Glint

Twinkle, twinkle little... He awoke. He was lying on a bed of pine needles and broken branches, the fallen victims of some concussive force. A giant hand that had swept through forest and swatted the life out of all of them. The pine needles. The branches. Him. The girls.

The girls! His pulse quickened. Move! His brain screamed. But when he tried, there was nothing. No motion, no movement, no pain.

No pain? There should be pain. Everywhere.

They had no notice. Well, okay, twenty-two minutes. It might as well have been zero. Target? Sacramento, California. The message was chilling. The echoes of emergency sirens already trumpeting doom. Ninety minutes away from them and still too close.

Fires were so prevalent in the area these days that he kept a week's supply of everything in the truck just in case they had to get out fast, just in case they had to survive for a week. Always there was the thought they could come back, safely, even if only to sift through the ashes to recover what few treasures that remained. But there was no coming back from this.

A fire had happened before. They were lucky. The flames consumed a neighbor's house and then politely jumped over theirs to devastate the neighbor on the other side. They should have moved then, but who wanted to buy the only piece of kindling left in the neighborhood?

Later, in winter, his oldest daughter brought home a trinket from one of the scorched piles of rubble that had been someone's home before Mother Nature had intervened. It was a heart-shaped locket, one designed to display a heart-shaped picture. Perhaps a mother had given it to her daughter, or maybe it was the other way around. He thought about trying to find the owner, but then what was the point? It had been too long, and he didn't even know their names.

After chastising his daughter for playing somewhere that wasn't safe, and that wasn't their property, he had relented to her pleas to keep the locket. There was no picture inside, so she found a picture of her and her sister, heads touching, giggling smiles. She cut a heart-shaped form to stuff in the little gold shell. She was wearing it proudly when the time came.

He was home with the girls when there was a sudden interruption to the kids program they were watching on television. He heard a man's voice, trembling, almost pleading. He heard the word "launched" and then a broken, "get out... if you can" and then, with finality and resignation, "God speed." His blood ran cold. He looked at set. The captions, the images, the chaos. He grabbed his truck keys, clamped a daughter in each arm and ran.

Death was riding a pale warhead from the west. They drove east. If they could get to the mountains, it might buy them time, shield them from the destruction... and radiation. Fast and furious, he tried to avoid the larger traffic arteries, but it didn't matter. In less than ten minutes they were ensnarled in a carbon monoxide maze as every citizen north and south of the capital tried to flee Northern California.

Adrenaline surged, a tsunami attack on his system. "What can I do?" he thought. Then it came to him. He turned right onto a private gravel driveway. No one home. He steered through a pasture that bordered the woods. He looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes. How far could he get over unpaved and uneven terrain? A mile? Two? He floored the accelerator.

The truck bounced over rocks, ground squirrel mounds and pasture debris. All at once they were airborne, clearing a small gully. The rear tires landed first, collapsing the springs to straight bands of steel and jolting the occupants in a spine-tingling collision of tissue and vertebra. One the girls screamed. Both girls began to cry. His oldest blurted out, "Daddy! Where are we going?" She was scared. He backed off the gas.

"I'm sorry, honey. I don't want us to be late," he said. The words were bitter on his tongue as he tried to keep his composure.

"I heard there was a tea party at the fairy garden. We need to get there before it's over if we want to see real fairies."

"Really!?" she exclaimed, excitement supplanting her tears.

"Really," he said, smiling. He was sure that he had just bought an E-ticket to hell. He kept driving, increasing the pace.

Ahead and up a steep embankment he saw what he had hoped, a fire road through BLM land. He shifted the four-wheel drive into low and pushed the truck up the thirty degree slope. The back tires began to spin just as the front wheels reached the lip of the road creating a momentary, heart stopping pause before the wheels caught and heaved the truck onto the mostly even dirt and gravel surface.

Ten minutes.

The road was relatively flat, but meandering. He had no idea if he was making progress away or towards the impending maelstrom. No choice now. Action was the only recourse, for good or ill. He soldiered on.

The path ended abruptly, a cloud of dust billowing behind the truck as the brakes were applied with authority. A massive pine tree lay across the rutted road. The slope on either side too steep and too unstable to drive around.

Five minutes.

Trying to keep panic out of his voice. He turned to the girls and said, "looks like we are on foot from here."

He grabbed two backpacks from the rear of the truck and quickly clipped them to either side of his torso. One bag food and water. One bag camping supplies, including a .45 caliber Colt Commander.

Gingerly he lifted each girl over the offending tree and followed them with a quick two-handed vault.

Three minutes.

He looked at his watched, took each girl by the hand and said, "It's almost time! Let's run so we don't miss the party! They ran. Tears of frustration, of worry, and regret began welling in his eyes.

They were nearly out of breath. He paused and looked at his watch. "Okay, girls," he said. "It's a super secret path from here. I'll carry you the rest of the way, but you have to close your eyes tightly."

"Okay? Here we go."

The flash was brilliant. Even filtered by trees and rocks and hills, he was utterly blinded. The heat that followed was as surprising as the assault on his eyes was painful. His grip on the girls tightened. The simultaneous arrival of sound and fury overloaded all senses as the three of them were thrown into the air by unimaginable force. Forty feet up. Two hundred yards forward. Their collective breaths blown from their lungs by the sledgehammer of God. Or Devil. Their un-winged flight would have been remarkable and terrifying had they been conscience for any of it. Fortunately for them, they were not.

How long had he been there? An hour? A day? He remembered thinking of the girls, thinking that he had to find them. He had to help them. He tried to move. Then he remembered that, too. He was paralyzed. He couldn't move. He couldn't help. He couldn't...

His pain was unbearable. Not his bones or flesh. He couldn't feel those. It was the pain in his heart. A pain so intense that for the first time in his life he actually wanted to die. He wanted to end it. Now. But he couldn't even do that. Oh, death would come, but on Death's own terms and in Death's own time. Not even his overwhelming loss or love could stop that.

As it happened, he would meet Death half-way. Two days later, a brief glint of sunlight seared it's way through smoke and haze. His burned faced was caked with dirt and ash, but the kiss of sunlight caused him to force his eyelids into lizard-like slits. A kaleidoscope of light specs danced in his view, white polka dots on a gray canvas, little stars looking for a night sky. Despite everything, he was determined to find the source.

It was twenty feet above him. A denuded branch dangling one lonely twig, that twirled in the soft breeze and reflected the meager glint of sunlight all around it's purview. A heart-shaped locket.

His eyes grew round. His breath ceased. And at that final moment of excruciating realization, his own heart took it's last beat as he joined his daughters in the fairy garden.

The End.