Black Rain

by William R Hunt

  Copyright © 2018 William R. Hunt

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental,

  and the views expressed are those of the characters, not necessarily the author’s.

  Cover art by Olivia at www.fiverr.com/oliviaprodesign

  1

  Kay

  Kay was writing a rejection email to a promising writer when her coworkers began drifting into the break room. She caught the movement through the blinds above her desk, wondered briefly what would distract them from work at ten in the morning, and then returned her attention to the email on her screen.

  Dear Susan, thank you for taking the time to submit your collection of poetry to us. Unfortunately, Pronghorn Publishing does not accept poetry at this time.

  Unfortunately, Kay thought grimly, recalling her own attempts a few years ago at publishing half a dozen short stories she had tinkered with in college. Most of the editors and agents she had targeted had not returned so much as an automated rejection, and the few who had responded had inevitably included that turning-point word feared by all praise-seekers: but.

  Was unfortunately any better?

  This was the worst part of her job—finding talented voices and turning them away because they did not meet the company guidelines, or because Pronghorn had already filled their quota of a particular genre for the rest of the year. It sapped Kay of her enthusiasm, and today she had precious little to start with.

  She pressed SEND on a long sigh, checked her thermos for coffee (empty), and let her eyes drift across the small desk that was her home away from home. Broken fragments of last night’s argument jostled one another in her head. They were like driftwood, always floating back no matter how far she threw them: the half-eaten plates of baked ziti and asparagus, the slam of the front door as her husband went out to his truck, the moving shadow under her six-year-old’s bedroom door that suggested it would not be so easy to contain the damage this time.

  You’re a good mother, she told herself. You’re doing what you have to do. It’s for the good of the family.

  That was her mantra: the good of the family. Whatever sacrifices had to be made, whatever privations endured, she would do so for the good of the family. Unfortunately, it was difficult to remain focused on the objective when her husband - the person who was supposed to be her teammate in raising a family - took the opposite view on the subject of Luna’s schooling. He had never held organized education in high regard, and so when Luna had made it clear she was terrified of leaving both her parents for almost an entire day, Kay’s husband had advocated sympathy, patience. They could wait. There was always next year, wasn’t there? Kay had tried to explain that their daughter was only six years old once, and making friends would only get more difficult as she grew older (especially since Kay had agreed not to send Luna to preschool), but somehow the words had not come out as she had intended them.

  Kay’s own upbringing had been unstable, to say the least. Home-schooled along with two of her brothers in a rural Pennsylvania town, she had been a happy child until the day a man with a black tie and a suitcase came to the house to tell her mother there had been a gas explosion at the mine and her husband would not be returning, and would she like to go over the insurance policy? Kay’s mother tried to raise the children on her own, but she simply did not have the fortitude for the job. After her third mental breakdown, there was a meeting of extended family behind closed doors. Sometime afterward, Kay and her brother Raylan moved in with Aunt Elise in New York, where things settled down for a while.

  Still, the damage had been done. Kay grew up a shy, reclusive child with a below-average education and a lack of structure that left her feeling directionless and alone—which was exactly the reason she was so insistent on Luna starting school right away. She wanted Luna to have all the advantages she’d done without.

  More people passed her window on their way into the break room. Now she could hear the drone of a robotic voice, probably coming from the TV. A weather alert, maybe, or a live event. Not a school shooting, she hoped: Her husband didn’t need any excuses to keep Luna at home. As soon as the thought had entered her mind, however, she realized how selfish she was being and regretted thinking it.

  She glanced at her inbox and saw she had eighty-seven unread messages. They weren’t going anywhere in a hurry. Rising, she straightened her skirt and stepped out into the main office room.

  Nigel was just passing by. He was a first-generation African emigrant in his thirties, and quite possibly the only black man in all of Sage Springs. They had met during one of Kay’s failed attempts to get her daughter to play a sport (soccer, in this case), and though Luna had shown little interest in paying any attention to the ball, she had managed to make a friend: Ada, Nigel’s daughter. It was Nigel who had convinced Campbell to give Kay a chance with the company, even though she’d had zero experience in the publishing industry at the time.

  Nigel looked at Kay with his dark eyes, not even a hint of his customary smile present.

  “What’s going on?” Kay asked.

  “They have it in the break room. Come on.”

  Kay’s heart quickened as she followed Nigel into the break room. Almost the entire staff of Pronghorn Publishing stood in a semi-circle in front of the TV, some with hands dangling helplessly at their sides, others covering their mouths in shock or anticipation. For a moment Kay could not see the TV, could only read the expressions of the staff, and her mind worked feverishly to guess the tragedy. Had the president been assassinated? Had there been a terrorist attack? Was the country suddenly at war?

