Disaster Among the Heavens - Don E Peavy Sr (best books for students to read .TXT) 📗

Feds can get to him. We want you to go to Colorado with us and try to talk your husband into surrendering the Assistant to us. We know the Assistant has been seriously wounded and may be dying. Your husband is keeping him alive.”
“What is NORAD?” asked Blundus.
“Some kind of military base. The Captain said he’ll fill us in when we report back,” answered White. “Okay, Mrs. Diggs, you get packed and we’ll be back to pick you up. You should take enough things for three days. And remember, this is your very last chance to see your husband alive and help us save him. Tell absolutely no one where you are going.”
“Yes, thank you very much. I will be ready. I’m just so happy to hear that my husband is alive,” said the Wife. She jumped up from the couch and gave each of the officers a big hug and escorted them to the door where she gave them another hug as she said goodbye. Having just completed a tumultuous ride on the roller coaster of anxiety, for the first time in over a week Pamela found reason to smile. Hope swelled within her. She felt refreshed as the breezy Chicago afternoon stroked her for several minutes until she closed the door and rushed to her bedroom to pack. She knew not what lay ahead of her on this strange yet exciting journey. However, she hoped that at the end of the journey she would see and be with her husband. How she hoped!
Hope is easy when we lack sufficient knowledge of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We may hope so long as we see tomorrow even if it be through a glass darkly. The Wife prepared to meet her tomorrow with hope beating wildly in her breast like the drum play of Buddy Rich. She did not know that her husband was teetering on the brink of disaster among the heavens. Because she did not know, she was eager, even anxious to go!
. . .
Fredda thought the Assistant had lied to her. She was relieved when the missiles stopped once their noses were above ground.
Doctor Diggs helped the Assistant sit up where he could view the monitors. This helped him for a wry smile covered his face. He brought his hand up to his mouth signalling he wanted water.
Fredda read the sign well. She handed Diggs a canteen which the Doctor held to the Assistant’s mouth and watched as the Assistant sucked in a small amount. The Assistant swished the water around in his mouth and spit it out on the floor. Diggs frowned. He gave both the Assistant and Fredda a damning look.
Gingerly, Diggs gave the Assistant more water and this time the Assistant made a gurgling sound and spit the water on the floor. Diggs gave him more water which the patient swallowed. Fredda took that as her cue to clean the water mixed with blood and saliva from the floor which she did using an Army blanket.
With great difficulty, and in staccato phrases, the Assistant forced himself to say, “Listen to me. This place is equipped for ninety days. You can survive the nuclear winter here.
“We have won! We have won!” With those words, the Assistant’s head fell backwards.
Doctor Diggs laid him down again. He and Fredda were confused by the Assistant’s comments. They had not fully appreciated their position and what they were doing. Neither of them was aware of the sophisticated weaponry at NORAD. A strange feeling overcame them. They did not understand that disaster now lurked just two typed lines away. Their thoughts were invaded by the Assistant who tried again to speak but could not. He grabbed the pen and paper and wrote again.
“Fire missiles now,” Diggs and Fredda looked at each other intensely. They spoke not a word, yet they understood one another. Both wondered if they should tell the Assistant that they had altered his plans. Without speaking a word, in unison they questioned whether they should tell the Assistant that they were not as eager as he was to destroy America and with it possibly the earth and the heavens. Yes, there were injustices in the world. However, life was still worth living.
How could they tell this rebel on the edge of death that out of the nihilism of his revolution they had found a way to give meaning and purpose to the property and lives that had been destroyed? Out of his mess of chaos they had constructed a hope in a Great Society. They envisioned a way by which America could emerge Phoenix-like from the ashes of destruction and become a newer and grander land. How could they tell their dying comrade? They could not. And so they stared into each other’s eyes looking for an answer that would never come.
The Assistant’s body shook. He made a gurgling sound. Blood began to ooze from his lips. Fredda picked up a nearby towel and wiped it away. This fragile but determined patient tried to speak but only blood and air escaped his lips. His eyes flickered then closed. His breathing got shorter and shorter and then faint and more faint. Fredda and Diggs could do no more than watch. Within seconds, the Assistant gave up the ghost. His burst of excitement had robbed him of his strength, and he had none left with which to sustain life. He was so eager to kill that he lost the strength to live and now the Assistant was no more.
Tears fell from the eyes of both doctor and nurse. They folded the patient’s arms across his chest and then the Doctor stood up. After Fredda kissed the deceased on the forehead, she followed. In the space of a few days she had lost the only two stars in her life’s universe. Her world had suddenly gone nova. She had hardly completed her upward movement before she fell into the arms of the Doctor and broke into tears.
She cried not just for the deceased, but for the revolution he had started, the uncertainty of tomorrow, the pain of her own life and quite frankly, the mess she’d gotten herself into. Excitement had turned into calamity. The quest for life had become a requiem for death. What a disparity she suffered between what she envisioned and what she achieved.
Thus it was that she cried not only for the assistant and herself, she also cried for the director -- he too was no more. Her life could not have been a movie, for when have the heroes died so early in a film?
“You must have really loved him,” said Diggs holding Fredda tightly in his arms. She wetted his shirt with her tears.
Without warning and without any preliminaries, Fredda moved her face from Diggs’ shoulder to his face, and their lips locked in hungry passion. They tore at each other’s clothes and kicked off their shoes as they fell to the floor to a makeshift bed next to their once patient, and with all of their strength and more, they tried to douse the flames which burned within them by pouring their essences into each other.
Their bodies trembled and quaked. They shed all of their clothes and with them those things which separated them. They were no longer doctor and nurse, fellow revolutionaries, weeping, bereaved. They cried internally and externally. They groaned and moaned and made all the sounds of ecstasy as they struggled for release of their pent up emotions, their frustrations, their weariness, their oppression, their being cast adrift in the sea of life without sail or oar--all these things and more they sought to exhale from their bodies--their psyches.
Then it happened – their bodies erupted. All their inner feelings were condensed to fluids that gushed from their bodies like a Texas wildcatter and clashed one to the other and then overflowed to the floor. However, no armies would emerge from these juices.
The two lovers now lay locked in each other’s arms. They began to slip into that darkness that envelops those who have just passed through the storm of passion. Their country was in peril. Their hopes danced on the edge of the abyss. Their own futures--their very lives, were uncertain. All these things they blanked out of their minds as they held each other so tightly that they became as one.
They neither knew nor cared whether those outside would attempt to penetrate their subterranean fortress under cover of night. They slipped into darkness and left the ‘morrow to that Infinite Power who controls the sands of time. Consider all the disasters from earth’s great quakes – none can match the energy expended that bodies locked in passion makes!
. . .


