by Jon Davis
Then, before the spots even faded from my eyesight, the building began to violently shake beneath us. It creaked and shuddered hard enough to make me worry as to whether we might reach the ground in the worst possible way. Slowly, the rumble passed, leaving the sound of car alarms and people talking as they came outside to see what had caused this.
Trying to keep a sense of humor, I said, “Wow, big meteor.”
Brand said, “Ya think? Christ! We were lucky that it hit outside of town, and not us! I just hope it was the only one.”
I was looking up when he’d said that. I said, “Uh, yeah, about that...”
The show wasn’t over. Hundreds, if not thousands of lines of light flared down to fade away in the sky. The meteorite had broken apart, and its companions now followed it down. Fortunately, they were burning up before hitting the ground.
In awe, we watched until last of the trails burned out. Once it was over, I realized that, before this, the sky had been a beauty of shining stars. Now, they were only pale points of light, cold in their regard. I felt small and insignificant, and yet, full of wonder. That’s when I remembered that I had the camera. And here I wanted to take pictures of pretty lights. I started to say that I was an idiot when Brand interrupted me.
“Okay, I’ll never make fun of Karla’s beliefs, ever again! What a great show! Can we go, now?” he said. There was a tremor in his voice.
Everything flashed bright white-blue again. A massive crack of thunder burst from above, turning into a roar that shook us so hard we were flung down flat to the roof. A part of me wanted to cover my head and whimper. Instinctual, my stomach roiled with panic over what was happening.
And yet, curiosity pushed at me until I finally rolled over to see what was causing this everlasting roar. It took some moments to comprehend what I was looking at. And when I did, I wanted to crawl down into a deep dark cave somewhere. It took everything I had to keep from screaming. My mind threatened to shut down from the sheer size of that horrible thing ripping apart the night.
At the edge of the atmosphere, an oblong shape crossed the sky. Engulfed in the same white and blue fire as the first meteor was, it left sparks and black clouds exploding out from the edges and trailing into the sky behind. The thing was a monster, blasting apart the air itself. The sound of its passage shook me to my very bones. Yet, even in the unending boom, I could hear Brand praying.
The roar slowly faded to a series of rolling thunderclaps that grew distant and was finally gone altogether after what felt like hours. My heartbeat relaxed with the fading sounds and tentatively, I started getting to my feet. Brand soon did the same, and we looked at the massive smoke and sparking trail that it had left behind. It dawned on me to finally check my cell phone for the time. It was just past three in the morning.
I said, “Wow, we suffered through the end of the world in less than half an hour.”
Brand glared at me. I ignored him and checked the phone for a signal. There wasn’t one, and the time clock blinked out even as I looked. Ah no, there’d be no calling the family from here. Showing the phone to Brand, I said, “Signal’s interrupted; I think we’d better get moving.”
It wasn’t easy getting down to the ground. Random bursts of the cold, hard hitting wind nearly cost me my hold on the pipes. And once we did get down, that wind kept blowing the snow off the ground, whipping it into our faces in random bursts. At times, it would be clear, but at other moments, it would become surprisingly like whiteout conditions.
In spite of the windblown snow, the two of us passed by people standing outside their homes, wrapped in housecoats, or jackets hastily tossed over pajamas. Aside from talking about the giant rock in the sky, there was a lot of black humor about the date and with what just happened. For some reason, that bothered me. I wanted to tell them they might want to consider how lucky we were. It may have been because I knew something about space from a friend. I knew that the second rock was too damn close for comfort. While the first meteor had hit the ground, the second one—the bigger one—had not. Or if it did, it didn’t hit anywhere near us. If it had crashed to the Earth, we would have been a literal part of a crater by now.
