Three days until impact.
I sat on the couch in my living room, arms curled up around my knees as I stared down at the phone beside me. Someone had created a countdown, so we could all watch in real time as an asteroid a tenth the size of the moon came hurtling toward us.
Attempts had already been made to move or break it, but the thing was simply too big. Now all there was left to do was wait.
I didn’t want to die alone, and yet there I was all by myself, unable to tear my eyes away from the clock. It had just ticked past the three-day mark to two days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-nine minutes.
For a long while, the streets outside had been nightmarish: cars honking, people screaming or crying, sometimes I could even hear hysterical laughter. Occasionally there were gunshots, and that was when I shoved my dresser in front of my apartment door. I lived on the fifth floor of a high-rise apartment building with only two windows. Both of them were boarded up now.
As the counter continued to tick down, things eventually grew quiet. Now, with only three days left, there was almost no sound outside at all. An eerie silence filled the city streets. I eventually tore the nails from one of the boards to look down from my apartment window. The streets were a mess, shattered glass and trash everywhere, but the rioting had settled down. There was even a couple across the street walking through the park hand in hand. For some reason, this made me burst into tears for the first time.
Two days until impact.
My car had been broken into, but it still worked. I drove out of town and onto the highway that led to my mother’s house. It was too far away for me to reach in time, but heading that way gave me a sense of purpose.
While I drove, I imagined a scene in my head. I would arrive at her door with maybe an hour left. She would hug me and tell me she loved me. She’d invite me in. We’d make popcorn and watch TV.
She would say, “How have things been in California?”
“You know,” I’d say, “it’s expensive, but I guess I like it. Well, I liked it before all this happened anyway.”
Then we’d both laugh.
“I’m so glad you came,” she’d say. “I know things were strained between us when you left, but you know I’ve always loved you so much, right?”
“I know,” I would say. “I love you too.”
The lines in the center of the highway ticked by, and the sagebrush still clung to the muted teal of midsummer. I looked at the time and considered that I might actually be able to make it if I drove all day and all night without sleep. What was the point of sleep anymore anyway? I pressed down on the gas pedal a little harder, finding it hard to believe that there was anyone left who would pull me over.
In the distance, I could see the asteroid on the horizon, like a tiny oblong moon that had been growing in size day by day. Once in a while, you would see a little flash on one side or the other as the various governments of the world still tried in vain to pummel the beast into submission with their nuclear arsenals.
I picked up my phone from the passenger seat and opened my contacts. I stared at a smiling face in the circle labeled, “Mother.” After a minute or two I took a deep breath and pressed the call button. It rang and rang and eventually went to voicemail: the same thing it had been doing for the last thirty days. With a sigh, I switched my phone over to play loud music through the car’s speakers instead.
One day until impact.
I had been crying in my back seat for hours.
Somehow I had managed to find a way to charge my car all the way to Nebraska, but my luck had finally run out. At this point, the power was out everywhere, and someone had stolen the solar panels from the last few charging stations. I kept driving in hopes of eventually reaching something with even a spark of electricity flowing through it, but my car eventually gave out on I-80 just outside of Kearney.
I pulled over to the side of the road and sat for a while, staring stupidly at the horizon. Then I crawled into the back and curled up into a ball, tears streaming silently down my face for hours on end. Eventually, a knock at the window caught my attention. I sat up to see an older man peering into my car. He wore a Minnesota Twins baseball cap and had a kind smile.
He called out through the glass, “Are you okay in there? Need any help?”
I opened the door and stepped outside, not bothering to wipe away the tears. With a glance at my phone, I did some quick math and estimated that I still could reach my mother’s in time if I asked him to help me push my car to the next town and if—by some chance of incredible luck—one of the stations still had working solar panels, but… deep down I knew there was no point. With a sigh and a shrug I said, “All the charging stations are down, and I’m dead in the water. But I guess it doesn’t matter much at this point anyway, does it?”
The old man laughed and said, “My car broke down a few months ago, and I never bothered fixing it. Then I realized I’d never really seen much of the country outside my own neck of the woods, so one day I just started walking down the highway.”
He began to tell me more about his life, and asked me about mine. Eventually we both started walking together. We walked in and out of the small town of Kearney, and I did manage to spot a charging station with working solar panels, but it was too late. Too late to get to my mother’s house. Too late to fix a broken relationship. Too late for anything anymore.
Three hours until impact.
At some point between one town and the next, the old man and I parted ways. As the final hour grew nearer, I broke into a now-defunct water park called Island Oasis and climbed to the top of a singular tower with two slides dropping down into a waterless pool.
I recalled a day I had spent with my mother and father at a water park when I was younger. That was before my father had disappeared. Before she filed for a divorce and married a bottle of gin. I remembered floating down the lazy river with both of them trailing behind. I recalled a slide that was so wild and curvy, I swore I was going to fly out the side. It was both terrifying and wonderful.
I leaned against the railing of my pre-apocalyptic water park and stared out at the rooftops of the town I would die in. I didn’t even know its name. Not far from the tower, I spotted some kind of field. People were gathered together there, sitting in a circle and holding hands.
Eventually I slid down to lie on the smooth wood of the tower and stared up at the clouds lazily passing by. There were no asteroids above at the moment. Just a beautiful blue sky. I pulled out my phone again. I hadn’t been able to charge it since my car died, but there was still enough juice left to last me through to the end of the world.
One last time, I hit my mother’s call button. It went to voicemail. This time, I left a message.
“Hi mom,” I said. “I just wanted to call and say I love you. Sorry I haven’t been in touch… I miss you, and, um… well thanks for everything, I guess. Hopefully I’ll see you soon.”
With a wavering sigh, I hung up. Then I tossed my phone off the edge of the tower.
I had not wanted to die alone, and yet in the end, there I was all by myself. I closed my eyes and let the sun soak into my skin. I could hear the wind blowing through the trees, occasionally accented by the mourning dove’s somber song.