Hugh Howey - Shift

A third of the way up — and Donald had to stop and catch his breath. His calves were going to give out before his lungs did. He regretted puttering around on the ATV the past weeks while some of the others slogged it on foot. He promised himself he’d get in better shape.

He started back up the hill, and a voice like ringing crystal filled the bowl. It spilled in synchrony over the looming rise. He turned towards the stage below where the national anthem was being sung by the sweetest of young voices—

And he saw Anna hurrying up the hill after him, a scowl of worry on her face.

Donald knew he was in trouble. He wondered if he was dishonouring the anthem by scurrying up the hill. Everyone had assigned places for the anthem and he was ignoring his. He turned his back on Anna and set off with renewed resolve.

‘ —o’er the ramparts we watched— ’

He laughed, out of breath, wondering if these mounds of earth could be considered ramparts. It was easy to see the bowls for what they’d become in the last weeks, individual states full of people, goods and livestock, fifty state fairs bustling at once, all for this shining day, all to be gone once the facility was up and running.

‘ —and the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air— ’

He reached the top of the hill and sucked in deep lungfuls of crisp, clean air. On the stage below, flags swayed idly in a soft breeze. A large screen showed a video of the girl singing about proof and still being there .

A hand seized his wrist.

‘Come back,’ Anna hissed.

He was panting. Anna was also out of breath, her knees covered in mud and grass stains. She must’ve slipped on the way up.

‘Helen doesn’t know where I am,’ he said.

‘ —bannerrr yet waaaaave— ’

Applause stirred before the end, a compliment. The jets streaking in from the distance caught his eye even before he heard their rumble. A diamond pattern with wing tips nearly touching.

‘Get the fuck back down here,’ Anna yelled. She yanked on his arm.

Donald twisted his wrist away. He was mesmerised by the sight of the jets approaching.

‘ —o’er the laaand of the freeeeeee— ’

That sweet and youthful voice lifted up from fifty holes in the earth and crashed into the thunderous roar of the powerful jets, those soaring and graceful angels of death.

‘Let go,’ Donald demanded, as Anna grabbed him and scrambled to pull him back down the hill.

‘ —and the hooome of the… braaaaave… ’

The air shook from the grumble of the perfectly timed fly-by. Afterburners screamed as the jets peeled apart and curved upward into the white clouds.

Anna was practically wrestling him, arms wrapped around his shoulders. Donald snapped out of a trance induced by the passing jets, the beautiful rendition of the anthem amplified across half a county, the struggle to spot his wife in the bowl below.

‘Goddammit, Donny, we’ve got to get down —’

The first flash came before she could get her hands over his eyes. A bright spot in the corner of his vision in the direction of downtown Atlanta. It was a daytime strike of lightning. Donald turned towards it, expecting thunder. The flash of light had become a blinding glow. Anna’s arms were around his waist, jerking him backward. His sister was there, panting, covering her eyes, screaming, ‘ What the fuck? ’

Another flash of light, starbursts in one’s vision. Sirens spilled out of all the speakers. It was the recorded sound of air-raid klaxons.

Donald felt half blinded. Even when the mushroom clouds rose up from the earth — impossibly large to be so distant — it still took a heartbeat to realise what was happening.

They pulled him down the hill. Applause had turned to screams audible over the rise and fall of the blaring siren. Donald could hardly see. He stumbled backward and nearly fell as the three of them slipped and slid down the bowl, the wet grass funnelling them towards the stage. The puffy tops of the swelling clouds rose up higher and higher, staying in sight even as the rest of the hills and the trees disappeared from view.

‘Wait!’ he yelled.

There was something he was forgetting. He couldn’t remember what. He had an image of his ATV sitting up on the ridge. He was leaving it behind. How did he get up there? What was happening?

‘Go. Go. Go,’ Anna was saying.

His sister was cussing. She was frightened and confused, just like him. He had never known his sister to be either one.

‘The main tent!’

Donald spun around, his heels slipping in the grass, hands wet with rain and studded with mud and grass. When had he fallen?

The three of them tumbled down the last of the slope as the sound of distant thunder finally reached them. The clouds overhead seemed to race away from the blasts, pushed aside by an unnatural wind. The undersides of the clouds strobed and flashed as if more strikes of lightning were hitting, more bombs detonating. Down by the stage, people weren’t running to escape the bowl — they were instead running into the tents, guided by volunteers with waving arms, the markets and food stalls clearing out, the rows of wooden chairs now a heaped and upturned tangle, a dog still tied to a post, barking.

Some people still seemed to be aware, to have their faculties intact. Anna was one of them. Donald saw the Senator by a smaller tent coordinating the flow of traffic. Where was everyone going? Donald felt empty as he was ushered along with the others. It took long moments for his brain to process what he’d seen. Nuclear blasts. The live view of what had for ever been resigned to grainy wartime video. Real bombs going off in the real air. Nearby. He had seen them. Why wasn’t he completely blind? Was that even what happened?

The raw fear of death overtook him. Donald knew, in some recess of his mind, that they were all dead. The end of all things was coming. There was no outrunning it. No hiding. Paragraphs from a book he’d read came to mind, thousands of memorised paragraphs. He patted his pants for his pills, but they weren’t there. Looking over his shoulder, he fought to remember what he’d left behind—

Anna and his sister pulled him past the Senator, who wore a hard scowl of determination. He frowned at his daughter. The tent flap brushed Donald’s face, the darkness within interspersed with a few hanging lights. The spots in his vision from the blasts made themselves known in the blackness. There was a crush of people, but not as many as there should have been. Where were the crowds? It didn’t make sense until he found himself shuffling downward.

A concrete ramp, bodies on all sides, shoulders jostling, people wheezing, yelling for one another, hands outstretched as the flowing crush drove loved ones away, husband and wife separated, some people crying, some perfectly poised—

Husband and wife.

Helen!

Donald yelled her name over the crowd. He turned and tried to swim against the flowing torrent of the frightened mob. Anna and his sister pulled on him. People fighting to get below pushed from above. Donald was forced downward, into the depths. He wanted to go under with his wife. He wanted to drown with her.

‘ Helen! ’

Oh, God, he remembered.

He remembered what he had left behind.

Panic subsided and fear took its place. He could see. His vision had cleared. But he could not fight the push of the inevitable.

Donald remembered a conversation with the Senator about how it would all end. There was an electricity in the air, the taste of dead metal on his tongue, a white mist rising around him. He remembered most of a book. He knew what this was, what was happening.

His world was gone.