Scenario by Dave Housley
They are in the basement, sitting among the boxes of communion wine and sacrament. They had been halfway through choir practice when it began and now they sit here, on the ground, most of them still in their vestments. Outside Clancy can still hear it happening. He looks at his phone again. Nothing. They should have put a radio down here, some supplies. They should have done a lot of things.
“Pastor what should we do?” Mrs. Barnard says, her voice shaky, tears leaking eye liner down her cheeks.
The pills are in his desk. How could he have left the pills in his desk?
“Shall we pray?” he says.
“Oh Jesus Christ pray?” Mr. Robertson says. “Sorry it’s just, you know, kind of a fucking alien invasion out there. With all due respect.”
All due respect. Mr. Robertson calls him “padre” and smells of gin. Two months ago his wife attended Easter services with a black eye.
“I need to get out there. I need to see if Donald is okay,” Mrs. Albright says.
He looks at his phone again. “I may have to…” he says. He stands up and hears the terrible sound again, some kind zap and then a shout and then nothing but the regular buzzing of their ships, a high white noise he has almost gotten used to. He sits down again.
He remembers a discussion in a philosophy class at seminary. Their professor was young and attractive, with long hair that fell just right around his shoulders and smart blue eyes. It was the first day of class. “Scenario,” the professor said, a light smile playing around his mouth. “Aliens attack.”
“I need to…Donald is just. He needs me,” Mrs. Albright says.
“Honey, Donald is, I mean, all of it is just…it’s gone. All gone,” Mrs. Barnard kneels in front of her, holds both hands in her own. If this had happened just a half hour later he would be in this basement by himself. Then he would have had time to go through the office and grab the pills before he came down here.
He doesn’t remember the discussion so much as the revelation that the professor had done something interesting and a little provocative. He remembers the classroom, the view of the trees just beginning to turn their Fall colors, the wonderful sensation of walking through the lovely little campus in the cooling air. He had always pictured himself back there some day, maybe leading his own classroom, making his own thought experiments for the students.
“Shall we pray?” he says again. The truth is he has no idea what they should do. If they are going to die there would be no harm, really, in just going up to the office. It is entirely conceivable that somebody would need to return to their office in this kind of situation. He feels the pull working up through his backbone. His fingers are tingling and there is a round numbness starting up in the back of his head.
“We can’t just wait here,” Mr. Robertson says.
“We can’t go out there,” Mr. McAllister says. He has taken off his vestments and is wearing a Washington Capitals hockey jersey. Clancy fancies him as some kind of low level abuser, a man who goes home at night and pours himself a drink, distant and cruel.
Everything seems absurd in this situation. He should be leading them. He should be offering solace. Should they take communion? He remembers a turning point in the seminary conversation, the shaggy attractive professor asking, “What if the aliens also have a god?”
These aliens do not seem like godly creatures. Before everything went dark the news was reporting that Los Angeles was gone. New York. DC. Paris. Tokyo. It took all of thirty minutes for them to work their way from the cities through the suburbs, moving with the cruel efficiency of a flood. The news was reporting sightings and then an attack and then there is no news at all.
“Is there anything down here like a weapon?” Mr. McAllister says. “I mean, like a knife. A hammer or something?”
Mrs. Barnard stares at her phone. “It just…” she whispers. “Won’t.” She is fair and pretty, somewhat damaged. Clancy imagines that she has a checkered past, a teen pregnancy or an addiction. Perhaps she is a cutter. When he had the accident she was the first person to visit him in the hospital.
Clancy stands. He needs to lead them. “We should probably take off the vestments,“ he says. “In case we need to…“ He is not sure what they might need to do. Hide? Run? Fight? He had always assumed the worst situation would be a shooter, some scared angry kid. Hide run fight. The synod had sent posters around for the community board and he had refused to put them up, a mild rebellion. He remembers the original War of the Worlds movie. There were smaller ships, or beings, or some kind of extended weapons that would move from building to building extinguishing any signs of life and he half expects to see one of their electric eyes peeking around the window any minute now.
He looks at his phone again. Before everything went dark the CNN website was just one headline – ALIENS ATTACK – and a grainy image of something that looked like a zeppelin. He wonders if the things zipping around outside are zeppelins.
