I sit awake in the solitude of my basement next to the wavering light of our last candle. The windows have been boarded tightly shut, blocking any trace of light. The small fire is our only source of heat. My children are asleep several feet away; it’s comforting knowing they’re safe, for now. In the silence of the night it’s easy to reminisce about the life we lived, not-so-long ago. Things changed so rapidly. It feels like an eternity that we’ve been barricaded inside our house. 

I close my eyes to welcome sleep, but visions of the past three months play in my head like a marathon of madness. I open my eyes and glance down at the journal in my lap. To me it means the world; it’s our story of survival. The notebook’s open, and I stare down at the blank page. The only writing is the heading at the top – Day 94. My heart aches as I wonder how many more entries I’ll be able to make. I frown as I flip back to page one and reminisce about the day of impact. 

It started out like any other day. I woke up, got Grant and the kids up, then flipped on the TV. The breaking news was about a missile that the US government deployed to break apart the large meteor headed towards earth. I’d heard about the meteor a lot over the past few days, and of the several foiled attempts to redirect the path of the object. As a last resort the army decided to launch a highly explosive missile to break apart the large rock. The missile impacted just off-center, fragmenting the large meteor into five smaller pieces. 

Four fragments were small and insignificant, but there was still one large chunk remaining. Scientists insisted the sheering of the rock as it entered the atmosphere would incinerate the last remaining threat. Viewers were told to look in the eastern sky at 1:00 in the afternoon, and they might catch a glimpse of the deterioration process as it happened. We went about our business, paying it no more attention than that. What a mistake that proved to be.