It happened just after dawn. The sun had been up for less than an hour. I woke up early that morning because I had to be at work before seven. Traffic was impossible on Fridays, so I always allowed myself plenty of time. Who would have believed then how little that would have mattered?

I had heard my mother say it was going to happen all my life, but I never believed it. I guess I just thought it was a fairy tale. But it wasn’t. It surprised everyone when the clouds lowered to the ground, and people started disappearing all around us. I was stuck in traffic in the inbound lane and never saw it coming. I’ve never seen anything like it. Nobody had.

The bright morning sun made it even scarier when the clouds all dropped out of the sky and settled on the earth. I don’t know if it was the sun reflecting off them or what, but each cloud edge seemed to have a gold shimmer. Then suddenly, cars all around me were empty. Boy, was I glad to be sitting in traffic that morning. I was one of the lucky ones to be stopped in traffic instead of being in one of thousands of accidents on the highways.

A lot of people died that day. Planes dropped out of the sky when the flight crews disappeared. Trains derailed. Even the President’s plane lost its captain. They never gave out details on what happened to the President. At least a dozen nations lost leaders. Not that it mattered since the new World Federation Chancellor declared an indefinite global Marshall Law.

I guess my mama went up there in heaven with Jesus. She always told me that someday he was going to come after His church. Well, that’s what I think happened, anyway. It would have been so much easier if I could have just believed what the World Federation mouthpieces told us had happened. However, men from outer space snatching away millions of people from the Earth at the same time just didn’t make sense. Especially since most of those people were churchgoers and little kids. Nope, I believed it was what my mama said would happen. I don’t know why it caught everyone by surprise. We heard about it all our lives. Yet, in the end, we still couldn’t believe it happened.