  “—HAVE BEEN LAUNCHED,” an inhuman voice was saying, “AND ARE EXPECTED TO STRIKE THE UNITED STATES WITHIN THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES. ALL RESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES ARE ADVISED TO FIND SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.”

  “Just a drill,” Eddie Campbell, boss and co-founder of Pronghorn Publishing, muttered. He was in his power stance: feet spread, arms folded across his chest, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Eddie was the diplomatic type, a real go-getter, and he rarely allowed anything to break through his optimistic demeanor. Kay had never seen him this amped up before.

  Kay stopped beside Nigel and stared at the flatscreen TV hung on the wall, where four lines of stark white text stood on a black background:

  Emergency Alert System

  EAN Network

  Issued an

  Emergency Action Notification

  Eddie cleared his throat, preparing himself to take control of the situation. “Alright, people,” he said. “This is just an accident, like that thing in Hawaii. As long as we all stay calm—”

  “THIS IS NOT A DRILL,” the voice continued. “STANDBY FOR A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”

  Kay’s hand flew instinctively to her mouth. She shared a glance with Nigel, whose eyes were wide, almost childlike. If not for the message on the screen and the tone of that alien voice, it might have seemed like a prank, a terrible joke that had gone much too far. For a moment she could do nothing but stare at the screen, reading the text over and over as she tried to understand what was happening. Not even Eddie seemed to know what to say.

  The silence was broken by a loud, synchronized beeping coming from every cell phone in the room. Kay started as if she had been struck by a cattle prod. Her own phone was still in her purse, which was on her desk, so she unabashedly leaned over Nigel’s arm and read the text on the screen:

  EMERGENCY ALERT

  BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO COLORADO. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

  The air went out of the room, leaving no sound except the distant wail of a siren and the soft flutter of nervous breathing. Kay felt as if she were back in one of those
nightmares she’d had as a kid, stuck in the middle of the road as a pair of headlights bore down on her. Only this time it was not a truck coming at her. It was a ballistic missile.

  She scanned the faces in the room, searching for someone who still had the ability to think rationally. Her eyes met Eddie’s. He was pale, with a glimmer of sweat on his upper lip.

  “Is it nuclear?” she whispered.

  “You missed the beginning of the message,” he answered. “My God, Kay, it could be coming right here!”

  “Is it nuclear?” she repeated, more firmly this time. She knew little about missiles except that nuclear weapons were known to cause damage far beyond their blast radiuses. Sage Springs was a small target, and she did not for a second entertain the idea that a foreign power - she was assuming this was not an act of domestic terrorism - would waste its time on them. But if a missile were to strike a nearby target, the effects might very well endanger the lives of everyone in Sage Springs.

  Eddie nodded and calmed himself with a deep breath. “Nuclear, yeah. Several of them, sounded like. We all need to get below—” He stopped abruptly and stared into the main office room. Dale Howard, an eccentric copywriter who tended to keep to himself, was pressing himself against the window as he tried to get a clearer look at the sky.

  “Get away from that damn window!” Eddie shouted. “You got a death wish?”

  The TV came to life again as the president’s voice filled the room. “My fellow Americans, it is with a heavy—”

  The president’s voice was drowned out by a loud rumble coming from above the office building.

  “Oh my God, a missile!” someone shouted.

  “It’s the cavalry!” Dale shouted back, almost gleeful as he pointed at the two fighter jets now screeching to the south-east. “We’re safe, everyone! They’ll shoot down anything that—”

  Dale never finished. A bright light flooded in through the windows, as intense as white embers in the center of a raging furnace, and Kay felt herself stagger back, her arms waving blindly through the air for something to hold onto. She found a hand, clasped it, held on against the light, her eyes now pinched shut.

  Dale was screaming in the next room: “I’m blind! My eyes, I can’t—”

  And then came a sound Kay would remember for the rest of her life. The windows on the southern and eastern sides of the building exploded inward at once in a screech of shattered glass. Kay was pulled to the ground, and she thought she heard a whistling sound above her, followed by a soft thump. A savage wind rushed through the building, tearing the papers off the bulletin board like dead leaves from a tree, scattering binders across the floor. For a moment, Kay could do nothing except hold on and wait for it to pass. She remembered sitting in the dentist’s chair as a large black woman tapped at the side of Kay’s wisdom tooth and rocked it side to side, a sensation she had continued to feel even after several shots of anesthetic had been injected into her gums. She had told herself it would pass—she had only to bear it, to reach deep down inside herself for that stubborn resolve she knew so well, and eventually the crisis would end and she would find herself on the other side.

  It would pass.

  In the dentist’s chair, however, there was always the option to tap out and reschedule, or perhaps forgo the procedure entirely. Here there was no such option. She had no choice but to endure it.

  At last the air calmed. Nigel squeezed Kay’s fingers. “Are you alright?” he asked. “Kay, can you hear me?”

