“More like thousands,” said McLellan. “But she was doing it to keep the survivors on the strip safe.”
“And what about all those medics at the shelter that she ordered shot? Do you think she was right to do that?”
“Paranoia is the only reason I can think of for her doing that. I didn’t take part in it.”
Halverson nodded. “I noticed you didn’t do any shooting there.”
“I have no problem blowing away criminals, but I can’t mow down innocent civilians in cold blood.”
He gave Halverson a look that Halverson could not interpret.
Halverson heard a rumble overhead. He leaned forward in his seat and looked up through the windshield. A black aircraft built in the singular triangle shape of a Stealth bomber was flying toward Las Vegas.
“What’s that noise?” said Victoria, unable to see the aircraft from the backseat.
McLellan craned his neck through his open window and shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand as he gazed skyward. “Looks like a Stealth bomber.”
“Could be a drone,” said Halverson.
A deafening blast resonated through the air.
Eyes bulging, Halverson, McLellan, and Victoria started in their seats.
“What was that?” said Victoria.
She didn’t know if anyone could hear her. She couldn’t even hear herself because of the ringing in her ears.
Halverson watched a massive fulmination erupting over Las Vegas. He had never seen such a humongous explosion in his life.
He turned his face away from the blinding light emitted by the blast. “Don’t look at it.”
“Shit!” said McLellan. “They’ve gone and done it!”
“What?” said Victoria, shutting her eyes.
“They nuked Vegas.”
“We gotta get out of here,” said Halverson. “We’re too close to ground zero.”
An orange and black mushroom cloud blossomed over Las Vegas and towered into the sky, belching radioactive smoke and debris into the atmosphere, emitting a roar that shook and vibrated the Mustang.
McLellan spun the Mustang around and headed at speed in the opposite direction, stomping the gas pedal.
The hot arid blast wind bearing thermal radiation would arrive in no time, Halverson knew, scouring the desert and burning everything in its wake.
“You think we can outrace that thing?” said Victoria.
“Quantrill had her own militia,” said McLellan. “They have scores of blast shelters around here. She always suspected Vegas would be one of the first targets to be nuked.”
“I guess she wasn’t paranoid after all.”
“Nevada is the home of the A-bomb. This is where they conducted test explosions back in the fifties. Blast shelters are pretty common around here.”
“Do you know where the shelters are?” said Halverson, his face contorted, barely able to hear himself through the racket of the blast.
Warily, McLellan watched the image of the nuclear explosion unfurling its orange and black blossom in the rearview mirror.
“Yeah,” he said. “There’s one around here.” He paused, looking uncertain as he surveyed the terrain. “I think. Look for a large boulder painted white in the desert.”
“How can you tell?” said Victoria, taking in the desert. “Everything looks the same around here.”
“Quantrill drove out here because she knows this area. I’m telling you, there has to be a blast shelter nearby. She knew the government would bomb Vegas sooner or later so she had shelters built all over.”
Halverson scanned the scrub-dotted desert flatland. He picked up on what appeared to be a splash of white in the otherwise brown desert. It was difficult to tell for sure because of the distortion to his vision caused by the shimmering thermals rising from the ground.
“Over there!” he said, pointing to his right.
“I got it,” said McLellan.
The Mustang screamed toward the blaze of white that was the length of a football field from the car.
McLellan slammed on the brakes about ten feet away from what turned out to be a white-painted boulder. He spilled out of the car.
Halverson and Victoria filed out after him.
Halverson could feel the hot blast wave approaching them, screaming across the desert, casting up dust, sand, and pebbles around them.
McLellan wheeled around and pulled his gun on Halverson. “Except you’re not coming with us.”
Halverson froze in his tracks, the blast wind picking up around them. He had to squint in the gusts that blew sand at him.
Victoria kept running and stopped at McLellan’s side, looking confused.
“I don’t get it,” said Halverson.
“Open the door,” McLellan told Victoria.
“What door?” she said.
“In the ground at your feet there’s a ringbolt. Pull it up. It’s attached to the shelter’s trapdoor.”
Victoria stepped backward and all but tripped on the iron ringbolt that protruded from the dirt.
Through the veil of dust, Halverson could barely make out the mushroom cloud looming over them. He could feel the fringes of the intense heat emanating from ground zero as the burning radioactive wind swept toward them.
“I heard about you from the Bureau before I lost contact with them,” said McLellan. “I know who you are, Chad Halverson, if that’s your real name.”
“Does it matter?” said Halverson. He had several names he used in his line of work. One was as good as the other, the way he saw it.
“The Bureau told me you’re a rogue CIA agent and an enemy of the state. I’m supposed to take you out.”
Halverson was inching closer to McLellan and hoping McLellan wasn’t picking up on it. The roiling dust was helping screen Halverson’s movements. Halverson ruled out reaching behind his waist for his Sig. By the time he snagged the pistol, McLellan would have pulled the trigger on his FN 5.7 and blown him away.
