The End Is Now

THE BEGINNING

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed — in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

1 CORINTHIANS 15 : 51 – 52

There are certain rules to surviving a horror movie… Never, ever, ever under any circumstances say, I’ll be right back. Because you won’t be back.

JAMIE KENNEDY, SCREAM

GOODLAND, KANSAS

One week from tomorrow, at precisely 6:11 in the morning, the rapture or apocalypse or Armageddon or whatever else you’d prefer to call it, is going to occur.

But only in Goodland, Kansas.

The rapture will not take place anywhere else in the world. It will not crash the stock market, cause cars to wreck, or leave planes without their pilots. Husbands will not leave for the kitchen to grab a jar of pickles, only to come back to the living room and discover that their wives are now nothing more than piles of clothes. Power plants will not shut down, leaving televisions, light bulbs, street lamps, and hairdryers without electricity. Running water will not stop, forcing citizens to take baths in rivers and wash their clothes in lakes. Meteors will not crash into the ocean and create tidal waves. Nuclear missiles will not be launched from the USSR, North Korea, East Germany, or any of those pesky countries in the Middle East. Barcodes will not be tattooed onto wrists or foreheads. The number 666 will be nowhere in sight except for those rare instances when a customer at McDonald’s buys nothing but a Filet O’ Fish and a medium strawberry shake, and the total including tax comes out to be six dollars and sixty-six cents. A world government will not be formed. Computers will not melt down because they are confused about what the year 2000 actually means. Aliens will not blow up the White House.

Nothing like this will happen.

That is, nothing like this will happen anywhere but in Goodland.

This goes against conventional wisdom. Most people think that when the end comes it will be widespread: Trumpets will sound and horsemen will appear and it will be a whirlwind of all kinds of tribulation — from pre-trib, to post-trib, to middle-trib. But that doesn’t make sense. It’s just not how such things work. It’s not true to the pattern of how other miraculous destruction has occurred in history.

There are always warning signs.

God didn’t simply destroy Nineveh — Jonah was swallowed by a whale and then sent to warn Nineveh of its impending doom. Moses warned Pharaoh before the plagues hit — and even the plagues started out innocently enough, simple stuff like frogs and locusts before the heavy hitters like blood rivers and death angels. Peter warned Ananias and Sapphira, Lot warned Sodom and Gomorrah — and in the end they were all destroyed to warn others about the dangers of wickedness.

This is what will happen in Goodland. Their rapture will be a signal to the world. They are a warning. A sacrificial lamb. It makes sense. Once everyone sees how powerful the rapture is, they will be afraid, or excited; they will hit the floor and repent of their sins. Everyone, everywhere, will know the truth. Not only that, but this event will provide God a chance to see how things go. He can look at the rapture and see what worked and what didn’t. He can watch the good, the bad, and the ugly of the apocalypse so He can know how to improve it when He takes it global.

Goodland is the test market for the rapture.

The ultimate warning sign for all to repent.

WILL HENDERSON

Will was running late. At this rate he’d never make it home in time for dinner. And this wasn’t just dinner. This was Monday night dinner. This was the most important meal of the week for the Henderson family. The meal for which his mom spent the whole day cooking things like roast, garlic potatoes, fresh baked rolls, and pistachio fruit salad.

Will knew he should have left Nate Jackson’s house sooner. But Nate had just returned from a family trip to Kansas City where he got the most impressive set of brand-new, mint-condition DC graphic novels Will had ever seen. Look how cherry these are, Nate said as he opened the cellophane packaging and slowly took out the comics. Nate was right. These were cherry. Batman and Superman looked lifelike on these pages. No, they looked better than lifelike. Every detail on every page was breathtaking. Otherworldly. How could someone be expected to keep track of time when looking at comics like this?

Can I read it? Will asked.

Yeah, just be real careful. Mom said I’m not even supposed to open these because they’re so nice.

