Perihelion
“You wanna go for a walk?”
Gene had scarcely finished the sentence before Anubis came barreling into the room and leaped up onto the couch, nuzzling his wet nose under Gene’s armpit and into the crook of his neck while the man was bent down tying his shoes. Whining impatiently, fidgeting and pawing at Gene’s back, every fiber of his being begging Hurry up! Hurry up! Hurry up!!!
“Ah! Alright, alright buddy!” Gene exclaimed in mock outrage, struggling to get that last knot in his lace against the hysterical insistence of the hundred-pound German Shepherd. “We’re going, we’re going! Come on!”
Gene rose and hadn’t taken one full step before Anubis shot past him, bounding through the kitchen and to the back door. He sounded like Scooby-Doo when he ran, running in place briefly as his paws refused to catch on the hardwood floor. The dog raced to the door, then dashed back to Gene, then back to the door, then back to Gene again, wagging his tail wildly all the while. He didn’t want Gene to get distracted and forget where they were going- for a walk. When he saw Gene coming, he started leaping at the door, jumping as high as he could and clawing at it, raking his paws over it as though his own uncontrollable excitement carried the magic to turn the knob. He squirmed and whined as Gene made him sit to put on the leash, but as soon as he heard the metal latch close over his collar, he was leaping up again like a dolphin, totally unable to contain his joy at the thought of going for a walk.
“Okay, okay, let’s go,” Gene said, sighing as he turned the knob. Promptly yanked out the door by Anubis, he didn’t have time to be sad or scared.
It was a nightly ritual of theirs, and they both loved it. Every walk was a new joy, even if they took the same well-trodden paths- there was nothing Anubis enjoyed more than going for walks, and there was nothing Gene enjoyed more than walking with Anubis. They both knew their part, Man and Dog, and in this simple ceremony of The Walk, they each continued to carry out a drama that had been going on for forty-thousand years, ever since the first cro-magnon stole a wolf puppy from its mother’s den. They’d walk for an hour or two, three or four miles up and down every hill in Somerton, til they eventually wound their way back home and collapsed exhausted on the sofa. It was the high point of the day for both of them, the perfect way to end the evening, with only the rain occasionally interfering.
But tonight was different. Gene knew something Anubis didn’t, and though he tried not to think about it, the somber undertone remained. Anubis didn’t know that this was probably going to be their last walk together.
Once they were out the door, Anubis wanted to bolt right down the driveway, but Gene stopped him to look up at the night sky.
The night was cool, a gentle April breeze blowing the scent of a fresh-fallen rain through the streets of northeast Philadelphia. Far above, the wind was busy shepherding away a covey of loitering clouds to reveal the stars. Orion the hunter, with his faithful hound Sirius at his feet. Draco and the Dipper. A scythian sliver of moonlight circling high above the constellations. And, in the center of the sky, the ghostly glaciers of Caelia shone bright. Canis Major seemed to be balancing the new planet upon his nose.
He took a deep breath at the view, and then Anubis began pulling at the leash. Gene stumbled forward and they started down Barcalow Avenue at a brisk pace, Anubis’s nose buried in the grass to blaze the trail for them. Gene looked down at the asphalt and the heaviness returned to his chest. A tingling dread tormenting his limbs as they walked. He’d seen enough of that stupid planet on the television anyway- the Hubble images providing a far more intimate view of the interloper than what the mere naked eye could discern. But Caelia was still plainly visible, slightly larger than the Moon despite being twice as distant.
Its surface was viewed but indistinctly, a spectral haze surrounding the planet. Hundreds of geysers erupting pressurized liquid all at once to create the mist, spewing out a temporary atmosphere of water vapor as the icy world flexed and groaned in the warmth of the Sun. The thaw gave Caelia a marbled appearance, azure cracks on its surface revealing deep fissures in the icy crust. Newborn canyons rapidly filling with meltwater and the briny upwellings of a subterranean sea. Funny how they knew so much after only a week, and yet so little.
The tightness in his chest refused to go away, and he just accepted it as they walked down the street. Eyes glazed in thought, deep thought, wishing time would go faster and simultaneously wishing it would stand still. They left Barcalow where it bisected Overhill, and at the bottom of Overhill was the near three-way section of that street with Philmont Avenue and Bustleton Avenue. It wasn’t a straight intersection- Overhill terminated by flowing into Philmont, and then about three car lengths later Philmont intersected properly with Bustleton. It caused interminable traffic congestion, but there was little to be done without tearing up the roads and starting all over.
All three streets were totally empty, unusual for the hour but not the circumstance. The businesses on either side of Philmont- the Hibachi Grill on the left and the Shamrock Tavern on the right- were darkened, their neon curlicues out of commission for the evening. Gene bit the inside of his cheek and wondered if they’d ever turn back on. Anubis stuck his nose in the bushes bordering the Hibachi Grill parking lot and marked one of them, as he did every night.
“Come on, boy,” Gene said, tugging weakly at the leash when Anubis turned to inspect his handiwork. “We’re going for a walk, not a sniff.”
The intersection was empty and bleak. Totally devoid of cars. Not even the distant thrumming of an engine; the streets were all deserted. Well, probably that made sense. The light was red, and Gene stopped at the crosswalk. “Anubis, sit,” he commanded. Anubis looked up at him quizzically, but obeyed nonetheless. A moment passed before it dawned on Gene that the street was, in fact, completely deserted.
“What am I doing?” he muttered, glancing down at Anubis. They locked eyes, the dog’s jowls curled back into a happy pant. He was just glad to be outside. “I’m being awful silly, aren’t I buddy?”
While the light was still red, they crossed Philmont. Gene didn’t look back, but the light changed to green the moment his shoes hit the opposite pavement. They continued walking along Philmont, the barren asphalt stark black against the LED streetlights. The Shamrock Tavern looked precolonial now, with its unlit windows and lot devoid of cars. Really it was three buildings, with a rambling ell tacked onto the back. A two-story billboard jutted from the ground in place of a tree, proclaiming to the world the wonder of a Ukrainian insurance broker in Feasterville and a Japanese restaurant on Grant Avenue.
