I still remember where I was when it all began.

Clair and I were in my yard, laughing. That summer had been something new and
different. We had found happiness, maybe for the first time in our lives. We werent in
love, nothing as trivial as that. It felt more like we were love. Things made sense.
There were chairs on my patio, but we werent using them. There was a concrete
path through my yard, but we had neglected that, too. Instead, we had lain on the grass,
facing the sky. I dont remember what we were talking about. Just the epression on her
face when I had taken my eyes off the clouds to look at her.
!hed been smiling.
"nd then the ground began to shake.
"t first, I thought it might have been a truck out back. #r thunder. $ven a minor
earth%uake, however rare that might be.
&ever would I have imagined what it really was.
When the shaking didnt stop, the look on her face shifted from a smile, to
confusion, to a slowly increasing fear. We stood. The grounds %uaking seemed to increase
as we rose, and I noticed that we were holding onto each others hands.
"nd there, on the hori'on, picking themselves out of the ground, we saw them.
(ehemoths, gargantuan caricatures of humanoids, silhouetting themselves, blocking out
the sun.
"nd the buildings in the distance, my )od, the buildings were toppling over as the
ground underneath them was torn open. The creatures stood, seemed to stretch* a
moment that lasted forever* and then straightened out, surveying the world they had been
living underneath for so long.
Things stopped making sense for a long time after that.
*********************************
&ow, were strapped into an airplane, strapped in because nothing is safe
nowadays, and things still dont make sense. &o one really knows how much of the planet
is still alive. +aybe these things were only underneath "merica, maybe no one even knows
whats happened to us.
#r maybe theres nothing left, ,ust some stubborn humans who refuse to be
cleaned off the face of the $arth that they all believe to be theirs, regardless of how foolish
such a belief is.
This world was here long before the first man walked, and will be here long after
the last. -unny how easily we forget this. .ow easily we put our own species on such a
high and fragile pedestal.
The ground beneath us is devastated. +aybe it was once a city/ #r maybe it was
,ust a small town. &either eist anymore, and whats left looks all the same* a blasted
landscape covered in the skeletons of our old civili'ation.
"nd sometimes, rarely, when I look out the window, I see others. Waving, running,
screaming. #f course, theres nothing we can do. Theres nowhere to land this plane, and
even if there was, we probably wouldnt. It becomes a lot harder to trust strangers when
theres no order or structure to stop them from killing you and taking everything you
have.
I do look out the window now, and see a familiar sight* black spider*like creatures
swarming over ruined buildings. We still dont know what they want.
I find Clairs hand and grip it, and reali'e I am crying.
01o you still believe in )od/2 I ask her, feeling tears covering my cheeks. +aybe
once I would have been ashamed to let her see me like this. (ut things have changed since
then.
!he s%uee'es my hand.
0I still do.2 Then she smiles, and for a moment, its the same smile I saw on her
face in my yard, so long ago.
Thats enough for me, I suppose. We can keep trying to reach for something
without ever knowing what it is, as long as it gives us a reason to keep living.
+e/ I have a reason worth living for.
Clair still believes in )od.