Promised Land

by Brandon Dean

  Suddenly, static played through the speakers instead. My parents looked confused, but Dad also looked irritated at the possibility that he wouldn’t be getting his money’s worth. Everyone in the cars and the lawn chairs scattered around the grounds began to complain and groan in irritation and confusion.

  Finally, the nervous voice of a young man came over the speakers. “I regretfully inform all of our patrons tonight that we will be closing before our scheduled time. As of now, we are unsure if refunds will be issued. However, please keep your ticket stubs to exchange for one free entry on a day of your choice. Th-thank you.”

  “What a crock of shit!” Dad yelled, angrily shifting the car out of park.

  “Temper,” Mom reminded him.

  “How about some music? You know, to change the mood?” I suggested.

  “Fine,” Dad growled, adjusting the radio back to our local mainstream station, which was smack dab in the middle of “Tangerine” by Jimmy Dorsey. It wasn’t a bad song, but I had heard it so many times that it had grown stale to me weeks ago. It didn’t make a difference, though; I’d have listened to the sound of nails on a chalkboard if it would’ve helped settle Dad down.

  From our position on the grounds, we were one of the last cars to exit the drive-in, and when we pulled out onto the main road, we were immediately caught in the bottleneck of traffic.

  I had never seen so many cars backed up in one place in my entire life. Three to five minutes would pass, peppered by a few swears and snarls from Dad, and in that time, we would only move ahead a whopping ten feet. This went on for what seemed like ages, and I knew it would take all night at that rate. Several songs on the radio came and went, and it was in the middle of “Serenade in Blue” that it began.

  A voice came in over the radio, interrupting the song and taking over the airwaves. It wasn’t Wilmer’s voice, though—this one lacked his signature goofy lisp. Instead, this voice sounded professional, completely calm. Almost robotic.

  “This is the US Department of Defense, warning all US citizens receiving this broadcast to take shelter as soon as possible. Our mainland has been invaded aerially by a foreign power believed to be Germany. In coordination with previously undisclosed military information, it is believed that the cities of Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, Indianapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Cleveland, and Jacksonville are or may be in imminent danger. It is advised that all citizens of the aforementioned cities please cooperate in an orderly and civil fashion. Please gather the following supplies for your own personal health and safety: food, water, clothing, hygienic supplies and toiletries, a form of AM communication such as a radio, and a portable light source. We will update you all with information to come.”

  “Enough!” Dad screamed as he turned the radio off.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  My parents ignored my question.

  “What does it mean?” I asked again, louder than before.

  “It means nothing!” Dad barked back. “You hear me?”

  “James . . . he’s just scared. Don’t be so hard on him,” Mom soothed, gently rubbing her hand on his forearm. I could tell Dad was upset, too; he just didn’t know how to express his emotions in a way that didn’t make him look like an asshole to anybody who didn’t know him.

  “Look,” he said in a deep exhale. “This guy’s probably just like Wilmer. A total idiot. Everything’s going to be—”

  Dad was interrupted by an explosion of deafening noise that seemed to come from everywhere. It was the most terrifying sound I’d ever heard, sirens that pierced the air around me. Mom immediately covered her ears in a vain attempt to drown them out.

  “What is that?” I yelled over the sound. The sirens were now accompanied by what sounded like a swarm of mechanical wasps in the distance.

  Dad looked up to the sky past his windshield. “Get out of the car!” he yelled.

  “What’s happening?” I shouted fearfully.

  “Get out of the damn car! Both of you!” Dad screamed urgently.

  I opened my door to step outside; about a third of the people stuck in traffic had done the same, while others who had a farther distance to go helplessly hoped the traffic would move.

  “Come here,” Dad said to Mom as he opened her door and began to carry her.

  That’s when I made the mistake of looking up into the sky.

  There were so many of them that I couldn’t have counted them all even if I’d wanted to.

