The End of the Beginning

by Eichholz, Zachary

  Grace stopped William just as he was about to jump out of the cabin door.

  “Good luck, sir, whatever happens,” said Grace sorrowfully.

  William nodded. Grace started the winch, lowering the lieutenant down on his new line, down the trapped wire until he reached the stranded basket with Kyung inside.

  “Hello. I’m William,” he said pointing to himself. “You must be Kyung Soon.”

  The little girl looked surprised at the sound of her name. Attaching a second harness to his own clip and wrapping it under her arms, William quickly got Kyung up and out of the basket. She was now level with his knees as she dangled from his harness. He cut the tangled wire to detach the Valor from the bridge cable. Once disconnected, he waved up to the cabin for the hoisting to begin of his own line. The downwash from the spinning rotors buffeted them from above. Thump, thump, thump, thump.

  “Just keep looking at me, Kyung,” he said to the girl, pointing towards his eyes. “Right here.”

  Kyung nodded and held onto him tightly. Over the radio came an ominous message from the pilots.

  “Nuclear detonation imminent. We now have only one minute, thirty-six seconds. Get the lieutenant up!”

  “Winch is going as fast as it can!” shouted Grace frantically.

  Harden sat back in his seat, putting his head in his hands. They weren’t going to make it.

  Radio calls began to flood his ear, the voices blending together until they became indistinguishable.

  “This is the USS Gridley. How many evacuees do you have - ”

  “Are people still on the road? We don’t have - ”

  “Captain Bryant, what is your posi - ”

  “Can anyone get a fix on - ”

  “Does anybody copy? We got civilians trapped on the Inche - ”

  “The airport is secure, permission to - ”

  William reached for the cabin door frame and swiftly swung himself up into the Valor. Kyung had let go of his legs so he could get up and in the aircraft; she was now hanging, alone, two feet below the cabin. She swung dangerously below the aircraft, a toy for the wind to play with.

  “Sixty seconds! Get her up!” screamed the pilots.

  “Grace, Harden, get my legs, pull me in,” ordered William.

  As his fellow soldiers dragged William back in the cabin, the clip holding Kyung snapped. She plummeted towards the ground. William leapt and caught her, hanging his upper body out the door. Harden and Grace each had a leg, groaning and straining. Kyung dangled in his shaking hands with hundreds of feet of air below.

  “I’ll pull you up, don’t worry!” William wheezed. The radio chatter was now louder than the Valor’s engines and the riot on the bridge below was gruesome. F-16 fighters flew by, afterburners in full and ascending. A glimpse up gave William a tourist’s view of downtown Incheon. It was still, and its proud glass towers beamed over the city. The forests around the harbor and city still had some of their natural beauty as they covered the mountains like green shag carpeting until one could see no more at the smoggy horizon. Water below was blue and shimmering; a true city of paradise. A glint of light in the distance caught William's eye.

  “My god,” he said softly.

  “Twenty seconds until detonation,” shrieked the pilots.

  “I’ve almost got her up,” William said, beginning to pull her up. “She can make it!” he screamed. “She’ll make it!”

  William had most of his body back in the cabin. One last pull would do it. One last pull…

  I pulled as hard as I could in that collapsing hallway with what little strength I had left. I watched as she drowned in front of me, in my hands. The current was unstoppable. It would not let her go. Wind and rain came between us. She said goodbye as water spilled into her mouth. If I had had one last pull then… maybe…

  …And then it struck.

  CHAPTER 4: Purpose Lost In Fire

  Light poured over his senses. A brilliant flash to the northeast spilled over the harbor. Everything grew silent, dark, and shadowed as five megatons exploded in a display of man's incredible destructive power. William’s view became obscured by a hot, blinding white; whiter than the clearest snow covered slopes of Yongpyong; whiter even than the light surrounding the angels from the Bible.

