| "Impact" by Dahjo Arthur Doljanski The Rock was due. Standing outside my house I waited. The end was near, the end was now. This was the time scientists had guessed the Rock would hit. It was night out. Virtual silence as everyone sat huddled with their families. I felt almost lonely without any family of my own. Above a helicopter hovered, probably hoping to escape harm by being in the air. I couldn't tell if the Rock was coming or not, I was on the wrong side of the planet. Sitting in suburban Ohio. Suddenly everything around me jerked forward! It was like whiplash to the third degree. My neck was hurting, a few structures had failed. A jungle gym lying toppled, an overhang fallen onto the porch. Most of the windows had shattered. Now I could feel a slight rumbling in my feet. A low sound echoing around. This feeling lasted almost ten minutes. Then the sound grew louder. My entire neighborhood was on a hill. I was at the highest point, and my house was barely twenty feet from a sheer drop of over a hundred feet. From this point I could see a shockwave, moving much slower than I expected. Probably only a hundred miles per hour. But speed didn't matter. The destruction it was causing was horrific. It looked like a ripple in the earth. I could barely see over the top of it, but on the other side it was brown, overturned earth, with metal and other manmade materials visible through the mess. Even the air appeared to be moving with this destruction, carrying debris in the fast wind. He knew that no one on the ground could escape that destruction, death would befall all on earth. Maybe those people in the helicopter could survive, he could hear it growing distant as it rose higher. His life started flashing before his eyes. He knew how cliché it seemed, it felt, but he couldn't help it. He remember how much his parents had loved and cared for him as a child. He remembered the fights they'd had. He remembered his bout with depression, his unhappy teenage years as a social outcast. He remembered college, his first real job interview. Meeting his first girlfriend. How he'd felt so elated when she said yes to his proposal. The intense pain and the trip back to depression after she'd died in a car crash. He was finally getting over the depression now, and he'd met someone else. She'd been in San Francisco on a business trip. "Please let me live." He whispered at the wave. The road in front of him buckled. He felt the pain only for a second before the ripple of earth swallowed him. Jerry Bryant The helicopter blades whirled loudly through the air.. It was lifting off only too slowly. The door burst open and Tucker, the security guard at the station, ran out onto the landing area. He aimed his gun at Jerry, who was barely a foot off of the ground, "Stop right now or I'll have to fire!" His voice was barely audible over the racket of the chopper. Jerry could only make out "Right I'll Fire" Even though he couldn't hear the guard, he knew what he was saying. But there was no way he was gonna stop. He was probably going to die anyways, why not risk it? He ducked as low as he could go. "Ahh!" He felt a sudden stab of pain in his shoulder. The guard had fired! He'd shot him in the shoulder. He realized he couldn't see out of his left eye either. There was a sharp pain there too. He closed his eye and rubbed it with his finger. It hurt worse, and he felt a piece of shattered glass moving under his eyelid. Opening his eye as widely as he could he pulled the glass out like a contact. After a few seconds of blinking it was back to normal, vision wise, but the pain was still sharp and intense. The helicopter was rising steadily now, plenty out of reach of the guard. A damp warmth enveloped the right side of his body, where he'd been shot. The blood was covering him. Rolling down from the shoulder. After a quick inspection of the wound he realized the bullet had only grazed his shoulder, and that he was lucky the bullet hadn't hit in square in the shoulder, or worse, the heart. It took all of his strength to get back up to the seat and get control of the helicopter. He let it go slowly and started drifting out of downtown and towards the northern suburbs. He followed along the highway, I-75, for no real reason. Just something, following the highway, to keep him from passing out from sheer exhaustion and the loss of blood. He had gone on for about 15 minutes of this dizzy tension when he saw the ground shake beneath him. The Rock had hit. He'd gotten into the helicopter, stolen it, to be in the air when it hit, hoping maybe he could survive. In this nervous moment he stopped the helicopter and hovered about a quarter mile from the highway over an empty neighborhood waiting for the shockwave. He could see a slight vibration in the ground beneath him, and a low rumbling came from below. He only had to wait about ten minutes before he could see the line of destruction on the horizon. It would reach him soon maybe 30 seconds. Good, it was slowing down going through the land. Only approaching at a hundred miles an hour Jerry knew he could outrun the death, but he couldn't hide for long. The air was affected by this wave too. He turned the chopper as swiftly as he could and seriously hauled. The gas tank had just been refilled, prepared for John in the morning to fly traffic. He could make it maybe a few hundred miles on the new fuel-efficient design. At top speed the Bird, as it was called at the station, could travel at about 120 MPH. He was approaching 110. Through the mirror he could see the wave of earth and the wall of debris