Grief: Five Stories of Apocalyptic Loss Read online

  He stopped before the hut's massive doors, gripping one of the handles tightly. "Behold. Behold, my children, the ark that will carry us to New Eden!"

  ***

  Wendy stood in mute astonishment alongside the rest of the congregation, staring at Pastor Kostka's ark.

  It had been a shuttle, once. Not a shuttle, Wendy absently corrected herself, a bus. A school bus, re-purposed as a corporate shuttle for retreats out to this isolated facility, bringing middle-management types from the city for paint-ball or other team-building exercises. The Pastor's modifications, as far as Wendy could tell, were limited to bolting a few aerials onto the hood, attaching a tin-foil flag to the antenna, and chaining what looked like a half-disassembled jet-propeller onto the back. She wasn't an aerospace engineer, but the ark didn't exactly look space-worthy.

  The Pastor looked back towards his flock as he approached it. "Impressive, isn't it?"

  The enormity of what she was looking at hit Wendy powerfully, and she fell in a boneless heap to the gravel path.

  "What... what..." Amanda started.

  "It's magnificent!" One of the other women approached it slowly, a too-manic grin on her face.

  "What... what the fuck is this?" Amanda said.

  "Gaze upon the glory of God's creation! Praise be!" one of the others said, walking towards it slowly.

  Wendy gazed at the cultists in disbelief. How could they be so far gone? Almost half of them were approaching the bus with expressions of ecstatic bliss on their faces. The others shared a similar horrified demeanor.

  "You're insane," Amanda said in a whisper. "All those people we killed. Oh God, and we ate them."

  "Oh God," another woman said. "What have we done? What did you do to us!"

  The Pastor stepped forward, a look of surprise on his face. "Ladies, please... the time of our ascension is at hand. Don't let your doubt cause you to waver. We're so close.."

  "Shut the fuck up!" Amanda screamed. "We fucking trusted you! I trusted you! You said we could be saved!"

  Kostka recoiled. "You can! You will be! Behold, the ark! It may not look like much, but God's design!"

  "Fuck God!" Amanda said. She picked up a rock and hurled it towards the pastor.

  He ducked to the side, dodging the clumsy throw, and seemed to shocked to respond.

  "Fuck God and fuck you! We trusted you, we fell upon our men, we killed them! Because we trusted you! For... for this?"

  One of the other women stepped forward. "You're just having a crisis of faith. Calm yourself."

  "What have we done?" Amanda half collapsed with a wail.

  Wendy stood shakily. Why had she thought they could save her? She hadn't believed in their God. Why had she thought that they'd have a ship? She knew they were nuts. A crazy doomsday cannibal cult... why had she thought that they might have had a real ship? How could she be so stupid.

  "You're a devil!" Amanda was crying.

  "You've damned us all to hell!" A woman helping her up cried.

  "It's alright," Pastor Kostka said shakily. "It's natural that faith would waver. We can still save them. We can bring their spirits with us to New Eden."

  Wendy stooped and picked up a large rock, and it looked like some of the others had had the same idea.

  "My sins might take me to hell," Amanda said, glancing at the other girls and picking up her own stone. "But I'll make damn sure you get there first."

  "Ladies--" The Pastor stumbled back, falling beneath the hail of stones that seemed to never end.

  Depression

  "This just in." David Bright's voice did not waver. "Multiple independent agencies have confirmed that Comet X/2014 K2's path will send it directly into contact with the Earth's surface. Based on its speed, astronomers estimate that this collision will occur..."

  He stopped, staring at the teleprompter. "I'm sorry," he said, not entirely sure who he was speaking to or what he was sorry for.

  He tried again. "In just two weeks..."

  His jaw worked, and he tried to say the words. They wouldn't come out. His eyes flickered up to the booth, to the crew, to his producers. All were staring back at him, all trying to process what he'd read. There was no help there.

