The Ivy King Disaster

Amelie Jones

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Operation Ivy took place in the 1950s under a man named Harry. S. Trueman, who was the 33rd president of the United States. Operation Ivy was built to combat the nuclear weapons project under the Soviet Union. Operation Ivy killed Ninety-two thousand people. Near the middle of the 20th century, nuclear weapons had sprung to life like the seeds of a tree after a fire. The first of many nuclear bombs was detonated on July 16th, 1945. The plutonium implosion device was dropped on a test-site 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico. No casualties. Operation Ivy was meant to go the same way. My name is Ivy. I killed Ninety-two thousand people. November 9th, 1952, One week before the Ivy King disaster. Ivy Elizabeth King, that was my code-name. I’m not supposed to be here. In the 1950s, women's jobs included. • Getting the groceries • Mothering the children • Cleaning the house • If you were lucky, The Night Witches. The Night Witches. That’s where I started. A friend of mine, her name was Coraline ‘Cori’ Ryde. She was in her late-twenties, athletic build. She had a

scar through her eyebrow that left her with a constant eyebrow slit. She liked to tell stories of a knife-fight, or a bear, but in reality it was her childhood dog, Benji. He was a reactive rescue dog, a mutt, one of the white scrappy ones that were always dirty and smelt of wet dog no matter how hard you tried to remove that smell. He attacked her one day, for no particular reason. He was put down the next day. She cried for three hours when she found out. The bite marks scarred, and left her with, as she called it, a sign of pure ‘bad-assery’. We met in highschool, she had torn her white skirt and was bundled under the stairs between 5th and 6th period. I had found her, fumbling with a needle, which had bitten her fingertips that leaked the needle’s blood-red saliva onto her already damaged skirt. I sat down, silent, and stitched it up for her, and then wrapped her damaged fingers in bandages I had in my pocket. ‘You’re going to be a nurse.’ was all she said to me. ‘You are going to die.’ An awful response, on my behalf. It was a joke, of course, about how she couldn't sew to save her life and how that would make it difficult for her out there in the real world. I don’t remember my name back then. We became close friends after that, and I, as predicted by the infamous Coraline Ryde, became a nurse. Coraline and I would have coffee every Tuesday at the run-down coffee place on the end of my block. That was when she got me. ‘I’m in trouble, Ivy’ of course, she didn’t call me Ivy then, but I can’t remember my name before, so we shall go with Ivy. ‘Pardon?’ ‘Ms Raskova’ She sighs. ‘She wants me.’ ‘Do you have a fever? I don’t understand-’

‘She is a powerful woman. She is doing something brilliant, but I don't know if I want to be a part of it.’ ‘Cori Ryde not wanting to be part of something? That’s peculiar.’ ‘This isn’t a joke.’ She explained to me who this woman was. And indeed, she was powerful. She was using her power to create a women’s league to bomb Nazis. On the 8th of October 1941, she was deployed. It was her 18th birthday. She didn’t die that day; she became a legend. Soon after, I joined her. I remember the night’s grasp on my young, 17-year-oldskin, it's cold breath whispering prophecies of death on the tip of the wind’s tongue. Its words had me captivated, obsessed, addicted. It became a pattern. We were unstoppable. Stall the engine, begin to fall. Release the bombs, escape unnoticed, bring the engines back to life. It seemed simple. But sometimes the engines failed to return. This was when Cori came in handy. She was always an adrenaline addict, and so she volunteered for the job to repair the engines. This included climbing out onto the wing of the falling plane, and manually restarting the engine without falling or letting the plane crash. She was damn good at her job. Once World War II ended, I became interested in the government. No one would suspect a woman, and they brought me into their ranks for that reason. Cori was too, we got to work together, and because of our piloting history and Coraline’s bravery we were put on Operation Ivy. That was how I got here.