Will sat on the edge of Nate’s bed and flipped the comic books open. He turned to one page after another, reading about the adventures of the superheroes. Will’s mind always got lost in these stories, and at that moment he was lost in thought about Batman. Will felt bad for Batman. The Flash could move at the speed of light, Wonder Woman had an invisible jet, and Superman had a ridiculously unfair amount of powers (flight, laser vision, X-ray vision, wind breath, super strength — and those were just his basic powers — it seemed like he could just come up with a brand-new power whenever he needed it). And then there was Batman. He had exactly zero superpowers. He was rich. He had a lot of money. His trust fund was his power. He could buy really cool cars and planes and bat gadgets that could do anything and everything. But Batman couldn’t do anything for himself. Will thought all the other superheroes probably looked at Batman like he was a poser. Batman was the rich kid who had to buy his way into the Super Friends club. That must have made Batman really sad. Will thought Batman probably lay in bed late at night and tried not to cry at the mean things the other superheroes said. Batman probably would even look towards the heavens and pray, Please God, give me some kind of superpower. It doesn’t have to be much. Just the ability to jump over a building or become invisible or shoot beams of ice or fire out of my hands.

Will was almost in a trance flipping through the pages thinking about Batman when Nate said, Dude, don’t you have to be home? It’s almost dark.

Will looked up at the clock. Shoot. I gotta go. He jumped off Nate’s bed, ran down the stairs, and opened the door to leave. See you later Mrs. Jackson, Will said.

If the Lord tarries, Mrs. Jackson called from the kitchen.

Once Will was out of Nate’s house he started walking home down the gravel road. The road was on the outskirts of Goodland and on either side were large cornstalks as tall as NBA players. Will walked as quickly as he could. But even at his quick pace he wouldn’t make it home in time. His family lived so far away from everybody.

Still, he needed to make it home in time. This was Monday night dinner. This was a huge deal. So, the only chance he had to make it home before he was grounded for the next month was to cut across the cornfields.

Will stepped into the fields and knew that if he walked in a straight diagonal line, he would cut at least twenty minutes off his walk home. He’d just have to keep walking quickly and he’d be there in no time. He’d be there before his mom could call Nate Jackson’s mom and ask where he was. Will didn’t like when his mom talked to Nate’s mom. They always talked about religious things.

Of course most people talked about religious things in Good-land. Will had visited some of his cousins in Denver last summer and noticed that no one around there ever said things like, If the Lord tarries, when they said goodbye. But in Goodland that was just how most people said goodbye. Kind of like saying Geshundheit after someone sneezes. But the thing is, most people say Geshundheit after you sneeze. It seemed to Will that no one said If the Lord tarries anywhere else in the world. He wanted to make sure so he tested the theory out a month ago when his family visited Worlds of Fun amusement park in St. Louis. The teenager buckling Will into the roller coaster told him, Have a good ride. And Will answered, If the Lord tarries.

The teenager looked at Will as if he were from Neptune.

On their road trip home from the amusement park, Will asked his mom, How come nobody else talks like we do?

What do you mean? his mother answered.

Nobody in Denver or at Worlds of Fun says things like, ‘If the Lord tarries.’ Only people in Goodland say things like that.

That’s because they’re not concerned with the rapture, his mother said.

Oh.

You know what the rapture is, don’t you?

Of course he knew what the rapture was. Everybody knew what the rapture was. He’d heard about it lots of times in Sunday school. People around town talked about it every once in a while. And from the way people talked, Will always worried that it was coming soon. That made Will scared. He didn’t want to die.

Not that it was really dying. Or was it? He’d have to go away. His life on earth would be over. Isn’t that essentially what dying is? Does it matter if you skip the pain? Or is the pain part of dying? Do you have to experience something bad like a bullet through your chest or a car wreck or liver cancer or AIDS or burning or drowning? Is that part of dying? Probably it was. So that was one of the things that Will liked about the rapture. He’d get to skip the pain part of dying. It was like God would hit fast forward or skip to the next chapter, and he’d be whisked away to some magical place with clouds and harps and singing. He’d be whisked away to heaven.

So it wasn’t really heaven that bothered him — it was just that there was so much here that he hadn’t experienced. He hadn’t graduated and thrown his cap high into the air. He’d never learned to drive or been able to pick up a girl by himself on prom night. He wouldn’t be able to go on a camping trip with just his friends like they’d always planned they would when they were old enough. He hadn’t ever owned his own house, or had a job where he made lots of money that he could spend on video games and guitars and flat screen TVs.

Worst of all, he’d never even had a girlfriend, he’d never kissed a girl like all the other guys at school said they had. And he’d certainly never had the S-word with a girl. And he sort of wanted to do that too. Not until he was older. Not until his wedding night, and maybe not until a while after that. The S-word sounded crazy and weird and like a lot of fun, but also kind of scary and intimidating for Will right now.

