I won’t lie, I was feeding Honey meaty treats as fast as she could gobble them down. It struck me that there might’ve been periods where I’d been lax in repaying her love, so my arm was a piston, ramming into the bag before directing them at her eager mouth. I’d started to cry. Not for my life, but the life of my constant companion. She sat there, tail swooshing under her butt, oblivious to the impending destruction. The only things existing in her canine world were Mark, sniffing, and treats. Oh, and the doggy dreams of chasing rabbits or whatever she would pursue when her eyes closed. I hoped being the purveyor of the morsels put me at the top of the favourites list. Her brown eyes shone in the booth light, trusting entirely. I scratched under her chin and she pressed into my fingers.

Damn, I loved this pooch.

My phone had the BBC News app playing, and if the look of crushing defeat that washed over the anchor’s face was anything to go by, it was bad. Her subsequent collapse and disappearance under the desk did little to boost my hopes.

“Well, shit,” I said to the dog who wagged her tail all the harder. She yapped at me, moving to the door. “You need to go? Really?”

She jumped, placing her paws on my shoulders. Her beef breath was rancid and the most beautiful thing I’d ever smelled. Pulling Honey close, I sobbed into her fur as she writhed to lick at my tears.

“Come on then. One for the road. I might even join you and cop a squat.”

I left the counter untended. What was the point in worrying? The streets outside were empty. Pretty much the entirety of Earth’s population would be looking at the screen in shocked horror.

She bolted through my failed sanctuary of warriors and villains and waited by the back door. The stairs to my little flat lay to the right. It was so tempting to get Honey emptied, run up the steps, jump in bed and pull the covers up over our heads. The duvet bunker furnished the wearer with immunity from all harm, didn’t it? At least demons and ghosts for sure. Trillion tonne balls of rock were an unknown.

Honey scratched at the door insistently.

“Yeah, yeah, ok!”

The tiny patch of grass that came with the property was hardly a garden. It barely counted as a terrace, more a plot that was left behind as an afterthought. My weight bench took up nearly a quarter of the available space. If I were an arsehole, which I wasn’t, I could’ve grabbed one of the local feral cats and not be able to swing the poor thing as it hissed and tore my arm to shreds; the yard was that small. Honey, ever the optimist, did her rounds of sniffing for a suitable place to go.

I chanced a look at the news and wished I hadn’t. The missiles, tiny trails facing off against the encroaching monster, flew true and hit home. Their combined energy managed to light the scarlet aura a little brighter for a split second, then faded.

“Well that was a dud, huh?”

Honey finished, checked her deposit, and moved across to a patch of particular interest. I was stood with a poo bag in one hand, my phone in the other. I almost launched the handset over the wall, but relented and moved to scoop the poop. As the bag split and my finger dipped knuckle deep into the warm mush, I very nearly launched the untied bag in place of the phone. The way my luck was going, I’d end up hitting a disabled orphan. They would spend their last minutes on earth gagging on the wretched stench and feel of warm, digested turkey giblets. Yeah, it said finest cuts on the packaging, but I’m a fairly competent economist. You can’t sell a can of prime cuts for less than a quid and have it be from anything other than the beak, butthole, and foot.

What was that in the back?

If I was a competent economist I’d have invested my business loan into something better than an 80’s throwback money pit?

Shut up.

This was different.

Plus I’ve only got twenty-six minutes left. Give me a break.

The replacement newsreader was one of the off-camera staff who’d borrowed a shirt two sizes too small. His tie was askew, the tip shorter than the tail. I felt sorry for the poor guy. He probably had family he would never get to in time and had decided to make his last moments count for something. Someone was audibly screaming in the studio until a few gruff voices interjected and dragged them away, the cries fading.

“Give it to us straight, compadre,” I told the stand-in.

“The missiles have failed.”

I made a siren noise that startled the pigeons perched on a nearby branch. “Sherlock alert! We have a Sherlock alert!” I almost felt sorry for the morons of the bird world as they crashed against each other in their haste to escape. Their single digit IQ and cross-eyed look of perpetual imbecility usually drew an extra pity slice of granary loaf from my larder. After all, it wasn’t their fault they’d won the booby prize in the avian lottery.

Honey barked at me once as if to tell me to stop with the theatrics and clean up her mess like a good slave.

“I’ve got your shit on my finger!” I showed her the brown digit and she huffed and turned away. “I’ll act the fool if I want!”

Honey peed, a devastating rebuke to my outburst. The worst thing was she maintained eye contact throughout the stream, hammering the point home.

“If you can get below ground, please do so immediately.”

I thought of my duvet and compared it to a fully air conditioned and apportioned nuclear bunker. My cover was rated 10.5 tog, which put it in the ballpark of deep excavations, poured concrete and steel rebar.

