This Is Only a Test (13 page)

It isn't until they enter their apartment to see the toppled water cooler flooding the floor that he learns a valuable lesson.

Only in retrospect
, John thinks,
can you ever think of everything in advance
.

Look
, a boy said, pointing out his classroom window, a
B-29
.

Thirteen-year-old Yoshitaka Kawamoto looked. Or attempted to look as he rose from his chair and headed toward the window.

Then, the blast, followed by the same wails Taeko heard in the telephone office:

Mother! Mother!

Yoshitaka woke to find himself trapped beneath debris.

Woke to the sound of familiar voices belting out the school song.

They sang to attract a rescue team, though eventually their dust-caked voices gave out. Yoshitaka's voice was the last to quit, though by the time it did, he'd freed himself from the rubble.

He became the rescue team, searching his shattered school for someone in need of saving.

Eventually he unearthed a classmate with a broken skull and a single eye but with breath still in his body.

Yoshitaka tried to save him but could not—the boy's lower half was buried deep.

The boy reached for a notebook in his chest pocket, cried
Mother! Mother!
as Yoshitaka retrieved it for him.

You want me to take this along to hand it over to your mother?
Yoshitaka asked.

Mother! Mother!
the boy replied.

Yoshitaka nodded, then burst through the smoke toward the playground, kicking at the hands that reached for his ankles.

What he needed was water—something to clear his throat—so he ran toward the Miyuki Bridge over the Kyobashi River. But when he arrived at its bank, he learned that the river was clotted with dead people.

Still, he drank deeply as a mushroom cloud blossomed overhead.

He knew nothing of radiation back then.

John and Hanako marvel at the wreckage inside their apartment, amazed at how everything has found its wrong place.

Here are the books and here is the water
, they think,
but why are they together?

Tiptoeing over the soggy pages, they make their way to the fridge. The earthquake has rendered them powerless, and though they risk spoiling the food, they open the fridge door all the same.

Inside, they find an inordinate supply of milk, cream, and blueberries, and since they cannot yet wrap their heads around what has occurred—or what is occurring inside reactor 1 at the Fukushima plant—they whip the cream and dip the berries and feast amid destruction.

It is not a last meal. Why would it be?

They knew nothing of radiation back—

Eiko Taoka and her one-year-old son rode the streetcar in search of a wagon. Their apartment building was soon to be evacuated, and a wagon was needed to assist in their move.

As the streetcar neared the station, Eiko's arms began to grow weak. She'd been holding her son for quite some time, and as she adjusted him in her arms, she caught the attention of the woman seated directly in front of her.

I will be getting off here
, the woman said.
Please take this seat
.

Eiko thanked the woman, but as she and her son prepared to sit she noticed a strange smell, a strange sound, and then darkness.

Eiko's one-year-old son was staring out the window when the glass blasted from the streetcar. His face shattered, but even then he turned to his mother and smiled.

In the three weeks he had left to live, Eiko gave her son what comfort she could, offering him her breast and allowing him to suckle everything she had inside her.

The radiation, too.

John and Hanako try to sleep, but eventually they just stop trying. They have lost their faith in the earth. The aftershocks continue throughout the first night, though what scares them most isn't the possibility of another major quake, but what even a tremor might do to the already compromised structure of their apartment.

Their hearts flutter with every shift of the bedsheets.

I should have seen it coming
, John thinks as he lies in bed.
There were just so many signs
.

He means literal signs. Signs on buses and streets and the sides of buildings—all of them warning of the long-overdue earthquake soon to strike Sendai. Over time, these signs had become so ubiquitous that even John of Indiana knew better than to believe them.

A few nights before The Earthquake struck, another earthquake struck. It didn't cause John to grind his teeth to dust, but it did stir him awake.

He sat up, turned to Hanako, whispered,
What if this is the foreshock?

Senkichi Awaya, mayor of Hiroshima, sat down to his morning breakfast. His thirteen-year-old son, as well as his two-year-old granddaughter, joined him.

Perhaps he quartered an orange for young Ayako, poured Shinobu a cup of tea.

Sweetheart
, perhaps he said,
be careful not to spill the
—

The clink of a teacup, followed by a fireball.

Sweetheart!

That afternoon, when the mayor could not be reached, the city treasurer sifted through the wreckage of the mayoral residence and found Senkichi's scorched skeleton inside.

His reign was over. The radiation was not.

On Saturday morning John and Hanako wake to find their world has not yet changed.

Yes, they are still without power, but otherwise, it is a normal Saturday morning following an earthquake.

They leave their apartment and search the row of nearby shops for an outlet to charge a phone. What they find instead are swarms of people with similar plans, gripping their phones and waiting for the outlets.

Guess we're out of luck
, John thinks, though as they return to their apartment, Hanako spots a beacon—a glowing traffic light—just beyond their home.

Could it be?
they wonder.
Is it back?

They bustle up the stairs, swing wide the door, and find their luck has changed.

The power is back, which means their lives are back as well. They have running water, internet, and more food than they can eat.

Their good fortune is enough to keep them in Sendai while others flee.

We are safe here
, they think, while fifty miles away the core of a reactor melts.

Ten days after the blast that killed her father, brother, and child, Motoko Sakama—the mayor's daughter—boarded a train to see what remained of her father's city. When she stepped from the train, she found that what little remained was all but unrecognizable.

Motoko walked for miles, until at last reaching the home where her injured mother lay.

I am so sorry
, her mother said,
for the death of Ayako
.

Motoko's mother explained how Senkichi, Shinobu, and Ayako had just finished breakfast as the air-raid warning lifted.

How, for a moment, everyone felt fine.

Initially, when Motoko's father's and brother's skeletons were recovered, her young daughter was nowhere to be found. But upon closer inspection, once the ash was swept clean, the two-year-old's skeleton was unearthed alongside Senkichi's.