Between six and eight was a quiet time for Sam. He pretty much had the town to himself, except for commuters to Birmingham and the local paper boy. It was even quieter that morning, since everyone was off from work. It was then, during those early hours, that Sam liked to take inventory of his hometown. Never mind that the inventory never changed – except for that one shop on the corner that continuously transformed from video store to tanning booth shop to sub sandwich joint, and then back again. The main street – named Maple Avenue for the tall sugar and red maples that stood sentry along the thoroughfare – featured various storefronts that had been there for generations; Millie's Pet Shop,
Mercher's
Shop-Rite,
Pendergast's
True-Value Hardware, the Watkins Glen Five & Dime (yes, there were still some of those antiquated variety stores around) and Sam's Fix-It Shop. Further on to the south were the post office and two churches – a Baptist and a Methodist – and the little circular park with its picturesque white wood gazebo, playground, and duck pond. Even further southward was a residential area with street upon street of pretty two-story and ranch-style houses. And beyond that lay the railroad tracks, the junkyard, and the county landfill, along with Baxter County's one-and-only beer joint, The Little Brown Jug.
But today was not about taking inventory. Today was about observing.
Observing Independence Day and its freedoms. Observing his friends and neighbors and how they would celebrate it.
Given his age, observing was about all Sam Wheeler was up to these days.
Around eight-thirty folks began to show up at Maple Avenue to decorate. Red, white, and blue ribbons, American flags, balloons, the works.
Draped from the storefronts, from the lamp posts, from the gazebo. By eleven, the thick scent of charcoal grills firing up in the park drifted down the street, getting ready for the big barbeque around noon.
Around ten-thirty, Sam fell asleep in his chair and napped. He was awakened by George
Pendergast
from the hardware store. "You eating?" he demanded, more than asked.
"Hell, yeah!" said Sam. He pried himself out of the rocker and sauntered down the street to the big picnic in the park. About all he could manage to do these days was saunter, which, to Southerners, meant a cross between a walk and a snail-paced creep.
Oh, what a spread the town ladies had laid out! All manner of casserole imaginable, homemade yeast rolls and cornbread, battered squash, fried okra, macaroni and cheese, seven kinds of potatoes, and corn on the cob (which Sam's aged teeth could no longer abide). Gallon upon gallon of sweet tea and lemonade. And the desserts! Pecan pie, peach cobbler, pineapple upside-down cake, banana pudding, fried apple pies, and red velvet cake.
The townsmen were manning the grills with authority and pride.
Babyback
ribs, barbecued brisket, Black Angus burgers, foot long hotdogs, rib eye steaks,
broasted
chicken. Some had ten-gallon deep-fryers. Catfish and hush puppies galore.
By the time Sam had eaten his fill, he had to hitch a ride back downtown. Soon, the old man was back in his rocker. The parade started at three and he had the best seat in the house.
And what a parade it was. The Baxter County High School marching band playing Queen's "We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions." Baton-twirling, somersaulting cheerleaders with miniscule skirts and maroon-and-white pom-poms. The local chapter of the Lion's Club dressed up like clowns riding unicycles and mini-bikes. A procession of John Deere and American Harvester tractors pulling wagonloads of excited grandchildren. Horseback riders, camouflaged four-wheeler drivers, the volunteer fire engine, Jimmy Joe Spencer and his bumper-to-bumper, true-to-the-TV-show replica of the Dukes' General Lee, blaring "Dixie" on the horn until you got plumb sick and tired of it.
Then came the patriotic portion of the parade. Lanky Tom Hardy on stilts, dressed like Uncle Sam, followed by Boy Scout Troop #343. The Veterans of Foreign Wars. Iraq, Afghanistan, Gulf War, Vietnam, Korea, World War Two. There was even Alabama's last surviving soldier of the First World War, John Harper
Millberry
, dressed in his vintage uniform, unaware and unconcerned at the ripe old age of 110, pushed in a flag-draped wheelchair by his great-great-great-grandson. Sam had once joined them in the annual march, but he stopped when his knees and hip had gone out on him. And he sure as hell wasn't going to let someone haul him around in a damn wheelchair like a prized pumpkin in a wheelbarrow.