  A miniature star was now residing next to the harbor. The two nukes went off within five seconds of each other, one in the heart of Seoul and one in the brain of Incheon, the smart city of the future. A mass of fire and debris rose like an expanding bubble up from the ground. Towers collapsed inward towards the expanding bubble as they were literally blown over. A pressure wave was quickly hurdling towards the bridge. Anyone near the blast location was instantly vaporized. Objects up to one mile out from ground zero were reduced to little more than highly ionized plasma, heat, and energy.

  Walls of all different materials blew apart into millions of pieces. Air molecules were being crushed together so tightly and so quickly that, for a split second, a perfect dome of condensed water vapor formed around the blast site. Underneath the fire and the heat was a crater being galvanized into the Earth's surface hundreds of feet across and over a hundred deep.

  William’s digital smart glasses, sensing the intense luminosity change, darkened themselves to their highest settings, shielding his eyes and in doing so, saving him from being permanently blinded. Kyung wasn’t so lucky; she had been staring directly at the blast. Many in the crowd on the bridge below dove to the road deck. Others jumped off the bridge, believing the water below could protect them, provided they were lucky enough to survive the fall. Many were instantaneously subjected to third degree burns. The forest around the city burst into flames. The water in the trees vaporized and outgassed through the bark, sounding like an old steam whistle as they blew apart into splinters.

  Traveling at hundreds of miles per hour, the first air blast hit the Incheon Bridge with such force that it blew vehicles clear off the bridge. Multiple cables snapped, but the road deck remained firm in the nuclear wind. Concrete chunks from the crumbling bridge towers hit the Valor and destroyed its right engine, its carbon fiber rotors spinning apart. The pressure wave broke out every window in the aircraft and ruptured William’s eardrums.

  Two mushroom clouds continued to grow in the distance, the one in downtown Incheon only three miles away across the harbor. Sand on the closest beaches in the harbor melted and re-solidified as black glass. Shadows of the dead and dying became forever burned into whatever they were cast on, leaving silhouettes of people no longer there.

  Aircraft parked at Incheon International Airport were tossed into the air, tumbling across the terminal; their jet fuel igniting and exploding in midair. The glass rotundas over the terminal waiting areas shattered like the bursting of a soap bubble, spraying a mist that evaporated in the heat. The tents and barracks on the FOB airport apron caught fire and were blown into the sea. Tanks and other armored vehicles were crushed and tossed as easily as the aircraft were, flipping end over end with no end in sight. One hundred-fifty-thousand-ton container ships cracked in half and sank into the ocean, their floating remains ablaze with oil coating the harbors surface.

  A ring of dust and rubble grew at the base of the mushroom cloud and expanded outward. William struggled to hold onto Kyung as she screamed in pain, burns began to emerge and blister her once-smooth skin. The screaming stopped abruptly as the burns destroyed her nerves. William fared better, his fire-resistant flight vest and helmet saving him from any serious burns. His cheeks, the only piece of exposed skin on his body, received the equivalent of a severe sunburn.

  The mast of the destroyer that had tried to escape the harbor was twisted over the bow of the ship. The entire vessel had been pushed forward by the blast, almost capsizing it. Huge waves and spray in the bay were kicked up and washed over the bridge tower bases.

  Alarms wailed through the Valor’s cockpit as both pilots struggled for control of the plummeting aircraft. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Valor 36 Zulu. We have
lost control and are going down,” a panicked pilot yelled over the radio. “Repeat, we are going down. Nuclear detonations confirmed in Seoul and Incheon. Mayday, mayday, mayday.”

  “Radio’s dead! EMP fried everything!”

  William tried with all his might to hold onto Kyung as they spun out of the flaming sky, but the laws of physics ripped her from his gloved hands. He braced himself on the floor of the cabin after losing her but was tossed along with his fellow crew and rescued civilians around the compartment when the pressure wave from the Seoul blast hit them. A piece of the plane’s rotor broke loose and slammed into the cabin, ripping through Airman Grace and killing him instantly. The G-forces of the spinning plane made William’s vision blur and his limbs feel like they were hundreds of pounds. Upfront, the pilots knew they were fighting a dead aircraft.

  “Get the landing gear down!”

  “I can’t! It’s jammed!”

  “Damnit,” the pilot swore. “Brace for impact! Brace for impact! We are going in hard!”

