Amy Brashear - The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction

“What if we need to repopulate the earth?” Tyson asked.

“We won’t need these, then,” I said.

“But we might.”

“Dude, did you pay attention in biology? You. Don’t. Wear. Condoms. If. You. Want. To. Make. A. Baby.”

“Classy,” Astrid said, nodding.

I went back to digging in the drawers. Battery-powered radios. But we tried and kept trying to get a signal.

It had only been one day in here, and we were bleeding from orifices that we hadn’t thought could bleed, and the boys were still thinking with their penises.

Ugh.

“Oh, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap,” Max said over and over again, pulling out a heavy green metal box. It had a handle and knobs and switches.

“Just say ‘shit,’ boy,” Dylan said, curling up on his cot with a blanket. He had just spent a lot of time on the bucket.

“Okay, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, better?”

“Much.”

“That’s a Geiger counter,” I said.

“That’s, like, from the old movies. That’s not real,” Astrid said.

“It’s real.”

“Like this?” she said, waving her arms about.

“If it goes off, then yes, it’s real,” I said.

“Turn it on,” she said. “Turn it on.”

Max didn’t want to be the one who confirmed our worst nightmare. None of us did. I think we enjoyed the little oblivion that we were living in at the moment. Dylan finally gave up, threw his hands in the air, and told us to shut the hell up. He grabbed the Geiger counter, which had been put on the floor. He flicked the switch, and it buzzed. There was no denying it. Radiation. He moved around the room, placing the Geiger counter in front of each of us, and then himself. We were all radioactive. He turned it off.

For a while no one said a word. What was there to say? Our worst fears were realized. Whatever had happened out there had emitted radiation. And we’d gotten a high dose of it.

It was a leap from radiation poisoning to X-Men . But it was made. At least Rodney was optimistic.

Dead parents. Check.

A dose of radiation. Check.

Like the greats (Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, the Flash, Firestorm), we have our tragic backstory.

“We’re the children of the atom,” Rodney said, tearing a Razorback basketball T-shirt in half to cover his face from the fallout that he was convinced he was breathing in.

“No. I think that’s our children,” I said, picking at the dead skin on my thumb.

“This isn’t fucking X-Men ,” Terrence said, slamming his empty water jug on the ground.

“Well, fuuuuuuck!” Rodney said.

“Fuck is right,” Freddy said, grabbing a chunk of hair that had fallen from his head and stuffing it deep in his back pocket. “Was this supposed to happen?” he asked.

“Maybe they’re messing with us. Maybe this is just good makeup,” Astrid said, taking out her lipstick from her now brown-pink jeans.

“Damn,” Freddy said, sticking his right index finger into a sore on Astrid’s right cheek. “I can touch bone.”

“Don’t touch me!”

“Kitty is good but not that good.” Freddy wiped his finger on his pant leg.

“But we were on the mountain, and we didn’t get the seventy-five-dollar treatment,” I said.

“Yeah, Laura’s right,” Terrence said.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Freddy said, tightening his ponytail, but all that did was cause his hair to break and fall to the floor.

“I’m one step closer to becoming Professor X,” Rodney said.

For several days, Pikesville remained immobile. It was unclear what had happened. There was no message from the president. Was he alive? Did he make it to Mount Weather? Was there a cease-fire?

Dylan, Tyson, and I were working on the shortwave radio that we found in the back of a closet. Dylan messed with the antenna. Max and the bus driver were working on the walkie-talkies. And the director was asking the same question over and over again: “This is Griffin Flat High School. This is Griffin Flat, Arkansas. Is there anybody there? Anybody at all?”

The walkie-talkies weren’t working just like the radios weren’t, but that didn’t stop us from trying. We were trying anything. We didn’t have anything to lose. When those six days were up, we didn’t know what or who would be out there when we opened those doors.

We spent most hours in the day sleeping. Then reading. I read Eve of Destruction by Boudreaux Beauchamp to the group. When my voice got tired or I started coughing up blood, someone else took over. When we weren’t reading or talking about TV shows or movies, we were forcing food down and trying to keep it down.

“Ugh,” Astrid said, touching her armpits. She smelled her fingers, shook her head, and went back for another swipe. “I need a razor.”

“Don’t look at your legs,” I said, looking at mine.

“I didn’t even think about that. Kill me. I’m losing my hair on the top of my head but nowhere else.”

“We’re going to have to use Nair when we get home.”

“And tweezers. My eyebrows are out of control.”

Dylan hit the shortwave radio with his fist. It left his knuckles bloody, but we heard a little less static, and then we heard a man’s voice.

“Broken Arrow,” said a man.

“Copy that,” said another man.

“Do they know that we can hear them?” Terrence asked.

“Doubtful,” Dylan said, trying to make out what they were saying by messing with the signals.

The signal was kind of clear. Clear enough to let us eavesdrop on a conversation between two men.

Man 1: “Devastation?”

Man 2: “Affirmative.”

Man 1: “Survivors?”

Man 2: “Negative.”

“Nuclear war? There goes my sex life,” Freddy said. Though we didn’t say it out loud, we all agreed.

Tyson, Dylan, the director, and the bus driver were asleep, so they didn’t hear us talking about sex. I was glad for that. That would have been awkward.

“I’m going to die a virgin,” Astrid said.

“Wait—you’re a virgin, really?” Max asked.

“Why would I lie about that?”

“But you’re a movie star. You can do anyone you would like.”

“I have standards—” Astrid started.

“What about Drake Cooper?” I asked.

“Ugh. Publicity. We barely held hands.”

“Sex is good. Sex is fun. That’s what Judy Blume says,” I said.

“Who’s a virgin? Raise your hand,” Freddy said.

Only a few of us raised our hands. Sometimes it’s easier to say you weren’t even if you really were. So I didn’t raise my hand.

“You’re not a virgin?” I asked Terrence, who didn’t raise his hand.

He shook his head.

“He’s had sex with quite a few girls. Your friend Dana was one,” Rodney said.

“Dana?” I said. “She never said. When?”

“At prom,” Terrence said.

“Prom?” I went to prom with the boy who barfed on me in the second grade. There was no sex.

“And Kathy,” Rodney said.

“Kathy? ‘Jesus is my boyfriend’ Kathy?” I asked.

Terrence nodded.

“That promiscuous whore.”

“They’re not whores,” he said.

“I wasn’t talking about them.”