Song of the Bomb - 2005

Three figures moved across the flat expanse of the desert valley. They were running as fast as they could, but two opposing forces were pulling at them. The first was terror, terror of whatever it was they were fleeing, pushing them desperately forward, while the other force, utter exhaustion, was slowing them down.

One man, in the lead, was dressed in a faux-military security guards uniform or what was left of it. His jacket was gone completely and his shirt was ragged and torn. Behind him, the next man, panting for breath in rasping heaves, was dressed in a lab coat and still wore his plastic eye protectors.

Finally, the last man, and the most unfit of the three, was dressed in a dark suit, although it too was now torn and dusty.

Up ahead, and presumably what they were heading for, was a small village, inexplicably placed in the centre of the desolate valley. The sun beat down on it, as if trying to press the buildings back down into the sandy rock.

Gasping for breath, the security guard, finally reaching the nearest house, leant against a door frame and collapsed into the living room. He was a tall lean man in his late fifties.

He didn't seem concerned that this dwelling, like all the others, had no windows or doors. Inside there was only the most basic of furniture. A sofa, two chairs and a table. In the next room, which could be seen through the empty door way, contained a cooker and some cupboards. White stone steps lead up to the second floor. On the sofa, as if happy to welcome strangers in, primly sat a crash test dummy, splendid

in her yellow paint.

The man in the lab coat, a short bald man in his mid sixties, came in past him and fell onto the sofa, knocking over the dummy and muttered,

'My God!'

Their panting breaths filled the small room as the guard then said,

'Are we safe doc? From the radiation?'

'No..', replied the doctor between great lungs full of air, 'No radiation... there was no radiation in that explosion...not in any great quantities anyway.'

The guard seemed confused,

'Huh? Well why are we running?'

'Because there is going to be something far far worse...'

The guard shook his dazed head in confusion. Some drops of blood from his scalp fell to the floor.

'Doctor Van Gellis, we better go back then, there were dead and injured people everywhere.'

'No no..no, we have to get away. When the secondary explosion hits we want to be as far away as possible.'

'Secondary? But the base was blown sky high! What’s going to be worse than that?'

The doctor nodded at the door,

'He knows.'

The last man had arrived and was leaning with his hands on his knees, fighting for breath. He was seriously out of breath, as years of being sat behind a desk had made him fat. The guard turned towards him.

'It's...true.. we have to keep moving..'

The guard made to leave out the door, but the suited man grabbed him by the arm,

'Hailey isn’t it? Fred Hailey?'

The guard said nothing, but did nod.

'There is no use running, the blast radius is going to be fifty miles..'

'Fifty-seven actually..', muttered Van Gellis.

'..there are vehicles in this place aren’t there Fred? I saw you and the others drive them out here.'

'Yeah we did Mr Ifurlec. We drove trucks up here full of stuff for the village and we even dumped a few old cars around the place, but they were wrecks.'

Ifurlec shock his head, as if the reality that he wanted was not the one he was being presented with and that his stern denial could some how change it.

'But there must be a jeep out here, or someone left a truck?'

'Ha!', laughed Hailey without humour , 'Jolle would have had the balls of anyone who left anything out here that wasn't on the itinerary.'

And now his boss, Herman Jolle was nothing more than a black stain on the guard room wall, reflected Fred Hailey inwardly. A few months ago they had all been out here, outfitting the pseudo-village, nicknamed Tumbleweed by the guards. Furniture, kitchen appliances, beds, wardrobes, everything. The dressers even had clothes in them and the kitchen cupboards even had cutlery.

The weirdest thing they had had to do was place crash test dummies everywhere, in positions that had been designated on a plan of the village that had came from some bigwig up at the office. Fred hadn't put this young lady in this particular house, but he had put a group of them on chairs around the bandstand at the village centre. Presumably they were still there.

No one had asked why this was all done, although there had been lots of speculation at the time. It made sense that it was going to be used for testing something.

'So, we will get caught in the blast? But it's not radiation? What’s going on doc?'

'That's kind of hard to explain Fred. The secondary pulse is the payload. The first explosion was just the trigger which will set up the chain ...'

'Shut up Gellis!', shouted Ifurlec.

'Why? Why not tell him, we are going to get hit by it anyway if we can’t get away.'

Ifurlec sat down and put his head in his hands,

'There must be a way.'

He pulled a mobile phone from his pocket.

'Quiet useless I’m afraid. The EMP pulse will have fried it.'

Ifurlec dropped it to the floor.

Now silhouetted in the door way and looking out towards where the base was, Hailey said,

'When doc?'

'Any time between now and the next hour I would say. We had not finalised the trigger mechanism. I know Doctor Fortune was working on that. The test rig was booked for trigger testing. I wonder if that was what caused the accident. Quiet impossible of course unless he somehow hooked it up to the reactor core.'

