11 Ground Zero

Chapter 11 GROUND ZERO At this point, you're probably starting to feel a little angry that Coke hasn't been thrown into a volcano yet. I mean, I promised back in chapter 1 that Coke was going to get thrown into a volcano. And here we are in chapter 11, and the twins are nowhere near a volcano. Do they even have volcanoes in New Mexico? Again, I ask you to show a little patience. Trust me, by the end of this story Coke will get thrown into a volcano. You can take that to the bank. Dr. McDonald put the Ferrari in gear and headed north out of Alamogordo on Route 54. Coke already had his earbuds in and was nodding his head, oblivious to the world around him. "Where are we going today?" Pep asked from

the backseat. "We'll tell you when we get there," her father replied. "Is it a surprise?" "Let's just say we're going someplace that everyone should see," he said. "I love a mystery," Pep said, rubbing her hands together. "It's not that kind of mystery," said Mrs. McDonald mysteriously. The two-lane road cut through the New Mexico desert on a straight line for mile after mile. The most interesting thing to look at was the occasional SPEED LIMIT 55 sign at the side of the road. Pep dozed off for a while, waking up in time to see her mother telling Dr. McDonald to slow down and turn left onto an unmarked road. RESTRICTED USAGE ROAD, a small sign said. About two hours after they had left Alamogordo, another sign appeared, announcing that they were approaching WHITE SANDS MISSILE

RANGE. Dr. McDonald continued down the road for a few miles until he came to yet another sign. He stopped the car and instructed everyone to get out. Coke turned off his music. "This is the Trinity Site," Dr. McDonald said solemnly. "After years of working on an atomic bomb, this is where we dropped it. Nobody knew if the thing was going to explode, because it was the first time they had ever tested it. But it did. It blew up with the force of eighteen kilotons of TNT. Two hundred miles away,

windows were rattling." "Wow," Coke said, not just pretending to be impressed, but genuinely impressed. "And it happened right here?" "Not exactly here," his father said. "It was a few miles down the road." "Can we go to the actual site?" Pep asked. "It's still radioactive," her father replied. "Seventy years later, and it's still radioactive. But I wanted you kids to know about this. It was the birth of the atomic age. A few weeks later, we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and you know what happened there." "Eighty thousand people died right away," Coke said, remembering an article he'd read, "and something like a hundred and forty thousand died later, from radiation." Mrs. McDonald took a photo of the sign for Amazing but True. She opened her guidebook and read a quote from Robert Oppenheimer, the mastermind behind the first atomic bomb: "'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of

worlds.'" For a few minutes, none of the McDonalds said anything. There were no snarky jokes or wisecracks from the twins. It didn't seem like the time or place. "Why did we do it?" Pep finally asked. "Why did we build such a horrible thing?" "It was during World War Two," Dr. McDonald told her. "If we hadn't built an atomic bomb, Hitler would have built one." "You can imagine what would have happened if he did it first," said Mrs. McDonald. "I always wanted to come here," Dr. McDonald said, "and I wanted you kids to come here too. Hopefully, in your lifetime, nobody will ever use an atomic weapon again. Okay, let's go." Back on the road, it was obvious why this part of New Mexico had been chosen for the first nuclear test. There was nothing around as far as the eye could see. Or maybe it was the opposite—there was nothing around because

there had been a nuclear test here. Nobody wanted to get radiation poisoning. In any case, it was a good thing they started the day with a full tank of gas. There was no place to fill up. Everyone seemed lost in their thoughts when Dr. McDonald suddenly announced, "I think I've got it!" "What, Ben?" asked Mrs. McDonald. "This could be my book! I could write a novel about the Trinity Site!" The others had almost forgotten about Dr. McDonald's recent interest in writing a novel. As a university professor, he had written several nonfiction books in his field of technology. But they were only read by the academic community and had not sold many copies. He wanted to write something that would find a wide audience. He yearned to see his name on the bestseller list. "What about the Trinity Site, Dad?" Pep asked.