Nuclear Midnight Read Online Free PDF Page B

hairless, shrivelled, and blotched over every centimetre of their skin. Their suffering, more than anything else, made him realise the immensity of what the bombs had inflicted.
    On the night of the tenth day, Kenneth to was able to announce that the outside radiation level had reached a point that was tolerable. However, he warned that anyone venturing out shouldn't expose themselves to the elements for more than a few hours at a time.
     
    The next morning Alex and eight others assembled in front of the door. Their leader was Hugh Trent, a local villager who had been separated from his parents in the confusion immediately following the first attack. He would guide them as far as the hospital before leaving to search for his parents. The group carried no provisions except for a medical kit, several torches and two litres of water. They were each kitted out in the shelter's limited supply of wet weather gear, leather boots and balaclavas. These had been supplied to them on condition that they scavenge for food, water and warm clothing for the shelter. Kenneth had given them a number of hessian bags and water containers, which they could fill with supplies as they passed through the centre of the village.
    When all the preparations were complete, Alex and several other men removed the sandbags and unbolted the door. The assault on the door had not lasted beyond the morning of the third day. Alex had no illusions about the fate of the people outside, he only hoped they had crawled into a nearby house to die. To everyone's relief they found no bodies on the stairs. The steps were covered in half a metre of black snow and ice. Although it was nine o'clock on a summer’s morning, there was hardly any light coming from the surface.
    The members of the party pulled on their balaclavas and gloves and began making their way upward one at a time. All around were wooden beams used in the abortive attempt to break down the door. At the top of the stairs a small hole had been forced through the debris, but even here, there was no sign of recent footprints. They emerged and followed their leader into what had until recently been the vestry of the church. The room was now open to the sky and covered with nearly a metre of snow. A large section of the roof had collapsed over one of the standing walls, making an alcove of sorts. Hugh shone his torch in there, while the rest of the party continued on; he beckoned to Alex to join him.
    As Alex had feared, Hugh had found the bodies of the people who had been locked out. Most were huddled in tight bundles at the very back of the alcove. One of the bodies was that of an elderly man. He must have died before the rest because his body had been stripped and pushed away from the others.
    Another corpse was a youth about Alex’s age. Most of his hair had gone, except for parts of a red beard, which still clung, in ragged patches to his chin. His face was expressionless, his right fist full of hair, as though one of his last acts had been to pull all his hair from his head. Large ice crystals dangled from his nose and the remains of his beard, giving him a glassy, almost waxy appearance, like a figure in a museum. Alex couldn’t tell much about the other figures, except that amongst them, there was a woman and a child, frozen together like some bizarre ice sculpture.
    There were also a number of tins of food, all unopened. The large amount of human excreta and of vomit explained why they had remained untouched. Alex had expected to feel shocked, but he found he was only saddened. Already he was adjusting his pre-war concepts of normal and abnormal to fit this new reality. He realised he had expected to find them in this exact condition; no other outcome would have been possible after their exposure to such high levels of radiation. Both men returned to the party without mentioning what they had seen.
    They left the church and were met at once by the full blast of an oncoming blizzard. Stinging pellets