We'd been living in this house for a few years. Nothing would have really prepared me for what was about to happen. Sure, they told us that if a disaster ever hit that we'd just have to hide in our basement and put on gas masks...that everything would blow over quickly. That's not exactly how it happened.
my three little children were playing in the living room. It was at this moment, while I was leaning against my broom with a sun-splashed warmth coating my dress and apron, that I saw a flash of light. Almost immediately there was a plume of green and purple smoke shooting up with an orange-tinged halo near the origin of the flash.
In an instant, my children were in the basement, wrapping their faces with their masks. This wasn’t the first time we had practiced this, it was just the first time my husband wasn’t with me. This time, I was scared.
A terrible rumble started. Legos on the floor started to dance on their own. My gaze whiplashed from the Legos to my children’s faces. Their eyes were fixed on mine, looking for any strength I could give them. Then it hit.
WHAMMMM!
Stuff started falling off the shelves around us and dust clouded the air. We had secured the shelves but didn’t think about its contents that much. It’s amazing how much your thoughts slow down when something this traumatic happens in your life. Rapidly ducking to the floor and covering our heads, I felt a book hit my hand. My hand started to bleed and it hurt like the dickens, but we were ok. My husband had engineered this basement very well, but we didn’t really expect the earth movement.
My husband was an amazing man! He was the top scientist at Space Kahnex where they manufactured satellites and atomic clocks, an interesting pair. I knew he couldn’t be ok. The time everything happened must have been around his lunch break and he was surely close to his lab. From the colors of smoke that I saw in the distance before sheltering in our “Bunker” as we called it, I knew it was the lab.
Cesium was my husband’s expertise. It was stable only under pressurized conditions or when contained in kerosene. Expose it to the outside air and it lit up like a firecracker. The smoke billows purple. I couldn’t tell by the green smoke if it was from barium salts or molybdenum. Both burn green, but one is toxic when airborne and the other, not as much. I was pretty sure it was molybdenum because of the orange tinge around the edges, but then again, it could just mean the temperature was cooler at those edges. You can’t be married to a scientist for 7 years and not learn something about science, especially when you have to practice drills all the time in case something bad happens at the nearby plant.
Perhaps it was a poor choice on our part, but we had a single light bulb in the first room of the bunker. It never did stay attached to the ceiling, and right now, it was flickering and swinging back and forth. It was an afterthought, but hey, it was light. The flickering just made our nerves stay on edge longer than they probably would have otherwise.
I wasn’t calm. I need assurances. “Jenna, honey, go get the radio.” Even in these conditions, I still recognized her cute frizzled pony tails bobbing around as she skipped over to get it.
I trusted someone would be broadcasting. Radio signals travel far, so if I were to get news, it would be through the radio. As I tended to my wounded hand and checked my boys, Lotkin and Gigas, for any damage, Jenna came back with the radio, her little yellow dress perfectly accenting her dark brown skin. Down here, it was as if nothing ever happened. We were ok. We just needed some comfort from outside the Bunker.
I turned it off. We would no doubt need to conserve our energy. Our battery powered generator would last a while, but I didn’t know how much “while” we would have to stay down here.
The rumbling had stopped, and it seemed like all was quiet outside, so I had the kids go into their hideout rooms within the Bunker. I had an aching feeling in my bones that the loud boom and the scraping sound of metal and wood from above that the house was gone, or at best, battered and twisted up. While the kids were distracted, I took the opportunity to assess the situation upstairs. I put on some protective gear and approached the door. The trap door to the basement was made of steel and the walls were reinforced with sleeved rebar. We were safe, but I wasn’t sure I could get out. The steel was bumpy, as if a thousand baseballs had hit it from the other side. That wasn’t a good thing, other than we had been protected. The seal had not been disturbed, fortunately.
I tried opening the door, but it didn’t seem to budge. Gigas must have heard me struggling. Even at 11 years old, he’d been able to grow into a strong boy. He was built like his dad, sturdy and stout. Together, Gigas and I got the door to open a little, and with a rhythmic open-shut, open-shut motion, we were able to force it open enough that the debris on top met at an upside-down V with the door, holding it open.
Gigas peeked his head up above the ground level after I managed to poke my head out. The house was gone. There was a green haze left blanketing the ground. Water was shooting up where the sink stood just moments earlier like a geyser. I was still panting from our struggle to get the door open, taking in all the view of destruction everywhere around me when I heard a bone crushing scream. It snapped me out of my daze from the devastation. I looked at my son and saw he had removed his mask.
“No! Put that back on!” I screamed through my mask. I immediately grabbed his cold metal and rubber mask to get it back on him when I saw the red burns quickly surface on his formerly soft fair skin. I elbowed the shards of wood holding up the door to let the door drop and seal while I grabbed Gigas, quickly pulling him down the stairs. I ripped off his mask. He must have pulled his mask back and been exposed to the green haze. It was barium salts, for sure. Molybdenum wouldn’t do that!
We were ok downstairs with the filtration system. However, Gigas had exposed himself to whatever was in the mist with barium salt residue for sure. I ripped his outer layer of clothes off as he writhed in pain. His muscles twitched and his face burned. There was nothing I could do but to limit his exposure. I was fortunate to have donned my protective suit or I likely could have been burned, too. Kids don’t always make the best decisions, but this was my poor boy. It looked almost like he was having a seizure, but I knew not to give him anything to ingest. We had a first aid kit with all the necessary bandages and ointments, so I was able to bandage his face. He suffered paralysis after a few minutes of tremors, another sign of barium salt exposure. This was not fun! Jenna and Lotkin watched with agonizing empathy pains from the edge of the hallway as I tried to console my poor boy.
After a near sleepless night of caring for Gigas, we tried the radio again. Still nothing. After what I had seen up above, there was no wonder that I got no signal. My poor boy would be scarred for life. I had no doubt. Fortunately, we had enough provisions to last us a year if we needed, but I would have to climb out again eventually to see if I could find any unbroken solar panels to keep our battery powered generators charged.
It was a tough situation, but we’re resilient. We made it through, but we had no idea what was about to happen next.
