The Asteroid

by

Barry Miller

 

     “We’re all dead in 12 hours.”  Wilson repeated calmly, although beads of sweat were visible on his upper lip.  “There’s got to be some mistake!”  A much less calm Susan

said for about the 10^th time in the last half hour.  “We’ve both gone over and over the data Miss Phillips, there is no mistake, our associates in Australia are quite thorough,” Wilson replied. “Why hasn’t anyone else seen it?” demanded Susan.  “Not many people are looking from the Southern hemisphere, Ms.Phillips, as you know.”  Wilson ’s voice was starting to rise. “We’ve got to warn everyone!”  Susan headed for the phone.  “Stop, Ms. Phil - Susan, think about it, what good can it do?  I suggest we make our last hours pleasant Susan, don’t you agree?”  Wilson was coming towards her now.  “People have a right to know!”  Susan objected.  “It doesn’t matter! Nothing matters!  I’ve wanted you for 2 years Susan!  Ha-ha, that’s what matters! 12 hours! 12 hours!”  Wilson was approaching her now, “he’s gone crazy,” Susan thought.  She tried to run around him, Wilson spun her by the arm and forced her against a table, fumbling with his belt.  Susan yelled “Stop it, are you crazy?”  Wilson never heard Thomas come in, nor did he feel the bucket as it crashed down on his head.

 

     I’ve been a homicide detective for 13 years.  I’ve seen some things you wouldn’t believe.  But nothing prepared me for Thomas Puchowski.  He was the janitor down at the observatory, we brought him in on a suspected homicide.  We got 1 dead man and 1 missing woman.  Balding, about 40, Puchowski  struck me as an uneducated, slow- witted type.  After some questioning he just wanted to tell his story from the start.  We let him go ahead.  Sometimes if we get a suspect to start talking long enough they hang themselves.

 

     I’m not the nosey type, usually I just mind my own business, but when I heard them lab people yapping all excited like, I couldn’t help myself.  “12 hours!, 12 hours!” the fat one was yelling.  That’s what got my ‘tention, I was just outside the doorway.  Then it sounded like some kind fight was going on, with things falling on the floor and I heard the girl one start ta’hollering, “Let go! Stop it, are you crazy?” Well, I ain’t no hero type and I might not be the sharpest knife in th’ drawer, but I know when sumptin ain’t right.    I didn’t even realize what I was doin when I went a storming in there all willy-nilly like.            I still had my galvanized steel bucket in my hand.  The fat one had the girl down on

the table, he looked like has was a’strangling her, she was fighting back tooth and nail.  That’s when I hit him over the head wit my bucket.

     Well, the fat feller just sorta went limp like and fell over.  Me and the girl…we just kinda looked at each other for a sec, then she checked his neck and said he was dead.  I about fell over myself, I was already a-shakin something fierce.  “It was an accident, “ I sez.  “He was killin you,” I sez.  She looked at me and she say ‘It don’t matter.’  Don’t matter? I sez, we gotta call th police!  ‘No!’ she said.  ‘There’s no time! Look, your name is Thomas, right?’  Yeah, that’s me, I tell her.  ‘Listen very carefully Thomas, we have to get out of here.’  I dunno how to explain it but when I looked into her eyes I knew I was goin do whatever she told me.  We got outta there and got in her car and that’s when she starting telling me about the asteroid.

    ‘You know what asteroids are Thomas?’  Yeah, they’re big rocks from space, I tell her.  “That’s right, and a big one is going to hit the earth in less than 12 hours.”  Where?, where on earth, I mean I ask her.  She says it don’t matter where, it will either be a quick death or a slow death.  She says an asteroid this big will compress the atmosphere and heat it up hotter than the sun, everything in that part of the earth will burn-up, and that’s before it hits.  It’ll be moving tens of times faster than a bullet, and when it does hit, everything not already burned up will be smashed by the blast, like a million nuclear bombs.  For folks far away from the blast, they’ll see a flash of light, brighter then anyone has ever seen before.  Next after the flash will be a huge wall of darkness, filling the entire sky and traveling way faster than the speed of sound.  That’ll be thousands of cubic miles of dirt, rock, and super hot gases.  It’ll be the last thing you see before your burned up and cut to pieces. This will all start of chain reaction of volcanoes blowin’ their tops and world-wide earthquakes, and tsunamis.  A cloud of blackness will cover the whole planet, this is all the first day mind you, and burning rock will fall from the sky setting fires everywhere.  All communications will be knocked out, any survivors won’t know what’s going on anywhere else, not that it matters.  If there was anyplace to run to, it would be slow suicide cause the sun would be blotted out for years.  The earth just couldn’t support life no more.

