The Day The Sky Fell

Standing in the kitchen, the crisp morning air blowing through the open window. The mild smell of dish soap drifting through the air. The sound of young children screaming and laughing outside soothed me. Behind me, I could hear my siblings laughing in the family room. They seemed to be enjoying whatever cartoon was on the television. As the oldest, I was tasked with cleaning up while the twins played in the family room. I was thinking of taking them to the carnival that had opened today. A change in pace might be good for them, and it was only across the street anyway. I was finishing the last dish in the sink when a new smell entered the kitchen through the open window. It was the familiar smell of the nuclear power plant that resided a little ways away.
“Sophia! Ashley!” I called after my siblings. The two appeared in the doorway leading to the living room. They were so little, at only two years old, they just seemed off, like they could sense something I couldn’t. I shrugged it off and grabbed my coat, it was the beginning of late April, and the temperature just didn’t seem to want to warm. I tied their shoes and we were out the door. The sunshine warming our faces as we walked. Sophia seemed out of place without a jacket, she liked the cool air hitting her skin, it was calming to her. We had reached the carnival by the time the sun was beginning to set. Our mother would be home soon. I followed after them and rode the ferris wheel a few times, it was all worth it to see them smile. It was late when our mother walked into the park to bring us home. She wore a blue dress and black flats, she grabbed my sisters by the hand and led them home. They could not stop talking about the day they had at the carnival. I had a fair amount of homework due the next morning, so I went to bed early. The smell of the cloth as I lay in the darkness. I fell asleep to the sound of birds singing into the wind. Looking back, I now know that it was the last time I would ever sleep so soundly.
I was woken up by an alarm in the distance, it echoed off the buildings and into the hollow alleyways. It was familiar they did tests every once in a while should something happen to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This seemed different, someone would have told us if there were to be a drill. A realization hit me like a wall. This wasn’t a drill. Something was happening to the power plant and we needed to evacuate. I tugged on my sweatpants and stumbled to the door. After slipping on my sandals I went to wake my younger sisters. I walked into their rooms and layed both of them in a stroller and laid a blanket over each of them. I walked into my mother’s room, only to discover that she had already left. I felt anger bubble inside of me, but I pushed the feeling away, there was no time for that now. I pushed the two of them out the door, and stole a glance at the clock, it was 1:05 am. I ran for cover, if we could just get a little bit north of here we could have a chance at making it out alive. I ran far ahead of my neighbors, all I had to do was get a few miles north. That was easy enough, right? All I was doing was running for my life. We had been running for a little while when I heard a loud explosion, the ground trembled beneath us, and concrete split.
“Run! Run for your lives!” someone behind us shouted into the darkness. You didn’t have to tell me twice, I ran and ran, harder than before. I was going to get us to safety. A cloud of nuclear fallout tumbled down the street, it was lethal. It would kill us, and it would only take a few weeks to do so. I found a drainage culvert and pushed the stroller into the pitch black darkness. I then flung myself down and moved a large boulder over the top. The second explosion was larger, it trembled and shook the ground violently. I held onto the side of the tunnel, thinking that this was the end. I closed my eyes and began to pray, I wanted to live, this was not supposed to be how it ended. I was supposed to live long and die with my husband beside me. I felt a piece of me fall away into the darkness, a piece of sanity never to be recovered.
“No! No! No!” I screamed into the darkness. I pounded my fists against the stone until I felt warm blood spill between my fingers. The tunnel filled with nuclear fallout, the rock had not been enough. I cowered in the corner with my sisters and tried to cover our mouths. I covered theirs with their blankets and held them in my lap, if these were our final moments, I wanted to hold them one last time. To feel their chest rise one last time with breath. We stayed like that for a long time. Soon, footsteps were heard overhead. They were here to save us.
“Fire department, call out!” they bellowed into the morning sunrise. They were looking for the survivors, the ones lucky enough to escape the steaming cloud of nuclear waste left behind the explosions.
“In here!” I called. “Please help us!” I waited a few moments before the rock moved before my eyes, and in popped three firemen wearing gas masks. I shuddered at the sight. I handed one of them my sisters, and a second helped me out of the darkness. I looked around in horror to discover most of my neighbors dead, lying in the middle of the abandoned road. They took my sisters away from me and over to a medic tent they had set up for the survivors. Two doctors grabbed my sisters and whisked them out of my sight. I tried to push past the soldiers guarding the other patients, but was told to decontaminate. They told me to strip off my clothing and to shower with a special soap they handed me. I did as they asked. Anything to see my sisters again. After I was cleared, I walked back into the tent, I couldn’t see my sisters anywhere. I needed to find them. A nurse walking past noticed the concerned look to my clouded eyes.
