Asteroid Challenge: The Last One (with apologies to Valerie Meachum, to whom all things will become clear, in time . . . .) by Susan M. Garrett She hadn't expected it to take quite this long. Janette sat on the curb of the sidewalk and looked up at the mid-day sky. The dust cloud that now covered the earth had made day into night and night into a fearsome, chill thing that even a vampire could grow to despise in time. And time had, indeed passed. It had been six months since the end of civilization. That's what Walter Cronkite had called it. LaCroix had once explained to her that if Walter Cronkite said it was so, then it so. They'd dragged that man from his wife and family, placed him in front of a camera, and let him broadcast the end to the world. Amazingly enough, people had watched it. It had been amusing at the time, that so many people had crowded around television setes, whether in public or in the privacy of their own homes. She'd never allowed one in the club before, but finally relented and sent out two of the youngsters to fetch one. Her credit hadn't been needed--they'd simply looted the thing, as others had been doing all along. It was only a matter of minutes to set up the large screen system. She'd never seen the end of the world before and if she was going to watch it, she wanted to watch it on a large screen. It brought back memories of the turn of the first millenia, when peasants had run into the darkness of their homes and awaited the second coming that the bishops and priests had prophesied. It was the one time she'd regretted not being able to endure daylight--she'd wanted desperately to wander amonst the populace and see what had happened when they'd realized that tomorrow was here and the earth had not open to let the dead walk nor had the heavenly host descended to do battle with evil. Janette decided not to think about how even she'd gotten hysterical on that long night, when the memory of man counted one thousand years past, and LaCroix had been forced to subdue her to keep her from doing herself injury. Ah, but she'd been young, then. She wasn't yet used to the ways of the world, or the foolishness of mortals. Or the foolishness of vampires . . . . Nicola had perished on that last night, on the night when there was no longer any reason to hide who and what they were. She'd been told he'd rescued many mortals from collapsing buildings, from idiots with guns, from .. . . every sort of disaster that happens at the end of the world. After the bar had emptied, hours even after that Cronkite had wept and signed off the air for the last time, someone had come back to tell her that Nicola was gone. Of course, she'd already known. But she'd been polite, offered the messenger a drink--some minor party boy who'd taken a fancy to her once--then sent him out to meet his fate with the rest. LaCroix was also gone, though no one knew the circumstances of his passing. She'd simply awakened one morning to a horrible pain, far greater than the grievous wound that rent her soul when Nicola was taken. And then there had only been silence. Miklos had stayed as long as he dared, as had Alma and a few of the others, but they began to drift away over time. Her stock of blood was still formidable and she'd gifted them with bottles to take with them, wherever they thought they might go. A few, Miklos in particular, had tried to get her to go with them, but she'd refused. What was the point? The shops were gone. The hairdressers had perished, as had the manicurists, the artists, the musicians, the dancers, the laughter, the blood . . . . It was all dust. As were both Nicola and LaCroix. And so, she sat on the curb outside the Raven, basking in the dim mid-day gloom and watching the cockroach and the twinkie. She wasn't about to let either of them win. **************** "The only things left at the end of the world will be a twinkie, a cockroach, and Janette." Regards susang@vitinc.com Forever Faithful Ravenette, because somebody STILL has to. "Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies."