Credit: Illustration by Jamie Tufrey

It rained cows on Christmas Eve.

When the world broke, the atmosphere tore in raging cyclones, tornadoes, oceans of air sucked up and flung down, and those poor animals were caught in the turbulence, hurled into the sky. Until they fell back to Earth, crying in terror.

They were Jerseys, all deep tan with white patches. The sight of them rupturing like swollen bladders was terrifying. I had known each of them by name, with their soft brown eyes and flickering ears. Only Jessica had survived, tethered to a fence. I sobbed my heart out in the three days of cold snow that followed, and then again when the snow melted and I found Jessica in a pile of muddy slush with her legs sticking up stupidly.

I grew to hate the rain and stayed indoors when squalls blew in off the Brindabella Ranges, dumping water and debris over the shattered homesteads of Royalla.

On those bleak days I would sit in front of the dead television, mindlessly recalling the images that had been broadcast to the world over several years - a loss of innocence like no other. The relic had gone undetected until a flyby of Jupiter had photographed a long shadow across the disk of Europa. A barrage of probes had followed; a tedious, slow-motion power struggle of governments and corporations, desperately scanning, landing ... and eventually sampling.

On the sunny days I tended to the white fences that had been broken at Christmas, and others that were showing signs of normal wear and tear. I kept the lawns around the house cut even though they had become yellow and patchy.

By April the squalls had increased in frequency, always moving eastward where a permanent band of cloud hung from north to south. Strange aurora filled the evening skies and a lingering chill crept across the land. The tall maple shading the front porch shed its shrivelled leaves, and I knew then that I would never see autumnal scarlet again - colour had drained from the world.

Grim faced travellers would pass along the gravel road in front of my property, usually in singles or pairs. One time there was a group of 20, all geared up with supplies and backpacks. They had come all the way from Jindabyne - pilgrims of a sort - dressed in parkas and hiking boots. They kicked up dust on the road and then they turned east on the long march towards the escarpment. Some would stop and talk for a while, but none stayed for very long, compelled eastward, a burning light in their eyes.

Only a few returned via Royalla, and I started to wonder whether some ever made it back at all. Those that did were all skin and bone with gaunt, haunted faces - their eyes full of cooling embers of a past that no longer held any meaning. I wondered if I looked like that. Perhaps I would never know. All the mirrors in the house were shattered and I didn't have the courage to look at myself in those shards.

Of the pilgrims that did return, only one was different. He had a wild, almost feverish look. His name escaped me; it's a funny thing because I was always good with names. He said that the weather had cleared on the escarpment, but the rest of what he said seemed to be sheer hysteria. All talk of lights and ghosts and the hand of God. I wondered if he had been hallucinating from sleep deprivation. He left his backpack on my porch and walked west along the road leading out of Royalla, the only smiling traveller I had seen moving in that direction.

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I knew that I'd had a wife and son, Georgia and Rick, and some instinct told me that we had been happy. They had gone to Canberra to do some last minute Christmas shopping and were driving home when the world broke. I had found the car on the Monaro Highway, too crumpled to remove the bodies, and so I drove the backhoe to the wreck and dragged it the final five kilometres home. There was just enough fuel left to dig a grave on the hill behind the shed. I did not have the strength for a eulogy; something in me had slipped away with them that day. At first I thought I had forgotten our life together, but then I realised that it was a book I had placed on a dark shelf in my mind, too afraid to read.