“Thank you for letting us come, you didn’t have to.”
“Yes I did,” Williams said.
“Why’s that?”
“It’s because there’s a little boy in Honolulu that needs his dad,” he said, not taking his eyes off the island.
“Any sign of Tim?” one of the men asked.
“No sign at all,” Williams said angrily, and he heard Robyn moan.
“What do you mean?” Johnson said.
“You are Ensign William Johnson, from the USS Hughes, right?”
“Yes I am,” he asked. “What boy are you talking about?” “Mary made me promise I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Mary! She’s alive?” he asked excitedly, grabbing Williams’ arm.
“Yes, she’s alive. And you have a little boy named Billy.”
Johnson sat down in shock and didn’t say another word, just had this odd little smile on his face, before he brought his hands up to his face and began to weep. “It’s over! It’s finally over!” he said through the tears.
“It isn’t over, not by a long shot. It looks like that tub of yours is trying to get off the reef,” Williams said, pointing at the now distant island and ship, and they all looked. Billows of black smoke were now pouring out of the stack.
“Oh, no…” Johnson said.
***
About one hundred miles northeast of the island, at an altitude of five hundred thousand feet, the post-boost flight of the warhead ended. The flight from the silo in Nebraska to this spot took approximately twenty-nine minutes. The post-boost vehicle maneuvered to a downward facing angle, at a pre-determined window in space, and released the reentry vehicle. The W87 warhead looked nothing like a conventional bomb; it was cone shaped, similar to a sugar cone for ice cream, but about one meter in length and gunmetal gray. As soon as it had separated from the post-boost vehicle, spin-gas generators on the rear of the device fired and put a clockwise rotation on it to stabilize its reentry. The beauty of the weapon was in its simplicity. The designers, in an attempt to save weight, used the weapon’s own fissionable material, in this case Plutonium, for its heat shield. Once separated from the post-boost vehicle and spinning rapidly, the weapon now used gravity to pull in to its intended target with an accuracy of about one hundred meters. Like the old saying goes, close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and thermonuclear devices, and one hundred meters was close enough. It fell faster and faster, gaining speed as it got closer to the Earth. As it fell, the air got thicker, and friction with the outer plutonium shell caused it to glow white hot, leaving a streak in the darkening twilight sky, not unlike a meteor. Volivoli had been around for thousands of years, born of a volcano deep on the ocean’s floor, now long since dead. And born of fire, would now die of fire.
***
On the bridge of the USS Hughes, the captain walked out onto the wing bridge, and watched the slow progress. The men who had swum out to the ship were now trying desperately to climb up the rope ladder, still dangling over the side. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the ship broke free of the reef, and began backing up into deep water. He let out a sigh of relief and looked up. What he saw removed all relief he might have felt. He saw a glowing, white-hot streak coming directly towards the ship from high up in the atmosphere. He was frozen in place, unable to move when he felt a warm trickle run down his leg as his bladder released.
***
Five miles away on the lifeboat, Robyn finally looked up. “Look! A shooting star! Make a wish, Holly!”
Holly looked to where the girl was pointing, and got a knot in her stomach. She grabbed Robyn, pulling her down and covering her eyes. “Everyone get down! Cover your eyes! Do it quickly!” she screamed. They all hesitated for a moment, then the gravity of her voice told them they’d better do what she said. As soon as they were all down below the gunwales, the darkening sky, just starting to become starlit, turned to day. At exactly one thousand feet above the atoll and the ship, the barometric triggering device gave its order to the device to detonate. A white hot ball of fire spread out directly from over the channel where the warhead had detonated a millisecond ago. Everything within five hundred yards was reduced down to its molecular level. The expanding ball of hot gas, ten times hotter than the surface of the sun, engulfed everything within that radius. Everything on the island further out was instantaneously flattened, then set ablaze by the thermal radiation in a widening circle reaching out to two thousand yards. At that point, the whole atoll was wiped flat. The once soft, snow-white sand was turned to molten glass, and all the ammunition stored in the bunkers detonated, adding to the utter destruction. The shockwave, in the form of compressed air, raced outwards in an ever expanding bubble at the speed of sound, and that wall and the sound of the blast hit the tiny boat at the same time. It was loud, louder than any blast any of them had ever heard, and the shockwave rocked the boat to almost capsizing. It righted itself, as the designers had intended, though they certainly would not have been envisioning these circumstances when designing a self-righting lifeboat. After the shockwave had passed, they all looked up in amazement that they were still alive. The fireball was now rising into the air at a rapid speed, turning into a huge mushroom cloud still alive with fire.
They all stared for what seemed like hours, watching the cloud rise into the stratosphere and widen, and there was still a steady rumble like a thousand freight trains passing at once, that seemed like it would never end. They looked at where the island had once been, but could only see a white hot glow.
