The End of the World

I'm mystified as to what this is all about, but then I look at Braylin. If he'd appeared guilty before, it was nothing compared to how he looks now. He obviously knows what Greg is talking about, even if I don't.

"Dude, I'm really--"

"Not to me, Braylin," Greg says. "Apologize to Lana."

"Um, Lana," he starts, "I'm really sorry for..." He comes to a stop, obviously not wanting to explain what this is about.

"Tell her why," Greg demands.

"Lana, I saw you from the barn window when you were, uh, taking your clothes down off the line. It was only for a second though, and then I turned--"

"The truth," Greg growls.

"Okay, I know I shouldn't have, but, well..." He looks quickly at Greg, then quickly redoubles his efforts. "Lana, I did you all kinds of wrong today. I'm real sorry, and it isn't gonna happen again."

Either he's really and truly sorry, or he's got quite the talent for acting. Knowing him like I do, I suspect it's the former. My skin is crawling a little from the idea that he'd been watching me when I'd thought I was the only person within miles. Sure, Greg did the same thing, but that was, well, different, because... Well, it just was.

"At least it all worked out in the end," I say. That's as close to forgiveness as I'm going to give him, especially since he still hasn't come clean about the video cameras.

We get back to work, but the mood is more subdued now.

With the four of us working on it, the whole panel installation job takes about twenty minutes, including plugging the panels into the circuits I finished soldering this morning.

"Guys," I say, "I think this project is done. All I'll need to do is throw a couple of breakers in the bunker, then I can tell the electric company to go play Hide Your Power Pole Where the Sun Don't Shine."

"Unfortunately," Greg says, looking down at his father's battered old watch, "I need to get rolling right now if I'm going to catch my flight."

"You have to leave so soon?" I'm nowhere near ready to have him go back to Chicago.

"Unfortunately, yes." But then he looks at me with a timid expression on his face. "So, Lana, I'm going to be back next weekend. Would you like to, uh, go out on Saturday?"

"Like, on a date?" I ask, as if the thought had never occurred to me.

"Yeah, a date," he says, managing to look endearingly self-conscious. "We could see a movie or do dinner or something." He gives me a private wink.

I can see what he's doing here. We haven't had a chance to discuss it, but we're already on the same page. If we're going to form a new and respectable ranching family in this neighborhood, we'll need to at least appear to do this whole dating/engagement/marriage thing by the book. I know that's the way that Walter and Cathy would like to see it, and since they're going to be my in-laws -- and because I respect and adore them -- I'm going to do my best to be a model daughter-in-law.

"You know," I say, as if the thought hadn't even occurred to me, "I think I'd like that."

"Awesome," he says, visibly relieved. "Walk with me to my car?"

"I'd be glad to," I say shyly, hoping we're not overdoing this.

He offers his hand and I bashfully take it. And to think, he'd been buried balls-deep inside me twice this afternoon -- and will be again next Saturday if I have anything to say about it.

"Aww," Crystal says, her snicker stifled, yet obvious, "I think we have the beginnings of a romance here."

We ignore her and walk out of sight around the side of the house, hand-in-hand, glancing at each other with adoring eyes. We're not having to fake this part at all.

We're out of sight when Greg comes to a stop, which happens to be right next to the wishing well. He turns to me and takes a knee as he works his class ring off his right ring finger. He holds it out to me.

"I was stupid once and I lost you," he says. "I never want to lose you again. I've loved you since I met you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Lana, will you marry me?"

Assuming that we were going to get married anyway does little to reduce the gravity of this moment. My heart is singing. Greg has asked me to marry him! And right in front of the wishing well, over which I'd asked for this very thing so many times. Not so stupid now, eh? I'm going to come back later and grab that lucky penny out of the bucket.

"I thought we were waiting until the fifth date," I say, wanting to prolong this wonderful moment in our lives.

"Officially, yes. Just like we're going to officially sleep together for the first time on our wedding night. No, on our fifth date I'm going to have your real ring, and I figure I'll pop the question in a very public setting."

"And I'll be officially surprised. I predict that the happy tears will be real though."

"So, Lana, what do you say? Will you marry me? I'd hate to fly back to Chicago not knowing."

"Of course I will, Greg."

He grins and jumps to his feet, kissing me good. Then we look down at his huge ring. "That thing would fall right off my thumb," I say, "and even then, no one's supposed to know yet." I unclasp my necklace and pocket the heart, replacing it with his ring. "I'm going to keep it safe and warm, right here between my little breasts, until you put the real ring on my finger."

"I'm counting the days," he says. Then he pulls me close for another long kiss. I think I could get used to this.

Eventually we come up for air. "I'm going to put in my two weeks' notice when I go in on Monday," he says.

"I wish I didn't have to wait two weeks," I say, trying not to sound like I'm whining.

"You won't," he says. "I still have some vacation days saved up, so I'll use those instead of actually going to work. I'll need a few days to pack my stuff and tie up some loose ends, but I'll be back for good by Friday night at the latest, staying with my folks."

"I like the sound of that," I say, "but I wish you could just move in with me." I sigh. "Still, I'm on board with keeping up appearances. How about we make our engagement short though. Like four weeks? I'll bet we could put a simple wedding together that quickly."

"Hmm, twelve weeks might look better."

"Let me remind you that I may well be pregnant. Do you want to explain an eight pound, 'three month premature,' baby?"

"Is three weeks okay?"

I smile. "Four's fine. But since we're making wedding plans, do you think you can talk your dad into giving me away."