They passed the bar and Gene wondered what Abby was up to now. Probably with her parents, he imagined. Memories of her danced in his head- a doe-eyed goddess, milk chocolate hair chopped into a feathery bob. Couldn’t hold her beer, hiccupping as they walked back up Barcalow to his place. That smile as he led her down to the ledge of rock on the Poquessing Creek where they’d had a picnic. He thought they’d be together for the rest of their lives, until the freight train of Grief hit him. Damn shame how it turned out; Anubis really liked her too.
Philmont Avenue curved sharply after the tavern, running parallel to the grounds of Calvary Academy. The fenced-in playing field he’d always wanted to take Anubis to so they could play fetch. It was gigantic, really would’ve allowed Anubis to run like he’d never been able to in the confines of the yard. Not that the yard was small; the field was just so much bigger. Private property though, even if that didn’t stop them from walking through the school’s vast parking lot in the late hours. He supposed that nobody would’ve cared or even noticed if they had a catch there on this night, but he hadn’t brought Anubis’s ball with him. And there was precious little time anyhow...
They entered the lot and Gene was so lost in thought he almost tripped over Anubis.
“I’m sorry, buddy. I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head to rouse himself from the nervous stupor, the tingling dread of what was coming, and then he remembered what was already out there. “Hey, Anubis, look out for that tiger, okay? Last thing we need tonight is to be eaten.”
The school parking lot, always packed on Sundays, was desolate. It must have been crowded earlier for the last Mass, but stood empty now, just a sea of asphalt punctuated by the tall towers of the floodlights. Only the school buses at their quay on the opposite side of the lot, not likely to be driven out in the morning. Gene held the leash loose as they walked along the edge of the lot, again trying to avoid thinking about what was coming. Here, between the parking bumpers and the guardrail was a thin rib of grass lined with dignified trees, oaks and maples. It was better walking here for Anubis, he thought. More interesting smells on the soil than the asphalt, even if Gene had to duck out of the way of low branches occasionally.
Anubis stopped to mark an oak, and Gene looked across the street and saw the houses on Edge Hill with dim lights in the windows. Some rooms were illuminated by blue flashes of television, certainly watching the news, waiting tensely for what everyone on Earth now knew was coming. They were the sane ones, safe in their homes with their families. Gene didn’t know why he was out, himself. Maybe he just wanted to get a last look at the neighborhood, preserving it in his memory as it was, because no matter what happened it would never look like this again. Maybe because Anubis was his family, and this is what they did at 10pm every night.
He thought about his family then. Grandparents all dead, gentle Mommon and venerable Poppop buried up on Proctor Road. Parents were there too, two stones behind and three to the right. Car crash coming home from Wildwood, a year ago. T-boned by a drunken illegal. Paramedics said Dad had put his arm over Mom to try to cushion her. He blinked and forced the memory back to the murky recesses of his mind. Still too much to bear.
One brother in college, California. Other brother in the Marines, Iran. Sisters, three of them- he only spoke to one, and she lived in Florida. Family like a pane of glass that had been shot. Not shattered yet but about to. Spiderwebbed shards just barely held in place by their own jigsaw pattern. As soon as one gave, the whole sheet would come crashing down. But he had Anubis, and as long as Anubis was okay so was he. Just a boy and his dog against the world.
Anubis was busy sniffing a squirrel trail that disappeared up the trunk of an elm tree. Gene shrugged his shoulders indifferently. In literature, Anubis would sense his unease and try to comfort him, flatten his ears and lick his hand, but Anubis was not a dog of literature and he seemed oblivious to his master’s emotional plight. It wasn’t true, but it felt that way to Gene. Anubis responded to outward emotion like crying, but when it came to inward sadness he just thought tugging Gene along and doing they fun things they always did would help cheer him up. Like sniffing squirrel trails. In a way he was thankful for it- he certainly didn’t want Anubis to be sad too. He looked down at the black dog as he sniffed a maple trunk and wondered if Anubis would smell the tiger. Probably not. It probably wasn’t even in Somerton, but there was always a chance.
A tiger. Gene still couldn’t believe it. On top of the imminent doom, there was a tiger loose in Philadelphia. And here he was, loon, walking the abandoned streets late at night with his dog like nothing was out of the ordinary. He’d seen the tiger on the news- she was beautiful, Amur, with fur that looked thick and silky. It would have been soft to the touch if she let you, but she wouldn’t because she was fierce and proud. Piercing marigold eyes, like pools of honey set in an obsidian ring. She didn’t deserve to be in a cage, in a zoo. Fed ground meat and stuck with a monthly battery of antibiotics and pointed and laughed at by petulant schoolchildren. She deserved to run, to stalk and hunt in a cool Siberian forest. To live and die as a tiger ought, free.
Those distant memories of family returned. Smell of freshbaked cookies in a little house in Conshohocken. Blessed to have known his great-grandmother, even if it was only for a short time. Maternal great-grandmother. Eyes glazed with cataracts, but still able to see his kindergarten doodles with a computer magnifier. He called her the Bird Lady, because she would always break bread in the morning for the robins and the blue jays, tossing it out on the backyard lawn with slender, knobby hands that had served her for a century. A little statue of Mary kneeling in the garden, a cardinal perched on her veil. Such a sweet woman. She’d taught him the Rosary. Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, Glorious, but Gene always liked the Sorrowful most. He thought of the Agony in the Garden. That resonated. That’s really where everyone was at this night. Sorrowful unto death. Agony in this Garden Earth.
While Anubis zigzagged among the row of trees, chasing the ghostly scent trails of squirrels and rabbits and schoolchildren, Gene kept looking around, trying to remember every detail of the neighborhood- every tree branch, every window of every house- for whatever happened in the next few hours, it surely would never look this way again.
When Caelia was first observed by Spaceguard five days earlier, the initial reaction among the scientific community could be politely described as “utterly horrified.” A rogue planet, dashing out from behind the sun’s glare. Totally invisible until it came rushing past Mercury’s orbit, having already traveled undetected through the opposite side of the solar system. Proper calculations hadn’t yet been made, but some back of the envelope work was leaked from NASA, suggesting that Caelia would collide with Earth, or otherwise pass by close enough to severely disrupt its orbit.
