Thirty days.
The countdown has started, North America shivers under the shadow of a massive alien spacecraft, and humanity is hurtling toward an unknown future that lurks at the end of the timer. Somewhere, somehow, the heroes are making their plan...
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HARRISONBURG, VIRGINIA, USA
August 15, 9:00 PM
Driving down the empty, potholed streets solidified that Joanie and I should have left already.
Every hefty bump in my decade-old sedan sent pain spiking up my spine. My purse sat fully on the dirty car floor of the passenger seat. On the road ahead, the familiar street lamps were dark, bulbs as dead as I should have been.
Why didn't we evacuate with the rest of this cursed town?
The overwhelming brightness of the sky filled my car with golden light, nearly blinding my tearing eyes as I took a right turn at a stop sign. Not that I needed to stop. Too busy manning checkpoints and preventing people from returning, the police had stopped monitoring local traffic as the days had progressed, and the ominous daily counter in the sky ticked down.
The next song blasted out of my radio—a crooning woman singing about a lost love. "If only he hadn't left you after six yearssss." Her vibrato filled my ears as she held the final note.
"A bit on the nose, isn't it?" Sydney chimed in from the backseat. Her blonde hair swayed in the rocking car as she leaned into the small opening between the passenger and driver's seats. Her eyes glowed a shocking purple, distracting me from the desolate road ahead.
"Shut up," I snapped, swiping at the salty droplets coursing down my cheeks. I turned up the heat which blasted at my face, drying them instantly.
"What? Don't wanna think about it, about him? Maaasson. Maaasson. He was so lovely," Sydney nagged. "I miss him."
"I said, shut up!" I swerved my car, the right side mirror crunched against a tree and broke off, falling onto the road behind me as a honk resonated in the night air.
Had I done that?
I can't do this with you anymore. It's over.
A single text and my life was in shambles. Everything we had built over the past six years. Every last memory from our earliest dates at the port, to the movie nights in our rented house with Joanie, and then the world started ending. What was he going to do now? Move out? Where was he going to go? His family lived two states over.
I turned left at the next intersection, ignoring the blaring red light. Just down the road, the gas station's green neon sign read, "REG $66.78". Good thing I had nowhere to go. Who the hell could afford those prices?
Sydney leaned her elbows on the center console. "Is buying a bunch of shit really going to make you feel better?"
I sniffed. "Yes. Yes, it will."
No. No, it won't.
Nothing could fill the gaping void fracturing my soul. Nothing could remove or hide the undeniable pain his single text had wreaked. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was such an embarrassment. An ugly, disgusting rat. Why else was it so easy for him to do this to me?
