Mom nods wearily. I stare at Dad’s body breathing gently up and down. I know what Benji said is exactly what Dad would say, and yet I can’t do it.
“No. I’m not leaving. Not yet.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Benji,” Mom intervenes.
I can feel my blood boil. “I just want to give Dad a fighting chance. He would do it for us. I know he would. There’s still like two weeks before the comet strikes.”
“But we don’t have that long. There’s gonna be chaos at the vertex sites. Mass exodus. Don’t you get it?”
Mom stays quiet, rubbing Dad’s cheek. It looks to me like she’s saying goodbye.
When no one speaks, Benji yells, “Am I crazy? We need to leave. Mom?”
Mom replies, “You and Marcus can go. I’ll stay with Alex and my husband.”
A staring contest ensues between Benji and Mom. I’m not sure who’s winning until Benji hugs her.
She sobs and whispers, “I love you. Good luck.” Then she hugs Marcus.
Benji gives me a half-assed hug and whispers in my ear, “Don’t be stupid. Let him go.”
And I whisper back, “Take care.”
Chapter 23
Day 173: January—286 hours to decide
Question: What is your planet’s name?
Answer: We cannot answer that in order to protect historical integrity.
We've all watched
enough apocalyptic movies and read enough stories to know what it’s supposed to feel like. The real thing is supposed to be visual, fast, big. Earthquakes. Giant waves. Fire and brimstone. Social chaos. Maybe that’s the problem. It isn’t some Orwellian nightmare or some Hollywood blockbuster.
This is slow, painfully slow.
Invisible, internal.
And then maybe fire and brimstone and chaos.
In these moments, everything other than death becomes personal and timeless and equal. A warm hug or a warm sweater? An old love or a new car? No brainer.
Benjamin and Marcus
Lucas-Blu have been added to the online registry of the departed. People across the globe are leaving in droves. Some people, like me and Mom, are staying, but most are doing it for religious, political, xenophobic, or anti-establishment reasons.
Since it’s January 20, the government is true to its word and releases the last round of prisoners for vertex departure. Of course, there aren’t enough guards available to transport them since many of the guards left, so many buses end up in chaos with prisoners attacking guards before ever reaching a vertex site. A Massachusetts guard describes one heroic situation where a female prisoner stopped a bus riot and rallied the other prisoners to leave through the Quincy vertex with her. The guard says the prisoner, who couldn’t be identified, told her “today was her lucky day.” The news plays a grainy video of the prisoners entering the vertex, flagging one of them as a hero in these trying times. From a distance, the prisoner looks vaguely familiar, like she used to live in my neighborhood or something. According to my journal, getting released in the last round means she had a sentence of fifteen years or more. Wonder what she did.
Because of the logistics and the high threat levels, the wardens decide to forgo the remaining eligible releases and go into lockdown. Again, with the lack of staff, prison riots break out all over the country, the gates are forced opened, and massive escapes ensue. So now I am stuck on a planet with hardened, violent criminals who were supposed to be locked up for life possibly running loose and looking for one last freebie kill before departing.
Mom and I camp out in Dad’s hospital room. Each day the hospital staff diminishes twofold. All stable enough patients have been discharged, and other patients have been shipped here to merge and shut down other area hospitals. A female doctor takes over Dad’s case since his other doctors left. She is the only neurologist left in the hospital.
Are we the stupid ones? Caring, sacrificing, waiting?
Does that make us weak? Or does that make us the strong ones? I look at Mom sleeping and wonder if she’s really staying for him or because of me?
Regardless of the pills I swallow, I cannot find sleep. Ativan isn’t strong enough for this kind of stress. How can I find a moment of peace in a world of turmoil?
Later that week,
I turn on the television, and it takes me a minute to flip through the channels and see the change. The media is no longer airing feel-good stories. The few channels still airing are focusing on prayer. Yep. Prayer. Different religions, different words, sometimes just massive moments of silence, all with the same purpose. Prayer as an answer. Prayer as a savior. Prayer as action. Religiosity blossoms as death approaches. I always figured religions would turn on each other in the end. Instead, they’ve come together in a weird unity of peace to create some sort of great global spiritual.
God help us. The world must really be ending when religions unite.
