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The Sky Splits Apart
On June 30, 1908, a 100,000-ton meteorite plunged to Earth above the sparsely populated tundra of Siberia. Angled 30 degrees to the horizon, it ripped through the atmosphere from southeast to northwest at 50 times the speed of sound and exploded four miles above the ground with the force of a 40-megaton nuclear bomb. Ash and pulverized debris soared 40 miles high and spread around the world, causing brilliant sunsets and sunrises as far away as Western Europe, glowing night skies bright enough to read by over much of the Earth, and seismic and magnetic perturbations 2500 miles from the explosion's epicenter.
A month later in North America, following an early wet spring, northern Michigan plunged into an extended drought that left the dense underbrush in the virgin forests dry, brittle, and flammable, perfect conditions for a rash of forest fires.
Was there a connection between the extraterrestrial visitor and the Michigan drought and fires? We will never know for sure, but something spawned the sudden shift in Michigan's weather that year.
The Devil Awakens
Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The devil always builds a chapel there;
And 'twill be found, upon examination,
The latter always has the largest congregation.
— Daniel Defoe |
Thursday—September 3, 1908
10:30 AM
Ten-year-old Henry Hardies had no idea how the fire could have raced out of control so fast. He only knew it had, and now they had to fight it.
He dug the shovel into the dry soil, scooped as much as he could lift, and tossed it on the closest flames. The blanket of dirt smothered a square yard of flames. Clouds of dust puffed three feet into the air. To his right, new flames sprouted, seemingly from nowhere. Henry threw another shovel of dirt on it, marveling at how the fire seemed to jump from one patch of dry grass to the next, like an invisible living thing springing from under his loads of dirt.
The main body of the fire burned less than six feet away. The dry wood that fueled it popped. Its flames roared like an enraged beast. When Henry looked up, he imagined wild, red eyes taunting him and flaming arms reaching for him, so he tried to focus on the closer burning grass. But the waves of heat pummeled him and drew his attention back to the bigger fire.
Is it the beast's breath? he wondered.
Like the summer just passed, September was starting out warm and dry, offering no relief to the parched soil, crackling grass, and brittle underbrush. Henry had helped create a pile of brush and branches over the past three days, dragging the scratchy stuff or tossing it from the back of the buckboard. He and his 12-year-old brother Eddie had worked every bit as hard as Papa and their older brother Adolph to clear another acre of dense northern Michigan forest. This morning, Papa had carefully poured a small amount of lamp kerosene on the upwind corner of the pile and put a match to it.
The wind had been light all morning. They piled the brush in a 50-foot clearing a full hundred yards from their main field, farther than that from the house and barn. Everything should have been fine. Just like the half-dozen other piles they'd burned over the summer.
But this fire sprang to life with all the fury of Hell itself. Flames sprinted up the side of the pile, hissing and popping, driven by the breeze that, without warning, became a gale.
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fiction 
