Blast Between

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

Even space aside, the vacuum created in a massive explosion, would just as easily suck in a scream and dissolve it to silence.

The breeze whispered pleas. A gentle tugging on my light cotton shirt reminded me of my son trying to grab my attention with his sausage toddler fingers.

Aside from the light sway of sweet sea air, everything remained quiet. So dead silent that my jet lag threatened to pull me right under the veil of consciousness. If I weren't standing, I'd already be out. It wasn't easy to go from civilization to the middle of the ocean.

"You ready for this?" Colonel Cartwright seemed to appear out of the ether. I had no idea how he managed to sneak up on me when the terrain was flat beach for as far as the eye could see.

Was I ready for death and destruction? No, not really. But I sure as hell wasn't going to say that to the square jawed Army man puffing on a stogie next to me.

I looked at him. He appeared wildly out of place standing on an idyllic beach out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Something about being fully dressed in uniform in 87 degrees felt just as absurd as everything else we were doing here. His dress shoes dug into the sand added to the lunacy.

"Yeah, I'm ready," my arms were folded and I looked out into the blue abyss.

"Something wrong there Billy?"

The Colonel knew that I hated when he infantilized my name and the man relished any opportunity to get beneath my sunburnt skin. He made it clear that he saw me as a glasses-wearing, pencil pushing, geek. Ironic considering his weapons of mass destruction needed scientists like me to function.

"Nope. Just looking out there and thinking about all the sea creatures who'll get the shock of their lives in a few hours."

He let out a hearty laugh with a mocking edge. The lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled.

"You feelin' bad for the dolphins and the sharks and the fishies?" he grinned widely, his incisors looking like they could tear the flesh from my bones; and his cold gray eyes looking like they'd enjoy the endeavor.

I grit my teeth together. This man clearly had no regard for marine life and was iffy at best when it came to human life. He hadn't batted an eye when he led the military evacuation of the residents of the pristine island paradise in preparation for the operations.

"Yeah, actually, I do feel bad for the oceanic life," it was futile, but once the words slipped past my chapped lips, they wouldn't stop. "Here are these sharks and fish and marine life in the reefs, living their lives. They have no knowledge of us, of this above-water world, and they're about to be...obliterated."

"Blown clear outta the water," he laughed again, tapping his cigar so that gray cinders would fall onto the sand. "Well, better those fishies than our country's citizens," Cartwright said between puffs, completely missing the point in a truly spectacular logical fallacy.

"Do less feeling and do more science-y stuff. This Castle Bravo test cost a fortune kiddo. Shouldn't you be measuring the barometric pressure or setting up equipment or something?"

"I've completed the checklist. Everything is in place."

"Good," he clapped me on the shoulder a little too hard and I swayed to keep my balance.

Operation Crossroads in '46 and Sandstone in '48 were successful. I wasn't quite sure how or why the country had gotten to Operation Greenhouse. I never wanted to be the bearer of chaos and destruction, but here I was.

The more I dreaded the countdown, the faster it seemed to approach.

The sun slid across the sky as day dipped into evening. Around the shot cab, high-speed cameras were trained through an arc of mirror towers to witness the dry fuel hydrogen bomb.

It was my task to prepare the Marshall Islands where we were stationed and gather as much data as possible. It didn't matter that I knew that this bomb would not drop on a city, it still made me sick to think of its existence, of this testing. Unfortunately, my career hung in the balance back on the mainland.

The device was to be detonated on an artificial island off of Namu Island. The blast was slated to produce 6-8 megatonnes. I wasn't the designer of the death device, just the observer of the data, but I felt like a grim reaper nonetheless.

6:45pm was go-time.

My sweaty watchband clung to my wrist. I turned its face towards me and saw that it was 6:30.

Inside my shaking body, my intestines gurgled beneath my clenching stomach. If I possessed the power to call off this test, I would in a heartbeat.

Feeling physically ill, I felt the seconds tick away, peeling minutes off the scale of time until it was 6:44.

I wanted it to be over. To be somewhere else. To escape this planet run by the machinations of man with dreams of war. Maybe I could climb inside a rocket and claw my way to space. I could look down on this blue marble and bathe in the silence of sleeping gods.

No such luck.

I vaguely recall hearing the countdown between the static crackle. A firm voice, flipping through numbers. The serene evening of a tropical sunset about to be set ablaze. I swallowed thickly, my throat clinging to itself with a click.

None of us were facing the blast zone. I stood between Cartwright to my left and a fellow scientist, Finzer, on my right. Shields and mirrors would relay the visual to us.

4…3…2…1

Time stopped.

In those last few seconds, the eerie quiet from before became magnified. Just like when the crickets and the birds and the trees fall quiet right before a tornado comes tearing through the air with a scream.

The bomb exploded.

“Exploded” isn’t enough of a word. There isn’t a word that encapsulates what Castle Bravo did.

At the moment, I didn’t know that there was a design flaw. I didn’t yet know that instead of being 6 or 8 megatonnes, it was 14.8 megatonnes. Which was 1,000 times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I didn’t know that the blast tore a chunk out of the earth more than a half mile wide and hundreds of feet deep, ejecting several million tons of radioactive debris in the air. No…I’d learn all of this later.

For now I was on the ground, not realizing I was screaming until someone told me to stop.

The glasses on my face were crooked and cracked so I stared up blearily at a Colonel with the same bright orange ear plugs in his ears that I had wedged into mine. There was also a scientist hunched over me. I could tell because of her coat.

But something was wrong.

I had a searing pain in my head and a heaviness on the whole right side of my head and face. Ringing reverberated in my ears as if I had been in the center of a great bell that was forcefully struck.

Confusion gripped me, and with it, the cold chilling hand of terror.

The man above me was a Colonel – so his bars read – but it was not Cartwright.

I shot backwards, scrambling away on my hands and feet. “What the hell is this?” I squeaked, my own voice barely audible. Because I almost couldn’t hear myself, more fear poured down my shivering spine.

The Colonel had his hands out in a calming manner. “It’s alright Bill. It’s over,” he assured.

He was trying to make me feel better? He called me Bill?

“Wh…who are you?” I screeched at the scientist.

The woman twisted her face in confusion. “It’s me,” she yelled, but it sounded like a whisper. “Doctor Hanson.”

“What? Who are you?” I turned towards the Colonel.

“I’m Colonel Wyatt. You know that already son. Did you hit your head or something?”

The Colonel turned to the scientist. “Get a medic. Now.”