Contact Preclusion

The nuke should have detonated in the air.

I stare at the ceiling. Naked wires coil to a bare bulb, which fizzes and flickers above our heads. Not enough to illuminate the shadows that pool in the dark corners. Not enough to add warmth to the cold cement, three feet thick. Ice-cold, ink-black. Our new living quarters. I can’t quite bring myself to say it’s our new home. Nothing about this place is like our old house. A concrete refugee camp. That’s all it is. The metal poles of the cot dig into my flesh. The canvas — stretched taut like a tented sheet — is rough and hard.

Before we came down here, I felt hope in my chest. Hope that we’d be able to resurface once the worst had passed. Hope that life could return to some vague semblance of normality. Oh, sure, I felt fear, too. Who can hear the rise and fall of an air raid siren and not have their stomach drop? But I saw it in the faces of the others — this would be The Worst Moment. This nuke would clear the air, so to speak. Not in a literal sense. A popped cyst, the release of pressure — left to heal. Everything that came after would be better. Once you’ve hit rock bottom, you’ve got nowhere to go but up.

But what if you’re incapable of going up?

What if this rock bottom is a permanent state of being?

Contact preclusion is its name. The thing that failed. The thing that ruined our lives. Or, rather, made the ruins of our lives that bit more ruinous. I’m not trying to kid myself — I know a nuke is a nuke. It’s never a good thing. But this way turned out to be so much worse. Contact preclusion — if only you’d worked. Not that you were the only thing to fail on the bomb, but you were the most important thing. The most important thing to not fail. You were the failsafe. You were our failsafe.

Because of that, I can’t go home.

Ever.

I mean, chances are the airburst would have KOd our house anyway. But if it hadn’t, we’d have been free to go back there in a few weeks. But this way — with a surface blast — they put our whole city out of commission for a long, long time. How long? I don’t know. Is anyone interested in buying property in Chernobyl? It’s been half a century, and still, that place is a radioactive no-go zone. Whereas Hiroshima and Nagasaki became viable cities once more within ten years or so. Lingering genetic effects aside. Increased explosive impact versus long-term fallout residue. It might seem like a tough choice, but it’s not.

“The air burst fuze failed to actuate.” That’s what the man in the soldier fatigues told us ten minutes ago. Big black bags beneath his eyes, face pale. As if we knew what the hell that meant. “The air burst fuze failed to actuate, which wouldn’t be a big deal.” He then grinned a sickly grin. “Not for us, at any rate.” He stuck a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a metal lighter. His company logo engraved on the side. “Basically means the bomb won’t go off in the air, like they want it to.”

“So, that’s a good thing,” said a balding man in an Eagles t-shirt. He glanced between us, from civvies to the solider. The only soldier. The single one. “Right?” Sweat shone on his brow, the top of his head like a polished bowling ball. “It didn’t work, so we can head back up there!” The elation on his face worried me. Maniacal. Unhinged. Too happy.

The soldier raised his eyebrows in a manner that seemed to say, Be my guest, buddy. “That by itself would be a good thing, yeah.” He nodded. We all sensed the ‘but’ coming. “But the contact fuze shouldn’t act as a backup fuze in case of actuation failure.” He then took a drag of his cigarette, tilted his head back and sighed a cloud of grey smoke into the room. Nobody complained about the haze in such an enclosed space. Nobody seemed to care. “Contact preclusion.”

We all looked to one another, questions written on our countenances, frows furrowed. A few shook their heads. Some shrugged.

Soldier Man rolled his eyes. A teacher with idiot children. No, Timmy, the square peg doesn’t go into the round hole because it’s a square. “It should make ground detonation impossible. The contact fuze not acting as a backup fuze would preclude detonation.” He bobbed his head again as if this were the simplest thing in the world. “Contact preclusion. Only—” he cleared his throat “—only it failed.” He raised two of his fingers, in that age-old hippie sign. Peace. “Two. Two failures on their bomb.” Soldier Man ticked them off. “First, the airburst fuze doesn’t actuate, which stops it from blowin’ its load mid-air.” Some of the parents grimaced and put covered their precious tots’ ears. These kids had endured a nuclear blast, but heaven forbid they hear a cuss word. “And second, the contact fuze does, which causes it to blow when it hits the ground.”

“So, it makes no difference, right?” said Bald ‘n’ Sweaty. “We were gonna get nuked either way, right? We can still ride it out?”

Soldier Man gave him a look that could shatter glass. “No. We can’t. With an airburst, the fallout gets disseminated over the globe by winds and stuff. Its concentration is negligible, local impacts — beyond the explosion, that is — are small. Whereas with a surface blast, which is what we have here…” He shrugged and looked away, his words trailed off.

We all understood. Even Bald ‘n’ Sweaty. He sat down on his cot with the sound of a deflated balloon. The Eagles t-shirt bulged over his gut. His face crumpled into something that resembled a blobfish. The cot sagged beneath his considerable weight, the material groaned.

He hasn’t moved or said a peep since.

I look back to Soldier Man, but he’s now lain down, eyes to the ceiling. He continues to puff — without enthusiasm — on a cigarette. Like a dead man with his last smoke before he meets the electric chair. For all I know, that is his last cigarette. He hasn’t even bothered to take his rifle with him. It stands by the door to the toilet, balanced against the wall. Almost as if he wants someone to pick it up and start blasting.

No, the hope in my heart has snapped. I guess you could say it failed to actuate. Only if you said that to my face, I’d try to break your nose. I’ve never been a violent person, but it’s never too late to start. It’s not like there are any police left to lock me up. There’s not anything left, anymore. It’s all gone. I stare once more at the ceiling. Naked wires, bare bulb. It fizzes and flickers — do we have any spares down here? What if it goes out and it’s the last? Do we sit in the impenetrable darkness until the air runs out, too?

Until we hear that click from the rifle’s safety?