Run, Run, Run
The sun dipped low over the Brooklyn skyline, streaking the sky with pink and gold. Lila stood in front of her bedroom mirror, carefully adjusting the braids that framed her face. Her long chestnut hair was woven into two neat braids, each reaching halfway down her back. She liked how they made her feel—ready, steady, like she could move with purpose. Today had been exciting, and tomorrow promised to be even better.
Her little brother, Noah, bounced a ball against the wall, the rhythmic thud filling the room like a steady heartbeat. He was always in motion, always full of energy. He paused and shot her a mischievous grin. “Are you gonna dance like a superhero tomorrow?”
Lila laughed, smoothing down her dance top. “Something like that,” she said, twirling on her toes. “It’s called modern dance. You just feel the music and move however you want.” She loved that it wasn’t rigid like ballet. It was free, unpredictable, fun.
Noah squinted at her, clearly unsure of what that meant, but shrugged and went back to his game. “You’ll be the best,” he said with absolute confidence.
The smell of fresh pasta and marinara sauce drifted in from the kitchen, warm and familiar. Their mother, Mila, was cooking, humming softly to herself as she moved gracefully through the space. Lila loved watching her mother in the kitchen—she always seemed so calm, so sure of herself.
In the living room, her father, Nova, sat on the couch, working on his laptop. He is a professor at Columbia University, specializing in the history of the Cold War. He looked up and caught Lila’s gaze with a proud smile. “Ready for your performance tomorrow?”
Lila nodded eagerly. “I’ve been practicing for weeks. I know I’ll be great.” Just thinking about the stage sent a rush of excitement through her. She could almost hear the applause, see her parents clapping, feel the music carrying her across the floor.
Her birthday was only a week away. She will be thirteen—another year older, a step closer to being a grown-up. Maybe she’ll get a new dance outfit. She liked the idea of getting older, of having more choices, more freedom, like the big girls at her school.
Closing her eyes, she imagined herself dancing—fluid and strong, gliding across the stage. It felt like everything had led to this moment. Tomorrow was going to be perfect.
For now, it was just another evening in Brooklyn—Noah’s laughter, the smell of dinner, the warmth of home.
*
Lila woke up to silence.
She didn’t remember falling asleep. One moment, she was stepping off the school bus, walking toward the school’s entrance.
Then—a blinding flash of white light.
Now, she was lying on the sidewalk, dust in her mouth, her lavender hoodie torn.
The air smelled like burned meat.
Suddenly, it was dark as twilight.
Her ears buzzed.
“Elliot?” she whispered her friend’s name, barely hearing her own voice. “Josh? Sandy?” She called out the names of her classmates.
No answer.
She stumbled toward the school.
The windows were shattered. The walls—half destroyed.
She stepped inside, but inside was outside, too.
Then—she gasped.
Countless bodies laid across the floor, shards of glass embedded in their skin.
She screamed.
And ran.
Her mind swirled with confusion. Everything was wrong. The world had collapsed.
I need to find my family.
Lila turned and ran.
*
The fastest way home was through Prospect Park. She sprinted from the school, past Grand Army Plaza.
The city was unrecognizable. Buildings had crumbled. Windows shattered. Cars were flipped over, crushed like tin cans. Trees were fallen or their trunks broken and all charred.
A horrible silence engulfed everything.
She could hear nothing but the sound of her own footsteps, her breath ragged and loud.
At the plaza, the great monument stood broken. The statues that once sat atop the arch lay in pieces on the ground.
Underneath it, there was a man with his body half charred. With a husky, trembling voice, he said,
“Hiroshima…”
Hiroshima…?
Lila learned about Hiroshima at school and from her father. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the only two cities in history to have been struck by a nuclear bomb in World War II.
What about Hiroshima? What does he mean?
Is this…. a nuclear bomb?
Lila gasped.
There was no one to give any answers, or any help.
Darkness swallowed the park.
Then—
“Water… please…”
Lila turned.
Hundreds of people staggered toward her. Skin hung off their bodies in melted ribbons. Lips gone, teeth exposed in a silent, endless scream.
Some didn’t even look like human beings—intestines trailed behind them like shadows.
“Water,” they begged. “Water…please give me water”
Lila gasped—
And ran.
I need to go home. Mom and Noah will be there.
Lila never stopped running until she reached her block.
