The Day After

My name is Dean Campbell Cooper, I am thirty-four years old and for
the last six months have been living, along with three others, in the
first man made habitat on the moon. It is here that I met Natalie, the
woman who would have become my wife.
We were due to marry in England, three months after our stay here
ended. Natalie's parents had made the arrangements in our absence. When
we first saw the photographs of the church they'd booked in rural
Staffordshire Natalie had cried, when I asked her why she said she
wished that she was back home, making plans and sending out invites. I
told her to stop being silly, that soon we would be there and then she
could do all the things she wanted.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
Three days later Andre, our resident astronomer, spotted the meteor
spinning slowly way out beyond the orbit of mars. This was nothing
unusual, although most of the debris of the solar system had been found
and logged, there were still plenty of rogue chunks 0of rock floating
around waiting to be discovered. What was unusual was the size; Andre
calculated it to be at least Fourteen miles across. How such a vast
chunk had gone unnoticed despite the many to catalogue such things was
a mystery. Andre had made a note of the meteors position and sent the
information back to earth.
A further three days passed as the meteor was tracked as it made its
way amongst the stars. Its orbit carefully calculated to within a
fraction of a mile.
It was another two days before we had any feedback from earth, two
unbelievably ordinary days considering the news that was to come.
There's an old saying that everyone can remember where they were on
the day that Kennedy died, I don't know if this is true but I suspect
that it is, I wasn't even born then but I can imagine the impact of the
statement as it was broadcast across the airwaves. I experienced a
similar felling to what must have been felt on that day in 1963, a
feeling that all was going to change, that what was known was to become
unknown. I can see it in my mind, where I was, who I was with, what I
was doing.
The day to day schedule upon 'moon base Alpha' (The unofficial name
for our base among the stars) was mostly made up of routine checks on
the systems vital to supporting life within the bubble of earth we had
created. Checking the air supply, the water purification and a
painstaking search of the outer skin for any sign of damage that could
prove cataclysmic to us were just daily chores that took up the first
four hours of our day. That morning's rota had me down for a spot of
gardening in the part of the base that had been set apart for
hydroponics experiments. It was a task that I personally hated but knew
that I couldn't wriggle out of it again. The last time I'd been
assigned this duty I'd managed to persuade Natalie to take it in my
place, but not this time.
So it was with reluctance that I stood among the GM vegetables and
plants searching for any signs that they were reacting harshly to the
artificial environment, so far the experiments had gone better than
expected, when the radio crackled into life.
It was Andre, he sounded breathless. He needed all of us to report to
the main briefing room immediately.
"I haven't finished here yet." I told him, hearing the others making
similar complaints.
"This is important." He answered, his Russian accent pronouncing the
words ziss is.
Although he wasn't officially in charge of the base, none of us were,
we all knew that he wouldn't have sent for us in the middle of the
daily checks if it weren't something vital, so within Ten minutes we
were all assembled in the briefing room.
"What is it?" O'Connor asked him with his usual bluntness. Andre
didn't answer, he just handed a piece of paper to him which O'Connor
read in silence then passed along to Natalie. She read it and passed it
to me.
The details aren't important; the only thing that did matter was that
the asteroid that Andre had discovered a week earlier had been
calculated to impact the Earth in less than a fortnight.
At first I didn't grasp the implications of this, I couldn't. After all
it's not everyday that you learn that everything you've ever known,
everything you've ever loved is going to be destroyed.
"Is there anything they can do?" It was O'Connor again; he seemed to be
the only one capable of speech.
"Nothing, not a thing." Andre eventually answered, though I had to
strain to hear him. "What about us? They can't leave us here."
Natalie's face had gone white; I know she was thinking about her own
family, the people she loved.
"We're on our own I guess. We've got the emergency shuttle I suppose,
but what's to go back for?" O'Connor looked at me as he said this and I
knew he wanted me to answer him. After all, I was the pilot, the only
one who would be able to fly them back home if we did decide to die
along with the rest of mankind.
"I think we should think about this. As I see it we've got a choice of
dying on the earth along with everyone else or staying here, taking our
chances with what we have.
This experiment was designed as long term; if we decide to stay we'll
just have to make it longer term than we thought." Although I had said
we should wait, my mind was already made up. I wouldn't go back; I just
had to hope the others felt the same.
"Do you think we have a chance?" Andre looked bad; he was the only one
of us who was married. He had a photograph of his wife and children
stuck to the wall of the telescope bay.
"I don't know." I replied. I didn't.
"What about NASA? Haven't they got something to stop it?" O'Connor had
immense faith in the people of his home country; he was finding it hard
to believe that they would be helpless in the face of this.
"It's too close, there's not enough time." Natalie reached over and
held my hand as she said this; I could see the tears in her eyes.
The rest of the meeting was taken up with discussions about what we
should do. I told them my feelings and the others seemed to agree in
principle, though Andr? suggested we should go back to the surface
after the impact. This caused more discussions and it was well into the
evening before Natalie and I found ourselves alone.
"Will they all die?" she asked me.
"I think so, the dust cloud won't clear for at least three years, and
the sun won't be able to get through." I didn't go into details of the
effects. Natalie knew them as well as me.
"I want to go back." She said "I want to be with them."
"You can't, we've decided as a group to stay, if the human race is
going to have any chance of survival its going to be us."
Natalie turned on me, anger suddenly on her face. "So what you are
saying, Is that I should give myself up as the last surviving woman,
turn into just a womb for the survival of the species. I won't do it."
She was shouting, her hands balled into fists which she used to beat at
me. I pulled her towards me, putting my arms around her, and held her
tight. I held her until her cries of anger slowly subsided and gave way
to the sobs of grief.
The next day we received word that NASA were going to send up another
three shuttles. Onboard one of them would be the supplies we'd need to
build another, larger, dome and a supply of earth soil, rich in
nutrients needed to grow the seeds they were sending. On the other two
shuttles would be eight hand picked people. Eight chosen to join us and
survive. If they had enough time another shuttle would be sent with
more supplies but that could not be guaranteed. From what we could
gather the announcement of impending doom had triggered massive panic
across the globe. Rioting was commonplace in the major capitals of the
worlds; it seemed that the people were determined to start the job that
Andr?'s meteor promised to finish.

