Another Christmas short story I just put together. Two years in a row now...might just become a tradition. Enjoy!
Santa's Christmas Nuke
“Santa?”
Santa, hunched over his broad desk groaning under
mountains of paperwork and a mug of no-longer-hot chocolate, recognized the
tone in Ginger’s voice. Among the most trusted of his elves, he knew she wouldn’t
interrupt him this close to the big day without good reason.
“Come.” He nodded for her to take a seat. The scratching
of his quill and the crackling of the fire failed to fill the silence that hung
awkwardly while he finished his notes.
“What brings you this way?” he finally said, peering up
at the ageless elf over his wire-rimmed glasses.
“There’s a name on your nice list I’d like you to check
twice.” She was polite to a fault.
“They’ve all been checked twice,” he chided her gently. “That’s
not it, is it?”
She shook her head with a soft jingle and sighed. “I was
afraid of that. Maybe thrice, then. We have one Isabelle Rose Armando, age
seven, from Oakcrest, Indiana.”
Santa cocked an eyebrow. “She’s definitely on the nice
list, that one. Not a doubt in my mind.”
“So nice that she tripped the Saintly Protocol,” Ginger
said, letting that hang in the air like the sharp tang of peppermint.
“The Saintly Protocol, eh? That I didn’t know, though I
can’t say I’m surprised.”
Santa tossed his glasses on the desk and slumped back
into his chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose. The Protocol was something the
Powers That Be, those semi-sentient aspects of the universe from which he
derived his powers, had insisted on as a condition of his nature. They had the
demeanor of lawyers and decreed that there had to be some threshold for good
behavior over which a child’s requested gift had to be guaranteed. If Santa
could change or ignore any and all requests, then it diminished his magic. In
the end, they’d agreed on a bar so high that it was achieved only once or twice
a century. And, because such kids tended to be so incredibly good, their gift
requests were usually a pleasure for him to fulfill. The last, a young Puerto
Rican boy in 1968, had asked for his grandmother’s kidney disease to go away.
Christmas miracle fulfilled.
Ginger wouldn’t have come to him if this was such a
case.
“Yeah, a Protocol,” Ginger said. “Perfect record of
making her bed, brushing her teeth, keeping her room clean, being nice to her
brother. She helps the neighbor lady shovel her sidewalk and weed her garden,
all without being asked. She even started up a charity that raised nearly a
quarter million dollars to help a retired teacher with a bone marrow
transplant. But you already know all that and more.”
Santa nodded. “So, what did she ask for?”
Ginger produced a snow globe from the depths of her coat
pocket and slid it across his desk. In the glittery orb was a bland,
non-descript building. “It was with one of your helpers at the Northgate Mall.
Best if you see for yourself.”
Santa gave the globe a good shake, set it back down, and
let his gaze slip into the swirling eddies and currents. His perspective
shifted from high above the Northgate Mall, though the crowds of gift-laden
shoppers, and ultimately to a brilliantly decorated Christmas tree before which
sat one of his helpers. Other assistants dressed in unofficial elf attire
shepherded a line of children waiting their turns to divulge their Christmas
wish lists. Isabelle, dressed in her favorite pink dress and shiny white shoes,
was already sitting on the man’s lap.
“So, my dear, what would you like for Christmas this
year?” the helper asked.
In the sweetest, most sincere voice possible, she said, “I’d
like you to nuke Pinnacle, Kentucky, off the face of the map.”
Santa could only imagine his own expression mirrored
that of his helper. The only difference being that the other man could just
laugh it off later that night over a drink down at the bar. Old Saint Nick,
however, had a Protocol. His jolly went colder than the wind swirling outside.
“See what I mean?” Ginger said, looking grim in a way
unbefitting an elf.
#
Santa stood out among the snowdrifts, his ruddy cheeks
angled upward as he looked toward the dazzling aurora borealis. He didn’t need
the silent night or the humbling light show to communicate with the Powers That
Be, but it always felt more appropriate to do it this way. Unfortunately, they
were being about as accommodating as a chestnut-roasting fire was to a
snowflake.
“I know the Protocol requires me to take the girl’s
request as intended,” Santa said, as if repeating himself would do any good. “But
she didn’t know what she meant by ‘nuking.’ She was just parroting the words of
her father. And clearly his intent was meant to be figurative. Therefore, it’s
only reasonable to say her wishes should mirror those of her father.”
He winced, realizing he’d just implied the Powers were
being unreasonable. To his way of thinking, though, it was true. Young Isabelle’s
father worked for the Environmental Protection Agency and had fought for most
of the last decade to get the entire town of Pinnacle condemned and declared a
Superfund site. It was the unfortunate victim of bad geography, with competing
contaminants in the water from an old mine, agricultural runoff, and naturally high
levels of radon. To add insult to injury, smokestack emissions from Louisville
and Lexington frequently precipitated out in a fog common to the valley in
which Pinnacle resided. No one of these issues was sufficient to force changes
and all were too diffuse for any practical cleanup effort, but in aggregate
they were a multi-generational disaster. Most folk who still lived there were
too poor to pick up and move, in spite of the obvious health problems their
environment had wreaked upon them. It wasn’t that the father wanted everyone there
dead, he just wished no one could live there.
We disagree.
Whether she knows what she asked for or not is irrelevant.
Santa snorted, shuddering at the uncanny resemblance
between his condensed breath and a mushroom cloud.
