Deadly Sky (ePub), The
Read Deadly Sky (ePub), The Online
Authors: David Hill
PUFFIN BOOKS
David Hill is an award-winning writer who lives in New Plymouth. His novels, stories and plays for young adults have been published in eight different countries.
For Katie Haworth, splendid editor
There were about ten ships. No, more than that. Twelve, fifteen, nearly twenty of them. Black silhouettes on the sea, too far away for Darryl to see properly, but he could pick the long guns of a battleship, the high sides and flat decks of aircraft carriers. Others lay around them, completely still, facing in all directions. A second battleship, more smaller ones â destroyers or frigates or something. A whole fleet, ready to hurl fire and steel at the enemy.
Nothing moved. If he squinted hard, Darryl could just make out anchor chains angling down into the water from bows and sterns, holding the ships in position. No sign of life on the decks. He couldn't have
seen it, anyway: they were all too far away. But he knew there would never be life on those warships again.
The sea lay flat. A single thin cloud hung unmoving above the silent fleet. Darryl leaned forward. His eyes were fixed on the long black shapes; his heart had begun to beat faster; he could hear his breath coming, quick and shallow.
Funnels and gun turrets, masts and superstructure showed sharp and dark against the sky. Now he could make out the vessels' shadows stretched across the surface of the water. Must be early morning. Whenâ
The ocean jumped. A pulse seemed to radiate outwards, flashing under the water, almost too fast for Darryl to see. The whole sea jerked upwards. The air above it blurred, shuddered.
Then the ocean split apart, and a great white pillar tore upwards, hurtling into the sky. Darryl jerked backwards, mouth dropping open. Inside a second, the churning column of water, foam, smoke â he couldn't tell which â stood ten times as high as the warships, storming upwards, rushing outwards as it rose. Already it was wider than a football stadium, wider than a mountain. The ships were like cut-out toys at its base.
Fire glinted and glared inside the white column. The top was spreading out, thickening like the top of a monstrous mushroom as it soared into the sky. Vast
masses of water slumped back down, crashing onto the surface of the sea far below.
Another shock of some sort ripped across the top of the water, towards Darryl. He ducked, even though he knew he was safe. The ships bucked sideways; some swung wildly over, about to capsize. Away on the left, he glimpsed palm trees straining backwards as a hurricane of wind struck them. Branches tore free. Trunks snapped and vanished.
He gasped again as he saw the wave coming. It raged out from the base of the enormous pillar that still stormed into the sky, top turning black, now wider even than the circle of warships.
The wave charged towards those ships. A tumult of crashing white, four times as high as the tallest aircraft carrier, surging out in all directions, raging across the ocean faster than a plane could fly.
Two seconds, maybe three, and it reached the nearest vessels. A couple of frigates or destroyers and one of the battleships. It rose above them, dwarfing them, then smashed down on them. The smaller ones vanished instantly. The battleship reeled sideways and toppled, funnels and masts swinging in a wild arc until they pointed straight at Darryl for a moment, then disappeared.
He fought to believe what he was seeing. A battleship like that weighed 40,000 tons, he'd read.
Forty thousand
tons, and it had capsized like a plastic toy. In front of him, the titanic wall of water raged on. The great column of white wasn't white any longer. It hung in the sky, foul and swollen, darkening as he watched. Firestorms still blazed through its spreading top. The ships had all gone.
Now a voice was speaking, and a city appeared in front of him. The wreck of a city. A few walls stood, but a great bulldozer appeared to have smashed its way backwards and forward, destroying houses, turning buildings into piles of smoking wood and brick. The remains of burned trees poked upwards, black and dead. An office block tilted crazily sideways, every window blown out. Buckled bicycles, a lorry with its tyres melted, a train carriage â no, a tram â that was now a mangled mass of metal.
Again, nothing moved. Like the sea with its warships before that colossal column came boiling upwards, the scene was empty and still: a vast, abandoned rubbish dump.
Darryl tried to concentrate on what the voice was saying. âThe bomb detonated 1700 feet above a hospital, near the centre of the city. The temperature at the point of explosion was over 1 million degrees Celsius,
two hundred times hotter than the surface of the sun. The howl of the bomber's engines made many people look up; its captain had put his B-29 Superfortress into a steep turning dive, to get it away as fast as possible. A lot of townsfolk kept staring upwards, puzzled at the sight of an object dropping towards them beneath a white parachute. When the bomb went off, its heat was so great that the air for half a mile around turned white-hot. Inside a second, thousands of people were burning.'
A face was in front of Darryl. He couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. The hair had all gone, leaving a black crisp on the skull. Cheeks, forehead, nose, neck were blistered raw flesh. The eyes were slits; the mouth hung open. Darryl felt his own lips draw back. âAw, yuk!'
The face vanished. For a moment. Darryl couldn't tell what he was looking at, then he realised they were bodies, twisted and half-naked, clothes hanging in charred strips. âFor up to three miles from the explosion, almost everyone caught in the open was burned to death,' the voice said. âThose immediately below the bomb, or within a few hundred yards, vanished completely. Their bodies were vapourised by the heat.'