But it wouldn’t always be scary. Someday he would be ready.

Still, he didn’t think about the S-word much, but he thought about his wife all the time. He wondered what she would look like. She’d probably have blonde hair and she’d like to play soccer or volleyball. Will even wondered if he knew his wife right now. Sometimes, during math when the teacher was writing long division problems on the board, he’d look around the classroom and wonder if his wife was sitting in class with him. Was she a few desks away and just as bored as he was? What if someday, once they were married, they’d talk about math class and tell each other, That’s where I first noticed you, in math, during those super boring lessons. That’s when I knew we’d be married. But that day would never come. He’d never get to have that conversation with his wife. He’d never even get to know who his wife really was.

He’d probably be raptured before then.

And that wasn’t fair. This was a point Will often brought up in his prayer time. God, why can’t you wait until I’m old, like twenty-five, until you bring the rapture? Let me do some of the stuff that people have gotten to do for thousands and millions of years before me. Isn’t that fair? And then Will felt like God spoke the answer to him: No, that wasn’t fair. The rapture had to come someday; it couldn’t wait until everyone turned twenty-five. Because then it would never happen. And besides, there were some people who were babies or little kids and they’d never get to experience all the good stuff Will had. They’d never get to ride a bike, or white-water raft, or go see the Kansas City Royals play live and in person. He should consider himself lucky he’d gotten to do all of that. Even more, he would be very lucky that the rapture was going to happen in his lifetime. He was special.

And then he stopped.

He looked around. He was so deep in thought about the rapture and Worlds of Fun and his future wife that he’d lost his place in the cornfields.

Where are you? There was barely any sunlight left. He wasn’t even supposed to be in the cornfields. If his parents knew that he’d cut across the cornfields, he couldn’t imagine how grounded he would be, but it would be bad. He would probably still be grounded after the rapture. The adults didn’t want anyone in the Johnsons’ fields because they stretched on as far as the eye could see, in every direction, rows and rows of endless cornstalks like trees in a forest. Will could navigate them; he’d done it before, but he had to pay careful attention to the subtle changes and markers along the way. And he thought he was paying attention. But all the thoughts of the rapture crept in and distracted him. It happened to him sometimes. Emily made fun of him because of it. His mom said it wasn’t his fault. One thought could jump onto another and another. But she also said just because it wasn’t his fault didn’t mean he wouldn’t have to fight against it. She said he needed to pay attention, and that wasn’t easy; that’s why they called it paying.

He was paying attention now.

He knew exactly what to do to get out of the fields; he hadn’t been so lost in his thoughts that he’d completely lost his bearings. He needed to walk straight about three hundred steps, and then right five hundred steps, and then left six hundred steps. Like that, he’d be out of the cornfields. He could run home, he’d be there before dark — he’d outrace the sun if he had to. Then he could go back to normal things like worrying about the rapture.

He started counting each step. He knew right where he was the whole time, and once he got near his last few steps he could feel the outside world, taste the fresh air, and imagine what it would look like outside of the green and yellow and brown blur he’d been staring at for the last half hour. And as he walked out of the cornfields something odd happened.

There was more corn.

The six hundredth step looked just like every other step. He hadn’t left the fields at all. He closed his eyes and listened. Surely he could hear people playing and talking; there would be cars driving on the road, and these sounds would guide him out of the field. He had miscalculated. But he was close. He just needed a little help to guide him the rest of the way.

He listened — and — nothing.

Now he was going to have to do something that would give him away. He’d have to yell. And then everyone for sure would know that he was in the cornfields. They would tell him, I told you so. This is exactly why we say, ‘Don’t play in the cornfields.’ He would tell them he wasn’t playing, he knew exactly where he was. He just got a little distracted. But those logical explanations would fall on deaf ears.

That was a price he was willing to pay. Is anybody out there? Will said, loudly and confidently without quite yelling it. There was still a shred of hope that someone would be nearby, someone who’d guide him out of the fields so he could avoid trouble.

Anybody? He half-yelled again.

No answer. He started worrying much less about being grounded and much more about dying of thirst in the cornfield. He knew that you died of thirst way before you died of hunger, which seemed weird to Will because he usually felt hungry a lot more than thirsty.