  David had worked in broadcast journalism for over forty years, and was a respected face, well known to the public, well thought of by his peers. He'd covered elections, he'd covered wars, he'd covered revolutions and scandals. He'd never had to lower himself to fluff pieces, scare-mongering, or politicizing. He was, many considered, one of the last few true newsmen, and it was only that name recognition and audience trust that enabled him to keep that professionalism in the sea of news-entertainment. It was a gift, the luxury of integrity, that he was deeply grateful for, and he would not let down the audience that enabled it.

  He cleared his throat. "In just under two weeks, Comet X/2014 K2 will impact the earth with a force hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Estimations indicate that this will cause both atmospheric and seismic disturbances leading to a climactic shift more severe than that which is believed to have driven the dinosaurs to extinction. We are facing the inevitable extermination of mankind. God help us all."

  He'd said his piece. He'd done his job. The horror and disbelief dawning on the faces of his crew and co-anchor... some of them had surely had advance knowledge of the update, but hearing it spoken, hearing it in the voice of the most respected man on network news...

  He turned towards his co-anchor, his voice growing conversational, an automatic reaction to dead-air, honed from years of covering for colleagues when necessary. "Do we have any official response to the news yet, Mary?"

  Mary blinked and glanced down at her notes. She was a good kid, that one, new to the team and already proving her chops. She was of the new breed of journalists, half show-woman and half talking head, but David didn't hold it against her. She didn't create the system, she just had to live and work in it.

  "Not yet, David."

  A simple question. Yes/No. Give her time to recover. Professionalism was about making everyone else look good.

  "Stunned." He turned back to the cameras. He could see the producers looking through their notes, scrambling to come up with a response. "That's the reaction here in the studio, as I can assume that that's the reaction in homes and workplaces across the country. How does one cope with a loss of this magnitude? How does one even react? This is an event unprecedented in human history, and what we have here is an opportunity for our finest moment. How we react to this crisis is the ultimate determination of who we are, what our lives have been, what we've lead up to."

  His eyes stayed locked on the camera as he noticed the producer waving him to cut out of his peripheral vision.

  He gave the camera as reassuring a smile as he could manage and nodded. "More reactions to the news after the break."

  ***

  A professional. That's what David Bright was. It's all he knew how to be, on camera. When he was working, when he had a job to do, when he had a nation -- a world -- hanging on his every word, he was cool. Confident. Composed.

  Here, though. Here, in his empty apartment, behind closed doors and drawn curtains, here he felt nothing.

  Numbness.

  His gaze cast across his awards. Peabodies. His UNCA plaque. His Pulitzer. They spoke of a recognized career, but what did it matter, now?

  He sat in his chair, across from the big-screen television, but didn't turn it on. Ice clinked in his glass as he sat in the dark, waiting.

  ***

  "Welcome to the 6 o'clock news, I'm David Bright, Mary is out tonight." David was as professional as ever. His suit was neatly pressed, his hair was perfectly coiffed. "Our top story: the upheavals caused by Comet X/2014 K2 as it approaches the Earth. Riots in cities across the world. Here with me is Professor Henry Schmidt, a professor of sociology at the University of New York. Tell me, professor, what can we expect?"

  The Professor sat uneasily, uncomfortable in his
ill-fitting suit. "It's hard to say at this stage, uh, David. We've never seen a calamity of this scale before. Psychology can give us insight into the stages of grief for individuals, but when it comes to far larger groups -- cities, nations, the whole of humanity -- we can only guess at the effects of the emotional synergy."

  "Emotional synergy?"

  "People have a way of infecting one another, their moods. It's the 'will of the crowd.' Humanity is an intensely social species, and we're designed to form a sort of emotional gestalt. Normally when an event occurs the gestalt is limited to those who have some sort of personal connection. This event connects all of us, and I think we'll see empathy on a scale never before witnessed."

  "Empathy," David smiled. "Really?"

