Chapter 1

Of all the fucking luck this wasn't some of it. I should have known something shitty would happen when I got old enough to realize being born in 1984 was nothing to be proud of. Sure, George Orwell didn't have the date right on the money, but he wasn't so far off after all. Nineteen Eighty-Four wasn't so bad and Ronald Regan offered some hope on the communist front by spending most of them into submission.

Hell, even old Bush the elder didn't make any major fuckups and Bill Clinton provided eight years of comic relief. And then along came W -- he was an idiot, frat boy, fuckup from the word go. He nearly broke the whole fucking country and led to finally breaking the race barrier at the top of the ticket. I think most of the country was just relieved to get over that hump without Jesse Jackson getting in there somewhere.

Here we were in November of 2012. Barak Obamalamadingdong had done an acceptable job during his first four years and he'd been re-elected for four more, but in December we got the word all our astronomical scientists had been sitting around with their thumbs up their asses.

NASA had been jacking itself and its budget off trying to get some sucker a ride to Mars, and the damned Mayans had known what was going to happen for thousands of years, even though they only gave us hints.

Apparently the Mayans had known the shit was going to hit the fan on 21st December 2012 AD since way back on 11th August 3114 BC. Somehow they managed to calculate all this thousands of years before the telescope was even a gleam in Galileo's eye.

Of course, since the Catholic Church had a direct line to God back then they'd known for hundreds of years the Mayans weren't good Christians and couldn't possibly have any idea of what was going down.

Here and now on 10 December 2012 it sure looked like those Catholics had misplaced a comma or misspelled a word in one of their Holy translations, or at least their adding machine had slipped a cog somewhere.

Even though they'd given executing Galileo the old schoolboy try way back when, the telescope had caught on anyway. The earth was not the center of the whole universe, and yes Virginia, that pesky twenty-mile diameter asteroid was going to hit Earth pretty damned nearly exactly when the Mayans thought something was going to go horribly wrong.

No matter what they'd claimed they were doing to keep an eye out for approaching space detritus, our people in the know had spent the big bucks on satellite TV and spying on our neighbors and none of the money grubbing bastards had bothered to check on what outer space had next in line for our poor old planet Earth.

No one had noticed the monster fucking rock headed our way at somewhere around one hundred and forty thousand miles per hour. Maybe it was understandable since the poor little thing was only twenty or so miles in diameter. It seemed a little odd though, since once it was pointed out, any damned idiot could spot it easily with a pair of Wal-Mart binoculars. All you had to do was go outside at night and look.

If you said it fast it didn't sound so bad, but you had to say it damned fast since its estimated speed put splashdown on the twenty-first. Eleven days away. Even now they had it located and had a good handle on its speed and direction there was no good estimate of where it would hit.

Even if they'd had a good guess about the point of impact there was not much to be done about it. If it struck the earth intact most living things were done for. Hell, it might even be all living things, but I didn't think so. In fact I didn't think it would kill all humans, but I did think it would kill most of 'em.

Of course the whole world was in a panic and they all wanted to pack up and go somewhere safe, but where? That was the sixty-four thousand dollar question. By two days before projected impact it was pretty obvious someone somewhere had an idea where it would hit, but if they did they weren't telling.

My biggest surprise was the lack of violence in the streets and next was the way TV, radio, and other services hung in there. It was just as well the place I worked closed for a week, because I wouldn't have showed up anyway. Finding a place to hole up might be pointless, but I did it anyhow.

Hell, moderate shelter was easy to find where I lived. My home was in tornado alley and there were quite a few storm cellars around. I happened to know of one about eight miles from me and I also knew damned few people could remember it at this late date.

I'd found it on my own while deer hunting when I was sixteen. It was behind an old home place, which had burned down more than thirty years ago. It had been a big old house and they'd had a big shelter. It had been solidly built and had heavy timbers holding up what was basically just an earthen top over a big hole they dug.

Finding it hadn't been an intentional move. I'd been hunting and stepped on the door which promptly fell through. The inside was about twelve by twenty-four and there was really nothing in it. I assumed whoever'd dug it had removed everything when the house burned and they had to move elsewhere.

Whatever the circumstances at the beginning -- here and now it was a big hole in the ground with big timbers keeping it from falling in on itself. Maybe I could have found out more about it, but I didn't try. I practically forgot about it myself until news of our impending doom made me remember.

When I thought of it I went back to take a look and could barely get to it. The dirt road it had been near was no longer being maintained by the county and I had to cut several small trees down to even get near the place. I did it after dark, mostly, because I didn't want anyone following me and showing up after things had gone to shit.

After I found it and replaced the door I did what I could to gather food and other supplies. I didn't try doing anything fancy, but I did gather up bulk food of the type to let me hang on. I wasn't interested in complicated foods and my main staples were cornmeal, flour, and pinto beans. I also bought plenty of ammunition for my Colt Python and my Marlin 336c in 35 Remington.

A couple of days after the news was out I heard something really disturbing on TV. Of course they were making a big deal out of how to survive if worse came to worst and even though I laughed at the if part I did pay attention. When they got to the part about so much shit being thrown into the atmosphere if it struck land somewhere I got nervous.

It was something I hadn't considered, but apparently an earth strike could cause the air to be nearly unbreathable from dust and dirt thrown up. I drove nearly a hundred miles to a fair sized city to visit an army surplus store I remembered.

They'd had lots of old WWII type gas masks there once and when I found the place still open I was happy they had some left. I bought six masks and forty-eight replacement canisters.

The owner waited until I'd paid for my treasure before he told me those masks were only good for certain gases. I shrugged and said maybe they'd help without bothering to mention they'd sure as hell keep dust out of my lungs.

Another surprise was the lack of people rushing to buy up supplies. I didn't know whether I'd need a lot of cached food or not, but I did wonder why there weren't more people out stocking up for at least a few days worth. Business at Wal-Mart was brisk, but there was no mad rush.

One of those short wave radio receivers was near the end of my shopping list. I figured if things got real bad I'd at least want to try finding out if there were others still living somewhere. I wouldn't have any way to talk back to them, but at least I could find out if there were others alive.

My last purchase was parts and pieces to jury rig some type of ventilation for my hideout. I bought enough six inch stove pipe to reach from inside to about three feet above the ground on top of my new place. It took all afternoon to get the hole down through the dirt and the timbers holding up the roof. I put a small twelve-volt fan inside it to move air and then I covered the open end with cotton cloth and then a rain top. It wouldn't keep everything out, but surely it would help.