CHAPTER 1

Crystal never saw it coming. Sure, every religious venue and church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, had been talking about it, but she wasn't devout. She didn't go to church every Sunday or read the Bible every day before she went to bed, but she did believe there was more than just her world. Regardless, when the churches began their uproars about the coming of the savior and the rapture, Crystal would be a liar if she said that she hadn't turned a deaf ear to their voices. It was just all too much to believe. Besides, how could a human being know something like that? Maybe she was right, but maybe she was wrong, too.

It wasn't until August that the news on the rising tension over what the state of the world actually was began to pick up. Scientists with names Crystal had never heard before were coming on television and discussing the odd frequency of meteors breaking through the layers of Earth's atmosphere and the anomalies occurring with the star Betelgeuse. It was a super-giant star, a part of the Orion constellation, and one that scientists stated, "would have enough power to obliterate Earth's atmosphere, allowing for space debris to pass through with little obstacle." Of course, such a statement caused Crystal some pause, but the scientists would always follow up with statistics and studies, which were supposed to comfort and tell everyone that there was little chance of an apocalypse ever happening in a single lifetime. Crystal only understood the bare minimum of what was actually said, but, then again, she was just a history major. It also didn't help that every professional they put on to discuss it spoke in a monotone that had Crystal tuning out half of what was said. They didn't seem to be worried, so neither was she.

And on a regular August morning, the last thing on Crystal's mind was Betelgeuse and the boring scientists. She had a test in History 203, and as she jumped in the shower her mind was running through dates and names that had something to do with the civil rights movement, but it was all swimming together. The bleariness wasn't clearing as fast as she liked. She groaned with the pressure and cursed the fact that she had scheduled an 8 a.m. class when she lived thirty minutes away from the University of Alabama. Crystal wasn't a morning person.

Still, she pushed on, or trudged on, depending on which task she was pressed with to make herself look somewhat presentable for regular society. Crystal had lived life as a tomboy, and it wasn't any different in college. The night before, she had good intentions. She laid out the straightener and blow dryer before bed, but in the morning she had to choose between more sleep or straight hair. Sleep usually won out. Then she'd jump out of the shower, stare at the disgustingly pink straightener and blow dryer set her mother had gotten her on her fourteenth birthday, sneer, pull her hair into a wet knot, and back to the bedroom she'd go. Good intentions could only go so far.

Her dressing habits weren't any better. A T-shirt, a hoodie, a presumably clean pair of jeans, and her Converse. She couldn't care less about anything she wore, but her Converse were something else. They were black high tops, and something about them just clicked with her. If she had a style, it would be lazy, but the Converse felt like they made her seem more laid-back than lazy. It was an embarrassing thought, and she often felt it silly, but she couldn't help smiling when they slipped onto her feet. They felt familiar and just like they had two years ago when her mom had bought them for her. It was one gift her mom never questioned getting for her upon request. Crystal thought it was because it was the only article of clothing she had shown any remote interest in, and her mom had been dying for her to take an interest in being a girly-girl. Her interest in the shoes was the extent of her girliness, though.

Once they were on her feet, she was set and ready to go. Crystal walked through her trailer, passing through the hallway and the living room, then pausing in the kitchen long enough to grab her key off the counter and to shoulder her bag balanced on the bar stool. Her home was sparse and run-of-the-mill, but it was hers. With one last look to make sure everything was in order, she opened the screen door, opened the main door, and stepped out onto the porch. She turned back long enough to lock the door, but the second the lock turned, she bounded down the steps of her little half-porch, all the while clicking her Volkswagen Beetle's unlock button. Along with her shoes, it was one of the few feminine staples in her life. She drove a bright green Volkswagen Bug. It was twelve years old, the air conditioning worked only half the time, and she was almost too tall for it, but it was too cute for her not to have in her life.

Crystal bounced up to the car, opened the door, and flung her bag into the passenger seat before sliding in and putting the key in the ignition, bringing the car to life. She silently prayed as she flipped a switch on the dash, then sighed in relief when air began to flow out and circulate through the car. It felt like a good day, and as she pulled out of the driveway the worries of the world and the test seemed to fade away into the background, replaced by the whirring of the cool air in her car and the quiet melody of whatever song was playing on the radio. She never saw it coming.

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The drive was dull, though Crystal's mood was significantly better than it had been when she woke up. The monotony of life always stood out the best on the drive up to school. It was thirty minutes of silence, except for the air and the occasional honk from a passer-by Crystal barely recognized. She hardly ever left the radio on for longer than a few minutes. One of her pet-peeves was "talking" radio shows. Radios were for music, and she didn't care enough about celebrities and their bad habits to listen to radio shows. It was just one more reason for her to not be a morning person: morning radio "talked" too much.

