Ben Franklin, staring to the south, said, “I don’t see any mushroom cloud. Don’t they always have a mushroom cloud?” “The explosions were very far off,” Randy said. “Probably a lot of haze, or other clouds, between us and the mushrooms. What we see is a reflection in the sky. It’s dying, now. It was much brighter when I first came out here.”
“I see,” Ben Franklin said, satisfied. “What do you think they clobbered? I’d guess Homestead and the Boca Chica Navy base at Key West.”
Randy shook his head. “I don’t see how we could get rocked from that distance. Maybe they hit Palm Beach and Miami. Maybe they missed and pitched two into the Glades.”
“Maybe,” Ben said, not as if he believed they had missed.
It was so quiet. It was wrongly quiet. They ought to hear sirens, or something. All Randy heard was a mockingbird tuning up for his morning aria.
Helen released her grip on his arm. Thoughts seemed to parallel his, she said, “I haven’t heard any planes. I don’t hear any now. Shouldn’t we hear fighters, or something?”
“I don’t know,” Randy said.
Ben Franklin said, “I heard ‘em. That’s what first woke me. I heard jets-they sounded like B-Forty-sevens- climbing. Traveling that way.” He showed them with a sweep of his arm. “That’s southwest to northeast, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Randy said, and at that instant he heard another aircraft, whining under full power, following the same path. They all listened. “That one will be from MacDill,” Randy decided, “heading across.”
Before its sound faded they heard another, and then a third. They all pressed close to the porch screen, looking up.
High up there, where it was already sunlight, they saw silver arrows speeding and three white contrails boldly slashed across morning’s washed blue sky.
Ben Franklin whispered, “Go, baby, go!”
Terror departed Helen’s eyes. “Could we go up on the captain’s walk?” she said. “I want to watch them. They’re mine, you know.”
Ben and Peyton sprinted for the ladder. “No!” Randy said. “Wait!”
Ben stopped instantly. Peyton ran on. Her mother said, “Peyton! That was an order!”
Peyton, her hand on the ladder, went no further. She said, “Shucks.”
“You might as well start learning to obey your uncle Randy, just as you obey your father, right now!”
Peyton said, “Why can’t we go up on the roof?”
Randy had spoken instinctively. He found it difficult to put his objection into words. “I think it’s too exposed,” he said. “I think we all ought to be underground right now, but there isn’t any cellar and it’s too late to start digging.”
Ben Franklin said, “You’re right, Randy. If they laid an egg close, we could get flash burns. Then there’s radiation.” The boy looked at the weathercock on the garage steeple. “Wind’s from the east, so we won’t get any fallout, anyway not now. But suppose they hit Patrick? We’re almost exactly west of Patrick, aren’t we? Patrick could cook us.”
“Where did you learn all that stuff about fallout?” Randy asked.
“I thought everybody knew it.” Ben frowned. “I don’t think they’ll hit Patrick. It’s a test center, not an operational base. Patrick can’t hurt them, but MacDill and McCoy, they can hurt them. And, brother, they will!”
Randy, Helen, and Ben Franklin were facing the east, where the missile test pads on Cape Canaveral lay, and where the fat red sun now showed itself above the horizon. Peyton, nose pressed against the screen, was still trying to follow the contrails of the B-47’s. A stark white flash enveloped their world. Randy felt the heat on his neck. Peyton cried out and covered her face with her hands. In the southwest, in the direction of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota, another unnatural sun was born, much larger and infinitely fiercer than the sun in the east.
Automatically, as a good platoon leader should, Randy looked at his watch and marked the minute and second in his memory. This time he would know the point of impact exactly, using the flash-and-sound system learned in Korea.
A thick red pillar erected itself in the southwest, its base the unnatural sun.
The top of the pillar billowed outward. This time, the mushroom was there.
There was no sound at all except Peyton’s whimpering. Her fists were pressed into her eyes.
A bird plunged against the screen and dropped to earth, trailed by drifting feathers.
Within the pillar and the cloud, fantastic colors played. Red changed to orange, glowed white, became red again. Green and purple ropes twisted upward through the pillar and spread tentacles through the cloud.
The gaudy mushroom enlarged with incredible speed, angry, poisonous, malignant. It grew until the mushroom’s rim looked like the leading edge of an approaching weather front, black, purple, orange, green, a cancerous man-created line squall.
They shrank from it.
Peyton screamed, “I can’t see! I can’t see, Mommy. Mommy, where are you?” Her eyes were wide, her face tear-stained and mottled. Arms outstretched, she was moving across the porch with tiny, stiff, uncertain steps.
Randy scooped her into his arms. She seemed weightless. Helen opened the door and he rushed into the living room. Talking to her, saying, “Easy, Peyton, honey! Easy! Stop rubbing your eyes. Keep your eyes closed.” He stretched the child out on the couch.
Helen was at his side, a wet towel in her hands. She laid the towel over her daughter’s eyes. “This will make you feel better, baby.”
“Momm ~” y?
“Yes.” This was the first time, since she was six, that Peyton had used Mommy instead of Mother.
“All I can see is a big white ball. I can see it with my eyes closed. It hurts me, Mommy, right through my head.”
“Sure, just like a big flashlight bulb. Lie still, Peyton, you’re going to be all right.” Now, with fear for her child’s sight supplanting all other fears, Helen steadied. Again she was composed, able, efficient, and she knew the moment of panic would not return. She told Randy, calmly, “Hadn’t you better call Dan Gunn?”
“Of course.” Randy hurried into his office. Dan had two phones in his suite in the Riverside Inn. Randy dialed the private number. It was busy. He dialed Riverside Inn. Again, he heard the impersonal busy-beep. The inn had a switchboard. All its lines shouldn’t be busy. He tried the clinic building, although he knew it was most unlikely that Dan, or anybody, would be there at this hour. It was busy. He dialed operator. The same beep sounded in his ear. Once again, Randy tried Dan’s private number. The infuriating beep persisted. He gave up and announced, “I’ll have to drive into town and bring Dan out here.”
At that moment the ground-conducted shock wave rocked the house.
Peyton cried out, in her sightless terror. Helen pressed her down on the couch, murmuring reassuring mother words. Randy noticed that Ben Franklin was missing from the room.
The blast and sound wave covered them, submerging all other sound and feeling. Again the kitchenware and glasses and china danced. A delicate vase of Viennese crystal crumpled into powder and shards on the mantle. The glass protecting a meticulous and vivid still life, a water color by Lee Adams, shattered in its frame with a loud report.
Randy looked at his watch, marked the time, and did the flash-and-sound arithmetic in his head.
Helen, watching him while soothing Peyton’s tense body with her fingers, watching and understanding, said, “What was it?”
`what was MacDill,” Randy said. “Six minutes and fifteen seconds. That means seventy-five miles, just right for MacDill.” “MacDill means Tampa,” Helen said.
“And St. Petersburg. You’ll be all right until I get back?” “We’ll be all right.”
Randy banged into Ben Franklin on the stairs. “Where’ve you been?”
“Opening up the windows and doors downstairs. Just made it. Not a window broke.”
“Smart boy. Now you go on up and help your mother take care of Peyton. I’m going for the Doctor.”
“Randy-” “Yes?”
“I’m going to fill up all the pails and sinks and tubs with water. That’s what you’re supposed to do, you
