From the Fire

FROM

THE

FIRE

AN EPISODIC NOVEL

OF THE NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST

EPISODE I:

END OF DAYS

BY

KENT DAVID KELLY

WONDERLAND IMPRINTS

2012

DESCRIPTION

On April 4
^th
, 2014, 6 billion and 783 million people died in the blinding white fireballs of the Pan-Global Nuclear Holocaust. Sophie Saint-Germain, wife and scientist and mother of one, was not among them.

She lived for a time, and so her words endure.

The reclamation of her terrifying story is a miracle in itself. Uncovered during the Shoshone Geyser Basin archaeological excavations of 2316, Sophie’s unearthed diary reveals the most secret confessions of the only known female survivor of the Holocaust in central Colorado. Her diary reveals the truths behind our legends of the High Shelter, the White Fire, the Great Dying, the Coming of the One, and the Gray Rain Exodus, her horrifying journey into the wasteland made with the sole conviction that her daughter, Lacie, was still alive.

For these are the first of words, chosen by the Woman of the Black Hawk:
FROM THE FIRE / GIVE ME SHELTER / THAT I MIGHT ENDURE THE STORM, / GIVE ME THE STRENGTH / TO PRAY MY DAUGHTER WILL PREVAIL.

From the Plague Land, from the Fire. This is the book of the woman who was, this is the codex of our ancestors’ revelation.

~

An episodic narrative, FROM THE FIRE, EPISODE I: END OF DAYS is the first installment of a serialized novel by Kent David Kelly. This unforgettable novella comprises 15,000 words, 50 printed pages, and precedes EPISODE II: THE CAGE, also available from Wonderland Imprints.

INTROITUS

“Oft expectation fails, and most oft there

Where most it promises; and oft it hits

Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.”

~

—Helena in
All's Well That Ends Well

(II, i, 145-147), by William Shakespeare

EPISODE I:

END OF DAYS

I-1

TESTAMENT

(As originally published and serialized in the University of Tasmania, Australia [UTAS]
Holocaust Studies Newsletter
for Q2, 3 and 4, 2317.)

~

The following is the first section of a factual yet restructured narrative derived from the 21
^st
-century confessional written by one Sophia St.-Germain, a female adult survivor of the 2014-15 Pan-Global Nuclear Holocaust. Saint-Germain lived near to the town of
Black Hawk
, an unrecoverable site believed to have been located some 60 kilometers west of Denver, somewhere along the eastward-facing “Rocky Mountain” spine of U.S. Province 38 (then known as “Colorado”).

The narrative — in the form of a single spiral-bound cellulose notebook, reinforced and preserved between two square-shorn and modified automobile door plates — had been re-titled by later generations as a holy book, specifically as “THE BOOK OF WOMAN.” The
original
title, derived from the first nineteen words inscribed upon the title page in St.-Germain’s own hand, is:

“FROM THE FIRE /

GIVE ME SHELTER /

THAT I MIGHT ENDURE THE STORM, /

GIVE ME THE STRENGTH /

TO PRAY MY DAUGHTER WILL PREVAIL.”

This miraculously intact work was recovered from the fourth excavation of the Shoshone Geyser Basin hunter-shelter conclave, a site discovered in Yellowstone, U.S. Province 44 (“Wyoming”) by UTAS Team CCCXIII/2316. This artifact was originally discovered at dig site 84, 3
^rd
striation, depth 3.2 meters and had been ceremonially buried with seven female human skeletons and one feline skeleton of indeterminate subtype.

The preservation and recreation of St.-Germain’s tale represents a very exciting milestone in the field of Holocaust Studies, being only the forty-fifth survivor diary ever found intact, and to date the only one solely written by a woman. The document was written in both English and an obscure 21
^st
-century language classified as “Teeline Shorthand,” likely to maximize the limited amount of paper available. The current narrative has been slightly extended by this researcher to provide explanatory bridges between the partial entries made during Sophie’s ordeal throughout April and May of 2014, chronicling her experiences on Zero Day and the twenty-six post-impact Cycles (“days”) immediately thereafter.

