“Dude,” says Samson, putting a hand on the Prophet’s arm. “Cut it out.”
But the Prophet is done being a prisoner. He has someplace to be, a holy mission, and no shirtless poser with a five-dollar philosophy of macho nihilism is going to stop him.
“God talked to me all night,” he tells them, “all night lying on a concrete floor. His voice was the hum of cables deep underground. You will let us go, or face His wrath.”
“Tyler,” shouts the Durden with the knife.
“Yes, Tyler,” shouts the boss, drill sergeant-like.
“Can I cut him now?”
“Please.”
Knife Durden dances forward, slashing the air. “This is your life, kid,” he says, “and it’s ending one minute at a time.”
Samson sighs. Like a one-eared pit bull, he was raised by his father to fight. Part of him always knew it would come to this. He unbuckles his belt, pulls it through the loops.
“God,” says the Prophet, raising his voice, “is unhappy.”
Samson steps in front of the Prophet, snaps his belt between his hands.
Knife Durden feints a lunge.
You let me violate you
You let me desecrate you.
“With Noah it was the flood,” shouts the Prophet. “In Sodom and Gomorrah, He turned the sinners to stone. Look around you. The sky is burning. What did He tell us—no more flood, the fire next time.”
Knife Durden spins, slashing. Samson steps back. He flicks his wrist, and the belt buckle catches Knife Durden just below the left ear, drawing blood. Two other Durdens step forward. The Prophet moves into the center, his hands raised.
“You will let us go or feel His wrath.”
The Durdens stare at him, losing interest in the circus. Some of them are hungover. The rest are still drunk. The sooner they filet these boys, the sooner they can find some Marla Singers to violate. Samson tightens the belt around his right hand, ready for the next wave.
Boss Durden steps forward, pulling a revolver from his belt. He aims it at the Prophet’s face. “There is no God,” he says.
An explosion rocks the hangar behind them, blowing hot debris ahead of it like a shove. Simultaneously, they hear the scream of an incoming missile, and the M1150 Assault Breacher explodes, blowing the Durdens off their feet.
The army is here to take back the base.
Samson ducks instinctually, but the Prophet doesn’t flinch. God is here. In his might and majesty He has parted the seas and torn down the Jericho walls. The Prophet lowers his gaze to find Boss Durden lying in a pool of his own blood. Half his jaw is missing, and he gurgles his confusion to the sky, left arm outstretched.
Somewhere, a .50-caliber machine gun starts up, and then everywhere they look they see muzzle flashes. Samson grabs the Prophet’s hand, pulls him toward the fence line. A tank crashes through the barbed wire ahead of them, firing a depleted uranium shell with a deafening thoom. Samson and the Prophet duck behind a jeep, wait for it to pass. Smoke from the incoming gas grenades mixes with the smut in the air, turning the day into a blur of light and dark shapes.
The apocalypse becomes an impressionist painting. In a patch of clear air they see an anarchist in a giraffe costume stumble across the runway on fire, his arms and legs windmilling. Overhead they hear the heavy rotors of army helicopters, Special Forces operatives in midnight black descending on unseen fast ropes, here to mop up the strays. Samson and the Prophet climb an embankment and squeeze through a hole in the cyclone fence, and then they are free.
*
The apocalypse, it turns out, is easy. There is no confusion, no uncertainty about stakes. The world is in chaos. You must survive. End of story. It is the Time Before that tests your strength, your mind. The years of not knowing—is the world ending? Are we descending into some new dark age? Before is the era of great anxiety. You live in a state of heightened awareness, of constant adrenaline, looking, always looking for the straw that will break the camel’s back. The smallest sounds wake you in the night. You reach for your phone, checking the news, wondering if the zombies have risen while you’ve been asleep. For clarity, we shall call this period the pre-apocalypse. The Age of Unknowing. And it is over now.
Samson and the Prophet run through the urban sprawl. They are on the low desert streets of Morningside Heights in El Paso. Sounds of gunfire from the base reach them like distant fireworks, fierce at first, then sporadic. There are tanks in the street, transports filled with National Guard soldiers, but also pickup trucks on kamikaze missions, jumping the center divide. Pockets of discord arise ahead of them and must be avoided, militia clusters laying down covering fire wearing makeshift gas masks and firing armor-penetrating rounds.