SPIN

"Tyler," Simon said.

Before he went on I said, "Give me a call-back number before you hang up or we get cut off. So I can reach you."

"I'm not supposed to do that. I—"

"Are you calling from a private phone or the house phone?"

"Sort of private, a cell, we just use it locally. I've got it now but Aaron carries it sometimes so—"

"I won't call unless I have to."

"Well. I don't suppose it matters." He gave me the number. "But have you seen the sky, Tyler? I assume so, since you're awake. It's the last night of the world, isn't it?"

I thought: Why are you asking me? Simon had been living in the last days for three decades now. He ought to know. "Tell me about Diane," I said.

"I want to apologize for that call. Because of, you know, what's happening."

"How is she?"

"That's what I'm saying. It doesn't matter."

"Is she dead?"

Long pause. He came back sounding hurt. "No. No, she's not dead. That's not the point."

"Is she hovering in midair, waiting for the Rapture?"

"You don't have to insult my faith," Simon said. (And I couldn't resist interpreting the phrase: my faith, he had said, not our faith.)

"Because, if not, maybe she still needs medical attention. Is she still sick, Simon?"

"Yes. But—"

"Sick how? What are her symptoms?"

"Sunrise is only an hour away, Tyler. Surely you understand what that means."

"I'm not at all sure what it means. And I'm on the road, I can be at the ranch before dawn."

"Oh—no, that's not good—no, I—"

"Why not? If it's the end of the world, why shouldn't I be there?"

"You don't understand. What's going on isn't just the world ending. It's a new one being born."

"How sick is she, exactly? Can I talk to her?"

Simon's voice became tremorous. A man on the brink. We were all on the brink. "She can only whisper. She can't get her breath. She's weak. She's lost a lot of weight."

"How long has she been like that?"

"I don't know. I mean, it started gradually…"

"When was it obvious she was ill?"

"Weeks ago. Or maybe—looking back on it—well— months."

"Has she had any kind of medical attention?" Pause. "Simon?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"It didn't seem necessary."

"It didn't seem necessary?"

"Pastor Dan wouldn't allow it."

I thought: And did you tell Pastor Dan to go fuck himself? "I hope he's changed his mind."

"No—"

"Because, if not, I'll need your help getting to her."

"Don't do that, Tyler. It won't do anybody any good."

I was already looking for the exit, which I remembered only dimly but had marked on the map. Off the highway toward some bone-dry cienaga, a nameless desert road.

I said, "Has she asked for me?"

Silence.

"Simon? Has she asked for me?"

"Yes."

"Tell her I'll be there soon as I can."

"No, Tyler… Tyler, there are some troublesome things happening at the ranch. You can't just walk in here."

Troublesome things? "I thought a new world was being born."

"Born in blood," Simon said.

THE MORNING AND THE EVENING

I came up toward the low ridge overlooking the Condon ranch and parked out of sight of the house. When I switched off the headlights I was able to see the predawn glow in the eastern sky, the new stars washed out by an ominous brightening.

That's when I started to shake.

I couldn't control it. I opened the door and fell out of the car and picked myself up by force of will. The land was rising out of the dark like a lost continent, brown hills, neglected pastureland returned to desert, the long shallow slope down to the distant farmhouse. Mesquite and ocotillo trembled in the wind. I trembled, too. This was fear: not the pinched intellectual uneasiness we had all lived with since the begi

I wondered if Diane was this frightened. I wondered if I could comfort her. If there was any consolation left in me.

The wind gusted again, washing sand and dust down the dry ridge road. Maybe the wind was the first harbinger of the bloated sun, a wind from the hot side of the world.

I crouched where I hoped I couldn't be seen and, still trembling, managed to peck out Simon's number on the keypad of the phone.

He picked up after a few rings. I pressed the receiver into my ear to block the sound of the wind.

"You shouldn't be doing this," he said.

"Am I interrupting the Rapture?"

"I can't talk."

"Where is she, Simon? What part of the house?"

"Where are you?"

"Just up the hill." The sky was brighter now, brighter by the second, a bruised purple on the western horizon. I could see the farmhouse clearly. It hadn't changed much in the few years since I'd visited. The outlying barn looked a little spruced up, as if it had been whitewashed and repaired.

Far more disturbingly, a trench had been dug parallel to the barn and covered in mounded earth.

A recently installed sewer line, maybe. Or septic tank. Or mass grave.

"I'm coming to see her," I said.

"That's just not possible."

"I'm assuming she's in the house. One of the upper-floor bedrooms. Is that correct?"

"Even if you see her—"

"Tell her I'm coming, Simon."

Down below, I saw a figure moving between the house and the barn. Not Simon. Not Aaron Sorley, unless Brother Aaron had lost about a hundred pounds. Probably Pastor Dan Condon. He was carrying a bucket of water in each hand. He looked like he was in a hurry. Something was happening in the barn.

"You're risking your life here," Simon said.

I laughed. I couldn't help it.

Then I said, "Are you in the barn or the house? Condon's in the barn, right? How about Sorley and Mclsaac? How do I get past them?"

I felt a pressure like a warm hand on the back of my neck and turned.

The pressure was sunlight. The rim of the sun had crossed the horizon. My car, the fence, the rocks, the scraggy line of ocotillo all cast long violet shadows.

"Tyler? Tyler, there is no way past. You have to—"

But Simon's voice was drowned in a burst of static. The full light of the sun must have reached the aerostat that was relaying the call, washing out the signal. I hit redial instinctively, but the phone was useless.

I crouched there until the sun was three quarters up, glancing at it and glancing away, as mesmerized as I was frightened. The disc was huge and ruddy orange. Sunspots crawled over it like festering sores. Now and again, gouts of dust rose from the surrounding desert to obscure it.

Then I stood up. Dead already, perhaps. Perhaps fatally irradiated without even knowing it. The heat was bearable, at least so far, but bad things might be happening on the cellular level, X-rays needling through the air like invisible bullets. So I stood up and began to walk down the pressed-earth road toward the farmhouse in plain sight, unarmed. Unarmed and unmolested at least until I had nearly reached the wooden porch, until Brother Sorley, all three hundred pounds of him, came hurtling through the screen door and levered the butt of a rifle against the side of my head.

* * * * *

Brother Sorley didn't kill me, possibly because he didn't want to meet the Rapture with blood on his hands. Instead he tossed me into an empty upstairs bedroom and locked the door.

A couple of hours passed before I could sit up without provoking waves of nausea.

When the vertigo finally eased I went to the window and raised the yellow paper blind. From this angle the sun was behind the house, the land and the barn washed in a fierce orange glare. The air was already brutally hot, but at least nothing was burning. A barn cat, oblivious to the conflagration in the sky, lapped stagnant water from a shady ditch. I guessed the cat might live to see sunset. So might I.