This researcher is indebted to both Joseph Peter Carrington and Tatkret Begay of the Kodiak Trial Court Clan on Kodiak Island, Alaska, for their ceaseless efforts in translation, historical reconstruction and artifact preservation. I have written this narrative from Sophie’s diary in an attempt to realistically portray her hopes, her fears, her love and — dare I say — her spirit. Despite a certain artificiality of voice, I have made every endeavor to simulate “suburban” and “upper class” life as it persisted in the 201X post-industrial era, but any errors pertaining to vehicles, products, branding, electronics or other cultural minutiae are certainly my own. Fellow researchers in possession of
any
conflicting first-source information are respectfully encouraged to correct me with the appropriate artifacts and/or period citations.

This is the book of a challenging woman, one who may well prove to be unlikeable at times. But she — among the millions — emerged from the Nuclear Holocaust; she became strong and selfless, and she certainly grew to become one of the eminent matriarchs of the Lost Age which emerged from the White Fire. The trauma-induced personality shift of St.-Germain herself, from cold and selfish daughter of wealth to noble-hearted Samaritan, has been portrayed herein as it is directly reflected in her diary’s change of tone, from entry to entry over time.

This recreated tale of terror, hope and ultimate survival is intended for all, without restriction. May your Lore-Masters and -Mistresses find it pure. Please disseminate, share and retell this tale as one of the Reborn Truths as best you can, wherever your Clan may find you. And for my part, be it known that this work is dedicated with all my heart to Paul and our one surviving son, Gabriel. I love you both more than life. May you find these words of the Illumined Ones comforting as we approach our own darkest hour.

~

In Humility,

—Alexandria S.-G.C.,

Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies,

Tasmania, UTAS

iii.17-2319

I-2

ZERO DAY

(Four-Four-Fourteen)

Sophie gritted her teeth as the NPR daily Shelter Event Report segued into a BBC World Service recording. “Christine Collins re-
por
-ting,” began the reel.
Very
British. Static hissed as the satellite signal bounced along the Rocky Mountains. Sophie clutched the Hummer’s steering wheel a little tighter.

“… for BBC World
Ser
-vice. As tensions escalate all a-
long
the Persian Gulf following the sinking of tanker
Burmah Endeavour
by discredited Iranian
splint
-er forces, the
Shelter Panic
continues.
More
conflicting reports are coming in to us from
Russia
, and from sources quite
beyond
the Steel Line of the
Vol
-ga. Entire cities,
certainly
including Volgograd and Orenburg,
and
— depending upon con-
flict
-ing satellite imagery declassifications — perhaps
even
as far east as Tomsk and Novosibirsk, are being
to
-tally evacuated. We know that the Shelter Panic is becoming
contagious
, something of a social and
Internet
-contracted hysteria, as Russian citizens con-
tin
-ue to secretly report via uploads to
Youtube
and social media from behind the Line.”

“Elsewhere in Europe,
Vienna
has been partially evacuated,
Monaco
is in chaos, and riots in
Zurich
continue for a third night tonight. Meanwhile, tragedy in Versailles as
French
police come to blows and then trade
gunfire
with self-termed
survivalists
digging alleged
shel
-ters for their families in the forest behind the
Palace
of Versailles, an event which has led Président de la République Giraud …”

Keep it out
, thought Sophie. She massaged her forehead.
Keep it all out. I can’t take it anymore.

She lifted a recycled-paper coffee cup out of the center console, took a sip of her cooling latte. The wipers of the Hummer H4 pulsed back and forth, purring and glimmering with sunset and the fitful springtime rain. Humming an off-key tune to herself to cloud away the BBC report, she slid her latte cup back into place, then pulled her iPhone 6GS out of its door-handle socket. The world news report droned on.

Can’t take it anymore. Don’t let me
think
, don’t
feel
, don’t—

Sighing, she texted to Jolynn up in Centennial, something trivial about the sheet sale at Park Meadows Mall.
The more vapid the better. Be a bitch if it clouds it out, pretend you’re
not
a social scientist.
Not
a mother.
Not
an NSA widow. Lacie is fine. Tom is fine. Don’t
think
, don’t
feel
, don’t
…

She frowned as her cell phone auto-corrected ‘Frette’ linens to ‘Friday.’ It was only her glance up at the corrector bubble on the iPhone’s crystal face that caused her to see that she was drifting her Hummer straight into the Escalade in front of her. In two seconds or less, she would cause a low-speed collision.

She slammed on the brakes. The H4 screeched to a halt once more. The pickup driver behind her shouted a singled redneck-inflected word —
“Lady!”
and she started to giggle before she could stop herself. The balding man behind her was furious. He chewed on a cigar, patted the outside of his door with a rain-slicked hand. What kind of a fool would keep his windows down during an April rainstorm?

