The Hard Way Home

William had been burning fuel for days and was dreading the family’s return more and more with each passing mile. Back on the outpost, he feared how things might have changed while they were away, how the family might not fit in after missing so much ordinary day to day life. Since the June 10th event, those fears seemed trite.

“Are we home yet?” asked a voice from the backseat.

William answered, keeping his eyes ahead.  “Not just yet, kiddo. Go back to sleep for a bit.”

Barbara woke up next. “Thought you’d be bouncing off the walls by now,” she said. “The kids wear you out? Want me to take over for a while?”

“No, I’m alright.”

“Why are you lying?” she asked. “You haven’t been yourself since before we left. Tell me what’s wrong.  Aren’t you excited to be going home?”

“I think…something happened. I think something’s gone wrong.”

“What do you mean?  Gone wrong with what?”

“We stopped getting calls from home three months ago.”

“…What?”

“Back on the base, the last call I got was in early June. It came in at a weird hour and I couldn’t make it all out. The sound kept breaking up…but what I heard sounded frantic. Hurried. Panicked.  After that, there was nothing. Complete radio silence. Not a peep all summer.”

“Maybe the receiver went dead. Or the antennae froze up again.”

“The equipment was fine. I checked it over and over. If there’d been a call, I’d ‘ve heard it. There was nothing to pick up.”

“This doesn’t make any sense. Why would they stop calling? What happened to them?”

“I don’t know. I tried for weeks to call from our end.  No one ever answered.”

He could see the realization sinking in, her face dissolving from staunch denial to quiet crumbling.

“I didn’t have the heart to tell you. Whatever happened to them was over and done. We couldn’t have gotten back fast enough to stop it. If we could stop it at all.  So, you see?  There was no good reason to tell you.”

Barbara was no longer listening. She stared at the tide of pink stars that rotated across the horizon outside, the first sunrise she had seen in years igniting in the sky ahead.

“There was no good reason to burden you with that information.  Besides…had you known, would you have not come back?  ‘Cause I had to come. I had to see for myself to know for sure. I had to see for myself that it really happened.”

Barbara glanced back to her husband, her face now carrying the same dread that had clung to him the last twelve weeks.

William kept muttering, “…I had to see for myself…I had to see for myself…”

The kids began to stir as Earth appeared in the spaceship’s window. Home sweet home was still a few hours away, but the family could already see the scorched, dead continents beneath a twisting veil of nuclear winter.

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