So this time he yelled, Please, I’m lost. I need some help. PLEASE!

Silence. Someone could hear him. They were just trying to prove a point. They were trying to teach him a lesson.

Okay. I’m sorry! DO YOU HEAR ME? I SAID SORRY! I WILL NEVER GO IN THE CORNFIELDS AGAIN!

Nothing.

He walked up and down the rows of corn explaining things over and over. Screaming for help. Admitting guilt. Apologizing. More screaming. And towards the end he started to cry. He didn’t want to. He knew it was such a baby-kid-lame-o thing to do. But he couldn’t help it. If someone could hear him, they were playing a sick-cruel-scary joke.

But what if someone could hear him?

He closed his eyes and listened one more time. Not for the obvious things like cars driving and honking or kids playing and laughing or parents talking. No, he listened for the quiet types of things. Like someone breathing or soft footsteps. And then he could hear it. Slow breaths, in and out, from someone else, as if they’d been there all along. He could feel someone else’s eyes burrowing into the back of his neck, he could almost see whoever it was behind him, smiling.

Hey, mister, listen, I’ve got a knife so you don’t want to —

And then he ran. It was a trick he’d learned from watching movies. The hero would always act like he was talking to the bad guy, and then mid-sentence, out of nowhere, the hero sprung into action. Except the hero probably wouldn’t have run; he would have turned around and snapped the bad guy’s neck, but Will didn’t know how to break someone’s neck. He couldn’t even punch very hard. So he just ran. He didn’t even look back to see who it was behind him. He knew if he ran in any one direction long enough and fast enough and hard enough, he’d get away from whoever was following him and out of the cornfields.

So he ran until he was out of breath, until it hurt too much to go on. And then he ran a little farther. When he finally stopped, his face was covered in tears and sweat and dust and pieces of cornhusk. He took off his shirt and wiped his face the best he could. It made his shirt filthy. Another thing to be grounded for. He didn’t care now. He wanted to be grounded. He would give anything to be home, to be yelled at, to be sent to his room for a month. All of that seemed small now. Because he knew how bad the situation had become.

You could die out here.

They might not even find you until weeks from now.

This didn’t even scare him. He just knew it was true. He’d watched survival videos in boy scouts where grown men had gotten lost in the wilderness. In one video a man got frostbite and his leg had to be cut off. In another video a man got lost in the desert, and his face had gotten so scorched that it looked like he had leprosy, and when they found him they tried to give him water, but even a thimble of it made him sick.

I’m serious, God, please help me find a way out of here. I’ll be good. Really good. I’ll help others and feed the homeless. I shouldn’t have come here. I know that now. I learned my lesson. But you have to help me. DO YOU HEAR ME? Please, if you’re really out there you have to help me.

This wasn’t the first time he’d prayed this kind of prayer. There were two other times (he got lost in Disneyland when he was eight, and Nate had broken his leg when they were tree climbing last summer) and both of those times God didn’t say a word.

Right now Will didn’t have time to wait on God. He’d have to get himself out of this mess. He needed to run more. But he was tired. His head was cloudy, and everything looked blurry. Even worse, the sun had set. The cornstalks created crisscross shadows all over the ground. The moon was starting to shine now, but just enough to make things seem eerie and alive. There was no point to running anymore. This is where he would end. This would be the final resting place of Will Henderson.

The winds picked up again, howling and making the cornstalks dance around him. Will was paralyzed. It was like when the nightmares were so bad he couldn’t even scream.

Then a face appeared in the cornstalks. It looked just like Moses did in all of the movies, only it was made out of the cornstalks coming together: bright yellow eyes, a ripe green mouth, and a cornhusk beard. Will wondered if God was finally about to speak to him. Then again, maybe it wasn’t God at all. Maybe it was an angel. Or maybe the face was Satan or a demon. Maybe it was there to trick Will.

He’d have to listen carefully to be sure.

When the face finally spoke, it told Will he had nothing to be afraid of.

Will said he was afraid of the wind. The wind stopped.

Then the face told Will about the rapture (only the face didn’t call it that but Will knew what he was talking about), about what would happen in the next week. Will listened; his mind was calm and it soaked up everything.

When the face finished talking, it went back to looking like cornstalks, and Will was so calm and tired that he couldn’t help but sleep.