Thankfully, with very little morning traffic, Crystal's drive didn't drag along, but she did find herself gazing up at the sky. It was somewhat overcast because of the early morning humidity, but there was a strange heat sweltering outside and making everything look like an oasis. Images that should be stable and concrete seemed to physically waver in the morning light. Crystal lived in Alabama, and it could get up to 110 degrees easily, but not even a summer morning could create so much heat as to make everything visibly move. The voices of those scientists suddenly seemed much more prominent than they had before in Crystal's mind, and it was so distracting that she had to stomp on her brakes to catch the turn in to the Little Caesar's parking lot, which earned her a few more not-so-friendly honks from the drivers behind her.

She tried to brush them off as best she could, but a blush still managed to rise up and heat her face. She wasn't one to make mistakes so easily, and she mentally shook herself for allowing herself to be so easily distracted. With a huff and a renewed sense of concentration, she pulled into the parking lot and chose the spot farthest from the pizza place. It didn't really matter because her car would end up smelling like pizza anyway, though Crystal still didn't understand how that was even possible. Regardless, she couldn't afford the $600 parking decal, and the next best thing was to park twenty-five minutes off campus and walk. When she had first come up with the idea, she had told herself, It won't be a big deal. I need to walk more. It'll keep me healthy. But as time went on and she got further and further into the Fall semester, she became willing to sell her left kidney for a parking space, and the thought of having to get out into the uncomfortable heat had Crystal questioning whether or not it would be worth a $500 parking ticket just so she didn't have to walk all the way.

In the end she decided to push forward with the walk, mainly because she didn't think her kidney would be worth even $200 and she couldn't afford a parking ticket on her record, anyway. She could barely afford her car insurance as it was. With an unenthusiastic sigh, she reached over to the passenger side and pulled her bag into her lap before yanking the key out of the ignition and kicking open the driver-side door. It was all very robotic and well-rehearsed, and it only got worse when she stepped out of her cool car and into the morning heat. It hit her the second she made it all the way out of the car, and she found herself gasping for breath as her lungs tried to adjust to the completely different air temperatures. It was jarring, but when she threw her bag over her shoulders, she was all business.

She pulled out her phone to check the time: 7:32. She had about three minutes to spare before she'd have to book it to class. Just enough time to walk instead of jog in the heat, and she made sure to take her time, too. Sweat had already begun to pour down her forehead, and she hadn't even gotten completely out of the parking lot. Once again her thoughts went back to the scientists on the TV, but something else began to intrude her thoughts. It was a silence, and on a Monday in a college town, silence shouldn't have even existed. Even the sound of birds and squirrels fell away into the deafening silence. She paused and turned to face the road, surprised to find cars stopped in the middle, but there was no hollering or screaming. Not even horns were blaring. Instead, people were getting out of their cars, all in a quiet hum that fell away to the silence.

Crystal couldn't tear her eyes away from the strange sight. Everyone was out in the road, cars abandoned even if they were still running and with doors left wide-open and inviting. No person looked exactly like the other, but they all pointed towards the sky in one way or another. Some with outreaching arms, others with only their eyes and their faces, but everyone looked to the sky. Everyone except Crystal, but then something clicked in her. Despite the rising heat and the sweat that dripped into her eyes, her legs quivered with the need to run and to get away. But her eyes met someone else's — a man standing maybe three feet away from her on the road. He turned his face away from the sky long enough to meet her eyes, and his mouth opened as if to call out to her, but the instant his voice began, another sound, one even more deafening than the silence, erupted.

It was a shrill scream, not unlike the screams of people from horror films, but different. It was almost alien in the way it continued to get louder and louder. Crystal covered her ears and ducked as if to dodge something. Along with the noise, the heat had risen to an almost unbearable point, and in her attempts at protecting herself, she had lost sight of the man on the road. Crystal looked back in his direction, only to find a meteorite in his place, engulfed in flames with a hand reaching out from beneath it. It gave Crystal pause, and she suddenly found herself wondering what he had looked like before he was crushed.

