The End (5 page)

4

Tessa was in a meeting when it happened; day dreaming, not really paying attention.  She is the appointed leader of the Abbey Downs Township, the arbitrator of petty town disputes and other municipal matters.  She's also one of the youngest to ever hold the position.  To her it's more an honorary title, passed down to her as the last of the towns folks to carry the Dunham name.  The Dunham's purportedly the founders of all that is Abbey Downs.  Mrs. Marley is droning on about Kyle Morrison's tomato plants growing into her yard, Kyle is swiping through content on his phone and Tessa is twirling a strand of long blonde hair around her finger. 

She has a sour feeling in the pit of her stomach.  She knows that something is about to happen.  She knows that "it" is about to happen, she just doesn't know what "it" is.  She wonders if a storm is coming but that doesn't feel right.  No this feels bigger.  She's reminded of her childhood lessons.  She's reminded of Evan.  She's reminded of the prophecies that never came to be.  The feeling grows stronger within her.  Tessa will later describe this feeling as
warm, as if this is what it feels like to glow, to emanate, to radiate power.

"Are you even listening to me, young lady?" Mrs. Marley snapped grumpily but before Tessa could reassure the elderly woman that she was indeed listening everything went black.  The woman's wig and Kyle's phone thunked to the table simultaneously.  Outside a car smacked hard into the mailbox in front of City Hall with a loud crunch.  The sound of birds chirping was replaced for a moment with clattering and then all was silent.

Before the darkness has even fully dissipated, Tessa is up, heading towards the house on top of the hill.  Dunham Manor.  Where everything began.  Home.  She isn't driving her white GT down the empty streets or even running along the footpaths that intersect in the town square.  No, if any of the residents of Abbey Downs still existed corporeally they'd bear witness to a young beautiful blonde literally floating home on the wind.

Tessa glides smoothly towards Dunham Manor, bypassing the front of the house altogether, she lands in the backyard where years before we watched her and her Mother enter a
cellar towards a secret entrance that led to the depths of Abbey Downs proper.  As she makes her way through the caverns beneath the house the walls light up and pulse with dim green phosphorescence.  She travels half a mile in no time at all before she comes to the center.  Here she stops at the great pit.  She closes her eyes and for just a moment breathes in the various odors of the cavern.  The combination of moss and mint is strong, with just a hint of brimstone.

She turns around and begins poring over
the glowing words etched into the stone wall, looking for something specific.  Something she remembers from her childhood.  According to the lessons taught by her own Mother, these etchings were left by an ancient line of their family as a warning of things to come—but unlike other findings throughout the late 20th century, these prophecies were not in some obscure dead language.  There was no Sanskrit or hieroglyphs.  No cave drawing or the ancient puzzles of the Missouri Indians.  No these messages carbon dated thousands of years before any of that and yet as impossible as it all seems, they were written in 20th century English.

Some of t
he etchings were written as a timeline of events.  They predicted great discoveries, the fall of empires, world wars, even the moon landing all with precise month and year dates.  But this strange fact is not what concerns Tessa at the time.  She's looking for a specific event that ends the timeline and begins a channel of text that unfortunately has faded with time and is no longer legible.  As her eyes find the exact spot she reads aloud, "the extinction of the human race at the hands of dark angels  - October 1999."

Her family eventually gave up on the ancient etchings.  1999 came and went uneventfully and the timeline did not include any event that followed.  Evan and his mother even
tually went as far as to leave Abbey Downs permanently after Evan's father died.  He was trying to preserve the records of his research on what ultimately ended up being a false prophecy of the end of the world.  Distance and time eventually faded all that Evan had learned about their destiny into a childhood memory that may or may not have happened.

It's not that they didn't believe everything else that they learned and taught each generation.  There was no question that there was magic
and that they weren't quite human themselves (although the bloodline was very thin anymore).  Nobody questioned the existence of magical creatures that only their kind could see and hear.  Nobody denied the control their kind had over the natural and unnatural forces of the world around them.  It was just the prophecy.  Evan's father even theorized that the events foretold in the etchings wouldn't come to pass in 1999 because they were foretold and now Tessa is beginning to think he was right.  According to Samael, the reason the etchings were so accurate spoke more about who was writing them, than about the events themselves.  He believed that the timeline, while a warning of the end, was also like a validation.  If the United States of America landed a space ship on the moon in July of 1969 than this added credence to the end date.

The fact that they were also written in 20th century English was the next obvious indicator.  Some theorized that the etchings weren't in any particular language but rather written in magic that would adhere to whatever culture ultimately existed when 1999 came around.  Samael didn't believe this either, he thought it was written in 20th century English because those that wrote it were originally from the 20th century. 