  "It's not necessarily a good thing, David," Professor Schmidt said. "The emotions in play aren't positive ones. Rage. Terror. Anguish. We're going to witness a potent mix of negativity."

  David's smile faded. "And what do you think the end result of this is going to be?"

  "Suicide on a scale we can scarcely imagine."

  ***

  Suicide.

  The word had been echoing in David's head since his interview with the professor.

  Why not? Why not kill himself? Why not beat the rush?

  He sat in his chair, holding his glass, listening to the ice-cubes tinkle when he tilted it.

  He had a gun. Right there. In his living room closet, left side, third shelf, locked away in a box. Even out of view he could feel it there, feel its presence, feel its weight, imagine it in his hand.

  It'd be easy to get up, walk over there, open the closet, take out the box, unlock it, pick up the gun, load it, put it to his head, and pull the trigger.

  Nine steps. Nine steps to oblivion.

  Maybe he would.

  Maybe tomorrow. The air felt so thick, and his limbs felt so heavy. He ran through the steps in his head again and again, imagining his death, but it seemed like it'd take a herculean effort just to put his tumbler down on the coffee table.

  ***

  David wore his suit and tie sharply. There was no way for the audience to tell that, just off camera, the studio was staffed by a skeleton crew of two interns. He didn't know where the rest of the staff had gone. Maybe they were home with their families. Maybe they'd been killed in the riots. Maybe they'd taken their own lives.

  Part of David envied them, whatever the case. It would be so much easier to shut down. To go catatonic, or to take his own life. He wasn't afraid of dying. He'd been a war correspondent. He just had a job to do, and he'd do it for as long as he could.

  "We're mere hours before Comet X/2014 K2 reaches Earth. No statements have been released by the White House or the city's mayor, leading some to speculate that there won't be any more word from governmental authority. Rumors abound that the government has a bunker deep enough to protect them from the comet's impact, though later we'll speak with a geologist who claims that there will be enough disruption to the earth's core to render any such shelter impossible.

  "But first, let's talk to an astrophysicist and get some insight into--"

  The lights went out. David blinked, and spoke through the darkness. "Did we lose our feed?"

  He could hear the booth's door open. "Sorry, Mr. Bright. That's it."

  "But the generators--"

  "Out of fuel," the second intern said.

  David could hear the men stumbling towards the wall, towards the studio door. There was a creak, and a sliver of light appeared as they found it.

  "Mr. Bright?" one asked, holding the door open, while the other slipped out.

  David was framed in the pale rectangle cast by the windows in the hall. He squinted against it, and waved them off. "No, No. I think I'll just... Just sit here a spell."

  The intern nodded, stepped through, and left, taking the light with him as the door closed.

  David sat in the dark, alone, unthinking, unfeeling for a long, long time.

  Acceptance

  Elizabeth and George arrived to find the party already in full swing, lights and music reaching them long before they arrived at the isolated estate's main gate. Drivers who had held no illusions about ever driving again had wedged their cars carelessly about with no regard for order or safety; someone had even parked the front half of their Prius in the decorative cement pond, knocking one of its cherubic statuettes over to stare forlornly up at its former perch.

  "I told you that nobody would have cared if we'd had a few before coming over." George grinned, oblivious to the dark look Elizabeth was sending his way, not caring that she was in No Mood. "We've got a lot of catching up to do."

  The haphazard parking made for an impromptu metal labyrinth up to the front doors, George dancing a little to what music filtered out from the inside as he rounded the cars, stopping now and again to bounce in place as his fiancée caught up with him. Elizabeth lacked any such sway in her step. She seemed to move forward only with tentative steps, following George up to the front door with a sour expression on her face.

  "I'm glad we have the chance to see everybody." George inhaled deeply before ringing the bell, earning himself another sour look.