A supercharged bolt of panic tore through me, lighting up every nerve ending and trebling my heartrate. I could actually feel it thumping against my chest like an Alien baby ready to jump into the loving arms of the queen covered in fragments of rib and pectoral muscle. I’d purposely avoided looking skyward to the east, but as the afternoon light took on a tinge of pink, I had no choice.

It was breath-taking in an utterly terrifying way.

Red death.

A trillion tonnes of cosmic fury, raising its boot to crush us flat.

A smaller, crimson version of the pale moon which had triggered wolves and poets to worship her for millennia.

Our worship of this false idol would be fleeting.

The trajectory would see it impact in Slovakia.

All of Slovakia.

The surrounding countries would lose a sizeable portion of their landmass too… For the split second it took to punch clean through our planet and turn us into space dust.

At least it would be quick.

My galloping heart slowed as the inevitability of the situation crowded out all fear. I was with the one thing that I loved above all others. We were together. I’d had plenty of girlfriends, and even a couple of fiancées, but the chime of church bells was never in my destiny. At least I didn’t have kids to comfort. That would be the worst. Would I even have told them what was coming? For the youngsters, ignorance was bliss.

“You wanna go over the park, bubba? Throw your ball?”

Honey’s ears pricked up and her head cocked inquisitively. Park, walk, and ball were all words she knew very well. I looked for the slobber coated tennis ball, but quick as a flash it was in her mouth and she was standing at the gate waiting. Her tail was wagging hard enough to power a small island nation and the dictator’s three luxury palaces. I cracked the latch and she raced as far as the kerb. On a typical day the road resembled a car park during rush hour, and a race track at all other times. Today it was silent, empty. So too was the park as we crossed. A few couples and families were laid flat, watching the sky from the comfort of the recently cut grass. I moved to an area well away from them so we didn’t disturb their last moments together.

“Leave, bubba!” I said and Honey dropped the ball.

I lobbed it away from the sight of the comet, wiping the warm mush of her slobber onto my trousers. She was off like a rocket, snatching it from the ground before circling back. The stand-in presenter was still babbling in my pocket.

“Good girl! Who’s a good girl!” I cooed as she returned the prize.

I toe punted it this time, catching her by surprise. Her head snapped in the direction and the body followed in a blur of yellow fur.

“Strange readings…”

“Beautiful dog,” said a woman with an American accent.

I was so caught up in our game that I thought it was a guest on the BBC News. Honey had dropped her ball and I tossed it again, but she was fixated on something behind us. I turned, expecting to see the comet a hundred times larger, punching through the upper atmosphere on its final collision course.

Instead, I saw a woman.

Holy shit! It’s Audrey Hepburn! was my first reaction. She had the same flawless skin. Her brown, almond shaped eyes sparkled in the crimson twilight. The cupid’s bow of her red lips sat beneath a perfect nose with a little uptilt. A closely cropped pixie cut finished off her look. For the life of me I couldn’t remember the film it was from, but that style had always blown my mind. In a world of worshipping waist length, fake blonde tresses, I’d always kept the opinion that a short do could really complement a beautiful woman’s face to myself.

“Hi,” she said to me.

I just stared, but Honey took the cue and blunted my awkward rudeness with a flurry of affection. She’d looked awkward and afraid as the mutt jumped at her. Hell, we were all afraid. The potent licks and wagging tail caused the lady’s fear to recede and she rubbed Honey’s face, baby talking to her.

“Hi!” I said, seconds too late to make it any less weird.

“What’s her name?” asked the stranger.

“Honey. How’d you know she was a she?”

“The pink collar is a bit of a giveaway,” she said with a smile.

Of course! Dickhead! I mentally slapped myself.

“I’m Mark.”

I offered my hand and she shook it. I could feel her trembling.

“I’m Cristal. Spelt like every rapper’s favourite champagne, not the rock.”

I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Are you a stripper?”

What? You idiot! This time I mentally kicked the shit out of myself. I made sure to find a bin and dumped the partially rotten contents on my unconscious body as a final insult.

She stared at me.

Honey turned and stared at me.

I figured a slap or a knee to the crotch was coming, so I braced for impact.

Instead, she laughed. “Do I look like a stripper?”

I said the next thing that came into my dense, pigeon-IQ’d skull. “You look like Audrey Hepburn.” Ok, that wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.

She actually blushed. “Thanks. You can call me Cris.”

I stood there staring. “We’re going to die in eleven minutes,” I said.

Fuck! Coo. Coo. Pigeon Mark shits on the ground and walks in it. Good effort you vacuous, dead-eyed plank.

“Tha… that’s kind of why I approached. My friends… Well, they just ran off. I don’t know where, or why. Could I maybe just stay with you both? Until it’s over.”

Aside from her being one of the most beautiful women I’d ever laid eyes on, I admit I was just as shit scared as she was. The chance to have human and canine comfort at the end was something I couldn’t deny. “I’d like that.”

She looked around at the others in the park. “Shall we lay down too?”

