“Well, we either fix this thing, or we wait out here and hope someone else comes along before we freeze to death.”
Mike continued to swear and the names he called Sampson became more and more inventive.
“Can you fix it?” Mike asked after he ran out of names to call Sampson.
“I think so. I hope so.”
“Damn it. I left my phone in the truck.” Mike felt his pockets. “And, yep. The piece of paper I wrote down the spare numbers on is also, you guessed it, in the truck.” He cursed again.
Tom closed his eyes and took a deep breath. They had no way of contacting their families now. He hadn’t even had a chance to speak to Claire yet.
“Okay, try it now,” Tom instructed half an hour later. Mike turned the key and let out a whoop when the engine started.
“You’re a fucking grade-A legend! Get in, let’s get out of here.”
Tom grinned and jumped into the truck. He tucked his hands under his armpits to warm them up.
“I dunno about you,” Tom said after they’d been driving for a few minutes. “But this has been the craziest forty-eight hours of my life. Find out an asteroid is heading our way, crash land a plane, take refuge in a barn, get taken in by a friendly farmer and his sister, then get car-jacked and abandoned somewhere in Manitoba. What’s next? Alien abduction?”
“Let’s hope not,” Mike said. “I don’t really want to be probed.”
Tom snorted. “Yeah, me either. What would you prefer? Alien invasion, or the asteroid?”
“Alien invasion, of course.” Mike only thought about it for a few seconds.
“How come?”
“They’d be something concrete to fight. It’s a bit hard to fight a bit of space rock. I dunno about you, but I’m feeling pretty helpless and I don’t like it.”
Tom nodded.
“How about you? Space rock or aliens?”
“Aliens too, I guess. Although why they’d want to invade this measly little planet I wouldn’t know.”
“Do you think there are aliens out there?” Mike asked.
Tom shrugged. “Probably. Whether they’re intelligent life forms is another matter. I mean, if you think about it, how long have we been around? If aliens had visited Earth even forty thousand years ago, all they would have found would have been primitive stone age cultures. Go back a million years and what? I don’t know. If they’d visited seventy million years ago, all they would have met would have been dinosaurs.” Tom paused for a moment, thinking. “Who knows, maybe we’re the first.”
“What do you mean?” Mike asked, glancing briefly at Tom before returning his eyes to the road.
“Well, think about it. Someone has to be first. When the first farmers settled down in the Near East, and everyone else, every other human on the planet was still a hunter gatherer, they were the only ones and they set the world on its current path. Think about how much better off the planet would be if we’d stuck to hunting and gathering.”
“Hey, I like the comforts of technology and modern medicine, thanks very much. Besides, human technology not advancing past spears and arrows and living peacefully with nature wouldn’t change the fact that we’d still be wiped out by an asteroid in two months. We just wouldn’t know about it,” Mike said.
“That’s true. But, yeah, back to my point — what if we, at this very moment, are the most advanced civilisation in the entire universe. What if we’re the Egyptians of the universe?”
“Well then, we’re about to take a giant step back. I don’t think we’re going to be space travelling any time soon, that is, if anyone is still alive to carry on the human race in six months time,” Mike said.
“I just had a thought — what will happen to the astronauts on the International Space Station?” Tom glanced up at the sky and wondered what they could possibly be going through. Would they even want to come back? How long could they live for up there?
“Being stranded in space makes being stranded on the other side of the country look pretty tame,” Mike said. Tom agreed.
They were silent for a few moments, then Mike asked “would you rather find out about the asteroid one year, one week, or one day before it strikes?”
Tom stared out the window at the passing snowy plains and thought for a few minutes before answering. “I’m gonna go with one week.”
“Reasons?”
“Well, a year’s too long. Look at how quickly things have fallen apart already; it’s barely been two days. Imagine a year of this. More people would probably die in the chaos before the asteroid even struck. The food supply in the major cities is surprisingly fragile. Millions would starve… millions probably will starve over the next couple of months now that I think about it. How many people have enough food in their house to last them two months? I know we don’t. The food in the supermarkets will only last so long until it runs out if no-one replenishes it. I’m not sure how many delivery drivers are going to turn up to work over the next few weeks, and at this time of year most of Canada’s fresh produce is imported from overseas… we’ve already seen how messed up air travel is. As soon as we get back to Toronto we need to make sure we stock up on enough food to get us through the next few months.” Tom sighed and rubbed his head. He was so used to just being able to nip down to the supermarket or visit the local farmer’s market whenever he needed to get food. All they grew themselves were a few potted herbs in the kitchen window and a couple of tomato plants on the patio in summer. His mom had a vegetable garden that she tended in the warmer months, but it was more of a hobby than anything she could actually live on, besides it was buried under a layer of snow at the moment. He had no idea how much food they had in the house. Not more than a week’s worth, surely. Hopefully Claire had stockpiled a lot of food. He wasn’t sure what the situation would be like when they finally got back to Toronto. Would it all be plundered by then?
“Speaking of food, I’m hungry. I’ll stop at the next gas station and see what they’ve got,” Mike said.
Tom narrowed his eyes at the thought of the food Cora had packed them that he’d saved — in the truck with that scumbag.
The next gas station didn’t come along for another half an hour. Tom was surprised at how quiet the road was. There was only one car parked by the side of the gas station. They pulled up and Tom filled the tank while Mike went inside to get some food. He came back laden with chips, candy and energy drinks.
“Healthy,” Tom commented dryly.
Mike quirked his eyebrows. “Not really a top priority anymore Tommy-boy.”
“Fair enough.” He eyed the energy drink. He hadn’t drunk one since his college days, when he would stay up all night finishing a paper that was due yesterday. “I suppose they’ll come in handy. D’you think we could just drive straight through?”
“Yeah. I’m over this. I just want to get home before something else crazy happens,” Mike said.
“Good. Okay. Well you have a nap and I’ll drive for the next few hours, then we’ll swap.”
“All right. I think we should steer clear of the bigger cities… That piece of shit Sampson has got me paranoid,” Mike said.
Tom nodded. “Yeah, I agree. It won’t be one of my lifelong regrets not to see Winnipeg one last time…”
Mike snorted. “I think my first girlfriend lives in Winnipeg now.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Married with a couple of kids. Huh. My ten year high school reunion is later this year. Well. Was going to be. At least I’ll have a good excuse not to show up…”
Tom was silent. Somehow he kept forgetting about the asteroid, just for a few moments here and there. Then it came rushing back and he wondered how he could think of anything else. Days, weeks, months. That’s all he could count his time in now.