Meteor (4 page)

When they got home, Troy was happy to see that Mary was alone and carrying some food out of the front door of the house. He went over to help her. Just as he took the bag from Mary’s hands, he could see that her face was stained with tears. She grabbed her husband’s shoulder and kissed him suddenly, taking Troy by surprise.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” she whispered in his ear.

He gave her a half smile and turned to carry the supplies into the shelter. The front entrance of the steel-reinforced door had three locks on it. There was a combination lock, a huge master lock, and another door with a deadbolt. He looked around to make sure that there was no one around and he quickly worked out the combination.

He opened the doors and carried the supplies into the kitchen area at the back of the first level. Then he got out the new supplies that he had purchased from the grocery store and carried them to the kitchen as well.

Cordelia and Brandon went up to their rooms and began to pack up the clothes and things that they wanted to bring. Cordelia was grabbing way more clothes than she was going to have room to keep, and stuffing them in a suitcase that wouldn’t close. She was obviously becoming panicked and frustrated.

As Troy went back to the truck to get another load of supplies, his neighbor, Mrs. Jenkins came walking by with her dog.

“Everything alright over here?” she asked Troy as he made haste to get the remaining items out of the truck.

“Right as rain. Are you ready, Mrs. Jenkins?” Troy asked her.

“Ready for what exactly?” she asked him. “You’re not thinking that this meteor is a big deal, are you? On the news, they are saying it’s going to land somewhere near Africa. That’s an awful long way away. Besides, they are also saying that it’s nothing to be alarmed about,” Mrs. Jenkins said, thinking that she had really made her case.

Troy shook his head at the simplicity of her thought processes.

“I would advise you to take this seriously, Mrs. Jenkins. Get whatever supplies you can and take shelter as soon as possible. That’s my advice.” Troy turned to head back to the entrance of the shelter.

Mrs. Jenkins rolled her eyes and continued to walk her dog down the street.

After about an hour, they had loaded up everything that Troy would allow them to take into the bunker. Cordelia protested as Troy made her carry about half of her clothes back to her bedroom in the house.

“We don’t have enough room in the shelter for all of this,” Troy said, as Cordelia nearly came to tears over it. Troy sighed and headed back to the shelter to make sure that everything was ready. Brandon took only what he needed, but made sure to bring plenty of books and his Wii game system so that they would have some things to do to pass the time.

Cordelia came out of the house and wiped her eyes. Seeing that the family was all at the shelter making preparations, she began to walk down the driveway towards her boyfriend Henry’s house. She was in his driveway before her parents realized that she was missing.

“We have everything we need to go on in and bunker down.” Troy looked at the clock on his cell phone. It was now four in the afternoon, and the impact of the meteor was due in the next couple of hours.

“Where’s Cordelia?” he asked, as he looked at his wife and then his son. They both shrugged their shoulders.

“I guess she’s still in the house,” Brandon said.

Troy walked over to the house and ran up the stairs. Cordelia, of course, was nowhere to be found. Troy jumped in his truck and got ready to go looking for her.

Mary walked out of the open entrance to the shelter. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to get our daughter. I’m quite sure that she has gone to see that deadbeat boyfriend of hers.” Troy took off down the street.

Sure enough, he found Cordelia standing in the driveway of her boyfriend’s house, embracing him.

Troy pulled up behind them and hung his head out of the window.

“Come on, Cordelia, it’s time to go. Say your goodbyes,” he said.

Cordelia looked up at Henry’s face with tears in her eyes. “What will you do now?”

“We are going to wait it out like everyone else. We have as much groceries as we can fit in the kitchen,” Henry replied.

Troy shook his head, thinking of all of the people who would not be adequately protected holed up in just their ordinary homes.

“Cordelia, come on!” Troy urged her as she continued to embrace her boyfriend.

“Go, baby. I will see you soon, I promise,” Henry said.

“Alright, but remember that you promised me,” Cordelia said in between sobs, as she got into her father’s truck. She waved at him as they pulled out of his driveway, and he blew her a kiss.

“When will I get to see him again, dad?” Cordelia asked as the tears streaked down her face.

“I don’t know, sweetie.” He wiped the tears from her eye and smiled at her.