This is nowhere near as interesting as my life was back then, being born in 1923, the roaring 20s, and then being part of the Night Witches in WWII, now I was stuck at a desk. Cori hated it. ‘Hey, Ivy.’ I ignore her whispers. ‘Ivy!’ ‘Would you shut up, Coraline.’ I don’t remember her name, either. I could have sworn it was Coraline. But I would not have called her by her birth-name at that time. But I did. I don’t remember. I can’t remember a lot of things now. ‘I got permission to whip out the Skywarriors.’ I laugh at her. ‘Don’t be-’ ‘I did!’ She pulls two keys from her pocket. Douglas A-3 Skywarriors were interesting planes, and I would have killed to fly one. They were brand new to the US government, the first flight of its kind being only a month before in October. We were 27. I grabbed the key from her and tried to hide my excitement as I walked the halls towards the flight hangar. We took a flight; it’s been too long since I was in the air. She whips around me, flipping underneath me and flying upside down. I couldn’t help but smile. She spun away from me, spiralling down and then shooting back up again so close to me that my own plane wobbled. I swear I could hear the sound of her cheers. ‘A- Ind- port-NOW-’ ‘Requesting Repeat?’ I take the radio, I see Coraline’s plane level as she hears the radio too. ‘Agents India- report- Agents In- and Charlie- report to base’ ‘Hey, Darl’ Coraline’s voice crackles over the intercom on channel 2, I flick over. ‘What do you think they want?’

‘No clue.’ Our conversation was much clearer as our proximity was closer. ‘You still wanna be a nurse?’ rhetorical question. ‘You still want to die?’ It was an ongoing joke of ours. I land and run back inside to meet my superior, my hair whipping across my face and getting stuck in my mouth. ‘Sir?’ I salute, Cori does the same. I remember the look on her face. Her hair had come out of its bun, it tangled around her neck like a noose and danced on the air like liquid chocolate. She was made of sharp lines and olive tanned skin. Her eyes were narrowed, a powerful aura surrounded her strictly parallel body. ‘Trueman wants you.’ He grumbles. He didn’t like us. You would think working in the government that you wouldn’t be juvenile enough to think we were on a lower level then them. I bombed Nazi’s, he sat at his desk doing busy-work for the president. The large oakwood doors pushed open and he stayed behind them as it closed. ‘We are deploying you both on the second part of Operation Ivy.’ Oh...oh my goodness. ‘As you are aware, Operation Ivy took place a week ago with the detonation of Ivy Mike, we need a new team for the next bomb.’ Ivy Mike was the first of the two bombs that were part of Operation Ivy. It was the first test of a thermo-nuclear device in which part of the explosive yield comes from nuclear fusion. It was detonated 8 days ago. It was the first successful test of a hydrogen bomb. It weighed 62 tonnes. It made history. This was a job for an author, and I was about to write history. Ivy King was revealed to me now, and hence my code name was revealed, as the lead pilot, Ivy Elizabeth King. Where did Elizabeth come from? I really am not sure. I wish I could remember. Why can’t I?

‘This is Ted Taylor; he is the resident physician.’ Mr. Freeman said, a man came in. He had a large, tear-drop shaped nose and kind eyes. His hair was combed back with just a touch of hair gel and he smelt of cologne and menthol-cigarettes. He wore a grey and white suit. ‘Hey, sweethearts.’ He smiles. Cori frowns. She hated being called ‘sweetheart’. She gives him a sly smile. I wish I could have stopped myself. November 10th, 1952, I start the day in the cockpit of a plane I’ve never flown before. Convair B-36 Peacemaker. A rotten misuse of the word peace. I didn’t like this plane. It was fairly new, about 2, 3 years of age at this point. It was chunky and oversized, with the largest wingspan of any bomber plane. Although, I had some respect for it. It was the first plane able to deliver Nuclear weapons and was capable of inter-continental flight without refuelling. It was pretty impressive. ‘You sure a little lass like yourself can handle this large lady?’ The radio crackles. I have to admit, I was feeling cocky. ‘You sure a little lad like yourself can handle the idea of a mere woman such as myself powering such a large weapon-carrying vehicle?’ ‘Well played, King, but I’d suggest you watch your tongue with your other superiors.’ ‘Copy that, Taylor.’ He didn’t need to be there, but he liked to watch who would be piloting his project to its drop site. Line 2 crackles. ‘Hey, Darl.’

