Free Day of the Bomb by Steve Stroble Page A

and
wait.’ It’s like that for the Navy, too. The head bone’s connected
to the neck bone. The neck bone’s connected to the back bone…” He
continued his song until he had reached the toe bones. “And that’s
you and me, seaman. We’re just the toe bones putting test animals
on a fleet of our ships and some Jap ships to see what the next
A-bomb will do to them.”
    The seaman winced. “Actually, sir, I think you’re a
foot bone because you’re an officer. Us enlisted are the toe bones.
Maybe that’s why so many of us get broken I guess.”
    The ensign smiled. “You got a pretty good head on
your shoulders, sailor. You ever think of moving on up into the
officers’ ranks? That is, if you’re still going to put in your
twenty years of service so you can pull down a pension like you
said before.”
    “I don’t know, sir. I’d probably be a fish out of
water as an officer. I’m all right with obeying orders. Giving them
is just not too appealing to me. Besides, after my assignment in
the Marshalls is up I’m going to transfer over to the Seabees. I
love working with machines and tools.”
    “At least you’ll be happy then.” Happiness? How to
measure it? Sally was anything but when Fred had extended “because
I have to sort some things out.”
    “Things, what things are you talking about?” She had
written back.
    “I have to understand these new atomic bombs. Life
will never be the same again for any of us.” He had replied.
    “Just as long as you don’t hook up with some Hawaiian
honey in a grass skirt, Japanese Jane, or Polynesian Pam,” she had
warned in the letter in which she finally relented.
    Happiness? Just an illusion, that mythical pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow just over the next hill because the
grass is always greener in another place at another time under
better circumstances, he finally had concluded.
    ***
    A B-29 Super fortress dropped the bomb the next day.
It exploded about 600 feet above the waters and in the middle of
the ships anchored in Bikini Atoll. Because it was larger than the
first one tested a year earlier in the deserts of New Mexico the
observation ships pulled back ten miles from the blast’s epicenter.
Other bombers outfitted with cameras instead of guns filmed the
blast. Drone bombers flew through the mushroom cloud to take
readings. Based on data garnered from the aftermath of the bombings
on Japan, scientists had determined the radioactivity levels would
be lethal for any human flying aboard the drones.
    Within hours, crews approached the ships that had not
sunk or capsized. The ensign and seaman returned to retrieve the
animals they had anchored to the deck of a ship that still floated
upright.
    “Okay, the scientists especially want the survivors,
men,” Rhinehardt said. “So be careful with them.”
    “So they can give them medals and then a burial at
sea?”
    That wise crack produced enough humor to deaden
senses. The initial sights and odors of radiation burns and sounds
of animals dying agonizing deaths had sent a couple sailors to the
side where they vomited breakfast into the waves below. Especially
pathetic was the billy goat that had butted some of the sailors
during his stay on their ship and transport to his final berth.
They had adopted him as a mascot and started a betting pool in his
honor as to how many weeks he would live after the blast. Now he
lay on the deck, still bound to the rack he had been tied to in the
name of science. Gone was the spark of fire in his eyes, his feisty
attitude that said, “I was drafted into whatever craziness you
humans are up to but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.” His
glassy eyes no longer radiated life or received images to transmit
to his brain because he had been looking the wrong direction as the
initial flash of the bomb lit up the sky.
    “Looks like Horace isn’t going to make it another
day, boys,” the sailor who had named him said. “Who was it that bet
that he’d only live just