She recalled blue eyes, but she couldn't be sure. It was too hard to think with the screaming of the sky, along with the screaming of the people on the streets as she watched them run, taking shelter in homes that probably weren't theirs and fighting to get into each other's cars. It was mass chaos, and Crystal still didn't fully understand why, except that a flaming meteorite had fallen from the sky. If she were going to run, she had to know what she was running from. Every step she took weighed her down, and it was all from fear. How could she run from something she couldn't see coming at her? Yet her legs quivered with the need to move. With a rigid lift of her chin, she shot her gaze to the sky, and she realized the sun had been completely blotted out, replaced with thousands upon thousands of tinier suns, all heading directly for Earth. The moment her brain realized it, her legs lifted without a care, and with her head ducked back down, she took off toward the warehouse hidden behind the Alabama Jersey shop directly beside Little Caesar's.

It didn't take much thought to figure out why she was heading there. A warehouse seemed much safer than a regular home would be, but the moment she passed the jersey shop and the warehouse door was in sight, her great idea seemed more questionable than anything else. There was a figure leaning against the door, and as she got closer to the figure, she realized it was a man. He didn't move, yet he was stuck in a state of motion — frozen in a scream while his hand wrapped around a key in the door. Crystal wasn't sure what he had died from right off, but she assumed a heart attack of some sort. The man was older — around her grandfather's age.

Any other time, the death would've given Crystal some pause, but it wasn't the time or the place for mourning or pondering death. An imaginary clock was ticking in the back of her head, and death was becoming an all-too-real possibility for her. With as much courage as she could muster, while fighting back the bile rising in her throat, she kicked at the man until he fell over with a hard thud. His mouth still hung open, but his arm bent at a weird angle, broken, but still outreaching. It almost looked like he was trying to scold Crystal even in death, but Crystal couldn't take any more time. The screaming was ratcheting higher and higher, and any second the meteorites would hit and destroy everything without a care.

Hands shaking, she gripped the key still in the door with one hand, but couldn't get her grip steady enough to turn it. With a panicked screech, she muttered, "Come on, come on, come on," her fearful chant. She finally turned it when she used her other hand to steady the first. Rushing inside, she didn't take the time to remove the key, but used up precious seconds closing the door behind her and leaning up against it, gasping for breath. Even if it didn't matter, not being able to see the meteorites anymore was beyond comforting. Though she still shook, her body steadied itself much easier in the warehouse, but the heat was beyond stifling in the metal building. It also didn't help that she had on a hoodie, which she immediately stripped off without much thought. Much cooler and with a much more level-head, she looked around the warehouse, not surprised to find it sparsely filled. There were about four racks of sportswear, mainly because the college was in the throes of football season, and most of the product was already out in the stores. She guessed the man outside had been the owner and was on his way to count the final load before sending it off.

Regardless, she headed toward the racks, hoping to find some piece of furniture or something she could hide under in case the warehouse wasn't strong enough to hold out against the meteorites. Thankfully there was a desk, seemingly made out of some kind of metal, but Crystal couldn't tell what kind. It would have to do. She was about to prepare for the worst and crawl beneath the desk when her eyes caught the papers stacked neatly on the desk. Her hands grazed the papers — cold despite the heat, as if they hadn't been touched in some time. It was a spreadsheet stack, detailing the quantity of each item still left in the warehouse. Something about those papers brought the bile in her throat back up, but she didn't get a chance to relieve her stomach before a screech of something crushing metal rang out above her head, the lights flickering along with it. Thankfully, the lights came back on with no trouble, but the roof was already buckling in on itself, and Crystal assumed it was due to the meteorite that had left a dent the size of a Smart Car in the metal.

With no more time, Crystal dropped to the floor and pushed her way under the desk, folding up enough to fit perfectly inside. Her body strained to fit in the position required, but once the meteorites started to hit in their strange symphony against the roof, Crystal could have folded herself into a pretzel just out of fear. The roof matched the screaming with its own cries of pain, and it wasn't long before one side of the roof fell along with the meteorites. Crystal was thankful to find it wasn't on her side, and the desk was strong enough to stand the shock of the roof falling to lean against it, but it didn't stop Crystal from screaming in utter fear and surprise.

But not long after the roof fell, the meteorites' screams petered out until the only screams were those of Crystal, and those didn't stop until her voice grew hoarse, and her voice kept breaking with each intake of breath. Then, with sore muscles, she crawled out from under the desk into complete darkness, except for a thin trail of light filtering in from the far side of the warehouse. Wiping away the sweat and tears that had poured during the rain of meteorites, Crystal cleared her throat and started on her trek toward the light, all the while praying she didn't trip over or hit any of the clothing racks. Once she got to the light, her hope diminished to a rising of claustrophobia. The light was coming from a small gap between the wall and the roof, warped from the meteorites indenting and pulling at the metal. She could barely fit her hand through, much less climb out, and the only exit she knew of was on the other side of the warehouse. The tears were rising again, and she was doing her best to try and think of some way to get out, but the only thing she could think of was the stupid clothing racks.

