mother, suddenly a mystery, died in her hands. She
watched the woman’s life energy flow from her like water, seeping
into the ground. No matter how much she’d hated what the woman had
kept from her, she loved her. Her mother had been, until Worm Fall,
her entire world.
Cassandra took the two
swords. They were heavy in her hands. The wolf that she had,
somehow, managed to stun was getting to his feet.
“ You are your mother’s
daughter, wench,” the thing growled at her, its fur smoking in
places. “I will eat you as well.”
She started towards the
beast, swords bared, anger filling her heart. She had no idea if
she could muster that power again but the beast would pay and pay
dearly for what it had done to her mother. But then she saw the
dozens of burning yellow eyes peering at her from the darkness. She
could feel them then, feel them just as her mother had. There were
a half of dozen of the creatures there and she knew, without a
doubt, that she couldn’t fight them all, even if she could somehow
summon that magic her mother had. And that’s what it was, wasn’t
it? Magic. Her mother had done magic while fighting the beast and
it would take her a very long time to accept that. She watched as
her mother’s back arched in a dying spasm, her body
shuddering.
Along with the wolves
staring from the bushes and the smoking one in the playground, she
felt another, even more powerful wolf somewhere in the night to the
west. The thing in the city floated in the back of her mind,
clawing at her. She shook her head, trying to clear her
thoughts.
Cassandra heard the howls
as she got in her mother’s van and started the engine. The blinding
missiles continued to slam into the asteroid but she would not look
up. She put it in drive and headed out of the park, everything
she’d ever known dying behind her under the nuclear explosions in
the sky.
The old world had ended,
she knew. But hers was just beginning.
Houston, Texas, was awash with life in
anticipation of its coming death.
The streets were filled
with revelers, partying in a last stoic act of rebellion, sticking
up a collective middle finger to the cosmic doom that was fast
approaching like the angel of death. Extinction was coming for the
human race, yet those in the streets that night either didn’t care
or they chose to hide that fear behind the warm beer, drugs, and
music loud enough to make them forget. For the partiers filling the
streets of downtown Houston, God had written them off. The only
thing left to do was go out with a bang.
For others it was a time
of quiet self-reflection and conversation with their Lord. Locked
away in churches, mosques, and synagogues, they begged their
various deities to spare the world the fate he or she or it had
seen fit to inflict on the godless masses. They promised to convert
and have the sinners repent. They begged for mercy. They called
comet AGT-1475, a ball of iron the size of Texas barreling through
space towards the Earth, by its entirely biblical name. Worm Wood.
The name, over the previous three years since the comet’s
discovery, had stuck, and even the media had taken to calling the
night of the comet’s impact Worm Fall.
Still others locked
themselves in their basements and storm shelters, confident that
the ten cases of SPAM, two hundred gallons of water, and thousand
rounds of 9mm would suffice them till the smoke cleared and they
could rise up, masters of the wastelands. They conversed on their
array of short wave radios, the internet, and by phone, plotting
their rise from the ashes. Their world would be a new world and
those who hadn’t listened before, those who hadn’t prepared, would
be gone. They’d be a world of self-sufficient supermen, flush with
beans and bullets.
Some even tried to go on
and act like all was normal, going to deserted workplaces and
pretending to shop at long looted out stores. They hoped against
hope that the governments of the world were correct and that the
best
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