It was another extremely boring day serving my glorious nation as I sat a hundred meters underground studying for my promotion test. The promotion board to rise to Major was coming up and with it, the opportunity to get out of this bunker and the ever present "little red button", famed in nuclear literature everywhere. My fellow missileer, Brady, was kicked back reading a novel in bunny slippers and a purple snuggie.

Although things had been tense for a while on the world stage, neither of us expected anyone to actually provoke a nuclear war. Just like everybody else, my fears of world war three taking place had faded with the end of the cold war. This job was just one of many government sinecures left from a time when it might have been arguably necessary, but in my mind was now a convenient posting to polish my skills on my way up. I could even boast about the monumental responsibility sitting on "the button" implied. In fact, I had to do quite a lot of boasting in my promotion packet since this post didn't offer me a single opportunity to actually lead anyone. I'd have to more or less ace the board and turn in an otherwise brilliantly glowing promotion packet to even have a prayer.

The day was progressing according to plan and I was just about to break out my lunch box when the dim ambience was interrupted by the flare of red emergency lights and the wail of the emergency claxon.

"What the %$%@" Brady cursed as he sat forward abruptly and put on his headset. I swept my paperwork off onto the floor and held my headset up to one ear while my other hand blindly groped for the code book and pulled it.

"Echo, Charlie, Foxtrot, Quebec, Zulu," Brady called, repeating the message coming in through the headset.

"I copy the same," I answered, checking my book. "Full Court Press." My mouth moved deciphering the code language before my brain caught up. A full court press indicated that other sites linked remotely to our own could not be manned, so we would be firing not just our ten nuclear missiles, but every missile we could reach with an electronic signal.

Brady verified the code in his book, "I copy full court press. The basket is center." I nodded, not terribly surprised that in this surreal situation we were glassing the middle east. By the time these missiles were done, everything from the Gulf of Aden to the Black Sea would be so much radioactive wasteland and the lucky ones would be at ground zero, while the survivors died miserably of radiation poisoning and burns in the coming days and weeks.

"Verification codes received," I continued and pulled out the keys entrusted to me and plugged them into the wall.

Brady pulled his keys out, but just held them without plugging them in. The button, as it were, was actually a set of four keyed toggles so that it would take four hands to launch a nuke. This was one of the safeties to prevent one wacko from launching an unprovoked nuclear strike.

"Brady," I said sternly. "This is our job. For all we know, if we fail to do this we could be leaving America open to something even worse. Nobody calls up a nuke on a whim."

Brady nodded and plugged his keys in, but we waited, watching expectantly for the order to cease fire that would allow us to stand down. There was always a 30 second grace period so that someone at the top could change their mind after ordering the apocalypse. The seconds counted down on the obligatory waiting period. On the final second, I met Brady's eyes and nodded and together we turned the keys. For a moment nothing happened, and then the floor began to shake as the ICBMs launched, headed on their way for the middle east. For a moment, I sat blankly in my seat and then I stood up and went to the door. It's a commonly known fact that our 100 meter deep bunker was no protection from a retaliatory nuclear strike that would penetrate 200 meters into the ground. If I was about to die, I was going to go topside and see the missiles launched. If someone attacked us than I would be just as dead down here as up there.

My decision made, I punched the emergency release on the door and raced up the stairs. As I pushed out the heavy bunker door, I was in time to see over a dozen nukes rising into the air and arcing east. For a handful of seconds, I marveled at the beautiful contrails in the midday sun.

A brilliant flash burned my eyes as one of the nukes exploded not nearly far enough away. I didn't hear anything except my own pained cries until the over pressure rolled over me and tossed my like a broken doll across the concrete parking lot. A moment later, the thermal bloom washed over me and I burned.

The torture of burning followed me into the darkness. No swift cessation or sweet release of death found me as I seemingly plunged into liquid darkness full of the intense agony of burning to death over and over and over. I screamed soundlessly while my throat burned and felt my eyes pop and leak down my cheeks. Then some unknowable time later, as my bones turned to molten searing cinders, it all started again, or continued. The story of third degree burns being painless didn't seem to apply to me, as I could feel the terrible heat invasively ashing everything to the center of my being, and then, seemingly with pause or recovery, doing it again and again.

The mind can adjust to almost anything, and eventually, the pain ceased to be all encompassing, just agonizingly ever present, and with that I learned about the pain of drowning in an endlessly black ocean. I had always disliked the empty depths of the ocean stretching down beneath my feet and now I was suffocating continuously without ever truly drowning, held on the cusp of misery without blacking out while a dark terror of the black space that surrounded me grew into an ever present horror on par with my indescribable suffering.

My mind began to conjure shapes in the darkness and my incessant screaming, which never paused for breath, began to hear whispers in the dark.

"...on't do...is mind will break per..."

"...as dignity and ho...isn't evil, really."

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

The last words of a long and intense argument sank in fully and rebounded within my skull like a rhythm to the cacophony. I felt myself falling again, sinking into the depths and although I couldn't scream anymore from the added terror, I tried.