The roar came from the west. Rachel Westgrove looked up, peg in hand, and watched the rocket-plane glide overhead. Its contrails looked like ribbons of Chinese lanterns. The craft continued its descent, there was a rocket port near Atlanta.
She jabbed the peg on the line, snaring the sock, and went back inside.
“We should go,” she said.
Silas Westgrove looked up from his table full of paperwork. Lists of names and figures; a manual tally of clients and amounts invested. All the details had to be right, before they were recorded and beamed through to head office in St. Louis for his seventeen-thirty hour time slot. Get something wrong, and he would have to redo the whole lot by the reserve slot at twenty-one hundred. Not how he intended to spend Friday evening.
“Go where, honey?”
“Up north. I have family up near Missoula. We should go there.”
“I can’t take time off work to cross the continent to visit people we don’t know,' Silas said. 'Besides, it’s near impossible to get across the border now. Permits can take months to get.”
“I didn’t mean a holiday. We should go, move, leave Georgia. It doesn’t feel safe here anymore.”
Silas looked at his wife. Her chestnut hair tied back with a faded gingham headscarf. The pretty teenage girl who had made his young heart beat fast was now a woman so beautiful he still couldn’t believe his luck. But sometimes, she had the craziest ideas.
“Rachel, I buy and sell shares for other people. Do you know what the communists think of people like me?”
“Forget it. Tea will be ready at six. It’s meatloaf tonight.
§
They could have purchased one of the new dish-washing machines, but Rachel worried about it damaging the pattern on their plates and cups. The dinner set had been her great-grandmothers, it dated back before the War of Northern Aggression had split the country. So each night she washed, and he wiped, and they listened to the news on the radio.
‘…when Ambassador van de Groene met with the President in Richmond today. It was also confirmed the Confederated American Navy will take part in exercises with the Greater Dutch Empire’s. These will take place throughout the Caribbean and Gulf during April and May. Papal Nuncio Santillian issued a statement denouncing the exercise as provocative and aggressive.
After a few messages, we’ll have reports of steel production figures from the Canadian and American Democratic Socialist States…’
Silas turned the radio off, hung up the towel, and they went out onto the deck. The sky was clear, the air pleasantly cool. Another rocket-plane passed overhead.
“I’m sure there are more of those this past few days,” said Silas.
“There has been at least one an hour every day since Monday, sometimes more than that. I don’t know what’s going on in Atlanta, but it must be important.”
Silas watched it descend towards the hills. “You know, I’m not sure it is going to Atlanta, the direction’s a little off. It could be going to Fort Benning.”
“More Dutch military advisors?”
“Maybe.”
“I was serious about leaving, Silas.”
He turned to face her, she stared across the fields.
“I just don’t feel safe. The Papal States and the Dutch are getting worse. Always bragging about new weapons. Last week one of them even said they can use the power in atoms. We’re the losers in the middle, if they go to war.”
“It’s been that way since the twenties, Rachel. Nothing’s changed in forty years. The Papists don’t want war with the Dutch, and they’re not interested in our cotton and crawfish.”
She shook her head and leaned against him. “I hope you're right.”
“Of course I’m right.”
§
Rachel was boiling fruit in a large pot, jam for the pantry and market.
“Rachel!” Silas burst in the front door.
She jumped, splashing hot liquid on her hand. “In the kitchen,” she called, putting her hand under the cold tap.
“We have to go. Get stuff together.”
“Go where? What’s happened?”
“War. It’s war.”
She spun round, splashes of water scattering the floor.
“You know one of my clients is a General. He got the news while I was signing him up for some of those four percent Consolidated— Never mind that. The Papists are already in Texas. Going for the oil that’s been found, he reckons.”
“Where will we go?”
“What about your family in Montana?”
“But permits and—”
“Permits be damned. We’ll swim a river if we have to, or trek through a forest.”
Silas got an old packing case from the garage, throwing clothes and blankets into it. Rachel began assembling things to take, weighing the items value.
“What do I do with—“
Silas cut in, “If you have to ask, leave it. What doesn’t go in the car now, stays here.”
The car filled up quickly. When it was full they sat at the kitchen table with a final drink as the car’s boiler built enough pressure. The sound of rocket engines was incessant.
“What will it be like?” asked Rachel.
Silas was about to answer when the eastern horizon lit up with a bright light. They both raised their arms, the after image burning brightly on their eyelids.
Before either of them spoke, the noise arrived. A crushing roaring sound, that rolled on for seconds.
“My God. What is that?”
They went onto the verandah and watched a dirty cloud climb into the sky, the fat bulbous head flattening as it reached higher, a thinner stalk giving a mushroom-like appearance.
There was another flash, nearer.
Rachel shouted above the noise of the explosion, “You were wrong, Silas! You were wrong! We should have left when I wanted to.”
Wind roared, scattering his response as the house collapsed, and the firestorm consumed them.
An original story and photograph by Stuart C Turnbull.
Although not a linked story, this is set in the same world and timeline as Out of Africa