“OK, so we are not being allowed to come out of the house yet but we all have an upstairs and we are all living on lakefront property and the reflections at sunset are crazy and zoom lenses are the greatest thing God let man invent.”
Major Thomas Stepforth Jr. chuckled at his nine-year-old middle son Vertran's report from the home of his aunt and uncle, Sgt. Vincent and Mrs. Melissa Stepforth Trent, and laughed even harder when his eldest son, 16-year-old Thomas Stepforth III, came riding by in the back of Major Ironwood Hamilton's F-150, being embedded as a reporter for the Lofton County Free Voice and therefore allowed to be out reporting and photographing.
“Major Hamilton while serving as police captain here in Tinyville kept you alive when I wasn't sure I wanted to keep you alive after you blew up your mother's kitchen,” Maj. Stepforth had said to his namesake. “Of course I trust him with you. Godspeed, son.”
Mrs. Gloria Stepforth in her new kitchen that her eldest son had helped pay for by turning over all his newspaper checks laughed about that, which delighted the five Stepforth children still in their home.
None of them, not even Tom, had a clue about what they had missed out on, living through the arm of a hurricane … an arm that had dropped five tornados into Lofton County. All of them had been rain-wrapped, meaning they were perfectly invisible to the naked eye … and, Lofton County's officials figured long ago that the county was too close to the Blue Ridge to be bothered, because “tornados don't work on mountains” just like “lightning can't strike in the same place twice” and “hurricanes don't make it into southern Virginia.”
Result: Lofton County didn't have a tornado alert system.
Further result: Maj. Hamilton, knowing that, had just set up the appropriate technology and jury-rigged it for the county, and the Veteran's Lodge also did the same thing.
Still further result: evacuations were ordered on time for several communities and farms.
Final result: Those who listened lived.
“See, I could only live in Tinyville or the Veteran's Lodge in this county – maybe Big Loft now that Mayor Garner actually has some sense, but everybody else is just asleep at the wheel while God is sending hurricanes named for justice and memory after the fire last year and still deciding how much of the county He is going to burn, wash, and blow off the map,” Maj. Stepforth said to his brother-in-law.
“Yeah, not having good leadership can lead to being full of anxiety, and the people running this county are just being exposed for real as terrible leaders,” Sgt. Trent said. “But we already knew that.”
“Well, some of them will not have time to be making trouble – you know that all of Wallacia Flats got taken up into the clouds, and I don't mean in the Rapture,” Maj. Stepforth said.
“What?” Sgt. Trent said.
“Those gates should have had some pearls added with the ride they took today,” the major said, “but you know, given the foolery that went on in there, they probably are scattered in the flooded fields as rejects – like Heaven was going to let them in!”
“Well, no,” Sgt. Trent said, “because many of the people there did the most to make sure – and this is within our lifetime – that we could not enter anywhere that befit our status as full human beings. When you try to take God's right to choose from Him, there's a price, sooner or later. The survivors will never be able to keep anyone out of Wallacia Flats again, that is for certain!”
“When God answers your request to not have certain people in your space, but not the way you expect!” Maj. Stepforth said.
“Do we know how many survivors there are?” Sgt. Trent said.
“Pretty much everyone is accounted for – they got the evacuation notice in time,” Maj. Stepforth said. “I'm glad on a human level. I'm also glad to they will hear about the Lofton County Free Voice
coverage of their history and how that relates to the justice of the end of their little world, too.”
“Mneme means memory,” Sgt. Trent said, “and in that sense, the hurricane is just beginning.”