"Hey, Alex, did you have fun with my dad?" Eliza asked.

"I suppose I did. It was a good visit." Alex shrugged. "You know John came and sketched out some stuff."

"I know. He told me." Eliza said.

"So uh... What's going on here?" Alex asked, gesturing at the evidently panicked students.

"Maybe you should check Twitter." Eliza suggested sheepishly.

Alex sighed and closed his eyes. "What's the bastard done now?"

"I'll let you find out for yourself." Eliza said, giving him her phone.

Alex took the phone and logged onto his Twitter, scrolling through until he found a tweet.

Donald J. Trump realDonaldTrump

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un thinks he will get away with nuking South Korea! Sad.

Donald J. Trump realDonaldTrump

There's one thing the world needs and it's for all countries to turn against North Korea! Their dictator Kim Jong Un is a bad man!

Donald J. Trump realDonaldTrump

This is a very unpresidented thing for Kim Jong Un to have done. Extreme vetting of all North Korean defectors! Sad!

Donald J. Trump realDonaldTrump

North Korea just launched a nuclear weapon. They must pay for their actions. As President, I will make sure they will not get away with it!

"That unhinged man has a lot of things to say, doesn't he?" Alex muttered. "Oh look, there's 'unpresidented' again. Oh and 'bad man' and 'sad'. No 'bigly' though."

Eliza snorted. "Bigly."

"What do you think he means by not letting North Korea get away with it?" Alex handed Eliza's phone over.

Eliza took her phone back and put it in her pocket. "Well, we'd better hope it doesn't mean what the news is saying it means."

"What's it matter-it's all fake anyway, right?" Alex said.

Eliza grimaced. "Well..."

"You know what I mean, Eliza. Donald Trump thinks any news organisation that thinks he's doing a bad job is fake."

"They're saying he's preparing for war."

"War?"

"As in the nuclear kind."

Alex's eyebrows shot up. "So because North Korea was being North Korea, Donald Trump wants to wipe them off the map?"

"This shouldn't surprise you, Alex."

"It doesn't." Alex said. "It horrifies me."


The next morning, Alex awoke and carried out his morning routine-changing his catheter, going to the bathroom, brushing his teeth. He went into the living room and to the kitchenette, where John was eating his food, perfecting his drawing.

"Hey." Alex greeted.

"They haven't dropped a nuke yet." John snorted.

"Threat's over." Alex said. He took a bowl for himself and put it on the table. "But with Trump, is it ever over?"

"Lol." John said.

"Lol?" Alex raised an eyebrow. "John, you've been texting too often."

"Yeah, you." John retorted.

"Very funny." Alex took the milk from the fridge.

"They're playing depressing music on the radio." John said as Alex made himself cereal.

"When you say 'depressing'..."

"I don't mean shit like Solsbury Hill." John said. "I mean shit like A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall."

"They're still bigging up that Trump's gonna cause a nuclear war, then." Alex commented.

"Alex, he may have already started it." John said.

Alex would be lying if he said that John's statement didn't give him the chills. Instead, he tried to brush it off.

And John walked over to the radio and turned it on.

"-'s over! It's over!" Midge Ure cried out. Alex's heart skipped a beat. He knew it was just a song, but it was a frightening song.

"-for the memory of a life gone by-"

"You can turn it off now, John." Alex said. "You've made your point."

"Have I though, Alex?" John asked. "I mean, nothing's happening now, but... Donald Trump, Alex. Something's coming, I can feel it."

"Like Tony in West Side Story?"

"This isn't time for joking!" John slammed his hands on the table. His expression though, was not one of anger, but one of fear.

Alex saw this and sighed. "I'm sorry, John." He said sincerely. "I shouldn't have... Shouldn't have joked."

John nodded and sat down, still sporting his fearful expression. It wasn't often that John Laurens was scared.

They sat in mutual silence with only the radio as background noise-The Police's Message in a Bottle-until Alex's phone pinged. He lifted his phone slightly to look at the message.

From: Nu Pengyou

Heard teh news?

Alex picked up his phone and typed out a response.

To: Nu Pengyou

What news?

He went back to eating his breakfast with John until his phone pinged almost immediately after.

From: Nu Pengyou

Trump's just nuked NK

Alex's jaw dropped and he struggled to process what had just been sent to him.

John noticed this. "Alex?" He asked. "What's wrong?"

Unable to say anything, Alex simply showed John the text.

"Holy crap." John said.

"I know."

"Turn the radio up."

"You're closer!" Alex argued.

John leaned over and turned the radio up.

"-king news now, Donald Trump has ordered a nuclear strike on the secluded country of North Korea. We don't know yet whether the missile has struck the country yet or not-"

"Fuck." John shoot up. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." He kept repeating the word over and over again.