‘Cori.’ ‘You still wanna be a nurse?’ ‘Shut it, Ryde.’ She teased me with that statement as often as she could. It was her way of saying that my life would have been boring if it weren't for her intervention. She was right, of course, but I never admitted it. I remember graduation, she stood on the stage, a smile on her face revealing her slightly crooked teeth and singular dimple. ‘You sure you wanna be a nurse?’ She asked, elbowing me. ‘Be a Witch instead.’ She let out a mock witch's cackle. ‘You sure you want to die?’ The lights blinded me, and the memory of that event has faded from my being. Maybe if I hadn’t accepted Trueman’soffer I would remember those times. Maybe. I take off, shooting off into the clouds with Cori and a select few pilots behind me in their own planes. Core taught me to fly. I don't remember a lot of things, but I remember her hands. They were armour-clad in rings and veins as she clicked each button with precision and ease. Her nails were short, her fingers smeared with engine oil. She flew a crappy old plane made of wood and canvas called a Polikarpov U-2 Biplane. Those 30-minute sorties were her time. She was a goddess above the sea of flames she carved with those gentle hands, she was unstoppable. I wish I could remember her. She trails behind me, right on my tail. She is doing it to piss me off. She would do this alot. It was childish and frankly something I was too used to.

‘Stay in your lane, Agent Charlie’ Taylor’s voice shatters through the old rusty radio, and she drops back to her position. I found line 2. ‘Looks like someone is jealous.’ November 11th, 1952, First signs of failure We were up in formation again, practicing, making rounds. We had been in the air since 5 that morning and were repeating drills to ensure no mistakes. A mistake could be deadly, and devastating. Disastrous. Cori was surprisingly passive. She would listen to instructions and respect her superiors, despite what you may already think of her. She earned her respect. She earnt mine in 1934 when we were 16. I was reading in the library, flipping through the pages of an old version of Gray's Anatomy. It was the textbook I would need to study to become a doctor, although I knew I would only be a nurse. It was made in the mid-19th century, around 1858, by a man named Henry Gray, hence the name. The pages began to fill my eyelids with lead and my skin began to numb as the seconds fell lazily over each other. The illustrations, by Henry Vandyke Carter, began to squirm and dance across the page with the rhythm of my poorly beating heart when the book was suddenly snatched from my vision. ‘What on earth is this?’ her voice was shrill, what was her name? Blondie, I will call her blondie. Her hair was tied back in a tight bun and her laugh was more of a cackle. She had a gaggle of arse-kissers, as Cori called them, who agreed with her every move. ‘It’s a book, ever heard of one?’ I snap, too tired to remain lady-like.

‘God, you’re such a whore.’ She snipes. I roll my eyes. ‘How am I the whore, Tiff.’ That was her name, Tiffany. ‘You prioritise boys over reading.’ ‘That’s smart of her!.’ one of her hench-women chimes in. she was a mousy young thing, she could have been great, they all could have been. ‘Exactly, I will get a husband quicker.’ ‘And I will-’ Cori interrupted me. ‘Go bury yourself in some giggle-juice, Tiffany.’ She sat next to me, glaring with the same angry fervour as I attempted. She scoffs ‘I am a lady-’ ‘You’re a tramp.’ ‘What is your problem, Coraline?’ I don't remember the rest. She came to my aid, she proved herself a friend. Tiffany would have grown up to be a trophy wife, which was not a bad thing. She wanted three children, two girls, one boy, to mix it up. She always dreamed of the white-picket fence and the sparky golden retriever to sleep at her feet while she made dinner. Coraline always said she was nice at heart but mean on the surface. I wonder why Cori forgave everyone, even her dog Benji, after they hurt her. ‘Agent India, where are you, over.’ ‘What?’ ‘Coordinates of Agent India not found, do you copy?’ ‘C’mon, can’t you see her?’ Cori’s voice crackles over the intercom, interrupting the flight guards voice down on the ground. ‘She’s the hot piece of ass at the front, over.’ ‘Don’t be crass, Agent Charlie.’ I hiss at her, then read out my coordinates to the intercom.

