She called it the End of the World, a designation that marked the limits of her attempt to comprehend the intolerably incomprehensible. On January sixteenth, the world was much as it had been the previous day (which is not to say what it had been the previous year, given the rapidity of change in her world), but on January seventeenth it began to collapse, and a few days after that it was gone, irretrievably. From perhaps January nineteenth on she began to think that though the means bringing about the End were not any she could ever have imagined, the feel of her tenuous day-to-day survival was exactly what she remembered experiencing in the many End-of-the-World scenes she had been dreaming since childhood.
January seventeenth was a gray, cold, gloomy day in her city. At around noon reports of “widespread wildness” of youth began to filter into her office from around the world. At 3:30, she and her coworkers were dismissed early so that there would be no chance that any of them would be out and about after dark. The “wildness” had arrived in her city, too.
She spent the evening chatting on the phone, explaining it all to friends and relatives as simple mass hysteria exacerbated by the copycat syndrome, and that the news media were making too much of it. She had been glued to CNN since arriving home from work, tearing herself away only for telephone solace and to cruise the Internet for additional, less official, information. She was not at first overly concerned, because the media initially portrayed the “wildness” as a sort of global gang World War, organized along racial and ethnic lines, and also because she was used to watching catastrophic situations on CNN, whose anchors had been trained to keep viewers’ fear and despair aroused but distanced.
By daybreak she understood that the situation had gone beyond even the possibility of control. Throughout the night a constant barrage of gunfire and bursts of screams, shrieks, and bellows had been carried to her on the wind. In the morning she saw from her fourth-floor windows that a significant portion of the city was ablaze. Local television stations advised people not to call 911 or indeed any municipal or county numbers at all. “The authorities are overwhelmed,” they said at frequent intervals. A tape of the mayor pleading with people to keep their adolescent children home for their own (and the community’s) safety reran every fifteen minutes.
All morning she tried to get through to the friends and relatives she had spoken with the night before, but the circuits were always busy. A few minutes before noon, her phone went dead. CNN reported that most national guard units and much of the regular armed forces had been rendered ineffectual by so many of their members having themselves “gone wild”—while in possession of tanks, rifles, and other fierce armaments the Secretary of Defense declined to specify. By late afternoon, terrible things were happening within view of the windows of her apartment. Shivering, her muscles knotted painfully with tension, she wondered whether “they” ever slept.
When dark fell, not much before five, she debated the wisdom of turning on her lights. Since other windows in the neighborhood were dark, hers, if lit, would stand out, inviting, as it were, “their” attention. But if her apartment windows were dark, “they” might think no one was in the apartment and feel free to loot and vandalize it. In the end, she elected to close the blinds and put on a few low lights away from the windows. She could not bear the thought of waiting with her terror in the dark alone.
A knock rattled her door at around six-thirty. “Hello?” a voice called through the door. “Is anyone home? It’s Mrs. Mathers, from across the hall. Hello? Hello?”
Recognizing the voice, thin and creaking and tinnily resonant, she opened the door to the stooped and scrawny lady who had been living across the hall from her for the last six years. Their entire relationship consisted of exchanging polite greetings and accepting UPS deliveries for one another, and of the occasional borrowing and lending of an egg or tablespoon of baking powder or cup of milk. “My phone has been out since noon,” Mrs. Mathers said. “And I’m growing most concerned about the disorder.” The old lady’s eyes were bleak with fear, but retired English teacher that she was, she spoke as correctly as ever. “Unless you’d rather be alone, I thought we might sit together for a while, to keep up our morale.”
She wondered then why she hadn’t thought of that herself. It certainly made more sense than crouching in a corner, straining to hear the sounds of approaching danger. “Please, do come in,” she said. She hadn’t used her voice in hours and was dismayed to hear the wobble in it.
They sipped their way through several pots of tea. Mrs. Mathers said that it was the apparently global occurrence of the “disturbances” that frightened her. “I hardly know what to think,” she said. “We’re used to youth disturbances, of course, with all those Second-Echo Baby-boomers always so angry because the state legislatures won’t fund higher education any longer, but the disorder we’re seeing now, I fear, is something on an entirely different scale.” The old lady’s sharp black eyes bored into hers. “I have been cudgeling my brains all day to find a plausible explanation. Do you think some outlandish secret military chemical has been inadvertently unleashed?”
The experts on CNN all characterized the disorder as “copycat behavior on a scale never before experienced.” But then the media was focused entirely on the President’s declaration of a National State of Emergency and his urging parents to rein in their own children. “It’s a matter of individual, personal responsibility,” the President said in a constantly rerun sound-bite, words every commentator and anchorperson repeated almost every time they opened their mouths.
Even under the imminent threat of the End of the World, Mrs. Mathers was proper as proper could be. Her long brown and pink fingers, though trembling visibly, still managed to look school-teacherly with every sip she took from the blue and gold handmade mug. She, wanting to speak of ordinary, neutral things, asked Mrs. Mathers how long she had lived in the city.
