Sarabeth said. “Habit. And, I don’t know which way to turn.”

  “Well, where are we going, exactly?” Evan asked.

  “Maybe just drive around till we get some answers,” Leo suggested. “I’d take a left.”

  Sarabeth started to roll forward when Teena saw something that made her scream, “Stop!”

  Sarabeth jolted the van back to a halt.

  “People! Survivors.” Teena pointed to a house on the corner with a huge front yard. Across the expanse of lawn, Teena caught the eye of a little girl clutching her teddy bear. Teena wasn’t the type to cry at Hallmark commercials, but a tear almost came to her eye at the sight.

  “They must know about the attack and be trying to leave,” Evan said from the backseat.

  Teena ignored him and started to wave at the little girl, when out of the house loped an alien, its jelly-coated skin glinting in the moonlight, and grabbed her by the arm. Behind it came two more, each clutching one of the little girl’s parents.

  “Do those look bigger than the first one we saw?” Leo asked.

  Before she even had time to think, Teena found herself jumping from the passenger seat and pulling her gun from her waistband in one smooth motion. Sarabeth swung the van over to the family’s front yard, and the aliens—who’d paused mid-stride but didn’t let go of the family—stumbled a little as the headlights landed on them. The father tried to pull away, but the alien yanked his arm behind his back, while the mother and daughter trembled as their captors gripped them tighter.

  Teena caught the little girl’s eye again, and a wide smile came across the child’s face. She lifted her tiny foot and stepped, hard, on the alien’s massive knobby one. A guttural noise emerged from its mouthless body, and its co-captors bristled just enough to loosen their grips on the family. The father grabbed his wife and child, and they started to run toward the Gussy Me Up van, behind Teena. Teena silently cheered herself. That made three more people who wouldn’t get captured tonight.

  She pointed her gun at the trio of the now empty-handed aliens, still a good thirty feet away. She was about to fire, when suddenly out of the darkness came a half-dozen more aliens. As moonlight spilled down on them, they grabbed the family and two of the advancing aliens. Before Teena could blink, the aliens and their captives zipped away into the air. On their backs were clear glass ovals with green flames crackling inside.

  Oh, God, Teena thought. The aliens had jet packs. They could fly. How could four high school students possibly win this thing?

  As fear climbed in her throat, she realized the boys had jumped out of the van and taken position next to her as she faced down the remaining alien, who’d apparently been left behind to kill her.

  “I’ve got this,” Teena said, even though she secretly felt better with the guys out here, too.

  “Don’t shoot. Let’s go before they take us, too,” Leo said, staring at the spot where the family had disappeared just seconds ago. “Guns don’t work.”

  “I have to kill these things,” Teena said, anger filling her heart. “I have to try.” She moved in with the gun, clicking a fresh clip into place and littering bullets into her alien adversary’s head, chest, and stomach as it moved toward her. Once she’d locked on a weak spot and killed the first immediate threat, she’d kill every last one. It was the only way to save anyone.

  Bullet-ridden, the alien wobbled toward them, and Teena backed up a few steps, bumping into Evan, who was standing beside her like a bodyguard, gripping his bat and ready to swing. Leo held up a pink-handled cleaver he’d taken from Sarabeth’s kitchen.

  Sarabeth was still in the van, the motor running. “Please, let’s go!” she yelled.

  Teena rattled off another succession of shots into the alien’s throat. Now it was only about fifteen feet away. As the bullets pierced the silvery membrane with satisfying splats, the thing doubled over and started to retch green ooze onto the sidewalk. Evan reached out and pulled her backward by the shoulder so that the ooze wouldn’t hit her feet.

  “Ha! See? I found its weak spot! The throat!” Teena sneered at Sarabeth, whose green eyes grew so wide they threatened to swallow her face.

  She felt better than when she’d won prom queen as a junior. Knowing these things could be killed meant the four of them could win. And Teena believed that if a battle could be won, she would be the one to win it. She pointed proudly at the dying, puking alien. Now they could save everyone.

  “Holy shit!” Leo yelled, but not necessarily in a ding-dong-the-alien’s-dead way. Teena swung back around to where the creature had fallen onto the sidewalk. The green ooze was mutating into a dozen little green masses that looked like tiny, four-legged goblins with big egg-shaped eyes on the tops of their heads. They were almost cute, like demented lizards from the Littlest Pet Shop. But in seconds, a dozen little beasties were charging at Teena, fast, leaping from the ground and flying toward her face. Flying. Fucking flying. As if the sharp silver claws emerging from their tiny green feet weren’t enough. She screamed as one came right at her, its claws out. She stumbled backward, dropping her Uzi in the process.

  Lying on the ground, Teena clutched her neck, bleeding where one had scratched her. The things came at her in a buzzing swarm, and she held one arm across her face, fearing what was next. She scooted toward her Uzi and plucked it off the ground, but was so heavily surrounded she couldn’t even raise the gun to fire. But then the ground crunched as Evan’s feet landed in front of her. He planted himself in batter’s stance and started to swing—big, sweet, graceful swings that connected with goblin after goblin in a satisfying symphony of splatter. Some hits brought the goblins instantly to the ground, while others sent the goblins soaring on a home-run trajectory, until they exploded mid-air with a tiny squeal. She pulled her hands from her face to watch, disbelieving. Evan didn’t miss.