With a shiver, I pushed my focus back to the town. Better that than remembering scenes of massive destruction from old movies. Surprisingly, I saw that some of the lights were still working. Inside ones at least, outside, the glass was shattered from windows and bulbs alike. Fortunately, that didn’t include every streetlight. Some here and there had made it through the explosive roar of that second meteor. The bad part was that the lights weren’t the only things damaged. And not everyone had gotten out of this unscathed.
Brand pointed that out when he saw two people getting into their car to go for help. We walked on the side of the road to let them pass, and as we continued up the road, I saw that there were others bleeding, limping, and panicking. Probably people had fallen in glass from shattered windows or light bulbs. We watched as a number of townspeople come out, get in their cars, and drive towards the hospital. I found myself thankful that I was all right. I was, really. I always breathed heavily after a quiet walk around town.
But seeing people hurt as they were, made me wonder how my mom was doing. I checked my cell phone again. I didn’t even get an active light. I shouldn’t have been surprised; we were lucky to have the power, much less phone service. I didn't know whether she was okay, or hurt and bleeding from a fall. Without thinking, I rushed for home. Snow in the air, people panicking—I ignored it all, as images crossed my mind’s eye again of my mother in pain, wondering where I was.
Obviously, I wasn’t watching where I was going. I didn’t know how bad off I was until Brand grabbed me by the back of my coat, and yelled, “Vaughn, stop!”
How dare he stop me! Mom might be in trouble! I had to help her! I turned and yelled, “Brand, look at all this! Mom didn’t know I was out tonight! She could be hurt! Your parents—”
Brand turned me around and pointed. He said, “I think they would all ask why you broke your stupid-ass neck trying to run around in this craziness! Look!”
I did, and the mental shock worsened when I saw what was right in front of us. The blowing snow was clear enough on this street to see the very large hole that I almost ran right into. But that wasn’t all. Brand tapped my arm.
I followed where he was pointing. There was a long scar in the Earth. People were standing outside here as well. But it wasn’t to look at the damage done to their homes and decorations. No, this street was smashed up in a different way. The street side of trucks and cars were all smashed in. Other cars were on their sides, as if a bomb had gone off right next to them.
Brand said, “It’s like something played pinball with the cars, but what?”
A surreal feeling permeated the air. I knelt to look in the hole. It wasn’t very deep, though I would’ve broken a leg or my neck if I’d fallen into the empty hole. Wait, something was wrong here. “Where’s the meteor?”
Brand said, “Who knows, maybe it blew up on impact.”
Glancing back to him, I waved a hand over the hole, said, “Look, there’s no melted rock. The asphalt is broken up, but it’s not melted either. And the snow should be gone, but it was only shoved aside. Meteors are hot, Brand. So why is there no melting?”
Brand touched my shoulder. “Vaughn, dude, you’re babbling. Now, come on, I’m getting worried about my old man and Karla. I mean, if a rock hit here, then it might be they were hit too.”
I just nodded, not listening. I looked eastward to where the snow piled to each side of the furrow. No melted snow…something was definitely off-kilter here, but I couldn’t figure it out just then. When I got home, I’d have to…
I jerked my head around to stare at him. I muttered, “Mom.”
Without another word we ran southward, splitting off at the street his family lived on. Running down the road, I quickly reached the end of the street, where I could take a shortcut across a frozen plot of land that was owned by our nei
ghbors. Sitting open between the street and my place, it gave me a good view of my home. When I saw the shape it was in, fear uncoiled in my gut, and I found I could relax.
Lights were on inside the two-story home where I had grown up. And not a single window was broken. Given the damage that I had seen tonight, I was impressed. The only thing that gave any hints of having been through the equivalent of a hurricane was all the Christmas lights and decorations dangling from the back of the house, and thrown around in the side yards.
Someone said, “Vaughn? Vaughn Hagen? Is that you?”
Surprised, I whipped around and saw vague shadow moving towards me. Out of reflex I moved back, and before I could stop myself, my foot caught on the hard snow. I yelled out as I began to trip. And just as suddenly, something grabbed my jacket, and I was settled back on to my feet.
