TWO MINUTES TO IMPACT, the big screen read. We all huddled around the TV which crackled with sunspots. The red background glowed in the cramped cement room in which we had been living for the past three months. We had waited in fear for three months. Now it had come.

Our ghostly shadows shone against the wall where the cabinets were. Built into this wall was a faucet and a sink. There was no stove. There were enough supplies to last five people for three years. But there were seven people in the room which meant that the supplies had been used at an alarming rate. They hadn't lasted that long.

ONE MINUTE TO IMPACT, the screen told us. We were buried like a can of sardines twenty feet below the surface. They told us that we would be safe there. No one believed Them. We knew that we would be gone almost on impact. They told us that the matter would be resolved within a couple of months. It was too late to be resolved for us.

: 46. The screen counted. It now ticked the seconds away. That meant that the defenses hadn't worked. They never did. For the past year, They had been perfecting the system. They told us that it would be no time before the system was on line. But it was too late to work for us.

: 33. The seconds counted down so slowly now. Fear shook us in our seats. The bell rang. We had been instructed to lie down in the impact center upon hearing the bell. No one moved. Fear held us down.

: 21. We gave up. There was no more; this was THE END.

Like in the books, this was the last page for us. We did not know what the rest of the world would do.

: 19. The screen blipped. The Presidential Seal flickered in the background while a message travelled up the screen. It told us that It was being halted right at that moment, that the President was now on his way to Switzerland for the peace talks that had not come in time for us. The message said that damages would be limited. Then the channel flipped back to countdown.

: 06. No one looked at each other. No one was in anyone else's arms.

: 03. One of us fainted.

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