They are out there.

Hux Pariah stood on the porch of the Big House and scanned the steadily purpling horizon. Although he saw no clouds of dust from approaching vehicles, nor telltale red lasers from the scopes of sniper rifles, he knew it deep down in his bones. It was the first thought when he woke in the mornings and his final prayer before he closed his eyes at night. It danced so often through his head that he no longer needed to say the words out loud in order to hear them.

No, he didn’t.

They are out there.

No matter how many fences he ordered built, or torches he commanded to be lit. No matter how many men he had on hand to load their guns with powder or stand sentry at his doorway. He jerked with every rustle from the brush. He ducked for cover at every whisper of wind. Not a day passed when Hux didn’t sick up a meal or two and, though he found his jawline awful striking as a result, there’d be no way to disguise the steady shaking of his hand.

“When will they attack?” he asked.

Any day now, Hux. Any day.

“I wish they’d do it and get it over with.”

That’s not true and you know it.

“I’m not scared,” said Hux. “I’m ready for them.”

Maybe you are, but are they?

Hux diverted his attention to his Miracles. About forty or so of them stood in the yard, each facing different areas which had been designated as weak points. Places where the fortifications could be exploited, or the defenses manipulated. Each of them had been given a weapon of some sort. Some carried a gun, while others brandished sticks and stones. They kept their heavy-lidded eyes pointed toward the various tree lines and dared not so much as blink, despite the hour growing long.

“Tomorrow, we should let them sleep in shifts,” said Hux. “They’ll be no use to me dog-tired like they are.”

They’ll be no use to you dead. Now is hardly the time to split your defenses.

“They’re likely to collapse from lack of sleep.”

If they collapse, then at least you will know the limits of their loyalty.

Hux nodded. “You’re right, Luther.”

I’m always right.

Hux surveyed the lot a final time, then stepped inside the Big House. He removed his sidearm from his shoulder holster and placed it on the kitchen counter. The one from his hip went to the kitchen table. Finally, he slipped the tiny Derringer from his ankle and handed it to the big boy named Boo who guarded the bottom of the stairs.

“Are they awake?” Hux asked him.

Boo answered, “They ain’t made any noise for the past half hour, but I reckon they’re still awake.”

Hux nodded wearily, then ascended the stairs.

Some time ago, Hux relocated the dry goods storage locker to the top floor of the Big House. First, he had concerns of rats, roaches, or other vermin accessing their packaged foods. However, as time passed, he began to fear other Miracles sneaking past him, late at night, and poisoning their highly conditioned bodies with bowlfuls of pasta or cans of preserved meats. Rather than risk it, he’d replaced the wood door with one made of steel, and fitted it with a lock to which only he held the key.

Only recently had he come to realize that the room served not only to keep people from getting in, but could also be ideal when you wanted to keep them from getting out.

Hux stood at the door and rapped lightly with his knuckles.

“I’m going to open the door now,” he called inside. “Should either of you think it wise to bum-rush me, I only ask that you think upon what happened last time you tried it, and how none of us wants that to happen again.”

When he heard no further protest, Hux slipped his key into the door.

Inside, the dry goods closet contained enough sundries to feed a small platoon. Hux knew there’d come a day when outside forces might drive them within their own walls and he would not suffer for lack of his own preparation. The resulting siege could last days, weeks…months, even, and he would not be caught unawares. He’d stocked the camp with all the food and ammo he could lay an honest hand on, and then some. What had once been two bedrooms now housed shelf upon shelf of food that would last them through to the Tribulation.

It also housed Summer and Donnie, who stayed put on the floor as Hux opened the metal door. He clicked on the light as both of them covered their eyes with their hands and scurried like cockroaches for the shadows. He looked down upon them and shook his head.

“This is not what I wanted for us,” he said to the room. “Not by any means.”

Used to, Summer would plead and whine. She’d launch into a chorus of let me go and it doesn’t have to be like this. Most of the wind quit her sails when Hux tossed Donnie in to join her. Donnie was quicker to break. A couple turns with the boys downstairs and the old boy learned his lesson. He’d gone meek as a lamb as of late. He’d come to fear the gaze of Hux Pariah.

Don’t be fooled. He lies in wait.

“It will be any day now,” Hux told them. “All this will be over.”

Summer sighed. “You’ve been saying that for over a week.”

“Any day now.”

Hux’s attention turned to a small pile of shredded paper. It had been scattered across the room like confetti. He kicked into the jumble of it and toed it aside with his boot.

“Is this what I think it is?”

Summer said nothing.

“I asked you to read it.”

“I got better things to do than sit around all day and read the crap you write,” she grumbled. “That was the ramblings of a crazy man.”

“That was my manifesto.” Hux was on the verge of losing his cool. Luther put a hand to his neck and squeezed gentle until Hux’s heart rate settled. “That was my life’s work.”

“It was overwritten and paranoid,” said Summer. “Nobody wants to read crap like that.”

Hux could not take his eyes off the scraps littering the carpeted floor. “No matter,” he said. “There are other copies. When the time is right, every newspaper, every TV, every website in America will be reading it.”

