Radiation

The heat from the initial blast was intense. It didn’t burn, but it came close. Hotter than anything Jason had ever experienced while just walking down the street. Like standing too close to a bonfire. It lasted only a few seconds.

Everyone knew it was coming. Even the people who had stood with the president until the end had begun to admit that he had managed to produce the worst possible outcome. It was a perverse irony – the end beggars the word – that the blast came from the very place that the president had long proclaimed his superior ability to negotiate with and ensure improved relations with. This blast, along with all of the other, simultaneous blasts, were the ultimate proof that the president had done everything they imagined he had done and worse.

This president had never been the least bit presidential. He was childish and petty. He made up demeaning nicknames for anyone he didn’t like and used them freely, even in debates and press conferences. The educated sector of the population found him odious and embarrassing, and took some comfort from the fact that he had won because of an ancient, dated element of the political system, not by winning the most votes.

Like a lot of people, Jason feared it would end badly. And it had just ended as badly as possible. No worse outcome was conceivable.

Jason had been reading up on the effects of a hydrogen bomb detonation, which are not entirely clear because, before that day, no one had ever used one in war. They had done lots of tests in the Pacific, but they always tried to clear the people out of the way. It didn’t always work. They still caused lots of radiation poisoning among the nearby populations, but those people were not very close to the blast sites at the time of the detonation, and there were no buildings around, so no one knew exactly what would happen.

He couldn’t know for sure, but he figured he was about twenty miles from the blast. One source suggested that burns were possible 15 miles from a hydrogen blast, and he had not suffered any, just the intense heat, so he concluded the bomb had been aimed at the major air force base that was about 20 miles north northeast of his location.

He was in a park with his boyfriend, enjoying the day, not paying any attention to the news, so he had no idea what exactly had happened since yesterday to set off a nuclear exchange. Now their cell phones didn’t work, so they had no way of finding out. Not that it mattered. If a hydrogen bomb had detonated 20 miles away, there wasn’t much point in worrying about anything. It made far more sense to assume that the one that had just detonated 20 miles away was one of several their enemy/ally/enemy/ally/enemy had launched at the country, not a solitary bomb, and that his side had launched as much of its arsenal as it could at the enemy, with the earth becoming uninhabitable in the near future as a likely outcome.

Jason had always said that, if a major nuclear exchange occurred, he wanted to be at ground zero and get incinerated in the initial blast because he had zero desire to stick around to see the aftermath. As it happened, he was not so lucky.

The moment after they felt the heat of the blast, Jason and his boyfriend looked at each other. They knew what had happened. They knew nothing mattered now. They considered their options, which were few. Both likely had radiation poisoning that would kill them in a few days.

So the first thing they did was have sex, openly and notoriously, in the park. No one else was around. The silence was deafening. No birds. No cicadas. Just the two of them grunting and moaning in pleasure as they enjoyed each other.

After they finished, having nothing better to do, they decided to walk towards what they assumed was ground zero for the blast, to the northeast. When they reached the street, they saw more evidence of the blast. All the cars were stopped where they had been when the blast hit. The traffic lights were completely dark. Not flashing yellow – no lights at all.

Jason and his boyfriend discussed which route to take. They decided to go east to the U.S. highway that ran north to the vicinity of the air force base. They doubted they would get close enough to see the fires the blast must have caused, but they might see some interesting sights as they walked. They could find a spot to curl up and sleep after the sun went down.

Someone had already broken into and looted the first convenience store they came to. They thought it would take longer, but there was no sign of any law enforcement about, and apparently people took their opportunities as they came. Jason and his boyfriend went in and picked up some food – not the sort of thing either of them usually ate, but they knew they would get hungry soon and anything was better than nothing.

They walked on several more blocks and came to an intersection with pharmacies on opposite corners. They saw that both appeared to have the doors broken through. They went into the nearer of the two and found it looted. They walked to the back and saw that the pharmacy itself had also been picked over, all of the well known pain medications and others with street value gone. Knowing more about pharmaceuticals than most, Jason rooted around and found some less well known pills for the two of them, in case either ended up in pain before they died, and something he knew would reliably kill them if/when they decided to hasten their ends.

It seemed peculiar to them that they had missed the looters and saw no one else out and about. They could only conclude that the looters had come out on strategic missions, but that nearly everyone else was following the advice of the authorities to stay inside to minimize exposure. In that part of the world, tornado shelters were not uncommon, and it seemed reasonable to think they would provide protection from radiation as they did from tornadoes.

Justin’s problem with that concept was that no one could stay in a shelter indefinitely, and emerging to a world without electricity or any sign of a functioning government in which people had already looted all the easy targets was not a world he wanted to live in. Anarchy was fine as an ideal goal, but this was not an effective way to achieve it.