Once they got back to the house, all of the provisions were in place. Mary and Brandon stood just outside of the entrance of the shelter, waiting for Troy and Cordelia. Once Troy and Cordelia got out of the truck, Troy smiled at his assembled family.

“Everyone get a good look at the sky, the trees and the landscape,” Troy said. “I’m not sure how long it will be before we will be able to see them again.” He looked out over the tree-covered hills behind the house.

“He doesn’t mean that, does he, mom?” Cordelia asked, still crying.

Mary placed both of her hands on her daughters’ shoulders. “I’m afraid so, dear. You have to be brave and trust in your father.” Cordelia nodded and tried again to wipe the tears from her eyes.

The family stood together and looked out at the hills together for a few moments.

Troy broke the silence that had swept over the family. “Alright, is everyone ready?”

All of them reluctantly nodded as they turned towards the shelter and walked inside. Troy bolted the three doors securely behind them and activated the alarm and protection systems.

“Alright, kids, I need to show you how to operate the defense systems in case someone is trying to gain entry. Now, it’s unlikely that they will be able to get inside in the first place, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. This button here is the intercom. It will allow you to speak to whoever is on the other side of the door. This button here activates the incinerator. In the event that we have some unwanted guests, it will be sure to take care of any intruders that we have in our midst. First, you have to unlock this bolt with this key, and then you push the red button. Is that understood?”

Brandon nodded, but Cordelia burst into tears again at the thought of someone being incinerated right there in the doorway. Troy did his best to comfort her and make her realize that is was only a precautionary measure.

“Cordelia, listen to me, more than likely we will never have to use the incinerator, but we need some means of protecting ourselves should it come down to that,” he said. “I need you to be strong like your brother. We will get through all of this as a family, if we can keep our heads and our faith in one another.”

Mary smiled as she listened to her husband try to comfort their daughter. She realized that she still loved her husband, a man that she fell in love with all of those years ago because of his sensitivity and caring nature.

The family did it’s best to make themselves at home in the shelter. Brandon decorated his side of the bedroom with boy band posters, such as the Backstreet Boys.

“I can’t believe you like them,” Cordelia said in a disgusted voice. “They are so nineties.”

Cordelia was more into rock, and she hung her own posters on the wall. Troy made sure that all of the food provisions were stored properly and he studied his inventory sheet.

“How long can we stay down here with the provisions we have?” Mary asked him. He thought about the question for a moment.

“Seven or eight months worth,” he said. This seemed to ease Mary’s mind, because she didn’t think for a second that they would have to be trapped down there that long.

“That’s a relief,” she said.

Troy shot her a look of surprise. “Mary, I need you to prepare yourself too. We are much better off than many people, but it still might not prove to be enough. If this meteor causes the kind of impact that I believe it will, we are going to need supplies for much longer.”

“Do you really think so?”

Troy nodded. “I’m afraid I do.”

Mary felt tears welling up in her own eyes, and she walked slowly over to her husband and hugged him for the first time in an eternity. It felt good to have her hands around him. However, he was still angry about the affair that he suspected had been taking place. When Mary could feel her husband’s hesitation, she looked him in the eyes and spoke.

“Look, Troy, I want you to know that it’s over between me and Steve, and that I am so, so sorry for what I’ve done to our marriage. Please give me a chance to make it up to you.” She held onto his hand. Troy walked away and looked at the monitors that showed him what the cameras outside were picking up.

“It will take time for that wound to heal, Mary,” he said.

“I know. Just as long as there is some hope that you will find it in your heart to forgive me, one day,” Mary said as she looked away.

“So answer me this, Mary.” Troy made eye contact with her again. “Would you be breaking it off with Steve if this crisis wasn’t happening?”

Mary turned around and looked back at her husband. “I realized today that I didn’t care for Steve, and that I still loved you. I’ve just felt like there has been a distance between us now for such a long time. You have been so preoccupied with this shelter, that you seldom took any time to work on our marriage.”

“I sensed the same distance in you,” he replied. “So I felt like I had little choice but to go about my business when you seemed as if you were no longer interested in me.”

“I think we can chalk it up to one big misunderstanding.” She put her hand up to his cheek.

He liked the feeling of her hand there, but put it down after a moment. “Be that as it may, it will still take me some time to get over things.”

