Dark Clouds on the Horizon

I remember the dark black clouds, ominous, hanging like a low fog, almost as if they were trying to blot out the midday sun... 

 

Rain and hail fell in torrents driving all of us into the abandoned library where the people lay, huddled and scared. Our radio blasted, reporters frantically screaming, telling us this was the first time since the revolution the continental US had been attacked, Not with an army or tanks; they told us bombs were coming down as hard as the rains. One man angrily and hopelessly turned the dial inn search for something more positive, or "maybe some goddamn music, this is the radio for Christ's sake". He found a channel explaining how the low hanging clouds and the furious sheets of water and ice they brought were caused by the bombs and the debris they had sent into the air. The angry man went to change the dial again but his hand was stopped by a tall, bookwormish looking fellow who seemed to be interested in the report. He remained interested in what the radio had to tell him until the announcer started to say that nuclear radiation was making the local and surrounding atmospheres unstable, and the tumultuous weather wouldn't be ending any time soon, the tall man sighed, and as the announcer continued into a diatribe about how if the bombs didn't get us, and we survived the radiation, our dying atmosphere would certainly do us in. The tall man flicked off the radio and the angry man gave him the look of a child who had had his favorite toy taken from him. It seemed as if the depressing babble was the only thing keeping him mind from dealing with the crying and huddled massed surrounding him.

 

Shea held tight to me; at first she held close, trembling in fear, but now she was comfortable and still, glowing with a joy that was quite inappropriate given the situation. But I had nothing of her inner calm, in fact I wanted the bombs to come and take me, take us all, out from under the clouds. I mused that there would be some security in knowing when I was going to die instead of having to live a very short life in everlasting fear. I even contemplated suicide as I hoped and prayed for the bombs to take me away. The only thing that kept me from following through was Shea lying in my arms; I just couldn't let her down like that.

 

Then I saw the light, in powerful contrast to the dark clouds, shining around them but never through them; and before I could know my prayers had been answered, I was gone.