He was woken, still tired, by sunshine coming through the bedroom curtain.

Squinting sleepily at his watch he decided that it must have
stopped. Even at midsummer the sun does not shine at two-thirty in
the morning!

The colour of the light seeping through the heavy curtain fabric
looked odd, orange, like sunlight after a storm. Strange!

Puzzled and heavy with sleep he got out of bed trying not to wake
his wife of over 30 years.

Almost stumbling over his shoes, he shuffled silently around the end
of the bed to the window and carefully pulled the curtain back just
enough to have a look without disturbing his wife.
Hand to brow he screwed his eyes almost shut against the intense
brightness. As his eyes adjusted to the light he saw but did not
comprehend what it was that he was seeing in the northern sky.

 

Why Birmingham?

Maybe it was simply that the security forces were busy protecting
London. The opportunity to do it in Birmingham just happened.

Whatever the reasons, a nuclear bomb had just been detonated 200ft above
the city in what had been the top floor of the Birmingham Telecom Tower.

Whatever the reasons, the city of Birmingham had effectively been
wiped out.

Whatever the reasons, his sons, living near the university in
Birmingham are dead.

Whatever the reasons, a high energy pressure wave radiated outwards
from the explosion at a leisurely 344 meters per second.

 

Whatever the reasons...

He doesn't care.

Kneeling now by the window, his body pierced by cruel shards of
glass, his bloodied hand on the curtain.

His burst eardrums cannot hear him moan, his blinded eyes see nothing.

He will soon be dead, one of the lucky ones.

 

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