A Pagan's Nightmare Read Online Free PDF

that, Ned.”
    “We must consider all possibilities, Bill.”
    “Well, I have my official Prophetic Decoder calculator handy. Can you give me a sec?”
    “Why not? It’s just valuable airtime.” Ned paused, then whistled the first line of the
Mission Impossible
theme song. “Got your calculations yet, Bill?”
    “How wide is the eye? And what is the speed of the hurricane?”
    “Let’s say the eye is forty miles wide, and the winds are 160 miles per hour… a Category 5.”
    Ned could hear calculator buttons being pushed in rapid succession. “Just one more sec, Ned.”
    Ned tapped his fingers on his desk. “No rush at all, Bill. Shall I put on some background music, perhaps some Sinatra?”
    “The missing variable is the temperature of the Atlantic.”
    “Of course.”
    “But I can estimate. Here, I almost have the prophetic calculation. If the warhead were to plunge beneath the surface before
     detonation occurred, and the eye was forty miles wide and the hurricane’s maximum sustained winds were 160 miles per hour,
     then the result would be—”
    “Bill?”
    “Yes?”
    “The result would be that the little tropical fishies would somersault all the way to the Mediterranean. Next caller…
please!”
    Ned pressed line 2. “Who’s my second caller?”
    “Ned, this is Estella, from Tampa. I just left a breakfast meeting of Presbyterians for a Safer Coastline.”
    DJ Ned frowned into his mic. “That would be, um… the PFSC?”
    “That’s right. And at our meeting we were discussing these awful hurricanes and how the richest and godliest country on earth
     should be able to find a solution. So we’re forming a lobby group to encourage Boeing to manufacture huge fans, like giant
     propellers, to be built along the coast, from Tampa down to Miami and all the way up to St. Augustine. These fans, hundreds
     of them, could be turned on all at once to blow the hurricanes back out to sea.”
    Ned rubbed his beard, gripped his microphone. “You’re kidding, right?”
    “Not at all. And for aesthetic purposes, the fans could be painted in beachy colors, say a pastel peach, like the new line
     of cookware at Bed, Bath and the Eternal Beyond.”
    The Eternal Beyond?
Ned rolled his eyes. “Estella?”
    “Yes?”
    “That is without doubt the dumbest idea I’ve heard in my fifteen years of hosting this program. No, wait, it ranks second
     only to Bill’s.”
    “Regardless of your opinion, Ned, the PFSC must put pressure on Boeing.”
    “And how might you go about that, Estella?”
    “We’ll boycott.”
    “Who’ll boycott? You and your cohorts?”
    “The fortunate ones. Now, what about helping us lobby for those fans?”
    Now in the early stages of panic, Ned wiped the sweat from his forehead and wondered just how sick his coworkers really were.
     He was good friends with his producer—they had boated together on many a sunny weekend—though he held no particular affection
     for his gothic-dressing secretary. Still, Ned knew that even she had loved ones.
“Fans,
Estella?”
    A long pause was all Estella could manage at first. Then, “The PFSC must do all we can to protect Florida from nature.”
    “Sorry, but I think you’re just plain looney.” DJ Ned cut Estella off as a weather update scrolled across his monitor. He
     immediately thought of his listeners. “Listen up, folks. Hurricane Gretchen has made a turn eastward, which is bad news for
     us. Its forward motion is now twelve miles per hour, with maximum sustained winds at one-thirty. Yes, you heard right, one-hundred
     thirty mile-per-hour winds.”
    To Ned’s dismay, zealot winds seemed even stronger than tropical winds, and his palms were now sweatier than his forehead.
     He grabbed a paper towel from his desk drawer and dabbed himself. Yet he could not dab fast enough, so persistent was his
     sweat.
    Finally he tossed the soaked paper towel into his wastebasket, took a deep breath, and addressed his audience. “Crackhead,
     if you