Meteor (16 page)

Sleeping in their marriage bed for the first time in so many months was an unusual experience for Mary and Troy. It seemed like an entire lifetime of events had taken place between them, though in reality it had only been a few months. But those months had been filled with infidelity, death, destruction, and truly the untethering of life as they had once known it.

Despite the soul-deep weariness that had come with survival, Troy couldn’t fall asleep right away. He knew Mary wasn’t sleeping either. Every now and then she would sigh and shift on the bed, flouncing the cover away from her body, then changing her mind and pulling it back up to her neck.

Mary was the first to reach out a tentative hand. She laid her palm gently on Troy’s chest and rose up on one elbow to look at him. Their second floor bedroom was pitch black and very still despite the open window. For once, no wind swirled outside.

“Do you forgive me, Troy?” Mary asked without preamble. Many years of marriage had given each of them a sort of low-power mind reading ability. Mary and Troy both knew what the other was thinking on that first night back in the house. Troy knew he was lying in the bed where his wife had been unfaithful. Mary knew the same. Her guilt had not been completely assuaged, only postponed by the catastrophe. Though Troy had voiced his forgiveness before, she needed to hear it one more time. At the scene of the crime so to speak, so they could move on and feel comfortable in their home once again.

A full minute passed before Troy responded. “I think I do, Mary.” He placed his hand atop hers and squeezed softly. “So much has happened that honestly, the fact of you having sex with my friend is at the bottom of my list of worries. It’s kind of hard to stay mad when I’m too concerned with staying alive.”

Mary laid her head down on his shoulder and he could feel her nod, her soft hair brushing against his bare skin.

“I feel like everything that happened before the meteor crash was only a dream. I mean
everything.
Nothing from our old life feels real, it feels so strange sleeping in a normal house again. Just being aboveground feels so good but also so… scary.”

She nuzzled her head against him tighter and his arms tightened in response. “Will I always feel this scared? I don’t think I can live like that.”

“You won’t. You’re too strong for that.” She pressed her lips to the hollow between his neck and shoulder and settled back against him. Entwined this way, with a little more peace between them, Mary and Troy finally fell asleep.

Caleb had been instructed to wake Troy at two am for his shift as security guard. It seemed like only a single breath had passed before Caleb was shaking his arm and whispering, “Wake up.”

Troy eased out from under his sleeping wife and stood up before he was fully cognizant. With half-open eyes he followed Caleb down the stairs, feeling his way along the banister to stay on his feet.

Once he was certain Troy was awake, Caleb made his way to the guest room off the living room and collapsed onto the double bed, not bothering to throw back the covers or even take off his shoes. Troy watched him for a minute through the open door before turning to make himself some coffee in the kitchen.

Despite months of no alternative, Troy had not developed a taste for instant coffee. Nonetheless, he filled his mug up and forced himself to drink the stout, gritty concoction in order to stay awake until dawn. He wrapped his hands around the mug to steady it from spilling as he settled into the soft-backed chair Caleb had placed directly in front of the window.

He peeked out again as he had done earlier in the evening and was rewarded with a view of the same, featureless street. Even the feeble spot of light from the moon was now gone, hidden behind the heavy black clouds that polluted the sky morning and night. He wondered in a non-philosophic way if he would ever see the stars again.

Mother nature has always recovered, he reminded himself. The earth had survived an Ice Age, countless wars, global warming, and she would survive this meteor crash too. He tried not to think too hard about the future. It was one day at a time. So he propped his feet on the generator and made a mental list of the things they would need to accomplish tomorrow. He had to keep believing they had tomorrow.

Maybe it was wishful thinking but everyone seemed to agree that the next day dawned a little brighter than those before it. Cleaner light seemed to permeate the cloud cover and Mary said she could swear she felt a touch of sun warmth on her arms as the family lugged more essential items from the bunker.

They all had also agreed that one major need was something to stave off the claustrophobic darkness of the evenings. They scoured the bunker for flashlights, lanterns, and oil lamps and came up with plenty. They were all, for the most part, fully charged and ready to go since they hadn’t much need for them in the electricity rigged shelter. At least until they got the generator up and running again, they would have some light.

The second challenge of the day was how to reinforce the house as a viable safe spot. It didn’t happen every day but there were still desperate people roaming the town, taking advantage of those who went into this situation a little better prepared. Food was becoming especially scarce and every day people’s hunger grew worse.

