“Hello.”
“Good morning. Where are you in the world today?” Jason Ross always started the conversation like this because, even though they were close friends, he never knew where Chad was at the moment.
“I’m in Nebraska heading toward Salt Lake.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve been following the news?” Jason asked, already knowing the answer.
“No. What’s up?”
“Just the end of the world.”
Chad assumed he was joking. “Is this about the Saudi Arabia thing?”
“Yeah, and a nuke going off in California. And about six other things that are taking the country down. The flag’s going up and you’re the last one to find out.”
“Seriously?” Chad had no idea.
“Yeah. Is the power still on where you are?”
“Now that you mention it, the stop lights were out in the last town I drove through.” Chad still didn’t think the two things were necessarily connected, but he was intrigued.
“Will you listen if I give you some advice?” Jason asked. Chad was silent, which was as close to a “yes” as Jason was going to get. “Drive straight out to your little girl, pick her up and drive directly to Salt Lake. Or, dump your Jeep and get on an airplane if you can.”
“Seriously?” Chad asked again, about two octaves higher.
“Yes. Get to Salt Lake City as quickly as possible. You’re probably up shit creek as it is. I’m surprised this call even went through. There are a bunch of people I can’t reach anymore by cell. I assume we’ll lose comms after this call. Do you have a gun?”
“I have my 1911 and a box of shells. I’ll be good. I also have my go bag.” Chad pulled over to the side of the road and did a little mental math, thinking about the route back to his daughter in Omaha.
“What the hell am I going to do about Audrey?” Chad wondered aloud. Chad and Audrey had been divorced for several months and she was still as angry as a wasp in a dude’s jockstrap.
“I think she needs to come to Utah for her own good. Your daughter will never forgive you if you leave her mom behind. Audrey absolutely must get in your car. There’s no time to explain, and with her, explaining might take weeks.”
“Damn…” Chad thought through how he was going to pull that off. Getting Audrey into his Jeep, under any pretext, would take some serious bullshitting. An airplane? No chance. But could he really tolerate being stuck in a car with that howling bobcat for nine hundred miles?
Jason was right and Chad knew it. Little Samantha would never forgive him if he left her mom behind. All bad feelings needed to be set aside right now if what Jason was saying was true. It sounded like warrior time, and all he really cared about in this world was that little girl. That meant Audrey came as part of the package.
“I hope you’re right about how bad things are because, if I drag her into the car and I take off toward Salt Lake City, and then everything goes back to normal, the lawyers are going to have a good time with that one.”
Jason wrapped up the call. “By the time you get back to Audrey and Sam in Omaha, you’ll have no doubt the world is crashing. Dude, I’m looking out my balcony and I can see fires burning out of control in Ogden. No kidding. Get here fast.”
“Okay,” Chad agreed.
“Oh,” Jason had one more thing to add, “you’ve always argued that the super-secret American oligarchs would never let a collapse happen. So, this goes on the LONG list of things when I was right and you were wrong.”
“Screw you. I’ll believe it when I see it.” Chad laughed. “I’ll see you in a few days. Keep everyone safe. Love you, brother.”
“Godspeed.” Jason hung up.
5
“YOUR SERVANT, JT TAYLOR HERE again, for another episode of As the World Burns.
“Saudis are flying bombing runs over Iran this fine evening in retaliation for Iran NUKING THEM. Lots of bang-bang over Tehran tonight. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of homophobic racists…
“The Russians are making a beer run into Ukraine in their T-90 main battle tanks, overrunning the entire country. It’s like dad’s out of town and the kids are breaking into the liquor cabinet and the stack of Playboys under the bed. No adult supervision in the world tonight, folks…
“Oh, and I have a bit of top secret news from a Drinkin’ Bro in the 5th Fleet in the Med: Israel has rolled into the Sinai hammering the Egyptians once and for all. And our very own big boats are backing Israel’s play.
“On a personal note, I’m running low on booze and I’m heading toward Arizona unless they blow me up first. I need a rendezvous with a certain Drinkin’ Bro-ette who is holding a case of Leadslingers Whiskey for me, hopefully along with a badly-needed game of hide-the-sausage. I’ll be the one rolling up in the Humvee bristling with antennas…”
Federal Heights
Salt Lake City, Utah
The view from the back of the kitchen had been the deal-clincher when Jimmy had bought his luxury home seven years ago.
At the end of the Avenues neighborhood, Federal Heights ran up against the University of Utah campus and the Jewish Community Center. Why anyone had built a Jewish Community Center in an almost completely Mormon town was a mystery to Jimmy. There must have been an underground Jewish crowd in Salt Lake because the Jewish Community Center looked fancier than anything except the Mormon Temple and the Mormon Tabernacle itself.
As the name implied, Federal Heights perched up on the high bench, with panoramic views of the Salt Lake Valley. They couldn’t claim to be the richest neighborhood in Salt Lake, because the Heights had been built over a hundred years ago. Still, folks knew you had been blessed if you owned a home in Federal Heights.
Jimmy stood there mesmerized, his hands in his pockets, trying to decide if he was seeing fire or not. Almost ten miles across the valley, in what looked like West Jordan or Magna, he saw what looked like a plume of smoke, lazily reaching up to form a layer of haze, like a three-mile-wide mushroom. Six or seven miles to the north, mostly blocked out by his big cottonwood tree, Jimmy could see more smoke, maybe drifting south from Rose Park.
Jimmy knew his intelligence ran far above average. He had earned a scholarship to BYU, and that was no small feat. Even so, his mind struggled to accept the obvious truth—a reality that could be seen as plain as day through his bay window: Salt Lake had begun to burn.
He couldn’t hear sirens from this distance and the evidence was hard to refute. Something gurgled and he felt that hard place in the pit of his stomach that had re-appeared two days ago. Every time he considered the danger brooding within that smoke a picture flashed to mind: his six-year-old daughter on Christmas morning in her Disney Princess pajamas.
Little Olivia was as smart as a whip and as sweet as a little girl could be. For Jimmy, she embodied purity and grace. He adored all his children, but his love wrapped around Olivia like a never-ending blanket.
What he saw out the bay window hinted at a malignancy beyond anything he’d ever faced. Jimmy was darn near certain he wasn’t man enough to protect Olivia or his family from the maelstrom that smoke implied.
“Jim,” a voice penetrated his foreboding like a slow knife. “JIM! I’m talking to you.”
“Huh…” Jimmy turned, and his wife stood in front of him, a bit too close.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked rhetorically. “We need you to find all the flashlights in case the power doesn’t come back on before night. We need flashlights and the Coleman stove so we can cook in here.”