The Fifth Day Read online

  She just… knew.

  “I’m not sure I want to do this.” Gary laughed again. “I know, I’m being a wuss.”

  “Sensible, more like,” Lissa said.

  “I have an idea,” Margo said. “Can you turn one card for each of us? Not a full reading, only one card. Maybe the card that was like, in Ben’s reading, the thing you have to look out for?”

  Zolzaya gave her companions a questioning look.

  “Go ahead if you want to.” Lissa gave a little wave of her hand.

  “Sure.” Gary still sounded uncertain.

  “Like I said, I think we’re better off forewarned,” Margo said.

  “Okay. If everyone’s in agreement.” Z picked up the cards, shuffled them three times, and put them in front of Lissa. “Cut the cards.”

  Lissa, her mouth wry, did so.

  Zolzaya picked up the top card from the cut, and turned it over.

  The Magician.

  “So, Z,” she said. “What wisdom does this impart?”

  “It’s a powerful card. One of intelligence. Every card carries with it a light side and a dark side. The Magician’s risk is the arrogance of the adept. Something coming from what you think you know to be true, but that turns out to be false.”

  “You’re making this up.” Lissa smiled and frowned at the same time, a curious sensation. “Payback for being a disbeliever.”

  She hoped the shiver that rippled up her neck had not been visible to the rest of them.

  “No,” Zolzaya said. “It’s really what the card is supposed to mean.”

  “All right. Like Ben said, it could have been worse. How about you, Gary?” Lissa said. “Let’s hear what you are going to be facing.”

  Zolzaya shuffled the cards again, and pushed the stack in front of Gary. He reached out, and his hand trembled.

  He cut the cards, and Zolzaya turned over the top one.

  It showed a muscular man, clad only in a kilt-like garment, standing in a chariot being pulled by two horses, one black, one white. He gazed up from the card with a confident sneer.

  Lissa chuckled. “Even looks a little like you, Gary.”

  Gary said nothing, but looked up at Z questioningly.

  “The Chariot’s a double-edged sword, too. It’s a card of strength, but also carries the danger of following your impulses. This card is about things going badly wrong when you do what your instincts tell you to do. Think of it as a warning to follow your higher motives.”

  “I don’t think I have any higher motives.”

  “We all do,” Margo said. “Don’t say such a thing about yourself.”

  Gary shrugged. “At least it didn’t say anything about being ripped apart by a tree monster.”

  “I doubt there’s a tree monster card,” Lissa said.

  “Margo?” Zolzaya said.

  “Sure. But you did a reading for me only a couple of days ago.”

  “Things could have changed.” She shuffled the cards again, and handed the stack to Margo, who cut them without hesitation.

  The top card was Strength. It depicted a woman in a white robe, an infinity sign floating over her head like a halo, holding a lion’s mouth shut with apparent ease.

  “I got that one last time, too,” Margo said quietly.

  “The card has to do with the inner will. Mastering your fears. It’s a quiet, easy power that comes from inside you once you let yourself channel it.” Zolzaya hesitated, frowning.

  Lissa watched Margo’s face, willing Z to be careful. Margo was the one who believed this the most strongly. Say the wrong thing, and she could freak out completely.

  “And does it have a negative side, too?” Margo’s voice came out high but steady.

  Z shook her head, still frowning. “Not too bad. The danger of this card is in not believing that you can do the things you’re called upon to do. In order to make this kind of power work, you have to be certain you can do it.”

  “You look worried, though.”

  “It’s not about the meaning of the card. Have you noticed? All four of you got cards from the Major Arcana. The Fool for Ben, The Magician for Lissa, The Chariot for Gary, Strength for you.”

  “That doesn’t happen often?”

  “No. There are twenty-two Major Arcana, out of seventy-eight cards.” She shrugged. “I guess it’s just a coincidence.”

  “Certainly is,” Lissa said.

  Z stacked the cards back up, and picked up the box to put them away.

