Note: For those of you who want the latest version of this story, let me know and I'll get you a copy. You know how I am about rewriting and things like that, so this story is constantly being updated, especially as I learn more about the nuclear tests that have already happened, and their possible effect on the premise of my own story. dnw
Uninvited
“What’s this, Kayla?”
“Just read it.”
Lex glanced at the outside of the invitation Kayla had thrust in his hands. “‘You are cordially invited...’? Kayla, what is this?”
She sighed, as if dealing with a slow student. “Lex, just read it!”
He opened it. “‘...to the end of the world.’ Cute, Kayla, real cute. What inspired this display of gruesome joviality?”
“Lex, look around you! Two days ago we were checking out that new cave. Before that we were at my parents’ house. You were--once again--drooling over my mom’s sabre, and Dad was telling me old Navy stories...then two days ago, there was that minor quake and we got stuck. We dug our way out, but out to what? Look! We’re out of food, almost out of water, and we appear to have missed the late-breaking news of nuclear attack--and you have the gall to be sarcastic?”
Lex bit his lip, trying to repress the smile that was threatening to surface in the face of Kayla’s own sarcasm. The smile faded when he noticed the blisters on her hands and neck. He looked down at his own hands, surprised at the blisters he saw forming on his own wrists.
“What is it, Lex?” Kayla asked, seeing his stricken expression.
“Nothing,” he said, putting his hands behind his back. “At least we survived, Kay.”
Incensed by his once-again calm approach to the fact that their entire world had disappeared, his strange behavior was instantly forgotten. Her caustic reply whipped toward him, borne on the sharp wind whistling across the surface of the ever changing landscape. “Oh, that’s just wonderful, Lex! You, me, and all this sand!”
“Getting depressed doesn’t do any good, though.”
“Lex, you’re always calm! Don’t you ever just get angry sometimes? We’re going to die. Maybe you don’t quite understand yet--do I need to explain this concept again?”
“Kayla, calm down. We’re gonna make it.”
“You are so full of it, Lex!” she yelled at him, tears glistening in her eyes. She whirled around and stomped away, bursts of dust coating her shoes like the gloom shadowing her deep blue eyes.
Lex’s eyes widened at this latest insult, hoping she didn’t mean it. He shoved his hands in his pockets, sighed, and watched her walk away. Suddenly she turned, her honey-blonde knee-length hair whipping wraithlike around her.
“You don’t get it! You’re an orphan! Except for me, you’re used to being alone! Now, you’ve still got me, and I’ve got you, but my parents--my only family--are gone! And I don’t even know what killed them!” A strangled cry wrenched itself from deep inside her and threw itself into the merciless wind. Kayla sank down into the powdery sand, drew her knees up to her chest, and rested her chin on her knees, tears streaming down her face and dripping noiselessly onto her jeans and into the sand.
Lex strode to her side, knelt, and wrapped his arms around her, feeling her shudder with the effort of withholding sobs. As her weeping tapered off, she began to cough. The phlegmy sound, seeming as though it was coming form the very tips of her toes, finally subsided. She turned to the side and spit out blood, then swivelled around, fixing a horrified gaze on Lex.
“Wha-what was that?” she whispered.
“I don’t know, Kayla.”
“Lex, your mouth!” Kayla exclaimed.
“What?”
“You have a huge sore right under your lip!”
“Don’t worry about me, Kay,” Lex said reassuringly. “I’m fine.”
“But--”
“Kayla, I’m fine.”
“Whatever.” She sullenly turned away, pretending to study the view.
There wasn’t much to see. The sky was a mottled gray-green, the result of fallout and reminiscent of moldy cheddar cheese. The horizon was seemingly unbroken, with only bare, high sandy hills where the vegetation-covered mountains used to be.
‘So much for purple mountain’s majesty!’ Lex thought bitterly, his mind taking him back to three days ago--was it really only three days?--when these hills had been lush, verdant mountains, brilliantly emerald in the mid-June weather. He and Kayla--best friends since she was four, he five--were exploring yet another cave, after spending the week at her parents’ house. He could still picture those days....
Lex was jolted out of his memory by Kayla’s shifting. He looked down at her, startled by the deterioration he saw there. Her arm, where he’d been resting his hand, had a large bruise on it. The blisters on her neck and hands were growing steadily worse, and her skin was constantly peeling. She turned, and sucked in some air.
“I’m really sorry,” she whispered. “I just lost it when I thought about life...before.” She eyed him. “That’s what you were thinking about too, wasn’t it?”
A momentary look of surprise crossed his face. “Actually, yeah, it was.” He smiled at her.
“Can I talk about it, Lex?” she asked quietly.
“Sure. Lord knows I’ve babbled your ear off about my family!” He smiled; she chuckled.
“Well, yeah, that’s true....” Her voice faded, then grew stronger as her memory became clearer....
“My parents always dreamed of a home in the mountains. Well, after Mom finally talked Dad away from the ocean long enough for him to see how beautiful the Rockies were!” She laughed lightly. “After the military life--you know, with Dad in the Navy, and an officer, no less--they were ready to settle down. Of course, I’m sure my coming while they were on leave in Maryland helped that decision!”
