A Waltz for a Burning World

Ashlyn was working up the courage to call her mother, the angry green call button blinking at her in silent command. She could feel the tears building, the uncomfortable pressure on her throat making her choke as she pressed her thumb to that button. It rang. Once. Twice. Click.

“Ashlyn?” Her mother’s voice was hoarse. “Oh Ashlyn! I didn’t think you had service anymore! The news said most phone companies have lost their towers on account of the…”

Ashlyn fought against her own terror as she said, “I checked this morning, and we still have service. I don’t know how long though.”

She heard her mother sob on the other end of the line. “I wish you were here so I could hold you, so your father could hold you, so you could hold your dog.”

Tears slipped free from Ashlyn’s eyes as she envisioned her small pup, curled up on that too small blue bed, brown eyes wide and searching for the one face missing in the family. The panic. The confusion that must be ripping through her at this very moment.

“Can I say hi?” Ashlyn forced out, her throat constricting painfully against the onslaught of sorrow.

“Sure.” A pause as her mother fumbled on the other side of the phone. Of the country really. “Hey Nova, your sister is on the phone.”

A small bark that nearly tore Ashlyn apart filled the other line.

“Nova!” She forced excitement into her tone, making her voice coo like she was talking to a baby. “How’s my pup? Huh? How are you my sweet girl?!? I miss you so much, Nova Wova, but I’ll…I’ll be home soon ok!”

Her mother’s voice filled the dead space with tears as she said, “You should see her. Wagging her tail and looking around for you. Ashlyn?”

“Mom?” Ashlyn responded as the line began to crackle beneath her ear. “I’m here! I’m here! I love you! I love you all! I’ll see you soon!”

“I…my darl…love…” Were the only words that reached her through the now empty space of the phone.

Ashlyn pulled the phone from her ear and glanced hopelessly at the screen, now blinking with a NO SERVICE warning.

“Fuck…” it was more of a whisper before the rage truly hit her. Hit her like the asteroid the size of Europa was about to hit the Earth. The destructive rage that turned her vision red and made her scream so many obscenities any sailor would have been proud. And in that blind anger she chucked that goddamn phone across the small plaza she had managed to find, one of the few tucked around the wide green space in the center of her college campus.

The bench beneath her was searing through her jeans as she stood and stormed over to the phone, its screen now cracked and reflecting the sky laced with fire. The remnants of the early parts of the asteroid that had missed the planet but entered its atmosphere. It was, in a general sense, awe inspiring but Ashlyn could’ve cared less for the way space rocks played tic-tac-toe across the blue sky. It had been the same for one day now, two if she counted the day the warning first came out.

“Why?” She shouted at the phone, still laying on the ground, shattered as her heart felt. “Why couldn’t the warning have come a week…five days even…earlier? I would have been able to go home!”

In another attack of fury, she brought her heel down on the phone, completing its destruction as it split into two parts.

“Remind me not to get on your bad side.” His voice was a welcome distraction from the pure, burning rage coursing through her veins.

“Duly noted,” She said, turning to face this stranger with a reluctant smile. A smile tinged with a grimace and tears.

“Did you lose service?” He asked and she nodded in response, “So did I. I was talking to my parents.”

“Me too.” She choked back a sob as the pain speared through her once more. “I told them I would see them soon.”

He paused and looked skyward as more fire roared overhead, growing closer each time another small piece barreled passed. Ashlynn was pretty sure she’d seen him around campus at some point. Probably crossing between classes or hibernating in the library. She tended to avoid anyone who wasn’t within her circle of friends but looking at this boy who was clearly looking for a friend at the end she decided to show her other, more spontaneous side to the world.

“My name is Dustin,” he said extending a calloused hand and effectively drawing her out of her thoughts, “I’ve seen you around campus. What’s your major?”

She saw this conversation for the distraction it was, but responded anyway, “I am…was an International Studies major. And you?”

“Chemical engineering.”

She glanced into the small green area that stood in the middle of campus. He followed her gaze and noticed all the running people, the people who had paused to watch the sky turn to fire, and those who were still carrying on as though nothing was going to happen.

“Walk with me?” She didn’t even try to hide the plea in her voice. She didn’t want to be alone. Not now.

“Sure…” He paused and she remembered she hadn’t given her name in return for his.

“Ashlyn.”

“What a beautiful name,” He said as they strode out of the small plaza and headed across the open green area, their eyes locked firmly on the ground, on each other, anywhere but the clouds that looked more like volcanoes in the throes of erupting.

She laughed. “It is until people start calling you Ash or Lynnie.”