  “What about Jeff?” Ben said. “You haven’t done a reading for Jeff.”

  “He’s not here to cut the cards,” Margo said.

  “And he’d disapprove heartily if he knew you were doing it,” Lissa said. “He’d say you were sending demons his way.”

  “Maybe if I cut the cards for him,” Ben said. “Say, ‘this is for Jeff,’ or something. Would that work?”

  “It’d work as well as anything else,” Lissa said.

  “If you think it’s important, Ben,” Zolzaya told him.

  “We can’t leave anyone out.” Ben took the cards from Zolzaya’s hands, and set them down on the table.“This is for Jeff.” He cut the cards, turned over the top one, then recoiled, looking up at her with a scared expression.

  The card was the The Hierophant. A man in priestly robes sat on a golden throne, raising his hand in a blessing.

  “Another of the Major Arcana,” Z said.

  “And what does it mean?” Ben asked.

  “It’s the card of the high priest.”

  Lissa laughed. “Well, at least that much is appropriate.”

  Z looked up at her. “Look, you really think this is all a coincidence?”

  “I don’t see any other explanation. The world simply doesn’t work this way. There is no way that there’s some kind of mystical connection between you, us, and a bunch of drawings on cheap cardstock.”

  “I don’t know,” Z said. “A couple of days ago, I’d have agreed with you. But now…?”

  Lissa shook her head decisively. “Confirmation bias. Once you believe something, you accept any bits of evidence that further support what you’d already decided.”

  Z took a deep, trembling breath. “You’re probably right. But this is still freaking me out.”

  “I’d be lying if I didn’t say the same. But I know better than to mistake my emotional reactions for reality. In any case, don’t tell Jeff we did a card reading for him, okay? As superstitious as he is, he’d never speak to any of us again.”

  “He’s not superstitious,” Margo said. “He’s religious.”

  “Same thing.”

  Margo pursed her lips, but didn’t respond.

  “Now you,” Ben said to Zolzaya. “You’re the only one left.”

  “Me?” She smiled. “I’ve never done a reading for myself.”

  “Never?” Margo said. “Not even out of curiosity?”

  “No. I knew it was fake, right from the beginning. What would have been the point?” But she shuffled and cut the cards, and drew the top one from the stack.

  “What if it’s another of the Major Arcana?” Margo jerked her head at Lissa. “What then?”

  “I’m not going to change my mind because of a card.” And simultaneously, she knew it would be. But she couldn’t admit that, say out loud that everything that had happened in the last couple of days hadn’t only cracked the armor of her certainty, it had shattered it.

  Z flipped over the card.

  It was the High Priestess. A woman, crowned with the crescent moon, enthroned and holding a wand, looking out at the world with a haughty, knowing expression.

  “The card of another kind of power.” Z’s voice was hushed. “Mystical knowledge, dreams, and intuition. The Sibyl’s card. Take control of the power and you speak with the voice of the goddess.”

  “That’s cool,” Ben said. “You’re like our sorceress.”

  “I don’t know. It’s a scary idea. Knowing things that are beyond the bounds of logic. I like things
to be rational.”

  “Rational went away yesterday morning,” Gary said.

  “I can’t argue with that.”

  “Satisfied now?” Lissa said. “Now that we all have clear knowledge of what’s going to happen to us?”

  “You don’t have to be so abrasive,” Margo said.

  Lissa shrugged. “We just spent an hour fooling with playing cards. I’m allowed to voice my opinion.”

  “I’m taking my reading seriously,” Margo said. “And so should you. Your card was about relying too heavily on what you already think is true.”

  “I only think something is true if I have evidence,” Lissa countered. “And if I have evidence, why should I turn around and disbelieve it?”

  “Because if that’s your approach, you’ll doubt the evidence when it’s right in front of your eyes. Professional skeptics are like that. You get so used to doubting that you doubt everything. Don’t think that’s not a bias, too.”

