“It’s a little disturbing,” I told him.
He just smiled.
Astrid walked away, still looking in her handheld mirror. “You know New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York.”
It was downright cold. We were pretending that it was June even though in reality it was November turning into December. That was the thing with Arkansas weather; it had two settings: hellfire and hypothermia. The saying “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes”—well, it was true. We had been known to go through all four seasons in one day.
“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up,” Mayor Hershott said, walking up beside me. “Laura, how are you?”
“I’m good,” I said.
He was dressed in a tweed jacket, tweed vest, tweed pants, tweed bow tie, and glasses, and his hair was combed to the side. I guessed tweed was popular in 1954.
“Betty bought a bit of butter, but she found the butter bitter, so Betty bought a bit of better butter to make the bitter butter better,” said Mayor Hershott.
“Astrid was talking weird too—”
“Vocal exercises,” he said. “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked?”
The director was standing next to the cinematographer, and they were arguing. The director would yell, and then the cinematographer would yell, and then the director would stomp his foot, and then the cinematographer would stomp his foot. The cinematographer walked away cursing and raising his arms in frustration, leaving the director biting his fingernails.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. “Everyone seems tense.”
“Well, they are—the explosives aren’t here yet, and the big blast is next Thursday,” Tyson said, walking up beside me.
“There’s actually going to be a bomb going off?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “A big one.”
“Is that smart?” I asked.
“What could go wrong?”
“Are you asking? Because a lot,” I said.
He walked away, pulling his sunglasses down from the top of his head.
“The light is great. We need to get going,” yelled the guy with a clipboard.
The director threw his arms in the air and decided it would do.
That was encouragement.
The set safety people were talking to Astrid. I was hoping they were talking some sense into her, but sadly no. She wanted to do this. Even though her stunt double was being treated with likely third-degree burns.
“Okay, quiet on the set. Quiet on the set,” the director said.
“Action!” The guy who held the clapperboard closed it with a clap.
“NO! STOP,” the director yelled. Everyone froze. “She’s got red lipstick on her teeth. FIX!”
Kitty came running with a tissue, and rubbed and rubbed Astrid’s two front teeth. Kitty reapplied the lipstick and made her smile.
“Okay, Quiet on the set. Quiet on the set,” the director yelled again.
“This is going to be the best thing since sliced bread,” Kitty whispered.
“Astrid’s going to kick the bucket right before our eyes,” Raymond said in a whisper.
I looked over to Freddy and Owen. They too were excited to watch fire engulf Astrid. It was Christmas morning for these people.
“And action!”
-
It’s a calm and sunny Monday morning. The Wells family goes to the festivities for Operation Alert. Martha stands toward the back with her mother, father, and brother Willie. Mayor Forte informs the crowd of the public service announcement set forth by Civil Defense.
“The Reds will not let Pikesville live,” says Mayor Forte. “You are instructed to go to your local shelters until the formidable threat has concluded.”
Martha grabs Willie’s hand as the sirens sound an air raid alert. The citizens of Pikesville talk and laugh as they slowly move to their designated fallout locations… paying no attention to the sleek missiles rising over the town of Pikesville.
At first, people think: airplanes dropping leaflets—This Is A Bomb!—a good old-fashioned propaganda technique to scare them.
Flash, Heat, and a Deafening Boom, and a Blast Wave that knocks people off their feet.
The sudden and overwhelming force sweeps down Main Street. People run. But there’s no time to hide.
In the end, Willie is stronger. He dashes ahead. Martha loses his hand and becomes one of the many engulfed bodies turned to black char. But the mushroom cloud in the sky is an indication—fallout is coming.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I awoke to light suffusing my room. As it faded, the ceiling fan slowly came to a stop. I squinted in the sudden darkness. It was quiet. My alarm clock was blank, not even blinking the dreaded 12:00. The dryer was off. Mom always did a load right before bed; I usually heard it rumbling if I woke up. The telltale sound of white noise or buzz of some sort of electronic appliance. Kind of comforting. Now nothing. The power did a fast whoop before shutting off.
My heart leapt. It had to be an EMP.[56] Right? Which only meant I was awake for the apocalypse.
They, as in the people who were in charge of doing the unthinkable, said once you see the flash, you have less than thirty seconds before the blast. Flash. Blast. Boom. I lay there in my bed with the covers up to my chin, waiting for the blast, boom, since apparently I had already had the flash.
But did I really want to be here in bed when the end of the world happened?
My first stop was the living room and then the kitchen. No lights on the VCR and no humming of the fridge. I tried a light switch in the dining room to be sure, but nothing. I even opened the fridge to see if the light was on—it wasn’t. It was still cold, so I quickly shut it. We would need the food before the radiation came. Looking out the window, I saw nothing. The streetlamps that usually kept our cul-de-sac lit were out. It wasn’t just our house.
They said that a bomb fifty miles away sounded like a giant door slamming the depths of hell.
I peeked in to Dennis and Mom’s room, but they were asleep. Mom and Dennis asleep. Mom sprawled out all over the bed, leaving poor Dennis with a square inch of his own. Did they feel it?
We could have had the flash, but then it was too far away to see the blast. Even so, when was the fallout going to hit us?
Terrence’s room was down the hall from mine. I could hear the snoring from outside the door. I cracked it open just to make sure. If he was awake, we could experience the blast and boom together. But he was asleep. I went to close the door, grabbing the knob, but ended up stubbing my toe on the doorframe (Stubbing your toe. It hurts like an atomic bomb went off in your foot and you have no one to blame but yourself) and yelped, waking up Terrence. “What are you doing?” he asked, half asleep.
“I saw a flash of light and all the power went off,” I said.
“What?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
“I’m waiting for the blast.”
“What?” he asked again. “Did we just get hit?”
“I thought I’d be the only one awake for it.”
“And?”
“And I didn’t want to be alone,” I said.
56
Electromagnetic pulse. Electronic devices will be shut down for a hundred miles in every direction due to the EMP generated by the blast. That includes cars, radios, televisions, clocks—anything, really, that runs on electricity. And they won’t start up ever again.