The lack of sunlight, the upheaval of transportation channels, the acid rain, the air pollution, and so many things factored in to the world’s ability to grow and deliver food. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. Troy knew their own food supplies were running thin even though they had carefully rationed them every day since things went south.

He placed Brandon in charge once again of taking inventory of their remaining supplies. They had brought all of the food from the bunker into the house along with all but two of the water jugs. The only things they had left behind were some articles of clothing, the first aid kit, and some cookware that they didn’t need the first night in the house. Everything else now lined the walls of the dining room or sat upon the café height table for easy access.

Brandon now sat at the table and recorded items in a spiral notebook and took careful note of what things they had at hand that might keep them alive for another day.

Life settled into a new rhythm, as it always does. The human spirit is adaptable. Troy and Caleb got the generator running so the comfort of electric lights made the nights as bearable as they had been in the bunker. More so, due to the freedom of being aboveground.

Everyone’s claustrophobia vanished by degrees each day, and in the house the atmosphere was one of contentment, if not outright happiness. Fuel was a precious commodity still so they ran the deafening generator only when absolutely necessary. The hoard of flashlights and lanterns did the job when they couldn’t spare the fuel.

Water had been another challenge. The first earthquake in the area broke a major dam in a river thirty miles north of the town. A creek running behind the bunker swelled with the overflow once held at bay by that dam and spilled over the banks onto the neighboring properties. Wary of drinking possibly contaminated water, Troy, Mary and the others drank through their dwindling jugs of water until they could no longer ignore the shortage.

So on the fourth day of making a go of it at the homestead, Caleb and Brandon went down to the now receding creek and filled ten jugs with discolored water. Grass, sand, and other dirty little particles swam visibly through the opaque walls of the repurposed jugs. Brandon hefted a jug to eye level and watched a mosquito skate along the surface before attempting to buzz its way out of the small opening in the mouth of the jug.

That mosquito was the first bug Brandon could remember seeing in over five months. He thought the cold had killed every insect species on earth, and despite his annoyance at the critter yucking up his drinking water, he felt a small flash of hope in his heart.

One evening, basking in the glow of overhead lighting, the family gathered around for a game of Scrabble. If you ignored the somewhat dirty faces, the thin ribs, and the grimy clothes of the group, you might think this was a regular Friday night before the world broke apart. Everyone laughed easily with one another.

The earthquake did not happen all at once like in the movies, where fragile dishes rattle from china cabinets to crash on the floor and doorframes split apart. Rather, it escalated in stages. It began with a small, barely perceptible vibration of the floor and walls around them. For a few moments it was like being inside the body of a guitar once the strings have been plucked. The air quivered along with the more solid objects inside the house. Knick knacks on tabletops shuddered and scooted from their spots centimeters at a time.

“Oh no,” Caleb said to Mary, who was sitting in the chair by the front window reading a book. So absorbed in her book, she only noticed the subtle shift in her surroundings once Caleb brought it to her attention. She dog-eared a page and laid the book down as she stood, looking in astonishment as the lamp beside her wriggled its way to the edge of the table. The vibrations increased quickly.

“Where is everyone else?” Mary asked Caleb.

“Troy is on the back deck drinking coffee, and all the kids are upstairs, I believe,” he answered. To test this theory he shouted up the stairs and asked the kids to come down. They were all already halfway down the stairs before he ever uttered their names. They had felt the shaking and now entered the living room with frightened faces.

“Mom, how bad will it be?” Cordelia asked in a quiet voice. By way of an answer, Mary put a comforting arm around her daughter and pulled her to her side.

“We need to get somewhere safe before this gets worse,” Caleb said. “Everyone outside.” He reached out his hands to usher Cordelia, Mary, and Brandon out of the room and into the kitchen. Troy was just opening the back door as they walked in.

“What is Hannah doing?” Mary asked.

“She was right behind us,” Brandon answered. A peek back up the stairs showed Hannah huddled on the top step, her arms wrapped tightly about her drawn-up knees.

As Brandon ascended the stairs to retrieve her, a massive shudder shook his feet out from under him and Hannah had to throw her arms out and brace them against the walls on either side of her to keep from tumbling down. During the next lull in motion, Hannah rose from the stair and took Brandon’s offered hand.

“Come on, Hannah, we have to get outside, it’s getting worse,” Brandon said in what he hoped was a calming voice.

