The Wicked End

I had since then been taking up residence with Matt at his house. There were times when I almost expected Zacky to just poof himself to where I was and take me back as a prisoner, though it never happened. Zacky was a liar and I didn't believe a word of anything he said to me. There was no way he was a prophet. The Rapture didn't exist and Matt and Brian weren't evil. Just because a few people turned up missing and some cars crashed didnt mean Zacky could turn all psycho on me like that. There was no doubt he was just jealous I had feelings for Matt and simply wanted to keep me for himself.

It was all perfectly and reasonably explainable. Soon enough the missing people would come back from wherever they went to and everyone would calm down and things would return to the ways they always had been. ...I hoped.

Matt came in through the front door alone. I looked up from my magazine, furrowing my eyebrows.

"Hey babe, where's Brian?" I asked as I greeted him with a quick peck on the lips. Yeah... while I had been living there with him, he'd confessed that he liked me too.

He pulled away. "Uhm.... he had some...things to go take care of," Matt replied, almost as if he wasn't sure of what he was saying or if he should even be saying it to me.

"What kind of things?"

"He uh.... didn't say exactly," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. A slow smile reached his lips. "I think he's going off to see some girl, but that's just my guess."

I smiled and laughed and Matt leaned down to kiss me again. We stood there kissing for a short while when, out of nowhere, a high pitched noise ripped through my ears. I pulled away from Matt, covering my ears as if that would soothe them, but the sound continued. I began whimpering in pain. It was almost like having someone blow a whistle as loud as they could right next to my ear.

I threw myself down to the couch, stabbing my fingers into my ears, trying hopelessly to get the noise out of my head. "Make it stop, make it stop," I cried. And then, as soon as it was there, the noise was gone.

"...Are you okay?" Matt asked as he stepped nearer to me. I slowly opened my eyes and pulled my fingers out of my ears, dreading the sound coming back.

I started to breathe unevenly as I kind of looked around and then finally placed my eyes on Matt. "Did you hear that?" I asked, annoyed, as I rubbed my temples; though the sound was only there a short time, it had caused a splitting headache to form.

"Hear what?"

"That noise. That high pitched noise. It was so painful and loud and irritating... didn't you hear it?" I asked as I stood up slowly.

"...No? I didn't hear anything. Maybe it was like... in your head? I get those all the time," he suggested, and then shrugged.

"No, it wasn't anything like that," I tried to explain. "It was like a really loud whistle in my ear... worse than when it's just in your head."

Matt kind of looked at me confused. We just stood there in silence, not really knowing what to do next.

We both jumped when we heard glass shattering. I looked down at my feet. The glass I had placed on the table, full of water, had somehow moved itself (which was highly improbable) towards the edge of the table and had fallen off. The shards glistened in the light coming through the window and the water was spreading out across the linoleum. And then I felt it.

The floor trembled from beneath me. I could hear the other drinking glasses in the cupboard tinkling against each other as the room was rattled. Soon the entire house joined in.

I looked at Matt with eyes wide open. "...Is this an earthquake?" I asked as the house started to heave and I heard boards in the wall creaking and splitting from the force.

"I dunno," he said quietly, shaking his head. He walked to the nearest window and looked out. I didn't dare follow. "Come look at this," Matt said, and motioned me over. I cautiously went and stood next to him and looked out the window.

Little chunks of packed ice were falling and scattering on the ground, making little tink tink noises as they ricocheted off the house. "Matt... does it hail during earthquakes?" I asked, because with the coming of the hail, the shaking of the house had only intensified.

"I don't think so. Maybe it's just a storm... and the thunder is shaking the house?" Matt asked more than said. He didn't seem scared of whatever it was that was happening. I was about pissing myself, and his nonchalant-ness was only making me feel even more uneasy.

"...We'd have heard the thunder, so" I said, but was cut off.

Overhead, somewhere much higher than just the floor above us, there came a squealing noise: the sound of something heavy falling. It reminded me of a rocket, and the beat of my heart intensified as my first instinct was that we were being bombed. I could almost feel that something.... or some things,,, were being dropped on us. Like I could feel the waiting impact.

