It was hard to understand how he could see a few of the comet’s surface details without it actually being close enough to be inside the Earth’s atmosphere. But since there was no glowing trail like a falling star, it must truly be giant and really, really close to them! With every passing minute, it rose steadily higher into the sky with a ghostly wall behind it. The sounds and smells of his world fell away as he watched the alien interloper’s slow progression toward the sun.
A pair of arms hugged his waist from behind, gave a good squeeze, and resulted in an unexpected trumpeting of passed gas from him.
“Hey! That wasn’t nice!” she exclaimed. He turned in her arms. She was on her knees looking up at him.
“Sorry, Mom, but you know I’m always loaded for bear!” She laughed harder than he could remember. He loved her laugh, and he couldn’t help laughing too.
“Yes, I guess so,” she replied, regaining her composure and brushing away a lock of hair that had fallen across an eye. Her face was red from tears of relief, and what little makeup she started the day with had become tear-smeared.
“You really thought it was going to hit us, didn’t you?” he asked.
Her smile wilted a little and then rebounded, “Yes, sweetie, I did. And Dad and I really appreciate you being such a strong—”
Her words were cut short by a crack and rumble, like a mighty glacier calving. He was slammed against the ground. Blinding pain filled his head as the world became dark. The pain! White sparks floated in his vision as piercing sensations shot through his temple. Nothing made sense. One minute he was standing and talking, the next he was laying in the grass, tossed around and being pulled across the ground to places unknown. The ground was shaking and blurry, threatening to come apart at its seams—at least that was what it felt like.
Oh crap! Oh CRAP!
For the first time in his life, he felt completely and utterly helpless.
“MOM!”
His mother grabbed his arm, pulling him close with a grip that threatened to break it. They lay together, her body mostly covering his, while the ground heaved and spasmed in waves. The vibrations permeated every part of his body. The Earth was shouting at them in a thunderous, extreme, deep voice. Everything shook. The ground bit into his skin like angry sandpaper and dust filled his lungs. He bounced up, and the weight of his mother pushed him back down, at times knocking the breath out of him. Her skin was cold and wet, and didn’t feel like what he had always known as the warm comfort of his mother.
In a lot of ways it felt like when he would lay in the back of Grandpa’s old pickup truck as he drove just a little too fast down the dirt country roads. Only this time, no one was driving the truck, it was out of control, and people were screaming. He held tight to his mom; she wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him. Even still, no matter how he fought it, he started to cry.
It’s all too much!
The world was shaking, people were screaming, sirens and alarms were going off everywhere. It shouldn’t be doing this!
Make it stop, Mom! Make it stop!
He wasn’t able to say the words, but she surely understood.
“It’s okay, sweetie, it’s just the fault lines reacting to the pull of the comet! It’ll pass soon!” she yelled over the rumbling of the Earth. “We’re lucky to be in the middle of the open part of the field! Nothing can fall on us here!”
Even though she was shouting as loud as she could to be heard over everything, her voice was higher than normal and coming in clipped, forced words. She had never sounded like that. She was terrified, he could tell. Despite it all, her words made him feel a little better, but soundless cries still filled his throat, making it dry and cramped.
But it wasn’t over soon. The shaking went on for what felt like hours. The rumbling of the earth, dogs barking, screams of countless people. Car alarms blared, transformers exploded all around, making the park sound like the middle of a war zone. Without warning, the ground grew still, with a few aftershocks every now and then. So, too, did his emotions. The world was slightly less scary now, but he lay there with his mom a little while, just to be still. His dad made it to them, held them both. It was so good to feel his crushing embrace.
“Are you okay?” he asked. Unable to answer, Sam looked up at his mother. Struggling to hold it all together, with eyes squeezed tightly shut, she bit her lower lip and nodded.
The world was quiet again as the shaking trees and waving streetlights stilled. Sam pushed away from his mother and sat up. Drying his dirty face with a shirt sleeve, he erased his moment of weakness and looked around. The other people around them sat with a silent gaze of shock. The car alarms had finally stopped complaining. The lone, frightened wail of a baby filled the air. Soon the world would be filled with the sounds of emergency vehicles, but for now, there was nothing.
In reality, the main quake had only lasted a little more than five minutes. And while things didn’t look too bad where they were, L.A. probably hadn’t done so well.
It wasn’t long before people dusted themselves off and continued as best they could with the festivities, not deterred in their celebration of what most had thought would be their last. Yes, their homes probably had damage, but the world had just dodged a cosmic cannonball and they had survived a massive earthquake. Everything else was just an inconvenience and would take care of itself in due time. After all, Californians were used to the ground shaking from time to time, right?
* * *
The three of them stayed at the park all afternoon, watching Agrona climb toward the sun, filling an ever-growing portion of the sky with its unbelievably large tail. The park filled with people playing music and games and cooking on the barbecue pits, the air heavily laden with a hundred mouth-watering smells. Every time the wind changed direction it brought the smoky, rich aromas of grilled steak, hamburgers, sweet barbeque, bratwurst, and chili, to name a few. Each one made Sam’s stomach growl in a new way. The general mood was between a state finals sporting event and as if everyone in the world was having Christmas morning together—just excited and elbow-to-elbow with smiles of good will.
