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My foolishness had bought me half a day, maybe more. My cleverness had made me a prisoner for the last hours of my life.
The event had taken us, all of us, by surprise. Far too much time had been spent puzzling over the chaos. Just ten minutes more warning and I could have flown so much higher, and so much faster -- which would in turn have given me so much more time free from my prison, bobbing the last moments of my life somewhere out on the ocean. It had started ten hours ago -- a few confused messages and Europe goes silent -- Africa, Asia, the Middle East, all quiet. It wasn't for a few hours later that we learned of the False Dawn, something awful burning its way across the planet. Something hideous looking down on us from space, scouring the surface of the planet clean. ... and then we'd seen it ourselves. By the time we realized that it was coming for us, coming just before the dawn, working Westward, ever Westward, we got to the skimmers. I know that some of the others had gone to the airport, and I know now that they were doomed. They're dead by now. I think Pete and I were the only two that could have gotten out of New Mexico, and Pete decided to stay with his family. He's dead by now. He was probably the wiser of the two of us. He let Mark take his single seat skimmer in his place. Mark was a fine mechanic, but he had no experience at the controls. Mark augered into the tarmac on take-off, my screamed instructions cut short as Pete's skimmer exploded. It was then when I saw it. A roiling red dawn, casting strange stabbing patterns across the black stretch of night. I had instinctively climbed to get more altitude with my skimmer, but in front of me I could see strange cauterizing rays reaching over the horizon and slicing into the clouds above me. It was as though someone was just erasing the clouds. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before, and the vision of it filled me with something sickening. I was watching the death of the planet, but it was being played out in a sight no one else had ever seen before in the history of the planet. Clouds, miles wide, vanishing in such a simple and unnatural manner. I almost gave up then. I would have swooped down and tried to find Pete's truck. Ridden for a few last moments back to his house. Spend the end of my life with people. But the airplane exploding above shocked me back into my flight -- fight or flight, basic animal instincts, and I was flying. The airplane had tried to get to higher altitudes, but that had just allowed the False Dawn to catch it earlier. Catch it, and burn it. I dove back to the nape of the Earth -- let my planet shelter me from the dawn for a few minutes more. I needed to out-race the dawn... I knew that the Earth revolved at around a thousand miles and hour at the equator, so if I could only keep the skimmer going faster than that I'd eventually pull ahead of the dawn. I only had to keep myself alive, skimming close to the Earth, at that speed, for a few hours. Once I reached the coast it would get easier. I'm sure when I was younger a task like that would have made me feel alive. But not today. When I did have a moment or two to think, all I could think about was that everyone I had ever know was already dead. By the time I reached the Pacific I'd gained a handful of minutes on the dawn. I also saw a couple other skimmer pilots racing, like me, to the West. I tried to raise them on the net, but I couldn't reach anything. The net was down. I don't know if the dawn itself had brought it down, or whether the net relied on humans somehow for it's continual existence, and they were all dead. Sometime in the next few hours I'll run out of Earth. I'll reach the spot the False Dawn first set down on my planet, and there will be nothing left after that. I suppose I could keep flying. The skimmer will keep going for another day... I might be able to keep flying in the lee of the Earth until I just run out of fuel. But I think that maybe Pete had the right idea. I have no family to gather close at the end, but at least I have the Earth. I'll just find the edge of the ocean... whatever is left, if there's anything I can land the skimmer on... and just wait for the dawn to reach me. The planet and me, at the end. That sounds about right. |