The choir are all in their street clothes. “I think there may be a tool box in the storage room,” he says. “And a crowbar somewhere.” The pain is forming in the back of his head, a pulse and a throb that will soon encompass his entire being. He feels in his pockets again, looks at the phone. It would be perfectly normal to have a reason to go back up to the office.
“I think I need to try to get there,” Mrs. Albright says. “To Donald. He has special needs and he’s not going to know how to…”
“I mean, if this is it then we might want to go out…I don’t know, fighting or whatever,” Mr. McAllister says. He has found the crowbar they use to open the crates and leans on it. “Do a little damage at least.”
“I don’t think that’s wise,” Clancy says.
“We can do whatever we want,” Robertson says. “I don’t know why we’re all still acting like this pantywaist is in charge just because we’re in the church.”
“I’m not in charge,” Clancy says. “I know this. This situation is…” But they are all doing their own things, closing up on themselves, crying, wandering around the room, McAllister and Robertson foraging for weapons in the storage area, Mrs. Barnard still staring at her phone. He is indeed not in charge. Pantywaist? If they leave at least he’ll be able to go up to the office. If this is the end then it wouldn’t even matter. He could take a few and then when he wakes up he will either be in his heavenly kingdom or back in this basement and it will have all blown over, he will have survived one way or the other. “As always you are free to do of your own volition,” he says.
Robertson has found the toolbox and rifles through it. He puts the hammer on the ground, the wrench. He regards a box of nails. “If we had some gunpowder I might could make a little IED down here,” he says.
“I don’t believe that would be appropriate,” Clancy says. “For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”
Clancy does not know why he speaks in such an elevated tone around them but it is something he has always done, part of the way he has taken on this assumed role. Sometimes the things that come out of his mouth surprise him for their wisdom and pomposity. If he is being honest he doesn’t really like any of them, not the ones in this room. Some of them are fine. Decent people. The choir, this group, just seems like they are overcompensating for something. He imagines that they put in their hour, hour and a half, at choir practice and then go home to their various devices.
“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint,” he says.
“Jesus Christ,” Robertson says.
“Thank you, Father,” Mrs. Barnard says.
He stands. “I need to…” he starts. The buzz gets louder and the light in the window darkens. Something is scraping along the sidewalk outside. He sits down. They are quiet, all of them sitting on the floor, backs against the wall.
Robertson stands. He holds the hammer. “I’m going out there,” he says.
The pain is starting up in the back of his head. “Let us pray,” Clancy says. Robertson moves out of the room and they hear him walking up the stairs. Clancy stands. He recites the Lord’s Prayer and finds himself comforted by the words, not so much their meaning as the ancient sounds in his mouth. He is providing them comfort. He is a spiritual leader. If he is being honest he has not been doing a very good job lately, has been coasting a little ever since the accident and the pills and the way he started taking a few more pills to get through the holidays. If he is being honest he is not sure about anything any more.
Outside they hear Robertson shouting and that terrible zap again. “My god,” Mrs. Albright whispers.
“What are we doing to do, Pastor?” Mrs. Barnard says.
He could go up the back stairs and get to the office. It doesn’t really make any difference what they think of him now. He could make up some excuse, anything. It is totally believable that a pastor could need to go to his office in this situation.
“Are we just going to sit here and…wait? For, like, the inevitable?” Mr. McAllister says.
Clancy had argued that the alien god would be the same god, that they couldn’t possibly expect that there could be two gods. The young teacher had asked them about other religions. Is the Jewish god a different god? The Muslim god? The pain is settled into his head now like a weighted blanket. His hands are starting to shake, the chills starting up and the sweat dripping down his back. He wonders where the attractive professor is now, if he is still alive, what he would think of Clancy in this basement clamoring for his bottle of Oxycontin. If he is being honest it was a flirtation, verbal sparring like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in those old movies.
Outside nothing but the steady buzz. At least soon he will know. He had always pictured his heavenly destination as a kind of cross between an all-inclusive resort and those days at divinity school. A cliche. A ruse. Soon they will all know.
“I’m never going to go to Hawaii. I’m never going to learn French. I’ll never see my grandchildren again,” Mrs. Barnard says. She is lightly crying, resolved, and Clancy thinks about reaching out but his skin is on fire. He is sure they can tell that he is going through some kind of withdrawal, that they knew all along and have only been play-acting their role in this ridiculous little charade.