JEFF HENDERSON

The sun set a Reese’s Pieces orange as Jeff Henderson flipped down his dusty visor. He was driving home from another day of automotive sales on the access road next to I – 70. He could almost feel the cars as they whizzed by him at eighty miles per hour.

They were all on their way somewhere.

They didn’t think of Goodland as a town or a city. They thought of it as more of a glorified truck stop. Most travelers know Goodland has a Holiday Inn Express or a Comfort Inn to stay at if they need a place to rest before they head 189 miles west to Denver or 394 miles east to Kansas City. They read the road signs and see that within the city limits there’s a McDonald’s and a Dairy Queen, or a Rusty’s if they want to experience an authentic small-town diner. And observant travelers notice Goodland’s slogan handpainted in white on the side of a splintered maroon barn that reads, Goodland. Stay a night. Stay a lifetime. But that’s about all those who drive past Goodland know about the town. To them it lasts for about three exits along I – 70 and then it disappears in their rearview mirror. It’s quickly forgotten with the promise of a bigger, better Dairy Queen forty-five miles ahead in the next town.

What they don’t know is how close-knit Goodland is. They don’t know about the Goodland fair and livestock show that happens every summer, or that fall is everyone’s favorite time of year because it’s when the cornstalks reach up towards heaven like they are trying to touch God himself. They don’t know that nobody from Goodland actually eats at Rusty’s because they’d much rather go to one of the diners near downtown or the café at the airport. And most of all those tourists driving through Goodland don’t know that the motto on the handpainted sign has everything to do with the belief by some (but certainly not all) that they have been chosen for the rapture. Those who think of Goodland as a truck stop have no way of knowing that to Stay a Night means you are a tourist passing through, but to Stay a Lifetime means you’ll get the honor of experiencing Goodland’s fate with the rest of the town.

Jeff Henderson was born in Goodland so he knew all these things. He knew exactly what the sign meant. He passed by it every day, but he never looked at it or read it because to him it was just a piece of the scenery. It was part of the background like skyscrapers are to natives of New York or mountains are to natives of Colorado. He didn’t think of it as normal, nor did he think of it as eccentric. It was something he took for granted. Some small towns have legends of old haunted mansions on a hill or stories of spooky graveyards on the edge of town, and that’s what the Goodland rapture talk amounted to for Jeff. It was a quaint legend which added to the charm of Goodland, but nothing more. Nothing that needed serious thought and consideration, because there were other things in life. Pressing things.

Everyday things.

And those were the things Jeff thought about as he drove home from work. At the moment he was thinking about his Ford Taurus, which was too old, clunky, and unfashionable for someone in his line of work to be driving. It was older than both his kids. If he had a promotion he could buy something much nicer and reliable and slick. But just as much, a promotion would validate everything: the hours away from his family, the stress, the phone calls, the hustling, the twisting and scheming, the smile he had to have plastered on his face forty hours every week, the nine to five, the long days without a sale. The blood, sweat, and tears would all be worth it if he could just get promoted to senior sales rep. Even better, he wouldn’t have to put junior sales rep on his business card anymore. Junior. It was so embarrassing. He was a father of two, he was a husband, and he’d been in the business world for a little while now. And he still had a card that said junior.

Still, worrying about things like business cards and titles was an entirely new thing for Jeff. A couple months ago he didn’t care what was on his business card. He was just happy to have a job. Well maybe not just a job. He’d had lots of those — he’d been a farmhand, he’d framed houses, and he’d been an assistant manager at Señor Clucks.

For his whole life he’d been paid by the hour. But he’d done whatever it took to survive. Jeff had been living in survival mode ever since his senior year of high school. It was second semester and he was ready to graduate. He was imagining life in college. He didn’t know what he wanted to study, didn’t even care, he just wanted to live the college life. He’d take all the easy classes and party for a couple of years; he’d get serious about his major and figure out life junior year. That was the plan. But then on one ordinary day, Amy came up to his locker and her face was pale. She was already pretty fair skinned, but on that day she looked almost translucent.

What’s up, babe, Jeff said. He was wearing his letter jacket and chewing gum.

I’m late, Amy said.

So am I, Jeff answered.

"No, I’m really late," Amy said.

He gently grabbed her elbow and smiled. Don’t worry, I’ll go to class with you.

"Is that your way of saying