Cold World

The dropping of the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did what it was intended to do: the war with Japan was over, and unconditional surrender followed. The United States of America had proved their technological superiority over the Axis powers and won an early Cold War victory. It also had an unintended side effect.   What Oppenheimer and the other scientists working on the Manhattan Project could never have predicted was what they’d see in the sky after two atomic detonations so close in time and proximity. Blue and purple lightning crackled across the sky over Japan, spreading to China and Korea and then further west across Asia, east to Hawaii and then mainland North America, and soon enveloping the entire planet. The cracks in the sky all burst at once.   At first nothing seemed different. Radiation levels didn’t increase globally. The atmosphere was intact. Scientists believed it was some sort of atomic chain reaction, but nothing to worry about long-term. It wasn’t until a few months later those reports of strangely deformed people running through the woods were verified. The reports of figures vanishing in the old buildings across Europe as the Allies closed in on the collapsing Nazi government. The howls in the night that sounded like some sort of animal, but also sort of like a person screaming in pain. Inanimate objects floating on their own. Animals standing up on two legs and speaking in voices that made the hair on your neck stand up. People without reflections. People whose skin fell off and grew back different. Kids drowning in ponds after seeing faces under the water. Eyes in the fog, under the floorboards, at the end of the hall, just past the tree line.   The masquerade that separated the mundane and mythic had fallen. Occasional fractures that let their world slip into ours had been completely torn open by the force of the blasts, colliding the two worlds together in a way they hadn’t been in thousands of years. Campfire stories, folklore, and legends were proven partially or wholly true. Global political structures have tried their best to adapt to the end of the war and the new reality. Small towns across the world struggle with what lurks in the darkness. Unseen things lurk in the shadowy places of cities. Cops, government agents, and private citizens have learned to track and fight back the supernatural.   Two decades have passed, and mankind has had to grapple with its place in this new world.