BIKINI ATOLL, MARSHALL ISLANDS 

1984

The sky was a suspended blend of brilliant pinks and oranges as the sun inched closer towards the horizon, bathing the Pacific island in warm shades of orange. Out in the water, bobbing up and down, was a ship that had anchored a few hours ago, 1,345 feet offshore. The captain was down in the lowered deck, getting some much-needed shut-eye as his small crew went about their evening duties. It was easy for him to snore away thanks to the gentle rocking of the vessel.

On the beach of the Bikini Atoll, a motorboat was beached, leaning to one side, as a freshly made campfire rose a few feet away. Two girls stood next to it, talking among each other, while two boys were walking away from the boat and towards the fire, carrying a cooler between them. Once they got to the fire, they placed the cooler down in the cooling sand, and one of the boys, a brown-haired, brown-eyed boy, opened the cooler and grabbed four beers. He handed the three of them out to his friends before opening his own and took a sip from it.

"Ladies, Marcus, this is why my dad's the best." grinned the boy. It was clear that he and the others were excited at the fact that they were on a restricted island.

"I'd say," the blue-eyed, long-haired blond giggled. "We'll never doubt you again, Jared."

"How did your father even manage to do this for us?" asked the curly-haired redhead.

Jarrod grinned. "Easy. It's the perks of being high up on the ladder."

The second boy, Marcus, whose blond hair was cut neatly, took a swig from his bottle. "It's sort of amazing. No one's set foot here for years until now. Until us."

"That's the government for you, making sure things like this waste away."

The redhead, Diana, set her drink down in the sand. "I hear there's still radiation lingering around here from those tests back in the fifties."

"That's what they say. Who knows if that's true nowadays?" Marcus hummed.

"I say that's all bullshit," Jared snorted. "There's no way radiation is still lingering around here for this long. I mean, look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They recovered a few years after the two bombs were dropped on them."

***

The captain twitched awake as the rocking of the boat grew more violent. He sat up, frowning, before carefully getting out of his bed, hands gripping whatever anchored thing he could get his hands on to keep himself steady. He began to make his way out of the room and towards the stairs that led to the deck.

***

"It's like, dust and all that, right?" asked the blond woman, Amy. "So, would it go away quickly?"

"Pretty sure." Jared shrugged.

Marcus lifted his bottle to take a slip until he glanced over at the ocean and paused, brows furrowing. He turned his head to look at the anchored boat, squinting. He could see the boat bobbing more and more violently, as if it were getting hit by countless rogue waves.

"Uh... guys?" Marcus pointed. "Is anyone seeing what I'm seeing?"

The others followed his gaze and finger to watch the boat bobbing more and more before, suddenly, it rose out of the water with the help of foaming and churning water below it.

"What the hell's going on out there?" asked Diana. "Did one of those underwater volcanoes erupt?"

"I don't know– hey, you guys seeing something behind it two?"

No one answered Marcus, not when a thin object rose out of the water and slapped down on the surface to submerge again. Then, a figure of gigantic proportions began to rise, its silhouette black against the ever-darkening sky. A high-pitched squeal sounded from it before the squeal lowered into a menacing growl.

The teens watched in horror as a silhouette of an arm rose away from the figure and slapped down on the boat, cutting into the hull and causing an explosion to briefly light up a dark chest.

The reactions from the teens were immediate; the girls were screaming, the men jumping and yelping. Amy and Diana instantly clung to one another, Diana already wailing with tears running down her cheeks.

"HOLY SHIT!" Yelped Jared.

"W-What's that?" Amy was hysterical. "What do we do?! Jared, what do we–"

She was cut off when a distant hum met their ears before they and the island were suddenly bathed in a pinkish light. The only thing the four could do was to stare in horror and in disbelief.

Then, a flash of light erupted, and a mushroom cloud instantly formed from the blast, rising upwards into the sky and atmosphere as the shockwave raced outwards from the epicentre. It was like it was signalling the ominous things that were to come.