Aboveground

“Whoa,” I murmured, staring into the hole before me as the dust cleared and I could slowly make out what remained of the hatch I’d recently escaped, now a huge pit filled with rubble.

“Whoa is right,” my brother, Joe, agreed, stepping up beside me and giving me a totally out-of-character mother hen expression. “Are you sure you’re okay, Frank?”

“Okay?” I repeated hollowly. What was okay, these days? My head was pounding from the explosion we’d just witnessed, and just an hour or so before that, I’d...