in the air following behind him. Only about 400 yards back it was going as fast as he was. As he was going faster he was also rising in altitude. The debris cloud was thinning at his height, and he could see beyond the ripple. Everything was a mess. Overturned earth, brown mud everywhere. Only a few evidences of man were left on the surface. There was a fire burning in a clump of trees that had managed to stay above the ground. Now the air was starting to heat up. Not too much, yet. The next few hours it was the same. Passing over towns, farms, cities, lakes, all to be destroyed in mere seconds. The wave was continually slowing down, and so was he, to conserve fuel. Flipping on the built in GPS he was shocked to see that he'd traveled to Kansas city already. His heart pumping, he looked out the mirror as the city, the lives, were destroyed, collapsed into a pile of earth and rubble. He knew he didn't have much fuel left. It was now or never. He started slowing down, but not too much. He was now going about 5 MPH slower than the wave. It gained on him slowly, taking almost twenty minutes. He was as high as the chopper would take him, hoping for the best. Sweat was dripping down his face, the heat was intense right outside the wave. The helicopter was jerking back and forth, tumbling like a plane caught in turbulence times ten. He could barely see the air disturbance not 20 feet behind him. Then it consumed him. The heat!!! It was unbearable! Like a furnace! 200 degrees! His skin was cracking, he would only survive a few more seconds. The helicopter was literally flipped, jerked up and down, and rolled over. And then the air cooled considerably, almost a hundred degrees, and by some miracle the helicopter was hovering still, the wave heading away from him, slowly but surely. The greatest feeling of elation passed through me, I had survived!!! But I knew worse was to come, for I had nowhere to land, the earth below me was melted and mush, constantly rocked by earthquakes. So he just sat, thinking about everything, the death. Not like he'd had any real family. His parents and sister had been killed in a car crash, he was the only survivor. His grandparents were all dead, except his grandfather who had been in prison. So they'd tried to put him in a foster home. It didn't work. So they'd just decided to put him in an orphanage till he was 16 and then let him live on his own. And so it had been. He'd been miserable at "home", but in school it was a different matter. He had a lot of friends and loved to play sports and was always a straight-"A" student. Of course there'd always been that lurking secret, longing to come out. When it had he'd been scared to death, and for good reason. Hate was common in his town, racism, especially. But that's not what his secret was, he wasn't some Michael Jackson who'd managed to actually look like a man. He was gay. He'd told his class in his valedictorian speech. This had been a vital mistake. His entire class was watching, the Sycamore High class of 2004. He was gay. Later that month, at the end of June, at the swimming pool, he had been harassed as he was walking out. They were a group of tough, gangster looking people who all grew up in the city and had been moved to the suburbs in the "Decent Neighborhoods for Decent People" program. They'd taken him and forced him into a car, taken him to the dump, shot both of his feet, teased him, and ran. It was all, classic, stereotyped. He knew it, some people thought he'd faked it for attention. A nice guy who'd been dumping his trash found him. His feet were so damaged he was unable to move on them. They guy had had a cell phone and called 911 for him. The doctors had fixed his feet up in no time using the new bone regeneration technology, and he was as good as normal. Physically. His self-esteem had been lowered to nothing, his moral confidence gone. His trust in any human had left him. He was not comfortable with himself anymore, as he had been after he realized he was as he was. He became an apathetic shell. The people who'd committed the hate crime against him had never been caught, and it actually made national news. This made him feel only worse. He was grouped with a few incidents, like Matthew Shephard and the Gay and Lesbian Festival 2002 bombing. After a year or two he'd gotten a job as a cameraman at a local news station, deciding that too much of his life had been wasted by the incident to go to college, his life was ruined. How unfair, ruined because some people saw him as different, ruined because some people couldn't see past this, couldn't grow up, couldn't mature, just hated. And that was his, sad, pathetic, depressing life story. So here he was, maybe the only surviving human this side of the destruction, probably not. He was stuck in the air with no place to land. Suddenly he heard an unimaginably loud squeaking noise, like nails on a chalkboard. A ripping, tearing noise followed. He saw a red glow ahead of him. The earth was cracking open! Fault lines were opening up, pulled apart, right before his eyes. Lava spewed thousands of feet into the air. The fault was approaching him. Fast, at a supersonic speed. He saw the lava flying at him. He felt the heat, he felt his body being burned away. He felt a darkness enclose him. His last thought, "Another life taken, another of the billions so rudely taken. So wasteful, so awful. A million years of development of the human race destroyed in a moment." He felt nothing. Tucker Wallace Standing by the door, guarding it, there was hardly any point. In less than an hour they'd