By the time it reached Peter, it was no longer deadly, but it was certainly powerful. It struck him in the back and sent his helpless body flying forward. It was a stroke of luck or the hand of God that saved him.
The wind, coupled with the gravity of the Earth, body-slammed him into the gravel of the highway shoulder. He rolled over and over through the tall grasses, avoiding the steel guardrail because a prior accident had split it into two twisted parts.
Seconds later, Peter found himself facedown in a drainage ditch covered in warm, muddy water. His skin smelled warm. Sunburned. Like he’d spent too much time at Virginia Beach on a scorching August day.
Instinctively, he tossed and turned in the shallow water, covering himself with moisture. His mind thought he was on fire. He wasn’t, but the blast of heat he’d endured had certainly incinerated others closer to Washington.
Peter couldn’t recall how long he’d lain in the ditch. It could’ve been seconds or minutes. Eventually, the worst of the heated air had passed, and the roar that accompanied it had quietened. It was replaced by the sound of despair.
People screamed for help. They cried with angst. Others shouted instructions as if they were experts in surviving a nuclear explosion. Still more stood in awe, mouths open, watching the mushroom cloud rise to the heavens, illuminated by the flames roaring uncontrollably outward from the blast along the surface of the earth. Hungrily devouring buildings and vaporizing people in a flash, their charred bodies crumbling into ash onto the scorched ground.
As the fireball traveled outward from ground zero, the intense heat set gas lines, fuel tanks, and power lines on fire. The electromagnetic pulse destroyed anything electronic within two hundred miles of the ground detonation.
The colossal pressure wave hurtled outward at five hundred miles per hour, crossing the Potomac River, demolishing everything within seven miles. Houses made of wood were torched. Sturdier block, brick and steel construction might have remained standing. However, only their naked and warped steel structural supports remained. Utility poles snapped like toothpicks. The wave whipped through green space, snapping trees and leveling landscape. People were flung through the air and pummeled by deadly projectiles of brick, glass, and metal.
At the point of detonation, a crater fifty feet deep with a diameter stretching beyond the Pentagon was quickly filled with the now-boiling water of the Potomac River as it rushed to fill the void where the heart of America’s government once beat.
All of this happened within the first few minutes.
Peter had suddenly become hyperaware of his surroundings. His mind raced as he tried to recall everything he’d learned about the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. Living in the DC area, the thought of being the number one target of nuclear-capable nations made him more than a casual reader of news reports leading up to that night. A word kept popping into his head.
Fallout.
The moment a nuclear bomb detonates, several forms of radiation instantly permeate the surroundings. For those near the point of impact who were fortunate enough to survive the incendiary effects, the threat of radioactive fallout was very real. As the pulse of radiation surged away from the blast, the bodies of every living being who was outside or in inadequately insulated buildings were prone to the fallout. Radiation wreaked biological havoc on the human body. At the molecular level, it immediately began to alter human DNA, impairing the ability of cells to replicate and repair themselves from damage.
Within minutes to hours, based upon proximity to the blast site, most people exposed would begin to show signs of acute radiation syndrome, including nausea, headache, dizziness, and vomiting. Within several days to two weeks later, new symptoms would emerge. In addition to purple blotches and lesions occurring on the skin, diarrhea, hair loss, fever, seizures, and bleeding from the mouth were common. In the most severe cases, people would become delirious and mentally incapacitated.
One thing would be certain. The majority of humans with radiation sickness would die because they no longer had enough immune cells to fight off any sort of infection or because their digestive system was too damaged to function properly.
Regardless of the cause, death was guaranteed.
Peter Albright didn’t want to die. He lifted his battered body out of the drainage ditch, adjusted his sling pack, and stumbled up the embankment toward the hard surface of the highway. Others were scurrying down the slope, splashed through the ditch and up the other side toward an apartment complex.
Just as Peter reached the pavement, he glanced over his shoulder as several people began cursing in frustration. A ten-foot-tall chain-link fence had thwarted their efforts to reach the residential area.
Joining dozens of others who raced past him, he mustered the strength to begin running once again, ignoring the scrapes, cuts, and bruises his body had endured. He needed to find a place of safety. A shelter of any kind to protect him from the radiation that would soon be raining down all around him.
CHAPTER TWO
Friday, October 25
Fair Oaks Mall
Fairfax, Virginia
Peter glanced at his yellow Casio G-shock dive watch, a gift from his father when he graduated from high school. It had been his constant companion for years, but now, like his car, it had ceased to function. As he began to pass the pack of frightened motorists, he glanced up at the steel structure holding the interstate directional signs. Ordinarily green with reflective lettering, they were now scorched and difficult to read. Not that it mattered because he planned on taking the exit anyway.
The asphalt turned to unforgiving concrete, much to the chagrin of Peter, who enjoyed running. His daily four-mile jogs were paying off if he could only put the pain of the fall out of his mind. There was no time to lament the fact his muscles were begging for a rest. All Peter could think about was the radioactive fallout.
At the end of the exit ramp, he saw a hulking structure perched on a hill before him. He’d been to the Fair Oaks Mall on one other occasion to purchase a pair of Asics running shoes at Dick’s Sporting Goods. The mall seemed like a good place to hunker down. It was a large structure with plenty of walls protecting him from the environmental disaster that was surely headed his way.
He rushed across the median separating the east- and westbound lanes of Lee Jackson Memorial Highway. He glanced up at the mid-rise Marriott hotel. People were standing on their balconies, staring toward DC. Some had flashlights while others lit candles that flickered wildly in the heated air.
Peter hustled up the embankment into the mostly empty mall parking lot. At nearly four in the morning, he expected it to be devoid of activity. He was wrong.
There were only a few sporadically parked vehicles left behind from the night before. There were, however, dozens of people racing in and out of the plate-glass doors of Macy’s. Some were dragging children by the arms, urging them to hurry to safety. They waited for an opportunity to push through the broken panes of glass to enter the building.
Also, there were the opportunists. The inevitable thieves and looters who took advantage of a catastrophe to seemingly enrich themselves. They rushed out of the store, their arms wrapped around piles of clothing, into the open arms of a cloud of nuclear radiation they’d never see until the effect on their bodies revealed itself.
Peter followed a young family through the opening into the darkness of Macy’s men’s department. Shouts filled the air. A fight had broken out in the shoe department. Names were called out as loved ones searched for those who’d gotten lost in the mayhem.