Nuclear Winter (a story also on my Wattpad account)

"Not with a bang but a whimper." - T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

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At first his children thought it was a normal snowfall, and for a moment, they were happy. Snow was, after all, a gift.

It wasn't their fault they were wrong; it was his.

It was his generation that could not use their words and resorted to nuclear weaponry that was irreversible. How could someone like him, a scientist who told the military how to set the world aflame, ever tell his children that it was not snow, but the ash of thousands of cities, trees, and people that they wished to make snow angels in?

He couldn't. He was as cowardly as ever, leaving it to his wife to explain. Instead, he did his best to navigate the deserted streets towards the barracks he had been told his family would be welcome at, all while she spoke the dreaded words.

The outside world was the post-apocalyptic landscape of his darkest nightmares, but this was far worse. This was real. Roger could not bear to look in the rear view mirror of his car, he couldn't bear to meet the eyes of his daughter and his two sons. How could he have failed so spectacularly?

He was their father. He was supposed to keep them safe, and now, he could see he had done everything but that.

Every generation was supposed to pass on a better world to their posterity, to their children and their grandchildren and so on. Roger had managed to help his own generation blow that better world to pieces.

He pulled their car to a quick stop in front of the barracks. Unable to move until his wife told him to. She didn't touch him. In fact, she hadn't touched him since the explosion.

Roger was unsure of whether it was because she thought he needed space or because she was disgusted that the result of the notes that he would sometimes leave on the kitchen table had caused her children to have to leave their home. Roger had a feeling it was the latter option.

"Daddy, how long are we going to be here? When can we go home?" Roger stilled in the front seat before watching out of the corner of his eye as his wife turned to face their daughter.

"We're going to be here for a while, sweetheart. Your Daddy has important work to do." And wasn't that the truth. He had helped make this mess. Now it was time to see if he could help clean it up.

Hastily, he handed the necessary papers to get into the bunker to his wife. He wouldn't need them. The personnel would recognize him on sight, and something told him that they'd be more than happy to let him in.

Getting out from the car, Roger closed the door behind him before walking towards the barracks.

"Dr. Brighton, they've been expecting you," one of the soldiers said, and Roger nodded stiffly. Yes, he already knew that.

He moved past the soldiers and the people waiting in line, ignoring the glares and curious stares burning into his back. While his children had no idea that their father, Dr. Roger Brighton, was responsible for creating the bomb that changed their world, these people knew. If only they could trust him enough to try and fix his mistakes as much as they had once trusted him to help end the war.

To be fair, he had helped to end the war. It was just that he might've helped cause the end of the world, too. It was akin to what the liberal newspapers had called him before the blast went off and the world went silent. Dr. Roger Brighton, destroyer of worlds.

"Brighton, there you are!" General McIntosh said, clapping Roger on the back with a gnarled hand as he came up to him. The general was smiling, but Roger knew why. "Excellent. Now you can fix this mess."

"Perhaps this is a conversation best had within a different setting," Roger remarked, and the General let out a booming laugh, drawing even more attention to the two of them.

"Of course, dear boy. Too right."

The general began to lead Roger away from the other people, taking him around the corner. Yet, even as they moved, Roger could see the general's hopeful facade dropping. It had been an act, just like Roger knew it was.

"Get in." Roger followed the order without question, going into the meeting room that was already filled with military men and science advisors. At the head of the table sat the President of the United States, but whereas before he might've smiled at Roger, now he didn't even look at him.

"Alright, Brighton. How the heck do we fix this?" General McIntosh took a seat, taking the last chair. Roger was to stand, as if on trial, but he was not surprised.

"General, when I gave you the bomb, I told you what the results of using it would be. You knew the risk, and you chose to use it anyway." The general's face began to turn the color of puce, but it was the President who spoke up.

"Roger, if this bomb was to cause so much damage, why did you create it?" Roger took in a calming breath, not that it worked.

"You asked me to, sir. You all asked me to. You told me to create a weapon that would end the war without question, a weapon that would wipe out an entire country in the blink of an eye or the push of a button. That is what I did."

"And did you not think before you acted? If you knew this would happen, this is on your head, not ours."

Roger fought to contain a bitter laugh. Who would have thought that the American government and military were more cowardly about owning up to their actions than he was?

"Sir, when given a direct order from the highest power in the country to create a bomb that could end the world, one does not say no. If I had, my family's lives would've been forfeit even before the bomb was detonated." The men in the room had the decency to look away. It had taken a lot to get Roger to create their bomb, and no one could deny that they had tried every trick in the book to get him to. "All I could hope was that you, the people with the power to stop your own actions, would have the courage to stop yourself from using it."

The room drifted into complete silence, and Roger tried not to look at the pictures pinned to the nearest wall. The pictures of the destruction that they had all wrought. It was the ruins of cities, of humanity, and the stuff of all of their nightmares and teenagers' video games. Roger had to wonder if said teenagers were as keen to play such games now that it was all too real.

He bet not.

"So what do you suggest we do? Tell the people that we have sentenced them to death? We don't have enough supplies to keep everyone alive for long enough to try and think of a solution. How long will this nuclear winter last?"

"Two months," Roger answered, his own mouth set in a firm line. "In that time we can try and start to grow the seeds we collected in the preserves, we can take some of the soil from outside and work on salvaging it."

"And that is all we can do? Study seeds and work on soil?" Roger looked to the general in response to his harsh words.

"No, that is not all we can do, or all that we will do. For all we know, we could be the only ones left alive. We could be the last people on Earth, and so we do what we must. As humans, we are supposed to learn from past mistakes. I suppose our memory has grown too long, we have forgotten what most of us once knew as children."

"What do you mean, Brighton? Stop speaking in riddles."

"Stories and religions from around the world tell the story of a great flood that forced the human race to start anew. This, sir, is our flood. The only difference is that we have no animals to speak of. We have our seeds, our science, and our minds. That will have to be enough."

"And if it isn't?" This time it was the President who spoke up, his tone was as quiet as ever, and yet every person in the room was forced to acknowledge his words. Roger, despite not wishing to speak everyone's thoughts out loud, was the one to answer.

"Then in trying to save the world, we have, instead, ended it."

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Word count: 1,483

This was written for a contest on Wattpad.