She tried to follow that line of thought, hoping for some inspiration, and found herself wondering if they were the cheap plastic or the nice metal kind. She hadn't thought to look when she came in, and instead began to pray she could find or knock some over before disappearing back into the darkness. Thankfully, she toed the rack before she could run into it, and was pleased to find that her hands touched cool metal when she began to pull it back towards the little stream of light. Once she had at least a dim stream of light coming in onto the rack, she tugged on the ends of the main bar, dislodging it, which caused the jerseys to fall on the ground in a heap. Crystal was about to abandon the jerseys to work solely with her bar when she thought better of it, and bent down to scoop one up.

She had to squint to properly see, but managed to wrap the jersey around the end of the bar to create a handle. Then, she shoved the other end of the bar into the gap, gritting her teeth at the sharp sound of metal on metal. Unfortunately, she couldn't find the strength or the leverage to pull the bar any farther than the gap would allow, no matter how many times she yanked. Crystal tried to hold back her scream of frustration, but it ended up falling out as a grunt. She was losing patience fast, and her anxiety was heightening with every second she remained in the seemingly shrinking warehouse. Gripping the jersey, she lifted herself off the ground and walked up the wall until she was in a crouched position. Her arms shook with her added weight, but Crystal didn't take any time to notice. Instead, she focused on pushing off the wall and pulling on the bar, which managed to pull the metal back enough to allow light to illuminate even more of the room. Her hope renewed, Crystal continued to pull and pull, despite the harsh screams of the metal and her own sweat beginning to drip into her eyes. Finally, the bar came loose and her legs straightened out completely, the gap open as wide as she could possibly get it. Her head fell back and thumped against the tile as she hit the floor, despite her backpack taking the brunt of the shock. After all that work, she ended up back in darkness, but instead of the darkness of the warehouse, she lost herself to the darkness of unconsciousness.

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When Crystal woke up, she found herself staring into a bright light, but it wasn't the afterlife. She didn't know how long she had been out, but by the sounds her stomach made upon her awakening, it had to be long enough for hunger to settle in. Crystal mentally cursed herself for not eating before she left for school, but her thoughts began to swim together as she tried to sit up. The light tilted and moved around in her vision. She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, willing the throbbing to stop and for things to settle, and with time they did. But standing up was an entirely different animal.

The moment she did, the bile that had been fighting with her finally won out, and she doubled over to let it. Once her retching had subsided and the awful taste had cleared enough that she could concentrate on something else, the memory of the gap in the wall brought her right back into business mode. She rushed over and peered out to the other side, which was full of light. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, which made the heat just as unbearable as before, but she took the sight of the sun clear and present as a good sign. Regardless, when she climbed through the gap and found her balance on the uneven incline of the roof, avoiding the meteorites, both cooled and still flaming, was a challenge that made her weakness even more apparent. She needed food, and quick. In the meantime, she shook with every step and tried her best not to trip and fall, but her legs were like noodles. Thankfully, she made it to the door without too much trouble, and she didn't hesitate to open it.

But when she saw the outside world, she almost preferred the darkness of the warehouse — almost. She didn't feel claustrophobic anymore, but the fear it left behind was all-consuming. Meteorites had completely destroyed the Little Caesar's next door, and the building behind it was still in flames, though it was more a burning pile of ash than anything. She looked to the man whom she had pushed over to get into the warehouse and was surprised to find him still intact and still silently screaming. If she wasn't still sick, she might have moved him or buried him, but her stomach was already beginning to lurch at the thought. Instead she headed back to the road, avoiding the fires, the meteorites, and the blood splatter. How could there be so much blood and no bodies? Once she got back to the road, she even looked for the out-reaching arm of the man she saw before it all had gone down, but it was either destroyed or under another meteorite.

The only hopeful image in the scene of destruction was her little green Volkswagen, remotely the same except for a large dent in roof. Because of the round hood, the meteorite that had hit it rolled off and sat coldly behind it. Looking around, her car was probably the one in the best shape except for a few sitting abandoned on the road. She might have gone to look into some of the cars, but joy over her car still being in working order preceded any need for scouring, and with another migraine coming on she really didn't feel the need for standing out in the heat any longer than was necessary. She needed something to eat, and that thought brought about an image of her mother's house, which was conveniently located in Tuscaloosa. It would take about ten minutes to get there, as long as the roads were fairly clear, and judging by the lack of life and police, Crystal assumed they would be. Yet, that lacking also brought a pit of dread in her empty stomach, and as she opened the car door, only to have it fall and scrape the ground, it only increased her fear.