  Metal birds of death wearing red crosses on the side. I had always been told that airplanes were angels up in the sky—how I’d been misled. I knew what the plan was without being told; I knew what had to happen if we wanted to live to see another day.

  We had to run.

  Chapter 4

  We have to go!” Dad shouted.

  I was worried that Mom would slow Dad down, but she didn’t. She was in no position to make a two-mile walk on her own, let alone run that distance. Dad ran through the never-ending rows of cars that were sitting at a standstill. I’d never known how much adrenaline the human body could produce once it was kicked into fight-or-flight mode, but I was finding that out.

  I ran after Dad. He would occasionally look back to see where I was before refocusing ahead to keep up his pace. I heard what sounded like a whistle as I looked to my right to see the flock of Nazi aircraft. The bombs were beginning to drop, and even with as many planes as there were, the artillery being released by them outnumbered them ten to one. I could hear the sirens of emergency vehicles practically being drowned out by the sounds of war.

  Nearly everyone had left their cars behind at this point, and a mass of people was running to grasp what little chance of survival they had. Dad kept hauling ass as I followed closely behind.

  Explosion after explosion rang loud and clear as I watched the city of Cleveland being reduced to nothing more than an ashy pile of ruin. The bombs seemed as if they were never going to stop. The screams, the frantic prayers, the self-spoken eulogies were never-ending. This is it, the end of all of us, kept repeating in my head.

  Dad was gaining distance from me; he looked back. “Keep up, Clint! Keep up!” he urged.

  I sprinted as fast as my legs could take me, closing the gap between my parents and me. I could see Charlie’s Liquor Store in the distance. We were getting close to shelter, close to home—or, at least, what might be left of it.

  Amid everything, for some reason, my mind chose to focus on my mother’s cries, one of the most unnerving sounds I’d ever heard. Even so, despite the chaos, despite our seemingly guaranteed death, it reassured me that we were all still breathing. She couldn’t cry out if she were dead.

  I was then only about ten feet away from my parents. My body had started to give out, and surely, my father’s had, as well. My chest began to clench, and my legs felt as if they would buckle under me at any second.

  “Stay close!” Dad forced out the words in an exhausted breath.

  The whistling sound was so loud I couldn’t hear myself think. I looked behind me to see where it was coming from as more bombs fell on the line of parked cars we had just run through. I was a football field’s distance away from complete annihilation.

  “Almost there! Keep pushing! Don’t stop!” Dad screamed, his voice practically gone.

  I could now read the flyers on the inside of the windows of Mayfield Grocery and Charlie’s Liquor; I was about sixty feet away. My sprint slowed to a quick jog as my body began to shut down. Dad was gaining distance again.

  The aircraft blitzed my hometown as bombs fell atop both Mayfield Grocery and Charlie’s. I was pushed back by the force of the blast a few feet, and then I blacked out. I’m not sure how long I was out, but I felt someone slapping my face, bringing me back to consciousness. Despite my blurred vision, I knew it was Dad. He had settled Mom on the ground for a moment to wake me. I
didn’t know what he was saying; all I could hear was a high-pitched ringing in my ears.

  I looked around. The places I’d once passed without thought on a regular basis were now piles of concrete, brick, and glass. I saw a little girl, no older than five, on her knees, speaking to her dead father. I didn’t need to hear what she was saying; I read her lips as well as the look of horror on her face.

  “Wake up, Daddy! Wake up, Daddy!” she chanted in a panic.

  The man’s body was mangled and torn to shreds, limbs several feet away from the rest of him. The child’s hands became coated in blood as she repeatedly banged on his chest in a feeble attempt to rouse him. I saw a few corpses scattered along the road—some scorched, some intact, some ripped apart beyond recognition. Images I’d never be able to forget, no matter how desperately I wanted to.

  My sense of sound came back to me, and my father grabbed me by the shirt and lifted me from the ground. “We’ve got to move, Clint!” Dad shouted before grabbing Mom in a frenzy and taking off again.