He spent hours in the caverns uncovering different etchings, even some in the great pit, and documenting them all, piecing them together as best he could.  Trying to make sense of them.  Everything wasn't as cohesive as he thought it ought to be.  There were texts about a great war that came in the early 21st century following the end of the timeline but it was disparate at best and didn't seem to be written by the main scripter. 

He went on to say that
whoever wrote the texts must have changed the timeline simply by inserting themselves into it in the past but before he could finish this line of thought a fire broke out at the library where his research was stored and he died trying to save it.

Tessa turned around as the shadows on the cavern walls around her began to contort into a vaguely humanoid shape.  A man approached her and they embraced.  His unnaturally large eyes were the color of emeralds and he smelled strongly of brimstone, "I thought I'd find you here."

"
Is it true?  Has the prophecy finally come true after all this time?" Tessa asked tentatively.

"I
don't know," said Ozmo.  Tessa looked him in the eyes and nodded.  She knew the answer was yes, he just didn't want to be the one to say it.  What alternative was there?  The hold Abbey Downs once possessed over the darkness was no more.  She needed to act now or all would be lost. 

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," she said solemnly, "It wasn't supposed to be just me."

Ozmo nodded back, "It's time."

Tessa shut her eyes and took a deep breath.  The shadows contorted again as Ozmo returned to his natural form
, his skin the deep green of his eyes, his limbs long and thick and scaly.  Tessa climbed onto the back of the dragon as he dove into the dark pit that while seemingly endless did eventually turn and open into the light of day.  Moments later they were flying high over Abbey Downs, her hands grasping at his thick mane and her thighs pressing hard against the musculature of his back.  She didn't open her eyes again until they were above City Hall.  There she let go of Ozmo's green mane and in one fluid motion leapt into the air as he continued on towards the end of town.

She was acting as a beacon now, sending her life force out into the world, making connections with the others like her. 
They wouldn't know it immediately but this force would ultimately bring them together from wherever they are and in turn they would culminate in Abbey Downs.  Tessa's skin was now the color of fire and just as bright, her limbs and hair flowing around her with a viscous fluidity. 

Her head
slammed backwards as the light shot forth from her chest with such force that for a moment she rose higher as if it were dragging her along with it before she began plummeting towards the streets of Abbey Downs.  Ozmo caught her in his maw mid-air and returned her safely to Dunham Manor.  Returning to his humanoid form, Ozmo carried Tessa inside and lay her down in her bedroom. 

Tessa needs her rest now for there is much preparation ahead of her.  So we'll leave her and Ozmo and follow instead the life force that she unleashed moments ago.  

We'll follow it
west where a young Soleil rides behind a burly minister in red on a Suzuki Intruder.  They haven't encountered another soul, good or bad, since they left the cheeseburgers at Wendy's behind.  Thankful that they found each other along the way but still unaware why they were both thinking of Abbey Downs that day, whatever that is, as their final destination.

We follow the light to the streets of California where a young man who goes only by his last name, Cochran, is heading East inside one of the Google street cars. 

We follow the light all the way back east to check in on Leo and Finn, they've found Evan and are making their way west now in his stolen Highlander... in the snow. 

We follow the light South where a woman named Anna is hiking North West toward Missouri having abandoned her car after a particularly rough patch of highway outside of Arkansas. 

The light continues outward across the oceans.  There are others like Tessa out here and they too feel the urgent sensation to head to Abbey Downs... but how?

5

It was cold.  Too cold.  Leo looked up at the sky through the windshield at the passing clouds.  While it certainly felt as if a season had passed since everything went to shit, not more than a couple days had come and gone.  Everything was out of whack anymore.  Day turned to night quicker.  The animals that remained were more aggressive.  The weeds seemed to be growing at an abnormally quick pace.  It was as if the Earths daily rotation on its axial tilt had sped up.  As if time itself had said, fuck it; let’s get this end of the world shit over with already.  Now this.

“Is that snow?” Leo asked.

Leo looked at Finn for confirmation but Finn was too busy sawing logs.  He decided not to wake him.  Better to avoid the spew of curses regarding his todger and chapped arse and whatever the fuck else he was always rambling on about.  Leo looked to the man in the backseat but he too was out cold.  He eyed the pistol in the man’s pocket as well.  He decided it was in fact, snow, falling from the sky and slowed to about 40mph just in case.  He didn’t want to come upon another stack of cars in wintry conditions and not be able to stop.  No, when you survive the apocalypse you expect a much more interesting death in the end.  Nothing as mundane as a car crash would be acceptable. 

As visibility continued to decline Leo decided to pull off for the night.  He pondered whether this was a wise decision.  At this rate the snow would continue to fall for at least another couple of hours and the roads in the morning would only be worse.  Certainly no road crews were on the ready to salt the highways and plow away the accumulated snow
—assuming of course that it didn’t all just magically disappear when the June hot sun rose in the morning. 