And then
—
the
electricity goes out. For good. Using my phone, I find out it’s statewide and spreading. Once my cell phone battery dies, I’ll be closed off from any more media coverage, the countdown app, and the online hologram questions and answers. A cold sweat builds in my spine.
The hospital emergency generators kick into high gear to keep equipment together. Mom and I play rummy by the window light to pass the time.
I’m mildly distracted until she states, “January 29.”
“What’s January 29?” I ask, playing three kings.
“It’s when we leave.”
She holds up her pinkie finger. I swallow down the words she isn’t saying.
With or without him.
We seal the pact.
On the night
of January 27, Dad fully wakes up. Mom and I cry like idiots and hug him together. We don’t mention the pact, that he almost missed the deadline. I wonder what would have happened if he had woken up after we left the hospital. No telephones. No way to communicate with us to come back for him. The thought stays with me, and I take a pill to swallow the guilt.
It doesn’t take long for Dad to agree to leave the planet. I mean, CORE failed. It’s leave or fry. Never know who he would have picked toward the end, country or family. It shouldn’t matter to me anymore, but it still does.
The few doctors left on staff release him to our care. He needs a wheelchair and an oxygen tank since he cannot walk and has residual breathing issues. I explain to Mom that online the holograms said they have advanced medical knowledge in their world. As long as we can get him to the other side alive, they can fix him better than ever.
Dad’s voice is soft and hoarse. He asks to go home first before we leave. Mom and I struggle to lift him into the car, and he screams in pain every time we move him. Benji should’ve stayed to help us. If I ever see him again, I’m gonna knock him out for leaving us.
As Mom drives down our street, an eerie, abandoned road stretches before us. There are no cars in our neighborhood. None. Not in the street, not at the curb or in driveways. There is an unnatural stillness in the environment, like time has stopped and we’re the only ones moving. We are the last remaining inhabitants on our block. It’s like a zombie apocalypse without the zombies.
We spend one last night in our house. We have a real last supper together and eat a large portion of the remaining food that doesn’t need heating. I have peanut butter crackers, apple sauce, and water. Mom has to help Dad eat by mashing the crackers in the apple sauce and lifting the food to his mouth. His coordination is completely off, and he’s having trouble swallowing. I hate seeing him so vulnerable. We eat by candlelight surrounded by pitch darkness since the windows in the house are still boarded up. The Christmas tree sits dark in the corner of the living room, a reminder of the way things used to be. The house feels like it died. It’s not home anymore.
After dinner, I sit in my dark bedroom, sleepless and eager to reunite with Dominick, Rita, and the others. In the beam of a flashlight, I paint my fingernails a shimmering purple-mauve color called Meet Me on the Star Ferry. It was either that or a metallic rose confetti color called Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Meteorite. I went for the hopeful choice for once in my life.
In the morning I pack a backpack. What do I bring to a new world? I grab my journal, a pen, the printouts of Rita’s and Dominick’s online existence, snacks for the road, a
Star Trek
shirt that Dominick bought me, a copy of
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,
and my dead cell phone.
I just want to get out of here. I finally want to leave this world and embrace another.
I wonder what it will feel like to step through a vertex.
Will it hurt? Will it take forever? Will I be able to breathe?
I swallow a pill because that thought makes me too afraid to leap.
Chapter 24
Day 181: January—112 hours to decide
Gridlock
.
I now
completely understand that word.
If I did my math right, we left the house approximately one hundred twelve hours before the comet strike. You would think that we could reach a vertex site that’s only forty-five minutes away in time.
The traffic snakes up Route 24 for miles and miles. We aren’t moving. I waited too long to leave. I should have gone with Dominick. Or Benji and Marcus. Or Penelope. I stood in front of that same vertex time after time. I had the chance to live.
On the first day, traffic moves slightly and we have hope. On the second day, traffic comes to a complete stop. By the third day, people ram cars into each other in frustration. There are abandoned cars littering the highway because people have decided walking or riding bikes through plowed snow is faster. Driving has become impossible.
Dad’s in a wheelchair. We will have to take turns pushing him through slush and ice for an obscene number of miles.
“Leave me here,” he whispers.
“That’s not an option,” Mom whispers back.