Fear among scientists turned into panic in the general population, and there was a mad rush on the supermarkets. Gene worked part-time at the AJAX deli up on Street Road. He was scheduled seven hours that Monday. The parking lot was a madhouse and he made the executive decision to break the rules and park near the truck dock behind the store.
As he rounded the building and came to the front of the store he saw a constant stream of people going in and out, a highway of stuffed shopping carts. He got a sudden feeling that he should just go home. If they were fucked anyway he wanted to spend his last days with Anubis. But he didn’t. Couldn’t. Needed the paycheck, in case NASA was wrong. More than that, his coworkers in there surely needed him. Throngs of people blocked his path to the timeclock and he wound up punching in five minutes late.
Another five minutes to get to the back of the store, maneuvering through aisles packed with customers and their shopping carts, the housewives and working wives and the dads and an endless band of nondescripts from all walks of life. Emptying the shelves as fast as they could be refilled. A pallet of water had been left sitting in one of the aisles, no one even attempting to put it on the shelves because it’d be gone in twenty minutes anyway. The milk was gone already, and the toilet paper. The deli was mobbed. Two people behind the counter when there should have been five or six- Dani and Liza. Palpable relief on their faces as he donned an apron and strode in.
“Madhouse today,” he muttered, glancing up at the ticker. “Sixty-Seven!”
“Haven’t you heard about Planet X?” Dani asked. She was barely five feet tall, with blonde hair and icy blue eyes. She was a grandmother and loved talking about the misadventures of her grandchildren and their puppy, making the rote job a little brighter.
“Yeah,” he said, putting a block of White American cheese on the slicer. Two pounds. “I don’t know how much of it I believe, but I’ve heard.”
“It’s crazy,” Dani continued. “The Air Force said they might launch missiles at it, to try to change its course.”
“Would that work?”
“I don’t know, but what other option is there? We’ve got to try something.” She glanced at the ticker. “Sixty-Eight!”
“The worst thing is that it might not hit us,” Liza said drowsily. Liza was Gene’s age. She was buxom and fun to work with and she did meth in the parking lot on her break. Her boyfriend was her dealer. She brushed an errant strand of dark brown hair out of her eyes and tucked it back under her hairnet before she took the next customer. “I was watching the news this morning and they said even if it doesn’t hit us, it could hit the Moon, or push the Moon out of orbit. And that would cause, like, global tsunamis and throw off the Earth’s tilt and mess up the seasons.”
“Right,” Dani said grimly, “We’d all go extinct. I mean, life can’t survive that kind of change, so we’d all just…”
“But slowly!” Liza insisted, “I think that’s worse. At least if it hits us we’ll all just be vaporized right away. I don’t wanna starve to death because this stupid planet stole the Moon.”
“That’s assuming it does hit us,” Gene said, “What if NASA’s wrong?”
There was a glimmer of hope in their eyes at that possibility. Liza turned and put a brick of imported ham on the meat slicer. “I hope so.”
“I guess all we can do is pray,” Dani said.
That seven hour shift went by rapidly and dragged into a thirteen hour one, as most of the night crew called out and the mobs of customers refused to recede. They were all perfectly polite- urgent, and scared, but polite. Eyes wide with fear- not terror but dread, that waiting for the medical results kind of dread. Unsure if it was their last day or not. Earnest pleases and thank yous at the beginning and end of each transaction. Taking their meat and cheese as though they were having Last Rites. Placing the bags in their brimming carts, checking off shopping lists that were as long as transatlantic manifests.
Even when he left at 8pm the tide showed no signs of abating, but crowd be damned he needed to feed Anubis and let him outside. He went home to a darkened house, feeling like crap for not having left any lights on for Anubis. Tried to tell himself it wasn’t really his fault, that his shift was supposed to have been over long before sundown, but he felt like crap anyway. Threw the switch on as soon as he entered the house.
Anubis was nearly invisible against the dark fabric of the living room sofa. Only his gleaming eyes and the tan mask around them revealing his presence. He looked at Gene and slid languidly off the couch, stopping with just his front paws down on the rug so he could stretch. It always looked amusingly feline, a police-line Alsatian raising his butt in the air to stretch his spine like a regular alleycat. If he believed in past lives, Gene would’ve bet Anubis had once been a tabby. Just for the stretching- he was thoroughly a dog in every other way. His tail curled over like a scorpion’s, stretching his back legs as he came off the couch. Then he trotted over to Gene, ears flattened, tail wagging. Wet tongue licking Gene’s open hand. Only his hand, never his face.
“Hey buddy,” Gene greeted, taking Anubis’s ear in his hand and scratching behind it, gently kneading the cartilage and raking the skin beneath the soft fur. The touch of his fingers pure bliss for the dog. “Sorry I’m late. Had a rough day.”
Anubis really did look like his namesake. Gene had seen the statue once at the Franklin Institute, that two-foot high shrine from King Tut’s tomb that was there for a few weeks as part of a traveling exhibition. The black cedar dog that was supposed to accompany Tut to the afterlife. Man’s best friend right til the end and even beyond. Anubis was his spitting image. Raven fur that had a lustrous sheen in the sunlight, with tan inner ears and a tan mask around his eyes. The main difference between Gene’s Anubis and Tutankhamun’s was that Gene’s had tan paws as well, front and back, and his belly was countershaded white and he had the shepherd’s robust frame not the lithe build of a jackal. But when he sat recumbent by the front door looking out over the street, he looked exactly like the statue in the museum. Regal was the best word for it. Anubis was royalty, and he knew it. In the backyard, with Gene, he was a goofball, still a puppy at five years old. But when he kept watch at the door, he was a sentinel.
Gene squatted down and let Anubis sniff his face. Wouldn’t lick, but sniffed. His eyes were remarkable, a bright, lustrous caramel. Tiger’s eyes. When Gene looked at him, there was never any doubt in his mind that Anubis was looking at him right back, that there was a soul behind those eyes that discerned the world and felt and loved just as he did.
Anubis was his only friend. Only real one, anyway. Only one he wanted.