After the parade, Sam sort of drifted off again. He awoke after dark to the pop and crack of fireworks. They lit up the sky in a myriad of colors against a black velvet backdrop. Pinwheels, roman candles, slithering snakes, hummers, horsetails, glow worms, whistle rockets. And, on the playground, the kids shooting off Black Cats, bottle rockets, and cherry bombs. Some running around with sputtering sparklers in hand.
As the festivities wound down around ten-thirty, Sam pulled himself up out of his rocker, went into the fix-it shop, and locked the door behind him.
The prospect of sleep usually filled him with unease and unanswered questions… would he wake up in the morning or not? But that night the excitement of the day and the camaraderie shared by the folks of Watkins Glen had dulled his fears. For a change, he felt strangely contented. He turned off the light in the front room, passed the aisles of shelved junk and appliance parts, to his twin bed against the back wall. He didn't bother undressing, just kicked off his shoes and lay down with his hands folded across his chest. Then, thinking he might resemble a corpse in repose, he put his hands behind his head and slept as he did when he was a younger man.
He dreamt of Estelle as she had been when they first courted. Honey-blonde and buxom in that angel-white dress she had sewn by hand. Not tiny and gray and withered, ravaged by Alzheimer's and cancer, confined in that Birmingham nursing home that stank of disinfectant and unwashed asses. Then later, in the rose-colored casket, surrounded by flowers, looking like some taxidermist's mistaken interpretation of his beloved. Too much lipstick and rouge. A curl of a stranger's smile that he had never seen upon her lips in fifty-nine years of marriage.
And he dreamt of a boy. A lover of baseball, bicycles, and fishing. One that had grown into a man; into something even more… or less. One who had abandoned his folks and his town for a world of strangers and endless highways.
By eleven-thirty, the dreams had passed and Sam's slumber deepened into something akin to death. But one that was never lasting and complete.
Then at midnight, the sun came up, brighter than a billion sparklers and hotter than Hell unleashed.
They called it The Burn.
At least that was what the news media labeled it. Funny how journalists – or those who claimed that distinction – had a snappy label for everything… including the end of world as we knew it.
Nobody really knew how it happened or why. Some said it was China, some South Korea or Iran. Some said Al
Queda
was behind it… or Islamic Jihad, the Hezbollah, or two dozen other terrorist organizations. Some claimed the Russians were up to their old tricks again. The trouble was, no one knew exactly who the culprit was. But whoever they were, they had succeeded in sprinkling the world with a shitload of nuclear bombs. No continent, no country, no state had been spared.
A few major cities had suffered direct hits – New York City, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Washington D.C. – but from the ground, not the air. Most of the devices, however, had detonated within a fifty mile radius of major cities, leaving the buildings intact, but flooding them and the surrounding areas with radiation.
There was even an urban legend circulating that a secret society of high school nerds who had gathered forces on the internet had been responsible, just to show those bullying jocks how powerful the acne-scarred and unpopular could be. After all, anyone could learn to build a nuclear bomb. There were at least half a dozen websites on the internet that gave you step-by-step instructions on cooking up Armageddon in your own garage.
When Sam stepped outside the fix-it shop door the next morning he found his beloved Maple Avenue gone. Instead, it had changed into a sluggish, noisy river of total strangers.
He stood there for a long moment, wondering if he was still asleep and in the middle of some confusing nightmare. But he knew that he was as awake as awake could be. Something had happened overnight. Something pretty damned bad.
The street was choked from curb-to-curb with cars and folks on foot. Most were still wearing night gowns and pajamas. Some walked like zombies, their eyes dull and full of shock. Some cried and some cussed, mostly at one another. Horns blared impatiently as those in front of them took their good time heading… where? They themselves seemed at a total loss at where they were headed. The whole thing reminded Sam uncomfortably of the Bataan Death March back in 1942… of which he had been an unwilling participant. Except that there were no Japanese soldiers to bayonet or behead you if you stumbled and fell.
