In the end, it was inevitable.

 

      On the front porch of the tiny house sat my grandfather's old rocking chair, carved and crafted from the leftover sections of the same oak logs he had used to build the cabin back in 1926. I still remember the feeling of his callused hand against my cheeks as he pressed my face against his itchy wool pants when I would try to talk to him while he spoke to other adults, his way of telling me to wait for him to finish. We were inseparable, him and I. It wasn’t until he laid on his deathbed that I learned about this place, and he made me promise that I would someday come and give this cabin the old Lazarus effect. I was a small boy back then.

 

I would’ve given so much more for that old man – my life, if I could’ve.

 

      It was a small cabin, lost high atop some tree-dense hills, overlooking several valleys of Appalachia. My father never took an interest in it after my grandfather’s passing, our life in the city and his job at the law firm were all too precious for him. He was always too busy to take us out to the hills, to reconnect with nature, much less care for an abandoned little home his father had built with his own hands and the sweat from his brow. That’s why I loved spending so much time with Grampa, he understood what it was like to be in nature, how important that was for children to understand that at an early age, just as he had tried to show my father when he was a young buck. My father eventually sold it over to the municipal government in 1972 for a mere $10,000 (though she had been appraised closer to $20,000). It was turned over to the local fire department, who used it as a fire watch cabin for some years, but even they had been gone for decades when I was finally able to buy it back. $246,000, and not a penny less, and that was at bargain price thanks to inflation. She became my side project, the cabin, and after a couple of years – and many hours of arduous work – I was finally able to fulfill that promise I had made when I was a child and brought her back from the dead.

 

I named it Lazarus Stay. I registered with a few different BnB apps to occupy it, to give it life, while I was away for work. Had things been different, it would be hosting its first guest next week, but there was no station on the radio, or channel on the TV, no social feed, which did not announce the same thing. Nuclear Attack Imminent.

 

Amongst the many targets throughout the states, McLaughlin base was one, and, unfortunately, I was close enough that running would be futile.

 

I gripped the old chair's arms as I slowly lowered myself onto it. An old man's grunt escaped my mouth, followed by a warm smile, as I remembered that old man grunting as he sat down on this very chair.

*FLICK*

​

The light emitting from my chrome Zippo lighter danced on my face as I lit the last joint I would ever smoke. If I was gonna go out, I was gonna float out of here.

 

      In the distance, a town’s lights twinkled in the lowest part of the valley. Cut off from the fabric of busy city life meant hardly any light or air pollution. The town's lights seemed like a reflection of the randomly polka-dotted night sky above them.

 

For a second, a perfect moment of pure bliss. Man's sin cast aside.

​

*SPEAKER CLICKS*

​

“Almost heaven, West Virginia…”

 

The needle hit Grampa’s old record and John Denver’s voice filled the cabin through the home speaker system I had retrofitted into it, drowning out the wailing sirens in the distance and the annoying tone that travelled up the mountains, like an ominous choir from down in the town. I sure am glad I never got rid of it, it was our favorite 45 single-song record and I had played so many times that it jumped every few seconds, but I could never bring myself to let it go.

 

I sat there for a few minutes admiring the Blue Ridge Mountains of beautiful Appalachia, then,

​

​

One...Two...Three...Four...Five…

 

​

A series of consecutive flashes, each one brighter than the last.

 

      I felt a pat on my chest after every flash, unsure whether it was my heart or the impacts of the shells. The Earth itself shuddered under my feet as if the bitter Appalachian winter had been far too cold for the ground itself. A haunting, deafening silence followed, unlike anything I had ever had the misfortune to experience before. In those last moments, I felt my age, old like my grandfather, up in the heavens, like my father, wherever he may have gone.

 

      On the horizon, a troop of five manmade, burgeoning, smokey mushrooms towered over the mountains as the night sky reflected the infernal menagerie of colors that engulfed the earth below them. From all sides of the valley, I could see the trees being trampled down at a speed only a child’s imagination could conjure. The initial blast wave crawled its way up and down the forest’s hills, searing everything in its path, turning all into clouds of ashes and dust.

 

Nothing stood a chance, and I would not be the exception.

 

      I had spent my whole life dreaming of happiness in my retirement years when I could live off my real estate investments and enjoy time with my family. But as the adage goes, “man makes plans and God laughs,” and life rarely goes as planned. I lost my family 8 years ago when they left, tired of my alcoholic and workaholic problems; they grew to abhor me, to detest me even, and after they left, I never heard from them again. I dedicated my life to working and paying off my investments, filling the spaces in-between with IPAs and fine whiskeys.

 

I often wondered how disappointed Grampa would’ve been – or is, although I don’t buy into the whole life after death idea – of how much like my father I turned out to be.

 

      For a split-second right before the blast finally reached me, I could hear the trees snapping in the distance, like dry twigs under your feet on a summer hike. The low grumbling roar of the ground as the destructive blast unearthed it, and in the blink of an eye, the blast crossed the acre of cleared land that was my front yard and hit me like a semi, slamming me against the wall of the cabin.

 

      I imagined it must have been like staring down at the exhaust vent of an F-35 fighter aircraft at high power. The scorching hot wind violently brushed against my skin, weathering the top layer away like sand as quickly as it transformed it down to carbon.

 

The strong oak cabin that had stood for nearly a century, which had withstood both the test of time and the harsh weather of mountain life, was wiped away, as if by a giant angry toddler swiping at his block tower down.

 

My suffering was short. I was lucky in that aspect, I thought.

 

The fallout, radiation, nuclear winter, famine, all the atomic nightmares that we feared in the past became a reality for those who survived – for as long as they could at least.

 

In the end, it was inevitable.