Ifurlec looked up, 'Um.. I may have authorised that.'

Van Gellis looked at him in disbelief.

'Why.. why Mr Ifurlec. That was very foolhardy. Doctor Fortune was only at the beginning of his research into using lithium triggers. That is what the test rig is for after all.'

'How was I to know?!' , cried Ifurlec ,'I'm not the boss! Old man Vivec was pushing so hard. The pentagon was going to pull the plug. Vivec held a meeting yesterday. Said we had to start showing some results.'

Dr Van Gellis removed his safely glasses, his hands shaking with rage.

'Mr Ifurlec. What do you think was going on? What do you think we are making here? Ice cream? I have just lost my wife in that blast! Poor Agnes was right down at the core! The soul bomb has been activated!'

'Look, I'm sorry doc,' said Hailey holding up his hands, 'But will you tell me what’s going to happen?'

Ifurlec turned on him and hissed,

'You are not cleared for that information.'

Hailey looked down at his belt. His gun was still there. He smiled and put his hand on the hilt.

'Well since you have just killed us all Ifurlec, I don't reckon I would be too upset if I was to put a couple of bullets in you, seeings as we are all going to be vaporised or whatever it is.'

His smile faded and he said ,'Start talking doc.'

Van Gellis cleared his throat and began,

'Well of course, we knew about it right back at the time of the Manhattan project. Close studies of test subjects and the atom bomb tests. It is possible to chain secondary reactions onto the explosions. Use atom bombs for triggers for .. other things. You were in Vietnam Frederick? Ever hear of First Earth Battalion?'

'Huh? All that wacky shit? X-ray vision and telepathy?'

'You may scoff Frederick, but they government has poured millions of dollars on research into telepathy, clairvoyance, X-ray vision, psychokinesis and what we were doing here, pyroanimakinesis.'

'Pyro-what?'

'Pyro from the Latin for fire. Anima means soul.. ah, not very pleasant actually. It literally means to set ones soul on fire.. ahem well anyway, after the Philadelphia experiment, it was discovered that the earths magnetic sphere could be influenced by controlled nuclear explosions. Colonel Alexander, then the head of the First Earth Battalion began research into the possibility of projection a nuclear explosion into

the spirit world.'

'What?', cried Hailey.

'It sounds far fetched I know, but the First Earth Battalion had been told to “think the unthinkable”. The term 'spirit world' is of course just an abstraction, more accurately

we describe it as the animasphere, a sub-dimensional area of the universe where consciousness resides.'

'But why? Why do this?'

'Ah well. The military have all ways been interested in ways to kill people but to leave the cities intact. Imagine a weapon that would attack people’s souls. No damage to infrastructure except at ground zero where the small nuclear device is detonated.'

'Good god. And it works?'

'Well, I have to admit to feeling slight pangs of guilt now, given the current circumstances. But our first experiments went alarmingly well. Ninety nine percent kill rate on test subjects. Rats, dogs, primates primarily.'

Hailey’s grip tightened on his gun.

'How did they die doc?'

'Well..ahem.. mainly they... mainly they chewed their own arms and legs off, or as much as it would take to kill themselves. If restrained, they would usually suffer massive heart attacks or brain embolisms.'

'Oh Jesus. Doc, what have you done?'

'I know, I'm so sorry, poor poor Agnes..', and with the Van Gellis buried his head in his hands, 'We, ah, we think that the subject is faced with a terrible moment of introspection. Their souls are laid open and they receive a sudden dose of existential despair. It is far too much to take in and a sensory overload occurs. Even in animals, apparently, the emptiness and coldness of the universe is too much to bear. Be thankful that we spend most of our lives going around with our eyes closed.'

Ifurlec, who was now standing said,

'There must be a way Gellis! Can't we do anything?'

Van Gellis looked up and said,

'We are only two miles away from ground zero you cretin. It would probably be best if Frederick just put a bullet in each of us right now.'

'Listen you...'

The world went white. They all fell to the floor.

Hailey new he was shouting, but he couldn't even hear himself. He could see Van Gellis prone on the floor beside him and could see he was screaming too, but he still couldn't hear a word. It felt like a violent wind was buffeting him from all directions at once. His vision was blurring and bright colours were flashing in front of him.

The wind got stronger and the noise louder. Hailey felt like he was about to be whisked away by the wind, out the window and off into space. The sensation bombardment was too much, too intense, and as he started to black out he went towards it with blessed relief.

He had no idea what time it was when he woke up. He was still on the floor, and groggily he tried to stand up and open his eyes. The light coming in from the door and window was pale blue and metallic. It felt unnatural, as if he were in a dream. He could here something too, like distant singing or a high pitched note. His ears were still ringing from the explosion.

