Downwind

They waited until the winds were favorable. Favorable meaning they blew, as they most always did, eastward. Out of the big empty Nevada testing grounds toward vague little watermark towns, shepherds who would find their flocks, lips melting off from radioactive grass, in shambles, into the west desert, down into mine shafts like slow protruding tongues. Kid died of something. Had to be something. Only one in his philistine family with any sense. Capable too. Hard worker. Just fell apart at the seems. First he developed seems, then they split, more like it.