The End Will Be Televised
by Tatum Schad
The news anchor follows missile trajectories with a shaky finger. Confirming the targets with someone off-screen, the color drains from his face.
I can’t look away.
I rarely watch the news, most of it coming through phone alerts. But I watch now, the familiarity of hearing it from a real person less discomforting.
Cars honk outside my apartment, gridlock blocking any escape from the anticipated blast radius, and I think of all the times I stood in the same spot back home, glued to the television while mom hustled out the screen door with the cats in a laundry basket.
“Turn that off and help me, Andrew!” she’d yell, heading to the storm shelter.
But I stayed put, jaw slack, hair standing on end as the tornado sirens whirred. I would’ve stayed there until the twister whisked me away if she had let me.
We manned those stations hundreds of times, the western sky deep purple over the alfalfa fields. We’d freak out, the weather man from the city telling us to take cover, only to stick our heads out of the shelter and wait while stubborn family members stood in the street and stared down the wall cloud, as if daring God to drop the funnel right down on top of them.
When the storm front crossed overhead, it brought a torrent of rain, then hail, and then quiet.
The worst of it always followed the quiet.
But our twister never came.
We’d come back up, tails between our legs, clearing off the fallen tree limbs and counting the hood dents, feeling like the good Lord has thrown us a bone yet again. And weren’t we so silly to think he might really do it this time.
I guess he’s making up for all those ‘almosts’ now.
Missile flight path lines arc across a world map on screen, becoming firecracker-red icons when they land.
Coastal cities first. Then further inland.
Las Vegas.
Salt Lake City.
Chicago.
Mom texts. Did you make it out?
She knows I’ve never been able to look away.
I text her back, I love you, as one of those lines inches toward Denver. I look out the window, the purple wall cloud of summers long past now traded for the purple silhouette of the Rockies. A trade I thought would mean a fresh start.
The television blinks out behind me, and I realize the cars have stopped honking. The city has gone quiet.
Nowhere to go, I climb to the roof and gaze into the twilit east toward Nebraska, home only four hours across the state line, wondering if Mom is in the cellar or if she’s still waiting, never able to go down without me.
Other tenants join me, some with pets in laundry baskets. The ground erupts and we ride the downtown skyline into oblivion, forlorn transplants with our eyes on the expanding blast, longing for the days when it seemed you could scare away a disaster just by watching for it.
Bonus audio of Tatum reading his story…
About the author:
Tatum Schad is a short fiction writer and supposed dentist living in Seattle with his wife and daughters. Originally from the plains of western Nebraska, he’s been a published finalist in numerous global flash fiction contests, including Twisted Tournament, NYC Midnight, and Furious Fiction. His work can be found in FlashFlood Journal, The Dribble Drabble Review, and other corners of the internet. Find them and more at tatumschad.com.