It looked like I was going to have to take the bus home.

Where only four hours ago had sat my spotless new silver Mercedes—still proudly displaying the dealer plates—there was now a car-sized lump of rock protruding from the bottom of a crater six feet deep, brutally encased by a still-glowing skeleton of twisted, precious German steel.

I stood agape beside what had once been my parking space. There was nothing left, save for my RESERVED sign, which the meteoroid had had the gall to leave perfectly unscathed.

Then with the sound of a trillion calamities, I watched as dozens of other blazing boulders fell from the sky. They plowed into rooftops, truck beds, radio towers, the bridge across the Edenfeld. Sirens screamed. The impacts shook the earth, each reducing solid ground to Swiss-cheese holes of smoldering nothing across the city.

Suddenly it wasn’t about my car. Where was Brittany? Was she all right? The rocks continued to fall. I couldn’t tell how far the devastation spread, but I had to find my wife.