The Dead Zone

━ 02 | before

"The most recent NASA reports suggest new activity in the area around Asteroid 99942 Apophis, and impact assessment suggests that it has once again broken orbit, potentially increasing the likelihood of collision by tenfold..."

"Turn that thing off; no one needs the anxiety," Fray said to his coworker, waving a hand toward the television above their heads adjacent to the screens displaying the menu. Outside, the dirty old Checkers sign stood untouched and unbothered by trivialities like the end of the world. Such an idea was pointless to dedicate time or effort to. It wasn't that Fray was careless; by contrast, he had everything in life ordered in schedules and lists, his future plans set in stone.

He knew what college he was going to go to, what degree he would pursue, precisely how he would finance his education and his first vehicle and a place to live, where he would look for work when he was ready to venture into his career. All the setup for life he had memorized. And then once he passed all those milestones, he had already considered the other obligatory American-dream checkboxes: marriage, real estate, children. He'd been raised to prepare himself for such things. It was a lot to keep stuffed in his head, and he simply didn't have any room left over to angst about end-of-the-world scenarios that may or may not happen.

It was fun to theorize on certain occasions, of course. Mostly in a joking context, despite everyone always telling him that he tended to take jokes a little too seriously. But living was hassle enough. To think about dying? What a waste of the time he had to live.

Despite every professional assessment predicting the contrary for more than fifty years, Armageddon had yet to come hurtling towards Earth. As a high school senior with much more pressing problems, Fray wasn't exactly stressed about the idea.

Elijah Cho, one of the other teenagers who worked cheap hours at the Checkers in the small shopping plaza near the school and someone who happened to also play varsity basketball, rummaged around for the remote. The channel, blissfully, switched to sports news. "Tell me about it," he said flatly. "My grandma mumbles about space rocks every night at dinner."

That was what everyone called the asteroid and anything else the National Space Administration fretted about—the vague, unassuming, and almost laughable term space rocks. It implied that the whole thing was nothing more than one big joke. In all honesty, that was what it felt like: a faraway, intangible threat that had never truly carried any meaningful weight. Just another space rock. Ill-advised, perhaps, but one could hardly blame them. What sane person prepared for the end of the world?

The bell at the front door, Fray's immortal nemesis, chimed to signal the arrival of a new customer. He sighed, finishing up wiping down the register counter and glancing up. He was pleasantly surprised to see who'd come in.

Celeste Guadalupe was something of a local celebrity, or at least the closest thing to a celebrity that anyone knew. Her father Santiago was a retired Nascar driver, and in his prime won four Daytona 500s in a row. Nearly everyone around had at least heard of the Guadalupes. The media loved Celeste because she was always willing to chat them up even when her father got tired of being cornered for interviews while trying to make a regular grocery trip. If there was one thing Fray knew about that girl, it was that she could make a conversation out of anything. She went to Lovecraft's rival school, Avalon Bay High, but Fray knew her fairly well because she was a waitress at the little Puerto Rican restaurant next door and came in to socialize just about every day on her breaks.

"Ay, you guys are packed," she'd said in that high, lilting voice of hers that made Fray's palms sweat, leaning against the counter with her elbows propped on its surface. She flicked one of the bottled drinks sitting beside the tip jar in rapid repetition before abruptly pulling her fist closed again. She flashed him a smile. "Don't know what's the appeal in ground cow stuffed with hormones between two pieces of bread with a side of potatoes, but hey! Who am I to judge people who choose deep-fried diabetes over a nice, home-cooked-style Latin meal?"