Mushroom Cloud Nine
an excerpt

Cole crawled along blindly across what was once a tree-lined road. He could see, but not see. He heard, and his ears translated it to his eyes. Echolocation. He could see, but not through the light spectrum. His body had forfeited that ability for something else.

X-Rays, he thought through the radio waves threatening to overwhelm his ears and brain. His body was fed from something outside the radiation. Gamma rays, he guessed, remembering eighth grade science.

He stared at the sun, just now able to “see” it from the ultraviolet and infrared that streamed from its heart. Something had changed in his body. He could no longer sense in the way that had been normal for him before. His atoms had been rearranged, his genetic potential unlocked.

Still, crawling along the shattered concrete, Cole didn’t know what was more frightening—the fact that he could no longer see, or the fact that what he was "seeing" was...nothing.