Picture this. The place is Arizona.
This time is Christmas Eve. In the small town of Hampton, you can hear children going from door to door singing carols. Lights are everywhere. The atmosphere is happy. Pretty soon these children will be sleeping, anticipating the morning after. Many families are sat around the fireplace or TV set, but now everyone is off to bed. The time is 10:43. Parents are still downstairs, playing Santa, watching the news, shaking their heads at reported terrorist attacks. A seven year old girl, Maria, sits on her bed, gazing out the window. She is not tired. She will not rest. This year is the year, the year she will see Santa. She swears. If only her eyes weren't so droopy...
What was that? She heard a scuffle on the gravel outside. Santa is here! But wait...doesn't Santa come on the roof? Shaking her head, she sits up, peering out the window onto the streets below. What's this? There are people in all black clothing littering the road, creeping to each door and entering. There is a man on the driveway outside, picking the lock and then entering. This is not Santa. She hears the man enter the house, the another one. Terrified, she creeps along the landing and stands at the foot of the stairs. Her parents bedroom is downstairs! There is nothing she can do. The men had guns! Looking over the banister, she sees them enter her parents room. A scream, but not from her parents. By now, all the men have entered the houses. There is no point keeping quiet anymore, all over the town, screams echo as parents are pulled from their rooms, children grabbed from theirs, and all are pushed, tied up, into the street. Maria reaches for her mothers hand, but it is slapped away by a man with a thick beard and empty eyes. The adults heads are held, then the people in black raise their guns, and shoot. Children and teenagers scream, sorrow, anger, fear. Parents and adults fall, closely followed by people in their late teens. The only ones to remain are 14 and under. Everyone left is packed into huge prison-type vans, wailing and sobbing, unsure of what is going to happen to them. The open topped vans let in the crisp night air, and Panama's don't do much against the cold. Maria stands, afraid, cold, sorrowful, letting her hair blow in the wind, as she sees her town get smaller in the distance. She has a strange feeling she will see that town again, but doesn't know where it's coming from. As children cry around her, she is hit with a strange sense of foreboding. She doesn't know what is coming up, but she knows it will not be good. She will hold on. She will survive.
(Year 2003)
YOU ARE READING
The fallout
ActionShe clenched the gun in her hand, finger resting on the trigger, seething with hatred for the man in front of her. Because of him, Europe was no more, the whole of America was a desolate land, and half the people she cared for were dead. This is it...
