Sophie and Heath
"Oh, my sweet holy mother of God..." Sophie watched the television openmouthed as the reporter babbled about a nuclear bomb dropping on a place called Smallville in Kansas. "Dad? DAD!" She dropped her school bag on the ground with a crash and ran for her father. "Someone dropped a nuclear bomb on America!"
"What the fu-oh, Jaysus, Mary and Joseph. They fecking well did." Her father sat down heavily on the couch and father and daughter watched the CNN broadcasts. "Oh...this is not going t' turn out well a'tall." Sean's accent got thicker as he shook his head.
"What's going on?" Robyn inquired as she came into the living room, brushing her hair. She was dressed in her primary school uniform. "You said you were going to drive us today..."
"Siddown, Robyn." Sean patted the space next to him as his older daughter hugged his side. Robyn came and sat.
"What happened?"
"Not nuclear war...but the first nuclear weapon to be dropped on a populated area since Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Sean had always believed in teaching his children to mistrust politicians and the newspapers. They had had...a rather skewed upbringing after their mother's death. Robyn went to school once and denounced the teachers as implementors of anti-Irish sentiment and pawns of the English monarchy. Which is true but inappropriate to say.
"I gotta call Heath..." Sophie edged towards the phone, still staring at the tv screen with wide eyes. "Oh my god..." She dialled Heath's home, praying he hadn't left yet. He shouldn'tve.
"Hello?"
"Heath! Turn on your TV!"
"Already have, Prongs, already have. Can I say, Americans are stupid? I mean, what the? They *designed* that bloody things. Struth, Irish, they bloody well probably set it off by accident!"
"I know, Blackie. Americans are bloody dense. As if 9/11 wasn't enough..."
"Soph, how many people do they think died?"
"Final body count? I'm thinking millions. Not the least to say how people are gonna be affected by the radiation."
"Stone the flipping crows."
"I know...this is horrible. Are you going to school today?"
"Bugger that. I'm going to wallow in my shock and curse America some more."
"Wanna come over and do it here?"
"You're on, Prongs."
"Good." Sophie turned to look at her dad. "You don't mind if we don't go to school today, and Heath comes over, do you?"
"Not at all, cariad." Sean's eyes were glued to the tv screen. "We've got plenty of chocolate and other shock food, don't we?"
"Yeah."
"And I have whiskey. Hey, you're seventeen. So's Heath. I was drinking when I was fifteen...which doesn't mean you can try it then, sweetie." He placed his finger on Robyn's nose and she smiled briefly. "We can drink to the memories of those who have died..."
"For something that was probably a computer virus or something. Bloody hell." Sophie shook her head and sat back down on the couch. "Americans are so, so stupid they scare me. What if that bomb had fallen somewhere else?"
"We'd be looking at world war three..." Sean commented quietly.
"I'm scared, Dad," Robyn whispered and Sean hugged her closed, dragging her up into her lap.
"Don't fret, sweet. No one would ever bother with Australia. We're too little on the global scale," Sean said reassuringly. Sophie barked a laugh.
"And meanwhile, our prime minister's lips get very closley acquainted with Dubya's arse."
There was a knock at the door, and she went to open it.
"Blackie!"
"Hey, Soph. Hey, Mr O'Shaughnessy, Robyn." Heath nodded as he stepped into the living room.
"Call me Sean, lad," Sean said. "Pull up a piece of carpet and sit down. I'll break out the whiskey."
"Ok..." Heath looked at Sophie. She shrugged.
"Hey, it's not like I can get drunk anyway."