“I’d suggest a good editor, then,” said Summer. “You can’t spell for shit.”

“And you…” Hux looked to Donnie, who had yet to rise. He sat with his back against a giant case of toilet paper, one of the rolls he’d busted open to use as a pillow for his neck. “What great things we could have done together. I gave you everything you wanted. I gave you companionship, I gave you the pick of the litter…you could have lived out the rest of your years in absolute bliss. But you had to betray me.”

“I kind of like it in here,” Donnie shrugged. “Summer’s great company.”

“Sure, she is.” Again, a bitterness took hold of Hux’s mouth, one he was powerless to defend. “She’s great company until she ain’t. That’s for sure.”

Summer flipped him the bird.

Said Hux to Donnie, “I know your greatest fear, and that’s to be alone. You stick with this one and that’s exactly what you’ll be: alone. She says she’ll stand by you, but she’ll crack at the seams before too long and she’ll fix it so there’s no one there but you to hold together the pieces. She’ll run off anyone and everyone who might manage to possibly matter, then once she’s got you all to herself, she’ll show her mind to the door.”

“Go to hell, Jack.”

“I mean it,” Hux said. “After you were gone, I was down in Houston picking up some tabs, and I got caught up in some nasty traffic. Turns out, some hobo had charged into an intersection with a samurai sword and was waving it to and fro, talking about how he’d been sent to defend the world from dragons.”

“That’s a fascinating story, Jack,” said Summer. “Why don’t you write that one down too so I can add it to yonder scrap pile?”

“I watched that hobo run from one side of the street to the other,” Hux said. “I watched him hoot and holler until the police took him down with three bullets. Long after they carted him off, I could still hear the echoes of his carrying on, bouncing off the skyscrapers.”

“Is there a point to all this?” asked Summer.

“Sure there is,” Hux told them both. “For days or weeks after, I couldn’t figure out what the difference was between him and us.”

Hux knew he’d stung her, but not nearly hard as he wanted. So he went on. “Is it because we had a roof over our heads? Is it because we transacted thousands of dollars’ worth of goods at a time? Really…I thought about it a good, long while and never once could I come up with the answer of what made us any different than that stark, raving hobo.”

“I know what the answer is,” said Summer.

“Do you?”

Summer rose slowly to her feet. She kept sacred the distance between them.

“We have each other,” she said.

Hux dismissed her with his hand. He turned to face the door. He stepped no closer to the exit.

“I’m serious, Jack,” said she. “That hobo is what happens when we let each other get too far from the other. You can take up with all the little girls you want, Jack—”

“Quit calling me that.”

“Call yourself whatever you want,” she said, “but there’s only one thing keeping either one of us from going straight to ruin.”

Yes. Only one thing. Keep that in mind.

“I’m happy now,” Hux said. “But you couldn’t let that be. Once again, you had to go and spoil it.”

“You call this happy?” Summer pointed to the room into which she’d been locked. “You’re half out of your mind, man. You don’t trust anybody and you’ve gone completely off your rocker. This is how you get when I’m not around to keep you stable.”

To what great depths she has fallen. She will say anything at this point to further bend your mind.

“We both know that’s why you keep me locked up in here,” said Summer. She took a step toward him. “Because you know I’m the one who keeps you from falling apart.”

“You two can’t be serious,” moaned Donnie.

Hux silenced him with the wave of his hand. He kept his eyes fixed upon Summer.

“You tried to run,” said Hux. “You were going to leave the ranch.”

“I was never going to leave,” Summer said. “You know how often I get worked up. Sure, I hem and haw over things, but in the end, do I ever go anywhere? It’s like there are decisions being made outside of myself, and I just act on them. I have no way to explain what that force is—”

It has a name.

“—but think back from when we first met, until this very moment. Can you do that?”

“Okay.”

“Have I ever left you?”

One thing Hux prided himself good at was the ability to sniff out a lie. He’d been doing it since his early days and reckoned he had a knack for it, one that could beat lie detectors to hell. However, he could make neither hide nor hair of how sincere the words spouting forth from his old friend were.

“What do you think?” he asked the room.

She raises a valid point. On the one hand—

“I think I’d be lucky if I found someone so devoted,” said Donnie. He crawled on all fours to Summer’s feet and tugged her by the ankles. “If you showed me half the allegiance you show this crack-up, I swear I would stick by your side through thick and thin.”

Summer put both hands to her cheeks and flushed an unhealthy shade of red. While she found it impossible to speak, Hux suffered from no such affliction.

“A likely couple!” he scoffed. “Summer, to hell with this guy. Come with me.”

“Don’t listen to him,” said Donnie. He scurried up the length of her, until he held her face in his hands. They fixed their gaze upon each other. “Summer,” he said, “this idiot had his chance. He stuck you with a needle full of drugs and left you to OD in an East Texas emergency room. He’s taken from you the only thing that made you happy and locked you for weeks in a storage closet.”

“We’ve got quite the history,” said Summer.

