The End is Nigh (The Apocalypse Triptych, #1)

by John Joseph Adams

The signs are bullshit. Have to be. You know who “read” the signs? Pick your poison: Nostradamus. Jesus Christ. Jim Jones, Martin Luther, the whole Mayan civilization. Every flim-flam man from Cotton Mather to Uncle Sam. And every single one of them screwed the pooch. Then, somehow, along comes me. You know what they say about those million monkeys banging away on their million typewriters until one of them slams out Hamlet?

Maddie spent her hours at school in paranoia, uncertain if a smile or any other friendly gesture was but a trap to get her to let down her guard so that she could be cut deeper.

ain’t nothing worth killing people over until people’s being killed on your side. You make the first move, it ain’t disagreement, it ain’t the mess of democracy—you’re a fucking traitor. A terrorist.

It seemed that all over Seattle—all over the world perhaps—people were either confessing their sins, or busy committing new ones.

“Here’s to the end of the world!” a woman shouted,

The end of the world has become a joke, Darwin thought, a debate to be hashed out in the editorial pages of newspapers.

But so much to do. The world was about to end. There was so much to do.

An entire world slaughtered by men in elected posts who think they know best. How many of those in these cars voted for this? More than half, John grimly thinks.

“I never worry about the people who come after. If they can make sense of the memorial or not. It’s enough for them to know that something happened here, something important, that it mattered. Give them something they can feel. But telling the story? One story, with all its specifics? I don’t know if that’s possible.”

That’s the trouble with perfect nights: No matter how good they are, you only ever get to live them once.

For the first time in my life, the sense of impending doom that followed me around might actually have weight.

Bunch of Doomsday preppers are building bunkers in the Virginia hills so they can survive the impact. Take a moment on that. Worst case scenario is a brown dwarf star—best case scenario is a rogue moon. Hitting the Earth. And they think reinforced concrete walls and a couple of cases of Spam are going to see them through it?

“Every religion looks irrational from the outside. It all looks crazy, from a distance. If you’re not a believer. We Jews believe in plagues of locusts, giant bodies of water parting, burning bushes, people being turned into pillars of salt. You Christians worship someone who cast out demons and raised the dead. Why should we be allowed to believe in that stuff and this girl not be allowed to believe in something like Nibiru?”

I used to be so into the zombie apocalypse. I figured I’d be this hero in a society risen from ashes. Me, the phoenix of the new world order. But the real thing sucks. Because I’m going to die,