“Come on buddy, let’s go outside.”
Gene went to the backdoor, Anubis’s paws clicking on the hardwood floor at his heels. He held the screen door open, and the dog barreled out like a jet black blur, barking viciously at some creature hidden in the darkness, and disappeared into the murk.
He went back inside and preheated the oven for some flounder. Unlike the customers at the supermarket, his freezer was already packed. Gene was one of the millions of those on the spectrum between blissful naivete about the world and hardcore doomsday prepping. He didn’t have a fallout shelter, but he had enough food on hand for two weeks. Always figured if he waited til the time he needed two weeks of food to go shopping, it was too late. But maybe it was silly to be worrying about food anyway. If the Earth got hit by this newfangled Planet X, the whole world would just be destroyed. Reduced to its constituent atoms. The End. Ditto if the Moon were pulverized or carried away by the lustful new world like a sabine bride.
Once the oven started to warm up he turned on the television. It was one of the rules by which he governed his life- ten minutes of TV news after work, and no more, no matter what was going on. After work was sacred downtime, to eat and read and play with Anubis in peace. The talking heads had no right to interrupt that. The way he saw it, he had no obligation to be caught up on current events anyway, because most of them would be irrelevant by the next day. So little that actually mattered ever made it to cable; sometimes he thought about getting rid of it entirely. One less bill to pay.
Tonight, though, he was glad to have it, because the news was all about the only important subject- Planet X. The thought of destruction brought clarity to the network, shooing out the mouthbreathing talk show hosts with their celebrity gossip and flippant politics. The reporter was a good-looking brunette, standing out in the rain in front of a NASA logo, with an umbrella and a blue raincoat.
“-round the clock work by astronomers and mathematicians at NASA’s Goddard Flight Center has led to a reassessment of the trajectory of Planet X, now being referred to by astronomers as Caelia. Due to the planet’s high velocity, it is projected to pass 478,000 miles from Earth- that’s twice the distance from us as the Moon, and well outside the danger zone to either orbiting body.”
She seemed like an angel as she delivered the good news, spread it to all the world on the cable. Her cherubic face was replaced by an amateurish animation- it must have been prepared that hour, but it was beautiful, wonderful, showing the immense gulf between the planet and the Earth and the Moon. The newly christened Caelia would just dash by like a comet, with no harm done.
“The recalculated data also suggests that due to gravitational forces from the Sun, Caelia will actually be slingshotted out of our solar system even quicker than it arrived, not being captured in a potentially unstable and hazardous orbit around the Sun. The planet will approach closest to Earth on April 8 at around 11pm Eastern Standard Time, and the view from the Earth will likely be spectacular. Since Caelia is slightly larger than Earth, despite its distance it will take up the same amount of sky as the Moon, providing an unprecedented view of this interstellar visitor.”
The view certainly was unprecedented, Gene thought. Another glance up at the misty world. Cracked blue glaciers staring back at him. Fissures blue as a robin’s egg against the featureless white, like the whole world would be blue if the white patina were peeled away. Their walk took them down along Philmont, past a little residential neighborhood. A dog barked at them from within one of the houses and Anubis’s hackles went up, his tail curled venomously as he stared into the window at the dog. As soon as they passed, he buried his head in the pavement, tracking like a bloodhound for any further scent of the dog. As though it insulted him with its barking, and he wanted to know everything about it so he could hold onto the grudge. He stopped at very the next fencepost, looking back at the barking dog’s house while he pettily marked it. Gene smiled a bit. He hoped at the end of this there were still dogs around. Maybe no people but as long as there were dogs the world would be okay.
Philmont intersected with Byberry a quarter mile later, and they turned into the plaza there. Pine Valley Center. It had been languishing for awhile, half empty. An insurance broker. Laundromat. Hair salon. Rita’s Water Ice. An Indian restaurant that smelled atrocious. Rita’s was boarded up. He thought that was funny- did they think the Caelians’ first order of business would be soft serve?
They turned onto Byberry and started the long ascent up the hill, leisurely. No reason to rush, no sense in tiring themselves when there was still plenty of time to reach the top. It was the highest point in Somerton, that hill. Best place to be when the fireworks started. Or worst, depending on how one viewed it. Anyway, they’d get there handily with the time they had left. Maybe another half hour. Precious minutes, all thirty of them.
The neighborhood fox was sitting in a grove of elm trees by Forest Hills Station and he darted across the street at the sight of them. Gene wished him well and wondered if he knew what was coming. Crafty, that fox; maybe he did know about the Caelians. He watched the orange tail disappear beneath the culvert over Bloody Run and he really hoped they wouldn’t run into that tiger. He had a 9mm in his jacket pocket, for the tiger just as much as the Caelians. Didn’t know how the Caelians would take it, but it would smart a tiger for sure.
Forest Hills Station was deserted, but surprisingly a train passed. He made Anubis sit at the crossing and bent down to scratch his back and console him because Anubis hated trains. Hated how loud they were. Looking in the windows, the cars were packed with soldiers. Green helmets and vests laden with fresh magazines. Rifles slung over their backs. One of them carrying a rocket launcher. Where would they disembark? Jenkintown? Center City? Anyone’s guess- no one knew where the landings would commence. Only that they were coming. The train passed them by and chugged off into the night, whistling once in farewell before fading to a distant rumble.
“Okay buddy, let’s go.”
Those NASA scientists were right, no doubt. Their recalculations were correct. Caelia the planet posed no threat to Earth. It would, as projected, be cast out of the solar system, ejected by gravitational forces as the immune system rejects a pathogen. But there was more to it.
As Caelia got closer to Earth, Hubble noticed other things happening on its surface besides geysers. There seemed to be rectangular metal constructs on its surface in some places- stabler places, without the geysers and ice fissures. Stark black against the snow, long and narrow and hinting at something more beneath the ice, like they were only the bare entryways to a subterranean realm. Jutting out of the glaciers, like the prow of Shackleton’s Endurance after she got stuck in the ice. And in a sense maybe that’s exactly what they were, shipwrecks.