As the day wore on, Agrona raced to fill the sun’s place in the sky, and its corona began to shade the sun, much like the high spider-web clouds on a cold winter morning.
What had Dad called them? Oh yeah, cirrus clouds.
It had been a stressful day, but it had been a good day. Between the two extremes and spending the day in the sun, his mom and dad were looking tired, so they began to pack up and head toward home to see what was left. And to be honest, he was tired too. Depending on what they found when they got home, his dad said they might have to camp in the back yard. That sounded kind of fun.
“Okay, Sam, grab the blanket and let’s go to the—”
Dad was interrupted by shouts and exclamations from people in the park: “Whoa!” “Cool!” “Check it out!” Other sounds, like you would expect to hear from a crowd with a fly ball to outfield, echoed in the park behind them.
Sam looked around to see what the excitement was about. Everyone was staring west, to the area of the sky where the comet had risen earlier in the day. Sunset was a few hours away, but in the distance it looked like the sky was on fire and the sun was raining down upon Earth. Not one or two, but tens—no, hundreds—of falling stars or meteorites or comet junk were burning up in the atmosphere, literally raining down in the western afternoon sky.
Every once in a while, a big one would come down, disappearing over the horizon and leaving a glowing column of plasma, probably landing on the other side of the globe. It was like the world’s largest firework display, and it even came with Oooohs and Aaaahhs from the crowd.
The curtain of glowing debris gradually swept across the sky, made up of many different colors, not just the typical yellowish-white of falling stars; a few looked almost purple. In fact, they were so bright with their smoky trails that they were clearly visible in the afternoon sky.
“Hey, Mom. It kind of looks like
a full-scale invasion of little green men, doesn’t it?” She didn’t laugh.
“All of these falling stars are because the Earth is passing into the densest part of Agrona’s tail and the bits flying off the comet are hitting the atmosphere,” his mom noted. “Hopefully they’ll all burn up on their way in.”
Within an hour, the comet completely blocked the sun, darker than any normal total solar eclipse, and the whole sky was awash with streaks of light raining down upon the Earth. The blazing projectiles were backlit with the strange light of the blocked sun. It looked as if the whole world was trapped inside a wormhole in a science fiction movie. The larger fireballs were now falling overhead and occasionally he and his parents jumped as the concussive sonic booms reached the ground from the debris breaking up. Sam moved close to his dad this time. Just close enough so that as he stood, his shoulder brushed against his dad’s shirt, just enough to let him know he was there but not to seem like he was scared. His dad put his heavy hand on Sam’s shoulder and bent over to talk in his ear.
“Strange day, huh?”
“Yep,” he answered, trying to be as calm and collected as his dad.
“You know why you don’t have to worry about ‘em?”
“Uh, no.”
“Because we’re still here, able to worry about ‘em.”
Huh? That didn’t make much sense. But it seemed to work for his dad, and that was a good enough reason.
The first couple of fireballs were a bit unnerving with their explosions, and they made his ears ring and set off all the car alarms. However, as time passed and it appeared they weren’t in any immediate danger, people relaxed a little and tried to enjoy the show. What else were they to do? Families made an attempt to return to their picnics and settled in to watch the celestial fireworks.
Although to Sam it seemed less like a fireworks display and more like the videos of nighttime in a war zone, he didn’t mention it to his parents. They lay back onto their blanket and watched the sky into the early evening, until it was truly dark, or as dark as it could be given the celestial barrage going on. Now that their small part of the planet had rotated out of the wind of the comet’s tail, the show was largely over.
Sam looked over to his father, who was holding his mother’s hand and seemed to be completely at peace with the world. Throughout the day, even when they thought the freaking world was about to come to an end, giant comets buzzing by, cosmic debris raining down and the Earth shaking in protest to it all, his dad never lost it. Not once. He was untouchable, and that’s how Sam wanted to be when he grew up.
“Mom, I’m hungry. Do we have any hot dogs or hamburger patties left?”
“No, but I have a bunch of chips.”
“That’s okay, I was hoping for something more…meaty.”
“Yeah, I know how you feel,” said his dad. “Why don’t we call it a night and get a late dinner at home? We’ll probably be without power for a while, so we better get started eating what’s in the freezer.”
His dad started the car and pulled out of the park parking lot as his mom checked her news feed to see what was going on in the rest of the world.
“Looks like the GPS isn’t working,” he said, glancing at the car’s navigation screen.
“You know, the internet seems really slow too,” his mom said.
“Well, could be everyone in the world is getting online and doing exactly what you’re doing,” joked his dad.
“No, it’s way slower than I would expect from that. Between the earthquakes and the comet, it probably took out infrastructure. I’m sure we’ll see more stuff like that for a while,” she replied. “That’s okay. I’ll just let the day sink in.” She stared off into the distance out the car window.