Greg's gorgeous blue eyes light up at the idea. "I'm sure he'd love that."

"So would I."

"Lana, I can hardly wait for that day. I don't want to spend any more time away from you."

"And I can't wait to have you beside me every night for the rest of my life."

He gives me another kiss. I'm very quickly coming to love this.

"I love you Alana Erickson," he says.

"And I love you, Gregory Edwards."

"We're going to make one hell of a team."

"You've got that right," I say. "I figure my real life starts right here and now."

"And mine as well."

Greg takes my hand and we resume walking toward his car. Then he stops again. "Oops. I left my suitcase in the bunker."

"My purse and laptop are in there too. I'll go with you."

As we walk back around the side of the house, Crystal and Braylin are in the shade of one of the solar panels. Their body language says they're quietly arguing. They don't even seem to notice as we go by.

Greg has the hang of the heavy door now and efficiently opens it just far enough for us to comfortably slip inside. Inside the bunker, Greg goes down the hall to recover his suitcase from the Comm room while I duck into the utility room to check the voltage being generated by the panels. The gauge reads zero. Huh? Despite the care I put into doing everything exactly like the detailed installation manual said to, I must have wired something wrong. It looks like I'm going to have to do some troubleshooting.

Greg walks in, looking down at his iPhone with a frown. The screen is blank. "That's weird," he says. "It was working when we came out of the bunker. Maybe I didn't connect the charger cord right when I plugged it in at the hotel last night."

I whip out my Android and hit the oval button at the bottom of the screen. Nothing. "Mine's dead too," I say, the first hint of concern quickly turning into an all-consuming dread.

Greg's not there yet. "What the heck?" he murmurs. "What could cause that?" Slowly, his eyes widen. "Hey, Lana! Wait!"

But I'm already past him and running for the tunnel. I now fully understand that there is only one thing that could simultaneously kill the solar panels and both of our phones. And it's been twenty or thirty minutes since the torque driver and radio died.

"Crystal!" I scream.

The flash of light is almost blinding, coming in through the open doorway from the root cellar. I blink back tears as the light slowly fades. I push on toward the door. "Crystal!" I scream again.

The root cellar is oven-hot, and the wooden shelves closest to the outside door are ablaze. The prairie is burning for as far as I can see. Framed in the doorway, I can see that our local silo has finally fulfilled its one mission, as a Minuteman III ICBM climbs into the sky on a long column of smoke and flame. Further off toward the horizon, many others are rising.

Then I see a gray, blurry line advancing across the grasslands at blinding speed. It's putting out the fire as it races toward us, leaving an ash-covered desolation behind it. In the time it takes to move from left foot to right, the line intersects the missile just one silo further out from our personal nuke. It has barely cleared the ground, but now it explodes into a spinning, flaming dervish.

As I get closer to the door, I can see the house. It's an inferno. Greg's rental SUV is shimmering in a cloud of atomized red auto paint and the trees are leafless pillars of fire. Then, near the smoking solar panels, I see two prone but writhing figures. They are bright torches in a sea of flames.

"No!" I scream. Despite the heat searing my face and the rapidly advancing front of a thermonuclear explosion, I start that way.

Then an immensely strong vice wraps around my waist and drags me back down the root cellar, through the doorway into the relative cool beyond. I beat my fists against Greg's arm as he carries me back down the tunnel at a dead run.

"We've only got seconds until that blast wave arrives," Greg pants. He squeezes us through the door, then dumps me in a heap just inside. He grunts as he pulls hard on the inside handle.

It comes off in his hand.

"Shit!" he exclaims. There is nothing else on the smooth inner surface of the door to pull on. Before I can even protest, he's back out in the tunnel.

I leap to my feet. "Greg, no!" But he's already pushing on the door from the outside. At first, I have the hope that he'll just get it moving, then duck back in, but it wasn't open very far in the first place. By the time I arrive at the edge of the door, the opening is already too narrow for even me.

"Greg," I cry, putting my shoulder to the door and trying in vain to push it back open. "Please don't do this. There's got to be another way."

"No time," he gasps. The door is now open just a few inches. "Lana, I'll always love--"

The blast is strong enough to slam the door hard against the jamb and throw me to the floor. The noise is almost ear-splitting. The lights go out as the whole bunker is shaken like a rat in a terrier's jaws. Then the sound suddenly seems muffled. Even in the dark and noise and confusion, I realize that the entry tunnel has collapsed.

All around the bunker, I can hear things crashing to the floor. I can taste dust that's suddenly in the air. Before the rumble of the explosion ends, there's another, and then another. They seem to go on and on. In so many ways, this is immeasurably worse than I could have imagined.

Finally, the floor stops moving. I feel my way to the now immoveable door. I beat on it, screaming his name, until my fists are bloody, then curl up in a ball and begin to weep bitter tears.

* * * * *

Author's note:

The downside of entering a story in an April Fool's Day contest is that if you try to fool your readers, they're going to see it coming a mile away. So if you came across this story knowing that it was part of the contest, you likely guessed that a practical joke was being played on Lana and Greg long before they did. Hopefully, though, you didn't see those last paragraphs coming.

To date, this is the only story I've written -- in any genre -- with a sad ending. Like most people, I prefer a happy and uplifting one, but when I finished the first draft of this tale, leaving our freshly-engaged lovers next to the wishing well, the story just begged for something more serious. I went back through the story and inserted little hints about what might be coming, then downed a couple shots of Ouzo and destroyed the world.

As always, please let me know in the comments what you thought.

Thanks!

MB