The vibrations had begun innocently enough but they were increasing every minute. Brandon eyed the windows of the kitchen warily as they jittered like a struck tuning fork. He braced himself for the implosion of glass he was sure would spray them at any second.

Bowing in and out with an impressive range of motion without shattering, the windows stayed intact long enough for the pair to reach the back deck. Troy nodded to them as they emerged from the door and the entire group pitched down the wobbling wooden steps to the flat ground of the back yard.

They watched in disbelief for a few moments as the house bumped and tilted, cracks becoming more obvious in the foundation with each rolling wave of the earthquake. Now a safer distance from any falling objects, the group contended with the undulating ground beneath them.

Troy cast one glance backward through the open door of the kitchen, long enough to see that the cabinets stood open and that dishes and glasses had crashed to the floor. He shepherded the family around the corner of the shifting house and to the front yard.

From the sidewalk out front they watched as the pole that held a power line that once shuttled electricity into their home was uprooted and cast out of the ground. It fell to its side only a few feet from where they stood. With no power coursing through it, the black insulated wire dropped to the ground without a sound, then snaked inertly along with the heaving ground, emitting no sparks.

“What do we do, Troy?” Mary asked in a high voice. Troy shrugged, feeling helpless.

“This was the one disaster I wasn’t prepared for, remember?” he answered. “We’re fine out here. It will stop soon.” He hoped his words were true. Who knew in this new off-kilter world? Less than a minute had passed since the earthquake began but it felt like it would never end.

Troy was the first to hear the sound and he turned in its direction, brows furrowed in confusion and concentration. He took a wide-legged stance to stay upright and listened to whatever was approaching them from the east. The wind had risen to a maelstrom, debris of all sorts swirling around their feet. A crack that had started in the concrete foundation of the house now continued upward toward the roof, splitting the house nearly down the center. It shifted easily two feet to either side with each rumble of the earth.

“Oh God,” someone said. Troy wasn’t sure who, and was only vaguely aware the voice was female. In his fascination at the unwanted demolition of his long-time home, Troy offered no words of support. He could scarcely believe what he was seeing with his own eyes. He had no strength left to offer anyone else.

The large fissure running up the front of the house continued to grow and gape as the family watched. The bricks of the façade fell off in chunks and landed with audible thumps on the front lawn.

Cordelia buried her face in her hands and cried. What had started as a tiny tremor bubbling the hot liquid in Troy’s coffee cup had steadily grown into a bona fide catastrophe. A sound that resembled that of the breaking of a thousand dry bones reached the group’s ears and the very ground opened up around the house in almost a perfect circle. And then...

Total collapse.

In the course of only a few minutes, another refuge was taken from them, swallowed up by the opened earth. The dirt and rocks and tree roots rent apart as the house began its descent into the cavernous hole that now surrounded their home.

Unconsciously, everyone took a step away from the scene before them, something in their DNA retaining the fight or flight instinct of survival. They were unable to flee though. Seven pairs of eyes stared transfixed at the unbelievable sight of an entire house sinking into the dirt. It all happened quickly once the earthquake had built up this much steam.

In a manner of seconds the house was nothing more than a blank space on the suburban street. Accompanied by a sound like a freight train, the earthquake unknit the street, brick by crumbling brick.

When Troy and the others were able to pry their eyes off their personal horror they noticed similar scenes of destruction dotting the entire neighborhood. Much like the path of a tornado carves an unpredictable and unforgiving path, so had the earthquake.

Most of the homes on the street had simply disappeared. Empty spaces where once-lovely homes rose two and three stories into the air. The homes that still stood when the rumbling was over had sustained massive damage, windows cracked or blown out altogether and light fixtures swinging from their sockets.

Everyone turned their faces from the cloud of dust now billowing up from the wreckage and carried in their direction by the cold wind. Here and there neighbors dotted the uneven street.

For the most part, these neighbors did one of two things. Either they stood still enough to resemble statues, afraid to move lest the world start to shake again and throw them off their feet. Some clung to tree trunks; others clung to the hands of their family members. The other contingent of neighbors, the more mobile ones, wandered seemingly lost, the shock of what they had just experienced written on their pale faces and evident in their glassy confused eyes.

Troy and Mary fell into the former group. They stood stock still with their hands firmly clasped between them. They were unable to move from the spot where they watched the house disappear. The house that was Plan B was now only a memory sunken below the grass. There was no Plan C.