They assumed that, as they got closer to what passed for a downtown area in their small city they would see more people. The city was small, but it had its share of the pathology that was common throughout the land, including homeless people, who presumably had no place to hide during the blast and may have had no warning, just as Justin and his boyfriend had had none.

As they expected, near downtown, such as it was, they found an elderly black man sitting in a doorway.

“Any idea what happened?” the man asked as they approached.

“We’re not sure,” Justin replied. “We think a nuclear bomb exploded up near the air force base.”

“Ain’t that sumthin? So we all gonna die?”

“Well, we were all going to die someday anyway, but now we’ll likely die a lot faster.”

“How fast?”

“No telling. Could be days, could be months. Depends on how much radiation we just got. Were you outside for the flash?”

“You mean when it got all hot for a second?”

“Yeah.”

“I’s sittin' right here.”

“So you likely got about as much radiation as we did.”

“What’s this radiation stuff?”

“It’s kinda like sunlight, but invisible. It’s what they use for X-rays. You know, when they give you X-rays, the people wear those heavy things to protect themselves?”

“Yeah.”

“A little bit of radiation is okay, for X-rays, but we likely got way too much from the bomb that went off. I think it will kill us, could be slowly.”

“Well, ain’t that the shit. I got nothin’ goin’ on anyway, might as well go ahead and die. Is it gonna hurt?”

“Don’t know. It might be pretty unpleasant. You may get nauseous and vomit a lot.” “That ain’t no thing. Done that lots. Just like being drunk.”

“We might also starve to death.”

“Heh, heh. Nah, I ain’t.”

“How’s that?”

“You college boys?”

“Not any more.”

“Okay. I don’t trust those college boys. They get drunk and come down here and fuck people up for no reason.”

“We used to be college boys, but not that kind. Right now, you, me, and everybody else is in the same boat and it’s sinking.”

“Well, I gots me a little secret. I know how to get into the barbeque place up the street. They got a whole freezer full of meat up there.”

“It’s not going to stay frozen for long without electricity.”

“Yeah, but I’ll eat as much as I can,” he said, laughing.

“Is there a safe place to sleep around here?”

“I sleep out on the street every night. Don’t nobody bother me.”

Jason and his boyfriend had discussed the question and were of two minds. On the one hand, they had seen literally no one except the homeless man on the street, which suggested that everyone was hunkered down inside and likely to stay there for the immediate future. On the other hand, given the complete absence of any law enforcement, the area could easily become a bad replica of the wild west very soon, and neither of them had any way to defend themselves. Lots of people in the area had guns and would likely be only too happy to shoot anyone they perceived as any kind of threat. The two of them were ready to die, but they did not want to get shot, which might not kill them quickly and would be more painful than the lethal medications they had.

They found an office building with a glass door. They broke it and went inside, up to the second floor, and locked themselves into an inner office. They had sex again, and went to sleep. They slept soundly and for an unusually long time, waking up around noon the next day. They felt oddly lethargic. They ate some of the food they had looted the day before and decided to continue their journey northward.

Before the interstate, the highway they were on was the major U.S. highway between the much larger city to the north of the one where they lived and their city. At the southeast corner of the larger city was a major air force base that they both assumed had been the target of the bomb whose blast they had felt the day before. At their starting point, there was no obvious evidence of a nuclear blast except the presence of stalled cars on the highway and the fact that the traffic lights were completely dark.

They stopped at another looted convenience store, found some bottles of water and took them because they were thirsty. After a few hours of walking, they figured they had gone about five miles and so were roughly 15 miles from the site of the blast, according to their best reckoning.

They now began to see direct evidence of the blast. Small trees had been knocked down. The north walls of buildings were black. Continuing northward, the signs of the blast became more common.

They realized that all of the abandoned cars they had seen so far were empty. Now they came upon cars with drivers still sitting in them, dead. It was a peculiar site. Many more trees had fallen. Buildings were damaged beyond having black walls. Stores showed no sign of looting, but all their windows were shattered. The obvious inference was that they were now close enough that everyone who had been at that distance from the blast had died instantly, so no one was around to loot the stores. They poked around to see if they ran across anything they might want in the next two days or so.

Jason gave half of the lethal medications he had pilfered from the pharmacy to his boyfriend so he could kill himself when he wanted to, in case they got separated somehow.

"So, how long do you want to keep living?" Jason asked.

"No clue. Does it matter?" his boyfriend replied.

"I don't really want to interact with any authority figures," Jason replied.

"What authority figures?" his boyfriend asked, laughing. "How can anyone claim any authority at this point? Seems to me we're pretty much back in a Lockean state of nature now."

"I don't disagree, but if any military or police types with guns show up, I doubt they'll see it that way. They won't be interested in any discussions of seventeenth century political philosophy," Jason replied.