Even the small fact that her air still worked did nothing to comfort her as she pulled out over the median and onto the road.

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Navigating the roads was a lot more complicated than she would've liked to admit, mainly due to meteorites and not dead people, which Crystal was thankful for. But there were bodies, and plenty of them. Despite having already emptied most of her stomach's contents, she still found herself gagging every time she passed an even partially burned body. The ones that didn't look burned or harmed, she just told herself they were asleep, but even that had a haunting spin to it that made her uncomfortable. It was even worse when she had to swallow her disgust and drive over some of them. She wasn't going to get out of the car, and it was easier to close her eyes and step on the gas than to have to move them out of the way. She would mourn them later.

But as she drove farther on, past piles of ash that used to be buildings and even a few people, heads hanging toward the ground as they walked, Crystal's throat repeatedly clenched and unclenched with held-back sobs. Somehow, she saw her sister and her mother in those people, and even in the dead. It made her press the gas a little harder, despite her best efforts to calm her quivering legs.

When she did make it to her mother's neighborhood, she was relieved to find no flames engulfing any houses or dead bodies piled up along the street, but trees. Her mother's neighborhood had been known for its trees, but now huge magnolias that had lived through tornadoes and storms were destroyed and broken in half by meteorites that still rested near the stumps. Crystal could still smell the sweet blossoms and remember how the leaves would fall on her as she read beneath their branches. She often recalled a leaf she had kept and used as bookmark, and as she parked her car she longed for such a simple comfort. She climbed out of the car, taking care not to scrape the door on the ground any more than she already had, and slammed it shut. A tree had fallen directly in the road, and there was no maneuvering around it without risking busting a tire or harming her Bug more than she already had. Even out of the car there was no way around the tree. Crystal was no athlete, but she was going to have to scale the tree to get into the neighborhood. Gripping the bark, she climbed, inch by inch, each time allowing the bark to dig into her flesh and catch her clothes. Still, she climbed and reveled in the natural and familiar smell she had come to recognize as her "I'm home," smell. If she could, she'd bottle it up and take it with her, just in case she had to leave.

But that thought in itself made her heart ache, and instead she banished it, hoping her skin or her clothes would catch the scent and she'd be able to carry it that way. If not, she'd ingrain it in her mind forever. It took her much longer than she originally had guessed to scale the trunk of the tree, mainly because she spent so much time drifting and remembering times that would no longer be relevant. Regardless, she pushed through the nostalgia and made her way into her mother's neighborhood.

Most houses creaked with the weight of their fallen structures as Crystal bounded down the street, trying to find a house that looked as if it had at least some life in it. Where had all the people gone? There were cars both along the curb and in the driveways, but none of them looked to have even been touched since she last visited, and how long ago had that been? She couldn't even remember, and the regret stung even as her mother's house came into view, nearly untouched. Though the house had been untouched and its frame glistened with new paint, probably the 50th coat if Crystal had to guess, the door was strangely ajar. As many times as Crystal's mother had complained about shutting the door all the way, even if the world ended, Crystal's mother wasn't one to break her habits. That little pit of dread, which had continued to weigh her down, seemed to jump up into her throat, and Crystal found herself bounding down the street and into the house with the lightness of a feather.

The moment her shoes squeaked on the hardwood, she was calling for her mother and her sister, Angel. Their names tumbled out of her mouth as she rushed through the house, taking note of strange things missing. Couch cushions, whole cabinets of food, her mom's bags, the mattress and sheets, all gone, but one room had been yet to be checked. Her family hadn't responded to any of her calls, and the final room was her sister's. She didn't want them to be in the room, and as she wrapped her hand around the shockingly chilled knob, she mentally willed the room to be in the same state as the rest of the house — relatively empty.

And when she opened the door, tremors of held-back sobs raced up her torso, down her arms and legs, up into her throat, and out of her mouth as a cry. On her light green plush rug, her mother and sister lay, a bullet hole through her mother's head, and another through Angel's chest. Her mother's arms were wrapped around her sister. Crystal stepped into the room, toeing around the small pool of blood that had stained the rug brown and spread out to the hardwood floor. She pressed both hands to her mouth, cupping back the sobs and letting the tears spill over and trail down her fingers. The only thing running through her mind was how peaceful they looked, holding each other as if asleep.