The army is here to take back the base.
Samson ducks instinctually, but the Prophet doesn’t flinch. God is here. In his might and majesty He has parted the seas and torn down the Jericho walls. The Prophet lowers his gaze to find Boss Durden lying in a pool of his own blood. Half his jaw is missing, and he gurgles his confusion to the sky, left arm outstretched.
Somewhere, a .50-caliber machine gun starts up, and then everywhere they look they see muzzle flashes. Samson grabs the Prophet’s hand, pulls him toward the fence line. A tank crashes through the barbed wire ahead of them, firing a depleted uranium shell with a deafening thoom. Samson and the Prophet duck behind a jeep, wait for it to pass. Smoke from the incoming gas grenades mixes with the smut in the air, turning the day into a blur of light and dark shapes.
The apocalypse becomes an impressionist painting. In a patch of clear air they see an anarchist in a giraffe costume stumble across the runway on fire, his arms and legs windmilling. Overhead they hear the heavy rotors of army helicopters, Special Forces operatives in midnight black descending on unseen fast ropes, here to mop up the strays. Samson and the Prophet climb an embankment and squeeze through a hole in the cyclone fence, and then they are free.
*
The apocalypse, it turns out, is easy. There is no confusion, no uncertainty about stakes. The world is in chaos. You must survive. End of story. It is the Time Before that tests your strength, your mind. The years of not knowing—is the world ending? Are we descending into some new dark age? Before is the era of great anxiety. You live in a state of heightened awareness, of constant adrenaline, looking, always looking for the straw that will break the camel’s back. The smallest sounds wake you in the night. You reach for your phone, checking the news, wondering if the zombies have risen while you’ve been asleep. For clarity, we shall call this period the pre-apocalypse. The Age of Unknowing. And it is over now.
Samson and the Prophet run through the urban sprawl. They are on the low desert streets of Morningside Heights in El Paso. Sounds of gunfire from the base reach them like distant fireworks, fierce at first, then sporadic. There are tanks in the street, transports filled with National Guard soldiers, but also pickup trucks on kamikaze missions, jumping the center divide. Pockets of discord arise ahead of them and must be avoided, militia clusters laying down covering fire wearing makeshift gas masks and firing armor-penetrating rounds.
They move west down Nations Avenue, past the high school and the library. From inside they hear the sound of chain saws and do not slow. The Prophet appears to be praying under his breath.
“We need to check Instagram,” says Samson, thinking now of Story, of his sister. He could give a shit about God’s mission. He wants the people he loves to be safe. Wind blows in hot gusts from the west, swirling dust and ash from the fuselages of cars. They cover their mouths and noses with their hands and run, crouching low for no good reason other than it feels like the right thing to do. Three hundred miles away, in the mountains, catastrophic wildfires surge, firebrands leap miles ahead of each conflagration, starting new fires, like a lie you can’t control. Twisters of pure flame cyclone up into the clouds. Those who can, flee, but for many the fire moves too fast. Later firefighters will find the corpses of desperate people boiled alive in their swimming pools, others huddled together in grim embrace, like the victims of an atomic bomb. The mountain air fills with the sound of car tires exploding, their aluminum wheels melting in rivers that flow down sloping driveways, plastic garbage toters reduced to colored stains on the bubbling asphalt.
In Morningside Heights, the residential streets are empty now. Residents have fled or gone to ground. They pass house after house with the blinds drawn.
“Here,” says the Prophet, turning up the front walk of a single-story home. The front door is open. Samson hurries to keep up, blinded momentarily by the darkness of the interior. It is a modest house with a big-screen TV. On-screen, QVC is selling its wares—cubic zirconium necklaces, agate bracelets now at reduced prices. There is a laptop open on the kitchen table. Samson sits, turns it on.
“It’s password protected,” he tells the Prophet.
The Prophet opens the fridge, takes out a carton of orange juice, finds a glass. He fills it, drinks, gulping it down with singular focus. Samson tries 1234, then 4321. The Prophet puts down the glass.
“PraiseHim,” he says.
“What?”
“The password is PraiseHim. Capital H.”
Samson tries it. “No go,” he says.
The Prophet thinks about that. “PraiseHim exclamation point,” he says.
Samson types it in. The screen unlocks. He is looking at a desktop jigsaw filled with cats. He opens a browser, but it won’t connect.
“There’s no internet,” he says. “The internet’s down. Probably the government hit the kill switch.” He stands.
“Look for a phone or a tablet. Something with a cellular signal.”
They search the house. In a back bedroom, Samson finds a Samsung tablet. He wakes it up. There are three bars. On the wall above the bed are eleven crosses laid out in a diamond pattern. Samson finds the Instagram app, opens it. He searches for @bassethoundsrule. The Prophet wanders in and studies the crosses.
“I know you don’t believe,” he says. “And I’m not asking you to have faith. But can we agree they’ve been doing it wrong? Humanity. Two thousand years of burning bushes, of sermons on the Mount, and what do they have to show for it? The prosperity gospel? Hassidim refusing to vaccinate? Muslim honor killings? Jihadis in suicide vests? This is God’s will?”