World War 4: Sticks and Stones

Frank: Part One

I saw this coming since the beginning of the War. When I was very young, wars were meant to last even up to a decade. Today is day 50. From the beginning of the first minor nuclear scare before the War, sirens were built in my city to warn people of their impending doom. I always thought it was silly to build these sirens since everyone would die anyways, but as I finished securing my basement to become nuke safe, I had no complaints. I do, however, have a strong dislike for the amount of times that my wife leaves the house. I understand that a person needs to live as they are unafraid of what COULD happen, but the issue that I had was that the possibility of something happening was so much higher now that conflict was so fierce. I watched the news fervently every single day for the last fifty days as soon as war was declared. Today I did not leave the couch, which sat directly next to the door to my basement. I had an inkling of fear that I had not felt since the beginning. I could just sense disaster. I called my wife. She went out with a couple of her friends today. "hello?" she said. She was drunk. "Hey, do you think you can come home? I feel sick." It took some convincing, as my mind was all that felt sick. Eventually she agreed to let one of her sober friends drive her home. My mind was at ease. 

Since the War started, the nuclear siren had gone off three separate times, all false alarms. The siren was designed to go off as soon as the radar saw an object that could potentially be a bomb. Hence, the system was certainly flawed, but all of us doomsday preppers could withstand a false alarm with the knowledge that one day, an alarm might save our lives and our families lives. Just about a half-an-hour after I called my wife, when I was fighting off the overwhelming urge to fall asleep, the all-foreseen doomsday struck. The sirens rang, shooting bullets into the ears of the city. Screaming started to fire back, almost louder than the sirens themselves. I joined the battle. I screamed for my son, "Get to the bunker!!--- the basement I mean!" I had agreed to call the bunker the basement as to create the façade of normalcy for my child. To my relief he came running to my arms. I grabbed his elbow and pulled him furiously to the basement. I looked to the cameras in the basement to see that my wife would pull in to the driveway. I saw her car speed to a halt in the driveway. Within seconds of her pulling in, I also saw an all-consuming cloud of nuclear explosion rush to greet her. She was gone. As soon as I saw her meet death, my camera feed also met death. There were lights in the basement provided by my generator, but it felt like darkness. I felt like darkness. My seven year old son and I were crumpled into a wad together, crying like infants. I had never felt so alone. I had never felt so trapped. I told my son, Ben, that he needed to sleep, that we would have a funeral for his mom in the morning, just the two of us and then we would get to work. 

My neighbors and I used to have a barbecue every summer. Two years ago, we joked that in the case of a nuclear holocaust, we would dig a tunnel to connect our houses in order to create a sort of mole community to keep society alive. Last year, we joked about it some more. This year we were no longer joking. I had no strength left after today, but I did have a sledgehammer and a shovel, which is all that I needed. During the night that I had told Ben to sleep, I laughed a little to myself for telling him to do so because we had both witnessed someone we loved die. There was no way we could sleep. We didn't. In the morning, we did exactly what I said we would do. I prepared a nice breakfast of toast and butter and then we had a moment of silence for my wife and his mom. The moment was not so much planned as much as it just happened. I felt terrible putting Ben to such excruciating work, but there was no way I could dig a tunnel on my own. With immense reluctance, I picked up the sledgehammer and started to tear at the concrete surrounding the basement. Every last swing felt more faint than the last. By the time that I had gotten through to some dirt, I felt as though my vomit would vomit. Now it was Ben's turn. I could see the sedulous look in his eye with every swing of the shovel. I had to keep an eye on him because I knew that he would go on forever just to make his daddy proud. After about 4 hours worth of work, I could finally hear my neighbor's side digging. Now that I was so close to combining one house, I started to become a little unsure of the goal in sight. My brain of course went to reproduction. "Dear God" I thought to myself. After witnessing the death of my wife, I could not even bring myself to think about sex with another woman, so I decided to think about other goals. Maybe they wanted to combine resources, or maybe they needed company and decided that the hard work would be worth it in the end. Or maybe the plan in sight was stupid and underdeveloped and unnecessary. It was too late. I took one final swing and our houses were connected.