I calmed down as I realized what—or who—that 'something' was. “Alex Shaw? What the hell are you doing here?”
Wearing a deep black trench coat, Alex Shaw let go and stepped back. He was taller than I was by a couple of inches. I could see his face from the dim lights of my house. I looked him over. Dark as it was, I could still see that he’d been through hell. His trench coat looked shredded on the bottom edges. His face looked bad, with bruises and small nicks showing.
Staring at him, I said, “Whoa! What hit you, a Mack truck?”
Alex said, “No, I was walking on a patch of ice when the meteors hit. The quake sent me for a spin. What are you doing? Looking for damage?”
Good thought, go with that. I said, “Yeah, that’s it. Hey, what do you think happened with the super sized one? Do you think it hit somewhere?”
He said, “Okay, a question out of nowhere…are you okay? You look a bit wide-eyed. Are you in shock?”
He was right. I was in shock and amazingly exhausted. My arms and hands ached, and a glance down at my coat made me wince. There were small tears across the front and arms of the jacket. I shrugged it off. “I slipped. Maybe I should get home.”
Alex looked at me with those dark eyes of his. In the daylight, his deep brown eyes seemed to have an endless depth to them. Right now, the darkness made them frightening to look at, almost as if I looked into a void. That was Alex Shaw for you. He was always scary looking. He constantly wore black and kept his dark hair shaved down to the scalp. With his black goatee and dark eyes, he put off a sinister cast to people dealing with him. He liked it that way. I know he did, because he once told me so. He said it kept people from bothering him while he read comics, and studied science. And he studied all types of science.
If he were a sociopath, that knowledge, mixed with the look, would have had him starring in the FBI’s top ten most wanted list. He and I mainly read and talked about comics. And reading comics was fun yeah. But then, he would go into such high level talk of science that I’d be lost. I never got frustrated about it. That was just his way. He’d sit there, reading comics and then he’d begin talking about the real physics behind what he was reading. Because I barely had a clue about science, I would just smile and nod. But, it was because of his love of knowledge—including astronomy—that I had felt guilty and lied about what I had been doing.
I had started to tell him what I was doing with Brand tonight, but then I realized it might hurt his feelings. I know he would love stargazing on the church roof, but it’s something Brand and I did. I considered it a good way to separate the two of them in my life. After all, Brand wasn’t the type to hang around and talk comics or science. But talking with Alex wasn’t enough to get me to stop worrying about Mom. Certainly, she had to know that I was gone by now.
As though he was reading my mind, Alex said, “Go see if your Mom is okay. She probably is worried about you. Though, uh…here, take this.”
He reached in his coat, pulled out a pack of gum, and handed me a piece. He said, “I don’t think she needs to smell the beer, do you?”
My jaw dropped. Busted. Fortunately, Alex always kept some gum on him for the times after he smoked a cigar. That was good, since I smoked cigars too. Occasionally, I’d grab one of his smokes from a box he kept in his bedroom. As I said, he was smart, scary smart, and he noticed things.
I took the offered gum and thanked him. With a nod, he started going back towards the street. I watched him walk into the darkness for a moment longer before turning toward home. Mom would be worrying about me by this point. The thought of her puzzled expression when she saw I wasn’t in bed made me chuckle for a moment. I stopped myself. I was punch-drunk from everything that had happened. I really needed sleep. But I had to get past Mom first. Taking a deep breath, throwing the gum in my mouth, I went in to face the music.
CHAPTER TWO
If there was ever a chance for people to say, ‘I told you so,’ this was it. Across the world, people crowed about how close to the truth the prophecy came to be. For a short while, they enjoyed their moment in the sun. But it was for a moment only. The asteroid didn’t crash to the planet’s surface.
Once the point was made, people politely told doomsayers to relax and be glad they were only partly right. Tweeters and bloggers were not so polite. As usual, that began the newest war on the Internet. By the next day, however, the rest of the public managed to agree that the world wasn’t going to end.
