It was a planet-hunting satellite Kepler that first spotted what killed humanity.
The space observatory was going about its normal day, floating around looking at things too distant to be believed, when it noticed the patch of stars it was looking at had dimmed. Now that was something that Kepler was specifically built to detect. Only it was not one star or two that had dimmed because a planet passed in front of them, but that whole region of the sky.
Flash went a stream of ones and zeros to LASP in Boulder, Colorado. By nightfall the debate was on as to what this phenomenon was. Computer glitch being the highest potential suspect. So by the next morning the whole works was under the collective thumbs of several diagnostic technicians, who went after it with tender mercies.
Nope. No computer problem, that was their answer a week later.
But by then you didn't need Kepler, any observatory with a ground-based telescope linked to a computer that could calculate luminosity, past and present, could see it.
Anyway, all of this happened in the fall of 2014 and the world was far more concerned with the state of Kardashian marriages and who touched who's tits than what was going on out in space. Hell, I didn't even first hear of it till a year later, and by then everyone was concerned with who was going to be the next president and was it, hopefully, not going to be Trump or Hillary.
The dimming was dust.
Now apparently astronomers had known that our sun was approaching an area of the Milky Way that has a substantially heavier amount of cosmic dust than the area of space it's currently passing through. They didn't, however, feel the need to alert the public, since it will be something like the year 12,000AD before we get there. No need to get out the super
Swiffers
just yet.
But have you ever watched a fog bank forming? Ever seen those fingerlike tendrils that lead the way? Spooky things, huh. Almost alive in how they flow across the landscape, right?
Well, this darkening of the stars was the same thing. A tendril of dust and it had snaked its way into our solar system. You could judge its progress when the outer planets dimmed, then vanished behind a veil of interstellar dust.
The world leaders got involved then. Of course.
Nothing to fear, nothing but a bit of dust, nothing to worry your poor heads about, just go back to sleep our lulled citizens; let us worry your futures. Watch the football game, open your Christmas presents. Pay your taxes. We have your best interests in mind. Oh look, something shiny!
Then came the Summer of Frost.
Now in a few places in some states a mild frost in summer is nothing unusual. But Key West, Florida is not one of those places or states. There were crops being destroyed by those morning frosts all across the country. Everything susceptible to even minor cold went first, of course, then the hardier crops.
Then trees.
Not the fruit on them, the whole tree. With their branches full of summer sap and their leaves at their greenest they simply could not take the cold that summer. Then there was heavy snow on the ground, by the fall equinox, all the way to Louisiana.
It's late October now. The dust is between the Earth and the Sun. And our planet is plowing through it like a car through too deep water.
Welcome to my frozen hell.
** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
I knew this was going to be my last trip into town. The roads were testing even my driving skills and I was used to frozen roads from my years driving for Seax-Trucking Inc. Oh, the snow plows and sand trucks were still hitting the roads, but the number of roads they could keep clear seemed to be shrinking. And, given that trend, I knew I was making my last supply run this cold, chilly October morning.
Not that I had much hope of finding anything left.
The Walmart had been empty for weeks, and the small grocery stores had soon followed. Which is just as well, their roofs had all collapsed under the weight of snow. Now there was more of a flea market type set up at the high school. People would trade goods for food, or whatever was needed. Bartering had become the norm again.
I trade firewood. Almost bars of gold nowadays.
I swerved and slammed on the horn as a huge deer ran out onto the road in front of me. As I slid to a stop, a second came from the same direction.
Grabbing my .30-30 Winchester off the gun rack, I opened the door to try to see if I could get off a quick shot and maybe get some meat on the table.
I swung the rifle at the third deer to appear, tracked it through the scope, and was creeping back on the trigger, when I heard the thunder. Looking back through the white blanketed trees, I saw not one or two but hundreds of deer coming at me! And not just deer. Running right in the middle of them was a large black bear sow and her two, not much smaller, cubs.
For a moment I thought they were what had this herd of deer running but no....
There was a huge shadow running behind all of them.
As I watched, gun held steady but forgotten, the mother bear turned and reared up. She gave a chuffing huff, dropped back down and charged the oncoming shadow. The sow tried to bite and slap at the same time.
She was knocked ten feet away and tumbled like a child's discarded teddy bear! Then the shadow was upon her again.
Only then did I see it for what it was. A wolf! But a wolf far too large to be believed. He towered over the bear and when he attached it was brutal to watch. He savaged the beer like a terrier dog would a rat. Catching her in its tremendous jaws and shaking her.
I felt my body begin to quake then. It was responding to fear that my mind was too in shock to even register as a danger yet. I was a few hundred feet from a predator that was killing another normally dangerous predator as easily as I could have killed a helpless kitten.
Then it began to devour the bear with it still half-alive.
Easing back into my truck I debated choices. Try to shoot this thing. This wolf? But I was in no way sure that my .30-30 would bring it down. Against a deer or that bear it would have been effective. But that wolf?
And what do I do if it doesn't kill it? A wounded animal is always worse and one that size is too terrible to even contemplate.
Then the decision was taken away from me. A large stag horn deer, part of the still fleeing past herd, went too close and the wolf instinctively left his dinner to go after
running
prey.
My heart was in my chest till the wolf was out of my sight. It took me far too long to make myself shift my truck back into gear and continue into town.
Where no one believed me. Believed what I said I had seen. Not a single one.
** ** ** ** ** ** **
The load of firewood I had taken to town and traded had gained me a fifty pound bag of flour, cornmeal, and a hundred pounds of whole, uncut, oatmeal. I had tried to bargain for two big burlap bags of potatoes, something my fire wood should have easily gotten, but by now even semi-perishable food was going for incredible prices. Insane prices! They wanted the whole load of wood for the potatoes alone.
As I drove back home I pondered loading up another truckload of my woodpile and going back, right quick like, for those before they were gone. But then I gave that idea up. The road ahead was disappearing under a white blanket. By the time I got home and reloaded I would never make it back to town. And if I did I wouldn't make it home, not tonight, or maybe ever.
Then any such stupid decisions were taken away. Finding an injured woman, walking naked in the snow down the middle of the road, will do that to you. I came far too close to adding to her injuries, by running her over. I skidded to a stop in the snow, and then hopped out with my coat already flying off me to wrap her up in.