“I am so sorry,” she said as she led me to a cot with two small body bags laying next to each other.
“No,” I whispered. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening! They were fine! They were alive when they found us! What did you do to them!” I was beyond help. This day had been too much as it was. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my only siblings. The nurse laid her hand on my arm and I jerked away with disgust.
“Miss, they weren’t breathing when they got here. They had been suffocated by their blankets,” her last words burned the most. They had died because I held their blankets over their mouths in an attempt to save them. I had failed them. I felt a tear roll down my cheek, and I walked from the tent. I couldn’t be there anymore. I needed to go, go far, far away from this awful place. I watched as first responders walked around, trying to save people and animals who were balancing on the edge. Something I hadn’t noticed before was the color of the grass, it had turned an awful brown. It was dying, just like everything else. Plants seemed wilted and beyond repair. The wind was unseasonably warm, and rocks and soil had been displaced. Animals were lying dead in their dens, looking so peaceful, as if they has been asleep. Most animals didn’t have time to migrate, so they died, or would die quickly of radiation sickness. It was a large scale event, every organism within fifty square miles would be guaranteed an untimely death. That included, me. It wouldn’t be long until the radiation finished me off.
After this, succession began, dead plants disintegrated into the soil, leveling the land. Animals caught in the aftermath were killed because their mutated DNA would become catastrophically harmful if they were to reproduce. Trees seemed hollow and vacant. Animals moved away, leaving nothing but an abandoned world behind them. I returned every year to see what had become of this abandoned corner of the world. It seemed like a snow globe, left undisturbed and untouched by humanity. After some time, plants began to grow back, weeds seemed to be of abundance, growing in from what were once roads. Soon annual plants began to bloom, they came like bright splashes of color in the spring, and faded into the wind come autumn. Then perennials arrived, seeming to survive the cool winters and lasting through summers. Trees began to regrow, apples seemed to grow from almost every tree. Even a few new trees came, marking new territory in the forgotten land. The invasive species were beautiful, all sorts of different colors. The land seemed to be healing the deep wound of the worst radioactive incident in the world. Then came the animals, they returned and started new homes, leaving the old ones behind. They had found a place no human seemed to want to enter, and they had made it their home. After many years the land seemed to return to a sort of new normal, an abundance of thriving animals and plants complimented by the rocks and the astonishing scenery. It had been over twenty years, but I still remember it as if it were yesterday, the fires, the smells, the sounds. It would become a piece of my that could never be forgotten.
It was time to let that go, after such a long battle of health issues, today I had asked to be let go. No more pain, no more suffering, no more grieving the loss of my entire family, destroyed by a human caused event. Which was the worst part for me to handle. Before the power surge that led to the nuclear meltdown, the workers had decided to run a test to see how the reactor would handle a power outage, and due to a human error, the power level in the reactor surged, and the temperature rose. The workers had tried to insert the cooling rods, but were too late, the rods clogged the coolant output, and it turned to steam before it could do anything, leading to an increase in pressure, causing the first explosion, the second was caused the radioactive material exposure to oxygen, which caused an even larger explosion, which would end the lives of hundreds of people. Human error caused the death of my family. That was the bare minimum I had never grown to accept. A doctor stood over me while she administered the drugs that would stop my heart from beating.
“We had so much hope you would get better,” she said. “I’m sorry we were wrong.” I could feel a tear rush past my eyelid. I remembered a poem I had written so many years ago… It went:
“The ground we walk upon,
the steps we take
The path they lead us to,
the ones at stake.
Who do we look upon,
when all else fails?


When the ground trembles,
and the stars fall from above.
So quiet,
hush.
You are spoiling my apocalypse.
“The sky is falling!” they call,

they have no wisdom, no prevail.
The ground is giving way now.
The cracks swallowing humans whole,
their weightless souls litter the sky.
They will never know the promise of dying,

So hush, be still.
Don’t shout your painful words,
so I can perish in peace.” ~ J. S

‘Hope,” I said. “What an unforgiving, pitiful concept.” I looked outside to see a sunset, my last sunset. I took my final breath as the sun had just been captured by the horizon.