"John, calm down-"

"It's happened, Alex!" John grabbed his hair. "We're going to die! Can't you understand?"

"I understand, John, but remember the Life Support affirmation in Rent." Alex said, trying to sound as calm as possible. "There's only us, there's only this."

"Yeah." John nodded slowly. "Yeah."

"I'm going to get dressed and pack some stuff." Alex said. He turned to their shared bedroom.

John turned the radio off. "I don't want to know how much time I have left. There's only us, there's only this." He sang, shakily.

"I know." Alex began shoving clothes into his backpack-anything that would fit. John pulled out his backpack and did the same thing. Both of them were frantically packing any of their belongings that would fit in their bags.

Alex heard his phone ping again, so he went over to it.

From: Nu Pengyou

The UN are having an emergency meeting in Geneva

Alex began to furiously type a reply, not caring about typos and knowing that his time could be very nearly up.

To: Nu Pengyou

I'm scared, Eliaz, im not gnna deny that, but ii dogt want to live teh rest o f my life in fear-awhoever long that bay eb. if we enver see each other agian, goodbye, best of wives and best of eomen.

Not to his surprise, Alex got a reply almost instantly.

From: Nu Pengyou

Goodbye to you too Alex

John rushed into the living room carrying the backpacks. "I packed your toothbrush, Alex." He said.

"I don't know if I'm even going to live long enough to use it." Alex said.

"What do we do?"

"Whatever time we have left, we have to spend it with Eliza." Alex said. "And the others."

"I'm scared." John said. "Should I drive?"

Alex nodded, taking his backpack. "Yeah, drive."


John had dumped the backpacks and Alex's wheelchair in the trunk of his car as he drove on the nearby university campus. Traffic was high on the roads. To forget about the possible incoming apocalypse, John and Alex were listening to John's playlist on his phone. Show tunes were better than hearing what was going on. So when they got on the campus, they were shocked to see nobody around except security. Alex got the backpacks, while John got Alex's wheelchair as a security officer approached them.

"Are you two students here?" She asked.

"Yeah." John said. "I'm John Laurens and I study veterinary science and art. That's Alexander Hamilton and he studies political science." He took his backpack from Alex.

"Okay." She said. "I'm a security officer and I need you to follow me.

"Wait, what's going on? Why-" John began.

"We've been urged by Dean King to lead the students into fallout shelters-"

"Wait-fallout shelters?!" Alex blurted out.

"Yes, Dean King has had us preparing for a nuclear strike." She said. "Please follow me." She began walking.

John and Alex shared a look of worry and followed her. They followed her in silence as they went inside and down in a corridor. She opened a heavy lead door into a comfortable looking room, which had a couch, a few tables, cupboards and a door that looked like it led to another room. It looked almost like an ordinary living room, if you ignored the metal walls and door. Also in the room were the Eliza, Angelica, Maria, Dolley, James, Martha, Nathaniel, William, Aaron, Theo, Hercules, Sally and Thomas Jefferson as well as a radio that was playing Barry McGuire's Eve of Destruction.

"If there's going to be a nuclear strike, I'd rather Jefferson get out and die." John whispered to Alex.

"You heard that, Jefferson, out." Alex folded his arms and John let his backpack drop.

The door to the shelter was shut and made a loud noise. John and Alex turned to the noise.

"Looks like I can't." Jefferson smirked.

"Then shut up." Alex said.

John sat down on his backpack as the song ended.

"That was Barry McGuire with Eve of Destruction. Something that we might actually be on." The radio presenter chuckled awkwardly. He was clearly scared. "I-uh... I-here's Lukas Graham's 7 Years."

The new song started and Theo looked up from her phone. "I like this song."

"Do you think they're going to drop the bomb?" Dolley asked.

"That's a really depressing thing to think about." Martha said.

"Yeah? You think that's depressing?" Nathaniel asked. "We're locked in a lead lined fucking fallout shelter!"

"Cool your shit, Nathaniel." Theo hissed. "This is just a precautionary measure anyway. Just listen to the radio. It's not saying that any nuclear strike is imminent-it's playing 7 Years."

"Well, Theo is right." Sally said.

"Damn straight I'm right." Theo folded her arms indignantly.

"We might not all die." Sally continued. "I mean, how bad can living in a post-nuclear world be? It might not be as bad as predicted. I mean, look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

"They still had high cancer rates and lots of burns victims." Dolley argued. "And look at the amount of cancer in Chernobyl. Don't forget, if we're nuked it's bye bye doctors."

"I meant that there was no nuclear winter." Sally said.