Dustin took her hand in his as another rock roared overhead and they both flinched, nearly diving for the ground. She could feel him trembling and she had stopped trying to hide how much she was shaking.

“My mom calls…called me Dusty.”

They both paused as the reality hit them again. Past tense, they were talking about everyone and everything in past tense because that was the only time there was now. There was no future, would be no future for anyone except those lucky enough to have found government protection. Those that had gotten the warning a week in advance when NASA scientists were still confident that they could find a way to divert the asteroid. Or blow it up as a few world leaders suggested. But those world leaders were transported to safety just in case everything was futile. Well as it turned out, every attempt to destroy, divert, even dissolve the asteroid was fruitless and now humanity was going to disappear beneath the fury of that asteroid.

Ashlyn felt her knees buckle too late as the weight of the realization pressed down on her. She hit the ground with such a solid thud the oxygen was momentarily stolen from her lungs. Dustin joined her on the grass in a more graceful fashion, folding his legs delicately beneath him.

“What do you think is going to happen after? What do you think the purpose of it all is?” She asked, her eyes finally focusing on the patterns in the sky. The golden sun cast orange fingers through the burning trails.

“Life will restart,” Dustin answered without hesitation, his hands busy plucking grass and weaving it together. “The world has gone to tatters and the universe is going to remedy it because we humans won’t.”

“NASA said this one had the potential to tear the Earth in half,” Ashlyn wandered off in her thoughts. “How come we can’t see it then?”

“The sky,” Dustin whispered back, wind blowing the grass from his hands. “The sun is reflecting off the oxygen particles and stuff, blocking our view of space. Plus, if we’re facing the sun, then the asteroid is probably coming from the other side.”

“We’ll be the last to die.” She said it with such conviction and horror that Dustin went silent for a moment.

“Then we should make the most of it,” Dustin suggested his gaze falling on the girl lying next to him. Her onyx hair sprawled in the green grass the contrast like oil against algae. Her amber eyes brimming with tears as they traced the pictures being painted in the sky.

Ashlyn turned her head to focus on the boy sitting next to her. Deep russet hair offsetting chilling ice eyes full of terror and cracking like spring melt. She would have liked to know him before the end of the world, but it was already too late for that. It was an effort to sit up and face him, but she managed.

“What would you suggest?” She tried to smile, but the corners of her mouth barely lifted, and no light entered her eyes.

“Do you know how to dance?” Dustin asked, no joy in those words, barely any hope.

Ashlyn only nodded and followed as Dustin stood and extended a calloused hand in offer. She took it with the grip of someone hanging from a cliff. She would not let go, she decided. And he seemed to understand as his grip tightened on her waist.

Dustin began to hum. Ashlynn determined that it was a soft waltz as he led her in a circle through the grass. Far above them there was a horrible white flash that echoed an angel appearing to a human. The screams of others threatened to drown out Dustin’s mellow humming, but Ashlyn focused all her attention on his song, on his movements as they spun around.

Dustin forced himself to ignore the shrieking, the howling surrounding them. He made all of his attention narrow on the trembling girl in his arms, on the tears streaking from those vivid eyes and coating the cheeks in a soft sheen. He forced his grip to remain strong as he dipped her, and she turned her head into his chest.

He righted her and as the ground below them shook from colliding celestial bodies and the sky turned to blood and smoke. Ashlyn glanced skyward and cried out at the horror she found there. The black smoke diving for her lungs, the fire raining for Earth. The ground seemed to tear itself up and then began to sink downward.

Though they knew there was no point they ran anyway. Racing, hand in hand, for the buildings as the fire started racing along the ground, nipping at their heels like impatient herding dogs. Ashlyn screamed as the ground dropped from beneath her and she nearly lost her grip on Dustin who yanked and dragged her up the steps of the nearest building. They barreled into a storage closet and slammed the door shut.

Dustin waited as his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the closet and when he could finally make out Ashlyn’s shaking form, he pulled her close and wrapped her in his arms. He would not let her feel alone, not now. Not at the end. And it was the end.

A horrible, echoing boom raced through the building as the stones were ripped away by the wave of heat and fire caused by the collision of Earth and an asteroid.

It was supposedly bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs and for that Ashlyn was jealous. Their deaths hadn’t been unstoppable. Humans could have survived that asteroid. Not this one.

“I’m here.” Dustin shouted over the tumbling rubble as the wave approached with the speed and ferociousness of a charging grizzly.

“I’m here.” Ashlyn breathed back as the wave finally reached them and sent them flying: Ashlyn to ashes and Dustin to dust.