Amy Brashear
THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF THE MAKING OF THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION
To all my new friends joining me in the Fallout Shelter
Welcome Mixer is at 8:00.
In nuclear war, all men are cremated equal.
Author’s Note
Though the events of December 1984 are factually accurate, some names might have been changed to protect the families of the victims and those who risked their lives to provide testimony about their ordeal in the making of the film Eve of Destruction. This is their story.
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It’s safe to assume that people will believe what they want to believe. But everything within the pages of this black-and-white composition notebook is factuaclass="underline" a black-and-white accounting of what happened to the best of my knowledge. I didn’t exaggerate. Nothing is made up. I hope to see it stacked in nonfiction sections (under Ratliff, comma, Laura) in bookstores and libraries around the world. It’s a true story. My true story. And it all begins with me, Laura. Also, it is my sworn duty to keep a record in case my mutant children want to know why they have a tail. I can tell them it’s all Hollywood’s fault.
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Chapter One
It was one minute to noon, and I was standing in the lunch line at school—it was chicken and noodles day, which meant I’d find a bone, and it would ruin my meal like it always did. The cafeteria was buzzing about that week’s game, Griffin Flat versus Hollow Court. Go, Shiners! The season was a bust—zero to eight, with two games left to play. Seemed pretty damned pointless to be slaving away on a game when your players already knew that the only winning move was not to play. Rah-rah. It was hard to cheer for losers.
I grabbed a carton of milk from the crate, even though chocolate milk and chicken and noodles were a lengthy bathroom situation in the making. Then I reached into my pocket for lunch money borrowed from my stepbrother, who was still getting used to me as his “sister” and not the dorky girl who took over the “man room” down the hall.
Shhhh. The siren across the street from the school blended with the other four in town. Louder, more intense, its wavelike tones mixed with the voices of the cafeteria on that Thursday. No one paid attention. Once a week the town did some kind of siren test just to make sure we were used to ignoring it in case of an actual emergency. Two minutes and the sirens went off, but no one noticed because ever since FEMA[1] implemented the weekly occurrence, it had blended in to our mundane lives.
“Can those sirens shut the hell up?” Kevin Barnes asked, messing with the dial of his boom box.
Kevin was a senior and all-around badass. He sat across the room with the pack-a-dayers, next to a door that led to the trash cans where everyone went for a smoke. I sat across the room next to the pay phones. So when one of them had to make a phone call, we listened in on their conversations. My friend Max had been known to blackmail many of them.
“Thank God,” Kevin yelled once the sirens died down. He turned up the volume on his boom box and tapped his shoe to the beat of “99 Red Balloons” by Nena[2] as he sat on the tabletop. (Ms. Little, the librarian and cafeteria monitor, had told him hundreds of times not to sit where he ate, but he didn’t listen.)
“Everyone, shut the hell up!” Kevin screamed. A man’s voice got louder with each turn of the volume dial.
“Now’s your once-in-a-lifetime chance—all you have to do is be caller nine. Caller nine. That’s it.”
“Language, Mr. Barnes, language,” Ms. Little said with her index finger to her lips.
But people actually shut up. We stared at Kevin’s boom box while the radio station went back to playing music—“Every Breath You Take.”[3]
“What’s going on?” I asked Max, but he just shrugged. He was into the comic book[4] that I let him borrow a week ago. At first, I thought everyone was looking at me. But they weren’t. It was the phone bank behind me. I watched them like a science experiment. (I’m into science—don’t hate.)
Background: Everyone was listening to the radio. But the music stopped. Everyone got real quiet.
Objective: To find out why everyone was staring at me.
Results: Pending.
Limitations: They stared back.
Conclusions: Pending.
I got all A’s in science. I was popular in science class. Everyone wanted to be my partner because I got all A’s.
Kathy was sitting across from me. She was tapping her fingers on the tabletop and repeating seven digits. “444-2323.”
I started repeating them too. 444-2323.
All around the cafeteria, legs were being swung over the bench seats. I glanced at the phone booth behind me, then at my classmates running toward me. A mad dash to the phones. I stood up, grabbed a receiver, dug a quarter out of my pocket, and dialed the number. 444-2323.
And waited.
It was ringing.
There was no busy signal.
I was caller number nine.
“Hello. Caller number nine? Are you there? This is DJ Crazy Bob in the morning. Who’s this?”
“Um. Laura,” I said.
“Oh, shit on a cracker,” Dana said as my voice echoed in the cafeteria.
“Turn it down. Turn the volume down,” Ms. Little snapped at Kevin.
He turned it down. My voice wasn’t so loud. It also wasn’t how I thought I sounded in my head.
“Congratulations, Laura. You’re the ninth caller, and that means if you correctly answer these three questions, you’ll be the winner of the ultimate star treatment prize package.”
“I will?” I asked.
“Yes, you will. You and a guest will get the star treatment on the set of Eve of Destruction. Can you believe it?”
“No.”
“Well, you better start believing.”
That’s where DJ Crazy Bob stopped talking and Journey[5] started playing.
I waited on the line until the song ended and DJ Crazy Bob was back on the air.
“Just three questions. Three easy-peasy questions. You got that?”
“I think so.”
“And since the prize is a walk-on role of the film, we’re basing the questions on the Big One—the Big Bomb—okay? Got that?”
“I think so.”
“Ready, Laura?”
“I think so.”
“Okay. Laura, a girl of few words, here is question number one. Who is considered to be the father of the atom bomb?”
“Dr. Robert Oppenheimer.”
“Correct.”
“Go, Laura, go!!!!” Dana said, clapping her hands and jumping up and down behind me.
“Question number two: A thermonuclear weapon is made up of two isotopes. What are they? Wait, these questions are hard. Who made these up? Laura, why don’t you hold on a sec? Let me talk to someone about this—”
“No, wait—I can answer that,” I said, turning to face my classmates, who were staring at me.
“Really? You can answer that?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, go on. Try to answer.”
“Uranium-235 and plutonium-239.”
2
Nena, “99 Luftballons,” Epic, 1983. Originally a German song that was rereleased in English as “99 Red Balloons.” It’s a protest song. I personally prefer the German version even though I have no idea what she is singing.
3
The Police,