In place of the Carters’ garage was a pile of brick and burning chunks of roof. Their barn was in flames, and their aluminum-walled mechanical shed looked like crumpled-up foil. Down the road to the west, the Moores’ house and garage were burning, too. Five mangled bicycles, arranged big to small, lay in the yard as if for sale. A pickup truck lay on its side, wheels spinning, fuel leaking and blazing. Looking to the east, I saw that the Allens’ farm was an inferno, an upended tractor in flames by the burning house.

I looked in the direction of the nuclear plant’s coolant towers, curious as to whether they were still standing, but I couldn’t have seen them from my house even on a clear day. There was no mushroom cloud, at least, or bright glow over the hills.

As Mom and Charlie crouched together on the front yard and Maggie grabbed my arm to pull me farther away from the house, I suddenly could see ground zero: a circle next to the Carters’ foundation, with a radius of maybe thirty feet, that was clear of debris. Whatever was there had been scoured from the face of the earth. I pointed at it and yelled at Maggie.

Maggie nodded and kept trying to pull me away from the porch.

I followed her down to the street and turned back to look at my house. The roof was on fire, smoke billowing out of the upstairs windows. Glass was gone from all the windows, and the porch was on the verge of collapse. As I looked closer, I realized the whole house had been pushed back about eight inches off its foundation.

Adrenaline rushed through me, as if a switch in my chest had been flipped and chemicals were pumping into my heart and head. I suddenly felt dizzy and dropped down to my knees.

The Carters had been home when I got home. Their minivan had been in the driveway. It was nowhere to be seen now, and I couldn’t tell whether it had been thrown out of sight or vaporized. Maybe the metal shard that pierced our front door had been part of the engine or body.

Maggie placed her hands on my head and spoke into my ear, though the only noise that was getting through was the waterfall-like roar of the fire. The sound—and flames—surrounded us: houses and buildings burning and small fires scattered around the small neighborhood.

Maggie was still bleeding from her head, and I placed her hand back on the wound, but she pushed my hand away and pointed to the Allens’ house in one direction and the Moores’ in the other, both on fire. She pointed at herself and then the Moores’ house, then at me and the Allens’. I nodded.

I wish she would’ve stayed to tend to her wound, but I knew she wouldn’t, and I wasn’t about to debate her when I couldn’t hear a word she was saying. Maggie ran west toward the Moores’ while I shouted for Mom, who kept the curtain pressed into one shoulder with Charlie nuzzled against the other, to stay put. Then I took off for the Allens’.