‘You aren’t on the map.’ ‘I have eyes on her aircraft, we all do.’ Another pilot answers. ‘She’s here.’ ‘Not on our radar she isn’t’. ‘Your radar is broken.’ Coraline says. ‘She has reappeared. Agent India located on Convair B-36 Peacemaker. Over.’ ‘Copy that,’ Maybe I should have seen that as the first warning sign. November 12th, 1952, ‘You depart in 4 days, as you are aware,’ Truman starts. It was late at night, a storm gurgling in the stomach of the sky causing us to end training early. ‘The launchsite will be disclosed to you on the day, Travis, Wilson and Dodgson, you are dismissed from the team, you are no longer needed for the mission.’ The three other pilots start to fight for their case, Cori and I remain silent, Reeves, the last remaining man on the team, begins to defend his brothers. Trueman silences the room in an instant. ‘We don’t need to pay for six planes to launch when we could cut the number down to three-’ ‘So you let these wenches lead the trip?’ Travis screams, a vein pulsing in his forehead, spittle forming at the edges of his sandpaper lips. ‘A man could do this so much better-’

The others uproar in agreement, I can see Cori pulling at her collar to let some air to her neck. ‘Why keep the girl?’ ‘What makes her so special-’ ‘She can’t do shit-’ ‘She slept with you to get the position didn’t she, the little whore-’ I stand, whipping Dodgson across the face with the back of my hand, the thin silver band leaving a cut. I silently thank Cori for insisting I join her with her ring fanatics. ‘I worked damn hard to get this spot.’ I growl. ‘I don’t know about you, but if you haven't stood on the wooden wing of a plane with a failing engine to manually repair it without the help of a flashlight because god forbid a tiny spark in the sky reveals our position, I doubt you get a say in this topic you filthy desk-riding worm.’ The room went silent, and almost immediately I was hit with guilt and fear. I could be thrown off the operation for this. I let my emotions get the better of me. Why do I always do that? ‘Security.’ Trueman’s voice cuts through the thick flesh of the silence, and out bleeds a sigh of relief from Cori and I, as the security guards escort the men from the room. ‘I’ll fucking get you for this, Ivy.’ He said my real name that time. I didn’t know how he knew it. It scared me. She wouldn’t admit it but it scared Cori too. ‘You’re a fucking bitch’ he spits at my shoes, missing by a centimetre. Shit. ‘You’re on thin ice, King.’ Trueman says, cracking his knuckles. ‘But you’re damn good at what you do. This is your last chance.’ He should have fired me. I could scream until my throat bubbles with blood at him to fire me but he wouldn’t hear me. It was too late now.

‘Thank you.’ I wondered why he gave the women the chance to write history in the way that he intended. If he was normal, it would have gone right. If he had relied on a strong man, unencumbered by fickle emotions, it would have worked. ‘You’re insane, Ivy’ Coraline said to me before we left the compound that night. ‘I know.’ ‘He deserved that slap.’ ‘I know.’ ‘It was a damn good slap.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘You know,’ her voice hitched with a ring of mischief. ‘Nurses take an oath not to do harm upon anyone.’ ‘Dead people don’t make jokes, Cori.’ Sometimes I wish they did. November 13th, 1952, 3 days before the Ivy King disaster Thursday was my least favourite day. It was so close to Friday, and yet so far. It was a red herring, the liar, the cheat. It felt close to the weekend, and yet, it was two days away. Detonation date was three days away. I wouldn’t have a weekend this week anyways, as the detonation date was on a sunday, and the day before would be spent doing rigorous training. Why do I remember this day? Nothing happened.

Today went like every other day, so why must I recount it? I have relived this day over a thousand times, hoping to find something that could have stopped what happened. This day had no content, no redemption for me. I don’t remember my own birthday, or my best friend’s name, I don’t recall the smell of my mother’s hair or the lilt in my brother’s laugh, or even if I had a brother at all. But this day, this useless, unyielding day that proves I was clueless and undeserving of any forgiveness, why do I remember this so clearly. I remember the way the sun would slide across the skin on my cheek before ducking behind the silken clouds. I remember the rumble of the sky, as a storm began to brew overhead, I remembered Cori, dancing towards her plane with the radio in her hand, her hair swinging and shimmering almost golden in the sunlight. Perhaps I relive this to see what I’ve taken from them. From her. When she was younger, her father was young on the exterior, but rotting on the inside. His breath would hitch when a glass shattered, he would scream and writhe at night beneath the chokehold of his sheets, a hot sweat soiling his mattress with the burden of his memories. I guess I can relate to him now. He was in the first world war, conscripted, and watched his best friend die. He heard the clacking of the gas alarm like death himself was playing on his ribcage, the gas mask enclosing his vision and his breathing to a loud, hissing sound that engulfed his senses. But even behind the mist of his mask, he watched his best friend begin to choke, hands shaking. Mustard gas.