After a long silence, Troy sat down on the sofa that he had installed in the front room and switched on the older television that he had connected there.

“I really don’t know if I want to hear it, but let’s see what’s going on out there now.” Troy used the remote to switch on CNN:

“This is Molly Fuller reporting for CNN Headline News. Well, despite reports telling the public not to panic about the situation, people have indeed begun to get into full panic mode. As you can see behind me, this grocery store parking lot is full, and sources say that stores like this one are running low and in many cases running out of items as people begin to stock up and prepare for a possible disaster.

“Reports of violence in many major cities are beginning to trickle in, and some looting has begun in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Authorities are telling people to get home and take shelter as soon as possible, although at this point there is no need to panic. As for the meteor, it is still on track to make impact in the next hour or so. Sources tell us that it is still on a collision course for Africa or the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists are hopeful that it will land in the ocean, which will more than likely turn out to be a much better scenario than if it makes landfall.

“I’ve just gotten another report of a violent situation that has broken out in Washington DC. Sources there say that a neighborhood is on fire and a riot has broken out in the streets. Apparently it began when the neighborhood grocery stores ran out of supplies. An angry group of people set fire to the store after they were told to leave, due to the fact that the store no longer had any groceries to sell. Police now worry that similar situations will now begin to play themselves out all over the country.

“Again, they are telling the public to take what provisions you have to prepare for a worst case scenario, but once again urge the public not to panic and take the law into their own hands. We will have more news to you about this situation as it is made available to us. This is Molly Fuller reporting for CNN Headline News.”

Troy switched off the television and looked at his watch. It was now less than an hour until the impact of the meteor was supposed to take place.

“You were right all of this time that I thought you were crazy,” Mary said, as she sat down on the sofa beside her husband. “I should have trusted that you knew what you were doing instead of criticizing you.” She put her arm around Troy.

Troy turned to look at his wife. “None of that matters now. You had no idea that anything like this was going to happen.”

Mary brushed her husband’s hair back behind his ear. “You did, though. You even had dreams about it.”

“I thought those were just nightmares, but now I have to wonder if it was some vision of what was to come that I somehow received,” he said. “I never used to believe in things like that, but I really have to wonder now.”

Just then, they heard the two teenagers arguing with each other as the sound of the Backstreet Boys began to blare from upstairs.

“Turn that shit off!” they heard Cordelia’s voice shout from upstairs.

“Well there’s some things that a natural disaster won’t change,” Mary commented, as she and her husband shared a paternal smile. They both went up the stairs to the bedrooms.

“Alright, what’s the problem up here?” Troy asked them as he looked at the mess of clothes and things that were scattered about the room.

“Brandon won’t stop playing the stupid Backstreet Boys, and when I complained about it and asked him to turn it down, he started blasting it at full volume,” she said angrily.

“Is that true, son?” Mary asked him.

“Well, yeah, I did it because she was being so rude about telling me to turn it down. I wouldn’t have done it if she’d asked me nicely,” Brandon said in his defense.

“Look,” Troy said, as he got his children’s attention due to the serious tone in his voice, “We have to learn to get used to living in such close quarters with each other. We don’t know exactly how long we are going to be down here. So, I am asking the two of you to stop arguing over petty things. Brandon, play your music in your headphones, and try not to annoy your sister. Cordelia, when you are asking your brother to do something, please try your best not to be rude about it, okay?”

“Okay,” they both reluctantly agreed.

“What’s the latest dad?” Brandon asked, trying to get some updates on what was happening in the outside world.

“Nothing much to report yet. Just some news of people panicking and doing some looting in the major cities. The meteor hasn’t made its impact. I advise they we only listen to the media from time to time. We probably don’t want to sit there and watch this whole thing play out on television or it may get a little bit ugly. It would be best to find other ways to pass the time.”

“I made sure to get the cards, boggle, scrabble, monopoly, and clue,” suggested Brandon.

“Boring,” Cordelia said as she went to look for her headphones.

“If boredom is our main problem, we have it way better than most people do.” Troy looked up at the ceiling. “Your mother and I are going to prepare dinner. I don’t want to hear any more arguing coming from up here, is that understood?”

“Yes sir,” they both agreed. Each one of them sat on their beds and went off into their own little worlds. Troy and Mary went downstairs.