That was my smile. Those were my mother’s big ears and my father’s vampire canines—and the way he chewed his nails, but only the ones on his left hand, was like seeing my brother’s ghost. This was the kind of genetic detritus that was, I knew, supposed to kindle a fire in me, as if it mattered that we came from the same stock.

I didn’t know whether my parents were alive or dead, and didn’t much care—had never understood it, this obsession people have with

blood

. This fixation on

children

, as if popping a baby out and watching him grow into your big nose and type 2 diabetes was your best shot at staving off oblivion.

Ask people to worship you? They call you a megalomaniac. Ask them to worship your kid? They call that good parenting.

Still, I played along, let them all believe what they needed to believe. That was, after all, my business. And it wasn’t the hassle I’d expected, raising a kid, especially with the Children so eager to do it for me. It was only once he started up with the questions and all that end-of-the-world shit, that the trouble really started.

• • • •

He’d been at the compound for a week, and though I dumped him on the Children whenever I could during the day, at night he was all mine. He got himself set for bed all on his own—

mom calls me her little man

, he said, when I caught him flossing for the third time in a day, and that was the second and last time he mentioned her—but my responsibilities had been made clear.

“At eight, you tell me it’s time to go to bed,” he told me the first night. “I read for a while, and then at nine you come back and turn off the lights.”

So that’s what I did, standing in the dark for a while after, watching this kid—my kid—lie on his back with his legs straight and his arms crossed across his chest like a fucking corpse.

I made that

, I thought, and waited to feel something.

“You got everything you need?” I said. This was before the racecar bed and the hand-me-down pajamas. “Comfortable?”

He didn’t look it.

“Sometimes I like to practice being dead,” he said, staring up at the ceiling.

“You’re a weird kid, you know that?”

“She’s not coming back, is she?”

That was the first time he mentioned her. And because he wasn’t crying or behaving anything like you’d expect from a kid in his situation, I gave it to him straight. “Doesn’t seem likely.”

“Because I’m weird?”

“Because she’s a loser.”

“Oh.”

“Always was. Always will be. You’re probably better off.”

“Doesn’t seem likely,” he said. Then, apparently finished playing dead, he curled up on his side. I watched him until he fell asleep.

That’s how it went until the night, one week after she’d dumped him, when he broke routine. I’d just turned out the lights when he said, “I get five questions.”

“What?”

“Before I go to sleep, I get to ask five questions.”

“Says who?”

There was no answer, and so I knew who.

“Why now?” I said. “All of a sudden?”

“I was waiting until I had the right questions.”

That didn’t sound promising. “I don’t think so,” I said.

“I’m willing to negotiate.”

“Negotiate what?”

“Questions,” he said. “How about four?”

“How about zero.”

“Three questions.”

“No questions.”

“You’re really bad at negotiating,” he said.

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

That was when, for the first time since he’d set foot on the compound, he burst into tears. Burst like a clogged pipe, ten years of misery spraying out of him in a gusher, and even in the dark I could read his fury, that his pathetic little body had betrayed him. I remembered that, trying to survive the battle zone, dodging artillery fire between the kid you were and the man you were supposed to be. The world screamed at you to grow up, your zits and your twitchy dick agreed it was about time, but you were still afraid of the dark, you still slept with that old teddy bear, you still wanted your mommy.

Maybe you always wanted your mommy.

“Okay. Three questions.”

And that right there was my mistake.

• • • •

“Do you really get messages from God?”

“I do.”

“How?”

“It varies. Sometimes I read His intent in the signs. Sometimes He’s got something more direct he wants to say, and He talks to me in my dreams.”

“Why you?”

I shrugged. “Why not me? I didn’t ask for the responsibility, I’ll tell you that much. It’s no picnic, devoting your life to the word of the Lord. You’d be surprised how many people don’t want to hear it.”

“How do you know it’s really God? That you’re not just hearing voices or something?”

“That’s four questions. Good night.”

• • • •

“Does God hate us?”

“God loves us. We’re all his children.”

“And you have to love your children.”

“That’s the rule.”

“That wasn’t a question.”

“Got it. Thanks for clarifying.”

“If he loves us, why would he kill us?”

“Everyone dies, kid. It’s not punishment; it’s human nature.”

“No, I mean, why would he kill

all

of us. Jessie Babbage says the world is going to end. In eight months and twenty days.”

“That another question?”

“The question is: Is it true, the world is ending?”

I won’t pretend I felt good about it, but there was no other way. The kid had shown no sign he’d inherited his mother’s proclivity for bullshit, and I couldn’t show my hand without risking he’d spread the good news like a virus. “It really is.”

There was a long silence, long enough to make me nervous.

“What do you think of that?” I said.

“I think it explains a lot.”

• • • •

“How’s it going to end?”

“You mean, specifically?”

“Yeah. Nuclear war? Asteroid strike? Global warming? I read online about a giant volcano that might explode and kill us all. Also there could be a plague. Or some kind of alien invasion, but that’s not statistically likely. Did your dreams say which it is?”

“God’s a little hazy on the details,” I said. “But the Bible’s got a lot to say on the subject, if you’re interested.” I wasn’t about to give him the whole Beast rising from a lake of fire sermon—let the Children take care of that.

“What will we do? When it happens?”

“We’ll go to heaven with the rest of the righteous people,” I said. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

“You don’t even know me. How do you know I’m righteous?”

“Fair point.”

After that, the kid started having nightmares. And maybe I was partly responsible, but what kid doesn’t have nightmares? Anyway, these particular nightmares? Gold. Because he told the Children about them, and the Children took them to heart, figuring any kid of mine having visions of the apocalypse must be getting his info straight from the horse’s mouth. Purse strings started to loosen. No one wanted to be counted among the sinners when the big day came. Maybe I helped it along a bit, encouraging all that talk of divine visitation, but it’s not like I was forcing the dreams on him.

I just put them to good use.

• • • •

“If we know when the world is going to end, shouldn’t we be

doing

something about it? Like, warning people? Or doing something to save ourselves?”

“That sounds like three questions.”

“It’s one,” he said. “Multi-part.”

“Uh huh.”

“So?”

“So we don’t have to worry about it, because God’s going to save us, and whoever else he wants. That’s the whole point.”

“But don’t they say God helps those who help themselves?”