The End Has Come Read Online Free PDF

decided the baby was a girl. She probably had a name picked out. Her baby, her savior.
    “There are households who need babies to raise who’ll be happy to take her.”
    “Her, but not me?”
    “It’s a complicated situation,” Enid said. She didn’t want to make Aren any promises until they could line up exactly which households they’d be going to.
    Aren was smart. Scared, but smart. She must have thought things through, once she realized she wasn’t going to die. “Will it go better, if I agree to give her up? The baby, I mean.”
    Enid said, “It would depend on how you define ‘better.’”
    “Better for the baby.”
    “There’s a stigma on bannerless babies. Worse some places than others. And somehow people know, however you try to hide it. People will always know what you did and hold it against you. But the baby can get a fresh start on her own.”
    “All right. All right, then.”
    “You don’t have to decide right now.”
    Eventually, they came to the place in the road where the ruins were visible, like a distant mirage, but unmistakable. A haunted place, with as many rumors about it as there were about investigators and what they did.
    “Is that it?” Aren said, staring. “The old city? I’ve never seen it before.”
    Bert slowed the car, and they stared out for a moment.
    “The stories about what it was like are so terrible. I know it’s supposed to be better now, but . . .” The young woman dropped her gaze.
    “Better for whom, you’re wondering?” Enid said. “When they built our world, our great-grandparents saved what they could, what they thought was important, what they’d most need. They wanted a world that would let them survive not just longer but better. They aimed for utopia knowing they’d fall short. And for all their work, for all our work, we still find pregnant girls with bruises on their faces who don’t know where to go for help.”
    “I don’t regret it,” Aren said. “At least, I don’t think I do.”
    “You saved what you could,” Enid said. It was all any of them could do.
    The car started again, rolling on. Some miles later on, Aren fell asleep curled in the back seat, her head lolling. Bert gave her a sympathetic glance.
    “Heartbreaking all around, isn’t it? Quite the last case for you, though. Memorable.”
    “Or not,” Enid said.
    Going back to the way station, late afternoon, the sun was in Enid’s face. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and let it warm her.
    “What, not memorable?” Bert said.
    “Or not the last,” she said. “I may have a few more left in me.”

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Carrie Vaughn is the author of the New York Times bestselling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty, the most recent installment of which is Kitty Saves the World. She’s written several other contemporary fantasy and young adult novels, as well as upwards of 80 short stories. She’s a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at carrievaughn.com.

LIKE ALL BEAUTIFUL PLACES
Megan Arkenberg
    One
    The damned thing is, I still don’t like San Francisco.
    The present tense sounds wrong. It catches on the way out, like a ballpoint pen running dry and dragging an invisible indentation in the shape of a letter. But after everything, after the end of everything, it’s the truth.
    I still don’t like the city, its steepness, its damp chill, the feeling that something is lying in wait behind the crest of every hill. All those crowded sidewalks, slabs of concrete unevenly pieced together like a half-hearted mosaic, the cracks gathering cigarette butts and blackened chewing gum. People everywhere at all hours, and that sour smell that hangs in the air of seaside cities, unless you’re close enough to the ocean that the salt is