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After what seemed like an eternity had passed, I settled on our large dining room table. It was heavy, solid, an ideal hiding place to ride out whatever might befall us. With my eyes, I directed my wife towards the table. She quickly understood and complied, taking the children with her.

The entire house was filling with a fine dust as the plaster ceilings cracked under the strain. I could hear other household items crashing to the floor around me in a great cacophony of destruction and ruin. Despite the obvious danger I stood there, listening to it all. Fear was mixed with a certain curiosity, even as the house threatened to come apart around me. It seemed as if I could only truly understand what was happening by experiencing it fully, in every detail.

In the distance, I heard a loud crash. I assumed that one of the neighbor's houses had given way and collapsed. I could also hear people yelling outside.

It was then that another stray thought entered my mind. I remembered reading that earthquakes lasted a few seconds at most. Surely several minutes had passed by now. To me, it had felt like an eternity.

Whatever this was, it was not a simple earthquake. Something else was happening.

At that point, I made what was probably the most fateful decision of my life. Curiosity overruled caution, and I made my way through the falling dust towards the front door. Once there, I opened it and stepped outside.

My first thought was of how clear it was, how intact. Inside, it had been like walking through a cloud because of the falling plaster. Outside, I could easily see everything. It even seemed brighter than usual. Next door, there was nothing left but ruin. Other than that, the street looked no different than it always had. All of the other houses looked completely untouched.

I knew differently, of course. Everything was not normal at all. The ground beneath my feet continued to tremble.

There was something else nagging at me. When I had emerged from the house, I had been holding my breath so as not to inhale the dust. As I took my first breaths in the night air, there was a heaviness, as if the atmosphere itself were thicker somehow. Being a doctor, I knew immediately what was happening. There was not enough oxygen.

There was a great deal of wind as well. It whipped down the street as though the world had sprung a leak. It almost caused me to lose my balance as I stepped beyond the shelter of the front porch. The noise was like a deafening roar in my ears. I turned my head in the direction of the city core, the direction in which the wind blew, and that was the moment I caught my first glimpse of the invaders. Hanging over the silhouettes of the office towers and skyscrapers, a giant fireball filled the sky. It was enormous. At the time, I could not have even said what might be the cause, for nothing else was visible within the flames. Below, the air shimmered with heat, and I could see the mighty towers begin to warp and bend. All I could think as I stood there, staring, was that the world itself was coming to an end.

Suddenly, there was a loud splintering sound behind me. Before I was able to turn around, I was struck on the back of the head and everything went dark.

I awoke sometime later to darkness, silence. As my senses returned, nausea washed over me and I wretched. The back of my head stung fiercely. Below me, I could feel something cool and solid, reassuring. I held on to that sensation like a life preserver as the world slowly coalesced around me.

At first, I floated on a cloud, unable to focus on details. The universe seemed to spin around me like a cyclone. I was not even certain of where I was at that moment.

Then, one by one, details began to emerge.

My first realization was that I was face down on the pavement. That was all. I did not even have any recollection of how I had come to be there, only that it felt soothing to me. I continued to lie there for what must have been several minutes as I attempted to gain my bearings.