The day before the wedding, the remnants of a cyclonic depression charged ashore off the Gulf of Mexico, moving rapidly across the Florida panhandle into southern Georgia. A gigantic cold low-pressure area flowing down from central Canada over the past week, collided with the Gulf storm over Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, amping up its intensity. It changed direction slightly from due north to northeast. That afternoon as ground temperatures rose into the hundreds, the upward thermal winds inside the cell increased, creating the occasional bolt of dry lightning. It looked quite pretty from the ground as the bolts exploded up inside the whirling dry clouds surrounding the cell.
By 2:00 AM, the system was eighty miles north of Atlanta. As the air within the mass roiled like laundry in a tumble-drier, massive charges of static electricity continued to build. At 2:35 AM, a particularly powerful bolt burst from the cell in a five-mile-long jagged string of hell-fire, thrusting downward, seeking a high point on the landscape below at which to ground. What the lightning bolt found was ‘The General’ at the far end of Archie and Roxanne’s property.
It struck the tree a nanosecond later, its charge over three-million volts, its temperature equal to the surface of the sun. As the energy and heat instantly filled the tree’s core, coursing throughout its trunk and branches, ‘The General’s’ entire structure exploded into thousands of pieces as though a half-ton of high-grade TNT had just detonated at its base. It lit up the sky and produced a clap of thunder heard thirty miles away. In the ensuing explosion, many thousands of flaming embers and hotly burning shards of bone-dry wood were flung out in a one-hundred-yard radius.
The storm had also produced a wind microburst, a half-mile wide with gusts approaching ninety miles per hour. As the flaming remnants of the tree landed in fields of tinder-dry grass and scrubby brush, it was whipped to life by the wind. In minutes the wildfire had doubled in size and fury; minutes later, it had doubled again. Ten minutes later, it was a raging half-mile wide inferno, traveling eastward at thirty miles per hour, growing wider by the minute.
The fuse was lit.
____________________________________________________________
It had been sultry last night when they’d gone to bed. It was so hot in the house, Archie had run the heat pump’s air conditioning all afternoon, something they rarely used. But they wanted a good night’s sleep before their big day tomorrow and each of them felt out of sorts in the oppressing dry heat. It had been one hundred, four degrees outside at dinner time. They’d both felt anxious as though they’d forgotten something important about their wedding plans. Even Bud had seemed a little grouchy — absolutely unheard of for him.
Ah well, whatever it was, it would all be forgotten tomorrow.
He and Roxanne went to bed earlier than usual, before 10:00 PM, and slept fitfully. Not used to hearing the whine of the heat pump outside the house, it was keeping them awake so at 11:00 PM, Archie got up and shut it off, opening the bedroom window six inches and the kitchen door to the back porch. Bud was sleeping on his mat, just outside the screen door.
They were both sound asleep when Bud was roused from his sleep just after 3:15 AM. The dog became desperate to get inside but no amount of loud whining or barking seemed to bring either of his masters to the door to let him in. Finally, he used his teeth to tear open the plastic mosquito screen and rushed into the kitchen. He ran up the stairs to Archie and Roxanne’s bedroom door and pushed it open with his nose, rushing to Archie’s side of the bed, whining and nosing Archie frantically.
It took Archie a minute to awaken — he was groggy and wondered if he was dreaming. As he came to his senses, he realized it was hard to breathe. Roxanne was beside him, sound asleep — she should have awoken too from Bud’s whining. Now he realized the room was full of thick smoke; maybe that’s why he felt so dizzy. They’d been breathing these fumes for who knows how long. Starting to cough, Archie looked at the bedroom window; even with the blinds closed, he could see a dull red glow from outside and could hear a roaring noise some distance away.
Archie leaped out of bed, yelling at Roxanne, shaking her shoulders, trying to get her to awaken. Finally she did, but she was groggier than Archie. He pulled her to the edge of the bed, yelling they had to get dressed. He tried to turn on a lamp but there was no power. He found his clothes where he’d left them and pulled on his pants and a tee-shirt, not taking the time for socks or underwear. Roxanne was now on her feet; not thinking clearly and coughing heavily. Archie found her housecoat and wrapped it around her.
“Come on,” he said frantically. “We’ve gotta go fast, Roxy. The bush outside is on fire.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her along after him after slamming the bedroom window closed, running with her down the stairs, through the hallway to the kitchen, grabbing his keys off a hook, and out the back door to where he’d parked his Tacoma. He pulled the door closed behind them.
The brush along the far side of the lawn bordering their house was starting to burn; exploding into flames would be more accurate. The drive was covered with windblown embers, burning their bare feet as they ran to the truck. The heat from the wind and fire was like standing next to a smelter — painful to their bare skin — drying the moisture from their eyes so it hurt to blink. Embers were landing in the fuzzy material of Roxanne’s terrycloth housecoat, causing small flames like freshly lit matches. Archie swatted at them as they ran, knowing their lives depended on making it fifty feet to the truck. He could see spots on Bud’s back, smoking with red-hot brands smoldering in his fur. Even Bud was coughing now, trying to get breathable air into his lungs.
Seconds later they were at the truck; Archie pushed Roxanne through the passenger’s door with Bud after her and slammed it shut. He ran around to the driver’s side and jumped in, feeling the pain of something burning on his back. No time to worry about it now. He started the truck, slammed it into reverse, and spun the tires, backing into a turn-around, now fully ablaze around the edges. He slammed the transmission into drive and pounded his foot down on the accelerator, feeling the truck balk as it sucked in thick acrid smoke instead of clean oxygenated air. With the engine still running rough, he sped down their drive as fast as the truck could go, feeling Roxanne’s hands pounding on his back and his hair, trying to put out glowing embers. Bud was next; it would take a minute before she’d found them all, burning her fingers in the process. Archie spun the wheel and they did a four-wheel drift onto the road, the engine now sucking in fresher air, accelerating eastward away from the fire. Behind him in his rear-view mirrors, Archie could see the entire sky was red with fiery updrafts and flaming debris from the fire raining down around them.