But they were living wrecks, and just as the world was enjoying a deep, collective sigh of relief, thankful only for the gift of having a next breath at all, the doors to those metal blockhouses opened. And then Hubble wasn’t the only one watching. Then the US Space Command and the Roscosmos and the Chinese and the Europeans were all intently focused on Caelia’s surface. Spy satellites pivoting outward to peer at the glaciered planet, lenses zooming in on the black pillboxes.
Nobody liked what they saw. There was a general on TV not long after, a grizzled old soldier with broad shoulders and a lantern jaw and salt and pepper hair. He said- they’re coming. In a word. He put it better, of course. Grimmer. Said about how his satellites had seen vehicles driving out from the metal rectangles- vaults, they knew now. Big tractors with bubble wheels, towing what looked for all the world to be nails behind them. Thousands and thousands of nails, swarming the icy plains like termites. They had a wide parabola head and a short stem and then a long pointy tail like a rapier. Ships. Big as an aircraft carrier, each one. So there it was. The new doomsday prediction, unable to be countermanded by math. An invasion, plain and simple. Caelia was coming to fuck up Earth’s shit anyway, only instead of Caelia singular they had to worry about Caelians plural.
The General said the resolution on his satellites was quite good, which was the only good thing about the situation. The resolution let his men see that the ships were being loaded on the surface with some sort of provisions. All by the tractors- they didn’t see any greys or little green men hoisting sacks of flour over their shoulders. Just the cold, inscrutable maneuvering of machines.
“We predict that these ships will launch when Caelia is at perihelion,” the general said. Perihelion. Such an elegant word. It meant the time when Caelia approached closest to Earth- 476,098.3 miles away on April 8. About 11pm, give or take twenty minutes. He didn’t even need to say they were planning an invasion, it was just plainly apparent. Stark reality. The kind of realization you feel as a black pit in your stomach that makes you lose your appetite.
“Presently, we believe the Caelians must be a subterranean race, likely living in the planet’s briny subsurface ocean that is kept liquid by core convection. This of course means that they would likely be more interested in our planet’s oceans than continents and islands, but nevertheless there remains a strong possibility they will view us as a threat to their own control of the Earth, and will take measures to remove us in order to attain total dominance.”
The general sighed and folded his hands over the podium.
“I am not one for speeches. I just tell my men to get the job done and that’s all the inspiration they need. But since tonight I am addressing not only my command, but the whole world, I feel something more is in order. In two days’ time, the Earth will be at war. We will be facing a desperate invader, one who has survived for countless millennia adrift in interstellar space. One which has decided its best hope for a future is to attack and conquer our world, and snuff us out so that they might rule. As far as we know, they have a limited window in which to launch this attack. They have one chance to do this right. This is our strength. They will not be able to reinforce their armies. Our own military has been deploying to critical areas throughout the country, with reservists being called up for support in other sectors. We are also in communication with our allies and other nations to coordinate responses and offer assistance to one another when the hour is at hand. We will be ready to meet the invaders wherever they land, whether it be Virginia Beach or Pike’s Peak. They will come, and we will meet them. We will meet them, and we will fight them, and we will defeat them.”
After he picked his jaw up off the floor, Gene stared at the wall for a long time, the knot in his stomach tightening more, twisting itself round and round to torment him. An anvil suddenly upon his chest. Anubis was in the parlor snoring, straightening his legs in a dreaming stretch. He awoke, shook himself, and trotted into the living room to paw at Gene. Despite his despair, they went for a walk. A brisk one, Gene avoiding eye contact with Anubis, like he was ashamed of what he knew. Of what was coming, and how he couldn’t stop it. He went to sleep and dreamed restlessly of a sky darkened by ships, flying saucers landing like in the movies. A black horde of spidery aliens scuttling out, chasing him and Anubis, howling death as they laid waste to the city.
Some of the coping was amusing. The denial, the mental stacking of the deck. What started on a few distant corners of the internet rapidly became common talk- rumors of how the military was going to unleash the crashed alien ships at Area 51 to fight off the Caelians, how other alien races- the greys, the reptoids, the pleiadians- were coming to save Earth, or were already preparing a response. Utter hogwash, all of it. There was only Earth and Caelia. Whatever remained after the conflict, humanity would have to win it all by themselves.
There was another rush on the supermarkets- not as bad this time. Most people had already loaded up when they thought the Moon was about to go eloping like a starstruck teenager. But still bad. This time Dani called out. Said she was going with her grandkids to the Poconos. Gene left early. The store closed early. The whole illusion of modernity coming down all at once, the hallucination sharply ended. Everyone realizing that bills and employment and money itself didn’t really matter, none of that stuff ever really mattered, but family did. And that’s where everyone wanted to be, with family.
Gene heard the churches were mobbed the day after the announcement, and the next as well. Special masses held every hour, each with a new crowd packing the pews. He didn’t go- spent all day in the yard with Anubis instead. Never was a churchgoing man. Anubis’s favorite ball was a rubber Chuck-it, orange with a blue mock-seam, the colors faded from constant use over the years. Fastballing it from the patio and watching him run after it. Chasing him all over the yard when he didn’t want to drop it, finally cornering him and tackling him, falling down and saying “I got you! I got you!” and scratching his belly while he panted happily, his jowls curled back in a blissful smile. Happy to be alive, happy simply to be outside on that glorious spring day. Gene reclined on his back next to Anubis beneath the shade of the ash tree and they just laid there for awhile, catching their breath and listening to the leaves rustle in the breeze. The sun warming Gene’s face and turning Anubis’s black fur pleasantly hot beneath his fingers. He patted Anubis’s warm side, a firm drumming sound that resonated, that said I’m here. I’m solid. I’m not going anywhere.
The day grew long and as the Sun descended he painted the grass in the shadow-hues of evening. A mourning dove hoo-hooed on the power line in the neighbor’s yard. Caelia was just starting to peek out from below the horizon, but Gene didn’t care. Damn Caelia. He was sick of it. He wanted to watch the clouds. Horses. He usually saw horses when he looked at the clouds, galloping herds of cumulus ponies. This herd carried the promise of rain. Not a storm but a gentle spring shower. Anubis got up from his repose and trotted off, coming back a minute later to shove his wet nose in Gene’s face.
