A dream - the end

A dream - the end
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I peeked out my window, expecting to see a clear sky, but thunderheads roiled menacingly on the horizon. I hurried outside for a better look. The sky above was still clear, and directly above I saw four parallel contrails racing across the sky, far faster than jets... re-entry trails, like meteors but persistent. There was a series of four loud concussions - their sonic booms - as they disappeared behind the thunderheads, and then a flash erupted, disrupting the storm system and blowing it away. I watched as the flash faded over the course of about five seconds, and a mushroom cloud hurled into the sky. About thirty seconds later there was a deafening KA-POW that became a thunderous rumble, followed a few seconds later by a blast of hot air that knocked me to the ground. I got up in time to see three flashes in quick succession light up the horizon beyond the still rising form of the mushroom cloud.

Those were aimed at Dallas, I thought to myself. The first one missed.

I ran across the pasture to the nearby lake to check my water farm, a system of dozens of long organic tubers rooted to the lake bottom and held bouyant on the surface by air filled sacks. It was a system for drawing fresh water from underground reservoirs, and I would need it to survive. When I arrived I found the entire length of it, about twenty meters, coiled up and floating on the surface of the lake, dead. Someone had uprooted it, for what purpose, I had no idea. I drew it from the lake and held the large, round bulbous roots in my arms and cried. I pierced the air sacks and let it float to the bottom.

It was growing dark when the sky lit up with dozens of popcorn flashes, like rapid fireworks - some seemingly random, and some forming lines that spanned the horizons. Satellite killers, I thought. This is it, then.

To the northeast another flash engulfed the horizon, followed by another, more distant mushroom cloud.

That's the Red River army depot...