Radiation Children

1

Nuclear bombs can kiss my ass.

 In a fireball with a radius of one-point-nine-one miles, not only would everything in the fireball's path be vaporized—reduced to mere atoms—but when that explosion hits the ground, a three hundred foot deep crater is formed. The radiation radius is seven-point-six miles, which means that every human and animal in that range is violently damaged beyond repair and will die in the following month. Fifteen percent of the radiation survivors will die from cancer.  

Destruction, destruction.

The numbers above are estimated for a one-megaton bomb.

One-megaton bombs don't exist anymore because everyone likes bigger, better, the best, so every nuclear weapon in the world is over ten times larger than one-megaton. That multiplies the numbers above by ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty.

There aren't enough bomb shelters in the world to save us all, so if you aren't near a blast site when the nukes go off and you're not filthy rich or extremely lucky, welcome to your new reality for the next seventy-two hours: vomiting, bloody diarrhea, tremors, seizures, death.

Don't forget about nuclear fallout. Or the irradiated shriveled-up monsters lurking through the hazy aftermath. Or the assholes who launched the bombs in the first place—they storm the streets, perfectly immune to radiation and fallout, looking for kids to kidnap like in a horror story.

Those assholes took everything from me. My family, my life, my world. 

I can't get my world or my old life back, but I sure as hell am going to get my family back, because I plan on making some explosions myself. 

But I'm going to get it all back, because I plan to make some explosions myself. 

* * *

I have a talent: I can read anywhere, while doing anything: walking, showering, eating, playing soccer...it's a talent I've cultivated since birth, a skill that led Mom to ban books at the dinner table and Dad to say, "I just don't care" every time I walk into a wall or slip in the shower because I'm not paying attention.

The morning the bombs went off was the morning that I was so sure my world was going to end if I failed my upcoming biology exam. I used one hand to balance my biology textbook against a sturdy vase of sunflowers and stirred my cereal with my other hand. The house around me was a cacophony of normal morning madness: Dad flipped bacon in a pan, the Keurig ground out Mom's coffee, and my older brother slammed doors and closets upstairs. 

"Bio?" Dad asked as he sat down across from me at the kitchen table with a plate of bacon and strawberries.

"Yes," I said without looking up. "Test on DNA replication today."

"You're crushing your Cheerios with your spoon, sweetheart." Mom leaned down beside Dad and snagged a piece of bacon. I lifted my spoon out of the dregs of my milk and saw that she was right; Cheerio dust swam through the milk. I sat the spoon down, picked up the textbook, and lifted it close to my face, trying to press out the sounds of Luka's bristling anger and the smells of bacon and coffee.

Helicase breaks the hydrogen bonds holding the contemporary bases togeth—

Luka banged a door so hard that the entire kitchen table shook, making my baby sister squeal with laughter. I snapped my textbook shut, irritated, "What is he looking for?"

"Take a guess," Mom said. She sat at the table beside Dad with her coffee mug and sighed. "I'm gonna put a cowbell on that phone of his."

"I'd still lose it," Luka grumbled as he bounded into the kitchen with his backpack slung over one bony shoulder. He moved the canisters of sugar and tea sachets. "Has anybody seen it?"