“Ah, okay, alright!” he protested, taking the ball from Anubis’s mouth. He sat up and leaned against the ash and hurled the slobbery ball across the yard. The dog grabbed the ground with all four feet and catapulted himself after it, turning sharply as the ball bounced off the fence with a metallic jangle. He caught it mid-bounce a moment later, skidding to a stop when he realized he’d won. Stopping in the middle of the yard to look at Gene, eyes dancing, tongue lolled out the side of his mouth while he panted. Just staring at him, as if to say proudly Did you see that? Did you see how fast I was?
They came up to Bustleton again, this time at its intersection with Byberry. Top of the hill, highest point in Somerton. Once upon a time, Somerton was its own little village and it had been founded near this spot. Sprawl had overtaken it and not one of the original buildings still stood, but it remained the commercial core of the neighborhood. Russian strip malls instead of blacksmiths and cobblers and farriers. Electric billboards instead of dignified chestnuts. Tonight the strip malls were deserted, the gas stations closed. Sunoco and East Coast on either side of Bustleton, a rivalry that had come to a tidy end the previous evening. A golden statue of a lion stood on a pedestal at the corner of the Sunoco station, glaring out over the intersection. Not actual gold. Painted. It was crouched down in mid-roar and had a red handprint over its left eye.
“Watch out for that tiger, okay buddy?” Gene warned, suddenly reminded of it. He wasn’t mad about it but he didn’t want to get eaten either. An intern at the zoo had released a bunch of animals the day before. Zebras and giraffes and a rhino and a bunch of big cats. Didn’t want them to starve when the Caelians came. They’d all been rounded up- quite a circus on the news- except for one tiger. It probably wasn’t anywhere near Somerton, but there was still a mild tingle of danger, being in the same city as a wild tiger. For all he knew they were the only ones out and about in the whole city, just Gene and Anubis and an Amur tiger. Anubis looked up at him and saw a mild concern in Gene’s eyes. Hackles went up a bit as he scanned the empty intersection for danger. Not deaf to Gene’s emotions- he just responded different.
There was a low peal of thunder overhead. It vibrated Gene’s bones like a tuning fork. Anubis stopped and looked at him uneasily, tugging at the leash to go. “It’s okay, buddy,” Gene consoled, reaching down while they walked to scratch Anubis’s back. The thunder was from a fighter jet. A long shearing boom as it passed over, invisible but for the cometary tail of its exhaust. Four more followed shortly after, the roaring planes staggered at intervals like a meteor shower. They were heading south, to Center City. Good a spot as any to wait. Nobody knew where the Caelians planned to come down.
Gene saw in a documentary once that an alien invasion would start with them dropping thousands of rods in the ocean. Telephone pole-sized rods of tungsten, just off the continental shelf. The narrator said it would cause massive tsunamis and wipe out coastal cities. Philadelphia wasn’t coastal but it was on the river. He could imagine the tidal wave shotgunning up the Delaware Bay, an unstoppable wall of water, rearing up hundreds of feet tall as it blasted upstream. Wiping the whole city off the map, like a fist smearing an equation off a chalkboard.
He hoped the Caelians wouldn’t do that. Didn’t care much for himself- dying in a wall of water didn’t seem worse than dying from a ray gun or laser beam or whatever. All equally abstract, equally impossible to comprehend. But, Anubis hated water. Always had. Except the hose; he loved playing in the stream of the garden hose, chasing the jet of water across the lawn and trying to eat it as Gene howled with laughter. But pools? The creek? The ocean? No. Anubis hated all of that, anything deeper than a puddle, and Gene didn’t want him to go out like that. Didn’t want him to go out at all obviously, but certainly not like that.
They walked diagonally across the intersection, not bothering with the crosswalks anymore, and walked along Byberry for another two blocks before turning onto Proctor Road. Gene suddenly realized where his feet had been unconsciously carrying him the whole time, and he shrugged, the tightness in his chest increasing only a little bit. On a normal walk he’d avoid it altogether, or approach from the other direction so he wouldn’t have to see. Yet this was no normal walk, and there really wasn’t any other place he could think of to spend the world’s last night.
Gene waited til dusk to bring Anubis back in for dinner. The sunset was gorgeous, the clouds a mellow orange streaked with veins of red, the embers of the day slowly fading to a subdued, vespertine pink. He sat on the patio steps with his arm around Anubis, waiting for Venus and the Dog Star to herald in the night, and then they went in to cook dinner.
Gene had decided on breakfast food- a buffet of bacon and porkroll and scrapple, with scrambled eggs and toast as side dishes. Probably his second favorite meal, after Mommom’s chicken and dumplings that he’d never been able to replicate. But it was a damn close second. Anubis looked up in disbelief as Gene filled the dog bowl with an entire pack of bacon and half a roll of porkroll, and a spatula full of eggs for good measure. Gene put it down at Anubis’s place and Anubis sat tensely and stared at the steaming heaven for a moment, as though he thought Gene would take it away, snatch it up like the end of a dream. He glanced over at Gene, unsure.
“Go on buddy. It’s all yours.”
Anubis scarfed down the food in about forty seconds, if that, and Gene’s own plate didn’t last much longer. The dread knot in his stomach couldn’t defeat the aroma of bacon and eggs. Loosened the terror, if only during the meal. There was a soft patter of rain on the window screen that ended almost as quickly as it began.
That sunset had instilled something, he thought. Not acceptance, but there was a comfort in its beauty. So he ate, and enjoyed eating for the first time since the general was on TV. Speaking of, he flipped it on to hear what the talking heads had to say one last time.
“And now we have a special guest, Dr. Andrew Ventre, who works at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Dr. Ventre, thank you for joining us this evening.”
“Thank you for having me, Chris.”
Dr. Ventre was a portly old man, grandfatherly, with wireframe glasses and a long white beard. In another era he could’ve been a great mall Santa.
“So, Dr. Ventre, we’re told that you have a new theory about the origins of the Caelians. Could you lay it out for us?”