“Nothing could have survived that!” Suplee said. “Holy shit!”
“Oh my God, would you look at that!” Ensign Johnson said. “He’s gone. He’s finally gone.”
Holly was speechless as she held Robyn. “Holly, why did he do it?” Robyn said in a tiny, tiny voice. “We should have gone back for him. It’s what you’re supposed to do. Never leave a fallen comrade…”
“I don’t know, honey. Maybe he just wanted us to get free,” Holly said, holding onto Robyn, tears flowing freely.
“What about radiation?” one of Williams’ men asked. Holly, still holding onto Robyn answered. “We’re far enough away now and heading south. The prevailing winds blow east, so that’s where the fallout will go.”
Watching the glowing mushroom cloud rise into the night sky, no one heard the splash of water and a dolphin’s squeak, and nobody saw the hand come up over the gunwales. Another hand appeared, then Tim’s head. The clatter of the grease gun hitting the deck made everyone turn.
“Tim!” Holly screamed, rushing to pull him into the boat. Williams grabbed an arm, and Nakamura grabbed the other, and they hoisted him into the boat where he plopped on the deck unceremoniously. He looked a mess, and the wound in his side was still oozing blood. He looked up at Holly, and tried to sit up, removing the grease gun from around his neck, and dropping it on the deck.
“Hey, baby,” he said drunkenly, looking into her eyes. Robyn came over, and hugged him tightly.
“I thought you were dead!” she said, kissing him.
Everyone on the boat gathered around him, and Williams pushed through the crowd and knelt down next to him. “Tim, you’ve got balls, man, big giant brass ones. I don’t think I’d have been able to do that.”
“I had to. It was the only way left. I knew if he got hold of the codes, he would have just come looking for you guys,” he said, and then winced in pain.
“Man, you got hit pretty badly,” Williams said. “We saw the bomb go off, and we thought you were gone.”
“Well, I’m too ornery to die. And I will never, ever eat a tuna sandwich ever again as long as I live,” he said, pointing at Jerry, and then passed out in the bottom of the boat.
***
Tim was hovering between sleep and dreams, but could see light through closed eyes that refused to open. He could hear someone talking, but couldn’t make out what was being said. He could feel the bed he was lying on and smell the clean sheets. There were other smells. I
t smelled antiseptic, like a hospital. That was it. He was in a hospital. He tried to remember what had happened, but it was all a jumble. Coming home from Afghanistan… The Event, Paul, Robyn. Red Eagle… Holly and Izzy… the flight to the island… and the craziest thing, him launching the nuke. That was it! He’d been in a car wreck and this was all a dream. It had to have been a dream. He’d been in a coma and everything had all been a terrible nightmare!
But it all seemed so real… Holly… her long, long beautiful hair… He could actually smell her still at this very moment, and longed to feel her again. If it was all a dream, he wanted to go back and find her. He had to go back to sleep and drift off to that place where Holly was. He felt something cool and damp on his forehead. It felt nice, and he didn’t want it to stop. He felt a dull pain in his lower abdomen, and it itched. Yes. He could smell her now. Every woman has a unique scent, and that was definitely what was teasing his olfactory senses now. He forced his eyes to slowly open, and tilted his head a little. The light was bright and cold, sterile. Just like hospital lighting. His eyesight began to clear, and he could see a shadow. That brightened too as his vision cleared, and his heart skipped a beat. That beautiful face! That face of an angel, framed in long red hair was close, and the green eyes were gazing at him hopefully.
“Holly?” he said in a raspy voice.
“I’m right here, Timmy. Don’t move. You’ve been hurt really badly and you’ve got to stay still,” she said, tears of joy filling her green eyes. “Doctor, please come quick! He’s awake!”
“Was it all real?”
“Aye, it was real. Now please, lay still, love,” she said, kissing his dry lips.
A man wearing horn-rimmed glasses, his hair in a ponytail and wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt walked in and over to the bunk where Tim lay. “Ah good! I see you’re awake. You were a very sick bloke when we got you, mate. Luckily for you, your partner here has the same blood type as you!” he said in an Australian accent.
“Where am I?”
“You’re on the HMAS Newcastle. And we’re about a day away from Pearl Harbor.”
“How did we get here?” he asked, confused.
“We all did like you told Jerry to do,” Holly explained, “we got to the wrecked ship on the reef, and we were able to lower one of the lifeboats and get away. We were about three miles from the island when the bomb went off.”
“Yes, and we saw the light show from a thousand kilometers away,” the doctor said.
“The Australians picked us up about a day later. Just in time too, you had lost a lot of blood, and we weren’t sure you were going to make it,” Holly said, tears beginning to well up.
