contrast to the interstate, the avenue is practically empty, and she burns down the middle of it as another alert blares through the speakers.
Their lab is in Lakewood, a western suburb of Denver, in a redbrick building that used to be a firehouse.
They’re just over a mile away now, and Barry stares out the window, thinking how odd it is to see so little movement anywhere.
No other cars driving on the road.
Hardly any people out.
By his estimation, it’s been at least ten minutes since they heard the first emergency alert broadcast.
He looks over at Helena to say what he’s already said before, that he wants to do this again with her no matter what, when through her window, he glimpses the brightest light he has ever seen—an incandescent flower blooming on the eastern horizon near the cluster of downtown skyscrapers, so intense it burns his corneas as it overtakes the world.
Helena’s face becomes radiant, and everything in his field of vision, even the sky, is robbed of color, blanching into a brilliant, searing white.
He’s blind for five seconds, and when he can see again, everything happens at once.
All the glass in the Jeep exploding—
The pine trees in a park straight ahead bending so far sideways their tips touch the ground—
Structural debris from a disintegrated strip mall streaming across the road, blown by a furious wind—
A man pushing a shopping cart on the sidewalk flung fifty feet through the air—
And then their Jeep is flipping, the scrape of metal against pavement deafening as the shockwave blows them across the road, sparks flying into Barry’s face.
As the Jeep comes to rest against the curb, the noise of the blast arrives, and it is the loudest thing he has ever heard—world-ending loud, chest-crushing loud—and a single thought rips through his mind: the detonation sound wave reached them too quickly.
A matter of seconds.
They’re far too close to ground zero to survive very long.
Everything becomes still.
His ears are ringing.
His clothing singed all over with fire-ringed holes that are still eating through fabric.
A receipt in one of the cup holders has combusted.
Smoke pours through the vents.
The Jeep is resting on the passenger side, and he’s still buckled into the seat, at a sideways attitude to what’s left of the world. He cranes his neck to look up at Helena, who’s still strapped in behind the wheel, her head hanging motionless.
He calls her name, but he can’t even hear his own voice in his head.
Nothing but the vibration of his larynx.
He unbuckles his seat belt and turns painfully to face his wife.
Her eyes are closed and her face is bright red, the left side of it covered in glass-shrapnel from the window.
He reaches over and unbuckles her seat belt, and as she falls out of the seat onto him, her eyes open and she takes a sudden, gasping breath.
Her lips move, trying to say something, but she stops when she realizes neither of them can hear a thing. She lifts a hand turned red from second-degree burns and points at the glassless windshield.
Barry nods, and they climb through, struggling finally onto their feet to stand in the middle of the road, surrounded by devastation only fathomed in nightmares.
The sky is gone.
Trees turned to skeletons and molten leaves drifting down from them like fire-rain.
Helena is already stumbling up the road. As Barry hurries after her, he notices his hands for the first time since the blast. They’re the same color as Helena’s face, and already forming blisters from the white-hot flash of thermal radiation.
Reaching up to touch his face and head, he comes away with a clump of hair.
Oh Christ.
Panic hits.
He comes alongside Helena, who’s limp-jogging now over the pavement, which is covered in smoking debris.
It’s evening-dark, the sun invisible.
Pain is encroaching.
In his face, his hands, his eyes.
His hearing returns.
The sound of his footsteps.
Car alarms.
Someone scream-crying in the distance.
The god-awful silence of a stunned city.
They turn onto the next street, Barry figuring they’re still a half mile from the firehouse.
Helena stops suddenly, bends over, and vomits in the middle of the street.
He tries to put his hand on her back, but when his palm touches her jacket, he instinctively pulls it away in pain.
“I’m dying, Barry. You are too.”
She straightens, wipes her mouth.
Helena’s hair is falling out, and her breathing sounds ragged and painful.
Just like his.
“I think we can make it,” he says.
“We have to. Why would they hit Denver?”
“If they unleashed their full arsenal, they’re striking every major city in America, thousands of warheads,