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

“It doesn’t matter now. Impotence is a symptom of radiation. We won’t have to worry about our sex lives,” I said.

“Is that why it won’t—never mind,” Rodney said, sitting down on the cot next to Terrence, who scooted closer to the wall.

What We Miss:

Laura: breathable air

Terrence: basketball

Max: homework

Astrid: teeth

Owen: sight

Freddy: two-ply toilet paper

Rodney: girls

Dylan: hair

Tyson: deodorant

Bus driver: television

Mr. Edman: giving orders

I’d like to point out that no one mentioned a person.

“Who wrote homework?” Freddy asked, looking over my shoulder. “Because honestly, of everything in the world, you miss homework?”

“It was me,” Max said, raising his hand. “I miss a routine.”

“Routine I get, but homework?”

“Yeah, that’s a little insane,” Terrence said.

Max walked toward me and tried to take the composition notebook out of my hands.

“No, you can’t change it. So it is written. So it shall be done,” I said.

Famous Last Words:

“I remember this one time at camp, we would sit around the campfire and sing songs,” Max said. “I’ll start—”

Hi, my name is Joe

And I work in a button factory

I got a wife and two kids

One day, my boss, says, “Joe, are you busy?”

I said, “No.”

MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Terrence found the tape player, batteries, and a tape rack. He didn’t even look at the title or the artist. He just stuffed the tape into the slot, closed the door, and pressed play.

We sat in silence, humming, and eventually singing along with Levon Helm and The Band to their hit “The Weight . ” [74] The Band, Music from Big Pink , Capitol Records, 1968. The Band is a staple around my house. The group formed in Canada, but Levon Helm is from Turkey Scratch, so yeah, we claim them.

We rewound the tape and sang again. And again. The Band was home. We eventually put in another tape and sang to that. You could tell a teacher put this fallout shelter together. It was full of ’60s and ’70s music.

For five minutes and fifty-five seconds, we forgot we were in whatever mess we were in and sang, matching pitch with Freddie Mercury. [75] One of the greatest singers of all time. He’s the lead singer of Queen. And the greatest showman ever.

Was Beelzebub punishing us? We were probably reading too much into a song. Into all of this. We weren’t at war. We weren’t dying of anything. Maybe we all had the same bug. We were sick, that was it. Nothing bad happened, minus the explosion that made everyone…

Skeet outdid himself. That was it. That was all. Skeet was a master at the pyrotechnics. He was a master of the over-the-top game. We were fine.

We belted out “Bohemian Rhapsody” [76] Queen, A Night at the Opera , Elektra, 1975. like life depended on it. We even air guitared. And danced until we all puked from dizziness. Because we had a bug. That was all. A bug.

We dug for more and more music. It was hard to find something from this decade. But when we did, we rocked it hard. “Thriller” was appropriate. Even if we weren’t exactly zombies, we were as close as we could get to the walking dead.

No one could stop complaining. Everyone was bitching and bitching about anything and everything. It smelled in here. The food was awful. Why didn’t we risk it and open the door? What was the point? We were all probably going to die anyway. That was the consensus. Apathy. I had heard of it when it came to the Hogs, but to life? But we had it. We were apathetic.

We talked about whether or not government officials had been whisked away to Mount Weather. If there was a designated survivor in place. It was funny thinking about that. We spent so much time practicing for drills under our desks. Making bomb shelters under the ground. Making sure we had supplies to last us days, months, years, until it was safe to go outside after the fallout. But how do we know it’s safe? We don’t test thermonuclear weapons on each other. We do it in the sea—or underground. We don’t know the effects. How do we know Mount Weather will even work? They could all die.

We weren’t talking. We were sitting on our own cots, staring at everyone but not saying a word. We were going to snap. We didn’t have that much longer in here.

What the hell would we find after that?

To-Do List:

Slap Astrid across the face.

To-Do List:

} Slap Astrid across the face. {

“Shut the hell up, you wanker. Your voice is, like, so bloody annoying,” she said. Her British accent was like a caricature at that point.

Everybody was getting on everybody else’s nerves.

I was glad I slapped her across the face. But after I did, I noticed that her beauty mark was gone. I didn’t mention it. I didn’t want my head chewed off. I rubbed my palm. I slapped her harder than I’d been aiming to. But I did notice a brown mass on my middle finger. It wasn’t there before I slapped her.

She coughed again in her hand, and blood smeared on her palm.

“Astrid,” I said, getting down on my knees in front of her.

She spat on me, and a tooth flew out of her mouth and onto my dress.

“Oh, I don’t feel so good,” she said, leaning on Max.

I picked up her tooth and held it in front of her.

She laughed, taking it from me. “Did you know the tooth fairy teaches us to sell our body parts for money?” she said, throwing the tooth across the room.

“What happened to your mole?” I asked, straining to point out her flawless face.

She touched the spot where her mole once was. “It fell off,” she said.

“Is that normal? Because that doesn’t sound normal.”

She sighed, kicked at my legs, and sat beside me and whispered, “It wasn’t real.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t real, okay?”

“Again, what?” I asked.

“I was discovered in a department store—”

“By one of those you-can-be-a-supermodel-if-you-pay-me-a hundred-bucks people?” I asked.

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

“Sure.”

“Hey, Cindy Crawford was discovered picking corn, so anything’s possible.”

“So the mole was fake?” I ask, poking at her face with my finger where the mole once was.

“Yeah, it was fake, and I prefer the term ‘beauty mark.’”

“Call it what you want; it’s still a mole. Witches have moles. Are you a witch?” I asked, laughing.

“Not a witch, but you’re one with a B .”

“Nice comeback,” I said. “So why the mole?”