So they rode home in quiet darkness, strangely devoid of the normal inundation of technology. The powerless buildings outside were silhouetted only by the light from the occasional piece of comet streaking past the Earth in the distance, making the quiet, dark ride home just as surreal as the rest of the day.
* * *
Six Months After Comet Agrona
Since they were out of school for several months, Sam hadn’t been keeping up with his journal that much. Because of all of problems after the comet, the school decided they would stay with the same teachers they had before Agrona came. Mrs. Pennington had said he’d better get caught up.
“The world didn’t end, so that doesn’t mean you can’t finish your assignments,” she’d said.
Jeez, what a … I guess I better not write that part. Anyway, this is what happened the month after the comet passed:
The shower of daytime glowing pieces of comet lasted for almost the next three weeks, as did the eclipse of the sun, and that was how long we were without electricity at home. NASA said that Agrona passed so close to Earth that the planet’s gravity field changed the comet’s course slightly. The comet then flew toward the sun, which was why we were in its tail for a long time. During those days it was quite gloomy, dark, really, with all of the dust and debris between us and the sun. And after the first few days the comet dust was starting to coat everything outside. It was like an extra heavy spring dose of pollen, but dust. Most people just wore little face masks and treated it as an annoyance, like a volcano erupting, I guess. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
As far as the weather was concerned, things didn’t change that much, at least where we live. But from what I’ve seen on the news feeds, life was very hard for many countries. I knew that for a couple of months before Agrona passed, the rioting and violence was bad, but Richard Smith in history class said that he heard that over three million people died.
Agrona caused a lot of worldwide problems too, all by itself. It sounded like just about every fault line in the world moved as that big, icy rock flew by. And since it was almost the size of the moon and flew a whole lot closer, the ocean tides across the globe were affected. Some places had tides thirty feet above normal—reports said that half of the world’s coastlines were hit by tsunami-level waves. The pull of the comet’s gravity was so strong in places that a few of the really tall skyscrapers in Central Asia and Africa were actually pulled over, and parts of western California sunk a little, putting parts of it under the ocean! The weeks of darkness caused a short, planet-wide winter and messed up a bunch of crops. Another three million people died due to the initial earthquakes and flooding, and then another ten million were reported dead in the weeks following. That number is too large to mean anything to me. Sure, ten or a hundred, maybe I could even visualize a thousand dead people, but over sixteen million total? No. I can’t even.
Most people in our area had stocked up enough food, so it wasn’t that much of an issue. And other than a couple of weeks without any power, things were pretty good for us, at least compared to everyone else.
Communication, GPS, and weather satellites were messed up pretty bad. The slowdown Mom saw of the internet the day Agrona passed was just the first sign of things to come. Most of the satellites were either taken out in direct strikes by bits of comet or were so coated in dust they quit working properly. The dust was statically charged or something, so it stuck to anything with power. This made getting information, buying stuff, and anything online pretty hard for quite a while. Mom said that NASA was planning on sending up astronauts on a pretty regular basis to clean and repair the most important satellites first, but it would still probably take several years to get back to normal. Oh, and the scientists are saying that the Earth actually slowed down a little, which kind of screwed up all the clocks. But all in all, most people didn’t complain too much, since everyone understood how close the world had come to being destroyed.
But there were people who kept saying that there were too many coincidences, and that God was trying to tell us to change our ways. Mom and Dad said these people are just frightened and that they can believe whatever makes them feel better. Personally, things seem to have actually gotten better worldwide. Of course, it sounds silly to say that, bu
t besides all the death, things have improved. The teachers don’t seem to be driving us as hard as they used to, so that’s nice. And you don’t hear much about war anymore. Either they’ve stopped or people don’t want to hear about it. I did hear yesterday that all the world leaders agreed to build a kind of world asteroid defense system so this kind of thing never happens again. Not sure what that’s all about, but it probably uses lots of explosives and therefore is probably going to be really cool!”
Sam closed the journal, slouched back in the desk chair in his bedroom, and put his feet against the wall. The window was open, a slight breeze stirred the curtain, carrying the sweet scent of sun-dried grass. A bird was singing outside. It sounded like the same mockingbird he’d heard in the park the day Agrona passed. There were other good things that had happened since it flew by, but they didn’t belong in the journal for others to read.
Since the comet, it seemed the only thing he heard people say was, “Live for the day!” So, taking that advice, he’d approached Ashley one day and told her how he felt about her, and how he was ready to repopulate the Earth with her by his side if they ever had to. It didn’t end up sounding quite as romantic as it had in his head when he’d practiced it. Luckily, no one was around, and she didn’t laugh at him. But she did look very confused, like he had a third ear growing on his forehead, and generally avoided him after that. So that wasn’t so great. However, things with Megan had turned interesting.
In the last couple of weeks, she became more of a close friend. Probably as close of a friend you can be with a girl. She was actually pretty cool. Why he told her about how things went with Ashley, he’ll never know. But she was cool and gave him a hard time about it occasionally, but that was okay. She was fun.
The Doomsday Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 33