TIME: 12:37 DAY: Tuesday MONTH: November YEAR: the not too distant future....

PLACE: LAGOS,NIGERIA

The first bomb exploded just a few thousand feet above the National stadium, its energy release, in the forms of radiation, light, heat, sound and blast, the equivalent of one million tons of TNT. The sirens that had warned of the missle and its ensuring companions' approach were a but a thin squeal to the giant roar of its arrival.
Within two thousandths of a second after the initial blinding flash of light, the explosion had become a small searing ball of vapour with the temperature of eighteen million degree fahrenheit, a newborn mini-sun of no material substance.
The luminious fireball immediately began to expand, the air around it heated by compressiom and quickly losing its power as a sheild against the ultraviolet radiation. The rapidly growing fiery nucleus pushed at the torrid air, producing a spherical acoustic shock-front which began to travel faster than its creator, masking the fireball's full fury.

Dust was sucked from the earth as the swirling vortex reached upwards, dust that became contaminated by the deadly, man-activate rays, rising high into the skies, later to settle on the destroyed city as lethal fallout.
The angry cloud with its stem of white heat was more than six miles high and still rising, banishing the noonday sun, when the next missle detomated its warhead. Seven more megaton bombs were soon to follow.....

ONE

Mariam stood transfixed. what was happening? why the panic? and that dreadful wailing noise of just a few minutes before. The sirens of the War. oh no, it couldnt be happening again!
She was too stunned, too frighted, to move. All Around people were pushing, shoving, running in fear. Of what? Aeroplanes with bomb? Surely that didnt happen any more. she should have paid more attention to the news. Should have listened more closely to her neighbours. Miriam recalled hearing something on the radio about the tension in the North East; but she had been hearing that for years and years. It didnt mean anything m ore. It had nothing to do with shopping at shoprite and washing dirty sheets and spoiling grand-children and living in Surulere. And nothing to do with her.