  "I can't believe you dragged me here." Elizabeth broke her silence while checking her makeup in the door's reflective tinted glass. George hadn't let her turn on the car's interior light on the drive up for fear of being followed up from the city. "Words cannot even convey how disappointed I am in you right now. We had plans, George. Those tickets weren't cheap, and it's been so long since we've had some time just for us. Why can't we have just... just turned off the lights, shut the blinds, and held each other? Why can't you just be there for me for once?"

  The smile dropped from George's face and his eyes closed for a moment, banishing the need on his fiancé's face from his mind's eye. "Liz--"

  George's eyes snapped wide as a well-dressed young man opened the door, smiling broadly. "Ringing the bell?" He sounded bemused. "Come on in."

  ***

  "Sorry, Ross, old habits die hard." George grinned, stepping past his fiancé and into the house. "Sorry we're late." He took off his jacket, tossing it onto the pile of coats already heaped in the foyer closet. "Liz wanted to... uh... she wanted to make sure that everything was locked up tight before we left. And feed the cat."

  "Oh," Ross said. "I'm sorry to hear that."

  "You know how it is." Elizabeth frowned, her voice rising. "All the rioting. And then George insisted upon driving most of the way here with his lights off – thank god there was a full moon tonight. It's a miracle we didn't end up in a ditch."

  "Oh, good idea." Ross nodded towards George. "We're pretty far from the city here, but you can never be too careful."

  Elizabeth slipped her own jacket off and onto a clothes hanger, leaving it to dangle alone from the otherwise bare bar high above above the heap of jackets spilling out of the closet. She made a few token attempts to recover those that had slipped out into the foyer before turning to George.

  "I need to freshen up."

  ***

  "You'll want to use the downstairs bathroom." Ross stepped over the coats, leading his friends from the foyer into the parlor. Several Tiffany lamps illuminated the room with a warm but dim glow, casting slight shadows that crossed and intermingled with one another while bathing George and Elizabeth in a number of subdued hues. Power-strips had been plugged into every visible outlet, and the lamps connected to them crowded tables, bookcases, and counter-tops. Paper lanterns hung from hooks set into the ceiling. Previous parties had seen the house decorated with a number of themes that Ross had arranged with an almost neurotic eye for detail, but this year everything seemed haphazard.

  A large flat-screen television dominated the wall opposite the foyer. It was currently turned to a cable news station and Elizabeth averted her eyes – the audio was drowned out by the stereo's music, but the close-captioning had been turned on, and subtly misspelled subtitles flitted across the bottom of the screen. A small gro
up of party-goers gathered around the front of the screen, watching and discussing whatever it was the anchors were talking about. Just like my friends, Elizabeth thought, watching television in the middle of a party. At least they didn't bring the video games this year.

  As with the decor her fellow guests lacked any sort of uniformity in outfit or manner. Many of those present had decided to dress up, but what exactly "dress up" meant seemed to vary from individual to individual. A trio of men in t-shirts and jeans were seated on cushions around a hookah, and from the smell it wasn't tobacco they were smoking. Elizabeth tugged on George's sleeve, glancing over at them with some trepidation.

  "I offered you a hit before we left," George whispered. "Go ahead and join them if you want."

  "Ted over there with Mark and James," she whispered back. "He's been straight-edge since the day we met! And they're just... smoking in the middle of the room. In front of everybody."

  "Honey, I really don't think that anybody cares."

  ***

  Elizabeth gave the pot smokers a final glare before marching stiffly out towards the hall leading to the bathroom. She wasn't exactly sure what was behind her strong negative reaction -- she was, on occasion, a recreational pot smoker herself -- but in past gatherings they'd had the class to sneak out to someone's car for a few hits. Sitting out there in the open was just... it was just crass. She didn't know if she was bothered more by the sheer vulgarity of the act, or the fact that nobody else seemed to be bothered by it in the slightest.

  "Sam!" she called with relief, rushing past the bathroom into the kitchen to give her oldest friend a warm hug. Sam, at least, was a constant, standing in the kitchen in an off-the shoulder sweater and black skirt, face made-up, hair coiffed.