The Road Home

He thought better of explaining the plan to every small group that Andrew sent down, instead waving at them to wait where they were and opening his phone to copy Jean’s driver schematic onto the small blackboard on the wall. As his hands flew over it, a text flashed across the screen.

His mother, representing both his parents who were away on a road trip to Calgary, hoped that he was safe and promised to call in a few hours, when they got out of the mass panic of the comet-watching event they were attending. Given how much panic just twenty-three people caused here, Clement doubted they would get away with just “a few hours.” He sent a single heart in reply with one hand just as he finished writing the last name for the last car with the other - if they were going to talk soon anyways, there was no point in overloading the town’s already fragile cellular network system.

Andrew was apparently a miracle-worker, because the groups of two to three kept coming, but the panic which had reigned on the top floor was nowhere to be seen, as if they felt protected from the unknown threat in the sky by a layer of wood. Nonetheless, terror was still largely what drove them - there were many wet pairs of eyes, shaking hands, and racing eyes. Fearing that this terror would eventually result in a chain reaction and panic would resume, he scoured the crowd for the first designated driver he could find.

That turned out to be the student council president. So that’s why they had needed him to attend… Although that was pointless now, since petty grudges no longer meant anything in the grand scheme of things. With a considerable amount of effort, he was shoved into his own car, appearing so distraught that Clement legitimately worried for his safety, and was off. Another car was sent off without incident, but when the third driver - the deputy of the yearbook club - was found collapsed with several empty bottles around them, Andrew had to take his place as the third car's driver. Luckily, Jean had somehow obtained the addresses of most guests, so they at least knew where to drop the blacked-out young man off.

As the fourth car sped off, just four people remained in the club house: Clement, Howard, Eliza, and Jean, who was still in the same pose at the table. This deficit was due to a small group leaving on foot after seeing the pitiful state that some drivers were in, and Evan being sent to escort them out of the labyrinthine school grounds.

It was already getting late, so they decided to leave cleaning for tomorrow and go home instead - with the exception of Clement, everyone had family at home that should have been worried sick at this point.

However, just as they were boarding the former president’s tiny car of a make that was impossible to discern in the darkness, Clement cried out:

“Crap! We forgot to close the dome. If it rains all our tech is screwed!”

The others only looked at him, exhausted, so he had to act himself:

“Leave without me. I live nearby anyways. Know this place like the back of my hand.”

“You sure? We can wait, you know-” the former president started, but Eliza cut him off in her new, pragmatic manner:

“You look like you’re on the verge of collapsing. Just listen to him and get us out of here. He’ll be fine.”

“Alright. Whatever you say...” The driver side window lowered and a hand extended out of it, which Clement shook:

“Please, drive safely. The roads around here can be treacherous.”

“Of course. I’ve always been a safe driver, don’t you remember?”

Clement really wanted to believe him as the car sped off into the distance. He had waved goodbye to Eliza, but couldn’t get Jean’s attention, presumably because she couldn’t see him from her side of the car, having taken the shotgun seat for navigation. Regretting not calling out to her, or something, he walked back to the observatory.

Closing the dome was a trivial task, and he figured he’d leave everything else for tomorrow, because the sunset was fading very quickly, and the forest shortcut he was going to take to his house was quite perilous, with many rocks, roots and fallen trees placed just right to trip an unsuspecting hiker. His phone rang as he was locking the front door - given the fact that the call had bypassed Do Not Disturb, it could only have been from his younger sister.

Victoria Wilson was two years younger than her brother, and had been spending the comet-viewing event at a different party which took place at her friend’s family mansion. She informed him that she would be staying the night with her friends. This wasn’t the first time she did something like this, the “Mansion District” of Riverburg was quite difficult for any hypothetical criminals or rioters to get into, and Clement knew the family well, so he wasn’t particularly worried for her. Nonetheless, old habits died hard, and he requested to confirm this with an adult in charge. She was also used to such habits, and so was already in the process of carrying her phone to her friend’s mother, so the process was quick and efficient.

He was in the process of telling her to be safe and call him if she needed anything when the call ended abruptly - the fragile cell service network had finally reached its limit under the unprecedented volume of calls going in and out of the city, and all across the country. Clement wasn’t worried, though, just a little annoyed, because his sister, along with most of his friends, and even his parents, had backup ways of contacting him via the Internet.

Luckily, the walk through the woods proved easy, and just as was exiting the tiny slice of wilderness, his thoughts overtook him again.

Despite the panic of the world-ending event, he couldn’t bring himself to cry, scream, or riot like he had seen some of the others do. The issue was that had been so unsure in his career choices after high school, that he had to take a gap year to think about it. So many options were presented to him, it seemed, that he was overwhelmed with the very concept of having to choose.

There was astronomy, a field that he loved dearly, but a field that was expensive to study in and already very saturated by qualified professionals. If he were to go this route, he would likely spend a lot of time searching for a job far below his qualification level. There were astronomy-adjacent fields like the astrophysics program Howard and his brother were taking, but he just could not stand the applied nature of many physics problems. His meeting with Howard definitely did not help: seeing the terrible toll that program had on his old friend in so little time was certainly very disheartening. 

There was also the family business - accounting. His parents didn’t necessarily push him into it because Victoria already showed a lot of interest in it, but he knew that their logo was on half the tax returns in their county, and that all three of the Wilson siblings would be sent to college loan-free thanks to it. However, he found the endless numbers associated with this job quite dull, and so had serious doubts about this career too.

Thus, without any real aspirations, long-term goals, and with the sinister announcement returning and retaining many of his friends in town, he wasn’t sure whether he should even feel bad. Sure, this was incredibly selfish, but he didn’t really believe that the world’s governments and militaries didn’t have some way of defending against the asteroids, and doubted that unrest and resource shortages would reach his town before the Canadian government restored order. In essence, this event had given him judgement-free time to think about life, tons of opportunities in the astronomy industry - he did find the asteroid way before the announcement, after all, and returned his friends that were to move all around the continent after graduation.

Suddenly, a lone gunshot interrupted his conflicting thoughts. It didn’t seem too close, but he hunched over just in case. The argument about civil unrest not reaching their town quickly crumbled as the harsh sound rang out for many kilometers. “So, it’s already beginning,” he said softly to himself, and doubled his walking pace.

The rest of the walk was relatively uneventful, and Clement focused the bulk of his willpower into getting home as soon as possible, so as to not get struck by a stray bullet. The Wilson family home was a quite modest, single-story wooden building with the standard plastic siding, despite their comparably impressive income compared to most of their neighbours. They had moved into this house just as his older brother entered high school, in order to save money for his college tuition and Clement tolerated these conditions quite well, the implication being that both him and Victoria would enjoy the same benefits.

Clement unlocked the door, brushed his teeth in spite of how tired he was - a final act of rebellion against the change that the world-ending event threatened to bring - changed into some light night clothes - the house didn’t have air conditioning so it was far too hot for pajamas - and had no trouble falling asleep.

He dreamed of the asteroids. Through the lens of his telescope, he could see their approach. As was usual with nightmares, he was convinced that it was just a dream, but could not help but feel scared as the dark shapes loomed closer and closer. They filled the entire field of view, snuffing out first the stars, then the Moon, and then even the Sun, when there was an ear-splitting noise. Clement jolted in his bed, but the noise hadn’t gone away. Its echo rolled over his position several more times before finally fading in the distance. Something frighteningly close to him had exploded.