FILE NO. 031

PERSONAL JOURNAL ENTRY—CW3 KARA RESNIK, UNITED STATES ARMY

We killed a child today. We killed a little girl!

We should have seen this coming. It was bound to happen at some point. The highway should have been a wake-up call, but we were so caught up in finding the next piece. It’s easy to forget that when these things were buried, there was basically nothing around, just woods and plains. It was just pure luck that we found the first four pieces where we did. And now that little girl’s dead! They’re all dead!

We were so happy. We were making good progress, moving through our grid faster than we had planned.

It was such a beautiful day too. I got up earlier than usual and made it to the lab early in the morning. Since we fly at night, we never really get to spend time with Dr. Franklin or anyone else at the lab. But they were all there and we got to talk for a few hours, swapping anecdotes, learning about one another’s work.

Mitchell and I left around 10:30. We drove over to the base to prepare our flight plan. We flew straight to Nellis Air Force Base, near Las Vegas. My eye didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. It doesn’t hurt anymore, but it gets watery after a few hours. It’s not so bad at night, but this was a long trip during daylight and it had me worried a bit.

We slept for a couple hours when we got to Nellis, then we took off again. We had to cover the northern part of Arizona. This was the farthest we’d gotten from the base. It was a long day, but we were excited to fly over the Grand Canyon, neither of us had ever seen it. We wouldn’t really see anything at night, from this altitude, but it still felt good, like a layover in Paris. You never leave the airport, but even so, you’re in Paris.

Our flight was uneventful, right up until the end. We were heading west near the south edge of the Grand Canyon when I noticed some lights flickering to my left. This was different from the other times we found a body part. There was a patch of white lights. It was there before but neither Mitchell nor I had been paying any attention to it. There was a turquoise spot right in the middle of it, and lights flickering all around. I’ve been in Iraq. This looked like someone had dropped a bomb in the middle of town. I looked at our map. It was Flagstaff.

I dove down and headed south toward the turquoise spot. As we drew closer, we got a bird’s-eye view of the damage. The piece—from above, it looked like an upper arm—had obliterated a whole city block. Some houses on the edge had been torn in half. There were electric poles down; sparks were flying everywhere. A lot of the remaining houses were on fire.

I landed in a restaurant parking lot, about three blocks away. We started running toward the flames. Several people wearing next to nothing were running the other way. It was chaos. The fire department hadn’t arrived yet, neither had our recovery team. A few people were fortunate enough to get out of their homes in time to see them reduced to nothing. They were running in the streets, trying to avoid fallen electric lines. I could see the telltale glow coming from a large crater where two large houses used to stand.

A woman in her nightgown ran out of nowhere and latched on to me, screaming, “Amy! Amy!” She kept screaming her name, pulling me by the arm toward the edge of the crater. “She was in her room! Amy was in her room!”

Her house appeared to be in fairly good shape from the front, but the back half had been ripped right off. It was like a dollhouse—you could see every room, every piece of furniture. Amy’s room was on the edge, it was just…Mitchell pulled the mother away from me, doing his best to restrain her. “She’s gone,” he told her, holding her as tight as he could. “She’s gone.”

The hole was all muddy and filled with debris. There must have been a water line running somewhere. There were telephone poles sticking out like ragweed, chunks of bricks. We could see the front end of a car. All of it was mixed with mud and rocks. There was no way to even try to look for survivors.

There was this dog, a Bernese mountain dog, not a puppy, but you could tell he wasn’t fully grown. It was just standing there, right on the edge, barking at a patch of debris. There were lots of dogs barking, but this one kept jumping and barking at the same spot. He was just so intent, staring at some random spot. There was nothing there, nothing but mud, some clothes, a microwave oven.

Mitchell and I left the crater and went through a couple of the houses that were on the edge. Nothing.

Only eight people died that night. That’s what they told me. Most apparently ran out when the ground started shaking. Only eight…I pushed a button fifteen thousand feet away and I killed eight people, ordinary folks who never did anything to deserve this. They must have been so scared.

They tell me there was nothing we could have done to save any of them. I know that’s not true. We could have not gone over there. We didn’t have to do any of this. I wish it were as easy as saying I was just following orders. I chose to go. I’m responsible.

Everyone seems to have found a way to bury this, everyone but me. They’ve all shown great concern over me, lots of care and compassion. I don’t deal well with that kind of attention. I know it’s not pity, but I’m used to being the one taking care of people.

Mitchell comes to see me as often as I let him, which clearly isn’t often enough for him. He really cares, everyone can tell. But I don’t want to talk to him about this. He was there, just like I was. He’s the one who actually pushed the button. He must feel as responsible as I do. And if we keep flying together, I don’t want this to get in the way.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with Dr. Franklin since it happened. She wants me to call her Rose, as if I ever could. She’s holding herself together really well, considering. She’s the one that orchestrated all of this. The weight on her shoulders must be unbearable.

She comes every morning before her shift, sometimes she stays for a few hours. She plays the part of the big sister very well. She’s the only one who gets me thinking about something else. She brings me a new book every couple days, bad ones; they’re all horribly corny love stories. But she reads them too, and we laugh about them when we’re done. We have the same kind of humor for that kind of stuff. I guess she’s been as lucky as I have when it comes to relationships.

She’s never asked me to talk about what happened. She knows I’ve talked about the incident with everyone else. It’s all they wanna talk about. I don’t need to go through the events a thousand times to remember. I was there. I’ll remember how it went down for the rest of my life. I remember every detail; what the people were wearing; the picture frames on the walls of those houses that were torn in half. Dr. Franklin understands that. I’m grateful for that. I’m not sure I could go through this if it weren’t for her.

I know she still believes that some good can come of this. I can tell. For a while, I thought she was just driven by scientific curiosity, but now I know, she believes it’s worth it. She really thinks we can gain some knowledge that will help people. It’s nice to see that kind of conviction remain after such a tragedy. I wasn’t expecting it.

Speaking of surprises, Vincent showed up yesterday. I certainly didn’t think he would, since we barely know each other. He only stayed for a minute, but he brought me a present, as he called it. A gift card, $25 at the Home Depot. I laughed my head off. That was the point, I guess. Then he just said goodbye and left. It was touching in some strange way. I don’t know anything about him. He spends all his time alone in the other room, so we never have a chance to talk.