[BBOT] What is Worse Than an Oil Spill?

She looked up at the clock, ten after shift, where was he? She finished the tomatoes and started on the celery, wondering. He had been the best employee she had, and now, here he was a no show. And a national guard member at that!

She sighed and wiped her hands, glancing at the schedule. Aw, no, her other crew member did not get there for an hour, the sous chef virtually ignored her, and the lobby was already filling with customers.

What a lousy life.


"Hey, Sally."

Speak of the devil. Sous Chef.

"What, Mortimer?"

"It's Morty."

She gave him her look, the one that said you best be glad my mouth is shut.

"Anyway Sally, you might wanna call your coworker in early, Brad up and quit."

"Oh? Well, he left early last night for some emergency testing for his service, but he said don't worry about it, he would be back today."

"Well, Sally, thats why I am here. Brad called in and told us he was called up for the oil spill."

"You gonna hire someone new?"


"Sally, i can do without your attitude today."

"I can do with a crew today, Mortimer."

"I said it's Morty!"

Mortimer was a blond, and when he got angry, which was often,( and Sally loved provoking him), his face slowly turned red, from the neck up. It was happening now. Unfortunately Sally did not get to enjoy the full rise due to her first customers hitting the counter.


"I have people here to cook for, Mortimus. Can you call my coworker for me, sugar? I cant handle the rush alone. Hey sweetie, what can I get you today?" Sally turned away from Mortimer and focused on the line forming. Just another day at the Club.

***

Feet up, laptop on lap, Miller High Life cold and cracked, Sally Divine was resting after another hard day at her job, and at her age this was getting older than she was!! She clicked on the tv, and there it was, the oil spill. Three months already, and it was continuing to leak. Living in the middle of Indiana she felt while an awful disaster, it would likely not effect her up this far. She pushed the thoughts of the oil spill, and Mortimus, and Brad, and the crap job and rotten pay out of her mind, and settled into what was left of her evening, online.

Little did Sally know that soon she would be begging for these grueling days, because they would look and feel like heaven compared to her days ahead.

***

Silas Iben sat at his window, looking at the tv, a picture of normal rainclouds and weather on the screen. It claimed to be live from the Gulf, but when Silas looked out his window, the clouds resembled doomsday roils, reddish brown tinted billowing looking clouds, like God was flipping a satin sheet in the sky. The weird thing was, there was really no local tv channel anymore, and the newscast was for the rest of America, to keep them from becoming panicked. No one was left, except his clan and scattered others who refused to evacuate and had planned for doomsday long before 4/20/2010.

The other weird thing was the clouds never rained, they just roiled. His entire clan, which consisted of he, Silas, a twenty five yr old kid who used to be head bagger at Piggly Wiggly, Curly, his older brother, a meathead, and Annie, his airhead coworker, wore gas masks around the clock now, just like the jackboots who patrolled the area.

The past few days had seen fewer and fewer jackboots. There were no animals, had not been for weeks now. The methane in the air mixed with the corexit made life deadly to all those who had no gas mask. Silas knew what was coming, and knew time was running out. The clan had to make their exit, and they had precious little time left to do so. In 72 hours, the United States Government would detonate a nuclear bomb, making the lower eastern part of the country, uninhabitable.

That wasn't the worst of it. Silas had stayed behind because before the 4/20 event, his uncle had worked on the deepwell, and before he died in the initial explosion, had told Silas this might happen, and it was all because of what they had found when they first bore the deep hole.

Silas tried to get more from his uncle, the family crackpot because of his belief in conspiracy theories, but his uncle would only say it was bigger than money, profits, the works. In fact his uncle had said, with a faint quiver to his voice, it scared him a mite.

What scared you, Silas had asked.

That the US government just might not win this war.

It had made little sense, much of his uncle's gibberish made little sense. And until the oil spill, Silas had thought little of his uncle's words.

But from the day of the twentieth, fourth month of the year 2010, Silas Iben had thought of little else.

****

It had been three days since Sally had gotten an email from her online friend Si. She knew he had stayed behind in the Gulf and had hidden and avoided the evacuation, and she worried about his safety. The tv accounts of this nightmare were nothing like what Si was describing, and Sally herself was having strange dreams of doomsday .
Today, there was an email waiting her.

" Sally, it is time, we have to evacuate. We want to come to your home, but we cannot stay. I want you to make the fourth person in the clan, Sally. We need you, and your insight, and your spirit. Sally, it is worse than the oil spill. I finally found what I stayed behind to find, my uncle's journal. The nuke goes off in 72 hours. We are leaving tonight and will make it to your house in 24 hours. I know this is short notice, but you have to trust me, Sally, I need your help. Are you with us Sally? I need you to BELIEVE, more now than ever, and pray for us on our journey."

She sat in silence, reading the email, knowing what she would do. What was worse than an oil spill of this magnitude? At the least, Sally decided to welcome them in 24 hours, but would ruminate over whether she would go on with them.

As she slept that night, she had no dreams. It would be her last night in a bed, for a very long time.

***

The look on Mortimer's face when Sally walked out in that afternoon was worth it all.

But now, sitting in the living room, she wondered for the nth time if her gut had for the first time, let her down.

The knock on the door confirmed it had not.

The three young people crowded into the living room, dirty, smelly, like survivors of a grim and awful war. Sally welcomed them in, and listened to Silas speak.

The four of them made a nice clan.

***

They had made it to the Canadian border when the US Governemnt detonated the bomb. It was on all of the news channels. The clan were stuffed into a small booth in a dirty diner on the wrong side of town. They fit in nicely. The greasy burgers and golden fries would be the last they would ever eat, and in some way, they knew it. It was a delicious meal, and they all finished with a round of thick foamy beers. It was high noon, July fourth, 2010. As they clicked their beers together, the lights began to flicker, and then one by one they burst. Beers dropped, people began to panic, but the clan sat in their window booth, and looked to the sky.

As people began to run into the streets, confused and paniced, and wondered what what going on, the bright blue sky began to darken, and the sun disappeared.

But it was not storm clouds that blackened this sky, it was a mothership the size of a continent, and in that moment, Silas, Curly, Annie and Sally knew just what was worse than an Oil Spill.

Man great Story!

Loved it.

Tater,
You are just whetting our appetite here! Is this mothership supposed to be the "new Jerusalem that comes down from the heavens"? Come on, tell us more, you old bard!

It is a short story yall!! I had it more fleshed out, but pulled a bit to make it a short story. Thanks for enjoying it! And cliffhangers make great prequels!

Whoa! This is great stuff!

Well done.
Enjoyed it.

Great story line and building of suspense! Good job!

Thank you. I may try writing more in the short story section in the future. I appreciate the time spent reading.

Superb! I enjoyed the way you left things errrm... hanging in the air at the end.

Thank you very much for an excellent read. (Starred and flagged.)

Best regards,

Mike

Marvelous little adventure here hotbakedtater. This could go on but you're right, the suspense is what will make me remember this one! Great job here.

Fantastic

As you mentioned, you definitely should continue writing!
You definitely seem to be attuned to it.

Great work and I can't wait for your next.

reply to post by hotbakedtater


Excellent.

Hope to read more from you.

[edit on 24-7-2010 by ofhumandescent]

reply to post by hotbakedtater


I just read this now. You got to be kidding me. I didn't know this post existed and I had no idea I would read something this good.