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

and eyes were all that still worked.
Having lost control of his body, Diggs shifted his eyes to his lap in which lay the once beautiful head of Fredda. She was dead. His bunker buddy lived no more. Her cheerful smile was contorted into the kiss of death. The light which once radiated from her face was gone; it was replaced by cankerous sores and the pale of darkness. Her eyes were closed. Her eyelashes and most of her hair were gone. This was hardly the way for one who had come so far to take her leave. Death can be oh so cruel!
Diggs refocused his eyes on the monitor where Rodney was repeating the message of the poster boards. He fixated on the words, “Is there a doctor among you?”
The words reminded him of the time when at age seven his father suffered a heart attack and died in the back seat of their car because the workers at the emergency room of the hospital had refused to come out to the car to help his father inside. They said it was against hospital policy for them to leave the hospital. Upon that occasion, he had shouted to the workers, “Is there a doctor among you?”
There was no answer. He could not understand how a doctor could allow a rule of law to erect a barrier between his oath as physician and a patient needing medical assistance. It was then that he swore he would become a doctor and that he would never refuse treatment to anyone.
The Doctor now wondered why he had not thought at the time his father’s rejection was based upon the fact that he was a Negro. He could not find the strength to ponder the matter. His mind moved on to reflections of how his family had rallied together to run the dry cleaners which his father owned.
This meant that he did not have much of a childhood. All of his time had been spent studying and working at the dry cleaners. As a consequence, he could not play sports, though he excelled in academics and was even elected president of the student body and editor of his high school newspaper. He graduated at the top of his class.
After graduation, he went off to college. It was there that he met the woman who was to become his wife. He then went on to medical school, residency and then private practice. Images of these various moments in his life flashed before his eyes as did the time his telephone at home rang and he answered to discover the assistant on the line.
A cry for help moved him away from anger and disgust. Again, his mind played the scene where he rushed to the Assistant’s apartment and then the journey to NORAD. All was so clear to him now. He understood why he did what he did and how he came to be where he was. He tried but could not smile to celebrate his epiphany. The images stopped and his eyes returned to the monitor.
Diggs moved his glance from the monitor to Fredda. He tried to stroke her face. Still, he could not move his hand. It became obvious to him that his body was dead. All that was left were his mind and his eyes. They returned to the monitor where Rodney again displayed the message. “Is there a doctor among you?” Again, the Doctor tried to force a smile but failed. He gave one last glance to the lump mass in his lap.
A mist appeared before him. Out of it he saw his wife sitting down with tears streaming down her cheeks. He watched a lone tear emerge from his right eye and fall down his cheek. The next sight was a burst of light that invaded his body through his eyes and transported his soul to another sphere. Diggs was no more.
. . .
It is said that when two people get married, they become as one. Perhaps there is some truth to that old axiom which explains why when people have been married for a long time and have had a very close relationship, when one dies the other soon dies. Maybe that is why Juliet could not live without her Romeo nor he without his Juliet. It mattered not that they had been together but a short while – their love for each other was so strong as to reach that state of fusion which take others decades to achieve.
Seldom do those of us who look upon marriage from the outside, perceive such a bond. We are wont to see a couple that argues all the time or spends a lot of time apart or who is beset by all types of problems. We are seldom able to perceive the true depth of a couple’s love and devotion for and to one another. Outsiders look at marriages much the way people looked upon Richard Cory, never quite perceiving the true nature of the beast.
I make these observations at this juncture to lay the foundation for the event that comes next. For it so shocks our sensibilities as to require these introductory comments. We have witnessed from afar the relationship between The Weary Wife and the doctor. Each of them was involved in at least one affair. Notwithstanding these affairs of the heart, Pamela’s concern for her husband is genuine and she now suffers at the depth of her soul.
Such suffering is not apparent to us. Nor was it apparent to Shannon and the Airmen who came in and out of the office with reports of their lack of progress in reaching the bunker. For if they had known about Pamela’s suffering, perhaps they would have spoken more softly where she could not hear. Maybe they would have relocated her or themselves. Yet, they did none of these things. They went about their business as if she was invisible.
