Age of Power 1: Legacy (4 page)

When he’d heard
about Yama, he dropped everything and headed here. It took him longer than he
expected, thanks to the panic. From the sounds of it, he’d done some things he
wasn’t proud of, and I later noticed that the car he’d driven here in wasn’t
the one he owned when I last visited him. When I asked him about it, he
admitted that it wasn’t his. But he didn’t elaborate on the subject. And we
didn’t ask.

When he first
entered the house, Mom and I were watching news about the exodus. Mainly, the
news channels were showing looping videos of cars in long lines. I was only
sure of some locations by the signs they showed with city names on them. What
made it even worse was that the looped videos were on every news channel. And
with them, came repeating phrases about panic over what was going on. Yet, we
kept watching to see if there was any change in Yama’s path.

The first moment
we saw Dad was when we heard a floorboard creaked behind us. We both looked up
and stared. We forgot all about the news when we saw the dark-haired
forty-year-old standing there, in the dining room. Mark Hagen had been a
well-built man, just starting his construction business in Chicago, when Mom
had met him. He still had the rock like hardness to him when Mom and I nearly
bowled him over in a hug.

Mom once told me
that they had a whirlwind romance that ended with them marrying three months
later. They did love each other, but they had a more pressing reason for
marrying. I was already on the way. But I wasn’t enough to keep them together.
They divorced five years later because they had grown apart. But Dad was here
now. He told us he belonged with us and not somewhere else, alone, wondering
how we were making out. I’m not ashamed to say it; there were tears.

Dad let us know
that things were bad in Chicago. Businesses were closing everywhere. And,
obviously, Chicago wasn’t the only place. Every city had its very own exodus going
on. It was while we were catching him up on the news he missed—while driving
here—that I began to understand that humanity was ready to destroy civilization
for staying alive in the short-term. Ironically, on television, news people
kept pushing that nothing bad was going to happen. Given the amount of panic
going on, nobody really believed them.

I think that was
because there were too many scientists agreeing with earliest assessments about
what Yama had done. They gave a clear view of what would happen physically. One
well-known news anchor promptly quit and walked out of the studio after the
scientist finished with his explanation. No, no one was happy with the
continuous talk about the subject, but that trajectory did give the military a
short window they could use. And they did.

Announced by the
leaders of the G20 nations, billions of people prayed for the success of the
one thing we could use against such a monster. Nuclear missiles flew from silos
and submarines all over the world, aimed and timed to explode to push Yama
onward, when it reached the point where it would begin to swing back toward
Earth. Together, we watched as the days and hours counted down to that final
moment. They told us that only half the missiles launched actually reached that
point.

Don’t get me
wrong; the missiles had been the best option we had. If there was one thing
this planet was good at, it was the ability to deliver weapons of mass
destruction. Unfortunately, missiles designed to come back to Earth from a low
orbit made it hard to take out an asteroid almost the same distance away as the
Moon. Still, we did our human best.

On the night it
happened, videos popped up on YouTube showing the flashes from the explosions
near the Moon. It was during Iowa’s daytime, so all we could do was hear about
it and look at the pretty pictures. The military told us that it would work.
The asteroid was at just the right point that, when that much force was
unleashed, the nuclear warheads blast waves should have pushed it outward.

To the world’s
horror, Yama’s trajectory didn’t change by one single degree. It fascinated the
scientists, of course. They kept saying that the pressure waves from such
firepower should have worked. A few hoped to solve the problem by the time the
rock hit us. 
Why?
 Because they wanted to
know, and Armageddon or no, at least they would die having cracked that
mystery. They knew that it would be the last cosmic mystery they would ever
have a chance to solve.

Physicists kept
describing the very bad day we would have. They did it so incessantly, that I
muttered something about them looking forward to it. I was thinking that often
about scientists since the start of this insanity. And the more I heard their
talk, the more I was beginning to be convinced I was right. But Mom said
something that made me think twice. She said they were scared too. So scared,
that they could focus only on the job at hand, talk about Yama, or go insane
with fear and desperation as the rock closed in.

Thinking about
that point, I realized that everyone was only doing exactly what they knew how
to do. Scientists did research to stop this or explain the failure. The
religious prayed, hoping that a God or Gods would answer before the coming
‘Day.’ And the politicians promised. Everyone else did his or
her best to run and find a way to survive. And some of us just accepted
it, as Mom had.

Dad though, Dad
had tried finding ways to get us down to Mexico. But Mom knew what the impact
numbers meant. She wasn’t a super genius or anything, but she could figure out
what would happen after the first blast. Calmly determined, she ticked off all
that would happen after the impact. She brought up slow starvation, burning
forests, the freezing of the northern hemisphere, and the likelihood of an ice
age after the fires.

Then it would
get nasty.

Dad would argue
about Riverlite being inside the asteroid’s blast radius. Mom would come back
with facts about the fate of the survivors in increasing detail. After hours of
denial, of anger, and every effort he could come up with to convince Mom, he
slumped on the couch in the living room.

Okay, there was
a lot more fighting, and he did a lot more to try to save us. He made calls and
tried calling in favors. He lost friends trying to get us on a fast flight to
safety. Either people didn’t return phone calls, or they would tell him he was
out of luck. Finally, Dad had to accept that it was just not going to happen.

In the end, we
didn’t run. Instead, we watched from our living-room windows as townspeople
abandoned Riverlite. It frightened me, and the only thing that kept me from
freaking out was thinking about my friends, especially Brand, and hoping they
would get far enough away, to be safe. Intellectually, I knew they wouldn't be.