“You know what I loved?” Mr. McAllister says. “Bruce fucking Springsteen. Ever seen him in concert? Like four hours he goes. Glad I saw him when I did.”
“Perhaps we would be safer in the office,” Clancy says.
“I loved cheesecake,” Mrs. Carbonell says. “And vodka.”
“The office? On the second floor?” McAllister says. “I personally don’t want to be zapped.”
“But we are going to be, right? Zapped?” Mrs. Barnard says. “Pastor?” She is looking to him. Bless her heart she is still looking to him and he must respond.
“The important thing is that we keep our faith,” he says, the words floating out of his mouth with a smoothness that surprises him. “Our heavenly Father is right here with us. Even here. Even now. More so than ever he is here with us, for us, and we must not forsake him.”
“Amen,” Mrs. Barnard says.
McAllister sighs.
He needs to get up those stairs. Whoever, whatever is outside cannot be watching everything. Is it possible that they will live through this? In the movies they might form a rebellion, a loose knit coalition of…but this is not the movies. He could take four or five of the pills and he would either wake up in this place or in his heavenly Father’s and either one would be fine.
“I would like to take communion,” Mr. McAllister says. “To be honest you’ve been kind of a shit pastor, you know that right?”
“Communion,” Clancy says. He stands and makes a show of opening up the sacrament. “I will just need to…” he starts, and makes for the stairs.
“You’re not going out there, are you?” McAllister says.
“It is important,” he says, putting something extra in his voice, a bluff he knows none of them will call. “Our heavenly Father will not abandon us and I will not abandon him.” He doesn’t even really know what this last thing means but it has the right effect.
He pauses in the stairwell. The buzzing is constant, a thin zip that just hasn’t stopped. No electric eyes wrapping down the stairs. He takes a step, pauses, takes another step, and then he is moving as fast as his legs can take him, glancing out the window – dark, smoke, thin lights moving around, looking down from the sky. He moves up through the first set of stairs. He can see the gauzy light from the chandelier in the second story atrium. He pauses. Outside an electric crack and a sizzle and the constant drone of engines up above.
Would the aliens recognize his collar, the vestments? Would they have their own religion? What does it mean if they do not?
He makes it to the atrium and presses his back against the far wall. The office door is closed. The hallways is dark. He remembers the instructor, the way his hair flopped to the side like the singer from the Cure. He wore jeans and a black turtleneck and told them to call him Robert or Mr. Robert if they had trouble with informality.
Clancy scoots along the wall. He feels like a final girl in a horror movie, sneaking left left left, reaching for the knob, turning it slowly and…nothing. He collapses in the desk chair, opens the drawer and there they are. Relief floods his body. He stands up, sits down. He opens the bottle and dry swallows a pill, and then another. Outside the dry sizzle of electricity, bzzzzz snap.
He remembers a moment in the seminary’s orange-painted stairwell, one of them moving up, the other down, a hand placed on top of another. Mr. Robert had a funny look on his face, knowing but noncommittal. He withdrew the hand, paused, waited for Clancy to do something or not. “Sorry,” Clancy had said. He paused. Unsure what to do, finally he moved along down to those green rolling hills and wherever he thought he was supposed to be going.
You’re a shit pastor, you know that?
He supposes he does know that.
He settles in to the chair, an old leather stuffed number that the someone long before him had splurged on. It is soft and plush, a real luxury. He will miss the chair. He turns on the computer but he knows the internet will not be there. Should he write some last thoughts? For whom? He dry swallows another pill. Already things are going soft around the edges. The buzzing outside is somewhat of a comfort now and he cannot imagine how quiet it all would be if it somehow stopped. He is not sure what the choir will do. They will either be found or venture outside or some other option none of them know about yet. He will either wake up in his heavenly Father’s home or in this leather chair and either way it will be fine. He swallows one more pill.
Dave Housley is the author of four novels and four story collections, most recently the novel “The Other Ones.” He is one of the founding editors and all around do-stuff people at Barrelhouse. He is the Director of Web Strategy for Penn State Outreach and Online Education. He tweets at @housleydave.
16 December 2022
Leave a Reply