The three of us begin the trek of our lives. We run out of food in our backpacks. My stomach kills. My fingers and toes ache from the cold through my boots and gloves. The idea of frostbite enters my mind, but it’s the least of my problems. I didn’t think the crowds would be so massive. How could there still be so many people in Massachusetts? Why did we all stay so long?
By the fourth night, day one hundred eighty-four, January 31, with maybe two to three hours remaining until midnight, I realize that Benji and Dominick were right. Damn it.
Up in the night sky, a spark grows bigger and brighter.
I’m going to die.
We’re all going to die.
Chapter 25
We get close
enough to the vertex to see it glowing on the night horizon with a tight swarm of people and traffic clamoring around it. People race past us. Pushing, shoving, beeping, yelling. Like a giant net of people trapping us from moving forward. Some give up and sit on the side of the road, staring up at the sky. Waiting.
Tears fall.
We can’t make it through the crowd in time. Wheelchair or not.
When faced with absolute death, I expected to give up at some point. To face my last moments on a planet with no regrets. I expected to give in to death. Slip into the silence in peace. If the planet goes down, we all go, like Dad said once.
But I know I could’ve saved myself. Saved my parents. Dominick will hate me for not coming. I hope he finds someone to love there. Maybe he and Rita will get together. Might as well. At least they won’t be alone. I wonder what it’s like on the other side of the vertex.
Up ahead, a teenage boy with gauges in his ears and a guitar sits on the side of the road singing “Hallelujah.” His fingers must be freezing. Another older woman, possibly his mother since she puts her arm around his shoulder, joins in. I don’t know how they can sing. I can’t even speak.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t know if I believe in heaven.
The night sky is ablaze, like the stars have caught fire. A deep rumble, worse than thunder, surrounds us.
No one runs and hides. It’s inevitable, and we know it. We move forward like rats in a maze fighting for the last bit of cheese, hoping that somehow the sea of people will part and we will still make it in time to run through the vertex. Mom and I keep inching the wheelchair forward even though it’s clearly over.
I hear Dad whisper, “I’m sorry.”
Mom touches his head. He reaches his hand up and she holds it.
We stop pushing. We know.
“I love you both. Dearly,” Mom says and reaches out for me. “At least we are together.”
Dad replies, “I love you.” He looks at both of us. “You are my world.”
“I love you,” I say to them.
A brilliant, icy mass blazes forth with a split tail of blue gas and white stardust cascading in its wake. The night sky ignites in a blinding firestorm, a rocky ledge piercing the atmosphere. The stars seem to wink out as the light grows brighter. It’s awful and beautiful and my legs tremble at the weight of it. I close my eyes to wait for impact.
Bright blue island sky. White rope hammock tied to palm trees. A book waiting for me.
Will it hurt? Or will it be so big, so horrible, that I just cease to exist? No history. None of us. None of it mattered.
What was the point?
And then—
Chapter 26
The singing stops.
I open my eyes and look around. Everyone stares up at the ominous sky. We cover our ears as a sound wave hits.
The fiery comet streaks in a wide arc across the darkness, a terrifying rainbow that swallows the stars. Night becomes day. It crashes into the earth and smashes into a trillion pieces of light. Iridescent orbs dance and disperse throughout the air, seeming to pass through us, then silently dissipate into thin air.
We wait for the wave of destruction to follow.
The stars return and shine over us as always.
Am I dead?
Is this heaven?
Around me, people stand motionless, waiting for an aftershock, an aftermath, just—after.
Nothing.
A voice in the crowd yells, “It missed!”
Everyone cheers.
People hug. Dance.
We survived.
We survived.
But how? We didn’t change the comet’s path. It just crashed—I saw it with my own eyes.
So how are we still here?
Everyone looks toward the nearest vertex. We wait for the hologram’s next speech. To acknowledge its error. To apologize. To send our people back.
But the hologram bows and vanishes into the vertex.
Everyone looks around. Everyone stares at their neighbor.
We lived.
WE LIVED.
The Earth is fine.
Was always fine.
Dominick . . .
And then—I see the change in their eyes and their mouths. It’s not elation. Not joy. Not pain.
It’s realization.
We all saw it. It didn’t miss.
The particles went right through us.
The comet was a fake.
The comet was a hologram.