Lex sniggered. “I’m sure!”
“Anyway, Dad retired when I was four, and we looked at land for, oh, I don’t know, months. It all looked the same to my four-year-old eyes--trees, dirt, bugs, grass. Then one day Dad came bursting through the door of our apartment in Murray, swooped Mom up into his arms, and swung her around. He’d found our new home.”
Kayla paused to hitch in a breath. “You could see our house from the interstate. It--our house, I mean--was beautiful, but my favorite room was the old room.”
“Old room?” Lex interrupted. “What was that?”
“That’s what I called that room of my mom’s with all the antiques in it. There was the player piano--”
“With all that music!”
“Yeah, and the carved tables Dad brought from Guam, with the village scenes carved into the panels and top...and that awesome Empire Revival couch from the ‘20's. Remember that?”
“Yeah.”
“I loved that room, but what I remember--and miss--the most are Dad’s old Navy journals. They described a world so different from mine, one I could barely imagine. Whoever heard of calling a plain old door a ‘port’ or a bathroom a ‘head’?” She laughed to herself, and ran a hand through her hair, pretending not to notice the large clumps of honey-blonde strands falling out. “And now I”m 18, and in a completely different world than the one I used to be in.” Her voice, just minutes before light and happy, developed a bitter, sarcastic tone again. “Look at all the room! Wow! And the color scheme!”
Kayla’s voice dropped, a note of resignation creeping into it. “Thanks to our stupidity--can you believe we still had that nuclear stockpile all these years?--I’ve got more room than I ever dreamed of. It’s our own fault, though. Our Department of Defense kept modernizing and building the arsenal, and now everything is peachy-keen. We know our bombs work, and we get to survive without food, water, or other people.”
“Wait a minute,” Lex interjected. “If there isn’t anyone else, why did you sign your invitation ‘the four survivors’?”
“Because I cannot allow myself to think we’re totally....” Her voice faded.
Lex leaned closer. “What?”
Kayla’s eyes fluttered as she leaned more heavily into his arms. “Can’t...breathe. My lungs hurt.” She coughed weakly. “We can’t...be alone....I wouldn’t be...able to...handle it if--” She was cut off by another fit of violent coughing. She turned to the side, vomited blood, and stared at him, her eyes wide, the desolation rising in the deep blue wells. Her ragged breathing left her body for the last time in a tortured exhalation, and the now-lifeless body sagged in Lex’s arms. He stared at her, disbelieving, and saw the deep lines marring the youthful face. His throat constricted and his eyes closed in mourning, he began to lay her down, then suddenly looked up, a light of renewed determination flashing in his eyes. “I won’t leave her here!” he whispered fiercely, staggering to his feet. He ignored the flash of pain that shot through his body when he lifted her, and lurched off across the vast alien landscape.
* * *
General Daniel R. Shelton, United States Army, and Louis Smith, nuclear physicist in charge of DoD Project 1953-B, strode across the colorless terrain.
“So it was successful, Doctor?”
“Yes, general. There is nothing left--alive, that is--in the 180 square miles of the Sevier Desert we detonated 1953-B in.”
“The three hick towns?”
“Gone.”
“What about those two skeletons?”
“I’ll have to ship those back to my lab at Warren for more comprehensive tests, but my hypothesis is that they accidentally stumbled onto the situation after the explosion.”
“With all the precautions our boys from Warren and Nellis took?” the general asked contemptuously.
“Sir, with all due respect, I don't think you understand how this bomb works. It detonates silently, sending atomic waves below the surface to destroy foundations, and an extremely radioactive--close to 2000 rads in measure--fog across the surface to decimate all living things. However, this prototype was more silent than even our most optimistic projections predicted, so it would have been easy for hikers to suddenly find the test site and not know what they found.”
“Yet it still has fallout.”
“Yes, but only for five to seven days, unlike the ones we had at the end of World War II. When we first conceived of a localized nuclear weapon, in 1946, we never thought we could get it to work as well as it does now, only 57 years after its original conception, and this is only the first test. These people must have come upon the test site in the first days after the detonation.”
“How do you know?”
“This strong fallout rapidly accelerates the symptoms of radiation poisoning and, after death, human decomposition. That’s part of what makes it so deadly. Besides, we dropped 1953-B in June, and it’s August now, which gave the decomposition factor plenty of time.”
“I see. Excellent, Doctor Smith. Let’s head back to base. I need to prepare my statement, and you need to write up the official report stating that Project 1953-B, Localized Nuclear Weaponry Testing, was successful.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, and Doctor Smith?”
“Yes?”
“Not a word to your team.”
“Of course not, sir.”
“We’re still working on getting the, uh, right information to the right people. And we have to get crews in here tonight to rebuild the few roads and transplant some trees onto those hills.”
“Yes, sir.”
General Shelton scrutinized the physicist. “Let me know about those skeletons, Doctor. I’ll have to explain how they survived the blast.”
Louis Smith solemnly looked back at the general. “What skeletons, sir?”
"Very good, Doctor. Carry on."