Instead of just pulling over like they had the previous night, Leo took the first exit off of
route 70 they came upon.  It was a residential area, lower middle-class at best.  There was a gas station void of cars and a shopping center just as abandoned as the city had been.  Above all else was the incessant buzzing silence of the new world.  

. . .

Yesterday...

"You must be the luckiest son of a bitch alive..." Leo said suddenly.

"Why do you say that?" asked Finn as they strode along
the Schuylkill.  Leo had left the carriage horse in the fields behind Lemon Hill mansion, setting it free in the new world.  Now he and Finn were making their way west on foot.  They talked about driving for a while but there were actual holes in the highway where planes had crashed and two out of three bridges were completely impassable now.

"The world pretty much... ends.  People all over disappear all at the same time and you sleep right through it.  Not only that but you're on the one plane that happened to land
and
park at the gate
just
before it all goes down," Leo began.

"Well when you put it like that I suppose."

"
Then
you find a charged phone with no passcode, I mean who does that right?  And you just
happen
to see a TV that's showing footage at the precise moment that the only other human being, as far as we know anyway, left on the planet is making an appearance."

"Yep, yep, with you so far."

"And not only is the moment so unlikely, so improbable, but the footage is of someone that's less than a few miles of where you happened to have landed."

"S'right
.  It's a bit wonky isn't it?"

"A bit wonky?  Are you fucking high, man?" Leo looked at him incredulously.

"Nah, nothing like that.  Here's the real kicker too.  You see, I wasn't even supposed to
be
on that plane, mate.  I got delayed outta London just yesterday on my way to Washington, D.C."

Leo just shook his head, "I mean it's all just way too coincidental."

"What are you on about?" Finn squinted at Leo then started to laugh, "Hey you didn't tell me we were in
West
Philadelphia."

"Yeah so?"

"So?  SO?  You know... West Philadelphia, born and raised, on the playground was where I spent most of my days?  Surely you know the tune."

"And I must be the
un
luckiest man alive," Leo said mostly to himself.  What he didn't say out loud was also how suspicious he was of his new found companion.  Coincidence or not, he might be dangerous.  Leo wasn't so sure it was a good idea to stay with him at all... even if he was the second to last man on Earth at the moment.  Yet he couldn't bring himself to purposefully part ways with the man.  The thought of being alone like that again was just too overwhelming.

"Where are we going anyway?  I feel like were a bit lacking in provisions, wouldn't you say?"

"We're going to the zoo."

"The ZOO?  As in lions, and tigers, and bears?"

"Yes."

"Well what the bloody hell for?"

"When I saw that horse back there I figured whatever the hell happened didn't effect animals, just people.  Well most people anyway."

"
So?"

"So
... it'd be a dick move to just let all those animals starve to death in cages don't you think?"

"
Fair enough." They walked in silence for a few moments, "I mean don't you think it's a bit of a waste of time is all?"

"You have something against animals, Finn?"

"No no no don't get your knickers in a wad, Leeeooo.  It's just maybe our time would be better spent, you know, looking for other
people,
instead of playing zoo keeper." Leo didn't answer.  The silence resumed.  Finn started humming the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song, "Hey do you think they'll have cotton candy there?"  Leo looked at Finn.

. . .

Evan slowed to a crawl as he edged his way past another accident.  The GPS on his smart phone had taken him nearly all the way to Philadelphia on back roads that were mostly deserted but every now and again he came upon a road block.  As he got further and further into Pennsylvania he kept checking the GPS to make sure it hadn't lost its heading.  Something didn't feel right for some reason.  He was headed North East and something internal, something straight up primal in him was telling him it was all wrong.  But he kept going anyway and the GPS obliged him with directions for several hours.

"Stop." Came the voice of the GPS suddenly.  Evan stared at it for a moment thinking his mind was playing tricks on him but he kept
driving.

"Stop.  Recalculating.  Stop."

Now Evan slowed.  It was unmistakable.  His GPS was giving him commands it had never given before.  "Stop" was not something GPS's were smart enough to know.  "Stop" would require an awareness of real-time conditions relative to the immediate vicinity beyond normal traffic.  "Stop" would require an awareness that the recipient of your instructions was also not heeding them.

"Okay then.  What now?"

"Danger."

"Danger, what the hell do you mean danger."  It was then that he saw it.  Off in the distance in his peripheral vision was a dark shape in the woods.  It moved back and forth through the trees
spastically and then shot into the air on non-corporeal dark black wings before it disappeared swiftly in the direction he was headed.

"Recalculating."

"What... in the
fuck...
was that." he stared out the windshield into the sky searching for the object.  It was just a speck but he watched as it launched east like a bird, or a plane or a super hero in blue tights before it was beyond his sub-standard vision.

