Welcome to the Launch!

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  Nine out of ten people would feel some remorse about interrupting a priest’s sermon with a screeching rock song whose words were, at the very least, inappropriate for the occasion. And this would be an absolute certainty if the event that was so rudely and insensitively disrupted happened to be a funeral.

  But Ramsey felt nothing but a wave of happiness when the priest looked up from his Bible and all those in attendance turned their heads to glare at him indignantly. He thrust his hand into the pocket of his jacket and pulled his cell phone out as quickly as he could, all the while mumbling apologies as he swiftly moved away from the group and went out to the cemetery grounds.

  Since he was only able to speak with his wife once a month due to her being more or less incommunicado on the other side of the planet, silencing her call was the last thing he’d ever think of doing. Just the same, Ramsey made a mental note to change the ringtone of his new cell phone.

  “Hello, darling,” he greeted her as he continued walking among the trees, supporting himself with his black cane. He had to stop a moment to pull down the wide-brimmed hat he always wore so it wouldn’t be carried away by the wind. “I’ve missed you. How is everything down there?”

  Ramsey shuddered just thinking of his wife being in Antarctica. Each time he imagined what it must be like, shivers ran up and down his spine.

  “I miss you too, sweetheart,” answered his wife’s voice. “Everything here is going as planned. The visit with Congressman Collins and his bureaucratic cronies set us back a bit, but we managed to convince them to get us economic support from Congress. How’s everything at home?” she asked, unable to mask her homesickness.

  Ramsey chose to leave out any mention of his little faux pas in the church; it somehow didn’t seem to hold the same weight as Congressman Collins or the millions budgeted for scientific research. Instead, he summed up for her the highlights of his life since they’d spoken last month, though there unfortunately weren’t as many as he would have liked. His business wasn’t exactly sailing along, and he didn’t want to cloud their monthly conversation with unpleasant news. His wife, on the other hand, shared all her news about the progress they were making in the studies they were carrying out at the South Pole. Jane was using scientific jargon that to Ramsey, the manager of a cigarette factory, was nearly incomprehensible. But she was speaking with so much passion that he never felt the slightest inclination to cut her off. It must have been because they’d been married for such a short time, he thought somewhat cynically. Well, at least during their wedding ceremony the guests had thankfully had more sense than he did and had turned off their cell phones.

  “So, how long before you finish up your work and come back home?” asked Ramsey.

  “If everything keeps going like it is, we’ll finish in two months,” she said, sounding pleased.

  It didn’t seem like such good news to Ramsey. Even though her time away wouldn’t be extended, he’d held out the hope that she’d be back sooner. He refrained from saying anything about that.

  “Oh, honey!” His wife’s voice sounded emotional on the other end of the line. “It’s incredible! I’m looking at the aurora australis! What an extraordinary light show this is. If only you could be here now to see it with me.”

  Ramsey imagined his wife with the phone up to her ear, looking at the sky at the South Pole. Without even realizing it, he let himself be carried away by the illusion of being at her side, and gazed at the sky as if she were pointing out for him where to look. What he saw left him flabbergasted . . . and speechless.

  “Ramsey, are you still there?” his wife asked. “I can’t hear you. Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, I can hear you . . . I’m sorry, it’s just that . . . I could swear . . . I see it, too.”

  “What do you see?” she asked, not understanding.

  “The aurora. I see lights in the sky making a kind of trail of colors,” Ramsey stammered.

  “Come on, sweetheart,” she said, playfully scolding him. “Don’t start with your teasing.”

  “I swear to you. I’m looking at an aurora right here above me,” he insisted. “It’s like the one we saw in Alaska last year. Is the one you’re seeing green with purple streaks?”

  “Yes,” she replied, her voice clearly changing. “But that can’t be. You’d have to be much farther north to be able to see an aurora borealis. And it can’t be the same one I’m seeing. Listen, if this is another of your practical jokes I swear I’ll stay down here another year—”

  “It’s not a joke!” Ramsey interrupted. “I’m seeing it with my own two eyes. I’m going to take a picture of it with my cell phone and send it to you so you can see for yourself I’m not lying.”

  Feeling swept up by the unexpected excitement, Ramsey walked out from under the trees so he could see better. As he was walking toward one side of the cemetery, he saw that other people had stopped and were also looking up. At that moment, a silent but spectacular flash completely filled the sky. Ramsey instinctively covered his eyes and, when he took his hand away, he marveled at the sky, now adorned with many different colors. First it was tinged with red; a few seconds later the color changed, going from yellow to indigo.

  “Ramsey?” his wife was now shouting into the phone. “Something has happened here. The aurora has disappeared in a kind of explosion of light.” His wife’s voice sounded fearful. “The sky is changing color . . .”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  He couldn’t believe what she was saying to him. It was simply impossible. She was telling him in great detail exactly what he was witnessing, in spite of the fact that they were thousands of miles apart.

  “Now is it yellow?” he asked.

  “Yes. How did you know that?” she answered. “Is the same thing happening there?” The scientist’s voice sounded both tense and excited.