She sat there listening to these details of hopelessness until she could take it no longer. Without saying a word, she jumped to her feet simultaneously with the life leaving her husband. It was as if a knife had pierced her heart. In pain and deep agony, she let out a loud, hell shaking scream and ran through the open door.
Pamela continued until she reached the crater into which she dived then started digging with her hands. She was oblivious to the fact that her skin began to burn away and reveal her bones. She continued even as the dust invaded her nostrils and inflamed her tissues and cells and caused her blood to boil and her veins to burst through her skin. Even the white suited soldiers who tried to pull her away could not immediately stop her digging. Pamela’s life flashed before her eyes and for the first time she wished that she and Johnny had children. In her fevered distress, she neither heard nor felt anything. She saw nothing but the light which exploded before her eyes. The wife was no more.
. . .
Shannon led the officers back to the Command Centre. Words were useless and so they remained silent. The officers had witnessed many deaths – though none came close to the horror of Pamela’s. They were all visibly shaken.
“What was she trying to do?” they asked themselves as some of them held hands and cried.
Black, White, and Blundus watched these events from outside the Command Centre. Saddened and horrified at the sight of Pamela’s death, they cried and tried to console one another. They cared not who might see them and what might be said. Though they hardly knew Pamela, in their journey together they had come to think of her more as a friend than the wife of a suspect. Now, they had lost a friend: a vibrant, intelligent, person who had so much to live for. She was gone. What was it all for?
Shannon wondered the same thing, though he did not cry. He did not know Pamela, yet he was touched by her death.
“Dammit, listen up!” he shouted as he entered the Command Centre which was now packed and noisy as it had been upon his arrival. “I don’t want another damn person to die here today. Death is hereby outlawed. Do I make myself clear?”
There was no answer. How can one answer such a question? Were it only possible for us humans to outlaw death. If only we could suspend it for a moment. But such power is denied us. Even Lazarus who was raised from the dead was raised only to die again. Death is real and it is final. We have no power over it. Hence the need for our religion which teaches us that death is but a gateway to another existence.
Shannon was unwilling to engage in any type of philosophical or theological inquiry. He wanted to stop death and now. As he glanced around the room at the many young men who were now under his command, he swore to himself that he would not lose a single one of them. Already, he had lost too many friends and acquaintances in so short a time.
Still somewhat shaken by Pamela’s death, Shannon walked in silence to the latrine where he washed his face several times before returning to the room. The noise had returned. He busied himself making final preparations for dealing with the cloud and reaching the bunker. Pamela’s death increased his determination to reach the bunker.
Shannon alternated between talking on the telephone and the three radios on his desk. He also had to sign orders and answer questions being shouted to him from across the room. Then, he got up and went to a private office to telephone The President.
. . .
The President was disappointed in the report. He listened without interrupting. When Shannon was done, The President merely told him thanks and to keep trying and hung up the telephone. The President then ordered everyone out of the Oval Office and played his tape of the sermon by Campbell. When the sermon ended, he called in his staff and started making plans to address the nation during prime time that evening. He had decided that delaying the speech until morning would not give him the audience and attention he wanted.
. . .
“Sir, the helicopters are in place and the tent is secured in place so we are all set to start Operation Clean Sweep,” reported an Airman.
“It’s about damn time,” retorted Shannon. He glanced at his watch. It was 1745 hours. He had one hour to complete his task and notify The President in time to change the speech he would give. The President informed him that he had prepared two speeches in case Shannon was able to get into the bunker before The President got to substantive matters. The President could merely switch speeches as the opening was the same for both. It took all of fifteen minutes for Shannon to get back into the specially designed suit, which made him look more like an astronaut than a soldier.
Shannon exited the Command Centre. He looked at the huge tent which covered the crater before hopping into a nearby jeep which took him to ground zero – the centre of the large circle of