Outside, he unlocked his patrol car door and beckoned to Zuma to enter.
The young man entered with a smile, filling the front seat of the patrol car.
Zuma, a thirty-year-old weighing 230 pounds, is his patrol partner, and they are mostly seen together enjoying and drinking even after working hours.
He inserted the car key and ignited it; the car produced a dead sound.
He brought out his phone.
No service.
His wristwatch had remained exactly: Eight minutes to three.
Everything seemed to stand still at that exact time.
He unlocked the car door, alighted from it, and was followed by Zuma, who wore a puzzled look.
"Boss, what's going on?" he asked for the second time.
"Let's go find out," Elenu replied, urging the remaining officers to go home and report when things return to normal.
Suddenly, he heard a deafening sound close by as smoke rose, followed by more sounds of cars screeching and colliding.
A jet hovered dangerously close, almost hitting the tower beside the Osogbo River, before descending to crash into the river.
"What's going on?" Elenu asked a woman in a blue Ankara top and wrapper with a baby strapped to her back.
The woman spread her hands in all directions.
"What does it look like, mister? The world is coming to an end, and nothing is working anymore."
The fire had started somewhere far off, and the afternoon breeze was spreading it in all directions.
The cars caught fire and kept erupting, killing all those trapped inside, while the surviving ones ran along or were carried by well-wishers and sympathizers.
Even if the firefighters were called, which was impossible due to the network breakdown, Elenu believed it was practically impossible for them to navigate the numerous breakdowns of vehicles on the major and minor roads all over the city.
A few miles away, some local kids had gathered to break into a jewelry shop across the road.
Zuma looked at Elenu, expecting the signal to interfere.
A few meters away, some thugs had stabbed a shop owner trying to protect his shop from being looted.
Some ladies were screaming as youngsters tried to snatch their purses and jewelry.
A young child of seven or eight was wandering barefoot, crying, and asking for his parents.
Suddenly, evil seemed to be everywhere.
Evil is no faceless stranger living in an unknown place. Evil is in you and me. We are evil—the devil's anvil. We all inherited it, along with our pancreas and liver.
It's in our DNA.
The first man on earth was disobedient, the second a deceiver and accomplice, the third a murderer, and the fourth was murdered. Humanity's history, from Genesis, has been one of evil and sin.
Now humans can exhibit the evil within them without any fear of having to pay for it.
"Let's go and check the jet that just hovered past a few minutes ago," Elenu told Zuma.
A young man with dreadlocks and torn clothes blocked their path.
He brought out a black pistol and unlocked the chamber, displaying the bullets inside.
"Is he crazy?" Zuma asked.
Elenu shook his head silently.
"No idea, buddy," he replied after a long pause.
The young man with dreadlocks loaded the gun and pointed it at his own head. He pulled the trigger, and the gun produced a dead click sound.
"You see, mister, your guns don't work anymore," he shouted, dancing erratically as he mingled with the crowd.
The two men walked towards the Osogbo River.
Far off in the town, confusion and fear gripped everyone.
If just a blackout could cause this chaos within a few hours, imagine what would happen when the comet strikes.
Elenu strongly believed the blackout was connected to the incoming comet.
He had a hunch this was just the beginning of something big, something unexpected. Fortunately, he had no one to worry about except Zuma.
Of course, the young man could take care of himself.
We are all in God's hands.
Exactly an hour after the blackout, the comet landed. It was a terrific event in all the places where the solar body landed.
A comet is an icy, small solar system body that releases gases known as outgassing when warm and passing close to the sun. Comet nuclei range in size, from a few hundred meters to tens of kilometers across.
The one that landed on Earth, fortunately, is about 20 million megatons, yet it still produced calamitous events filled with fireballs that kill anyone who sees it.
The sky was filled with gazillions of meteors, showering particles that burned up in the atmosphere on their way down. The sky caught fire, the heat and flames unleashed burned the forests and cities. Suddenly, the world had transformed from a beautiful garden to a place filled with horrors. In a few hours, nature had destroyed what humans had taken ages to build.
Yet humans were still lucky. Had the comet held more energy, it would have caused a global firestorm ignited by back-falling impact debris, forming a global pall of darkness that would have lasted many months. The dust would have been suspended in the stratosphere from such combustive energy.
Humans are lucky this time around, but for how long will their luck last?
"Every hooray ready?" Zuri asked the battalion in front of him.
"Yes sir," they replied in perfect English.
"We will be landing in a few minutes. This is the opportunity we have all been waiting for, and I am sure we will take the bull by the horn and destroy any obstacles that may stop this invasion." Zuri paused and walked through the middle of the prepared invaders. "Remember the hooray code of honor: you must never be captured alive. On your body is a chip that you need to press immediately for self-annihilation whenever you are captured. Is that clear enough?"
"Yes sir," the invaders replied.