all be dead anyway. "The Rock is now at the same distance from earth as the moon. Approximately 30 minutes from impact." The news anchor said with almost no emotion. Off in the shadows by the door Tucker stood, acting like a good security guard. He really didn't care anymore. In fact, he was almost hoping for some action before his death. His death. Most people had found that hard to comprehend at first, that they were going to die and nothing could stop it. Not Tucker. Why should he? His life was pretty much worthless. Sure, he had a family who loved him, sure he was smart, sure he made good money. But he just wasn't happy. He didn't know why, but life just sucked. Maybe being smart was his problem, maybe he could see too deep into things. What he saw wasn't pretty. He'd been unhappy since the end of high school, but now it was just magnified. Working at the station, hearing all the news stories, he just saw what humanity was. A stinking, rotten race of disgusting, perverted, rude jerks. Children having babies at fifteen, adults raping girls and boys as young as five, murders every die, school shootings so common they only make the news if over 10 people died. Humanity was worthless, nothing. But he knew he may as well do his job. "Right now we go live to Mike Buresh in the 12 Weather Center for some details on the impact." The anchor said. The cameras in the room all shut off and across the room I could hear him talking about the stuff that'd I'd been hearing for the last few days, about the shock wave traveling around the world, a superheated explosion, fault lines opening A sudden movement and the cameraman was making for the stairs on the other side of the building. Tucker knew he was going for the Traffic helicopter, the "Bird" as it was called. He dashed as fast as could across the room, but he tripped over a wire running across the floor. He cursed himself and got up as fast as he could. His knee had been slammed hard and he couldn't as fast. The door to the stairs was locked, but that wasn't gonna stop him. He pulled out and cocked his gun, aimed at the lock, braced, and fired. It blew apart and he pushed the door open. "1, 2, 1, 2." He counted as he ran up the stairs three steps at a time. It was only two floors to the roof. As he went around the second to last landing he could hear the helicopter starting. He burst out the top door and aimed his gun at the helicopter only a foot off the ground. "Stop right now or I'll have to fire!" He yelled over the sound of the blades. The cameraman didn't stop. He knew how to pilot that chopper. It was rising faster now. The guy ducked down low just as Tucker fired. He thought he hit him in the shoulder, but he couldn't be sure. The glass had shattered in, and had definitely done some damage. Tucker fired at the chopper until his round ran out, because he was pissed that someone had managed to escape in. That helicopter was reserved for the station manager, anchor, and the weatherman. Since there wasn't much he could do standing around on the roof he headed back downstairs. In the room the few remaining people looked at him anxiously. It was really only the anchorman and the other cameraman. "What happened?" The anchor asked. "That camera guy stole the Bird. The little jerk. Well, maybe someone'll survive. But he still could've been a little less selfish and taken some other people. Jeese, just another murderer." Tucker said, talking to himself by the end. In a bad mood, Tucker walked back up the stairs. When he got to the roof he turned out all the lights and just stared at the sky. He reminisced about his life. Not much to reminisce on. He thought of his parents in Ontario, probably wishing he were there. He felt kind of guilty, but it was pointless. He knew he couldn't feel emotions like that, he couldn't, he knew what guilt could do to someone. It'd done a lot to him. Ruined his life, turned him over, introduced the sadness. He shut it out, he had to stop thinking about it. When he felt the jerk of the comet hitting, he started crying. He let the guilt flow through him. The guilt he felt for his parents, his grandparents, his sister, the guilt he felt for shutting them out. He wished he could tell them now. In fact, he would! He jumped up and ran for the stairs. The ground was shaking a little now, and an unsettling rumbling noise was echoing. He jumped down the stairs, each flight of ten at a time. He had to get to the lobby fast. By the time he made it down all 20 floors he knew he had little time. He ran across and picked up the phone. Yes, the dial tone was there. It was working. He dialed in the number for his parents. All the while his mind was thinking, "The human race is getting what it deserves, death. But please, let me apoligize for this guilt to my family before it ends!" He heard one ring on the phone. He heard it being picked up, he heard a voice, his father's. "Hello, who is th--" That was the last thing he would ever hear. Daniel Eifford "The Rock is now at the same distance from earth as the moon. Approximately 30 minutes from impact." Daniel said to the camera. He tried to speak showing as little emotion as he could, and it was pretty easy. He'd never been one to show his emotions. "We know that the Rock will hit on the edge of the Iberian Peninsula. The impact will be traumatic, and the surrounding areas will all be immediately destroyed. We'll have more details on this after we return from this commercial break." Dan couldn't believe they were running commercials. Everything was going to end in half an hour. But he guessed that a lot