“Everyone got out?”
“Yes, everyone got away. Robyn is up in a cabin asleep. She has been worried sick.”
“Good. I was trying to give you all time to get far enough away. I wasn’t sure I’d get out in time, but that didn’t matter, as long as the rest of you did,” he said.
“How did you get to the lifeboat anyway? It was three bloody miles away!”
“You’d never believe it.”
“Alright now, he’s still not completely well. You’ve lost one kidney and part of your liver, and you need to get some rest. I don’t want any of those sutures ripping out, so please don’t move around much for a bit.”
“Ah, I’ve got plenty of liver to go around, and I got two kidneys, I can give up one I guess,” Tim said in a weak attempt at a joke.
The doctor showed Holly out.. “Now get some rest, mate,” he said to Tim. “I’ll let her come back in a bit, but you need your rest.”
“You’re the doc,” Tim said, closing his eyes, and was immediately asleep. The next time he woke, he was feeling a little bit better than before, and could even sit up a little. Robyn and Holly were there at his bedside, and standing behind them was a very nervous Jimenez. He looked around, and saw all the accoutrements of a ship, and could feel the movement. He sipped on some water through a straw offered by Robyn, and thanked her.
“Dad, we were so worried about you. We thought you were gone with the rest of them when the bomb went off,” she said, taking his hand gently, careful not to hit the IV that was placed in a vein there.
“I’m okay, baby. It’s all over now.”
“Was this what Dawn Redeagle told us about? What you had to do?”
“I don’t know, baby. I think so. I don’t ever want to have to do that ever again. It’s over and done with,” he said, closing his eyes.
“Yeah, and now we can be one happy family, all four of us!”
“Four of us?” he asked, opening his eyes.
Robyn looked at Holly in surprise. “You didn’t tell him?”
“Tell me what?” he asked. “If you hooked up with that Jimenez kid—”
Jimenez quickly stepped back. “No, sir! I swear I didn’t do anything! She saved my ass back on the island!”
“No, Dad, not that, although he is kind of cute,” she said, giving Jimenez a coy look over her shoulder.
“Now wait just a goddamn minute!” he said, and started to sit up. Holly gently pushed him back down into the bunk and kissed him.
“I’m having a baby, Tim,” Holly said with a twinkle in her eyes.
“A-A baby? You’re pregnant?” Tim said, in shock. He almost said ‘how did that happen?’ but that would have been a really stupid question.
“Yes. I’m pregnant.”
“Now what?”
“Well, I do believe there’s a nice house in northern Arizona we can get for cheap, and there are no nosy neighbors,” she said.
“Yeah, I do recall mentioning that a time or two,” he said, his smile wide.
“I love you, Timothy Xavier Flannery!” Holly said, leaning down to kiss him. “I love you too, babe,” he said, kissing her back.
“Where’d ‘Xavier’ come from? That’s funny!” Robyn said, and they all had a good laugh as the Australian ship neared Hawaii…
The End?
About the Author
Thomas Wolfenden was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is an honorably discharged veteran of the US Army. He’s worked in several different jobs throughout his life, spending fifteen years in law enforcement and the private security field. He has worked as an automotive detailer, ambulance driver, a nuclear medicine delivery courier, a dairy barn cleaner, and most recently has worked as a ballast regulator operator, a switchman, conductor and a locomotive engineer on the railroad. He’s travelled extensively through the United States and abroad, and lived in several States. Pennsylvania, Arizona, West Virginia, Kentucky, Idaho and Florida being a few. He has written several OP-ED pieces for various local newspapers, and had up until recently kept a political humor blog. He’s a Life/Endowment member of the National Rifle Association, and a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment. He now spends his time between the United States and Australia, with his life partner, Catherine. This is his first novel. He can be contacted at: [email protected]
Table of Contents
Author’s Note
Forward
Part One
Chapter 1: The Nothing Man
Chapter 2: Careful What You Wish For
Chapter 3: Booze, Books and Bullets
Chapter 4: Conflagration & Exodus
Chapter 5: Friday
Chapter 6: Replenishing Hands
Chapter 7: Another Winter
Chapter 8: Holidays Passed
Chapter 9: Ports of Call
Chapter 10: Intestinal Fortitude
Chapter 11: Go West Young Man
Chapter 12: Rude Reception
Chapter 13: Pass Interception
Chapter 14: Q&A
Chapter 15: Retaliation
Chapter 16: The Ancient Ones
Part Two
Chapter 17: Home Sweet Home
Chapter 18: Fly the Friendly Skies
Chapter 19: Aloha Haole!
Chapter 20: The Island
Chapter 21: The Battle of V
olivoli
Chapter 22: Rockets’ Red Glare
About the Author
One Man's Island Page 49