“Maybe now it’s time to take up with someone new,” said Donnie. “Somebody who won’t put you through so much pain.”

Summer smiled. “We won’t get very far, you and me. We’re locked in a storage closet.”

“Like I said,” Donnie said, also smiling, “you’re great company. We can spend the rest of our days in this storage closet, for all I care.”

Summer looked from Donnie to Hux, then back to Donnie. Hux could see the whirligigs spinning in her head. She closed her eyes then opened them.

You can’t trust her.

“If I could trust anyone…”

She’ll say whatever she believes is necessary to wriggle free from bondage. You’d forever look over your shoulder, waiting for her true intentions.

“You’re right…”

Hux backed out of the room, stopping at the doorframe. He braced it with both hands and eyed both his prisoners. Neither of them moved a muscle.

“I’m going to step downstairs and brew myself a nice pot of coffee,” said Hux. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had caffeine?”

Are you sure that’s a good idea?

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” said Hux. “Furthermore, I’m going to leave this door unlocked.”

Like hell you are.

“If you join me downstairs, then all is forgiven.”

Summer licked her lips. Donnie held his breath.

“If you choose to throw in your lot with each other,” said Hux, “then you can remain up here.”

Donnie took Summer by the hand. Hux did not wait to see how she received it, instead turning his back to them and again descending the stairs.

She’s not to be trifled with. You should march back up to the top of those stairs and lock the door.

“I have no doubt in my mind what she’ll do,” said Hux. Even still, he ordered Boo to keep vigil at the bottom of the stairs. He walked into the kitchen and rustled an old can of coffee he’d stashed behind several boxes of herbal tea. He opened it and received its pent-up aroma straight to his face.

He closed his eyes and smiled.

“Oh, how I missed that smell.”

Even if she walks down those stairs, that means nothing.

“I can’t do this alone,” Hux said. “I’m getting so tired.”

You’re far from alone. Those Miracles outside, they’d die for you. They’ll do anything you told them.

“But for how much longer?” Hux poured hot water into a dented kettle, then set it on a gas burner to boil. “I see it every day. Their devotion is flagging. When I am inside these women, they no longer receive me with the vigor of the early days. When they work in the fields, they don’t sing the songs as loud as they used to. I hear them whispering…”

Perhaps we should keep certain ones separate from the others.

“I see how they look at me each time I order them to stand down, after each unfulfilled prophesy.”

I’ve been meaning to tell you, maybe we should go easy on all that End Times talk.

“I need Summer back by my side,” he said. “Like the old days.”

The two of them are plotting your downfall as you speak.

Hux shook his head. “She wouldn’t let that happen.”

You don’t know her as well as you used to.

“I know her better than most people.”

You can’t trust anyone. I’m the only one…

The kettle kissed steam into the room and Hux removed it from the flame. He stood alone in the kitchen a moment, before he said, “How do I even know you’re real?”

Take a look upstairs.

“I don’t hear anything.”

That’s because they’re gone, Hux.

“That’s impossible. Boo would have—”

A window, a door…a hole in the wall. What does it matter? They’ve escaped.

“Summer wouldn’t—”

See for yourself.

Hux dropped the kettle to the floor. Before it landed, he’d already crashed through the dining room, the living room, and bustled past Boo at the bottom of the stairs. He crashed up them two, three at a time, until finally he reached the landing, the hallway, and the metal door standing wide open.

Inside, he found no one.

Hux staggered into the room, empty save for all the sundries he’d collected for an Armageddon that may never come. He walked to the center of the room and dropped to his knees upon the discarded shreds of the manifesto that Summer had destroyed, rather than read.

“How do you like that?” he asked aloud. “She’s gone.”

I hate to say I told you so, but…

“I never thought she’d do it,” Hux said. “Never in all my days did I think she’d go anywhere but where she belonged, which is by my side.”

First thing they’ll do is call the cops.

“Summer would never go to the police. She and I have an agreement.”

Like “no hospitals”?

Hux swallowed thick. “Still…”

And if she would leave you, what’s to keep all the others from doing the same?

Hux could no longer argue that point. While still down on his knees, he fought a fanciful notion that perhaps he might toss out a final call for help, one that might be answered by a power great enough to stay the coming tide from the bad guys down in Houston, or the cops in Corsicana. One that might finally give him what he really wanted, which was peace of mind enough to finally get a little bit of rest. Just a moment’s fucking rest, because it never stopped, that piece of him upstairs never, ever stopped, not with all the booze in the world, not with all the money. He could be neck deep in little girls from here to Salvation and still that evil organ between his ears would keep right on cranking.

Cast down upon his knees, he closed his eyes tight and lifted his head to the sky and didn’t care if it was Luther who answered, or some cranky God with whom he’d always been a stranger. He made a promise then and there, if one of them would answer him, he’d forever be in their service.

“Just please give me peace of mind.”

Hux Pariah opened his eyes to see what sign he may have received, and found himself staring at the top shelf of the dry storage closet.

Up top, where he’d crammed a bulky box of purple powdered drink mix.

Kool-Aid.