of people were still thinking the story might be a hoax, and they might as well run the commercials. Normally he and the other anchor would talk about the stories during the break, but she wasn't there that day. Almost no one was. They were with their families at home. He would be too, if they had been alive. Not two weeks ago they had been killed in a car crash, the first recorded crash of the new Libertad!'s. His daughter, Jenny. Only six years old. She was very smart, and already in first grade getting straight A's. She had shoulder length blond hair that was naturally curly, such a sweet smile, face. His son, Ryan, He was thirteen. Sort of a loner, but always nice, kind, loving. He had fun with his family and cared a lot about animals. He had a pet bobcat, only recently allowed to be a pet in the state of Ohio, with the new technology animal control was becoming easier. He was so full of life and had so much going for him His wife, Elaine. She was the love of his life, his true sole mate. They had met at the end of high school. By some lucky chance they had gone to the same college. They really didn't fall for each other until the Junior year. After that it was pure love. They waited to get married until they'd graduated. The wedding had been awesome, fancy, in the nicest, church in the state. She'd gotten pregnant with John on the honeymoon. She was still beautiful, the whole time. After they'd had the boy their lives had totally changed. Raising him wasn't easy, and they both struggled. Dan had used his degree in journalism to get a job at the station. After that they'd spent the years raising Ryan, they'd had Jenny, and raised her. He loved his wife beyond anything, all the experiences they'd shared, all the love. Everything they'd been through. The memories made his stomach churn, he needed to express his emotions in some way besides feeling this internal pain, but he couldn't. He'd always hidden his emotions, the result of his anxiety disorder in school, whose effect had not worn off. He was still a little shy, and was embarrassed to show his emotion. The cameraman signaled for him that they were coming back from the commercial. "Right now we go live to Mike Buresh in the 12 Weather Center for some details on the impact," Dan said to the camera. The lights in the room dimmed a little, and the camera shut off. Mike was talking in the room to the side, but Dan shut it out. He didn't need to know how horrifying his death would be. He heard a noise as the cameraman turned around fast and knocked over some papers. He made as fast as he could for the door to the up stairwell. The security guard started chasing him from the other side of the room. But he tripped over the bundle of wires running across the floor, jerking the camera they used for him sideways. He was hurt in the knee, but not too bad. He jumped back to his feet fast and ran over to the door. He cursed when he realized it was locked. He jerked out his gun and shot the lock. The noise was extremely loud, and there was a ringing in Dan's ears "Ah damn that little wuss," Dan muttered to himself, speaking of Jerry, the cameraman who had run. The only other people in the room now were Dan and the other cameraman. "What should I do?" The guy asked. "I dunno, just use the side view camera, it'll be okay, I'm sure not many people are watching." I told him. "Okay," He responded, getting the other camera ready for operation. A few minutes later Mike was still talking about the impact when the guard came back through the door. "What happened?" Dan asked the guard. "That camera guy stole the Bird. The little jerk. Well, maybe someone'll survive. But he still could've been a little less selfish and taken some other people." The guard replied. He mumbled something after that that Dan couldn't hear. He sounded really angry, and after a moment he turned and went back up the stairs. The cameraman called out to him to say they were coming back live now. "Well, there's about ten minutes until the impact now. In the meantime, there have been many movies over the years about this very situation, of course, in those movies the world always survived." With that Dan went into a long talk about movies that had hit on the subjects of rocks hitting the Earth, Armageddon, Deep Impact, and Great Balls Of Fire were the main ones. Just as he was finishing he felt a jerk "I'm not sure but I believe that was the impact. We will go to Towercam now, until the end. Every human being on Earth will be dead within ten minutes." He said, but he couldn't help gulping during the last sentence. He was terrified now, his stomach twisted. He couldn't help but think of his family now. All the major events in his life, the marriage, his graduation, his first kiss, his first tooth lost, his first day of school. He didn't want to die now, he still needed to live. He could rebuild his life. A sick feeling crept through him, and he had to go to the bathroom. He hurled into the toilet until it was all dry heaves. He ran back out and up the stairs. He wanted to spend his last moments outside. The guard was running down as he ran up. When he got up to the edge of the roof he got down on his knees. In the distance he could see the shockwave coming. He was as good as dead. He spent his last energy in praying. Dear god, you know I've accepted your son Jesus. I pray that my sins are forgiven, and that the sins of my family are forgiven so that I may see them after this. This can't be the end can it? It's such a waste if it is. Please, please let me see my family. Please let me--. More to come... |