  I collected myself, dusting off small pieces of rubble and bits of dust from my clothes, then followed Dad again. He looked back at me to assure himself I was still behind him.

  We ran and ran and ran, and it looked as if—against all odds—we were going to make it out of this alive.

  My body was sore from the impact of the blast and from so much running, but it was better to be sore than dead. I could see it—Ashford Lane. My God, I’d never been so happy to see so many cookie-cutter houses. The fact that they were all still standing comforted me. I found consolation in knowing that if it were to end tonight, I’d at least be at home and not on the side of the street somewhere.

  Three hundred feet—only three hundred more feet, give or take. We were almost there. My dad’s legs were shaking; my mom covered her eyes as tears flowed freely between the cracks of her fingers. We had pushed ourselves to the limit. We had nothing left in our bodies, so our minds needed to carry us.

  We had not come this far just to die in our front yard.

  We reached our mailbox at the end of the driveway, and a million pounds of pressure released from my shoulders. But not for long. I heard something, a new sound—loud, clanking mechanical gears in a synchronized rhythm.

  Dad looked back to me, making sure I was there, and then took a glance at the sky. A wide-eyed expression of sheer terror stretched across his face. “Backyard! Now!” he screamed. I looked behind me. In the sky was a single aircraft whose size far outmatched the other plane I’d seen.

  We ran into the backyard.

  “Cellar!” Dad instructed.

  I looked to the sky once more over my shoulder as I descended the steps behind my parents. One bomb, one the size of a small house, released from the underbelly of the aircraft. That telltale whistle filled the air.

  I rushed inside the cellar and slammed the door shut behind me, making sure to lock it from the inside.

  The whistling grew louder and louder, to the point I was sure my eardrums would burst from the pressure.

  I felt a wave of motion under my feet and above my head; the world around me shook as if the very earth were having a convulsion. The explosion was so loud that I heard it for less than half a second. It was as if my ears couldn’t process the decibels given off by the impact of the behemoth bomb that had been released. The only sound audible to me after the explosion was like being in the center of a tornado, with the rushing and whooshing of the wind all around us outside. The cellar doors started to shake and rattle, as though the hands of God himself were trying to pry them open.

  “Help! Get the doors!” Dad yelled to me. He grabbed the door on the left by the handle, while I took the right. The vibrations of the door hinges rattled against the wooden frames as we pulled the handles toward our bodies to prevent them from flying open and exposing us to whatever was outside.

  A small, one-inch-wide chunk of wood burst from the center of the door, exposing a foggy orange light coming through the gap. The ray focused on Dad’s right shoulder as his flesh started to burn and sizzle like bacon in a cast-iron pan. He winced in pain and repositioned himself out of the beam’s path. Just as I was sure I couldn’t hold on for another second, the force of the explosion subsided. Other than my mother’s cries, the entire world was suddenly silent. The overwhelming stillness we were suddenly plunged into was nerve-racking—eerie, even. It was the sound of a nothingness that could only mean doom.

  Dad shakily pulled his cigarette lighter from his pants pocket and lit a small oil lamp on the floor. Suddenly, I had a clear view of everything around me. Mom was curled in a fetal position in the corner of the room, shaken by what had just happened.

  I looked around the cellar. Three gas masks hung on the wall, a hunting rifle propped up on its butt end in the corner next to it. Boxes and shelves full of food and dozens of Mason jars full of water were against the wall behind me, and three sleeping bags were pushed together at the far-most wall of the cellar, with blankets under them for additional support. All of my dad’s tools, all of our stored items had been pushed to the other corners and crannies of the room.

  This was what Dad had been doing in here all this time.

  This was what he had seen coming. And despite the anger and frustration I’d felt toward him earlier that week, I had never been so thankful for his urgency.

  I sat against the cellar wall, drenched in my own sweat. The three of us inhaled deeply, trying to catch our breath.