“I can’t nuke a town off the face of the map,” he
grumbled. “It’s not exactly very Christmassy.”
Such a miracle is
most certainly within your purview. And upholding the responsibilities attendant
to your powers requires that you must.
He rolled his eyes. “So, if I refuse? That’s it? No more
Santa? No more Christmas spirit or miracles?”
That’s how the
universe works.
That’s how the fine print was written, Santa thought,
bristling. For entities so much higher on the metaphorical food chain, they
certainly lacked a willingness to exercise anything resembling flexibility with
their innate power.
“I’ll think on it,” he said, turning on his heels and
tromping back toward home. He sensed something that might have approximated a
chuckle from them, had they any sense of humor.
#
Santa cracked the reins and his team of reindeer banked
sharply into a thick cloud layer ripe with snow. He tapped into his ability to
alter reality in ways he’d never had to do before. Time and space dilation
necessary to deliver gifts around the world by way of impossibly small or
non-existent chimneys – easy. Intercepting a pair of B-52’s some four miles above
the Ohio River Valley – not difficult, but not something they practiced.
“Right on schedule,” Ginger said from her seat on the
sleigh’s bench beside him. She was looking between an old pocket watch and a
parchment map that flapped wildly in the breeze.
A great deal of Christmas magic, not to mention
brainstorming and planning, had gone into making all the arrangements of this
endeavor possible. Santa knew what had to be done, but he still took great care
in how he handled it. Someone could get hurt or killed, and there were limits
to his powers even this night.
He pulled his team up alongside one of the bombers and
matched speeds. Through the blowing snow, he could just make out the pilots in
the cockpit. In all likelihood, they were oblivious to his presence. NORAD
claimed to track him and his team each year, but both knew the truth of that
fiction. He felt a pang of guilt for what he was about to put them through.
“Ten seconds,” Ginger shouted to be heard above the
winds at this speed.
Santa looked at the bomber, placed a finger to the side
of his nose, and twinkled his eyes. Half a dozen one-in-a-million mechanical, computer,
and safeguard failures happened simultaneously aboard the aircraft, causing the
bomb bay doors to open and two nuclear bombs to cycle through the rack and drop
out into the storm like pebbles in a raging river. Through the windows, the
pilots could be seen frantically scrambling over the controls.
“Ho ho ho, bombs away!” Santa shouted, allowing himself
a bit of a grin.
“Always a first for everything,” Ginger said, rolling up
her map.
Santa nodded and cracked his reins again. “Rudolph,
light ‘er up!”
The red beacon of his lead reindeer burst into brilliance
that both lit up and cut through the storm clouds, dazzling and eerie. That got
the attention of the pilots of both planes. To their credit, though, they held
their course and didn’t panic. Santa gave his team an extra kick and guided
them ahead and then across the bow of the two bombers before vanishing into the
night to continue the rest of his rounds.
“You let them see you.” Ginger was carefully measured,
neither accusing nor pleased.
“Seemed the least I could do,” Santa said. “Besides, it’s
not against the rules.”
There were rules against making himself known, but there
were also sub-rules and provisions. He was intimately familiar with them and
had skirted very edge of several with that little stunt, just as a way to thumb
his nose at the Powers. He hadn’t vanished in a puff of non-existence, so they’d
clearly let it slide.
Santa pulled out his list and drew a line through
Isabelle Rose Armando.
#
“’Mister Jose Armando, of the EPA, spoke to the press regarding
the immediate evacuation of the town of Pinnacle, Kentucky,’” Ginger said,
reading from a half-folded newspaper while her feet were kicked up on Santa’s
desk. For once, he didn’t mind the break in decorum. “’He indicated that there
had been errors in prior pollution-related lab work and that levels of several
contaminants were well beyond acceptable tolerances. All residents both in the
town and surrounding areas are being relocated with the assistance of FEMA and
the Red Cross. The President has already issued a statement that funds will be
freed up to aid in relocation, coverage of current and future medical needs
related to the pollution, and compensation for property seized by eminent domain.’”
Santa chuckled. “Funny how that worked out.”
Ginger nodded and continued. “’Mister Armando admitted
that the timing of the order on Christmas Day was unfortunate, but that the
discovery of the mistake and acting with the utmost of urgency was something of
a Christmas miracle. “Lives may be saved by today’s actions,” he said.’”
She tossed the paper on Santa’s desk and laced her
fingers behind her head. “Think he has any idea what happened?”
Santa shrugged. “He knows something happened, and that
he’s being used as cover. But he’s also smart enough to know it’s in the best
interest of everyone living there. The truth will probably come out sooner or
later, then he’ll know.”
“Just how deep do you think those bombs went?”
Santa had aimed the pair of bombs for a patch of boggy
land just on the northern outskirts of town. They’d penetrated like an Olympic
high diver and hundreds of cubic yards of muck had backfilled in their wakes. Safeguards
preventing them from arming had remained intact.
“Deep enough that it’ll be easier to cap it with a few
acres of concrete, declare it off-limits, and never let anyone near the place
again.”
“I saw in another report that the US Postal Service might
initiate action to revoke Pinnacle’s ZIP code,” Ginger said. “It’ll officially
cease to be a city.”
“Wiped from the map.” Santa nodded sagely.
“Sounds like the sort of thing the Powers That Be would
do. Letter of the law sort of thing.”
“That’s how the universe works. Ho, ho, ho.”
