Tears trickled down Jackie’s cheeks. Her memories of fun on the islands with her relatives soared through her mind. She winced and then whispered, her voice rising as she spoke. “Granny B, that wasn’t a volcano! I’m scared for our kin back on the islands. Tom, could that have been some sorta bomb?”
Tom noticed a scent in the air he had never smelled before. His eyes squinted, and he took short breaths into his nostrils until his shoulders snapped back and his head lifted. Fear was not something he’d been used to at the ranch. “I don’t know, but I hope whatever happened is behind us. Jack and June are alone at the ranch, and I’m worried how they’ll handle things if the shit just hit the fan.”
Tom then thought, I’m overreacting. Grandpa preached TSHTF so much that I see shit hit the fan situations where they don’t exist. There’s an explanation, and it won’t be the end of the world. Damn, I’ll never be as good at this as my grandpa.
Tom was a good-looking twenty-eight-year-old widower who was athletic and socially awkward. Tom had been a good husband and made a good living raising cattle and goats up in the mountains above Ashland, Oregon. His rugged good looks and awe shucks charm belied his shyness. He worked hard to be outgoing but was a homebody and hated leaving the comfort of the ranch. He was over six-feet tall and towered over Jackie, his twin sister. He called her little sister, and she called him big brother. She was his best friend and confidant.
Tom just didn’t realize that his wife had thought he was boring and led a dull life. His wife tried to get him to go on vacations and get out in the world, but he was a homebody and loved being on his ranch with Granny B and Jackie. Tom didn’t know how much Gwen had begun to resent the lonely life on the ranch. Granny B had caught her flirting on the phone with another man the day before she died in a car crash going to meet the man. Granny B never told Tom because he worshiped his unfaithful wife.
Tom’s grandfather, Jonas Clark, had been one of those ‘Doomsday people’ since leaving the Army. He’d begun seriously prepping after he married Tom’s grandma when they got out of the service and moved back to his grandpa’s family ranch in Oregon. They’d met in Iraq and had been together until a few years ago when he died. Tom and Jackie’s parents had been killed in a car wreck when the twins were five-years-old. Jonas and Bessie raised them as their own. Tom had grown up tagging along with his grandpa and wanted to grow up to be half the man his grandfather was.
The only good thing that had happened to Tom in the last year was winning the Powerball Lottery. His share was only ten million dollars after taxes. He’d bought some toys and treated his family to an all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii, which had almost made him forget about Gwen. Even with a large amount of cash, he still lived in the large two-story ranch house his great-grandpa had built back in the late 1890s. Tom had fixed up the ranch and had bought some top-notch stock to improve his bloodlines, the Jeeps, and new ranch equipment. He also bought some gold and junk silver coins to bulk up their prepping but otherwise kept the bulk of the money in some wise investments.
Tom tapped his sister on the arm. “I just thought that this had better not be the apocalypse. I’ve only spent about a million dollars of the ten million I won. I guess the joke would be on me if there’s nine million left rotting in a bank just as worthless as toilet paper.”
Jackie took in a deep breath to steady her nerves and then wisecracked. “Toilet paper is worthless until you don’t have any. Remind me not to shake hands if the shit has hit the hand.”
Tom couldn’t help laughing at his sister’s crude but true joke. “Yep, shaking hands would be low on my list. We’ll just bump elbows like they did back in the twenties with that China virus.”
Jackie clung to her brother’s arm, laid her head on his shoulder, and tried to be brave. “I’m worried about the ranch and Jack and June.”
Tom thought about the ranch and what chores had to be done. “They’ll be okay for a month or so. Most of the cattle are up in the high country, and the darned goats are out in the eastern pasture. They both have plenty of grass and water.”
Tom cracked his knuckles and fidgeted with his lap belt until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He reached up and pushed the call button for the flight attendant. He looked up and down the aisle and didn’t see any of them in the passenger cabin. Tom searched his memory for anything that could have happened that made any sense. He thought, I never fully believed in all that apocalypse stuff Grandpa spouted. What if he was right after all? What would Grampa tell me? He knew all about nuclear bombs, EMPs, and bio-weapons and would know what to do. There wasn’t the classic mushroom cloud of an A-bomb or the look of a non-atomic explosion.
Then he remembered they had to be almost five to six hundred miles from Hawaii and thought, Maybe a ship did explode. That would explain the flash.
Jackie leaned over Tom, chatting away with Granny B about what could’ve happened. Jackie pushed the bomb theory. “It had to be a bomb because a volcano would have sent fire and smoke a mile high.”
Granny
