Phoenix Rising by Karen Hesse

Author:Karen Hesse [Hesse, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 2009-02-17T05:00:00+00:00

By the end of the day I’d had enough of Christmas shopping. I’d had enough of being in town. We planned to meet Gran outside Radio Shack at six fifteen. We had fifteen minutes to kill.

“Let’s wait inside,” I said. “You’re shivering out here.”

Inside Radio Shack, rows and rows of television sets were turned on, tuned to the local station. No sound, just the same picture, repeated thirty times on the various-sized screens.

As we stood and watched, the local newscasters sat behind a desk, soundlessly introducing the first story.

They ran a film clip showing one side of the Cookshire plant blown open. A blackened, ragged hole filled the screens. Twisted chunks of debris spewed across the ground. Helicopters passed above with monitoring equipment, measuring the radiation release from the containment building. All around the site emergency firefighters scrambled, wearing suits like astronauts wear.

The next film showed New Hampshire traffic jams. People fought, children hid under blankets in the backseats of abandoned cars. We’d seen that clip at school.

Then they panned across stretches of land, showing aerial views of the evacuated cities and towns: mile upon mile empty of life. Everything looked perfectly normal, just empty. An orange wind sock flapped above the unplowed runways at Logan Airport. The streets of Boston’s business district stood empty.

But not completely empty. Packs of dogs, looking thin and dangerous, stalked up and down the avenues, weaving in and out between the abandoned cars. Shoulder to shoulder they scavenged, occasionally turning on each other.

They showed a crowded evacuation center, a hospital with patients on the floors, bodies in a temporary morgue. Men weeping. A child, wide-eyed, under a clear plastic tent.

Other people gathered around us in the store.

The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission appeared, identified by a flash of words under his face.

Then the President of the United States came on.

Finally the camera returned to a somber-faced anchorwoman.

And then they cut to a string of commercials, idiotic commercials.

Muncie tugged at my arm and turned me away from the television screens.

Gran planned on meeting us outside at six fifteen. We were late.

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