THE H-BOMB GIRL by Stephen Baxter (beach books txt) 📕

We all looked west, towards the docks, where we thought the bomb would fall on Liverpool. Only Nick looked east. I think he was trying to be funny. His head was killing him. He even, took his glasses off to see better.

Well, the flash came, not from the west, from the east, like a huge light bulb being switched on, and off. We all saw our shadows stretching in front of us.

“So much for the four minutes,” Joel said.

We all turned around. In the east, a huge black cloud was rising up, above the roofs of the houses. It wasn’t like a mushroom, really. More like a huge hammer. The only noise was people screaming, and the sirens, and the church bells. No noise from the bomb.

“They’ve only gone and done it,” Bern said.

“That was Burtonwood,” Joel said. “The air base. They’re taking out military targets first.”

That meant Mort was almost certainly dead.

And Dad. Almost certainly dead. Already. That was what pad had always said. Dead, as soon as the bombs start falling.

“Maybe it will stop there,” I said.

Then Bernadette screamed, “Nick!”

I hadn’t looked at him. He was just standing there. His mouth was stretched wide open, but no noise came out. There was this stuff running down his face. He had looked into the blast. His eyes had melted.

Bernadette tried to grab him. But he punched her, and just ran off.

Joel held her back. “We have to get back in the hole. The blast.”

I saw a sort of wall of smoke coming down the street. It was still far off shop windows were popping. I saw people being thrown up in the air. And a car, up in the air tumbling.

We all scrambled back into the hole.

The noise came with the blast. It was like a huge wind that passed one way, then got sucked back the other.

Maybe it won’t go any further.

Dad is dead.

It still isn’t real when I write it down.

*

Sunday 10:30 a.m.

We’re at the Jive-O-Rama now. But nobody’s jiving.

When the blast had passed over, Joel said we had to get out of there. If a second wave of strikes came, against the cities, we would be too close to the “epicentre.” We’d be baked alive. Jimmy’s cellar out in the suburbs and away from the city centre, would be a better bet.

All that CND stuff is paying off for Joel. At least he knows what’s going on.

So we came up and ran east, away from the city centre. That huge cloud from Burtonwood still hung over everything, directly ahead of us.

Nobody around. Everybody in hiding, I suppose. Every shop window was broken. Joel says probably every window in Britain is already smashed.

Joel says it’s no accident they struck when they did. It would have been about three in the morning in Washington. JFK asleep, everybody at their lowest.

I stopped at a few phones. I wanted to try phoning Dad, or maybe the Key numbers. None of them worked. Joel just hurried me along.

Now we’re in Big Jimmy’s Inner Refuge. Under the doors. Joel always said it would be useless, but it’s the best we’ve got.

Big Jimmy is missing Little Jimmy.

*

Sunday 11:00 a.m. Waiting. Busting for a pee.

*

Sunday. 11:30 a.m. Siren. No no no.

*

Sunday. 2 p.m. OK. OK.

So they dropped the bomb on Liverpool.

The light first. Even in a cellar even under the doors and mattresses, even through my closed eyelids, I could see it.

Then the blast. It was a great door slamming down. The whole place shook. There was a roaring. Then a whoosh like the sea over pebbles. That was the noise of Jimmy’s house breaking up, all the bricks washing down on top of us.

The wind just went on and on.

Then it stopped. But it started to get hotter and hotter.

Bern was getting crazy. She wanted to go up to see what was happening. Joel tried to stop her, but he didn’t have a chance.

I followed her. Joel too.

The house was flattened. We were lucky Jimmy’s cellar wasn’t blocked in.

We looked west, towards the city centre. All the houses that way seemed to be burning. There was stuff whirling up in the air from them. Dust. Soot. Ashes. A black cloud gathering up over it all, with fire at its base. It was very hot up there.

“They hit the docks,” Joel said. “They’ve taken out the military sites. Now they’re going for economic, industrial, civilian targets.”

“Shut up,” Bern said.

“The Russians will have fired off all their missiles while they had the chance, before the Americans can knock out their bases—”

“Shut up!” Bern started hitting him, like it was his fault. I had to pull her off.

A great wind started blowing, towards the pillar of smoke and fire. And rain started to fall. Big dirty drops the size of marbles.

“We have to get back inside,” Joel said. “That’s the firestorm.”

“The what?”

“And the fall-out is going to come, in an hour or so. Radioactive muck.”

We went back, to where Jimmy was cowering in the dark.

*

Sunday 4th November.

Seven days since the bomb.

I’ve decided I should save paper.

It’s dark and cold.

Jimmy’s sick.

We’re still in the shelter. Joel says we have to stay here for two weeks, until the fall-out is over. Jimmy agrees. The leaflet he used to build this Inner Refuge says two weeks as well. Good of him to let us in and share this. More than good. Saintly.

What the leaflet didn’t say was how the four of us are all supposed to get on, under these stupid doors. We haven’t killed each other yet. That’s about all you can say.

Jimmy had planned the shelter just for him and Little jimmy, for fourteen days. We ran out of food on Tuesday, water on Thursday.

On Thursday Jimmy went out to fetch some more food and water. Joel said he shouldn’t go at all, but somebody had to, and Jimmy said it was going to be him as he was the oldest and had