  Incheon Bridge's main span finally collapsed, as did its western tower, rending and groaning into the churning radioactive waters below. William’s back hit something hard. The pain was paralyzing. He would not remember the impact of the Valor hitting the rocky seawall on the eastern side of Incheon Airport’s artificial island. The two pilots, now dead from the impact, had tried their very best until the end to land the aircraft on land.

  Debris clouds lapped up against the mountains and splashed back into the disintegrating city. Eddies of hot dust in the mushroom cloud rose over 36,000 feet into the atmosphere, spreading out in all directions. A vacuum had formed and air rushed back in towards the detonation site, creating intense after-winds that sucked burnt out automobiles, street signs, buildings, and people back towards the fireball. Nitric acid and nitrogen oxides, formed from the sheer heat of the blast, gave the rising mushroom cloud a rustic red color, eventually being replaced by a smooth white top from condensed water vapor. Its stem was an ugly mix of brown and gray.

  William awoke to see Airman Harden next to him, dead. He was holding the body of one the children they rescued. He saw no one else. The cabin was lifeless.

  Thunder sounded. Small particulates inside the mushroom cloud were colliding and rubbing up against each other, forming lightning. Man-made storm clouds raged over the burning harbor area in a dance of electricity and sound. The air around William’s nose smelt of burning metal. Sunlight faded and a black cloud spread across the visible sky.

  Crawling along the rocks and out of the mangled Valor, William washed his face in the sea. One of his lenses was cracked and not functioning. His partially melted helmet was now distorted and bumpy. He took it off and threw it down beside him. Ash began to rain down across the harbor. William watched the world as it faded into a monotonous gray.

  Shaking, William tried to radio for someone. He was greeted by silence. He tried to move but pain shot throughout his lower back, too great to get up. His consciousness faded in and out but he thought he could hear voices. Dark, shadowy figures gazed upon him from above as the wind whooshed across his face, each gust encouraging him to close his eyes…

  “William, don’t be afraid!” she begged me. “Everything will be okay.”

  She tried to smile but it was hard. Water poured into her mouth faster, gagging her.

  “I love you, William,” she said, with a slight gargle. “I love you so much!”

  My grandfather and I pulled and pulled but the submerged bookcase had her. The water rose up and soon her figure disappeared from view...

  His chest heaved with the effort of breathing. It took him a minute to focus. A giant American flag greeted him, hanging from the ceiling of the cargo bay of a plane. A big plane, William noted. Harsh LED lights lined the bay. Wires, cables, and tubing ran along the gray and beige interior. He was on a bright orange cot on the middle of a rack of three, one on top of the other. His was located near the rear of the bay at the end of two long rows of racks that stretched the length of the interior.

  He could not move much and it hurt to speak. A heart monitor was beeping at his cot’s side; fast at first, but then it steadied as he gained his composure, its peaks and valleys straightening. His muffled groans caught the attention of a nearby doctor. The doctor, wearing a tan jumpsuit and blue latex gloves, hustled over to his aid.

  “Hello,” he cried excitedly as he bustled over. William tried to get up but the doctor stopped him.

  “Hey, hey, hey, calm down there, Lieutenant,” the doctor said, gently pushing him back down. “Lay still. It's okay - you're safe now.”

  He stepped back. “My name is Major John Morrison. I am a flight surgeon - a fixer of people!” he said dramatically. “I’m with the 15th wing outta Hickam Field in Pearl. You know the 15th Medical Group? Ah, maybe you don’t,” he said, shrugging and throwing his hands out. “Who cares? Call me major. Call me Doc; I loved Back to the Future. Call me John. Just don’t call me Dr. Morrison or sir. Wayyy too formal for me.”

  William listened as the doctor prattled on, bustling all about the plane. He was puzzled by the doctor’s upbeat, quirky attitude. William could tell he definitely did not see combat much, and despite his cheerful mood, William could not help but notice he was sweating and seemed nervous.