“I’ve been kind of avoiding looking at it if I’m honest.”

“I tried that. I just want to…”

“Be held?” Ok, Buffalo Bill! You’re coming off as creepy as shit right now. Plus, you don’t have a hose, any lotion, or a fucking pit! Plus your dog’s cuter.

I decided to stop talking until my death. Which was about ten minutes away. I zipped it, locked it, threw the key away, poured concrete on it, then took off and nuked the site from orbit. It was the only way to be sure.

“Would you mind?” she asked, awkwardly. “I think it’ll be easier, you know.”

I hit the deck faster than critic’s jaws at a Paris fashion show. I was going to make some analogical reference to knickers and boxers on prom night, but it seemed trite and offensive considering the nice company.

She lay down with far more grace and slipped into my arms. I adored her for leaving space for the pooch who dutifully crawled between us and laid down too.

“You smell nice,” she said.

I could feel the miraculously undamaged key emerging from the radioactive devastation.

Don’t. You. Fucking. Dare!

The lock snicked and the zip burred. I cringed. “Thanks.”

Ok, that wasn’t too bad. You’re getting better at this.

I could tell she wasn’t really remarking on my two-in-one wash and fabric softener that smelled of Tropical Lily and Ylang-Ylang or whatever the hell that meant. She wanted to talk down the minutes with inane conversation. And I was the master of inane conversation.

“Are you here on holiday?”

Smooth, Romeo.

Next up would be a wash and a blow dry in my salon as we discussed the inclement weather.

“No. I was studying for my masters. When the news hit, there weren’t many planes what with all the pilots quitting. The seats that were available went for millions.”

I snorted. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

She tensed and looked away.

“I meant the millions part!” I added desperately. “Not your studying or trying to get home.”

She relaxed a little and I could feel doggo eyes rolling at my awkwardness.

“It’s been a while since I talked to a woman, can’t you tell? It’s kind of just been me and Honey for a while.”

“That’s ok. I was sworn off men after my boyfriend slept with my best friend.”

Single! Jackpot!

For six minutes.

Fiendish plan meet major flaw.

“Was she one of those who ran away?”

“Hell no! I kicked her ass back in Wyoming last time I was stateside. Filthy skank.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Are you sure you aren’t a stripper?”

“Only on the weekends.”

“So it’s more of a hobby?”

She pondered the question. “I’d say more a lifestyle choice. I get the benefits of rigorous cardio along with moist, low-denomination bills. By going to a gym, I’m the one who has to pay. It makes no financial sense.”

“You make a great case for exotic dancing. I wish I’d had time to give it a try.”

“You’ve got the body and height for it.”

“I’m about a foot tall when laid down.”

“And I’d guess about six three when stood up?”

She was within half an inch. I was actually six-two and a half. I was blushing fiercely, not that you could tell in the scarlet haze that had fallen over the city.

I had nothing else to say.

The sky was on fire.

I held Cris and Honey to me tightly.

“Breaking news!” my pocket screamed through the denim.

“What was that?” she whispered.

I was reluctant to let her go, but the newsreader was beside himself with excitement. He’d finally snapped under the pressure. I used my free hand to withdraw the handset. Laying on our backs, I held it up so we could both see the screen.

The guy was bouncing like Tigger after a six hour bender on the Columbian marching powder. It took me a moment to distinguish the stark difference between the apocalyptic message scrolling along on the footnote, and his words.

“It’s slowing down! NASA estimates at its current rate of deceleration, the comet’s impact won’t trigger an extinction level event.”

Two thoughts came to me right then. Comets don’t slow down until they hit something. And if it was able to control its velocity, it was most definitely not a comet.

“This is amazing!” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet and pulling me up.

I didn’t share Cris’s enthusiasm as I looked towards the planet killer. The cloudy aura burned away in the atmosphere, revealing the spherical nucleus. And I’m talking a perfect sphere. As in, not possibly created by the big bang or God kicking over a street bin after a heavy night on the Jägerbombs. This was man made. I immediately corrected myself. This was made by something far in advance of our own species.

“What’s the matter?”

“You know the feeling you get after a vindaloo?”

“I’m a korma girl myself. Care to elaborate?”

For some reason the newsreader was stripping his clothes off and dancing around the studio. He was far hairier than any man ought to be.

“Well, at first it feels real good, but then you start to feel something’s not quite right.”

“You don’t think this is good?” She took my hands and started to dance with me. There was no removal of clothes, more’s the pity.

“I’m thinking we’re approaching the morning after phase of this little meal.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist! We get a second chance!”

Honey was running around us, yipping with shared joy.

A third thought hit me like an actual comet destroying a planet.

“Shit!”

“What?”

I wished for the approaching god-knows-what’s speed to pick back up and consume us in blissfully releasing fire. The grey sphere fell slowly over the horizon, ignoring my entreaties.

I sighed, shoulders slumping. “This means I’ve got to pay my business loan back.”