"I'll give you that. We need to decide if we want to continue north or stop here. It's starting to look less likely that we'll be able to find any place to sleep up here as easily as we did last night. None of the buildings is intact," said the boyfriend.

"That's true," said Jack. "This is just so romantic, I thought we could share the moment."

"ROMANTIC?" boyfriend asked, incredulous. "The entire population of the country is dead or hiding in shelters, and you think that's romantic?"

"Well, it's romantic for you and me. It's a tragicomedy. We're together, so it's a comedy, and we can die together, turning the comedy into a tragedy. Have you ever noticed that, in most mainstream movies, if there is a gay couple, one partner dies, leaving the other one alone? Four Weddings and a Funeral, the fat guy dies. The funeral of the title is his. That funeral scene wrecks me every time. A Single Man? We only learn about halfway through that his boyfriend died in the car wreck during a visit home and his asshole family doesn't want boyfriend there for the funeral. Then our hero dies in the end. Brokeback Mountain, Texas guy dies from a violent attack. It's gross. We have the option to write our own ending. Sort of. Thanks to an idiot president and a nuclear attack," Jason said. "We can die together and write a script that no one will ever read. THAT'S romantic as fuck. I weep to think on it."

"What about Jeffrey? No one dies in Jeffrey. 'Yoko Ono... To see the apartment,'" boyfriend offers.

"It's a comedy. Death hangs over the entire film. The whole point is that he decides to stop having sex to avoid getting AIDS. 'JUST SEX?'" said Jason.

"Trick. No one dies. He calls the guy's number and gets the answering machine at the end," boyfriend replies.

"Too gay. Not really mainstream," Jason replies. "Same problem with Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Straight people don't get drag queens in the middle of Australia. 'Just what this country needs, a cock in a frock on a rock.'"

"Sometimes, you're endearing. Other times, you're just annoying," said boyfriend.

"But now, I'm all you've got," said Jason, smiling.

"Oh, that's endearing," boyfriend replied. "Also, we should turn back because the corpses will start to rot soon and I do not want to have to enjoy that smell."

"Will they? Or will the blast have killed all the microorganisms that eat dead bodies as well?" Jason wondered aloud.

"Do we know?" boyfriend asked.

"How the fuck would I know?" Jason asked.

"You're the one who did research on the effects of hydrogen bomb blasts, Mr. Romantic," said boyfriend.

"Well, you and I are still here, and it stands to reason that anyone who was inside near where we were when the blast hit is also still alive, so that would include bugs," Jason replied

"But the cicadas all stopped. Did you notice that? High summer and no cicadas. That's just weird," said boyfriend.

"Maybe they were just shell shocked from the blast. We can't hear them here because now we're close enough that they did all die. Now I'm curious. I want to go back to see if we hear any cicadas," Jason said.

"Oh, lawd, the entire country is dead and you want to conduct an experiment on cicada survival," said boyfriend.

"You mean you're not curious?" asked Jason.

"No, I'm tired. We've been walking all day and I will be ready to go to sleep soon after the sun goes down, so I want to be someplace where we can find a building to sleep in," said boyfriend.

"Or we could just go ahead and die now. Get it over with. Do you love me?" asked Jason.

"Does it matter?" asked boyfriend.

"No, I guess it doesn't. Well, to get the full romantic impact out of the story, it would help if we were madly in love. The whole Romeo and Juliet thing, you know," said Jason.

"Who's Juliet here?" asked boyfriend.

"Well, um...." said Jason.

"Shut up," interjected boyfriend.

"Yes, ma'am," replied Jason.

The boyfriend slapped him playfully.

"We could go east to the lake!" boyfriend exclaimed. "The scenery will be better over there."

"Yes, let's do that. Then we can fuck on the shore and die. It will be glorious," replied Jason.

So they turned east on the next major street and walked towards the lake. They were just over a mile from the lake, so it didn't take long for them to get there. As they walked, they continued discussing their next move.

"So how do you want this to play out?" Jason asked.

"What do you mean?" boyfriend replied.

"Do you want me to throw you onto the ground and rip your clothes off, or embrace you and kiss you deeply, or what?" Jason asked.

"Well, embracing me and kissing me would be more romantic, but..." boyfriend said.

"But what?" Jason asked.

"The Living End! Duh. You didn't think of that one, did you? It's perfect. The ho tries to kill himself in the end, but he fails! It's perfect! We'll both die in the end instead! In flagrente delicto! Beauty, eh?" said boyfriend.

"You're right! It's brilliant! Why didn't I think of that? Damn! That's hot," said Jason. They got to the lake, undressed sufficiently to make the scene play out as they intended, and took their lethal medications. Then they started having sex. After they finished, they lay together, waiting for the medications to take effect.

Then they died.