She couldn’t find her building. She was sure that she was in the right place, but all she could see shattered glass and broken asphalt.
“Mom!” she screamed. “Noah!”
No answer.
No one was there.
*
The wind changed. And with it came the fire.
Flames surged through the ruins, devouring what was left of Brooklyn. Buildings collapsed, their steel bones twisting in the heat.
Lila ran.
A man ahead of her tried to escape, but debris pinned him down. He struggled, his face contorted with fear.
She tried to help. She tried to move the rubble, but it was too heavy.
The fire roared closer. The man screamed.
And then the flames swallowed him whole.
Lila choked back a sob, her tears evaporating in the heat.
She kept running.
She had to find Mom and Noah.
“Mom! Noah!”
The raging fire was swallowing her voice.
There was no sign of them.
She couldn’t see anyone.
Nothing but fire and smoke.
Lila ran.
And she didn’t stop.
She couldn’t stop.
*
When she looked up from her running, she was by the river. Shocking devastation came into view.
The Manhattan Bridge was gone, collapsed into the water. So too the Brooklyn Bridge, a mangled wreckage of stone and steel.
The river was filled with bodies, disfigured corpses.
People’s skin was blackened, their faces unrecognizable. They no longer looked human.
Lila could see some survivors were throwing themselves into the river. Were they desperate to cool their burning bodies?
It was too much to take in, so Lila turned away from the river of dead and dying people.
Lila had no idea how many hours had passed since the firestorm began, but at some point, it finally gave way to rain.
Thick. Heavy. Black as oil.
People on the street opened their mouths, desperate for water.
They drank.
And they collapsed.
Their bodies twitched, then went still.
Lila clamped a hand over her mouth.
She wanted to scream. But no sound came out.
Don’t drink it. Don’t touch it.
She ran.
The rain kept falling, coating the ground in a thick, oily black sheen.
She had to find shelter.
She rushed into the only building standing, slipping inside as quickly as she could.
It was empty.
The windows were shattered, parts of the structure crumbling. But compared to the destruction outside, this place kept its shape. It reeked of smoke and ash, but at least it was dry.
Lila sank to the floor, her mind spinning.
Where are Mom and Noah? I have to find them.
She couldn’t understand how everything had fallen apart so fast. Her thoughts drifted back to the man at Grand Army Plaza.
What if this was a nuclear bomb, what am I supposed to do?
But there was no one left to answer her question. Her head was spinning.
Then, all at once, she was overcome by a wave of exhaustion.
Her body felt weak. Her limbs heavy.
She collapsed onto the ground, unable to take in the death and destruction that stretched out in every direction.
*
When Lila woke up, the black rain had stopped.
She stepped outside, half-hoping it had all been a nightmare.
It wasn’t.
Brooklyn was still in ruins. Buildings were collapsed. Ash coated the streets. It was an unimaginable horror.
Daddy. I have to find Daddy.
If her father, Nova, was still alive, he’d be at Columbia University. He was supposed to be teaching there today.
A flicker of hope sparked in her chest.
She had been to the university many times before. It was in Upper Manhattan, near Riverside Church.
If the bridges are gone, I’ll have to find another way.
The tunnels.
She decided to take the Battery Tunnel to Manhattan.
After what felt like hours of running, stumbling, and pushing forward, she finally reached the entrance.
She wasn’t alone.
Scattered around the tunnel entrance were hundreds of survivors—curled up in corners, covered in soot, trembling. Some weren’t moving at all.
She didn’t hesitate.
She stepped inside.
The darkness swallowed her whole.
The air was thick with the stench of burnt rubber, scorched metal, and something worse—something rotting.
She should have been coughing. Gagging. But she wasn’t.
She barely noticed.
All she could think about was her father.
The tunnel stretched on endlessly.
The whole world faded to black.
*
Lila emerged from the tunnel into a world still shrouded in darkness and ash. The ground beneath her feet radiated heat, the aftermath of the firestorm still lingering.
Manhattan was unrecognizable.
Silence pressed in from all sides. No sirens. No voices. No life.
I have to find my father.
She started running, her mind fixed on Columbia University in the Upper West Side. It would take hours to reach, but exhaustion didn’t matter. She had a purpose now.
Near the ruins of City Hall, she slowed.
