Turns out, the side of the road by Booth Avenue was the best place to watch the end of the world.
I know this for a fact. We drove around for hours, expecting that some high-rise balcony or maybe the pier at the beach would suit, but there were crowds everywhere and all that wailing gets to you pretty damn quick. We just wanted a good view, you know? Plus we didn’t want to haul the couch too far. Main Street was covered in debris, there was rioting over by the courthouse, some kind of cult thing was going on in the park. Not our style.
But we were driving way back around the south side of town to avoid the military convoys on the main roads and the stand-your-ground snipers over in the Highlands subdivision when we ducked up Booth and there it was.
No one around. One side of Booth is all trees and hidden driveways, the other is just a crystal-clear lake ringed by forest, you know, maybe a quarter mile past the power station? You could see the brilliant reflections of the oncoming meteorite, a pulsing inferno at this point, in countless red and orange and black lines dancing in the lake water. I started to take a pic to put on Facebook but Jim just gave me that look of his. “Oh, right,” I said.
We shoved the couch off the back of the truck and pulled out the cooler. There was whisky in there, good stuff, but for some reason both of us just wanted one last beer. We collapsed on the couch for the last time, tapped cans, chugged deep, and watched the sky burn.
Nothing like a cold beer.