“Oh my dear,” Mrs. Mathers said. She smiled and shook her head and sighed all at once. “I’ve lived here more than fifty years, if you can believe that.” Oh yes, and had taught in the public school system for thirty-five of those years.
The two women exchanged particulars, much of which both had already deduced about the other in their day-to-day neighborly observances. They told one another about their families and not-too-personal details of their individual histories. She remembers that much.
But she has no memory of what happened after that. She knows only that the next night, or maybe it was the night after, she was crouching in the alley, behind the Dumpster, crowded up against the bare winter branches of the lilac bush, shivering violently with cold, so stiff she could hardly move, her clothing wet through to the skin except for the parts protected by her Gore-tex jacket—alone. The stench of burning plastics was so thick in the air that her throat was raw and her stomach heaving with nausea. She also smelled the urine and vomit on her jeans and could not stop thinking about how wonderful it would be to die clean and dry in her bed. Her hope of escaping (to where? All the world had become hell) had sunk so low that the very idea of a “good death” had become a kind of promise to herself. If they’ve finished their vandalism, and if I can get back to the apartment, then I’ll take a bath, get into bed, and kill myself. Either by taking every tablet of every medication in the medicine cabinet—which, cumulatively, at least, should make a lethal dose—or by cutting my throat with the large Sabatier.
At least the apartment building hadn’t been burned to the ground.
The noise bothered her most. The shrieks and screams and hysterical laughter and gunfire never stopped, while it seemed that every car stereo and boom-box in the city was thumping, thumping, thumping at maximum volume, like the drum roll accompanying a firing squad.
“Kid, no, don’t do it!” The voice, hoarse and male, sounded shockingly near, and she at once recognized it as belonging to Mrs. Mathers’ favorite grandson, a tough-ass, plainclothes police officer who two years back had introduced himself as “Lieutenant Creighton” when he’d knocked on her door to ask her to call him if she saw anyone trying to enter Mrs. Mathers’ apartment during the latter’s stay in the hospital.
She peered around the Dumpster. Creighton stood with his back to the apartment building and his legs spread wide. He gripped an ugly snub-nosed weapon at arm’s length from his body with both hands. Because it was dark she didn’t at first see the girl, but, by following the line of Creighton’s arms and weapon, she spotted her about three yards from the man, dancing crazily in the rain, hands milling spastically in the air over her head—brandishing a hand grenade.
“Easy, girl, easy. Set it down, gently, on the ground.”
Though Creighton’s voice remained wonderfully steady and authoritative as he tried to talk her into sanity, the girl’s dance grew frenzied. She wondered if she should risk bolting. She thought the worst thing would be to be wounded and not killed. There was no damned way anybody was going to be fixing any injuries.
Creighton opened fire without warning. The kid collapsed. As she went down she dropped the hand grenade, which hit the concrete, bounced, and rolled a few yards down the alley, toward the Dumpster.
She closed her eyes, fearing the worst. Though her ears rang and buzzed from the shock of the gunshot, she heard footsteps pound around the corner, into the alley. She opened her eyes in time to see Creighton, bent low to the ground, head straight toward her. Six quick shots rang out, thundering in her ears, sounding closer even than Creighton’s had. Creighton crumpled into a heap, near enough for her to glimpse an expression of surprise on his face. Since he was looking straight at her, it could be either because he was surprised to see her lurking behind the Dumpster or surprised to have been shot.
“My granny,” she thought he said.
“Hey, the sucker’s still alive!”
She pressed back into the lilac branches, so far back that she could no longer see Creighton. The alley resounded with another, louder burst of shots. She thought, Maybe I should make a noise and they’ll shoot without looking and blow their chance to torture me.
Because of the ringing and roar in her ears, she heard nothing for a while, not even the constant distant whine of armored helicopters fighting fires. She perceived only the stench of burning, the sick orange of the sky, the cold, the drizzle, the darkness. Time dragged on, beating at the terminal verge. Her despair weighed more heavily on her at that moment than she had ever imagined possible.
Eventually she decided the alley was probably as safe as it was going to get. She knew that if she didn’t move soon, she likely never would. Slowly, painfully, stiffly, she eased herself out around the Dumpster. When she saw the heap of clothing and blood Creighton had become, she took care to keep her eyes averted from where she thought his head must be.
A weapon, given the situation, could simplify matters to the ultimate degree possible. She understood that with the sharpest clarity. But she was squeamish, and it looked as though Creighton was lying on it. Also, possessing his gun might delude her with a false hope of survival, which she knew would be stupid. So she left the weapon and concentrated her thoughts on whether a return to her apartment was now feasible.