  “Get. In. The. Van,” Evan commanded her and Leo, who sliced through the air with his cleaver but was making much less progress against his fast-moving targets. Teena and Leo scrambled into the van just as Evan pelted the last little beastie far into the distance. No sooner had that goblin burst into bits than the alien on the ground belched again, this time more green liquid than before, and that green liquid quickly bubbled into at least a hundred more goblins.

  They flew at the van like a flood of bats, and Teena could tell that even Evan was no match. He backed in through the open door, swatting the beasties he could and landing on the floor of the backseat with a thud. Leo slammed the door closed just as one of the goblins tried to get in, and cut the thing in half. Its top half, its oval eyes wide, fell onto the center console, sliding onto the floor of the front seat between Teena and Sarabeth. Teena lifted h
er foot and crushed the thing like a bug, satisfied as it gave a final breath.

  Sarabeth sped down the block as a stream of the goblins followed, beating against the windows as they flew at the van with abandon. The window Evan had knocked out—the plastic bags rippling as the van picked up speed—was weakening as the things hit it with their claws. Evan and Leo kept whacking the goblins away.

  “It’s fucking impossible!” Leo shouted over the din of the goblins’ persistent buzzing. “One goes down and another one attacks.”

  Fortunately, Leo was wrong. Eventually, some of the goblins grew bored and flew away, until just one persistent beastie remained. This one was not as wily as its cohorts, and even looked large and slow, like a goblin version of Dave Brandt, the now-dead lineman. It bobbled against the front windshield, its sharp teeth set in a grin.

  Sarabeth turned on the windshield wipers, but they just hit goblin Dave with slurping thwacks. Teena had another idea. She rolled down her window, leaned out, and killed the thing with a quick burst of gunfire. It squealed as it skidded off the hood and onto the street. The tires rolled over it, rendering it a pile of flat green slime.

  The threat gone for now, Teena turned in her seat to look at Evan, who was still at attention with the bat but looking exhausted and spent.

  “Thank you,” Teena said. She meant it, and hoped she sounded sincere. Evan’s sweater was tattered from where the little things had tried to bite him. His blood streaked his forearm, and splatters of green alien ooze covered his shoulders and hair. Teena reached out and pulled a loose thread from his upper arm, where the sweater was shredded. She surprised herself by letting her hand linger there. Evan was wearing soft cashmere, like the snuggly sweaters they sold at King Clothing, the kind Teena loved to nuzzle her face in. Since when did Evan have nice clothes? “Are you okay?”

  Evan nodded, rubbing a trail of slime away from his eye. The fact that he didn’t say anything or seem to care if he got credit made his saving her even more heroic, Teena thought.

  “Dude, your foot,” Leo alerted him, cutting into the moment. Attached to Evan’s shoe was one of the goblins, half flattened but still moving. Evan took his bat and crushed it. He fell back into his seat and leaned his head back, putting a strong jaw on display.

  Teena tore her eyes away, reminding herself he was a goody-goody church boy. Home-run hitter or not, it would take more than the end of the world before Evan Brighton scored with her.

  11

  CATCH MY DRIFTER?

  Evan Brighton, 3:51 A.M. Sunday, Sarabeth’s Van

  Evan’s hand didn’t loosen on the bat until they’d gotten back onto Route 33. They had to be going at least eighty miles an hour, and Sarabeth’s eyes were glued to the road. Suddenly, she swung a wide left into the IHOP parking lot and pulled up alongside the restaurant, next to the machines holding the Chicago Tribune and the Tinley Herald.

  Through his shredded plastic window, Evan could see the papers were from Saturday. Saturday morning, when he’d barely been sure he’d have the guts to go to Teena’s party, much less imagined becoming one of its only survivors. It was now early on Sunday, the time when Evan figured the papers were normally printed. Would someone come to fill these boxes? Would there even be papers? It didn’t seem like anyone was left to write the headlines. Besides the family they’d failed to save, they hadn’t seen a single other person. Were the aliens taking over everywhere? And how was it possible that he was one of the last people on Earth? Or at least in Tinley Hills. With Teena McAuley, of all people. Which only made the fact that he’d probably still strike out with her all the more pathetic.

  Under the restaurant’s trademark blue roof, the lit windows looked like empty, lonely eyes. If Evan had been with his stepdad, Godly Jim Gibson, this would have been a sign. And those green goblin bastards would be some swarm from hell, and the big purple aliens minions of Satan. “If God didn’t make it, then someone’s trying to fake it” was one of his Soul Purpose catchphrases.

  The IHOP might have been creepier for not being dark, like everywhere else. Under the fluorescent lights, plates of food sat half-eaten and abandoned. Either people had collectively just given up on their Rooty Tooty Fresh ’N Fruitys and decamped for Denny’s, or something more sinister had occurred. Leo must have been right. The aliens had taken everyone. And their cars, judging by the parking lot. The only car was an old silver Airstream motor home, the one people at Ermer called haunted because it had been in the parking lot for as long as anyone could remember. Rumor had it, a crazy old man lived there, but no one had ever seen him.