It had spread its golden touch of death across 1,100 unprotected soldiers across the war, and had hand-picked its victims. He clawed at his throat, his jagged, mud-filled nails cutting into his skin in pink gashes, blisters beginning to form and slosh on his knuckles, and then on the inside of his lungs as he croaked his cries for help, coughing and spluttering blood and yellow ooze, grasping at his eyes. His eyes. Cori’s father would never forget his eyes. They had begun to form blisters as well. In his eyes. The thin clear layer, or the cornea as I had read, on his eye began to swell and fill with fluids, his screams would send a shock wave through anyone who heard them as he seized and vomited thick, chunky and half-dried blood that stained the ice-cold mud that coated Cori’s father’s boots. He was so close to getting his mask on too. It had been in his hand, but it was too late. Cori’s father had to leave his friend’s body there and run head-first into combat. He felt a sharp pang and his vision turned black but he didn’t fall, he wasn’t unconscious. Though he wished he was. His attacker was shot before they could do him more damage, but he stood there in shock. He slowly fell to his knees, his eyes beginning to sparkle like TV static, his ears ringing louder than the screams around him and the ground shook with his weary hand as it landed where he had been hit. Not with a bullet, but with the front of a bayonet. He could feel the warm, fresh blood pooling in his palm as the pain began to throb throughout his body, and he soon realised the smooth coils of worms he was holding were his intestines. He had been gutted. A shell landed next to him to put him out of his misery. But death is not that kind, as he did not take her father then. He survived the blast at the loss of his facial structure and nose, and a nasty scar on his stomach.

He was trapped in his memories, reliving, as I do, the horror of that day. Reliving the cries of his friend, of his brother, watching the barren trees fall on innocent men, the numb, blistered feet rotting in the steel-capped boots that slapped against the mud, mixed with crimson ‘victory’. He was apprehended by his own mind. By his guilt. I felt bad for him. He didn’t deserve to live in that self-hatred and pain. He never asked to receive those scars for the honour of his country. He was a good man, with a loving heart. War took that heart, that beautiful beating heart, and leached it of its colour and its love. Of its lifeforce. If war cannot feed off of the love in man’s heart, it will kill them in frustration as it did, over and over. There was no other option. You either gave up your love for your life, or died for it. You can’t have war without humans. War is the horrifying love-child of humanity and power. It hates and makes hate, it tears countries apart under the guise of unionising them, it finds the deepest, most horrible part of a person, of humanity, and releases it for its own gain. Perhaps I deserved that. November 14th, 1952, Two days. Taylor was walking us through his design, ensuring we understood the severity of the item we were carrying. He explained to us how it was built, each word sticking like a bug on a honey-trap to my ears.

Reeves had been silent towards Cori and I since my outburst, and he glared daggers at me when we passed him in the hallway. Perhaps I had been a little harsh, maybe, if I had remained ladylike, maybe if I had sat there and taken that outlandish abuse with my legs crossed and my back straight, maybe....maybe.... I wish I didn’t have to remember this. ‘Instead of using an implosion system, it uses a ninety two point implosion system designed for the mk-13,’ He is saying, Cori isn’t listening, or at least she doesn't look to be. She places a silken hand on my bouncing leg, applying the pressure to make it stop. She leaves her hand there as he continues. ‘It’s uranium-plutonium core has been replaced with 60 kilograms of uranium formed in a thin-walled sphere that is used as the core.’ ‘The thin walls ensure that the core remains sub-critical until imploded, do you understand?’ Cori begins to speak. ‘The demon core,’ She states ‘What about it?’ The demon core was the core of a third atomic bomb the US had planned to drop on Japan at the end of World War II, but was not needed. It had then been used in experiments, but these experiments were not regulated with the same safety procedures, which ended in the deaths of two men and the consequential deaths of five others who succumbed to radiation induced cancer. Tickling the dragon’s tail was the name of the experiment that caused most of those casualties. Louis Slotin was preparing a demonstration on how to record criticality mass in bomb cores, and by doing so he killed himself and the five assistants in the room. His method included two beryllium spheres cupped over the demon core, but not touching. If they were to touch, the core would become critical. The