     Well, what could I say to all that?  I’ve seen the movies, “What about sending a rocket up with nukes to blow it up?”  I ask her.  She looked at me and sez  “Thomas, we don’t even have rockets big enough to even go to the moon anymore, and besides there’s no time.”  “So your telling me we’re dying today?”  I ask her.  Then she starts asking me about my family and such, course, I don’t have anyone.  I would like to say goodbye to my cat I guess, I tell her.  She says “let’s go to your place.”  I ask her what about her, anyone in her life.  She says “No one worth spending my last day on earth with.”  I ask why a pretty lady like her don’t have a husband, she says she did but the good-for-nothing, son-of-a-bitch traded her in for a younger model. 

     So we go to my trailer house, it ain’t much, but it’s home, first thing I get out is my bottle of scotch, the good stuff I was saving for a special occasion.  I ask her if she wants a nip, she did.  She ask me if I really think she’s pretty, I sez yeah.  Well, we ended up polishin off  the whole bottle.  We made love, and I can tell you it’s been a long time since I’ve been with a woman.  We drank some more, we talked about what we would do if we only had hours to live.  We sorta figured out that we was already doing it.

I woke up in next day ‘round noon when you fellers were knocking on my door, she was gone.  I never knew her name.  Ain’t it funny how your life can change lickety-split?

 

     At this point my partner started leaning on Puchowski hard.  Asking what he did with Susan Phillips’ body, and how he expected us to believe such a fantastic story about an asteroid. Puchowski just leaned back in the chair and said: “I reckon there was a mistake about the asteroid, about Susan, if that’s her name, I didn’t kill her and if you find her, tell her I love her.”

    

     Susan woke up with a start, sunlight was in her eyes.  “What the hell…” she thought.  She looked at the clock, 11:15am.  “Oh my god,” she said and instantly covered her mouth.  She looked over at a drooling, asleep Thomas.  Susan carefully slipped out of bed and proceeded to look for her clothes.  Finding all by her shoes she hurriedly yet silently dressed.  Her head was pounding from the scotch, but she could think clearly enough to wonder what happened, it had been well over 12 hours, did it miss? skip through the atmosphere?  She went out to the living room to look for her purse, she saw it on the kitchen table trough the doorway.  Thomas’s cat, Mr. Whiskers, sat contently on the kitchen chair.  Susan remembered how Thomas had heaped up some sliced cheese and 3 cans of tuna fish in the cats bowl last night.  “Nothing but the good stuff on our last day, huh, Mr. Whiskers,” he had said to the cat in baby talk.   Susan saw the empty scotch bottle on the counter and felt ill.  Grabbing her purse she headed for the door, wincing at the sunlight, she stepped outside.  The first thing she did when she got in her car was don her sunglasses.  As soon as she was heading out of the driveway she dug in her purse for her cell phone.  She had the observatory on speed dial.

     “Susan! Oh my God, where are you? Wilson ’s dead! The police are looking for you, are you alright?”  It was Julie, the intern, who answered the phone.  “Julie, slow down, what about the asteroid?” Susan inquired.  A pause “The aster – oh, you mean the hoax?” said Julie, confused. “Hoax?” it was Susan’s turn to be confused.  “What hoax?” Susan said through clenched teeth.  “It came over the wire this morning after the police left.  Some knowledgeable hacker got into Australia ’s system and sent out data indicating an imminent asteroid hit.  It was quite sophisticated, luckily it was stopped before it got out to the masses.”  Susan dropped her cell phone.

    

  Susan Phillips eventually showed up, we had her apartment staked out.  Thomas Puchowski will not be charged with any crime.  I kept thinking of what Puchowski said during his questioning: “Ain’t it funny how your life can change lickety-split?”

 

          “Case closed huh, Larry?”  Detective Smith asked his partner.  They had ran into each other the next morning at the community coffee area. “I was sure Puchowski  whacked the professor, kidnapped the assistant, raped her and dumped the body.”  “The whole time I knew something wasn’t adding up,” Smith said.  “Yeah, like what?”  Just as Smith opened his mouth to reply, an intensely bright light flashed through the window, blinding both men.  Five minutes later their retinas were still so burned they couldn’t see the approaching wall of darkness that filled the sky.