“Yes, well, my hypothesis is fairly simple- there are no Caelians. Now, I’m not saying there are no ships and no aliens- there very clearly are. But there’s no reason to believe they are originally from Caelia. The actions we observe on the surface do not square up with an indigenous origin. After all, why would a race that matured in briny depths beneath hundreds of miles of ice want to... visit... a warm, liquid world like our own? How would such a species even know about things like stars and planets, imprisoned as they were beneath thousands of tons of glaciers? It would make much more sense for them to have been from another planet, a more Earth-like planet, and to have established a base on Caelia.”
“Like an ark?”
“Yes, precisely. My hypothesis is that the quote-unquote ‘Caelians’ knew some terrible cataclysm was heading their way. This cataclysm would had to have caused chaos in their solar system, flinging Caelia into interstellar space and also ejecting their own world, or otherwise rendering it uninhabitable. In anticipation of this cataclysm, the Caelians would have sent unmanned ships with embryos- or whatever they use for embryos- to Caelia, which is ideally suited to sustaining frozen biological matter for a long, long time. But more than simply storing their embryos there for safekeeping, the Caelians clearly must have installed some sort of operating system on Caelia that would, after interminable eons, detect when the icy world was approaching a new solar system- perhaps by monitoring cryothermal activity in the crust.”
“Hold on a moment, Dr. Ventre,” the host had a confused look on his face, “What does cryothermal mean?”
Ventre had a pleasant smile and a hearty laugh, even when discussing armageddon. “Sorry Chris, I forgot I’m not in a lecture hall. Cryothermal activity is similar to geothermal activity on our planet- geysers and hot springs- but driven by heat and gravity from neighboring stars and planets, rather than any internal heat on the planet itself. This cryothermal activity is visible from Earth, the plumes of water vapor now surrounding the planet due to geysers from the Sun thawing the ice caps.”
“Okay, thank you, please continue.”
“Well, anyway, now that Caelia has finally approached a nice, warm world, whatever system is operating there has booted up, and is getting everything in motion for its frozen embryos to colonize the new planet.”
“Our planet.”
“Yes, our planet.” Ventre smiled, and there was a sorrow in his eyes, as though in his soul he were weighing the plight of the Caelians with the plight of his own world.
Gene turned off the set. He didn’t need to hear any more. He’d already weighed it in his own heart. Regardless of their sob story, the Caelians would have to find some other real estate, because he wasn’t selling. He rose from the couch, zipped up his hoodie, and went to the back door to grab the leash. Anubis trotted over eagerly, his eyes wide with expectation.
“Come on, Anubis,” Gene said. “You wanna go for a walk?”
And so they found themselves walking along Proctor Road. William Penn Cemetery lay off to their left, and they entered quietly. Tombstones old and new jutting out of the ground- grey granite most of them, polished black granite some of the newer ones. Photorealistic faces etched onto the newest of them, a Slavic import. Others so thoroughly eroded by time the names were unreadable. Gene’s grandparents lay beneath a grey granite stone near the entrance. His parents were just two stones behind and three to the right, the grass not yet fully grown back over the grave. The sight of it untwisted the knot in his stomach and instead he just felt empty. Hollow.
He walked to his grandparents’ grave first. Made Anubis sit- last thing he needed was some extra bad luck because his dog decided to mark a tombstone. The sight of them didn’t hurt as much- it hurt, but Mommom and Poppop had lived fulfilling lives. Married fifty-two years. Mommom hadn’t lasted six months after Poppop passed. Died of a broken heart, broken as the mate of a shot goose. Gene thought he understood. Relatable, but his own body had cursed him with resilience.
When Mom and Dad went, he didn’t eat for three days. Slept til two in the afternoon for most of six months- got up to let Anubis out, then straight back to bed. Hollow eyed. Hair a greasy mop. Quit his job. At some point, Abby couldn’t deal with it anymore and walked out the door and out of his life. He thought about ending it, the allure of the dreamless abyss. Took Anubis for a long walk one night looking for a bridge but there weren’t any bridges in Somerton tall enough. When they reached the corner of Napier and Maple it was two in the morning and Gene sat down on the curb and buried his head in his knees and cried and cried. Great wracking sobs. The kind of crying where you weren’t even sure if it was really you who was crying, or if you were simply a third person observer to someone else’s misery. Some other poor bastard who’d lost everything, and you were just there as a spectator to your own bereavement. He didn’t care if anyone heard him.
But Anubis was there, and he looked startled at the sound of the sobbing. He whined and nuzzled Gene’s head out of his knees, insisting even as Gene tried to push him away. Didn’t flatten his ears or try to lick away the tears, that wasn’t Anubis’s way. But his way was clear enough, and he whined and nuzzled more to try to break the dam within his master’s heart. Tongue lashed out once before he caught himself, as though he found it impolite. And that was when Gene realized how much Anubis loved him, and missed the old, fun Gene of walks and fetch. And the realization of how selfish he’d been in his sorrow hit him like a sledgehammer.
“I’m sorry, buddy. I’m so, so sorry,” he’d said, pulling Anubis in to hug him tightly. It hadn’t been an overnight transformation- Anubis’s love was no miracle cure. But steadily, he returned to a healthier mental state. Got out of bed earlier. Shaved finally. Got a new job at AJAX. Spent every possible minute with Anubis in gratitude for saving his life, trying to make up for the lost time of the past six months. He hoped he’d done enough.
He knelt down and patted his parents’ stone as though he could summon them from beyond. Their names stared at him accusingly, but he stared back and then he spoke.
“Hey Mom. Dad. I, uh, I’m sorry I haven’t visited more. It’s just… it’s too painful, y’know.” He bit his lip, struggling to hold back the flood that threatened to destroy him all over again. “I brought Anubis with me. We’re gonna go sit on the knoll, where we watched that comet a few years ago. You remember that? Neowise?”
He found himself laughing a bit, despite the sorrow, a quick bout of fluttering nervous laughter inappropriate to anyone but the grieving and the doomed, and he was both, a death row mourner.
“I say ‘watched’ but we never saw the damn thing. Always got up here just a little too late or a little too early. Oh but Anubis loved it, loved the walk, loved sitting up here to catch our breath. It’s, it’s a good place to rest, you know… God, there’s so many things I want to tell you and here I am rambling about something you already know about.”