beryllium spheres were supposed to be held open by two wooden door-stops, but instead Slotin used a metal screwdriver. The screwdriver slipped, and the beryllium spheres closed around the core. According to accounts of the incident, the core began to glow a light blue, and he began to feel intense heat and pins and needles in his hands. From where he was standing, he took all of the radiation from the core, and he died soon after. The five others in the room were exposed to enough radiation to kill them later in life. ‘Well, the demon core was what, 6 kilos?’ ‘6.2’ Reeves mutters. ‘Yes, 6.2 kilograms, but Ivy King has a core of sixty kilos?’ ‘That is correct, Ryde.’ ‘Wow...’ Cori was right, what we had in our grasps was an incredibly powerful weapon, perhaps the most powerful bomb to date. November 15th, 1952, Tomorrow, Cori and I will write history. What started as a meaningless highschool friendship forged over small specks of blood on a white skirt blossomed into something that would change the course of history, but we didn’t know it. My life had started the day I saw the girl in white curled under the staircase. I could have walked off to class, not been late, leaving her to figure out how to sew her white herself. Perhaps I would have run into her another time. Or maybe not.

Perhaps, if I could go back, I would shove young me past that stairwell and into class. I wish I could find some redemption for myself. November 16th, 1952, The day of the Ivy King disaster ‘Agent India.’ ‘Copy.’ ‘Agent Charlie’ ‘Copy’ ‘Agent Romeo’ ‘Copy.’ ‘Prepare for launch.’ That command was for the three planes, in their triangle formation, to start the runway. ‘You are third priority for launch, T-minus 2 minutes’ My radio groans and splutters. Line 2. ‘Hey, Darl.’ ‘Hey, Cori.’ ‘Nervous?’ ‘Are you?’ She responds with a laugh, that comes across the radio that a drunken lion. I flick back to line 1. ‘First priority for launch.’ ‘Permission to take off?’ ‘Permission granted, Agent India, Operation Ivy in progress.’ He goes quiet for a moment as we begin to move forward at increasing speed. ‘And...good luck, Ivy’

A part of me hoped he would call me by my real name, as though it meant something, as though perhaps he cared enough to find out what it was. The buried tension of holding a bomb in the back of the plane i’m controlling returns like a sense of deja vu. It felt like those sunny days after school with no homework, in primary school, coming home to your mother boiling cabbages, a smell you hate but learn to miss. A smell that drags you back to those afternoons every time you smell it. When I was younger, I wanted to know why smell was linked to memory. Turns out the olfactory bulb was connected to the amygdala, which is where memory is also located, forming an unexpected connection. That was why whenever I smelt that weirdly popular perfume that all the old flapper’s used I would see Cori’s deep black eyes, shimmering with her rippling laughter. Her mother was a flapper. Her mother fell in love with her father when they were kids, the classic kid-next-door story. It would have been sweet if her father hadn’t been so buried in his grief and his guilt. If her father had been spared from War’s ruthless gaze, the love vanished from his heart that day. But a heart cannot function empty, and so in the place of that love, guilt was replaced. It was 11:20 pm based on the dusty watch wrapped around my wrist. It was my father’s. I remember he smelt of calligraphy ink and plywood, perhaps he was a carpenter. The watch face was cracked. At 11:25, I checked the coordinates. 2,000 feet north of Runit Island in the Enewetak atoll.

At 11:29, The radio crackled. ‘Coordinates confirmed, permission to make the drop?’ Line 2 crumbles loudly, I can just hear her voice through the static. I ignore it. ‘I repeat, permission to make the drop?’ ‘Grant- wh- permi- India-’ ‘Repeat.’ At 11:30, I get permission to make the drop. And I do. The sky is dark and cloudy, so I don’t see the bomb land. But I feel it. The blast knocks my plane completely off-kilter, my world spinning violently and descending rapidly. ‘Ivy-’ I hear the radio on line 2 as I grasp at the controls, desperately trying to recover the plane. What had happened? My plane crashed in the mountains on the edge of the blast radius. I dragged myself onto my feet, gingerly testing my very broken ankle against the rocks. I limped forwards, a house nearby, its windows shattered. Where the hell was I? ‘Evacuation orders approved, 500 kiloton explosion detected. Tropopause height at detonation was 58, 000 ft, the top of the cloud reached 74, 000 ft, the mushroom base at about 40, 000 ft.’ The man on the at-home radio spoke. No, this wasn’t right. I had the coordinates correct, I was given permission to make the drop. I hit a country. ‘Estimated 92, 140 deaths as of the 18th of november, estimated casualties 181, 620’

