Free Nuclear War Club: Seven high school students are in detention when Nuclear War explodes.Game on, they are on their own. by Colt Triarii Page A

sleds, the goal post stumps, and other debris from football practice. David wondered if he looked that bad to the others.
    “I walked two blocks past this stadium, then turned left,” David said. He tried to forget that he would have burned to death on this very field, if he had not been in detention.
    Zeke just stared blankly at the field. David moved into his field of vision, and repeated what he said. Zeke nodded.
    Once they were on the road, the highway footprint became easier to follow. But the debris had covered everything almost uniformly, and David was worried he would miss the house location. It was impossible to tell where city blocks had been just an hour ago.
    “Zeke, Karen, I am having trouble finding the intersections. Each time you see a connecting road tell me,” David said.
    “Sure,” Zeke said, who motioned for Karen and Liu tospread out.
    “Here is an intersection” Karen said a minute later.
    “Next intersection we turn left. Let’s double up, one line on each side of the road,,” David said. He turned and looked, everyone was keeping within view, even Jorge. They could no longer follow single file, everyone was straggling out too far.
    When David turned left, his view to the northwest was no longer obscured by the mountains, and he saw it.
    The mushroom cloud was visible for miles. David was surprised it was not white, but dirty looking. Everyone just stopped, and stared.
    “How could this happen?” Ashley screamed. No one responded, or even acted like they heard her.
    Before this, David thought, the nuclear attack had been a theory. Now it was a hard, cold, fact.
    “Two more!” Doron said, pointing to a second and third mushroom cloud to the south. The white remnants of dissipating contrails, resembling those made by a jet, scarred the bright blue sky.
    Somehow David had always thought a nuclear attack would come at night or during a dark day. In the bright, cloudless sky, the mushroom clouds seemed obscene. The sun was the same, the sky was the same, but here were three mushroom clouds.
    David needed to get them moving, the fallout was coming and he was very alarmed there were
three
mushroom clouds.
    “The truck is a green pickup,” David said, “let’s get moving.”
    Every house was destroyed. Smoke and a sickeningly sweet burning smell filled the air. There was no sound other than cracking of fires. They never saw any live humans or animals, nothing moved.
    Cars were smashed with debris and rolled over. Some of the cars in the distance were still on fire.
    David jumped, startled when he heard a faint car alarm in the distance. He realized he had never considered his truck could be burnt.
    “This should be it,” David said, pointing to the driveway.
    “Spread out and look for a green pickup truck with a large silver box in the truck bed. It was parked in the garage, so it may be under debris.”
    David had decided to give it fifteen minutes. Then, if they didn’t find the truck, they would start sewer diving, prying up manhole covers looking for a shelter, or dig an expedient bunker and cover it with doors, wood, or debris with dirt piled on top.
    “Here it is!” shouted Liu, using a short piece of metal bar to pry the rubble apart.
    Somehow the truck was smashed upside down. But the cab had left about three feet of space between the truck box and the cement foundation.
    “You think this is stable?” David asked Jorge, who hobbled behind on a makeshift splint Liu had made for him.
    “Yes, just don’t jar the back of the truck,” Jorge replied, as he stacked cement rubble to stabilize the inverted truck bed. Liu immediately joined in,
    David took his key from around his neck and inserted the key into the lock. The lock was jammed. He tried again and again.
    “It’s stuck,” said David.
    Zeke pulled out the jack pry bar from behind the seat. He inserted the pry bar, and David hammered it with a broken chunk of cement rebar. David wondered if they could pry the box open,