  “All right.” Lissa smiled broadly. “There aren’t enough of us left that we can afford to bicker over philosophy. I’ll give you my word that I’ll keep my mind open, and my eyes too. You do the same. You and I will keep each other honest.” She extended a hand to the older woman. “Pax?”

  “Pax.” Margo shook Lissa’s hand.

  “I need a beer,” Gary said.

  —

  LISSA HEARD FOOTSTEPS on the stairs, and reflexively looked at her watch. It was a little past nine o’clock. Gary was sound asleep on the couch, his long legs stretched out, one arm crooked over his eyes. Ben was reading A Brief History of Time by the light from an electric lantern, his brow knit in concentration. Margo and Z opted for an early bedtime. Lissa agreed to sleep on an air mattress in Ben’s sister’s room, leaving Margo with the bed. They blew it up with a hand-pump and tossed on some sheets and a pillow so she wouldn’t wake Margo when she finally decided to retire.

  How long would watch batteries keep running? Sooner or later, all the timepieces would run down. And then—what? No more awareness of the passage of the hours? Days fading into days, months into months, no one keeping track of whether it was March or August, 2020 or 2024. Especially in Southern California, where there was less difference between the seasons. Maybe no one would care, and eventually even the concept would vanish. It was a weird idea, considering the way the whole industrialized world ran by the clock for the past hundred years. Would their distant descendants even remember that there had been such a thing as a clock or a calendar?

  The idea of no measuring devices, of numbers simply not mattering, was repellant.

  Sooner or later, they’d reinvent society, and rediscover science. Their descendants would rebuild what they had. Maybe make it better this time.

  If there were enough of them left that they’d have any descendants. Maybe this was really the end. Once the survivors were gone, no more humans.

  Ever.

  After all, even if there were enough of them, and they made a deliberate effort to continue, childbearing without the aid of modern medicine was a daunting idea. How many women and infants died in childbirth in pre-industrial societies? With such a small starting population, they’d be teetering on the edge of extinction if they couldn’t find a way to increase the survival rate. If the death rate of the population exceeded the birth rate, even for a few years, the human race would be in a downward spiral.

  In any case, what would continuance really mean? Going out to other places to see if there were more people? How could they do that, with the resources they had? But not to try would mean that they were cowards, lacking in a desire to survive beyond themselves—selfish. Could they do that, given the huge human inborn urge to survive? Go back to their ancestors’ ways, never treading more than twenty miles from the place they lived? Or moving constantly, as the Native Americans of the High Plains did, to keep ahead of famine and assure that they would not use up their resources by staying in the same place too long?

  Jeff turned the corner around the bottom of the staircase, and walked barefoot through the dimly-lit living room and into the kitchen. Lissa heard him fill a glass from one of the water bottles. He gave her a quick look on his return, and she thought he looked worried.

  “Are you okay, Jeff? You shouldn’t isolate yourself. You can stay down here with us in the evening.”

  “It’s okay. I’m fine alone.”

  “You really don’t feel the need to socialize?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll have a chance to socialize. We’re going to meet two more people tomorrow. And another afterwards. And that’ll be it for a while.”

  Lissa didn’t ask how he knew this. There was no doubt about what the answer would be.

  And Margo would say that, if they were getting information through Tarot cards, it was only fair that Jeff should get information through his own channels. Margo was probably one of those pantheist types who would say that it was all coming from the same source. You’re god, I’m god, everybody and everything is god. She’d run into those types at Berkeley—they were common in this part of the world—and the whole thing had struck her as vague, bland pop theology that, if it was true, wouldn’t tell you a damn thing about how the world worked.

  Worthless, in other words.

  But really, it was all the same thing. Tarot cards, psychics, divination and organized religion, all ways of circumventing the hard work of learning some science. “God works in mysterious ways.” Meaning, “Don’t ask me, I have no fucking clue why this happened.”