"Matt what is that?" I asked, panic seizing my lungs.

"Hell if I know," he mumbled. I dared to look back out the window, glancing past his shoulder as he was facing me. When I did, I saw something falling, just like I had known, about a block away, and it was on fire. Whatever it was made impact and the house shook more violently than before.

The next few seconds remained a blur to me. More squealing. More impacts. Loud noise. Darkness.

I came to sometime later and there was debris all around me and I could hear the crackling of fire. Something heavy was on me and there was dust clogging my throat. I coughed and hacked and heaved, and finally I was able to breathe a little better.

"Davanee?" I heard someone call. It was Matt. It had to be.

"Matt!" I tried to call out, but I coughed midway through and it came out only as a splutter of air and words. I groaned and tried to push the fallen beam from the ceiling off me so I could get up and find Matt, wherever he was. He could have been hurt, or in danger, and what use was I to him if I was trapped? The beam suddenly gave way much easier than it should have with just myself pushing up on it. And then I realized someone was pulling it off me. Matt.

"Davanee... shit, are you alright?" he spoke.

I coughed and he struggled to get me up off the floor. "What happened?" I choked on the dust as I asked.

"One of them hit us. I think they're meteors," he replied. He was dirty, his face marred with dust, and there was a trickle of blood running down from his forehead.

I then took the moment to glance around the room. There was a crater in the floor where a giant slab of burning rock was resting about ten feet from me. It was utterly absurd. How neither Matt nor I were dead was beyond me, but at that point, I just cared that I wasn't dead, and that both of us were okay.

"We need to get to shelter, and fast. There's more coming," Matt said as he got me up on my own feet.

"How long was I out?" I asked as I tried to get moving.

"I dunno... but that thing hit us about ten minutes ago. I've been trying to find out.... I thought you were dead," he gasped through the smoke coming from the flames as they licked the wall, bathing the house in intense heat and light. I wondered for a second how Matt wasn't knocked unconscious from the mere force of the impact on the house, and then wondered how it was that I hadn't been knocked out for too long anyways. And then I wondered how it was that the house hadn't collapsed on top of us already, what with half of it destroyed. It was, by a long shot, a miracle. Or just really really good luck.

Matt pulled me behind him through the lower level of the house and it was hard to keep our footing when the ground kept quaking. Those meteors were still falling. I could feel a sharp searing pain in my left calf, but thought nothing of it; it was probably just a cramp or a sprain, and I had more important things to worry about at the moment.

Finally, we reached a door and Matt reached for the handle, yanking on the door until it flung open. "Get in. Hurry," he said, allowing me to go first. He was taking me to the basement. I grasped for something to hold onto as I tried to get down the shaking rickety steps. I could barely see a foot in front of me, and I could fall at any moment. I could hear Matt's footsteps on the stairs behind me and we reached the bottom, Matt overtaking the lead and going first in to the basement. Quickly he ran to the other side of the room through the dark, and I heard him trying to move things. I couldn't see him, and didn't know where to go.

"Matt?" I called out over the deafening noises from above.

"Follow my voice,' I heard him yell, and I headed to the right where the sound came from. When I got close enough, I saw he had opened another door. It was thick and made of metal. He ushered me inside, following close behind and I turned around to watch him as he closed the door right as the ceiling of the basement collapsed and parts of the house fell through. He got the door sealed, and all I could hear was our heavy breathing, the noises of the outside world reduced to near nothing.

I heard movement, couldn't see a thing, and then a hissing noise sounded and there was light towards one wall of the room. I looked over and saw Matt lighting a row of mismatched candles on a shelf. The candles lit up the room surprisingly well and I looked around, watching the shadows dance along the other walls lined with shelves. There were stock piles of canned food and bottled water all along those shelves. The room was full of stuff.

"What is this place?" I breathed out.

"It's a bomb shelter," Matt replied, breathing just as hard as I was. I watched as he went over to one wall of shelves and rummaged around for something.

"Will we be safe here?" I asked shakily.

"Yep. This room is steel enforced on all sides. ...There's just one problem."

"What?"

"We're trapped."