From what she could see of it, the building appeared to be completely dark, inside and out—and, significantly, silent. Surely, she thought, that meant that those boys and girls weren’t still rampaging within. They did not seem to take any interest in doing anything quietly—which lying in wait for anyone to return would require.
Of course, they could be sleeping in there. It didn’t seem as though they ever slept, but she supposed they must. And considering what she knew about the behavior of their wildness, if they did sleep, they probably slept in large groups, sprawled like beasts in dens, sated or exhausted from the excesses of their violence.
It struck her at that moment, for the first time, that what was strangest about their behavior, apart from its crossing all lines of sex, class, race, and religious orientation, was that their violence seemed not to be directed against adolescents marked as other, as one expected with youth, but against the whole rest of the normal world.
The risk terrified her, but she could not bear to continue her cold, wet huddle in the alley. She supposed there were a few safe places where crowds of people sheltered under armed guards, but she lacked the strength and courage to go in search of them. All she wanted was to crawl into her bed and die, by her own hand, in peace. It was all she could think of. (It was all she could bear to think of.) And so, bent over almost to the waist, she lurched stiffly, on feet gone numb, to the back of the building. She discovered that the locks had been shot off; but then she had known that (though she had forgotten). She hugged herself, to get her shivering under control. She didn’t believe in God, but a voice in her mind whispered “Let them not be there, let them not be there, let them not be there . . .” over and over again.
In the dark inside she could not see even her own hand when she held it before her face. Every step she took was on a guess, with her hands thrust out to touch the wall or banister. Her memory of the ascent is typically faulty. She remembers that there were terrible things in the halls and back stairwell. She doesn’t recall exactly what they were. There were smells and messes and bodies to climb over. She remembers thinking: None of us are human anymore. No one is allowed to be human. It’s impossible. Impossible. We are all beasts now. When enough of us become beasts, we all become beasts. We revert. We revert. We revert.
She still thinks those words “we revert” every time she thinks about the End of the World. The Great Reversion. Though: reversion to what? She doesn’t know. Doesn’t understand enough about what homo sapiens is. The ultimate mystery of her life? Sometimes she thinks so. Though that other matter, which feels all important to her, seems far more mysterious, though perhaps that’s simply wishful mystification . . .
So she gets to the top floor and finds that none of the doors up there have been forced open. It’s a miracle, she thinks at first. Then: perhaps it’s a trap? A lure? A special torture?
But who among those youth would have an attention span sufficient to realize such a conspiracy? They are cunning only in the short-term. Impulse rules them. Like two-year-olds . . .
She fumbles her keys out of the side pocket of her rucksack. Her fingers are numb and stiff with cold. It’s hard, in the dark, to fit the right key into each lock. By the time she succeeds in opening them all, she is sweating and panting with the effort.
Home! Safe! Private! She secures the deadbolts and gropes for the light switch. She flicks it on, but nothing happens. She remembers that those boys and girls have been shooting up transformers all over town. It gives them a cheap, quick thrill—and is sure to make everyone miserable for a long time to come. No utility trucks will be going out any time soon to replace them.
The apartment is almost as cold as the out-of-doors. The heat no longer works, of course, since though the furnace is gas, there is no electricity to power its fan. But hot water still runs from her taps. And a hot bath will get her warm and dry and cleanse the stink and filth encrusting her body. After bathing, wrapped in her down comforter, she can be warm and dry for as long as she can stay in bed.
She lights a candle, sets it on the top of the toilet tank, and runs a bath. She fetches the large Sabatier from the kitchen, lays it on the side of the tub, and strips off the filthy clothing. An image pops into her mind, of the water meter in the basement, its numbers and arrows whirring madly with activity. It’s scary to think about someone seeing it and knowing she is there. She tells herself: I’m going to die soon, anyway. If they come pounding up here and shoot my locks off, I’ll have time to use the Sabatier on my throat. At the End of the World, a bath is the highest achievement possible. Small comfort is all that’s left. Nothing I can do will stop the madness. Might as well die in comfort.
In the tub she scrubs herself, drains the water, and scrubs the tub. Then she runs another bath and drizzles scented oil into it.
She lay in that tub for at least an hour, probably longer. She remembers having let some of the water out from time to time and topping it up with another burst of hot. Gradually the shivering stopped. She was tired, so tired. She needed to sleep. Though she didn’t think at all, the images never stopped bombarding her, images of things she later forgot entirely. This is human, too, you know, to forget some—or maybe most—of the unbearable. It’s a problem of consciousness. What the capacity for pain in the consciousness is, what the capacity for understanding is. Clearly she had a low capacity for both pain and understanding. That is, I believe, why she forgot so much.
And then, though she would have liked to have remembered more about life before the End of the World, she was willing to give up those memories if it meant that she didn’t have to remember all the things she could not bear to think about, all the images that made her highest aspiration, in those last days of the world, that of dying as quickly and easily as possible…
