Iron Age

Author : Rick Tobin

It’s insane to record anything, but what else is there to do, floating alone at twelve-thousand feet? Altitude sickness will kick in soon enough…maybe a blessing. I’m out of supplies and dehydrating. Frightened people grabbed Bibles; others cash…some each other. I snatched my school backpack with my video cam. This roost saved me as I watched thousands flying past into the waiting vacuum these last three days. I captured all the horror, watching family and friends pulled to their demise, desperately holding hands…too far from me to touch. Maybe nobody will find this video, but I am driven to capture this ending. Someone must.

Dad warned us. He was military liaison between NSA in San Antonio and NASA. Space Command listening posts picked up weird chatter months ago. Then JPL analyzed light emitted from alien crafts after they passed through the sun’s corona. Hubble photos confirmed these invaders had jumped from old space into our system. Their ships’ construction lacked any hint of iron. Dad said theorists speculated old parts of the universe, first formed after the Big Bang, were missing iron. JPL wasn’t sure why aliens wanted that metal, but after watching their armada siphon off Mercury’s tiny core, and everything inside Venus, their intent was clear. All attempts to communicate with these intruders failed; as we watched, some of their ships bypassed Earth going towards Mars.

We were elite civilians to be saved. Mom, typically stubborn, just lost it, refusing our transfer to underground sanctuary near Marfa. Once alien fleets moved the Moon out of its orbit like a beach ball, the Gulf rose overnight within ten miles of downtown. It was too late for our evacuation. Nothing moved as mother ships penetrated the poles. By then the chosen were already hunkering in deep safe havens, anticipating someday emerging, like Ant People in Hopi legends, replenishing Earth. Dad heard everyone underground was crushed on day one within the secret conclaves, once gravity was disrupted. No one was going to make it.

Hugging a huge building’s belly slowed my exit, as its mass inexplicably drifted somewhat slower. My precarious perch allowed observation of smaller objects zooming past, including the doomed living. The first day streams of the cursed rushed slower, but as aliens stole more iron, transition amplified. Mmm! Damn roaches. I hated seeing them pass by me, but at least they didn’t sting like scorpions, or worse. I saw a cop zoom past yesterday into a cloud of ascending fire ants. I shut off the camera, just as I did when a couple floated past doing the dirty deed in their panic. At least they weren’t screaming in agony.

I was going to enter the astronaut program, with Dad’s influence. Now, I’ll reach space, but I won’t be alive to enjoy the view. The weather is now turning insane. It’s raining upside down as lightning bounces through debris across the wide horizon of lift. Clouds of surface plants and water are now rushing past me like bullets. It’s only a matter of luck something hasn’t smashed me into building windows like a bug on a windshield.

The Earth will soon be a barren rock after the core is completely removed, so here is my final record as I watch the Hill Country below shred apart and the waters of the new Bay of Texas rise up in a twisting wave of froth, dead fishes, seaweed and muck. My water bottles are empty. That seems ironic as water flies past, escaping the dying planet, forever. Oh, there’s the camcorder battery light…