The End Has Come

With age comes comfortable familiarity. The following no longer changes: He gets up early and watches the Milky Way slowly fade from the sky as he sits at the bow of the boat. The sun climbs slowly in the distance, spreading a glittering carpet of diamonds across the caps of tiny waves. His son is there, asleep below.

Don closes his eyes and smells the salt water and listens as jazz music harmonizes with the sound of gulls, canvas sails, and lapping waves.

* * *

The Milky Way is gone, buried under a shroud of gray ash. Still, Don spends each morning on the deck of the Southern Cross hoping to catch the sunrise. He glances at his watch. Daybreak was thirty minutes earlier, and the horizon is charcoal rather than black. He squints, but there is no sun. The only difference between day and night is the shade of the oppressive gray draped from horizon to horizon. Shards of black glass surround the boat, an angry sea that hasn’t been calm or blue in months. He rubs his face with his right hand and stands up, bracing himself against chaotic waves. He heads below deck to wake up Zack. It’s another day. One no brighter, no clearer, no better than the one before.

* * *

The first storm comes when the asteroid hits. It’s as if the Earth shudders in pain. As the harsh winds blow and the seas thrash, Don is convinced that the yacht will be dashed to pieces. But after hours of being hurled up, down, and sideways, the seas quiet, and he and Zack nurse their cuts and bruises and take stock of the damage.

The winds blew out the windows, which they repair with plywood pried up from the bilge flooring, and Don repairs the jib without much difficulty. The biggest loss was their rainwater-catching basin, which was ripped free and blown out to sea. They replace it with one of their plastic storage bins.

They are better prepared for the next few storms, but the two of them emerge from each one injured and bruised, the boat battered. The worst is when Don dislocates his shoulder. He does his best not to scare Zack, but he is wracked with pain for hours after a loose flogging line rips his arm out of its socket, with each crashing wave grinding his dislocated arm against the surrounding bone.

After the seas calm, Zack takes charge with a sense of purpose that Don has only seen in glimpses between long periods of depression and quiet. He sets his foot on Don’s ribs and pulls hard on his father’s arm. Don’s scream ends with a loud pop and then silence.

Don has spent so much energy keeping Zack positive that his own oppressive depression, seeping into his consciousness little by little, surprises and overwhelms him as they face yet another storm.

The timing of the growing storm couldn’t be worse. He and Zack are weak from lack of food. They’ve drifted South again searching for fish, but the ocean water is thick with the ever-present dirt and ash that falls from the sky, an obscene black snow that poisons everything.

Don is thinking that the fish have finally learned that there is nothing of value near the surface. Maybe the time is right to try a landing. Certainly the government of Brazil or Guyana would not turn them away so long after the impact? But first he has to survive the storm.

It’s the worst yet, a gale or maybe even a full-blown hurricane. Don tries to steer the ship by hand, but quickly gives up as the thrashing waves and raging winds are coming from every direction. Zack stumbles into him, and Don is surprised not to see terror in his son’s eyes. They are grim, but it is a grimness borne of resolve, not powerlessness.

They hold on to whatever they can, their only goal not to break any bones as they are tossed around the cabin. The ship rolls nearly on its side as a steep wave lifts it into the air.

Don holds his breath, hoping the boat doesn’t split in two. As the ship rolls in the opposite direction, he falls back against one of the benches. He breathes out, and the ship slams into another wave, tossing both Zack and Don against the other side of the cabin.

There is a loud crack, and Don looks over to Zack, expecting to see a broken bone or his twisted body. But Zack looks fine. Taking a deep breath to shout, Don yells, “Did you hear that?” thinking that perhaps the mast had finally snapped.