"Yeah, but now we have H-Bombs that are so powerful they can make miles long craters in the world and make fallout spread thousands of miles." James said. "The largest H-Bomb ever detonated had a potential yield of a hundred megatons. They only detonated fifty seven megatons, but all houses even thirty miles away from ground zero were destroyed and people could have had third degree burns from sixty two miles away and the heat was definitely felt from a hundred and seventy miles away. The shockwave from the blast was so intense that windows were shattered at nearly six hundred miles away from ground zero and get this-the fireball was four miles wide and didn't even touch the ground because the shockwave was so intense. And the mushroom cloud seven times the size of Everest at forty miles high. Windows broke in Norway and Finland and seismic sensors were tripped all around the world, even as the shockwaves made their third trip around the world. Despite the fact that it was detonated two and a half miles above the ground, it caused an earthquake of five point five on the Richter Scale."

"Jesus Christ." John exclaimed after a brief pause.

"If that thing hit DC..." James paused. "We would be able to see the mushroom cloud. We would probably see the flash and feel the heat. We would definitely feel the shockwave."

"How do you know this?" Sally asked.

"Google." James shrugged, showing his phone. "It's the Tsar Bomba."

"Nope, I was wrong. That is the most depressing thing." Nathaniel corrected himself and sat down on the poorly carpeted floor. "Why are you even talking about nuclear bombs when one could be dropped on us? That's just ghoulish."

"Maybe, oh, I don't know, maybe because we're locked in a nuclear bomb shelter and the president is Donald Trump-an admitted sexual predator-who has already dropped a nuke on North Korea, prompting an emergency meeting by the UN." Alex said.

"But Donald Trump wouldn't be the one using nukes." Eliza pointed out. "And Vladimir Putin wouldn't nuke his buddy, would he?"

"North Korea haven't really been military allies to Russia since the dissolution of the USSR." Hercules said. "But they do share a border."

"That wouldn't be enough for them to want to nuke Trump, would it?" Angelica asked. "I mean, aren't Russian people skeptic of North Korea?"

"I think they are." John said. "But at the same time, Russia wrote off North Korea's debts a couple years back, so relations aren't exactly sour."

"I still think the Kremlin don't like that North Korea is testing nukes." Hercules said.

"Have been, you mean." Maria corrected. "Trump's probably laid waste to that country with nukes. As in... No more North Korea."

"In that case, Russia might nuke us." Hercules shrugged, picking at his nails in the corner. "Especially if the fallout landed in populated Russian territory."

"Maybe China will nuke us." William suggested. "Their relations are a lot stronger."

"But even China's had enough of North Korea's nuclear shit." Hercules said.

"Yeah, but still, since the end of the Korean War, they have worked together militarily." William pointed out.

"China it is then." John said, seemingly accepting of his fate.

"China it is." William repeated with a slight sigh.

"We've got breaking news coming in that the emergency UN meeting in Geneva is underway." The radio presenter said over the end of the song. "It is expected that they will be discussing President Trump and presumably issuing sanctions."

"See, sanctions." Theo shrugged. "It's not severe."

"Shh!" Alex put his finger to his mouth as Aaron went to turn the radio up.

"-om Brady of the New England Patriots-"

"Fuck it, it's Tom Brady." Hercules waved his hand dismissively.

Aaron turned the radio down again.

"If a nuclear strike were imminent, do you really think that they would be talking about the Patriots?" Theo asked.

"Normalcy." Nathaniel shrugged. "Trying to give the appearance of shit being normal, when we're all going to die."

"Or as REM put it, 'it's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine'." Maria said.

"That's a good song." Angelica added.

"One other thing that we wouldn't have if the world was destroyed by nuclear warfare." Dolley said. "Music."

"Hey, speaking of music, do you know this new song?" Eliza asked.

"It sounds like the chorus in that Jay-Z song like a decade ago." James said.

"And the prom scene song in Napoleon Dynamite." Maria said.

"I think it is." Angelica said. "Aaron, turn the radio up."

"You got it, boss." Aaron turned the radio up. There was a brief pause as everyone listened to the radio.

"Yeah, it definitely is." Angelica nodded. "The prom song, I mean."

"Whatever it is, it's depressing." Nathaniel rolled his eyes.

"Everything's 'depressing' to you, isn't it, Nathaniel?" Eliza asked.

"This situation is." Nathaniel said. "Everything about it."

"I can't really deny that." John agreed.

"I just want to get out of here." James said. "I'm creeped out. I can't believe that this is real. Like really real. Not just a bad dream."

"Well, it might be a bad dream." Alex shrugged. "Jury's still out on that one."

"Alex, you're not helping." Theo said. "James, it'll be fine. We'll be out of here by the end of the day. After all, you know all about George King and his raging paranoia."

"Here's hoping." Nathaniel said.

"We'll be fine." Theo said.