  “That was close, huh?” Dad tried to joke.

  Neither my mom nor I found humor in this.

  Dad’s forced smile faded to a look of sadness. “I’m sorry you had to see that, both of you,” he said.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  Dad sighed. “I didn’t—I just had a feeling. I guess it paid off, huh?”

  “For how long, though?” I asked.

  “My work in here wasn’t done, Clint. We’ll just have to make do with what I stored in here. Don’t worry, though. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We should be safe for a while.”

  I gestured at the shelves of food and water next to me. “A week, two if we’re lucky. Then what?”

  Dad looked irritated. “Then we leave and start over somewhere else.”

  I let out a derisive laugh. “Start over where, Dad? Where can we go? Did you not see what happened out there?

  “And why did they pick Cleveland? It doesn’t make sense. What makes you think we can even leave here to go somewhere else without getting killed out there?”

  “I don’t think you realize that I saved our lives,” Dad said, raising his voice with each syllable.

  “Maybe for the time being,” I said sharply. “It looks to me like we’re living on borrowed time now. We both know we should have died out there.” I paused to take a breath, easing my tone. “Thank you—thank you for giving us a chance. But if you had a feeling this was going to happen, if you had a feeling we would be living in a hole in the ground, then you must have some sort of plan in mind for what happens now. I love you, and I love Mom, and none of us deserve to starve to death in a hole.”

  Dad nodded, his attention now fixed on the hole in the door. “I know. I’ll think of something, but we aren’t going to be able to do it right now. None of us are thinking straight. Talking straight. And it’s chaos out there still. Get some sleep. I’m gonna try to fix that door—can’t risk letting whatever it is out there in here.”

  Dad grabbed a small piece of scrap wood he had lying around, a few nails, and his hammer. He ignored everything around him as he worked, trying to mask his fear.

  I curled up in a sleeping bag near Mom. She was still weeping, but significantly less than before. I gave her a peck on the cheek in an effort to comfort her. She was scared senseless—not that anyone could blame her.

  “Good night, Mom. Good night, Dad. I love you both.”<
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  “Night, Clint,” Mom whispered in an unsteady tremble.

  “You, too,” Dad said, his voice muffled by the nail he had clamped between his lips.

  I rolled over, turning my back to my parents and closing my eyes to try to get some semblance of sleep. I didn’t want to have a dream that night. I was hoping that maybe I was just in the middle of a nightmare.

  Chapter 5

  When I opened my eyes the next morning, I could see that sunlight had found its way in through the cracks of the doors, making the glow of the still-lit oil lamp unnecessary. I rose to a seated position and felt the ache of torn muscles that must have settled in overnight, making me grimace involuntarily in pain.

  “Oh! Look who’s awake!” Dad quipped as he handed me a tin can half full of black-eyed peas. “Sorry, I forgot to pack silverware,” he said with a shrug.

  “It’s fine,” I muttered.

  I looked over to Mom; she looked a little flushed. I thought it could’ve been the lighting or stress or perhaps even exhaustion from the night before. She was chewing her so-called breakfast slowly. Her mascara was streaked and dried on her cheeks from the path her tears had taken.

  “This has nothing on your biscuits and gravy, Mom,” I said, hoping to make her smile.

  She laughed feebly, then coughed.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “As okay as I can be. Don’t worry, sweetie.”

  I nodded, unconvinced.

  “I’ll make them for you again someday, I promise,” she said with a forced smile.

  “Hey, Clint! Look what I found!” Dad exclaimed, holding out an old paddleball game I’d played when I was younger.

  “Where’d you find that?” I asked in surprise.

  “It was just in a box full of your old stuff. Say, you never did beat my score, did you?”

  I laughed. “Oh, you mean that wild claim of yours that you got three hundred in a row? Gee, I don’t know, Dad, you tell me. Did I beat it?”