How the World Ends by Joel Varty Page A

manners.”
    Rachel climbs quietly out of the small toddler bed and whisks Jewel and the phone into the hallway.
    “Hello,” she whispers, somewhat annoyed the telemarketers have begun calling during noon hour and not just at suppertime.
    “Rachel, it’s Lucia. I don’t have much time. You have to help me. You have to help me get out of this city. There isn’t time to ex–“
    And the line goes dead, along with the lights, the soft fan in Gwyn’s room, and the washing machine in the basement.
    …
    Jonah
    The ordered silence of my thoughts belies the impact of the complete loss of cohesion that this city is experiencing.
    I watch as the crowd surges past me, as people are trampled under frantic feet, as eyes are turned wildly back in the direction they come from, as if they are being driven.
    I feel an urge to run with them, a strong, nearly inescapable weight of guilt tearing my feet from where I stand as I think to myself, it’s my fault. It’s my fault this is happening. I have to do something. What can I do? I am just a man, a coward, afraid, standing here, I can’t even run away. Yet another voice is silently in disagreement with my guilt. It tells me that I didn’t make these people run down the street trying to escape their terror. I didn’t turn off the power, or take away the fuel. I have only tried to be true to my brother. I just wanted to do the right thing. Was I wrong? Am I really that weak?
    Jim Blacks’s voice whispers in my mind in an echo above the commotion that surrounds me. “You don’t have to be something that you aren’t, man. Just be who you are, and have a little faith. Everything will fall into place if you keep those things in your mind.”
    I stand stock-still as the surging crowd continues to pass around me.
    I look up, feeling the rain pound my open eyeballs, yet I keep them open, trying to see something in the sky – some sign to tell me what to do. But I see nothing, only a blur, only the rush of water clouding my vision.
    “Stop!” I shout. Stop!
    I close my eyes. The din of the crowd is as much a noise-blur in the darkness as it is in the grey non-sight of the relentless downpour.
    I open my eyes, and the rain stops. The wind ceases blowing and the world feels several degrees warmer. I raise my arms in appreciation of the return of my sight, and look around. The crowd has stopped running. Several hundred people in wet coats holding ruined umbrellas stand and stare at me with my arms outstretched to God.
    And I wonder, I really wonder, for the first time in my life, what I am supposed to do next.
    Because I believe.

Chapter Nine – Getting Home
    Jonah
    When I was a kid growing up on a farm in the county, my parents began an experiment. They tried to be what was termed back then as “self-sufficient.” They tried to grow or produce everything they needed to survive.
    My dad milked cows for a living, but, being an excellent carpenter on top of many other talents, built his own grist mill, kept bees, and tapped trees for maple syrup. My mother tended a large garden with potatoes, beans, squash, tomatoes, raspberries and a plethora of other vegetables and fruits. We had a dozen laying hens, meat chickens, and turkeys. We had a couple of ponies and four or five horses for riding and driving.
    As kids, my brother and I would help with any of the chores that we could, mostly feeding and tending livestock. In spring we would help gather the sap for maple syrup and keep the boiler going for days on end. We helped plant and weed the garden, picked berries, grapes, and cherries in late summer for jams and jelly preserves. Most of our summers were spent drawing in hay for the cows. No matter how hard we worked, my dad could always find ways of describing how much more difficult it had been back when there were no tractors or heavy equipment.
    The one thing we did the old-fashioned way was threshing. Since my dad didn’t use herbicides, the oats, wheat and barley would be full of