He cranked the engine and raced through the least muddy path on the way back to the stage, his sister holding on tight behind him. They pulled up beside Anna, his sister hopping off and into her arms. While they chatted, Donald killed the ignition and checked his phone for messages. Finally, one had gotten through.
Helen: In Tennessee. where r u?
There was a jarring moment as his brain tried to make sense of the message. It was from Helen. What the hell was she doing in Tennessee?
Another stage fell silent. It took only a heartbeat or two for Donald to realize that she wasn’t hundreds of miles away. She was just over the hill. None of his messages about meeting at the Georgia stage had gone through.
“Hey, I’ll be right back.”
He cranked the ATV. Anna grabbed his wrist.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
He smiled. “Tennessee. Helen just texted me.”
Anna glanced up at the clouds. His sister was inspecting her hat. On the stage, a young girl was being ushered up to the mic. She was flanked by a color guard, and the seats facing the stage were filling up, necks stretched with anticipation.
Before he could react or put the ATV in gear, Anna reached across, twisted the key and pulled it out of the ignition.
“Not now,” she said.
Donald felt a flash of rage. He reached for her hands, for the key, but it disappeared behind her back.
“Wait,” she hissed.
Charlotte had turned toward the stage. Senator Thurman stood with a microphone in hand, the young girl, maybe sixteen, beside him. The hills had grown deathly quiet. Donald realized what a racket the ATV had been making. The girl was about to sing.
“Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Democrats—”
There was a pause. Donald got off the four-wheeler, took a last glance at his phone, then tucked it away.
“—and our handful of Independents.”
Laughter from the crowd. Donald set off at a jog across the flat at the bottom of the bowl. His shoes squished in the wet grass and the thin layer of mud. Senator Thurman’s voice continued to roar through the microphone:
“Today is the dawn of a new era, a new time.”
He was out of shape, his shoes growing heavy with mud.
“As we gather in this place of future independence—”
By the time the ground sloped upward, he was already winded.
“—I’m reminded of the words from one of our enemies. A Republican.”
Distant laughter, but Donald paid no heed. He was concentrating on the climb.
“It was Ronald Reagan who once said that freedom must be fought for, that peace must be earned. As we listen to this anthem, written a long time ago as bombs dropped and a new country was forged, let’s consider the price paid for our freedom and ask ourselves if any cost could be too great to ensure that these liberties never slip away.”
A third of the way up—and Donald had to stop and catch his breath. His calves were going to give out before his lungs did. He regretted puttering around on the ATV the past weeks while some of the others slogged it on foot. He promised himself he’d get in better shape.
He started back up the hill, and a voice like ringing crystal filled the bowl. It spilled in synchrony over the looming rise. He turned toward the stage below where the national anthem was being sung by the sweetest of young voices—
And he saw Anna hurrying up the hill after him, a scowl of worry on her face.
Donald knew he was in trouble. He wondered if he was dishonoring the anthem by scurrying up the hill. Everyone had assigned places for the anthem and he was ignoring his. He turned his back on Anna and set off with renewed resolve.
“—o’er the ramparts we watched—”
He laughed, out of breath, wondering if these mounds of earth could be considered ramparts. It was easy to see the bowls for what they’d become in the last weeks, individual states full of people, goods and livestock, fifty state fairs bustling at once, all for this shining day, all to be gone once the facility was up and running.
“—and the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air—”
He reached the top of the hill and sucked in deep lungfuls of crisp, clean air. On the stage below, flags swayed idly in a soft breeze. A large screen showed a video of the girl singing about proof and still being there.
A hand seized his wrist.
“Come back,” Anna hissed.
He was panting. Anna was also out of breath, her knees covered in mud and grass stains. She must’ve slipped on the way up.
“Helen doesn’t know where I am,” he said.
“—bannerrr yet waaaaave—”
Applause stirred before the end, a compliment. The jets streaking in from the distance caught his eye even before he heard their rumble. A diamond pattern with wing tips nearly touching.
“Get the fuck back down here,” Anna yelled. She yanked on his arm.
Donald twisted his wrist away. He was mesmerized by the sight of the jets approaching.
“—o’er the laaand of the freeeeeee—”
That sweet and youthful voice lifted up from fifty holes in the earth and crashed into the thunderous roar of the powerful jets, those soaring and graceful angels of death.
“Let go,” Donald demanded, as Anna grabbed him and scrambled to pull him back down the hill.
“—and the hooome of the . . . braaaaave . . .”
The air shook from the grumble of the perfectly timed fly-by. Afterburners screamed as the jets peeled apart and curved upward into the white clouds.
Anna was practically wrestling him, arms wrapped around his shoulders. Donald snapped out of a trance induced by the passing jets, the beautiful rendition of the anthem amplified across half a county, the struggle to spot his wife in the bowl below.
“Goddammit, Donny, we’ve got to get down—”
The first flash came before she could get her hands over his eyes. A bright spot in the corner of his vision in the direction of downtown Atlanta. It was a daytime strike of lightning. Donald turned toward it, expecting thunder. The flash of light had become a blinding glow. Anna’s arms were around his waist, jerking him backward. His sister was there, panting, covering her eyes, screaming, “What the fuck?”
Another flash of light, starbursts in one’s vision. Sirens spilled out of all the speakers. It was the recorded sound of air-raid klaxons.
Donald felt half blinded. Even when the mushroom clouds rose up from the earth—impossibly large to be so distant—it still took a heartbeat to realize what was happening.
They pulled him down the hill. Applause had turned to screams audible over the rise and fall of the blaring siren. Donald could hardly see. He stumbled backward and nearly fell as the three of them slipped and slid down the bowl, the wet grass funneling them toward the stage. The puffy tops of the swelling clouds rose up higher and higher, staying in sight even as the rest of the hills and the trees disappeared from view.
“Wait!” he yelled.
There was something he was forgetting. He couldn’t remember what. He had an image of his ATV sitting up on the ridge. He was leaving it behind. How did he get up there? What was happening?
“Go. Go. Go,” Anna was saying.
His sister was cussing. She was frightened and confused, just like him. He had never known his sister to be either one.
“The main tent!”
Donald spun around, his heels slipping in the grass, hands wet with rain and studded with mud and grass. When had he fallen?