Sorry, tough guy. What can I say?

Blushing at her own careless behavior, Sophie gave a little wave to her rearview mirror. Behind her, the pickup driver straightened his cap, flicked his cigar butt against the US Highway 119 sign, and gave her a little wave of his own. More of a fist pump, actually. She laughed again and the man behind her smiled despite himself.

Looking forward, she could see that a traffic jam had jumbled itself where Richman Street turned into the Ameristar casino. Nothing unusual, but she could hear people shouting. And someone
crying
. And hundreds more were — what? Was that
chanting
? She turned the radio down. The clamor of outraged protesters came to her through the window-glass.

~

“No more lies!

No more nukes!

Free Farhadi!

Tell us the truth!”

~

What in the Hell was going on?

Can’t
take
this anymore. Lacie is fine. She’s with grandma. You just need to get this under control and she can come home.
Sophie turned her wedding ring with her thumb, tried to stop her hands from shaking.
She’s fine.

Looking back past the pickup and at the line of gamblers’ cars slowing down behind her, Sophie clicked her turn signal on. But the cars in the lane to the left of her were already too close together to let her in. The driver alongside, Mrs. Claverdale no less, waved her an apology. Sophie mouthed, “No problem” and gave a shrug. The silvery-haired old woman snarled dramatically at the unseen protesters blocking the intersection up ahead, and Sophie laughed once more. Her voice had a nervous edge to it, an
hysterical
edge, like crystal. She didn’t like it.

Taking a last long drink of her sugary coffee, she resigned herself to a tedious wait in the right-hand lane.
Always. Always, I’m too far from home,
she thought.
Too selfish. Too alone.

The voice on the radio changed. She had successfully tuned out
Chris
-tine
Col
-lins and the BBC, but now it was Jake Handler again on the microphone, a man she respected and knew personally. A good friend of Tom’s. She turned the volume back up and was comforted by Jake’s trademark polite annoyance at giving his air time to someone else. But he also sounded — what? Sophie’s mouth tensed into a straight line of enforced calm. Jake Handler, a man who hunted wolves in his spare time with a bow and arrow and stayed out in the wilderness alone for weeks at a time, making sure he only killed starving animals who had no pups, was afraid. No, he was controlling it, but he was
terrified
.

His voice echoed in little spirals around the Hummer’s interior as Sophie’s right hand shook a little harder, turning the radio up too high. “Once again,
thank
you Christine,” Jake was saying sarcastically back at the BBC tape, “but meanwhile here in the States, we have
actual
and
new
news about the
real
emergency developing since this afternoon in downtown NYC. Tensions in Manhattan and Jersey and far beyond today are
continuing
to soar out of control. At the, ah, in the intersection of Tudor City Place and, ah … East Forty-First, now this I repeat is in
New York City
right by the United Nations Headquarters … protesters broke down police barricades and, and they attempted to block Russian and Chinese delegates from entering the United Nations. A fistfight broke out, and someone fired shots. A staffer to Ambassador Dmitri Altukhov, let’s see, her name is — was — Vasilisa Mirskii. He’s elderly, she was shielding him. She was, she was killed, okay? By the protesters, by the police? No one seems to know.”

“So far in the police and Federal crackdown, continuing into this evening, we have reports of … what is this,
nine
American citizens confirmed dead, including two innocent bystanders and one policeman, names being withheld. What? Okay, okay. And we have,
what?
Christ. Ah, forgive. Forgive me, everyone. Please. We have reports of one hundred and eighty-seven injured. Solidarity protests are springing up in cities and towns across the nation at this hour, including in our very own beloved Black Hawk and Central City, they’re calling it
Occupy Intersections
. Can you believe that?”

“So. So, okay. I don’t know. I don’t know.
Please
, please keep the lines open because we’re just three of us here and we’re waiting for more. What? No. I’m not saying that. Look, I’m on, okay? People, please wait for this to pan out with Associated. Don’t listen to the Internet. Stay in your homes. That’s all I can, folks, this, I can’t —”

Sophie killed the radio. A blinding light flashed across the sky.

She jumped up in her seat, almost cutting her shoulder where the seatbelt had twisted against her silk blouse’s neckline, as lightning flashed and the rain began to worsen. The chants were getting louder. A strange sound clattered up and faded away inside the Hummer’s interior, and she found herself looking over at the back seat and then down at the brake pedal, looking for the source of the curious sounds.

