During a typical alert they would be on lockdown, allowing no information from unofficial channels. This was different. The Commander’s Office had sent out word that as long as official duties would not be disrupted, there was no point in the typical information blackout. It came with a warning to not put full faith into what was on the news.
The planet had more cameras than ever before in history. Somehow network news stations always seemed to find a way to get a feed off of anything that had a lens when there was something even remotely newsworthy to talk about. There had yet to be any pictures of the areas hit, but Frank knew that would change sooner or later. He assumed the entire country, if not industrialized world, desperately wanted that look. They had to know how bad the damage was. Knowing might be bad, but not knowing was going to end up being far worse.
Frank supposed that one trouble with the modern world was that everyone had gotten used to instant communications. People had grown to expect any bit of information they desired to be available the moment they desired it. Right now, in those areas hit most of the cameras everyone had grown to depend on had been destroyed.
Frank’s imagination was running a bit wild despite the fact that he knew he shouldn’t allow that to be the case, but he couldn’t help himself. He was on the verge of convincing himself there was nothing but flat, smoking earth left for hundreds of miles around the two detonation sites.
Once the on hand supply inventory was complete this seemed like an appropriate use of everyone’s time, even before the first aid refresher. If the end result was a team that could focus instead of wonder what the damage was like, it would be well worth the time.
The reporter they were watching could normally deliver any news with a smile. She was failing at this fundamental news anchor requirement today. She was making a reasonable attempt at delivering the news without her voice cracking, but she was so emotionally affected that she was falling short on this count as well.
The news anchor kept talking, filling airtime no matter what, “I want to remind everyone, that we still have no idea who is behind these acts. We don’t know much of anything yet, other than there have been two nuclear explosions in two United States cities, which history will surely… please stand by for a moment.”
She put her finger to her ear, listening intently to a producer talking to her through her earpiece, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have our first video feed coming in from a helicopter over the destruction near Fort Worth. This is from a traffic helicopter that had yet to take off when the device detonated. Any of them that were in the air for many miles at the time were tragically downed when the detonation happened. This one had to be fueled, then fly in from more than a hundred and fifty miles northeast. Ah, the picture is coming,” her sentence ended abruptly and her mouth dropped open as she turned to see the picture on the screen behind her.
As far as the camera could focus the scene was nothing but giant piles of rubble. Pieces of what once were multi-story buildings, automobiles, what might have been a highway overpass, maybe a school bus, were all thrown together in massive piles.
In the distance some portions of buildings could be seen remaining with gaping holes. A pair of steel beams were sticking out of one of the remaining structures giving a smoke filled, charred reminder that the buildings here were recently much taller.
A city was gone from the Earth. It had been there just this morning. It was there, and now it wasn’t. It had been turned into a pile of waste. The land was still there, bits of junk were still there. None of what had been the well-organized and constructed buildings stood any longer.
The cameraman pulled back for a wide shot and the destruction appeared to go on even further and wider than Frank had imagined possible. It wasn’t completely flattened out, but looked to be something akin to the surface of an abandoned island in the Pacific, one of the ones that were used for testing of all kinds of weaponry during and after World War II.
Frank could not believe that what he was looking at had been a thriving metropolitan area just a few short hours ago. Being in the combat branches of the military he had seen destruction from bombs, explosives, and missiles, but this was far beyond any of that. If you looked closely in the distance you could see what appeared to be steel superstructures of buildings on fire. Given that this was a nuclear blast there should be no fuel left on the surface burning. It had to be the metal itself that had gotten so hot that it was producing a flame. It was too much for Frank to wrap his mind around. That much heat, it just wasn’t possible that this was really happening, it had to be a dream.
The helicopter slowed. There was a static filled audio feed from the pilot. By now the audience had put together from the somewhat broken transmissions from the helicopter that on the images were from the edge, not at the center, of the damaged area. The fires in the distance were too massive, and the pilot did not feel he could get closer without risking his aircraft. Besides, they were attempting to search for survivors, and that was clearly not needed any closer to the blast zone. The recording of damage could wait until they helped what people they could. So far they were searching, but not finding anyone left alive.
The pilot was systematically searching the area. The camera panned down rather than pointing in front of the flight path in order to increase their chances of finding someone still moving. The pilot was asking for help of anyone watching his feed to alert him if they saw something he missed. The pilot could be heard praying to himself between official radio exchanges. He must have forgotten that he pushed the voice activated transmission button.
Who could blame him?
The helicopter came upon what had recently been an elementary school. At least they came upon the remnants of a playground that indicated that is what this building probably used to be. It could have been a daycare center, but it was certainly something with children in mind. What remained of some of the children who had been on the playground could be seen littering the area. Their bodies had been turned to the color of blackened fireplace ash. Some of the piles of ash still maintained the shape of small humans who had finished their lives in intense pain based on the agonizing appearance of the positions they had been in when they reached their final breath.
One small child who had been on the side of the building and therefore not “protected” by its structure was burned down to a pure white skeleton. At this point the camera operator and pilot stopped speaking into the radio. Their flight slowly, almost sadly, changed direction away from the blast center moving further towards the outskirts. The camera remained focused on the skeletal remains of the once playful child as long as it could, as the nation and world took note of the price of this attack had cost the innocent civilians of the United States.
The pilot finally recovered with a very timidly voiced statement, “We are going to look further north for survivors.”
The news anchor came back into view as tears were streaking her makeup in silent emotions stains, “We have just received word from an overseas colleague. We have no reason to doubt the validity. There have been three nuclear explosions in Israel, our close friend and ally in that region. Our prayers go out to everyone in Fort Worth, Detroit and Israel. May God help Israel and God help the United States of America. We are at War. I hope humankind can survive this madness.”
She got up and walked off camera covering her face to hide the new stream of tears now flowing uncontrollably.