Gage wrapped his chubby arms around my neck, pressing his sweaty body against mine. Lisa wiped the sweat from her brow and brushed aside the strands of brown hair sticking to her face. Waves of heat wafted from the cooking asphalt, but I barely felt it. I’d always preferred summer to winter and tolerated the heat better than most others.
Six more planes swept overhead, leaving a loud, reverberating boom in their wake as they sped by. Car alarms up and down the street blared loudly, horns honking in quick succession, and headlights flashing had all the dogs in the neighborhood barking. The relatively peaceful day had become chaotic in the blink of an eye.
Along the road, doors opened and beeps sounded as people turned off their alarms. Shouts for the dogs to be quiet could be heard over the alarms that continued to wail loudly. Some people ran out of their homes and toward the squealing cars to try and turn off the alarms that wouldn’t be silenced.
Gage’s arm tightened around my neck to the point of near choking. I didn’t try to pull him away; instead I held him closer when he began to shake. Then just as rapidly as the rush of noise had erupted on the street, everything went completely still. Even the dogs, sensing something was off, became almost simultaneously silent. The few birds that had been chirping stopped their song; they seemed to be holding their breath with the rest of the world.
I remember Lisa stepping closer to me. Years later, I can still feel her warm arm against mine in a moment of much needed solidarity. “What’s going on, River?” she asked me.
“I don’t know.”
Then, from inside some of the nearby homes, screams and cries erupted, breaking the near silence. Exchanging a look with Lisa, we turned as one and ran toward her house. We clambered up the steps, jostling against each other in our rush to see what was going on. We’d scarcely entered the cool shadows of her screened-in porch when I heard the sobs of her mother.
We both froze, uncertain of what to do. Tears streaked Gage’s cheeks and wet my shirt when he buried his face in my neck. He may have only been a baby, but he still sensed something was completely wrong.
Instinctively knowing we would be shut out of whatever was going on if we alerted them to our presence, it had to be grown-up stuff after all, we’d edged carefully over to the windows, looking in on the living room. Peering in the windows, I spotted Lisa’s mom on the couch, her head in her hands as she wept openly. Lisa’s father stood before the TV, the remote dangling from his fingertips as he gaped at the screen.
My eyes were drawn to the TV; my brow creased in curious wonder at the mushroom cloud I saw rising from the earth. A black cloud of rolling fire and smoke covered the entire horizon on the screen.
Beneath the cloud, words ran across the bottom of the screen. The U.S. is under attack. Nuclear bomb dropped on Kansas. Possible terrorist attack. Possible attack from China or Russia. Numerous areas of reported violence erupting.
“It’s World War III,” Lisa’s father said as the remote fell from his hand and her mother sobbed harder.
My heart raced in my chest, and my throat went dry as I struggled to grasp what was going on. I knew something awful had occurred, but I still couldn’t understand what. How could I? I was a child. My time on this earth had been spent trying to avoid my mother as much as possible. It had also been filled with taking care of my brother, friends, TV, books, school, and the endless days of summer, that until then, I’d been so looking forward to.
I hugged Gage as I vowed to do anything I could to keep him safe from whatever was about to unfold.
Standing there with Lisa, I may not have completely understood what was happening, but I knew nothing would ever be the same again. The only world I’d ever known was now entirely different.
The cries and shouts in the neighborhood increased in intensity when more planes flew overhead with a loud whoosh that rattled the glass in the windows before us and set off some of the alarms again. Turning, I glanced back at the street to find some people running back and forth, hugging each other before running toward another house. Some got in their cars and drove away with a squeal of tires. Much like a chicken with its head cut off, they were unsure of where to go or what to do.
What could anyone possibly do? Were we next for the bombs? The hair on my nape rose.
I turned back to the TV and watched as the cloud continued to rise. More words flashed by on the bottom of the screen, but I barely saw them. I became so focused on the TV, I never heard my mother enter the porch until one of her hands fell on my shoulder.
Tilting my head back to look at her, I realized it must be worse than I ever could have imagined if she was touching me. It was the first time she’d touched me in a comforting way in years. It would be the last, that wasn’t by accident or in anger, for all the years following.
“What is happening?” Lisa inquired in a tremulous whisper.
“The end,” Mother replied.
I wouldn’t know how right she was until years later.
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About the Author
Brenda K. Davies is the USA Today Bestselling author of the Vampire Awakening Series, Alliance Series, Road to Hell Series, Hell on Earth Series, and historical romantic fiction. She also writes under the pen name, Erica Stevens. When not out with friends and family, she can be found at home with her husband, dog, and horse.
The Vampire Awakenings Bundle: Books 1-5 Page 145