  In the absence of the wind, voices began to speak all around them, moaning and crying out, praying to God or asking for their mothers or gibbering incoherently. At first Kay tried to pick them out individually, tried to recognize who was speaking and whether they were injured, but it quickly faded to background noise as her vision returned. She was staring at the frizzed threads of the carpet next to a coffee stain someone had made when they tripped over a wastebasket during an office birthday party celebration. Beside her, Nigel was on his hands and knees, squinting at her with concern.

  She pushed herself to her feet and released Nigel’s hand. Behind her, she noticed several pieces of glass embedded in the wall’s plaster. If Nigel had not pulled her to the ground, the shards might have struck her instead.

  The room swirled for a moment, then settled. Mrs. Barnes, a gentle woman who always arrived early and made sure there was a pot of coffee for everyone else, was staring down in bewilderment at the reddish, bubbling skin on her arms. Others who had been standing in direct line of sight of the explosion had been burned as well, and some stumbled about in a daze, zombie-like, still in shock at what had happened.

  Kay felt the beginnings of a pounding headache. The significance of what was happening seemed to creep up on her rather than surprise her all at once. She was taking a tentative step toward Mrs. Barnes when Nigel grabbed her arm.

  “Come on, Kay,” he said. “We don’t have much time.” There was a grim certainty in his voice, an awful understanding of how perilous their situation really was, and Kay latched onto that certainty and let him lead her out of the break room. Glass crackled underfoot. Dale lay on the floor beside a cubicle with his back to Kay, his arms and legs splayed out as if he were diving into a pool. Nigel walked around and stared at him. For a moment Nigel only stood there, looking down, his hands limp at his sides. His wedding band glowed faintly in the haze of light washing in through the windows.

  “Is he alright?” Kay asked, thinking, Of course he’s alright, everyone’s alright, he was alright five minutes ago and he’s alright now, none of this can be happening.

  But Nigel only swung his gaze to her and shook his head slowly. “Don’t, Kay,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”

  Not worth Dale’s life? Kay thought as she brushed past Nigel. She had not thought Nigel capable of such an insensitive remark. As she circled around Dale and saw him from the front, however, she realized what Nigel had actually meant. Dale’s face and arms were lobster-red and blistered, his chest cut by shards of glass. He was unconscious, his breathing shallow.

  Kay looked at Nigel to see whether he could make sense of this situation any better than she could, but he was already moving away, toward the glassless windows. It was not difficult to learn what had stolen his attention. Over his shoulder, some miles to the south-east, Kay could see a column of fire retching into the sky, now flattening, now billowing outward in a tsunami of dark-gray cloud stealing toward the sun. The smoke rose higher and spread out at the same time, all of it happening in slow motion.

  “Is that Kittering City?” she whispered.

  Nigel’s voice was hollow, distant. “Not any more.”

  The smell of blood and singed hair lingered in the room like a foul perfume. A steady wind pushed through the building (the windows on the opposite side must also have broken), catching papers and cartwheeling them through the air. It was quiet except for the voices of the staff in the break room—moaning, calling each other’s names, trying to make sense of what had happened.

  Kay glanced out the window again, and the sight of the mushroom cloud jarred her into action. She rushed into her office, noting absently that the lights were off and the TV had gone silent.

  “Please, please,” she whispered. “Please work.”

  She fished her phone from her purse with trembling fingers, pressed the power button. The light came on, showing a picture of her with her husband and daughter as they picnicked on the edge of a pond. She remembered that day. Luna had continually chased the geese along the shore, despite her parents’ warnings of what would happen if she caught up with them. Luna didn’t seem to believe there was any such thing as a “healthy fear.”

  Kay dialed her husband’s number. “Please pick up,” she whispered, “please pick up.” After a few moments of waiting for the phone to ring, she looked at it again.

  No service.

  On the heels of this discovery came a revelation, as dark and menacing as the cloud blooming outward, pushing toward her on the br
isk wind: Her husband could not help her. He had gone to the mountains, as he usually did when they fought, and he was probably up there now. She could not count on him returning in time to save her or their daughter.

  She was on her own. And Luna was at school.

  She slung her purse over her shoulder and left the room. In the break room, the new intern - Tracy - was sitting up with his back against a desk, hyperventilating as a middle-aged woman held his hand and tried to soothe him. Eddie was cursing at a cell phone that would not turn on; after jabbing the buttons for a few moments, he hurled the phone across the room and out the open window.

  Kay stared at the people she thought of as her colleagues, instinctively wanting to gather everyone together and come up with a plan to get them a safe distance from the site of the blast. She did not know what to do, and so her impulse was to defer, just as she would have when faced with a project outside her area of expertise—find someone who had more experience and follow that person’s lead. But looking at the dazed group of people scattered around like debris in the wake of a tornado, she knew that enlisting their help would take too long.