Mediterranean Sea
Island State of Malta
The Present
The residents of the ancient walled city of Mdina rose that morning to a clear sky and gentle sun. Beyond the towering walls and rocky hillsides, the sea lay flat with the occasional ripple running from any one of a number of lazy oars pulled by rugged men in colorful fishing boats.
Elias Spartan rowed his boat just far enough that he could easily see the red tile roof and balcony of his family’s home. Locking the oars to the boat’s gunwale, he reached deep inside his wool coat and produced a two-handed flask filled with bajtra. Not seeing the small form he was waiting for on the distant balcony, he took a heavy swig and savored the magical remnants of fermented prickly pear. If one sip hit the spot, Elias thought, two would finish the job. So he took another mouth-filling slug. He glanced at his phone, stuck with Velcro to the inside of the hull: 6:20 a.m. He had at least ten minutes before she would shuffle outside, rotate the telescope his way, and wave. A tradition he’d shared with his father from this same spot and now one he played out each morning with his youngest daughter.
He glanced at the fishing nets on the deck and instead grabbed the coffee-stained newspaper that was smaller, thinner, and more expensive than it used to be. Printed words felt right on a fishing boat. Elias stretched out and for the first time read the front-page headline: North Koreans Militarize Space Lab! USA, China, and Russia Follow. He scanned the paragraphs and a chill rolled over him. According to the Maltese National, the North Koreans had smuggled a dozen nukes into their “space lab” over the past decade. The USA and Russia quickly amassed nukes onto their own space platforms.
“Always finding new ways to threaten the world,” Elias mumbled. “Maybe we should talk more and terrorize less.” Weathered hands crumpled the pages into a ball and tossed it near the stern just as a figure moved across the distant balcony and traipsed toward the telescope.
Elias rolled on the bench, found his binoculars, sat upright, and focused them. A curly black mop of hair appeared behind the telescope and Lela’s small hands rotated the copper cylinder toward the sea. A smile broke across his face as she waved then followed with a spastic throwing of more kisses than Elias could catch while still trying to hold his binoculars. The kisses stopped. Lela spun back toward the house, where a woman ran out, scooped her up, and ran back inside.
The boat’s hull rattled and buzzed, the phone rocking back and forth while its screen flashed red and white with an emergency alert symbol followed by:
BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO MALTA & SURROUNDING AREAS. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
Surely this is a mistake… His wife’s image appeared on the phone, and Elias ripped it off the hull, staring up at his home. “What is happening—?”
“ROW ELIAS! ROW FOR YOUR LIF—”
The line went dead and was replaced with a flashing alert.
Elias snatched up the oars, dropped them into the locks, spun the boat around with one oar, and then ripped them through the water’s placid surface. Other boats small and large raced and rowed all around him. Thunder boomed and echoed above from the cloudless blue sky. As Elias pulled harder, shiny streaks appeared from the west. Reddish, blurry dots that left white trails raced in from the east. “Oh God! No, no, no!” His arms were numb, the oars skipping, losing their rhythm. Directly overhead, a field of white dots erupted.
A bright flash exploded in the north, followed by a towering fireball and the unmistakable shape of a mushroom cloud. Sicily, Elias thought; he had friends and family there. More clouds climbed high into the graying-sky from all directions—some close, some distant. Spain, the United Kingdom to the west, and possibly Turkey or Syria to the east? The shapes kept appearing, growing into one another as they reached for the sky.
The sea pulled his fishing boat away from the approaching shoreline. His body spent, chest pounding and lungs burning, Elias dropped the oars. His fishing boat was dragged north. He flipped onto his back, chest heaving, and he spotted the outline of his wife and three children on the fading balcony. He tried to raise an arm, a final farewell, but he could not move.
A shadow covered his boat. The sky darkened and the sound of rushing wind grew to a deafening roar. Elias Spartan’s fishing boat disappeared into a fifty-meter wave churning with bodies, boats, and buildings—heading toward Mdina’s walls.