Apocalypse for Beginners by Nicolas Dickner Translated by Lazer Lederhendler Read Free Book Online Page B

that was one thing out of the way!Now we could look forward to spending a quiet evening.
    Hope said nothing. She was testing the date in her head, running her mind over it as if it were the sharp edge of a knife.
    “Not a very credible date, is it?”
    I shrugged my shoulders, preferring to let the Randalls form an opinion on the matter. Hope looked at the dice resting innocently in the palm of her hand. There was no question of a computational error; that was the whole advantage—and absurdity—of chance.
    “And why exactly do you find that July 17, 2001, lacks credibility?”
    “
July!
Can you really imagine the apocalypse happening during the construction holiday?”
    To tell the truth, yes, I had no trouble conjuring up this image—but maybe I’d just read too much science fiction.
    “Okay, fine. July’s no good. So which month
would
you see it occurring?”
    She mulled over the question. Clearly, April, May and June were out. A springtime doomsday could simply not be taken seriously. August and September were lame choices—the end of the world would look like an ad campaign. “Super-Powerful Armageddon, 20% more Ammonia!” Ridiculous. October, in a pinch, could qualify. In November, on the other hand, the end of dayswould seem redundant. Any time during the winter could fit the bill, so long as it didn’t fall during the holidays.
    Sitting with her arms folded, Hope cast a disgruntled look at the dice. What good was it resorting to chance if you couldn’t manage to trust it?
    I watched her grapple with her internal contradictions. This chink in her self-assurance brought to light a more human, more feminine Hope. Who would have thought that doubt could be so sexy?

20.
TORA! TORA! TORA!
    Surfing the channels, we came across the second half of a film about Pearl Harbor. Instant consensus. Tucked under three old sleeping bags—relics of those sunny days when my family partook of the joys of camping—we watched the screaming Zeroes swoop down on the Pacific Fleet. On the deck of the warship, a brass band hastily finished playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It was the sort of ludicrous scene that we relished.
    Just as the USS
California
was being blown up, Hope cried out, “What about December?”
    “What?”
    While the debris was raining down on the harbour, theZeroes launched another volley of torpedoes. We could actually smell the stench of diesel.
    “In December. The end of the world. Just like the attack on Pearl Harbor. Not bad, eh?”
    My response has been lost to history.
    The news came on immediately after the film. The Lebanese president René Moawad had been killed in a bomb attack and we were seeing the first pictures to arrive from Beirut. In the bright sunshine, a mushroom of black smoke rose high into the sky. Hope frowned. On second thought, the summertime could prove as likely a moment as any for the world to end.
    We pulled the plug on the television around midnight and bedded down where we lay, wrapped in the sleeping bags that reeked of mothballs, using cushions for pillows.
    It took me a long time to drift off, due to the disturbing effect of Hope lying so close, with her back to me and her body pressing into mine. I finally managed to fall asleep, only to wake up in the middle of the night. The VCR clock showed 2:37 a.m., and I realized that Hope was no longer beside me. She was sitting on the couch, gnawing at her fingernails.
    “Can’t sleep?”
    She shook her head.
    “What do you think of February?”
    I was speechless for a moment as my neurons revved up one by one.
    “No better or worse than any other month.”
    She sighed.
    “No. That’s not it. It feels too contrived. So … are you hungry?”
    By way of response, my stomach rumbled loudly.
    We went on a supply raid in the kitchen, where I knew the location of the reserves of chicken-flavoured Captain Mofuku ramen. Genuine bunker food—non-perishable and mould proof. The package design, on the other hand, was a