She remembered that near by was 270 Broadway—a place that Lila’s dad taught her about. They even visited that building, because her Dad loved local history and it was here where the first offices of the Manhattan Project were located, the project to create the world’s first nuclear weapons.
Thinking of her father, she was shocked to see a man smoking a pipe in front of the rubble of 270 Broadway.
Unlike every other person she had seen, he wasn’t burned, wasn’t broken. He wore a clean jacket, pressed pants and a brown wide brim pork pie hat. It was as if he didn’t belong in this ruined world or even this time period.
When he lifted his face, his eyes met hers.
“This is the place…” he whispered. “Where it all started…”
He looked blank. His voice was quiet, but heavy.
“Now I am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”
Then, as quickly and shockingly as he appeared, he vanished.
Lila gasped, her skin prickling with fear. She couldn’t stay. She had to leave.
She ran.
She reached Times Square. The loudest and brightest place in the city—was now nothing but silence and ash.
The massive screens were shattered, their steel frames twisted and blackened. Cars lay abandoned, paint burnt off their charred exteriors. The ground was littered with burned objects, charred bodies. This must be like hell.
No voices.
No movement.
No life.
The crossroads of the world—erased.
She ran.
And ran.
And ran.
*
She knew she was close to her father’s university because the tower of the Riverside Church rose among the rubble, now a solitary structure surrounded by sea of devastation.
Columbia University was in ruins—windows were all shattered, concrete walls were crumbled and covered with ash.
This place had once been a hub of nuclear research, a birthplace of theories that led to the creation of nuclear weapons. The first successful fission experiment in the United States took place here. Lila’s dad once brought her to the building where it all happened, Pupin Hall. Now it was gone.
Lila stepped over broken glass and piles of blackened dead bodies. Her voice cracked as she called out, “Daddy? Where are you?”
Silence.
Only blackened bodies remained.
No. No, no, no.
Desperation clawed at her chest. She ran through the ruins, searching, pleading—
“Daddy, please!”
Nothing.
Then—
Something passed through her.
She froze.
A young boy, like her brother Noah’s age. He looked terriefied.
His skin was burned, his clothes in tatters. He was looking around, searching.
Searching for his family.
Just like Lila.
And then, she understood.
The flash. The silence. The moment she had woken up on the sidewalk.
She had never survived.
She had died the first moment, in that flash of white light.
All this time, she had been running through a city of ghosts.
Her hands began to fade.
Her legs, too.
Her body grew weightless, ascending into the sky.
She looked down at the city, her home, her beloved place—charred, ruined, lifeless.
And then, like dust in the wind—
She was gone.
*
Acknowledgment
After words
The inspiration to write a story and compose music about nuclear weapons came from a recent read, Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa, which is loosely based on his experiences as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing. I was deeply moved by the story, particularly by Gen, the main character, who is around six years old—roughly the same age as my son.
Another major source of inspiration for this project was the film Oppenheimer. Despite its success and high production value, the movie chose not to depict the actual devastation caused by the atomic bomb, leaving a crucial aspect of history unaddressed in its three-hour runtime. I realized that many people may not fully understand the true horrors of what happened, and felt compelled to research and share this knowledge.
In 2025, we mark the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Eight decades have passed since that catastrophic event, yet the world remains turbulent. It is crucial to raise awareness about the perilous consequences of nuclear weapons and to emphasize that history must not repeat itself. The recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022, accompanied by President Putin's threats of nuclear action underscores this urgency. Similarly, the ongoing Israeli- Iran conflict reflects our troubling times.
As I reflect on the lasting devastation wrought by nuclear weapons during World War II, I feel a profound responsibility to share these stories. Japan remains the only nation to have experienced nuclear bombardment, and while there was once a vibrant anti-nuclear movement, the voices of those who lived through the horrors are fading. Nuclear weapons are unparalleled in their capacity for destruction. Their effects are not only immediate but also insidious, with radioactive fallout causing long-term genetic harm. A single nuclear detonation over a major city could claim millions of lives, while the use of multiple bombs could devastate global climate stability, leading to widespread famine.
Through this tale, we explore the profound implications of a nuclear bomb being deployed in a real-life scenario. The destructive power of nuclear weapons and their aftereffects are surprisingly underappreciated in the U.S. This story will invite readers to imagine what could happen if such a tragedy were to occur in their own city, encouraging reflection on the far-reaching consequences of these weapons.
Tomoko Omura