The root cellar was small but they were continuously making room by eating the food from his garden stored there. He theorized that if the ash did not contaminate the food and water it was safe. Luckily for all in the confined space, his wife had insisted that he keep a few barrels of water in the cellar as well. She insisted that she needed cold water to start any soup stock. Starting with even lukewarm water tended to soften up the outside of things, like potatoes, before the insides could get warm. He had to admit that she made the best borsch he had ever tasted and she insisted it was because of starting out with cold water. For now her little quirk was saving their lives he was sure.
There had been a very awkward time when he had to speak to Yuli and Mansur about not fornicating for a long time for fear of spawning a deformed fetus. He had seen horrible monstrosities crying helplessly abandoned and left to die cause by the ravages of radiation in many of the hospitals and medical stations he had worked in. No arms or legs, horribly malformed faces, no eyes or even whole faces, crooked spines that bent the baby backward were all the norm. The newly married couple cried together for hours trying to comfort each other and silently hoping they had not conceived yet.
He had to focus and convinced Ivan that while he slept he had to keep his guard up and keep everyone safe and not to let anyone open or even try to open the cellar doors even a crack. If any of that sand got in it could kill them all. Ivan seemed convinced. He had been awake guarding and arguing with the others for over 24 hours and just had to close his eyes. Just for a second.
In what seemed like a blink of an eyelash he was awakened by a shaft of light and a puff of air. He opened his eyes in horror as he sat up. He saw the sand and dust swirl around in the shaft of sunlight that fill the confined space as Ivan threw open the doors even wider. He reached for his revolver and made sure he had a bullet for each of his children, his wife and himself. Ivan and the others were not his concern anymore.
Henry “Hank” Gardner heard someone swearing but it sounded like he was muffled. It turned out to be him. He kept shouting “what the fuck” over and over again. That is until he woke up and he knew he was in deep trouble. He was swinging from a USAAF parachute with some kind of mask on him and a small heavy bottle hitting him in the nuts.
He was having trouble making his left side work, anything on his left side, arm, leg, eye or even his hearing. It’s surprisingly hard to function with only one eye. Your perception is all screwed up initially.
As he took stock he started to remember how he got here. He was aboard a bomber; one of those big ones… and there was an explosion and… someone pushed him out of the plane! Holy crap was he scared. He was a chicken shit anyway and had figured out a way to strap a portable emergency oxygen system to his body and it was now saving his life and hitting him in the aforementioned nuts.
He was a scientist, what the hell was he being pushed out of a plane for! As the events of what he figured were the last 5 minutes came back to him, he suddenly realized he could not remember his own name! He did remember seeing a piece of metal blowing around with a name on it kind of following him as he fell. The damn thing hit him just as he pulled the ring that was supposed to make the chute work. I guess it worked because here I am. Was his name Finnegan? No, that was the name painted on the piece of metal that hit him. Until he can think more clearly, Finnegan it is. I must have hit my head.
Well… I’m over land and not water. Let’s see we were on our way to Grozny to do some kind of experiment. Something to do with a high altitude wind.
His right ear catches a droning noise and as he scans around he catches sight of another giant silver bomber flying a few thousand feet off to the right almost overhead. Shit its bomb bay door is open. I thought they had multiple doors? Now that is a bomb! Look at the size of the thing will yah. Amazing and there it goes… Someone is in for a world of hurt that thing is huge.
Wait, wait, oh God no! Its numerical… nucleotide… asthma… some kind of bad bomb and it’s going to kill me as well. What the hell do I do? Curl up in a ball! Can you steer this parachute? I know I’ll just cut the harness and drop and take my chances.
He starts fishing for a knife with his right arm and hand all the time watching the bomb fall through the air. It fascinates him the way it cuts through the air. That’s what I was supposed to study! How this thing fell through the air and what happens when it hits some kind of wind.
Just then the said wind hit him. He felt it first as his feet and legs were pulled sideways and then he was almost pulled out of his harness and swept sideways at an incredible speed away from the path of the monstrous bomb. He had no idea how fast he was going but he was flying behind his chute like a toy gone berserk. He kept going for what seemed like forever when behind him he sensed an incredibly bright light rather than saw it. It lit up his parachute and then a few seconds later a pressure wave hit along with a searing hot wind faster than the wind he was being carried by. This whole combination of fast moving air increased his speed tremendously but since he was traveling at essentially the same speed as the first wind it didn’t tear him or the parachute into shreds.
He went on like this for quite a while when all of a sudden he fell far enough towards the ground that he dropped out of the fast moving wind and then was sent in the other direction by a fairly quick wind. Down and down he fell all the time trying to remember his real name and his family… if he had one, anyone on the plane… anything that he could grab a hold of. Every once in a while he would swing around and wonder at the ever expanding mushroom cloud. Something about “I am the destroyer of worlds” kept repeating itself in his head. It looked like he was going to land in the foothills of the mountains that were now above him. Looking down on him like he was some kind of bug that had briefly visited their lofty world and now was back where he belonged.
He kept feeling weaker and weaker. Probably bleeding to death, he thought. No it’s the air bottle, it’s empty. Well not a bad way to go he thought. Finally he just couldn’t fight it anymore and fainted.
The next thing he knew he was alone with a foul smelling pile of blankets and hides on top of him. Someone was with him, lying next to him and holding her hand over his mouth. He heard strange, guttural, male voices, obviously shouting orders. He decided to play along and wait to see what the hell was going on. If they were going to kill him they would have done so when he was out. After about 20 minutes of going in and out of consciousness the pile of blankets and furs where lifted off him and he stared into the most beautiful set of eyes he had ever seen. They were blue green with a slight tilt, almond shaped and so clear you could see your soul in them.
He ended up marrying those eyes but that story will have to wait.
“The day had begun for me as any other since my assignment here in Grozny. We were testing a new People’s Fighter based on the German He 162 Sparrow. The official line was that it was designed by Yak but we could still see the swastikas under the new paint of some of our test models. It was a great little plane to fly. The fastest in the air up to now, I believe. It had the ability to climb quickly up to 12,000 meters. My beauty was based on the 162 B-1 expended range version that the Germans proposed but never built. As you know it was renamed Stalin’s Dart. This model was indeed a creation of Soviet hands.