Last Day

A Story by BelAir

A group of teenagers witness the end of the world

Last Day

BelAir

Today is May Ninth, 2010.

A few more hours and I’m not sure it will matter anymore.

. . . News of the “Death Machine,” as it was named, had reached us months before. Everyone laughed it off, or forced themselves to, until the morning they woke to purple skies . . .

It is a simple question.

What would you do?

Of course, nobody wanted to ponder that, and the realization came all too sudden. It was the morning of April 30^th when the first cloud was spotted.

(a factory somewhere)

(it’s gotta be)

One cloud on the horizon became two, three, the object of newspaper headlines, magazine tabloids, household conversations, government experiments. Predictions.

The end.

“They say some people even been wiped out on like part of the west coast. You heard about that, Greg?”

The boy nods noncommittally, lost texting, fingers racing. Normally, it was a week of ISS if the teachers caught a student ‘with their phone out’ –a term Hanna thought sounded like something close to indecent exposure—as Greg Smeltzer had his now, in his lap . . . but today—

today was different. Hanna is sure the authority has seen him plenty of times, but nobody has said anything in regards. The thought makes something move even deeper in her stomach.

Hanna Oliver had separated from their useless blabbing a long while ago, and sits now a few flights above them on the gym bleachers. There’s a heated basketball game going on on the floor, but most are doing the same: talking about the Death Machine or lost in their own thoughts. There’s also a notebook on her lap and a pen in her hand. When she resumes she writes feverishly.

It doesn’t last long before their conversations intervene again, and the old, reoccurring thoughts crowd in.

Hanna raises her head.

Waits.

And below, just in time, Bobby runs a hand through her ponytail.

She’s activated the panic button on her jeep, and in a matter of seconds the office will buzz her to fix this problem, and she will make some excuse that she has to go to it to do so.

From there each of them will ask to be excused, quietly.

Hanna can’t wait to get the hell out of here.

Coach knew there was nothing wrong with me, but he let me go anyway.

The four of them were already waiting by the time I got there . . .

Bobby has her fingers on the radio again, playing the dial for another station that wasn’t going to come in.

“I can’t believe it,” Kaytie is saying. “He waited until now to see a rated R movie.”

“What’s he carrying?” Hanna asks. Anything to divert herself from that damn static, and, suddenly, the pressure of Kaytie’s thigh against her own.

“Probably a Bible,” Bobby says, giving up and joining their stare.

Eli Ulrich doesn’t seem to notice as he climbs inside, or their faces at the windows, for that matter, either. He can still hear his mother screaming inside the house—at him, the television, he doesn’t know.

When he looks back, she’s at the door, pushing outside.

“Go, go, go—”

Bobby grabs the wheel and lunges the jeep forward, back onto the street, roaring toward the highway.

Disquiet runs through the vehicle when they see the leather-bound book sitting on his knees. Eli tucks it away, saying nothing.

Halfway into town, Dakota, in the front seat next to Bobby, pulled it from his pocket, lit it with the jeep’s lighter, and began passing it around. It was the first time I had ever seen a joint before, at least in my own hand. It was the first time I had ever been high, or something close to it.

Before we even hit town I was seeing movies of my own playing out before me, but I could still see the uneasiness in Eli’s eyes . . .

“Eli, it’s not going to kill you. Promise.”

He looks at Dakota again, to Kira on his lap in the seat. She shakes her head and looks away.

“No thanks.”

“It’s your last day on earth and you won’t even try it.”

To Kaytie. She shakes her head and seems to bury herself in the cell phone she is holding at the offer. She’s dark-haired, dark-eyed, a round, virginal face, with oversized Vans on her feet and bagging shorts.

She wanders, briefly, how fast Bobby is really going, and realizes it doesn’t matter.

The movie was bland and boring, a pathetic shot at a comedy that we had seen seven times now. Of course, I dozed in and out of it and saw things much more interesting of my own in my drugged state, and finally managed to fall asleep.

Popcorn tubs whiz through the air at the screen, just barely missing their heads, and the crowd of teenagers yell in disgust at the end like always. Hanna sees Kira and Dakota are too busy with each other to notice. For a moment, while a spray of popcorn scatters down on her shoulders, she wanders, why are they here?

Why aren’t we home with our families—with the ones who love us the most? And then I realized, as the reel rolled back over to the starting credits, we weren’t meant to be. Not us. Lonely, selfish adolescents . . .

By four o’clock the count is up to seven-million.

Three states on the west coast.

And night is coming before night is due.

Bobby only races faster down the back road under the bruise-colored skies—some even said it was just one of the worst thunderstorms Missouri had ever seen coming.

A solar flare.

But they know better. Children have always had a better way of accepting things as they are.