Chapter 6

The President sat behind his desk in the Oval Office reading a report that had just come over the telex machine from Shannon McMillan. He was distressed by the report which contained the sordid details of the mishap in Memphis. Twice now The President had formulated plans for the capture of the assistant and both times disaster had resulted with no appreciable gains. What The President had hoped would be a day of beginning had become another blue Monday.
“Mr. President, you’ve got to see this!” exclaimed the Chief of Staff who rushed into the Oval Office and turned on a nearby television set.
The President shifted his attention to the television where a news reporter was reporting from Moscow that the Soviet military was on full alert and that 20 Russian Migs had been launched en route to America.
“Turn that up some,” commanded The President, as if greater volume would erase the incredulity with which he received the news. He leaned across his desk.
The Chief of Staff complied. The President was about to speak further when the red telephone on his credenza rang. He swivelled his chair around and picked up the receiver.
“Mr. Premier, what seems to be the problem?” answered The President.
“Our MIGS are headed your way. We are preparing to launch our own missiles,” said the Premier in a gruff voice.
“Hold on, Mr. Premier,” shouted The President. He held the telephone with his right hand. He waved his left hand in the air. Realizing he was shouting, he moderated his voice and continued. “What the hell is going on? I’m watching a report on television saying your military is on alert and all hell is breaking loose!”
“Same question I want to ask you, Mr. President.” The Premier’s voice was calm and calculating. Such coolness irritated The President more.
“Mr. Premier, I am sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The Chief of Staff walked over and turned off the television then stood next to the