He looked around at the neat tombstone rows, at the drooping spruces lining the gravel paths. At the dignified Methodist church on the Trevose side of the cemetery and squat, brutalist Saint Christopher’s on the Proctor side with its thirty foot Cross touching the stars. He glanced over at Caelia. The eerie mist had faded like a morning fog, and the surface of the adversary was plainly visible now. The glaciers were twinkling. Little pinpricks of light, the ice scintillating like a distant firecracker. How long would it take for them to get here? He looked back at his parents’ headstone and the names seemed to speak of forgiveness, not accusation.
“Guess I’ll see you soon though, so I can tell you in person.”
Their last fishing trip was fading to a dream, though it had only been a year and a half ago when they’d rented the boat on Grassy Sound. Caught more crabs than fish but Mom had brought in a baby shark. Her favorite movie was Jaws. And Dad? The last trip with Dad was to Pennypack Park, with Anubis. They’d walked from Fox Chase down to Verree Road, talking the whole time. About nothing, but that was what really mattered in life, the nothings. The drab every day conversations about how beautiful the trail was, about how funny Anubis was for burying his snout in the macadam like a bloodhound to follow the trail of every dog they passed. Just a verbal expression of simply enjoying each other’s company.
“I’m just sorry I didn’t do more with you guys,” Gene said, the sudden sobriety of remorse clearing his head. “Wish we’d gone more places. I had a list, you know. Columcile. Batsto. You always wanted to go the American Revolution Museum, Dad. I- I should’ve made time. And I’m sorry, that I didn’t.”
The tears welled again, and he rose to his feet. He looked at Anubis, who looked back at him with those big soulful eyes, eyes that somehow understood wordlessly. He didn’t know this was where Mom and Dad were buried, but he missed them just as much. “Well, let’s not prolong the agony. I’ve said all I need to say. I love you Mom, I love you Dad. We’ll see you soon.”
They started across the cemetery, Anubis thankful to be moving again. He knew the spot they were heading to. There was a new smell on the grass tonight, he noticed. Like a cat, but different. A different musk to it, like it was bigger and stronger than your average cat.
Gene thought about the Agony in the Garden again and wondered why he didn’t dwell much on Revelation, given the circumstances. Caelia was no Wormwood though. It was a cosmic tramp, a hobo from beyond that was about to shed its fleas on Earth. That was how he looked at it. This was going to be a fight, and even though he didn’t expect to survive it, he at least wanted to go out with disdain for the invaders. No matter how Caelia got here, whether if it was gravity or dark matter or quintessence or the third angel’s trumpet blast, Gene hated it and everything that came with it.
Maybe he didn’t think of Revelation because it wasn’t certain that this was the end. Humanity could win. Any race that could freeze itself and awaken after billions of years surely was more advanced, but then again maybe their weapons would match evenly. It wasn’t impossible. Gene wasn’t betting on it though. The Sorrowful Mysteries rang out in his head again- “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?”
He stopped and looked across the street to Saint Christopher’s. The Church itself was an ugly, squat building from the 1960s, but the crucifix atop it always struck him as beautiful. Thirty feet tall, jutting triumphantly from the brown roof into the night sky. Triumphantly? Maybe defiantly was a better word. The Cross the ultimate defiance of death. Isn’t that what Christianity was always about? He bowed his head and breathed the words Bird Lady had taught him- “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from us; yet, not our will but Yours be done.”
He stared at the cross as if he expected it to answer but the only reply was the gentle whisper of the breeze.
“Come, Anubis.”
They walked over to their favorite spot, the little knoll at the other end of the cemetery. No tombstones here. Just a low, grassy rise that Gene and Anubis had come to often in summers past, to rest for a moment during their long night wanderings, before the mosquitoes shooed them off. This spot truly the highest point in Somerton, with a panoramic view of the tombstone rows. They sat atop the softly rounded crest, and Gene kissed Anubis on the snout. Kissed him on the head, over and over again, a barrage of goodbye kisses that continued until Anubis turned his head in annoyance. He still didn’t know.
“I’m so thankful for you, buddy,” Gene said, carefully, wanting the words to count. “I want you to know that. You’re my good boy, Anubis. The best boy. You always were.” He sighed, a deep rattling sigh that tried and failed to hold back the tears, and this time Anubis did flatten his ears and tenderly licked the salty rivulets off his friend’s cheek. Gene looked up wet-eyed and saw the ivory tusk of the Moon rising nearly to the height of Caelia, challenging the icy orb. “I love you like the Moon loves the stars, Anubis. Like the Moon loves the stars…”
They sat there for a few long minutes, watching the mist clear away from Caelia as its surface continued to be dotted with pinprick flashes of light, its blue and white brilliance now on full display. Gene took a deep breath of the cool night air. He fished in his pocket for a milk bone and gave it to Anubis. Scratching him behind the ears just the way he liked it, moving down his back until his right leg started kicking. Too early in the season for mosquitoes, so they just sat on the cool grass and waited.
It came stabbing straight down like a lightning bolt, silently at first before the whipcrack of the broken sound barrier hit them. At first he thought it was a meteor- the news had said there might be a shower as the planet edged closer to Earth. Then he realized it was purple. The sound of a distant explosion, somewhere in the direction of Center City, confirmed his suspicions. Meteors didn’t hit ground.
Anubis ruffed once, sitting up alert on his haunches. Gene looked at Anubis and Anubis looked back at him with those big, innocent tiger’s eyes and Gene put an arm around him to pull him in closer. Another purple bolt came lashing down, closer this time, towards the Delaware River. Andalusia, maybe? Anubis whined at the explosion. Another came, and another, terribly close, this time behind them to the north. And then the sky was being sliced by dozens of violet bolts, porphyric heralds announcing the arrival of a new prince.
Anubis whined again and Gene hugged him tightly, and they sat together on the knoll watching the lavender rain.
Wow, Pongo. This is so cool.
Anyway, gotta go…my dog is sitting next to me, and I’m wasting time not cuddling her.