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Aug. 30th, 2010 06:33 amIt is just before 9:00 on a Thursday morning when the sirens go off.
At this university in Dallas, just within the ever-expanding ring of suburbs, nestled gently amidst trees and streams so that the campus seems far removed from the busy highways a block past its edges, an awful lot of students aren't even awake.
Jason De Luca, a 24-year-old graduate student in mechanical engineering, is one of those who are awake, although he'd really rather not be. He had a rough time last night - Debbie Harmoner, the girl he's been Quietly There For, got dumped and had to cry on his shoulder until the wee small hours, and right when he'd decided he was finally going to try to kiss her she'd said she needed to go home and get some sleep before her test. He's still sort of beating himself up over not taking the chance in time as he heads across campus, certain he's going to be late for the CAD course he doesn't feel like taking in the first place (just because he's a science nerd he's supposed to know how to program a computer?).
His first thought when the sirens start to wail is that it's a tornado. He jogs toward the nearest lecture hall and heads down the back stairs to the basement. There's a slightly rusty Fallout Shelter sign on the outside wall, but he really only chose this building because it was close. Most of the undergraduates he passes were looking shell-shocked already just from being up this early, and now they have hands clamped over their ears as they shout questions to one another about what's going on. He gives a couple of them shoves to the shoulder to move them toward the building as he passes - "Quit bawlin' and get inside" - but he doesn't know any of them or stop to chat long.
He's only planning to get down in the basement, find the most structurally-sound area, and wait until they've called the all-clear on the tornado watch, but when he reaches the bottom of the stairs he finds a professor standing by a door and waving people inside as they come down from the main stairs on the other end of the hall. When he approaches he's waved inside too, and finds himself in a space about the same size as the upstairs classrooms, but empty of desks - nothing in it but stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes and barrels along the back wall and a group of confused and terrified people.
"What's going on?" someone asks, and someone else can barely answer:
"On the radio - the Russians - it's the bomb!"
At this university in Dallas, just within the ever-expanding ring of suburbs, nestled gently amidst trees and streams so that the campus seems far removed from the busy highways a block past its edges, an awful lot of students aren't even awake.
Jason De Luca, a 24-year-old graduate student in mechanical engineering, is one of those who are awake, although he'd really rather not be. He had a rough time last night - Debbie Harmoner, the girl he's been Quietly There For, got dumped and had to cry on his shoulder until the wee small hours, and right when he'd decided he was finally going to try to kiss her she'd said she needed to go home and get some sleep before her test. He's still sort of beating himself up over not taking the chance in time as he heads across campus, certain he's going to be late for the CAD course he doesn't feel like taking in the first place (just because he's a science nerd he's supposed to know how to program a computer?).
His first thought when the sirens start to wail is that it's a tornado. He jogs toward the nearest lecture hall and heads down the back stairs to the basement. There's a slightly rusty Fallout Shelter sign on the outside wall, but he really only chose this building because it was close. Most of the undergraduates he passes were looking shell-shocked already just from being up this early, and now they have hands clamped over their ears as they shout questions to one another about what's going on. He gives a couple of them shoves to the shoulder to move them toward the building as he passes - "Quit bawlin' and get inside" - but he doesn't know any of them or stop to chat long.
He's only planning to get down in the basement, find the most structurally-sound area, and wait until they've called the all-clear on the tornado watch, but when he reaches the bottom of the stairs he finds a professor standing by a door and waving people inside as they come down from the main stairs on the other end of the hall. When he approaches he's waved inside too, and finds himself in a space about the same size as the upstairs classrooms, but empty of desks - nothing in it but stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes and barrels along the back wall and a group of confused and terrified people.
"What's going on?" someone asks, and someone else can barely answer:
"On the radio - the Russians - it's the bomb!"