"Continue North on US-1."

Evan just sat there a moment longer.  Something was compelling him to head in the opposite direction.  His fucking GPS was talking to him.  And some
thing
was headed east ahead of him.  Everything in his entire being told him to head west.  He kept thinking of his Mother, he thought about the way things were just yesterday, he thought about Abbey Downs, although he wasn't quite sure why.  He thought about the guy in Philly that had no idea that some
thing
was headed right for him.  Some
thing
that was dangerous
. 
Evan hit the gas of the highlander continuing North on US-1 towards Leo the tosser.

. . .

An empty SEPTA bus was dangling precariously from the Girard Avenue Bridge.  Leo knew it must be empty.  Just like the mini-van he'd seen floating down the Schuylkill River a mile or so before they got to the bridge.  Still his heart jumped at the site of such things.  In time he'd get used to it.  In the end he might even wish he'd held onto that reaction.  Should it ever be normal to be used to this?  The Channel 6 Zoo balloon was still in the air as they approached the main entrance from 34th street.  A mass of AMTRAK cars blocked the alternate path forcing them to trudge the rest of the way up I-76 before they could actually get in to the Zoo.

"
Surprised my todger isn't chafed from all this walking.  Imagine that, come all this way and the last man on Earth is fucking Doctor Dolittle.  Ooh, cotton candy!" Finn said running towards the entrance.  He leapt over an overturned stroller then snatched a large tuft of pink cottony sugar on a stick from a vending cart.  Thinking better of it he snatched a blue one as well. They made their way up the main path marked by animal foot prints and fun facts here and there, "So what's the big plan?"

"I guess we look around for some
zookeeper’s clothes, see if there are any keys," Leo said already picking through a tan jumper with the Zoo's logo on it.  No luck.

"Yeah I guess you're right.  It would be a, what'd you call it?  A
dick
move to just let the animals rot in here."

"Exactly."

"So what about them, huh?"

Leo looked up to what Finn was pointing at.  It was the reptile house, "Yeah I suppose we break the glass and let them fend for themselves."

"Bugger that, chief.  Count me out.  I'll go rescue me a giraffe.  I've always wanted to ride one of those."

"You can't ride a giraffe."

"Pish Posh.  Can't ride a giraffe, he says.  And why the hell not?"

"I don't know... it's not like they're horses or something."

"Well it's not a bloody elephant either and they ride those in India don't they?"

Leo stopped engaging and began rifling through another jumper, "Jackpot."  He twirled the ring of keys around his finger then examined them more closely.

"That them?" said Finn disinterestedly gnawing on the blue cotton candy, "Going to set good ole Jabari free then?"

Jabari was a western lowland gorilla and he was staring intently at them at that very moment.  The zoo was eerily quiet.  Leo hadn't noticed when they'd first arrived but now that he thought about it, it seemed like there ought to be more noise in a place full of animals.  Especially if the world had just gone to shit.  Hell just at the end of the park a line of AMTRAK cars was burning where it had crashed into the Hyena and Camel habitats.  Leo wasn't quite sure how to approach his rescue attempt.  On one hand it should be as simple as unlocking a few gates and walking away.  On the other hand, if you unlock the gate on the
lion’s cage, you've got a lion to worry about.

"Well go on then," challenged Finn.  This seemed to trigger something in Leo and he did just that.  It took a few tries with a few keys but a moment later the gate on Jabari the gorilla's cage was unlocked.  The gorilla didn't burst through the cage and attack them.  In fact he looked just as disinterested in what they were doing as Finn did.  Leo decided not to force the issue and continued over to big cat falls.

The lions were laying in the shade but when Leo inserted the keys they began showing more interest.  The rattling keys almost seemed to be exciting them.  Like a kitten with a ball of yarn only... bigger and maybe their intestines would make a nice yarn ball before becoming dinner. 

"Here puss puss puss puss," Finn finished with some kissy noises.  The lion roared loudly and actually swiped a clawed fist against the gate.  Finn jumped back and fell on his ass.  Distracted by Finn, Leo didn't even notice the other lion as it slammed headfirst into the now unlocked gate.  In seconds both lions were out.  The first lion was already circling Finn.  It licked its chops and let out a low growl.  It did not attack.  Finn wet his pants.  The second lion sat in front of Leo, much like Jabari had and just stared at him.  It was as if he were waiting for an answer or even a command.

"Relax," Leo said finally.

"Relax, he says, this bloody lion's lookin at me todger like it's his last meal."

"Her," said Leo flatly.

"I don't much bloody care whether
it
has a vagina or not, Leo!"

Leo returned his attention to his lion and he said it again, "Relax.  We're just trying to help."