The place we inhabited was officially called “Forward Observation Station Delta”. Someone, many rotations ago, had tried to make light of the situation by calling it “the Igloo”. Neither Barnes nor I had much of a sense of humour, so we just referred to it as “this F’N Place”.
Despite what some might think, This F’N Place wasn’t in the middle of nowhere. The most northerly edge of Nowhere was about 50 miles south of here. If we ever got a furlough, a two-day pass, we might just have time to get back to Nowhere for a couple of hours getting drunk or plowed before we had to head back.
On a clear night, though, we could see the lights of Nowhere, out there, tempting us, mocking us for being stuck out here. We’d get transmissions from Nowhere, wanting a status report. We’d watch their news reports on the black and white TV, envious of their crime reports and civic battles over taxation.
Barnes and I had been posted to Delta because of past transgressions, our punishment being to sit in front of a computer screen and watch for green blips that might come our way. Barnes never told me what he did, and I never told him I had slept with my former commanding officer, who just happened to be married to HIS commanding officer’s daughter. He lost out on a promotion; I was sent here. I’m sure somewhere someone thought that was a fair trade.
Barnes and I always kept our distance from each other. He didn’t like me. I didn’t like him. Well…that wasn’t true. I didn’t care for him one way or the other. He didn’t like me after I returned his amorous advances with a kick that raised his voice several octaves.
And so, we passed our time in relative silence, staring at the screen, watching for blips that were never likely to appear. About once a season (or what would have passed as a season back in the world) something “exciting” might happen. Of course, something exciting was usually a lost airliner flying over our airspace, or some officer deciding he should stop in for an inspection.
But Barnes and I would sit staring at the computer screen, trying to figure out how we could stay awake until it was our turn to sleep. Days and weeks and months would pass, each one indistinguishable from the last.
Until one day, everything changed.
The blips appeared. First one, a loner we were set to write-off as another strayed airliner, or a glitch in the system. It wasn’t fear we felt, but frustration, aggravation. Relief that re-routing the airliner or fixing the glitch gave us something to do. We knew we’d fight over who got to do what. The winner got to fill out the report. The loser got to sit and stare at the once-again blank screen.
But then another appeared.
And another. And another.
By the time the third one appeared, Barnes was on the phone, sending the message up the chain of command. I kept expecting him to hang up in disgust, to turn to me and tell me it was a drill, just something to keep us on our toes.
We were the joke of the entire Early Warning System, so neither of us would have been surprised to learn it was just some prank designed to humiliate us.
But when Barnes hung up the phone, the look on his face told me this was no joke, no prank.
A voice that was neither Barnes’ nor mine broke the silence. I had forgotten I had left the TV on. A shaken newswoman, her voice breaking, was telling the world what we knew.
By then, the long empty screen was filled with angry green dots. My eyes must have been wide, but I could still focus enough to notice some of those green dots, and the deliverers of horror they represented were passing over This FN Place.
Barnes and I looked at each other, both of us having the same idea at that terrible moment of realization. We both rushed outside, forgetting the cold, forgetting it had been months since either of us had left.
We saw for ourselves what those green dots had meant. We saw the streaks of fire as they passed over our heads. Barnes looked to the horizon, watching each of the oncoming missiles. I knew what he was doing; he was studying their trajectories, trying to figure out which one was meant for us.
He pointed to one. My stomach dropped as I searched for the one he meant. I saw it, bright as the hell it would cause, coming straight towards me like a freight train.
“It’ll be close,” Barnes said.
I hadn’t prayed since my father’s funeral, but at that moment I prayed. Not for salvation, at first, I deserved to die, I supposed. Instead, I prayed for forgiveness, for whatever I had done wrong.
But then, as the moments passed, and death creeped closer, I decided the high road wasn’t the one I had ever travelled on anyways, and so I began to pray, beg even to be spared. Not for some better purpose in life…but just because I didn’t want to die.
The prayer worked, for as the missile kept coming, it began to veer away from the spot I stood, ever so slightly, a few inches every second. Barnes and I watched as it flew passed us, so close I could read the markings on the side, so close I could feel the heat from the rocket engines that propelled it.
That rocket was not the one that would kill me, but it would claim the lives of so many more. I watched, my relief turning to horror as it continued a journey that ended in Nowhere. That distant city, the one we had loved and loathed for all it represented, would die in the fiery carnage of nuclear destruction.
I watched as the mushroom cloud rose above Nowhere, and I realized thousands of people, men, women, and children had died as well. And I realized that thousands of cities, and millions of people were all dying that night.
I felt Barnes beside me, felt his arms around me. This time, his desire to hold me didn’t come from lust, but rather to provide comfort. And I realized he needed it as much as I did. I turned to him and held him as he held me. We were all the other had in this world, and suddenly This FN Place was the only home we would ever know again.
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