Meanwhile, the scorching wind was picking up speed and gusting violently across the desert toward Halverson, McLellan, and Victoria. They were having trouble remaining on their feet in the onrush of howling gale-force wind.
“You’re a traitor,” said McLellan, narrowing his eyes to see through the furnacelike blast of air that expelled radioactive dust into his face as he prepared to squeeze his pistol’s trigger.
“Why didn’t you let Quantrill kill me when you were grilling me?”
“I wanted to see where you’d go when I helped you escape.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to find out what you know that makes you so dangerous, so I gave you enough rope and followed you.”
“And?”
“You want to get back to DC for some reason, probably to destroy it somehow.”
Aided by a gust of wind at his back, Halverson hurled himself at McLellan.
McLellan squeezed his FN 5.7’s trigger as Halverson collided with him. The errant shot flew wide of Halverson.
Halverson grappled with McLellan as they fought for McLellan’s gun. Halverson grimaced in pain as he tried to use his injured left hand in his attempt to disarm McLellan.
They scuffled in the dirt, rolling around as the sand-laden wind shrieked over them abrading their flesh. McLellan maintained his grasp on his pistol, despite Halverson’s best efforts to dislodge it.
Halverson couldn’t allow this brawl to go on much longer. They had to seek the safety of the bomb shelter before they burned to death in the blast wind.
McLellan banged Halverson’s broken fingers against the ground as the combatants clutched each other’s hands. McLellan straddled Halverson’s chest. Halverson groaned in pain, pinned under McLellan.
Halverson couldn’t maintain his grip on McLellan’s gun hand much longer with his healthy hand. McLellan had the force of gravity aiding him as he pressed his body down on Halverson, driving his gun hand down closer to Halverson’s face and trying to aim the muzzle at it, overcoming the resistance being exe
rted by Halverson’s right hand.
Halverson contrived to buck McLellan off him, snagged his Sig from his rear waistband, and shot McLellan in the head before McLellan had a chance to right himself and fire his FN 5.7 at him.
Halverson scampered to his feet as the heat in the wind became even hotter. He thought his flesh would start melting any second, as the sand borne by the gusting wind striated his body. It felt like somebody was sandpapering his skin off, flaying him alive.
He staggered to the ringbolt, snatched it, and wrenched on it, pulling the heavy metal and wooden door open. The wind fought his efforts, thrusting the door downward.
Halverson mustered all his strength and held the door open.
Hunched over in the blustery wind, Victoria crawled down the wooden ladder that descended into the shelter.
Holding the door suspended above him in the wind with his right hand, Halverson lowered himself down the ladder. He screwed up his face in pain as he used his injured left hand to assist him in climbing down the ladder.
The tendons in his neck stiffened as he struggled to pull the door shut above him while the hurricane-like gusts fought his every move. He shut the door with a final heave and descended into the stillness of the shelter.
At the foot of the ladder he took stock of his surroundings. He saw a steel door opposite the ladder.
“That must be the blast shelter,” he said and approached the door. He tried to twist the doorknob. “It’s locked.”
“Maybe McLellan has the key,” said Victoria, advancing to his side.
“Why would Quantrill give him one?”
“Why not? He used to be her bodyguard, and he knew where the shelters were.”
“It’s not like we have any other choices—unless there’s a spare key hidden inside this anteroom somewhere.”
“I doubt it.”
“Me too. Quantrill wouldn’t want vagrants holing up in the shelter and eating her supplies.”
Victoria cast around the cramped anteroom. “What if we stay here in this room?”
“The air’s no good here. It’ll become contaminated with radiation.” He nodded toward the steel door. “That blast shelter’s airtight. We need to get in there.”
Halverson scaled the ladder to the trapdoor above them.
“You can’t go out there,” said Victoria.
“How else can I frisk McLellan for the key?”
Halverson shoved the heavy door open and peeked out of the shelter toward McLellan’s motionless body. Halverson narrowed his eyes to prevent dust and sand from whipping into them.
In the distance he could make out a pack of the walking dead lurching across the desert toward him, flailing their arms in the wind. Beyond them, Halverson could spy mountainous blazes devouring Las Vegas. The flaming Stratosphere Restaurant was leaning and falling in the conflagration.
Halverson had to reach McLellan’s body before the ghouls did. He didn’t want to contend with them while he was frisking McLellan.
Halverson removed one of his shoes and propped it under the heavy door so the door would remain ajar and be easier to lift when he returned. Prying open the shut door in the furious wind was all but impossible now.
Braving the wind, he inched out of the doorway and crawled on his belly toward McLellan. His skin burning, Halverson used his hand to probe inside McLellan’s trouser pockets. Halverson fished out a key ring. He had no idea if any of the keys fit the blast shelter. He would just have to try them and find out.
The ghouls surged forward, stumbling and groping, abetted by the wind at their backs in their trek toward him.
Halverson turned around and scrambled back toward the trapdoor.