  In any case, there was no sense getting Jeff all stirred up by asking him what he thought. Of the Holy Rollers she’d met, he was certainly one of the more pleasant ones.

  “Any other guidance forthcoming?”

  He frowned, as if he were wondering whether she was being sarcastic. “No. Nothing more.” His voice lowered. “Except that the Tribulation is soon to begin. Not all of us will survive it. The demon of the trees who caught Gary, and the hag Z saw, are not the only ones out there.”

  “What do they want, Jeff?” Ben had put down his book and was listening to the conversation with an intent expression.

  “They’re vying for our souls. Each in its own way. We must remain steadfast. When the Antichrist appears, we must not take the Mark of the Beast, but keep our minds fixed on the Lord.” His eyes, shining in the lamplight, turned back toward Lissa. “I know you don’t believe.”

  “No. I don’t. But I don’t have to, you know. Like Margo and me, you and I can still be friends even if we don’t agree about philosophy.”

  To her surprise, Jeff gave her a shy smile.

  “I wish I could convince you, though,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m afraid for you if you’re not saved. Hell is forever. No good person should end up there, but you can’t get to heaven by being good. You have to accept Jesus into your heart.”

  “All right, then. Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “What makes you so certain that the Bible is true?”

  His smile vanished, and again was replaced by a suspicious expression. “I know, that’s all.”

  “There has to be more to it than that. You’d like to convince me, right? Save my soul?”

  “Only God can save your soul, but the first step is believing. So, of course.”

  “Then put yourself in my place. Think about it from the perspective of an unbeliever. You’re not going to convert me by saying that it’s true because it’s true.”

  He frowned, considering. “I guess that’s right.”

  “I know it must be hard to see it from the point of view of someone who hasn’t always believed.”

  “I haven’t always believed.”

  “Really? I assumed….” She trailed off.

  “My parents were one-day-a-week Christians. My dad drank too much, and used to slap my mom around when he was drunk, then they’d both go to church on Sunday like nothing had happened. My sister and me, we were too scared to stand
up to him. But we were all glad when he ran off with another woman, when I was eleven and my sister was nine. Things were better after that.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  He shrugged again. “It was the way life was. I spent my teenage years chasing girls. I lusted after them, thought about all manner of sinfulness of the body.”

  “We all do, when we’re that age.”

  “Yes. But you have to control the carnal urges instead of letting them control you. I never went to college. Money, you know, and I wasn’t good at school. Dead-end jobs that never lasted long. I spent some time on the street, started in with the alcohol. I was following the way my dad went. But God sent me a messenger.”

  “What sort of messenger?”

  His smile returned. Lissa was amazed at how it transformed his face. He looked almost childlike. “Not an angelic messenger, like in the days of old. An earthly messenger. A minister. Brother Earl Lippencott. He came to me, when I was at the lowest of the low, and asked me if I wanted a job and a calling. I said, ‘What’s a calling?’ And he said, ‘Something that will change your life.’ I said I wasn’t sure about that, but Brother Earl pointed his finger at me and then at the dirty street corner where I was panhandling, and said, ‘What can you imagine I’d offer you that could be worse than this? Are you really arguing that you’d prefer drinking cheap booze and begging on the street?’ Well, I didn’t have no good answer to that.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I followed him. He gave me a place to shower and a big meal and washed my clothes for me. He said I could live in the church basement, because they didn’t have a custodian. The last one had quit, and God had told Brother Earl that I was the man. But he said that, if I was to accept, I had to give up the booze, start reading the Bible, and dedicate my life to God, and work hard every day to keep the church clean and neat.”

  “So you did.”

  “That was twenty years ago. I never looked back. Brother Earl was called unto the Lord nine years ago, and now I work for Brother Jim Morris. Or did. I guess Brother Jim got brought home to heaven yesterday morning, along with his wife and kids. When he didn’t show up for Bible study, I knew something was wrong. So I tried calling him on the telephone at his house, but no one answered.”