Screen goes white for twelve seconds with huge, deafening blast.

Slow fade back to picture.  Dimly, in harsh contrast, we see the trench with the Marines buried in rubble.  They struggle to claw their way out.  The choke and spit, covered with dust.  Some fall back, dead.  They are the lucky ones.

Cut to background shot.  We see that something has gone horribly wrong.  The observers, half a mile from ground zero are all indistinguishable charred, grotesque corpses, what is left of them.  The blockhouse is rubble, broken walls, with shadows of human beings scorched into them.  Aircraft and helicopters are burning skeletons on the tarmac.

Dead silence reigns over the desert.

Cut to the men in the trench.  Of hundreds of Marines in the original platoons, only a few dozen have survived.  They claw their way, on hands and knees, out of the trenches, through the cactus patch, as a slow fall of radioactive dust showers down upon them, blanketing them.

By the time the survivors have made their way clear, the sun is setting.  Night falls.

End of Scene 1

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