Watching this exodus of humanity surging through the heart of his hometown caused the old man to feel disoriented and a little faint. He held onto the back of Estelle's rocker to steady himself. Sam peered across the column of refuges, searching for a familiar face. He found it directly across the street. Millie Hopkins, the owner of the pet shop, stood in her doorway. She seemed as frightened and confused as Sam was. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. It was clear to see that she was upset.
"Millie!" he called above the steady roar of the crowd. "What the hell's going on?"
The little white-haired lady with the reading glasses chained around her neck stared at him incredulously for a long moment. "You… you haven't heard what happened?"
"I just rolled out of bed," he replied.
Millie burst into a fresh bout of sobbing. "It's horrible… just horrible."
"What, Millie? What's happened?"
"A bomb went off forty miles north of Birmingham," she wailed. "They think it was a nuclear bomb. Can you imagine that? A nuclear bomb going off here in Alabama?"
"Lord have mercy!" exclaimed the old man. "How did it happen?"
"Nobody seems to know," she said. "The news is saying that it wasn't isolated… that it's happened all over the world. Here in the United States, in Europe and Africa. Everywhere. Two hundred and eighty detonations… at least that's the count they've totaled so far. The folks on the TV and radio are talking crazy. Rumors of war… of the End Days. Nobody seems to know exactly what's going on."
Sam was stunned. Nuclear bombs? Nobody even talked about them anymore. He remembered the fears he had experienced back in the fifties and sixties… the Cold War and the potential for global disaster it had stirred. But those anxieties had faded with the tearing-down of the Berlin Wall and the fall of Communism. Who would want to start such madness all over again? A country we were at war with? Or maybe terrorists? It was possible, he supposed. There had been enough attacks in the States and abroad lately. The bombings at the Grammy Awards and Noble Prize ceremonies, and the gunning down of some of the world's greatest medical minds at an international medical symposium last year.
"Sam!" shrilled Millie from across the street. "Sam… I'm scared!"
"I am, too," he assured her. "Do you think you could make it through this crowd? You can sit over here with me, if you like."
Millie looked horrified. "And leave my babies? You know I couldn't do that."
Sam thought about Millie's shop, full of her beloved animals; puppies, kittens, hamsters, yellow-and-green parakeets, and goldfish. She would have no more abandoned them than she would her own children.
"I know you can't," he told her, forcing a smile. "Now why don't you go on back inside. Might be a mite safer. And lock the door behind you."
Millie nodded. "Yes. Yes… I believe I will."
Sam watched as the elderly lady turned and went inside. She no more had the door shut, when a gunshot rang out in the street. Sam searched the crowd and saw a woman in a pink bathrobe with a little girl clinging to her legs. She brandished a .38 revolver, her eyes wild. "Get away from me!" she screamed. "Don't touch me!" Those around her gave her some extra room, but all kept right on going, heading southward down Maple Avenue.
"Sweet Jesus, help us all," muttered Sam. He sat down heavily in his rocking chair and, for the next few hours, did what he always did… observe. But there was no peace and comfort in today's sitting. Only fear and dread.
Around three in the afternoon, things turned ugly.
The shock that had infected most of the wanderers had gradually changed into outrage and anger. And hunger was a factor, too. Most of those folks hadn't had a bite to eat since yesterday's suppertime.
The sound of glass shattering drew Sam's attention. Further down the street, a crowd was breaking into
Mercher's
Shop-Rite. The owner, Ted
Mercher
, stood at the door, trying to stop the tide of hungry and desperate people, but they flung him to the side and ignored his hoarse protests. Sam watched in alarm as Ted clutched his chest and dropped to the sidewalk on his knees. His grown daughter, Tina, was beside him in an instant, her pretty face pale and full of terror. With some effort, she pulled her ailing father to his feet and the two disappeared down a side alleyway, leaving the looters to do as they pleased.