"I wouldn't speak with certainty." Angelica said. "Especially with such uncertainties in the world."

"Mostly, I'm trying to convince myself that everything will be fine." Theo sat down next to Angelica.

The music stopped suddenly and everyone turned to the radio.

"Breaking news now-and it's not the news that any of us had been hoping for."

"Here we go." John said.

"Major news outlets are reporting now that there is a nuclear missile inbound for Washington DC which has been launched by China in retaliation for President Trump's nuclear attack on North Korea." The radio presenter sounded shaken.

Mutters of shock spread among the group.

"This is officially a two minute warning. It's all over."

An air raid siren sounded and the group huddled up.

Alex slid from his wheelchair down on the floor and hugged around John and Eliza.

Maria and Angelica clutched each other's hands and Maria rested her head on Angelica's shoulder.

Aaron held around Theo, who was gripping onto his t-shirt.

James and Jefferson were close to each other, holding hands.

Sally had her head buried in Hercules' shoulder.

On the other hand, Nathaniel opened his backpack and pulled out a large bottle of alcohol. "Might as well get wasted one last time." He opened the bottle as Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World began to play on the radio.

"Not Peggy." Eliza muttered. "Peggy's in Virginia. With Lafayette."

"If she dies, Eliza, she won't suffer." John said soothingly. "She'll go instantly."

"I don't want her to die at all." Eliza broke from the hug and snatched Nathaniel's beer.

"Yeah, now how am I gonna get wasted?" Nathaniel asked.

"I want to get wasted too!" Eliza said, taking a long gulp of the alcoholic beverage.

"So do I." Alex took the drink off Eliza.

Eventually, the drink was being passed around the shelter. When Jefferson was taking a drink, the radio cut out unexpectedly.

"What was that?" James asked.

"Radio probably ran out of battery." Dolley said. She took out her phone and turned it on. Only it wouldn't go on. "Huh. Strange."

Martha frowned. "What is?" She asked.

"My phone won't go on." Dolley replied.

This prompted everyone else to check their phones and William to check his laptop.

"Mine's not working either."

"Nor mine."

"I can't get mine to work."

"Annoying."

"What the hell's going on?"

"This is ridiculous."

John took his phone from his pocket slowly and pressed the home button. Then he pressed the on button. Nothing happened.

Jefferson stood up with the beer bottle in his hand as everyone chattered about their expensive paperweight phones. "The bomb's hit DC." He said, with tears in his eyes. "The EMP is why nothing's working." He explained, his voice audibly shaking, but he said what nobody else wanted to admit. "The blast has happened. Guys... We're in a nuclear war."


A/N:Hey guys! Sorry for the delay! I'm planning something for James Madison's birthday, but it might not be up until St Patrick's Day, which I'm also writing something for, but will be up by the end of the weekend. Damn Graffiti Pete messing with my schedule like this. Also, I can't help but notice that when I write for this AU, shit happens in real life too. Here's hoping this doesn't happen!

Donald Trump's 'tweets' are pretty muchexactly what my lecturer wrote when he was impersonating Trump for a role play. Don't ask.

Bigly is a word. It wasn't made up by Donald Trump. It means 'of great size'. Check your dictionary.

Midge Ure was the singer of Ultravox. Their song Dancing With Tears in My Eyes was playing on Alex and John's radio.

Something's Coming is one of the best songs in West Side Story. Fight me.

Nu pengyou is 'girlfriend' in Mandarin Chinese. But with more accents over some of the letters that I can't write out on my computer because I can't actually figure out how.

Message in a Bottle by The Police because that's what I was listening to when I was writing that part.

Rent is one of the best musicals. Fight me.

7 Years because I like that song.

Also, like Enola Gay, their discussion lasts as long as the song does.

Everything James said about the Tsar Bomba is 100% true. You can google it. I did.

North Korean and Russian relations have indeed soured since the USSR broke up. And the Kremlin is distrustful of their use of nukes. So is China, but China would support North Korea militarily, just as America would support South Korea militarily. That's why China was the one to do the deed. However, China also don't like that North Korea is doing their nuke thing.

The song that they discuss is Alphaville's Forever Young. It was used in a Jay Z song called Young Forever back in 2009, so not quite a decade ago. It was also in the prom scene in Napoleon Dynamite.

The references to the 'bad dream' is because Alex originally saw this godawful future in a bad dream.

I asked a friend how he'd react if he heard the two minute warning and he said that he'd get wasted, which is how Nathaniel having beer came about.

Nuclear bombs emit an EMP. No electricity. No phones. That's how they'd know. And their smartphones would totally be paperweights.

And you'd want to deny something like that to yourself. When you say something, it becomes real. That's why nobody wanted to admit it.

Ah well... Sweet dreams!