World After

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EVERYONE THINKS I’m dead.

I lie with my head on my mother’s lap in the open bed of a large truck. The dawn light etches the grief lines on my mom’s face while the rumble of the engines vibrates through my limp body. We’re part of the Resistance caravan. Half a dozen military trucks, vans, and SUVs weave through dead cars away from San Francisco. On the horizon behind us, the angels’ aerie still smolders in flames after the Resistance strike.

Newspapers cover shop windows along the road, making a corridor of reminders of the Great Attack. I don’t need to read the papers to know what they say. Everyone was plastered to the news during the early days when reporters were still reporting.

PARIS IN FLAMES, NEW YORK FLOODED, MOSCOW DESTROYED

WHO SHOT GABRIEL, THE MESSENGER OF GOD?

ANGELS TOO AGILE FOR MISSILES

NATIONAL LEADERS SCATTERED AND LOST

THE END OF DAYS

We drive by three bald people wrapped in gray sheets. They’re taping up the stained and crumpled fliers of one of the apocalypse cults. Between the street gangs, the cults, and the Resistance, I wonder how long it will be before everyone is part of one group or another. Even the end of the world can’t keep us from wanting to belong, I guess.

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