That was three weeks ago. The shuttles arrived, though only two of the
promised three. The other exploded on lift-off, probably the fault of
the rush job done on preparing the shuttle for launch. Already we've
begun work on the new dome and we're hoping to have it in place by the
end of the week. The only time we stopped was to watch the end of the
world, I know how that sounds but we all felt a need to watch the last
moments of the planet that had supported us for so long.

In the main briefing room, decidedly crowded now that we'd be joined by
the others, Andre rigged up a telescope to a view screen and we all
watched as the meteor began its final approach to Earth.
At first it looked like a star, one of millions, but as it approached
the outer limits of the earth's atmosphere it began to glow at the
edges, leaving behind a trail of debris like a comet's tail.
I experienced a brief moment of elation when I saw this, convinced that
it had hit the atmosphere at too steep an angle, that it was going to
burn up before it could hit. I can't remember but I think I said
something about this to Andre. Then there was a flash of light form
somewhere on the African continent and my elation was gone. Hypnotised
we watched as slowly a cloud of dust began to form in the atmosphere,
growing in size until we no longer needed Andre's telescope; we could
see the earth in the sky about us. Within the space of two hours it had
changed from a beautiful ball of blue to a mud coloured globe, barely
visible in the sky.
After that we tried to raise NASA on the communications rig but they
were gone.
Slowly the briefing room emptied and I was left alone with Andre and
the image of the ghostly planet. We sat in silence for a while, trying
to come to terms with our loss.
"What's that?" Andre broke the silence, I looked at him. He was
pointing to something on the screen.
At first I couldn't see what it was he meant, and then I saw. Since
that day I've wished that I hadn't but I did.

As I said we've started work on the dome, things are going well, if we
ever feel that we should give up we just need to glance above us at the
globe. The globe that we once called home and hopefully will
again.
As for me and Andre, we don't speak about what we saw in the telescope
after the others had left.
I try not to think about it but its no good, every time I close my eyes
to sleep I find myself back in the briefing room. I see clearly as four
shadowy figures gallop their way across the dust-ridden atmosphere of
the Earth. Andre had zoomed the telescope in as far as he could and we
could make out the shapes of the horses, horses as big as countries
carrying their supernatural riders as they fulfilled a prophecy as
ancient as time.
I see this and I weep.