“Do you know how long we will be gone for?” Lilli called out from the closet. “I have no idea” Andor yelled back from the guest room as he pulled a huge bin off the shelf and began rummaging around inside of it. “Where should we go?” Lilli said as she walked out of the room pulling a medium sized suitcase behind her and clutching a pile of jackets in her free arm. “I think we should head to my parents cabin in western Wyoming. It’ll be nice to get away for a bit anyways… Even if all this turns out to be just nonsense.” “I love your parents' cabin. We haven’t been there in a long time…” Lilli said as she piled the items by the door to the garage. “When was the last time we went there?” she said over her shoulder as she headed into the kitchen to pack some snacks and food. Andor didn’t hear her though he was too busy stuffing sleeping bags, their backpacking tent, and stove into his trusty old pack. A few minutes later he came down the stairs hefting his and hers matching packs. “I called the office and told them I was going to work from home for the next few days. I don’t need to be back in San Francisco until Wednesday next week.” Lilli said as she rummaged into the back of the pantry looking for the cans of chili. “Perfect! We will have a little over a week out there then. It should be pretty this time of the year as the snow is melting and the flowers are starting to bloom.” Andor said with a grunt. “Have you seen my headlamp?” “It’s in the guest room closet, not the office closet.” Lilli replied as she began stuffing items from the pantry into several canvas tote bags. A minute later Andor yelled from the guest room “Found it!” Then Lilli could hear him thundering down the staircase. “Okay I think we have everything we need for a long weekend in the mountains…” “If we drive in shifts we can be there by morning.” Lilli said with a groan as she hefted the bulging bags over her shoulder.  “Okay good plan.” Andor replied as he grabbed the pile of items Lilli had left by the garage door and ferried them to the trunk of their old yet trusty gray sedan. “I slept like shit, I’m gonna rack out now if it’s okay with you…” Andor said as he buckled his seatbelt and adjusted the volume on the radio. “Go for it. Traffic is horrible anyways…” Lilli said, slightly distracted as she swerved to avoid a squirrel which had run across the road in front of their car. “I wonder why it’s so bad?” “I think the Dodgers were playing the Giants this afternoon. Folks are heading home… and it looks like a fender bender a few miles up ahead.” “Wonderful” Lilli moaned… “Who won?” “Giant’s did 7 -2.” “Well that’s nice at least…” Lilli turned on a podcast about how the warming oceans were impacting the mating habits of dolphins. Before the intro had even finished Andor was snoring away in the passenger seat. ![[nightSky-ii6.jpg]] At 11pm Lilli pulled off a rural byway and the crunch of gravel beneath the tires wrested Andor from his slumber. “Where are we?” he said groggily as he rubbed eyes and yawned. “Somewhere in northern Nevada. Interstate 80 was closed due to a major accident. So, I had to take some backroads. I have to pee.” Lilli said as she opened the door. In an instant the frigid night air filled the warm car. “Holy shit it’s freezing!” she squealed as she ran around to the passenger side of the car. Andor opened his door to stretch his legs. “Don’t look at me while I am peeing!” Lilli shrieked as she gave him a cross look. “Sorry but you look so cute… I can’t help myself.” Andor replied with a twinkle in his eye. Lilli groaned and Andor chuckled under his breath and wandered around to the driver side of the car. “Oh my gosh! I had to go so bad. There’s nothing out here. I kept holding out for a gas station or something but I haven’t seen anything in hours.” “Look at those stars!” Andor exclaimed as Lilli snuggled up next to him and he wrapped his arm around her. “I’m feeling recharged after my long nap. Thanks for driving. I can drive for a bit if you’d like…’. “Okay” Lilli closed her eyes and kissed Andor. The night air was frigid but the intimacy of their bodies pressed against each other, the taste, and smell of her lover’s body pressed against hers warmed her up. Lilli was about to say something when there was a horrific roar, which was quickly followed by an ear splitting boom. They could feel the shockwave pelt their faces with dust and grit and the sonic boom both made them jump. A moment later the dark night was engulfed by a painfully bright flash of light. “What the fuck!?” Andor exclaimed in shock. Lilli gasped and spun around so she could watch a massive fireball streak over their heads. They stood in horror gazing up at the gargantuan fiery projectile as it shredded the crisp dark night sky like a deranged demonic firefly. As it streaked towards the horizon they saw another flash, and then a second smaller object broke free of the asteroid and fell towards the earth. The light from both objects was so bright now they were forced to cover their eyes. A second or so later the fireball disappeared behind a mountain and gradually the sky grew dimmer and dimmer until the landscape was bathed in soft starlight once again. Lilli and Andor stood there holding one another frozen in shock and horror at what they had just witnessed unable to speak. “Sweetheart, look!” Lilli exclaimed, pointing down the road. Andor followed Lilli’s extended hand and saw several deer come bounding out of the desert. In one impressive jump they cleared the byway and then disappeared into the chaparral and cactus. A few seconds later a raccoon and a rabbit scampered across the road, hot on the deer’s tail. “Well that’s spooky as fuck!” Andor said with a shudder. “What are they running fr…” before she could finish her sentence there was a rushing sound and then the stars disappeared in a mass of cacophony. “What in the actual hell!?” “It looks like a massive flock of birds.” Lilli yelled over the deafening noise. “The flock is covering the sky!” “Get in the car babe!” Andor yelled as he opened the driver side door and jumped in. “What are the animals running away from?” Lilli asked as she slammed the passenger door closed and buckled her seatbelt.. “I don’t know but I do know I don’t want to find out.” Andor replied as he mashed the accelerator to the floor spraying gravel and dust into the night. “Let’s get out of here!” There were fleeing animals all over the road. Unfortunately they hit several, but the dazed and injured animals seemed unfazed and would just clamber back to their feet and keep running pell mell into the desert. “I think I am going to be sick” Lilli said as Andor turned on the radio and began scanning for a channel to tell them what was going on - but all he got was static.  “Oh shit!” Andor blurted out so suddenly it made Lilli jump out of her seat. “What? What is it!” “Look behind us!” Lilli spun around and looked out the back window. There on the horizon behind them was an ominous glow on the horizon. “It wasn’t there one second and then suddenly it just appeared. I happened to look up in the rearview mirror as it changed.” “What is it?” Lilli asked as she reached for Andor’s shoulder. Andor just shook his head as the pit in his stomach caused him to break out in cold sweats… “Whatever it is, it isn’t good…” Lilli couldn’t take her eyes off the glow in the back window. She thought back to the nightmares, omens, premonitions, and even the prophecies which had transpired to bring them to this empty desert. *What if we had stayed?* *Is my nightmare happening right now in real life?* The thought of millions of people screaming and being vaporized in a flash of burning light made her want to retch out the window. Andor’s thoughts were just as bleak. *What force or entity was aware this was going to happen and why did they rescue them? How come they were the chosen ones?* Andor had struggled a lot since he woke up in the hospital with the fact - he had survived and many others had not. *Why me* was a question he had been unable to answer then and now, just as he was coming to peace with it all, he was being confronted with the same unanswerable question all over again. The speakers in the car crackled and then the emergency broadcast jingle ripped the young couple out of the morbid inner dialogues and back into the present. <ul style="font-style: italic">“At 11:17 pm Pacific Standard Time, US Space Force command detected an anomalous object which entered our earth’s atmosphere. Just seconds after the object was detected, there was a disastrous spike in microwave spectrum frequencies which decimated most of the communication networks and satellites on the western seaboard. From Costa Rica to Alaska there is a massive blackout in communications coming from the Pacific Coast right now. However, we do know at 11:23 pm, the galactic object crashed into the Pacific Ocean twenty miles off the coast of California.”</ul> “Oh my gosh!” Lilli cried, the gravity of what had just happened hit her like a bowling ball being dropped from a ten-story building. She started to weep… In shock Andor’s foot slipped off the accelerator pedal, and the car began to coast to a stop in the middle of the road. <ul style="font-style: italic">“Reports are coming in of a massive tidal wave which has all but wiped out San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Eureka. The mayors of Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle are issuing evacuation orders now. If you are hearing this and are anywhere in the vicinity of those cities, please go East with all possible expediency. The wave has been reported to be over five hundred feet tall and it has swept as far as twenty miles inland.”</ul> The message ended and then a moment later began at the beginning. Andor and Lilli turned and looked at each other. The dichotomy of the horror of what they were hearing on the radio juxtaposed with the soft starlight which made the desert look so peaceful was stark and felt almost alien. For a moment Andor’s mind carried him back to the desert in Syria. The night sky there too had graced the scenery with a ‘je ne sais quoi’ in the midst of untold carnage, death, and suffering. “Fuck!” a bright light lit up the inside of their car which made Andor flinch and Lilli scream. A second later there was a deafening horn blast as a big rig blew past their stopped car in the middle of the road. “Geez, he must be doing one hundred and twenty miles an hour!” Andor shrieked as their little car rocked back and forth. Both of them hadn’t noticed they had come to a stop in the middle of the road. They were in such shock at what they were hearing on the radio. “Let’s get out of here, babe, before we get creamed by a truck,” Lilli said, putting her hand on Andor’s thigh. Andor mashed the accelerator to the floor. They never caught up with the big rig despite their little sedan toping out at 105 mph. When they merged back onto Interstate 80 in Elko, Nevada Andor picked up his phone “Maybe we have reception here…I am going to try to call my folks.” “I’ve kept checking but I don’t have reception” Lilli replied as she swiped the screen with her thumb to check the reception bar graph for the thousandth time. After a few moments of silence Andor muttered under his breath and tossed the phone in the back seat out of exasperation. “Did you get static too?” Lilli asked as she dropped her phone dejectedly into her lap. “Yea…. I guess it’s a good thing mom’s health issues forced them to move to Arizona six months ago. They’d probably be dead now if they had stayed in Santa Barbara.” Lilli stared out the window. “My dad is visiting Vermont to do some spring skiing… He probably thinks we’re dead.” “Oh my god… Sausalito was on the other side of the bay from San Francisco you’re right it is probably destroyed.” Andor said as a tear rolled down his cheek. “What about poor Garçon?” Lilli said as she began to sob uncontrollably. Andor put his hand on Lilli’s shoulder and replied “Why that old rapscallion, he’s invincible. Remember that flock of birds knocked him out of the tree? We thought for sure he was dead but he scampered off like it was no big deal. It’s gonna take a lot more than an asteroid to take that little guy out.” Lilli wiped her nose with the back of her hand and then snuggled up next to Andor and closed her eyes. They passed the next few hours in silence, both of them lost in thought and wondering when the radio would come back to life and tell them more. Then around four in the morning, Lilli sat up and pointed up into the sky “Babe what is that?” Andor leaned over the steering wheel and gazed up into the night’s sky. “Looks like dozens of squadrons of military aircraft and they’re flying west.” “Holy shit! There has to be hundreds of planes.” “At least…” Andor said as he whistled “Helicopters and Ospreys too. I recognize some of them. They used to fly patrols in Syria above us all the time…” “It’s really hitting the fan huh babe?” Lilli whispered. “Yes it is sweetheart… Yes it is.” ### Next Chapter: [[15 - The Pontiac 🚘]] ### Previous Chapter: [[13 - Two + Two = Four 🧮]]