Karla was ecstatic about it. Her view was that the ‘Lord saved them from the Apocalypse’ at the last moment of course, for dramatic purposes—Brand’s words, not mine. He told me about her religious view of it all through texts. Unfortunately, texting was all I’d have with Brand for a while. The gum didn’t cover the smell of beer on my breath. Mom smelled it, and grounded me for the entire time I would be out of school. Actually, she grounded me until after the holidays. I had to ask which holiday she meant. She said that if I were good, she’d consider letting me out around Independence Day. Ha, Mom was kidding of course.
Or, so I hoped.
But as the day fell onto evening, I found the idea of staying home to be much more enjoyable than going out and dealing with the incessant talk about the damage in the town. If I wanted that sort of thing, I could get it from the news and YouTube. I have to admit that seeing what was on the video blogs bothered me. After all, I had the camera, a nice looking digital still and video recorder Dad gave me for my birthday.
And all I had were nice pictures of Christmas decorations and the single meteor streak across the sky. Others caught a fair bit more, such as the entire thing. They also caught images of people rioting in the streets. YouTube had some rather embarrassing videos that would take a long time for some to get over. I’m sure the people in the videos laughed over it—or they would, after a few decades.
Still, for all the panic, things hadn’t turned out to be as bad as they had looked. While there was property damage, the meteor crashing east of Riverlite had killed no one. A few empty farms were history from fires caused by the meteor shower. One of the airport runways would be down, until they cleared the debris and laid out new asphalt. And the first meteor’s impact had left a great deal of debris spread out across farmland.
But Riverlite remained relatively undamaged. Though, from what I’d seen on the way home, that included many broken windows, cracked walls, smashed vehicles, and decorations. I had a feeling that some insurance companies were going to be using that ‘Act of God’ excuse to get out of paying up. That it primarily came from the shock wave from the meteor’s impact and the passage of the asteroid gave them a good reason to play it out that way.
Cleanup would take a long time, but the people of Riverlite insisted on celebrating Christmas just the same. The local radio station announced that the less-damaged stores would stay open until Christmas Eve, to allow last-minute shoppers the chance to get presents or replace broken items. Kerrington Hardware, the main supplier for windows had a sale. And if people couldn’t afford replacement windows, then Sherrick Lumber would be very happy to help. Merry Christmas
Beyond the town and region, people were celebrating Christ
mas with an intensity unseen since just after World War Two. Church attendance swelled, scientists became enamored over the asteroid, and government leaders did their best to assure people that it wouldn’t happen again. The big cities took advantage of it for tourist money, at least in my point of view.
New York City was the first to announce a weeklong party that they were going to hold in Times Square. After that, other cities followed with changes of their own. From Christmas Day to New Year’s Day, people celebrated the idea of simply being alive. For the most part, they were actual parties and it brought out thousands of people onto the streets.
Locally, however, Riverlite, and other towns along the path of the asteroid, had more spiritual sorts of celebrations on Christmas Day. Nobody argued the point, we lucked out, and we knew it. Actually, from things being said by the scientists on television, we were luckier than we deserved. I felt properly thankful and then I switched channels to watch a Home Alone marathon.
Life goes on, though, and once we cleaned around the house and yard, Mom and I celebrated Christmas. I got new books, Dad sent a check for a hundred dollars, and Aunt Cassie sent me a history DVD about the Celts. That would be the old British Isles tribe of thousands of years ago, not the basketball team. She’s a tad different, my aunt. I sent her and Dad a couple online gift certificates. For Mom, I bought a clock that I’d seen in Latimer’s Antiques store on Fifth Avenue, near downtown. A square box type from the 1940s, it had glass walls inside the deeply lacquered wood frame. Mom liked that sort of thing. It wasn’t cheap, but I had it on layaway with the owner while I paid for it over the last year.