He heard a gasp and a sound like a splat coming from the kitchen and pulling himself upright he stumbled across to the kitchen doorway. Inside Ifurlec had what looked like a potato peeler in his right hand and was plunging it into his left wrist, each time letting out a strangled gasp as blood splashed onto the tiles.

Hailey staggered towards him and tried to wrestle the peeler from the bleeding mans grasp. The gnarly old Vietnam vet was much stronger than the executive, but even as the peeler clattered to the blood soaked concrete floor, Hailey could see that Ifurlec's wrist was wide open.

As the last of the life pumped out of him Ifurlec was still trying to bite and scratch himself. Hailey slipped and slid out of the kitchen, holding his bloody hands up in stunned confusion.

In the living room he found Doctor Van Gellis kneeling with his head in the crash test dummies lap. Somehow the dummy was sitting back on the sofa again, and by chance its head was turned directly at Hailey. She seemed surprised to see him.

Hailey could hear the doctor saying,

'I’m so so sorry Agnes. Can you ever forgive me?'

The doctors head moved up from the dummies lap revealing to Hailey’s horror that Van Gellis had clawed his own eyes out.

'I'm so so sorry' said the doctor taking the dummies hands.

Confused and scared, still half in a dream world, Hailey’s hand drifted down to his belt where his gun was, but all his fingers could find was the empty holster.

Just as he discovered this, the doctor took the gun from his pocket and in one swift movement raised it to his mouth and blew his brains out through the top of his head.

Gasping in horror, Hailey staggered from the small house and into the street. He headed towards the band stand, where all the dummies sat mutely, waiting for the show to begin. He looked up. The sky was cloaked in a blue aura, making the light from the sun murky and weak. The song, or whatever it was, was louder out here too, it had a strange quality about it, as if the singer was out of key.

Exhausted and on the edge of hysteria Hailey sat down on an unoccupied seat next to a dummy that was dangerously close to falling over.

He held is hands up to his eyes. They were covered in blood, but the blue light made it look black, as if he were covered in tar.

'What's happening?' he asked.

As if he had always been there, a figure in front of him turned round in his seat and said,

'Dare to think the unthinkable.'

Hailey put his hands down and looked at the man that had addressed him. He recognised that he was a Colonel in the United States army by his uniform. His grey hair was cut short and he had an angry look on his grained face.

'That’s what we used to say. In the First Earth Battalion. Make this planet whole by the ethical use of force. Every subculture of force must evolve into a master culture. The Army was to be no exception. I'm Colonel John Alexander. Excuse me if I don't shake hands, you are covered in blood.'

'I don't know what you are talking about. Where did you come from? Are you real?'

'No I am not real. Not the way you mean. Everything within 50 miles of here has been killed. The blast has caused a rupture into the realms of the dead. The army, god forgive us, has just created a terrible weapon. The principles of the First Earth Battalion have been perverted into an affront against God. It could have been so different. Soldiers could have been the principal moral ethical basis on which all things political could harmonize in the name of the Earth.'

'You...I..' , was all Hailey could manage , 'I don't understand.'

'Listen, hundreds of years ago, in ancient China, monks were often attacked by robbers and bandits. They developed a new fighting system based on using the force of the attacker against him. Likewise the soldiers of the First Earth were to learn martial arts with the same ethical basis. No Earth soldier would be denied the kingdom of heaven because he or she was used as an instrument of indiscriminate war. The conscience will be developed together with the ability to neutralize the enemy.'

Colonel Alexander sighed, 'But now, years after, we see humanity at its worst. A weapon developed on the same spiritual principles, but in the act of opening people’s consciences to the universe it destroys them.'

'I haven't had an urge to kill myself', muttered Hailey.

'A piece of you died in the A Shau Valley. You have been coping with oblivion ever since.'

'This doesn’t make any sense,' cried Hailey, 'A soul bomb? A nuclear explosion in heaven? Its crazy!'

'And I guess I am a hallucination?'

'Sure why not? My eyes have gone wrong too. Everything’s blue. I’m going mad.'

Suddenly the Colonel leaned over and punched Hailey right on the chin, knocking him off his chair into the dust.

The last thing he remembered as he lost consciousness again was Alexander saying,

'Did that feel like a hallucination son?'

As he gradually woke he could hear the whop-whop-whop sound of helicopter blades. He knew he'd been injured.

A North Vietnamese Army rifleman had bayoneted him in the belly just as his company were reaching the top of Hamburger Hill, in the A Shau Valley.

A smile drifted across his face. The sound of the choppers was always the sound of comfort and security. A warm feeling came over him. He knew he had a million dollar wound and that soon he would be going home and be glad to be among the living once again.

Strange, though. He could hear singing. Who could possibly be singing out here?