Another strange picture. A bridge or something, metal and concrete rails broken and bent. Across the ground lay faint shadows, human-shaped, as if adults
and children were standing somewhere nearby. âFive people were walking here at the moment the flash came,' Darryl heard. âNothing was left of them, but the outlines of their bodies made paler silhouettes on the blackened road.'
The ruined city slid past again. The voice kept speaking. âThe blast wave struck buildings, trees and people as a 500-miles-per-hour wind. The few who saw it and survived described a black wall of air hurtling at them. Bodies were flung for a hundred yards. Windows shattered, spraying glass. Walls and roofs fell, crushing those inside. Thirty seconds after the bomb burst, 50,000 people â as many as the whole population of Hamilton â were dead. Meanwhile, the pillar of smoke and fire kept rolling upwards, spreading and growing as it rose.'
âWow!' breathed Darryl. The same shape that had filled the sky above the doomed warships a few minutes ago was swelling in front of him again, thicker than a dozen city blocks, storms of smoke and fire swirling at its edges and inside the mushroom-shaped top. âInside two minutes, the explosion cloud was higher than Mount Everest,' the voice continued. âThe co-pilot of the fleeing plane described it as a bubbling mass, purple-black in colour, shot through with bursts of flame.'
Darryl kept staring as the pillar drove its way higher still, rolling up out of sight. âIncredible!' he muttered.
The voice had gone silent for a few seconds, then it spoke again. âAs it rose, the explosion cloud dragged dust, plus scraps of burning wood and clothing into the air with it, like a gigantic vacuum cleaner. Over the next hours, these floated or fell back to Earth, carrying with them the deadly radioactivity created in the split-second of the flash.'
The ruined city again. Now there were people, some lying twisted on the roads, some sitting and staring at him from burned, torn faces. A few limped or staggered among the smashed buildings, burned clothes hanging from their bodies. No. Darryl's breath hissed as he understood. Not clothes, but skin.
âOver the next days, thousands more died from their injuries,' the voice went on. âAnd then, after a week or so, many of those who had suffered only minor injuries began to fall sick. They lost all energy; they began bleeding from their gums and nostrils. Their hair started to fall out.' More shocked, staring faces; Darryl screwed up his own mouth. âThey were the first of those who would die from radiation sickness.'
The voice was joined by a figure. A man sitting at a desk, looking straight at Darryl. âNobody knows for sure how many died in Hiroshima, on the bright summer morning of 6 August 1945. Some estimates say 140,000. Others put the death toll at closer to 200,000. Another 70,000 are thought to have been killed when
American aircraft dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, three days later. A quarter of a century on, people in both of these Japanese cities are still dying from radiation or injuries received in the blasts.'
The ruined city once more. Then the warships, with the terrifying wave storming towards them. âAnd today, in the 1970s, the atomic bombs that ended World War II, along with the nuclear tests that have followed in the Pacific, continue to cause protest and anger.'
Darryl yawned. âWish we had colour TV,' he mumbled to himself. He glanced at his watch: 4.25. His mother should be home soon; she always tried to get away from her school no later than 4.30.
A different face was on the screen now. A dark-skinned man, angry and tense. Behind him, palm trees like the ones from the explosion under the ocean stood tall against a quiet sea.
The man's lips were moving, but it was the announcer's voice that kept coming. âSince the French began testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific, over eight years ago in 1966, marches and demonstrations have been held in Tahiti, New Caledonia, other islands â¦'
Tahiti? Darryl listened harder. That was one of the places his mother kept talking about, wasn't it? There
were girls from Tahiti and other Pacific Islands (Darryl couldn't be bothered remembering their names) who came to New Zealand to finish their education, and his mum was the person at the local girls' high who organised things for them.
He concentrated again on the announcer. âSome authorities point out that nuclear weapons actually
stop
nations from going to war. They say communist countries like China and the Soviet Union, with their armies of millions' â a shot of rows and rows of tanks, all with red stars painted on their sides, rolling across a city square â âhold back from invading other nations only because they fear nuclear warheads will crash down on them in retaliation.'
The announcer gazed at the camera, spread his hands. âBut in many parts of the Pacific, people feel differently.'
Now the other guy on the screen could be heard. He was wild, all right. âSince the French start exploding bombs at Mururoa, we're told not to eat fish, in case they carry radioactivity. What are the people on our islands supposed to do for food? We're warned to wash down our houses if the wind blows from Mururoa, in case radioactive dust reaches us. Those who live closer to the test sites say that the soil won't grow crops properly. Our people are frightened and angry. Weâ'
A crowd of figures were marching along a street.
Thirty or forty of them, all brown-skinned. Men, women in bright dresses, a couple of girls with long, dark hair. Some carried signs. Darryl couldn't read them; they were in French or something.
He yawned again. Come on, Mum! I'm hungry. And bored. The house felt empty suddenly. Empty and sad and angry somehow. It was like that sometimes, now there was only his mother and him. He stared at the TV, where the marchers filed along a street. Some people watched and clapped. Others stared.
Darryl stood up; started to turn off the TV. Then â at last! â he heard the front door open and his mother come in.