As of the 18th. I passed out for two days. I ran back to the wreckage of my aircraft as quickly as my broken body would take me, and I grabbed the radio. ‘Mission control?’ I cry. ‘Mayday, mayday, please, please someone respond.’ I click the button again, repeating the same line. No one responded. I flick to line 2. ‘Coraline?’ No one responds. ‘Dammit Corali-’ ‘The lake, by the lake.’ ‘Cori?’ She sounds weak, that could be the transmission. ‘Cori?!’ ‘I’m by a lake...over.’ ‘No, no, not over, Coraline come back-’ I slam the radio down. I need to get to a lake. I return to the house with the shattered windows. ‘Where is the lake?’ A stranger, a middle-aged woman stares back at me. ‘Ohmy goodness, sweetheart, what happened to you-’ ‘Where is the lake?’ ‘Do you need help?’ ‘No I don’t need help I need to find the god dammed lake” She points behind me. ‘A couple hundred metres that way.’ I make my way, agonisingly slowly, to the lake where I find the half-submerged B-36H bomber, and Coraline, slumped against a tree. I run, ignoring the sharp twists in my ankle and collapse at her feet. Her skin is torn deep into her face to reveal the ivory coloured cheekbones and what was once an ear. Strands of her hair seem almost embedded in the wound, and it doesn’t stop bleeding. I run my eyes over the rest of her body, blisters seem to be forming along her beautiful hands, blood gushing from a wound hidden beneath her clothing.

“Where is Reeves?’ ‘I don’t...I don’t know, what happened to you?’ ‘They lost you on the map ten minutes before the drop, we couldn't reach you.’ she croaks, her voice rough, as though she were speaking through sandpaper. ‘What?’ I breathe ‘Your plane was compromised.’ She wheezes, releasing a pained groan. I tear off my jacket, trying to wrap it around her injuries, my hands soon painted with the warmth of her blood, a sticky iron smell mixing with the rancid scent of burning rubber and oil. ‘It was because of corruption in the senior members-’ ‘Dodgeson?’ ‘Yes. He tampered with the plane. Your plane was showing the wrong coordinates, we couldn’t contact you to stop you-’ She begins to convulse, her body shaking and a trickle of blood leaking from the gap between her lips, staining her teeth. ‘Holy shit, Cori-’ ‘This isn’t your fault-’ ‘Coraline-’ She smiles, letting her eyes close. ‘You are going to be a nurse.’ ‘You...no, no, Coraline, get up!’ I shake her body, she releases her last breath, a sigh. She died with a smile on her face. She refused to give up her love, so War took her life. For the first time in her life she was wrong. It was my fault, and I wasn’t going to be a nurse. I tore away from her with a pained scream. The world shook with each beat of my heart, the trees snapping in at me, laughing, screaming, shit.

‘Cori!’ I cried, ‘Please, stop-’ I writhed away from her body; she couldn’t be dead. She had moxy. She was a survivor. Her body. It was slumped, cold. It was lifeless. She was lifeless. Because of me. She’s dead. I cry out, slapping my palms over my eyes and digging my nails into the skin of my forehead. If I had woken up earlier, maybe I could have saved her. If I hadn’t lost my cool at Dodgson, maybe she would be alive. If I never joined the military, if I had denied her offer to join the Night Witches, if I had left her curled under the stairs maybe. Maybe. What started as a spot of blood on a white skirt, ended as a spot of pearl white skin under a sea of red that had become of her face. She didn’t deserve to die like that. It should have been me. I had run into the city at that point, leaving her at the tree like I should have left her all those years ago under the stairs. I ran and I cried and begged for someone to help her, I was delirious. I died when a building collapsed over me in a fiery crash. But I wasn’t put out of my misery. I never will be. I recount this story to remember her, when all my other memories are slipping through my blood-stained hands. I deserved my death; she didn’t deserve hers. She deserved to live on in an old, probably ‘haunted’ house with her father’s business in her arms like the child she never wanted to have, and a dog curled at the front door. That was all she wanted.

And she was gone in less than a minute.