  “Uh, Major. I am Lieutenant William - ”

  John cut him off. “Yes,” he said. “Lieutenant William Emerson. Very impressive career, my friend. You almost caught it there though on that last one. You were very lucky - ”

  “My men, the kids… What happened?” William coughed.

  John looked troubled. He put his hand on William’s bandaged shoulder and gently patted it. “Just focus on resting, Lieutenant. You’ve had one heck of a week. But don’t you worry, I’ll have you fixed up by Christmas.”

  John turned to leave.

  “Major,” William wheezed, grabbing John’s hand, “please, what happened? Did anyone else… from my plane… make it?”

  “Lieutenant, I don’t think now is the best - ”

  “Major, those men were all I had. Did any... survive? Any at all?”

  John knelt down, and with his own hands grabbed onto William’s. John twitched his head and tried to speak but stopped. He regained himself after a few seconds.

  “You were the only survivor, Will.” John sighed deeply. “I’m so sorry.”

  Tears swelled in William’s eyes as he pulled back from John’s grasp. He felt his beaten body decline into numbness. William shifted and tried to look away from John.

  “I was able to grab this…” John spoke out softly as he took a charred picture from his pocket and handed it to William. On it was an elderly couple and a nine-year boy wearing a black NASA T-shirt and an ear-to-ear grin.

  “It seemed important,” John smiled hesitantly. He looked at Will. “I know you don’t know me, Will but… I’m not going to leave you. I’ll get you up and back in the fight in no time.”

  “I’ve been fighting my entire life, Major, and look where it’s gotten me. There is no reason to fight anymore.”

  “No,” said John, grabbing Williams hand again. He held it firmly. “I can’t image what’s going through your head right now but as a doctor, I can’t sit by and listen to you say things like that. You are First Lieutenant William Emerson, the Hope Giver, and I am your humble physician. It is not only my duty to nurse you in anyway possible but…”

  John did a quick look around and smacked his lips.

  “…Look,” he said in a whisper, “you’re kind of a legend around here. Being your doctor would make me really popular back at Hickam. I don’t have many friends.”

  William begrudgingly gave a smile. “Hope Giver?” he asked, bemused.

  “That’s what the media’s calling you. You’ve become pretty popular with them. Taking off to try and save civilians in the face of a nuclear blast? Seems like an appropriate nickname to me.”

  William nodded tersely. “I think I prefer Lieutenant Emerson.�
�

  He looked around the cabin. “Where are we headed? Where are we now?” he asked.

  “Right now, you’re actually at 25,000 feet above the Pacific in a C-17 Globemaster that’s been converted for aeromedical evacuation.” John laughed nervously. “Too high, if you ask me. We’re heading back to Joint Base Pearl Harbor - Hickam. It’s been eight days since the bombings. We have the best care waiting for you there and then we’ll take you back to the mainland when you’re ready. Take as much time as you need.”

  William didn’t respond. “Well, uh,” John said, wringing his hands. “If you need anything I'll be right over there. Just give a holler.”

  “Major,” William murmured as the doctor began to walk away, “I think I wanted to die on those rocks. I wanted to die once before, a long time ago. I never had anyone like you to make me want to live. Thank you.”

  “Nonsense,” John said, waving his hand, “You didn’t want to die. You made it. Deep down, you wanted to live, so you did. I’d say you're obviously not done here yet.”

  He turned away and nodded. William began to doze off again, staring nostalgically at the picture the major had handed him.

  “Get some rest, Lieutenant,” John sighed. “We’ll be landing at Hickam in three hours.”

  Due to his back, William couldn’t walk, so he was wheeled out of the C-17 at Hickam Field on a stretcher. As the rear cargo bay door opened, John helped him to the ramp. William squinted as his eyes struggled to adjust to the sunlight outside, putting his hands over his face. Still, it did not compare to the light given off by the nukes. The humid Hawaiian air rushed in. It felt good on his cool, dry skin.

  Several determined reporters surrounded William’s stretcher, taking pictures and asking him endless questions about what it had been like in Korea and to be in a nuclear blast. One reporter even had a camera-equipped quadcopter that was quickly taken down by annoyed Air Force guards.