  Just then, they were cut off. Ramsey hadn’t heard anything that would have led him to believe that the signal was getting weak or that the called would be dropped; the phone simply went silent. Ramsey looked at it and saw it was off. Beginning to feel nervous, he tried in vain to turn it on again. Even though he’d completely charged the battery that morning, the phone would not come back on. Ramsey walked back toward the funeral intending to ask to borrow someone else’s cell phone, but something told him that everyone else’s had also stopped working.

  He’d taken only two steps on the sidewalk when he stopped in his tracks; in front of him was a sight so strange his brain could barely process it. A child was trying to get his mother’s attention, but she was gazing at the sky in astonishment. The boy was tugging insistently on the leash of a dog that was as still as a porcelain statue. Two of its paws were planted firmly on the ground, while the other two were hanging unnaturally in the air, defying the laws of balance. Ramsey just stared, not knowing what to do. The dog was frozen stiff, as if someone had taken a photograph of it as it was walking behind its owner. The little boy broke into tears and his mother finally turned toward him.

  As he was struggling to understand what was happening, something in his peripheral vision caught his attention. Ramsey turned, and what he saw astounded him even more. A squirrel had frozen in midair as it was jumping among the branches of two trees. This could not be. Ramsey rubbed his eyes and looked again in the hope that it had all been a hallucination . . . but no; the squirrel was still there, hanging weightlessly in the air, totally unaffected by the pull of gravity. An unpleasant tingling nipped at the back of his neck.

  The sky continued to change color. Completely bewildered, Ramsey’s only thought was about how the mysterious flash had paralyzed the animals. Oddly, he wondered if his wife might be seeing petrified penguins. He tried to pull himself together and do something. “Come on, this is what you’re good at,” he thought. He turned toward the road intending to go back into the church and ask for help, but he couldn’t move his feet from the ground. The command to move his foot had left his brain and headed toward his foot—of that he had no doubt—but his foot was not responding.

  Without knowing how or when, he had totally lost control of his ability to move. He was still conscious of what was happening around him but he could not even move his eyes. His vision was fixed on the road and he was no longer able to feel his own body. He saw everything as if it were a movie with the camera stuck in one place, unable to interact at all with his surroundings. Though it was precious little consolation, he felt slightly calmer seeing that the other people around him were also paralyzed. The mother and her son, leaning over their dog. A couple on the other side of the street, looking at the sky. And a group of six children in the midst of a crosswalk.

  If it hadn’t been for the beating of his heart and the rustling of a light morning breeze, Ramsey would have thought that time was standing still. But that couldn’t be what it was. Leaves were falling from the trees, and a plastic bag danced in circles in the air, pushed along by the wind. Apparently only animals and people were affected.

  Ramsey heard the sound of a vehicle approaching on his left, but he could not turn his head. In front of him, the schoolchildren remained motionless in the middle of the street. A shudder of terror shook him as he anticipated the imminent tragedy. His mind screamed out with all its might, but his lips disobediently remained tightly closed. The front end of a street-sweeper truck appeared before his eyes. It was moving slowly, but continuously. The driver’s face, visible through the windshield, was as still as everyone else’s. Ramsey, powerless, stared in horror as the street-sweeper ran over the children. Their bodies were crushed by the heavy truck that had veered only slightly off course as a result of the impact. The crunching sound of broken limbs flooded his ears, but Ramsey barely had time to process the horror he felt over what had happened to the children. A rapid chain of events was cascading all around him.

  It began with a loud crackling, accompanied by a small flash in his right hand. Ramsey knew instinctively that the phone he’d been holding had exploded, releasing a small spiral of smoke. At least, he thought, he didn’t feel pain; he didn’t really even feel his hand. He took some solace in this, hoping against all hope that the children hadn’t felt the truck rolling over them. Almost immediately, he could make out small explosions inside of the vehicles that were near him. He guessed it might be the radios. Seconds later, the engine of a truck that was driving away from them blew up, its hood hurling into the front windshield. But that didn’t stop it; it kept on its course down the avenue as the engines of the vehicles it was passing burst in sequence. Several cars caught fire and Ramsey knew that many of them were occupied. They no doubt had drivers and passengers who were completely paralyzed as they watched the flames consuming their bodies. Never before had Ramsey felt so relieved that his son, Michael, had a motorcycle.

  He heard violent explosions in the distance, and shortly thereafter saw columns of twisting smoke rising far off, over the city. If in a place as remote as this cemetery several people had already died, he didn’t even want to imagine what might be happening in an area so full of vehicles and electricity.

  And then, with no warning, Ramsey regained control over his body and was able to move. He dropped his cell phone, which was burning his hand, and then joined in the shouting coming from all around him, a spontaneous expression of the terror and dread afflicting them all. Ramsey saw a truck crash into a tree and watched as the driver got out, his arm enveloped in flames. People were terrified; they were running in all directions and screaming hysterically.

  Something thundered over their heads. Ramsey looked up, and distinctly heard an ear-shattering metallic screeching. His eyes met with an enormous mass of steel, falling straight toward him. He could make out the British Airways logo painted on the side of the airplane as it plunged toward them. He didn’t even try to get away. His last thought, just before being crushed to death, was of his family. He asked God to protect them.

  The inexplicable phenomenon that would come to be known as the Wave had the disconcerting effect of planting the same questions in the terror-stricken mind of every survivor. What had caused that vortex of destruction? And more importantly, why had it happened?

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