Amy Brashear - The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction

“My baby girl,” Granny said, dragging out the words baby girl in her southern twang. “Come here. Give your dear granny a hug.”

I obliged. I even told her that Mom said hey, which she believed. “I’ve been praying that your mama would talk to me, and Jesus did fulfill his promises.”

“Yeah—”

“Now, come on inside, and I’ll make you a grilled cheese.”

“Granny, I’m not really hungry. I just came to borrow Dad’s motorbike.”

“Oh, baby girl, I don’t want you to get hurt on that busted old thing.”

“I won’t. I’ll be careful. I promise.”

She nodded. “Your mom knows, right?”

“Sure,” I said, lying through my teeth.

“Baby girl, I can tell you’re lying.”

“And how much did you send Reverend Lowry this week?” I asked, smiling.

“I see what you did there. I see what you did there. Where are you going with that old thing?” she asked.

“I’m on my way to Tech,” I said.

“Baby girl, I hate to break it to you, but that’s in the opposite direction.”

“I know. I just need something with an engine.”

“Does your mom know?”

“Sure,” I lied again.

“What’s so important that you’d risk your mother’s wrath?”

I sat on the front porch and said, “The end of the world.”

“The Rapture,” she said. “Making sure you’re right with the Lord, you are, aren’t you?”

“Granny, it’s not that—it’s the real end of the world. Don’t you know there’s probably going to be a nuclear war?”

“God won’t let man be wiped out by a nuclear holocaust,” she said, patting my knee.

“Granny—”

“No, baby girl, God protected us once. He’ll do it again,” she said.

That was how she told me a story about how my grandfather was a volunteer Civil Defense [31] An older government program that helped citizens in times of possible Soviet attack. They were responsible for the creation of duck-and-cover drills and the Bert the Turtle mascot, because you know when you see the flash, you’re supposed to duck and cover. My mom was told to hide under their desks in case of atomic attack, but today? We’re pretty much told not to bother. It was replaced by FEMA in 1979. watcher. He watched the sky for Soviet planes. Then she told me about my mom. Stuff I did not know. How my mom was a wreck at school, afraid the missiles would blow up the whole world while she was in math class. She even had an assignment that she had to turn in: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” She turned it in blank.

“When the sirens blared for a false alarm one day, your momma got to building shelves, two-by-four pine shelves with her daddy. She stocked canned goods in the garage. And she got the neighbors to give us three seats in their fallout shelter. One day—I don’t remember which one; it’s been a long time—while I was waiting for your momma to get home from school, there was a loud boom and then a mushroom cloud in the sky. But it was nothing. I never told your momma about that. She would have been in the bunker for years, and you probably wouldn’t have been born.”

“Why don’t I know this?” I asked. My mom and I were a lot alike.

“Why talk about something that will never happen?” she said.

“Granny, it’s a matter of when it will happen.”

“Who says? The news? Poppycock.”

“Granny, I’ve got to go,” I said, standing up.

“Baby girl, I wish I could tell you that it will be all right,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. “Us grown-ups have got this covered. Have faith.”

I twisted my scrunchie on my wrist.

“I blame this movie. Everyone is on edge—even your dad is worried.”

“Dad? My dad?”

“He called the other day.”

He called her? We hadn’t spoken in over a month.

“He was checking up on me. I called him when I saw a lot of military men in their fatigues carrying shortwave radios and Geiger counters,” she said.

“Granny, now you have me worried. Are you sure you saw what you saw? Maybe it was on TV?”

“Baby girl, don’t worry. We’re fine,” she said, leaning over to rub both her knees.

“Are you okay, Granny?”

“It’s my fibromyalgia,” she said. “It acts up every now and then.”

I helped her inside the house. She sat on her recliner and pulled the lever to put her feet up. “Don’t worry about the things you can’t do anything about,” she said. “Like Reverend Lowry says, we won’t suffer a nuclear war, because God would simply not allow it.”

I rolled my eyes. She gave that man her life savings in the hopes that he wouldn’t die. I would not trust in the words he said about what God would or would not allow.

“I’ve got to go. I don’t want to be late,” I said.

“Okay, okay. Be careful, baby girl. Granny loves you.”

“I love you too,” I told her.

I found the motorbike in the back of the garage, along with a pair of goggles, and one good kick got it started. The dirt flew up as I took it across the countryside. Each hill felt like a roller coaster and made my stomach flip. Faster and faster I went. I even ran a stop sign. Going fast really cleared the head.

It was out of my way, but I wanted to see Dad.

I had done this hundreds of times. I’d ride Dad’s old motorbike to a few miles north of Damascus to the Titan II Launch Complex 374-7. One of eighteen around the state. Fifty-four around the country. A six-thousand-mile range and a thirty to thirty-five-minute flight time. It was invincible. It had been activated in 1963 and deactivated in 1980. Now I ride to the ones close by, which included Blackwell, Hattieville, and Plummerville.

I was hoping to catch Dad out there on the site. A wave, anything. Sometimes I would. I’d disobey the warning sign and walk up to the eight-foot-tall chain-link fence that protected just two acres across, where a couple of antennas stuck out of a concrete silo lid, the only marker of Armageddon, and stand and talk to Dad. We’d talk until someone would walk by and yell that I didn’t belong, and I’d run. This wasn’t a safe place. Nowhere was a safe place.

I wanted to be asleep when the big one happened. I would die. We all would die. Griffin Flat was only minutes away from any silo. We were close enough to a major military installation. We’d be killed almost instantly if the Soviets attacked. No amount of preparation was going to protect me from a nuclear blast that close. I wouldn’t have to worry about how to survive anarchy or whatnot. I wouldn’t be there to see it. It sounded defeatist, but it was the truth. I thought about it all the time. I looked up at the sky, at every contrail, thinking that this was it—this could be an incoming warhead.

I turned the motorbike around so fast that it blew dirt and dust up into my face. It covered the tears falling down my cheeks. I wanted my dad, but he needed to be here in case of a red warning attack.

Thirty miles in the opposite direction, I parked the motorbike with the other motorbikes and followed the signs pointing toward the Witherspoon Auditorium.

“Is this the meeting for—” I started, but a boy with black-rimmed glasses and curly hair that went down to his shoulders finished my sentence.