She swallowed, and the noises stopped. Her teeth had been chattering.

The Escalade pulled further up ahead, and Sophie could
see
.

Her mind struggled to process the revealed spectacle tangling itself along the street and sidewalks outside the Ameristar. Somehow a tanker and a delivery truck had gotten stuck in the intersection. There were at least five police cars all around them, lights flashing in wild reflecting arcs of red and blue. Officers shouted and waved, one policewoman pointed with her baton, a barely-restrained German Shepherd was barking at the crowd with foam pouring out of its jaws, and the two trucks which were stuck in the intersection slowly began to struggle their way through a mass of people, smoking their way up westbound 119. Thrown rocks and bricks bounced off the side of the tanker. A beer bottle shattered against the trailer’s flank. In the void left by the two trucks’ passing, Sophie could see just what was causing traffic to snag in every lane in all four directions.

There must have been at least four hundred people milling angrily in the street, shouting. Chanting. Whoever Sophie thought of as protesters — dirty granola college kids, perhaps? — these people were not them. Some were gamblers and tourists, others were friends who Sophie knew well from her favorite restaurants and shops. There were people in wheelchairs, others standing all around them, black people and white with their arms looped through one another in human chains. Human walls, parted temporarily into two waves by no more than a dozen police and two frenziedly barking dogs. There were grandmothers, waving papers over their heads and ignoring the pelting rain. All shouting, screaming. There were
children
out there, and some of them were shouting too, some were even smiling up at their parents with the infectious energy, the power of it all. Some of the mothers were holding babies.

More lightning flashed, the wind was curling all around the Hummer in a sudden fit and shaking it, whirling eastward. Thunder rumbled along the canyons far behind.

The most defiant of the policemen, a thin older gentleman in a bulletproof vest, stood in front of another burly man who looked like an Isle of Capri bouncer or a bartender. The huge man’s biceps rippled beneath a ridiculous Hawaiian work-shirt as he shook his gold-ringed fist in the officer’s face. The old officer grimaced beneath a handlebar mustache, rain trailing down off the sheriff’s cowboy hat that was tilted askew over his right eye.

Sophie gasped. It was old Pete Henniger, retired for years and with a bad back that would act up in a cold wind, let alone a driving April rain. What was he doing back in uniform?

Pete splayed his fingers out in front of the bartender’s face, actually tapped the palms of his hands down on the huge man’s arms and was saying his name over and over again like some dubious mantra of calm. Sophie could see Pete’s mouth working, although he was silenced by the H4’s closed windows and the screaming crowd:
“Henry. Now, Henry.”

Finally, the huge man backed down. He squinted and shielded his eyes, then turned to throw out an offhand curse at the delivery truck that was disappearing up the pass.

As Sophie watched, Pete turned to rejoin the beleaguered police line. He didn’t quite make it.

A preteen girl, shivering in a Che Guevara T-shirt that was turning see-through in the rain, came up and intercepted him. The girl was absurdly tall, impossibly thin. Her damp and stringy hair shook off ringlets of water as she put both of her skinny hands on Pete’s shoulder and spun him around. The pain on Pete’s lined face flashed into anger as his back was twisted by the girl’s unexpected grip.

Raindrops bounced off the girl’s eyeglasses. Her teeth were bared, her braces showing, and Pete looked for all the world like he was about to belt her one.

Sophie’s H4 began to drift forward again as her foot slipped off the brake. Her hands, as if moving of their own accord, slipped off the wheel and shook up into her hair.

Can’t
take
this. I can’t.

A strange feeling tingled beneath her scalp as her manicured fingernails dug into the skin.

“This isn’t happening,” she heard herself say to no one. “This isn’t —”

One of the German Shepherd’s barking turned into a frenzied barrage of yaps, then a yelp of pain. A gunshot rang out.

The crowd split away like a pool divided by a falling stone, ripples of screams and cries of disbelief churning their limbs into action. People were crawling over wet pavement, others scrambling past the gutters. A woman carrying a plastic shopping basket overfilled with oranges tripped, spun around and rebounded off the hood of a car.

The street cleared, the car the woman bounced off of sped through the intersection and away. Three other cars followed. The policemen and -woman, left in a cloud of exhaust, were forming a ring around Pete, their leather-coated silhouettes bristling with Smith & Wesson pistols and riot shields. One policeman still clutched a baton and pepper spray, but a young lady officer to Pete’s right was pumping a shotgun.