The house rises in the distance in the jeep’s headlights. There are cars lining each side of the road for a mile, it seems.

. . . wondered where were their parents and thought of my own. They would be

worried about me by now, I thought, and then I was being pulled out of the vehicle and up the gravel driveway toward the country house.

I had to stop, though. It had to be now, before I got myself into another high or drunkenness or whatever else. The last one I had already worked off.

How long was it since I had seen them?

Felt like weeks.

She watches them continue up the driveway and starts dialing. When she finishes, they are already in the house.

A voice on the other end, troubled, low, but still recognizable.

“Mom?”

A pause.

“Hanna, where are you?”

“I skipped school. I’m with a few friends.”

Relief in that voice. Had she even caught a sigh?

“Are you coming home? Everybody’s here . . . I made enchiladas.”

Hanna tries to swallow and can’t from the odd constriction in her throat.

She closes her eyes instead.

“Yeah, Mom. I’ll be home later. I love you.”

“I love you, too. More than anything.”

Hanna shuts the phone before anything else can be said and wipes her eyes and climbs out. An electricity in the air makes her hair stand on her skin and an uncomfortable thrumming in her legs and groin, hurrying to the house before another tremor can start.

From the porch, a figure stands.

Waiting for her.

Kaytie offers her a weak smile.

Just as we were coming inside it started again. The music was so loud, though, I couldn’t hear anything outside over it.

It didn’t interrupt the scheme of things whatsoever. The dancing and drinking and yelling continued, and I was glad . . . glad to be of my own kind, to be invisible, shrouded within the music and the motion, untouchable.

The old house shakes with the music’s force, with the clamoring feet upstairs and down. The air’s sweet with drugs and beer on each other’s breaths. It’s cloying but comforting.

Another comfort: there’s not a television or radio in sight. No updates or photos or recordings or reruns.

Before long, the crowd is scattered. Bobby has found herself a decent match on the X-Box in one of the back rooms; Dakota and Kira gone. Eli is visiting with some almost-forgotten friends, Hanna . . .

. . . dancing, a hundred bouncing bodies rancid with sweat around me, sometimes clinging for a companion. It’s beautiful, I thought, and I’ll never see it again. The thought didn’t exactly disturb me, but made the moment—dancing in that old, ran-down house—something much more indescribable.

And then something different came over me. The feeling of being watched.

. . . across the room, Kaytie’s eyes . . .

Excitement.

Nervousness.

Fear.

She follows Hanna up the staircase feeling as if her knees will collapse at any second. They’re weak enough.

A room gapes open at the front of the narrow hallway, empty. A bedroom, she sees, as they move inside. The bed is brass-framed and quilted, with a closet, bedside table, window curtains thick with dust. Picture frames and artificial flowers.

Kaytie sits, hesitantly, and Hanna goes to the window and parts the blinds. From behind her, she can hear them snap open.

“Look.”

She turns and, following Hanna’s gaze, spots the fire-red light lying against the horizon.

It’s depressing but it’s final.

I closed the blinds when I saw how it upset her.

I couldn’t help but just watch her and wonder what she was thinking.

A little over a week ago, Kaytie’s mom committed suicide.

I touched her shoulder and she turned. The next thing I knew I was wrapping my arms around her neck, climbing onto her lap. Her hands went to my sides and then my lips were enclosed in hers.

Pretty soon her hands were lower, on my legs . . .

A beautiful portrait of the human emotions.

And then she hears a small whimper, and another tear pushes out of Kaytie’s eye and

skips down her cheek.

The two lay in silence, save for the pulse of music seeping up through the floorboards.

Hanna reaches over for her and is surprised when Kaytie, in her arms, begins to sob.

The “crowd” begins only a few people by a windowsill, who, during some time that evening, had broken away from the dancing out of drunken curiosity.

It grows quickly, and soon enough the red line on the horizon is more than just a line. In the distance, engulfing the landscape, a rolling tidal wave of flames.

Bobby manages to scamper away to the second floor.

Under her, the house shudders.

We were still lying together when Bobby broken into the room. She was taken back for a moment, but there was something that flashed in her eyes when she looked at me—like she wasn’t at all surprised.

We got the rest of us and left.

It was incredible to feel Kaytie’s hand move into mine as we made for the jeep.

We headed away from the flames. Couldn’t go home because home was already gone.

Bobby just made it to the highest hill she could find minutes ago. It took a while, so that the destruction was only a familiar line in the distance. For now.

We sit on the jeep, watching, with the smell of devastation coming to us on small, scarce winds.

Somewhere close by there is Eli’s worn, leather Bible.

A bray of uneasy laughter.

I’m still holding Kaytie’s hand.