  “Don’t you guys feel like we’re in some kind of weird IHOP commercial? Like, ‘Intergalactic attacks keeping you up at night? IHOP is open twenty-four hours,’” Leo said. Both girls shot Leo dirty looks from the front seat, but Evan didn’t mind Leo’s attempts to lighten the mood.

  “Why did you stop here, Sarabeth?” Teena asked. The greenie’s scratch on her neck wasn’t as bad as Evan had initially worried it was, but she’d been quiet ever since they’d gotten back on the road. Evan wished he could comfort her, but he was having a hard enough time comforting himself.

  “The lights were on.” Sarabeth shrugged. “It seemed like the only place to go, as usual.”

  Evan laughed to himself. The guys on the baseball team always came here after practice or after they went out for the night. Waffles were the best way to soak up a six-pack of Bud as it sloshed in your stomach. Evan had never really been invited. And now here he was, at four o’clock in the morning, with Teena McAuley. And she didn’t even seem to hate him. It was sort of like he’d made lemonade from the lemons of the evening, even though he probably should have used them to wash out his eyeballs to forget what he’d seen tonight.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t save that family,” he said softly. The dead bodies at Teena’s were gruesome, but seeing that little girl’s fearful expression would haunt him forever.

  For ten seconds too long, no one answered.

  “It’s not your fault, Evan,” Sarabeth said. “It’s not any of our faults. Who saw jet packs coming? I just hope we can find out where they’re taking people before they capture us.”

  He appreciated the honesty. And then he wondered how much easier his life would be if he could just crush on a girl like Sarabeth and not like Teena. Of course, if he liked a girl like Sarabeth, then Sarabeth would probably be the girl who thought he was a pathetic loser. Plus, she didn’t know it yet, but Evan predicted she’d be into Leo before the night was through. Or before they were through, whichever came first.

  “There’s no way in hell we can stop them.” The others stared at him like he’d just lit his hair on fire. “What? I’m allowed to say hell.”

  Silence. Evan could tell he’d freaked them all out a little, just like he had with the window. “All that crap my stepfather spouts about locusts and fire and brimstone doesn’t scare me. Most days, I think it’s all BS. But this isn’t the end of days. It’s real.”

  “What are you saying, Evan?” Teena asked, her big brown eyes designed to make you wish you were alone with her, or in Evan’s case, made him wish he were the kind of guy who had a clue what to do if he got her alone.

  “I’m scared. Call me a wuss or whatever,” he said, looking into IHOP at an empty high chair facing a plate of chicken fingers, like some macabre museum exhibit. “But I’m scared.”

  “I’m scared, too,” Sarabeth said.

  Teena looked from Sarabeth to Evan, and he steeled himself for an admonishment. “Fine. If it will help you guys get over yourselves, I’m scared, too,” Teena said reluctantly.

  They all looked to Leo, who was staring out the van’s window at the Airstream camper. Evan hoped Leo wouldn’t play the cool-guy role and blow this all off like alien invasions happened every day for guys as chill as him. Not for the threat Leo’s attitude might pose to Evan’s manhood, but for what kind of liar you’d have to be to not admit this was terrifying.

  Leo scratched his head with
his knuckles, shook his hair out, and turned away from his window to look at them all. “Shitless,” he said. “I’m scared shitless. So call me a pussy, too. Or did you say wuss? I prefer pussy.” He grinned at Evan, like they were two guys getting psyched up for the big game. Despite playing in many big games, Evan had never had anyone to get psyched up with. He liked having Leo around.

  The van was silent for a while as it sank in that their terror was something they all had in common. It was almost relaxing, sitting there, sharing a collective fear.

  A pounding came at Leo’s window. Leo jumped, grabbing the pink cleaver. Evan cocked back his bat wildly. Sarabeth grabbed a can of Mace from the center console. Teena whipped out her Uzi again, then put it down with a shaking hand.

  It took a second to realize the face was human. And old. And not entirely clean. Under the awning lights of the IHOP, Evan could make out a formerly white beard, now yellowing, that hung from a craggy, weathered face to the man’s chest, over a shirt that read I’M A FANITOBA OF MANITOBA, which was layered beneath a hairy brown blanket that looked like it had been made from Ewok skins. The man rapped on the window again, smiling. Surprisingly, he had a full set of teeth that were very white, very even, and obviously fake.

  “What the fuck?” Leo exclaimed, opening the van door a crack.

  “Don’t open the door, Leo!” Teena yelped.

  Leo shook his head. “Seriously, Teena, all the shit we encountered tonight and you’re freaked out by this dude,” he said. “Anyway, he’s a living legend. It’s Winnebago Guy.”

  “Who’re all of you? And why’s there no one in the IHOP?” the man asked, bringing his face close to Leo’s. Even from his seat on the other side of the van, Evan smelled the bacon grease, vinegar, and cigarettes. “And who’s got a light?” He waved a messy hand-rolled cigarette in Leo’s face but looked past him, toward Evan. “What about you, son?”