The Day The Earth Might Have Moved
The impact was only the start of it, apparently.
The meteor hit somewhere just outside Prague, and everyone on earth felt it. That’s what my mates said, but I slept through it. They always said I was lazy, them and Molly, but I think recent events have shown that that just isn’t the case. I have a condition, is what it is.
Anyway, so the meteor hit hundreds of thousands of miles away, but we felt it here at home. I say meteor, but to be honest, I don’t know the difference between one of them and an asteroid. Comet? Comet doesn’t sound right. But anyway, a big hunk of rock came smashing down, and did a lot of damage.
The TV said that we had dodged the bullet, really. Advance warning from the scientific community had allowed plenty of time to mostly evacuate the projected disaster zone, and the rock had broken up on its journey through space until what hit the dirt was little more then a piece the approximate size of a 747. I don’t know why they chose that particular description… I guess there wasn’t enough drama and tragedy in the disaster as was; maybe they thought people needed a frame of reference to give the event the appropriate gravity.
Whatever, the immediate body count was high enough. The initial impact vapourised everything within about ten miles of ground zero, and the angle of descent meant that the rock cracked open the earth’s crust; only a little, but even a little in situations like that can be devastating, we were told. Millions of tonnes of our own planet, shattered and thrown out by this alien invader; debris the size of VW vans thrust up and out at hundreds of miles an hour, shattering everything and every one within a hundred miles, way outside the evacuated area.
The papers, in this country at least, called it “The Worst Disaster Since 9-11”. Again, I suspect that this was the media leading its audience by the hand. It seemed like an incredible understatement to me, and also ignored a few other nightmare scenarios that as a species we had been through between times.
The true cost of the event, though, became apparent a couple of weeks later, as relief workers, returning from the hot zone, started to display horrific, and always fatal, symptoms. What began as typical asthma symptoms would lead to people hacking up blood, with traces of brown and pink tissue following. Soon, massive haemorrhaging began, blood pouring from eyes, ears, and every other orifice besides. Their mouths often torn apart by the ravages of earlier symptoms, most victims couldn’t even pray or scream as the end came.
What happened, they worked out, was that the massive explosion of landfall had been so intense that much of the displaced rock, and most of the man-made stuff in the path of the blast, was pulverised into pieces so tiny that it could slip past the gauze of the face masks that the rescuers wore, and so lethal, like a million atomic shards of glass, that it killed everyone that inhaled it. Which was everyone that went near. A toxic cloud of concrete, glass and rock smashed down to tiny flinders, and whatever else that lived in the ground and in the city. The aid workers, who found barely any survivors, had breathed in all of it. All of the lead and mercury and plastic and whatever else that sits in the average office building, house or wherever. All of what was left of most of the people that didn’t get evacuated far enough.
Humanity had managed to protect itself from the big shit flying at it, but hadn’t paid enough attention to the little shit.
It had proved impossible to get anyone close enough to ground zero to properly examine what had happened; the heat and atmospheric conditions were just too much there. By the time satellite footage was showing that the dust clouds were settling, the second wave of people started dying. Attempts to quarantine them were pointless; the aid efforts were the result of near unprecendented collaboration between many countries, and most of the workers had returned home.
We were still told not to panic, though, as these individuals started to die among us. They were the victims of the disruption of their bodies by physical invaders into their bodies, and not the carriers of any disease, as far as modern medicine was concerned. We prayed for them, but went about our business.
Well, other people prayed for them. I didn’t. I have to admit that I was in my apartment through most of this going on. My mates, they of the incredible claims of laziness, couldn’t even be bothered with coming and visiting me much any more. So I just kind of… hung out… and thought about my love for Molly Peters.
I picked up what bits of news I could from daytime TV, always a couple of days late. I didn’t even know that that second wave started dying until most of them were already dead. So I tried not to feel too guilty about the ‘not praying’ thing.
It took a couple of months for everyone to work out that the rapidly diminishing population of planet Earth was a third wave of impact victims. It turns out that those space rocks; they’re the gift that keeps on giving.
When people started going off work with flu, and then just deteriorating incredibly rapidly until they were in the ground, or when other people had heart attacks, or previously undiagnosed tumours, or stomach bugs that had them bent double in the bathroom until there was nothing left of them, no one really made the connection, because the sick had no symptoms in common: They were just humans getting sick and dying, and that is kind of what humans do.
It wasn’t until it was impossible not to notice that almost everyone was getting ill that doctors and scientists and everyone else started joining the dots, and by then it was too late. We didn’t know what exactly was happening, although theories ran rampant like dogs.
Maybe it was the mix of all the toxins and all of the human debris that was reduced to dust around Prague, in circulation now around the planet, a pink and grey mist, invisible to the human eye, infecting everyone with all the diseases and conditions and everything else that a city can carry.
Or maybe it was a brand new arsenal of infections and illnesses, kept incubating inside that rock through the cold and dark of space, sickness from another solar system.
Perhaps it wasn’t even that. Perhaps the meteor had been irradiated, going through some cosmic field somewhere out there, and that radiation had supercharged or mutated the things already dormant in our air, or just under our planet’s surface.
No one knew, and no one who cared had time to find out. Because everyone was dying.
Every man.
Although for some reason, not all of the women were falling to the various cancers and plagues, though there didn’t seem to be any clear distinction between the ones that died, and the ones that didn’t.
As my male friends slowly dwindled and died off, I could still see the odd girl, or woman, or elderly lady, wander by on the street outside my building, although they were looking steadily more shellshocked as each week passed and the population dropped further.
I saw Molly go past the other day, looking a little frantic and untidy, but still holding it together and healthy enough.
I try not to think too hard about what it means that I am still alive. But I’m betting it is something to do with the same things that everyone always used to bitch about. I’m betting that whatever it is that has stopped me getting off my backside and doing anything for my entire life; that makes sure that I never feel too good, but never seem to feel too bad either; that makes me find it hard to give much of a shit about anyone or anything, except that one girl; I’m betting whatever it is that is wrong with me is the same reason that I’m still standing upright, while every other male on the planet seems not to be.
And the upside, of course, is that now I get to see how much conviction Molly Peters really had; how much weight what she said about me being the last man in the world, and what wouldn’t happen even then, has any more. I’m guessing that, compared to the competition, I’m looking like quite a catch, right about now.
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