A thirtysomething male ghoul with grimy towy honey blond hair tripped behind him, sprawled on the ground, and reached for Halverson’s unshod foot. Halverson felt the ghoul’s bony claw on his foot as the hand swiped at Halverson’s sock. Halverson spun his body around to prevent the ghoul from clasping his foot.
The ghoul crawled after him, worming its way across the ground, its arms outstretched.
The keychain dangling from a finger on his injured left hand, Halverson hunkered down in front of the trapdoor, yanked it open with his right hand, and descended halfway down the ladder into the shelter’s anteroom, as wind blew sand into his face and the ghoul inched relentlessly toward him.
Coughing on the gusts of sand, Halverson shut the trapdoor above him in the ghoul’s face that was bearing down on him. Halverson threw the trapdoor’s bolt before the ghoul could reach the door. It was a small bolt and wouldn’t hold up under a concentrated assault, Halverson figured, but the ghouls lacked the coordination and the musculature necessary to lift the trapdoor’s ringbolt.
CHAPTER 74
Halverson descended the rest of the rungs to the floor of the blast shelter’s anteroom.
“Did you get it?” asked Victoria.
“I hope so,” answered Halverson, fingering the keys. He dropped the keys down before the blast shelter’s steel door.
“What are you doing?”
“We have to take off our clothes.”
Victoria shook her head in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”
Halverson commenced tugging off his shirt. “Our clothes are impregnated with radioactive dust particles. We have to get rid of everything we’re wearing.”
Victoria started unbuttoning her blouse. “Why don’t we do this inside the shelter?”
“We don’t want to take our clothes in there. They’ll pollute it with radioactivity.” He ran his hands through his hair, trying to shake out the dust particles in it. “And brush your hair to get the dust out.”
Victoria leaned forward, flipped her blonde hair over her head, shook her head, and ran her hands through her hair trying to clean it.
Halverson removed his briefs.
“Even our underwear?” said Victoria.
Halverson nodded. “The radioactive dust is in our clothes and on our skin. We need to take a shower if there’s one inside.”
Victoria removed her bra. “And what if we can’t get inside?”
He caught himself running his eyes down her breasts. “Then we’ll have to stay here. We don’t have any other choice.”
He crouched down, snagged the keys from the floor, and tried them one at a time in the steel door’s lock.
The ghouls fell to thumping on the trapdoor above Halverson and Victoria.
“What’s that?” said Victoria.
“Ghouls are out there.”
“Why didn’t the blast kill them?”
“For the same reason it didn’t kill us. They were too far away from its epicenter.”
“Then what good does it do to drop a nuclear bomb on them?”
“The fires caused by the intense heat will cremate them.”
“This is a desert. There’s nothing that catches fire here.”
“That wind from the blast is superheated. The ghouls should start bursting into flames soon.”
Victoria listened to the knocking on the trapdoor. “And what if they don’t?”
“The ghouls can’t stand up to the heat from a nuclear blast.” Halverson tried to insert another key’s teeth into the steel door’s lock. The bit didn’t fit. “Their brains will boil, and they’ll die.”
“Then why are they still pounding on the trapdoor?” said Victoria, glancing anxiously up at the thumping on the door that was dislodging dust and spewing it down on her.
Halverson fumbled for another key. “If the heat doesn’t kill them, the radiation will.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Radiation kills every living thing.” He inserted the next key’s bit into the lock.
“But the ghouls are already dead.”
And they were still hammering on the trapdoor.
With relief, Halverson heard the lock click as the key sprung it in the steel door. He shoved open the heavy door, which creaked on its hinges from lack of use. Dust showered down from the
lintel as the door swung open.
Buck naked, Halverson and Victoria dashed into the blast shelter.
Halverson shut the door behind them and flicked on the light switch.
Victoria spotted a metallic transistor radio that stood on a nearby particleboard table bathed in the flickering light.
Halverson figured the EMP from the nuclear explosion might be affecting the electricity as he took stock of the dim incandescent light bulb that hung suspended in a wire cage from the ceiling.
Victoria snapped up the radio, switched it on, and turned up the volume, hoping to hear a news bulletin explaining the atomic blast.
All she heard was Willie Nelson singing “Blue Skies.”
Poxland
Bryan Cassiday
Copyright © 2013 by Bryan Cassiday
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher and author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.
All characters in this novel are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
ISBN 978-1492739715
Bryan Cassiday
Los Angeles
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition: November 2013
Chapter 1
Halverson felt like he was covered with hot leeches that were sucking the blood out of his flesh. To make matters worse, he felt like ticks were crawling under his skin across the entire length of his body. He scratched his left forearm trying to soothe the itching that was burning his skin. It did no good.
The ticks were embedded under his skin as they crawled all over his body. His scratching accomplished nothing, save to exacerbate the itching and smarting of his skin.
His eyes snapped open.
He realized he was lying naked on his back in the dingy bomb shelter. He surveyed his body. There were no leeches on it, and he could discern no traces of ticks burrowing underneath his skin, no ridges formed in his flesh by their burrowing. Nevertheless, his flesh was burning up.
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