“No, not the ninth graders. They get MREs. Meals ready to eat. Tenth graders are dropped off with only one partner, plus MREs. Then when you’re a junior, you do it solo with MREs. This will be my first solo year without MREs.”

Emma looked horrified. They’d established earlier that this outing was her first stab at camping. She came from piles of family money to whom camping meant luxury accommodations with a less-than-full service in-room dining menu. “What are you going to eat?”

“Whatever I find, I guess. We’ve been training on nuts and berries and shit, but I’m hoping they’ll give me some fishing gear. A rifle would be nice, but I know that won’t happen. Maybe a knife? I don’t know. We go next weekend.”

Emma hugged him again. “That sounds terrible and terrifying.”

Somehow that made Adam feel better. More manly, perhaps.

“I’m getting cold,” she said. “Let’s go back inside and sweat some more.”

Little Adam liked that idea as much as its owner did. Emma grabbed his hand, and they hop-marched over the feet-unfriendly mulch back to the tent and the sleeping bag.

Round Two was as terrific as Round One.

Spooned up on his left side, pressed up against Emma, sleep had nearly swallowed Adam when the night erupted in light. It was like a flash of daylight that penetrated their flysheet and tent and highlighted the blood vessels of his eyelids, even with them closed.

“Holy shit!”

Emma made a yipping noise that he’d never heard before.

Adam was struggling to kick his way out of the sleeping bag when the pressure wave hit. The boom had the same quality of those bright bursting charges during fireworks displays, but instead of that single pulse of noise, the boom kept rolling. The mountain shook and the surrounding trees swayed.

A few seconds later, it happened again.

And again.

Adam found himself screaming, but he didn’t know why, or even if he was making noise. Emma clung to him tightly enough to hurt his neck.

He was dimly aware that the air smelled bad. It had a chemical quality to it, unlike anything he’d smelled before. It smelled hot. It smelled awful.

He finally got free of the fabric of the sleeping bag and crawled through the tent flap out into the night.

“Wait!” Emma yelled. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’m not,” he promised, and he turned around to offer her a hand so she could join him outside.

Holding on to each other, they took in the horror. In the distance, the head of a mushroom cloud roiled like an image from hell. Fiery reds and yellows wrestled with blacks and oranges. As it rose higher, the intensity of the inferno seemed to increase.

“Is that a bomb?” Emma asked.