S Ison - Russian Doomsday

The shockwave continued on out to seventy miles. Trees and buildings collapsed and exploded, people are thrown down, their eardrums bursting from the increased air pressure. Their capillaries burst, blood vessels collapse, organs burst. Before they died, they suffered internal hemorrhaging and their brains swelled from the shockwave that hammered at them. The pain was excruciating before death finally took them.

At the blast sites, irradiated water flowed back into the vast deep pockets in the bedrock. The initial blasts cause a significant tectonic shift, and the aftershocks continue. The Earth’s axis moves by fourteen inches. This is more than the 2011 earthquake in Japan, which shifted the axis roughly six and a half inches. The planet is changed forever.

Several hundred miles away, the Earth trembles. Seismographs rock violently, their zigzagging needles tell the scientists that something bad has happened.

The pilot Duboff sends his payload into the heavens moments before he is shot down by a US fighter out of Anchorage. His payload explodes over Texas some time later, making worse the devastation of the United States below.

Pike wiped the sweat from his brow. He and Margo were in the garden, making neat rows in preparation for planting the following week. The weather was warming up quickly and the seedlings were out of control. The living room was a jungle and Binx was disgruntled.

Beneath Pike, the ground shook. He heard a low-pitched rumble. He squatted down and placed his ear to the ground.

“Margo, lay down and listen,” he said. She did, laying her head next to his. He grinned. They lay there for a few moments. The ground didn’t stop shaking, and neither did the rumble abate. The hair on his arms rose and he looked at Binx, whose ears were back.

Then there was a tremendous flash, like a wild lightning storm, in the clear early evening sky. “Shit! I think it is happening! Grab Binx. Let’s get inside and put up the plastic. Find your cellphone and I’ll get mine. Turn on the TV.”

Adrenaline pumping, Pike jumped up. His legs suddenly became weak and heavy. He stumbled, and Margo caught him. He looked at her face and saw his own fear reflected there. He wanted to cry, but a numbness crept over him.

They ran into the house, shut the windows, got the cellphones and tried to turn them on. Nothing. They tried the TV. Nothing. The lights in the house remained on. Next, they checked their laptops. Nothing.

“It’s happened,” Pike said, his voice shaking badly. “Let’s get the plastic up and make sure we seal it well. Any fallout should stay out.”

They grabbed the heavy plastic, rolled it out, and attached the sections they’d prepared over each window, the front door, the back door and the fireplace.

Then it hit Pike. The faraday cage had worked! He looked at Margo and grinned stupidly.

“What?” she asked, her voice trembling. She was nearly hyperventilating.

“We still have power,” Pike said, his heart rate starting to return to normal. “The faraday cage actually worked. We will have power. One part of our planning has gone well. Now, hopefully, Sayer and Joy will be here soon. Let’s start taking our iodide tablets, start the series for the next two weeks.”

Binx continued to whine, his small body trembling. Pike bent and picked up the dog, petting him and comforting him. He slid an arm around Margo and pulled her to him. Buried his face in her neck and kissed her. “Breathe. Just breathe. We’re alive. So far, things are as we thought they might be. We don’t know if it was POSEIDON or something else, but that doesn’t matter. We are prepared. We did what we knew we had to, honey. We’re safe for now. Once Sayer and Joy get here, we’ll hunker down and see what happens.

“I’ll go out once a day, wear my rain gear, and check on the chickens, feed and water them. We keep our heads down and keep our weapons on us now. We go nowhere without them.”

“Okay, Pike. I want to cry but I’m too afraid to cry. I know I’m being foolish.”

“No baby, you aren’t. I’m afraid too. But we’ve done everything we could. We’re safe, we have shelter, food, water, and most important, we have each other. Whatever happens, I’ll protect you. I swear. We will get through this together, honey. I have you.”

The oceans begin to pull, sucked into the vacuum created by the explosion. The water roils and turns in on itself like a rising beast, like the Greek god Poseidon. The waves rise and crest, the water dead and irradiated, all life within its depths destroyed.

Poseidon’s vengeance rises high, but not as high as the Russian’s hoped. But that didn’t matter. Life along the coastlines for seventy miles is gone, a blasted wasteland torn apart by the shockwave, the heat and the radiation. One hundred miles out, all living things are irradiated, the radioactive isotopes attaching themselves to each cell in the organisms’ bodies.

Two hundred miles out, radiation creeps along like a killing fog, the prevailing winds carrying it beyond the blast zone. Transformer boxes on poles explode and catch fire. Cars are shredded. People run, screaming, panicked. Everything, phones, cars, all has stopped. Airplanes fall from the sky, thousands plunging to their deaths. If one could stop to watch, one could almost hear their screams on the way down.

Water, deep green and black, rushes over the devastated ground, bodies – human and animal alike – floating on it. The flood waters surge on and on, gathering in small eddies here and there, depositing unrecognizable red foamy bits and pieces. Most of the debris is small, like ingredients in a soup.

The water pushes on, carrying radiation with it. Washington, D.C. is no more. Not a tree, not a monument, not a bridge. Nubby protrusions in the ground remain. Water surges in.

All along the entire east and west coastlines it is the same: boiling irradiated water, pushing inland. Tremors move the land. Farther inland, there are signs of life, but most will soon perish painfully. The lucky ones are those who never felt a thing.

Those on the bitter edge, they suffer the most, feeling the blast and radiation before drowning.

The dead ocean waters spill into rivers, ponds, and lakes. Complete ecosystems are destroyed, neutralized, and poisoned. Contamination permeates the breathable air, the blast sending the radioactive isotopes far up into the atmosphere where it rides on the currents of the air.

Now the dead ocean begins to recede, dragging with it rubble and ash. The ocean currents pick up the radioactive water and move it along, distributing it across the world.

Poseidon has taken it vengeance Nothing survives the devastation.

Sayer and Joy were out in the barn feeding the goats. The goats began to cry and went to their knees. It was then that Sayer felt the tremor; the rumbling worked its way through his feet and up into his body. Felt it, heard it. He looked over to Joy, and she at him. Her mouth trembled and her eyes filled with tears.

“Go get our bugout bags and our suitcases,” he said. “Put them in the back of the truck and I’ll get the animals.” He pulled out his phone, checking, hoping against hope this wasn’t it. Then there was a flash in the sky. It wasn’t bright, like lightning in the distance, and the nearest transformer exploded, sparks flying.

He looked down at the phone. Nothing. It was an EMP. He threw his phone down, picked up one of the goats and carried her to the truck. He then went back and got the other goat. She cried out for her twins. Once she was in the truck, he got the two kids and put them with her. Then he scanned around, thinking. They’d have to leave quickly.