To my surprise,
while watching the lines of cars going south, I found that I still could hope.
I didn’t feel the despair I was seeing on television or in Dad’s eyes, when he
thought no one was looking. I don’t know why, but while I accepted Mom’s
explanations and backed up her arguments, a part of me—a deep part of me—still
couldn’t wrap itself around the possibility of dying. At least, not right
then.
It would come
, 
I was sure
.
But way down at the pit of my soul, I kept feeling as though something would
stop this. Maybe I believed we'd have a miracle or that a last minute
rescue would come.

But no miracles
came, and the asteroid continued coming. Still three days from Earth, Yama
showed up in the night sky as a bright moving light amongst the stars. The
world shuddered at the sight.

And here, in
Riverlite, people leaving, went, and those passing through, passed. But after
days of watching all this, I found I needed some time outside. Mom was
reluctant though and it took some effort to convince her to let me go. By this
point, it wasn’t about the beer. She just didn’t want some random crazy person
hurting me. I think it was more an extension of the worry that we’d be
house-jacked by crazy people.

I wasn’t worried
too much. Sitting where we were, not many people driving by would take much
notice of our home. We sat back from the edge of a cliff-side left over from
Ice Age glacial melt. The house’s isolation kept us safe from all but the most
determined thief. And nothing like that ever happened. But now, it was a
problem. Because of the isolation, I was going stir crazy. Television wasn’t
showing much more than repetitious scenes of panic and rioting. And even if I
had all the comics and video games in the world, they wouldn’t be enough to
distract me from what was just plain cabin fever.

After a long
session of whining, I managed to get Mom to let me go out. She was still edgy,
but Dad stepped in to help me convince her. I think he wanted some time alone
with her. Once outside, I cut across the neighbor’s garden area and started
walking towards Brand’s house. I knew he wasn’t home. The Housemans had left
town and had not once gotten a hold of us. But I realized that I just wanted
something—anything—that reminded me that Brand and I were
like
brothers.

I’d grown up
with him, and while it hurt that he and his family hadn’t told us they were
taking off, it didn’t end years of a friendship that saw as much as Brand and I
had. He once had a big brother. And I’d been there when they had reported that
Kyle
had been killed
in Iraq. I’d helped Brand through
many hard times after that, and he’d helped me through the times when Mom and
Dad argued over which parent I would live with during the summer and winter
months. They were surprised when I told them to let me decide that.
Surprisingly, they did, and both got roughly equal time with me. Hey, I like my
parents, even if they couldn’t handle living together. I never told them it was
Brand’s idea in the first place.

I reflected upon
a lot of this as I headed to their home. I had to take the roads. While snow
had fallen since the coming of Yama, the cars and trucks had packed it down on
their way out of town. That was good, because the sidewalks still had heavy
drifts of snow that would have been too tiring to walk through.

Spooky.
 
I had grown up in this area of town, and
sidewalks were usually clear of snow by the next day. And seeing the emptiness
of the homes sent a cold feeling down my spine that had nothing to do with the
weather. It could have been much worse, though.

In the news, I
had watched riots and mobs actually destroying homes and businesses. One
extreme example was where some crazies had torched their entire town as they
left it behind. But nothing like that had happened in Riverlite. At least, not
from what I could see in the short distance I was walking.

So imagine my
surprise when I got there and saw James Houseman, Brand’s father, pulling a box
full of canned food from their blue SUV.

I said, “What
the hell?”

James Houseman
was tall, with hair almost as white as Brands. But that was where the
resemblance ended. Brands dad was a Marine whose body still showed those years
of constant physical training. Brand wished he could have that kind of build,
but he took more after his mother’s lithe frame. And, because James Houseman
still played football with friends, and hunted annually, he kept in shape.

I liked him. He
and Dad were friends. He moved here from Chicago because of Dad, and stayed
even after Dad went back to Chicago. That was good, because by then, I was
friends with Brand. And although Mom wasn’t his biggest fan, it didn’t stop her
from letting me hang out with Brand. She had introduced Karla to James after
all. So they were at least friendly with each other. When he saw
me
he waved and smiled.

But his voice
had
a tentativeness
to it when he said, “Hey there. We
uh…we came back. Help me with the boxes, will you?”

I didn’t ask
what happened. Instead, I quickly grabbed a box and fell into step alongside
him, heading to the side kitchen door off to the side of the driveway. Before
we reached the steps to the door, Brand came out, jerked to a stop, and then
smiled.

He said, “Hey
guess what. Traffic sucks when the world’s ending!”

I stared at him.
Was that it? They took off without a single good-bye, and just expected
things to be the same after days of slowly growing terror? Brand and I looked
at each other—unspoken words passing between us. The end of the world was
coming and I wasn’t going to get an apology?

End of the
world. Did an apology even matter? They hadn’t made it to safety. No one would
be safe. Was I angry? Yes, as childish as it sounded, I was. I really meant it
about us being like brothers, and brothers didn’t pull stuff like this, not
even at the end. But now, I guess it didn’t matter. Everything I knew and loved
was ending. I shrugged, he shrugged, enough said. Body language, grow up with
someone, you just know what
’s being thought
.

Aloud, I said,
“Yeah well, I know what it’s like, hit all the red lights, cross traffic
is
bad. You know… the usual.”

James Houseman
snorted and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder while holding the box on his other
shoulder. He said, “Can you get the last box, son?”

With a quick
nod, Brand went for the box while I went with Mr. Houseman into the house.
Inside, I could hear a radio in the living room, set to Riverlite’s local
station. I ignored it as Mr. Houseman started putting cans of food into the
refrigerator. I pulled out more cans to hand to him.