“Can I help? Or do you want to see what we all look like beneath our skin?”
“The help one,” Ness said.
Miller nodded warily and sat beside her. Their fingers hammered over the keys.
“There’s like no water in there at all,” Zooey said.
“I know,” Kristin said.
“Water is a crucial component of preventing reactors from overheating and melting through their containment chambers.”
“I know.”
“And even if you shut down the reaction, the core will continue to produce heat, until—”
“Damn it!” Kristin spun around in her chair. “Yeah. Not Dying in a Nuclear Accident 101. Do you have any suggestions for what to do about that, professor?”
Zooey raised her brows at the floor. “Just sayin’.”
Kristin turned back to the keys. Ness watched the main screen as a series of rods poked into view, descending through the boiling reactor. Alarms shrieked from the walls. Everyone winced except Sebastian.
“These things are cooled by water?” Shawn shouted.
“What did you expect, a force field?” Kristin shouted back. “Why do you think they built this thing next to a giant river?”
“Because the U.S. government didn’t care if a hunk of worthless desert got blown up?”
Kristin cut off the alarms with the stroke of a key. Ness’ ears rang. A security man burst through the door. Without turning, Sebastian shot him down. The creature stuck its pad beneath Ness’ nose. “DANIEL ROAN DANIEL ROAN”
“Don’t worry,” Ness wrote back. “They’ll come to us soon enough.”
“Slap me for being stupid,” Shawn said, “but why don’t you just turn the water back on?”
Kristin pressed her lips tight. “Because the pipeline appears to have been critically compromised.”
“So should I go grab a bucket?”
“Better make it a helicopter. The core’s down, but it’s still generating heat. Without water, it will melt straight through the floor.”
Ness stared at the neon nightmare on the screen. The world clicked into place. “The backup pipe.”
Kristin hit more keys. “Never finished.”
Shawn goggled at the glowing blue core. “There’s a backup? How close to finished?”
“I mean, it’s right up to the cooling station,” she said. “With a six-foot steel cap on the end.”
Shawn gave Ness a wry smile. “Don’t suppose you got a six-foot pipecutter in your pocket.”
Ness pointed at Sebastian. “It does.”
“I didn’t even know lobsters shit. That thing’s a plumber, too?”
“Think its laser can cut through steel?”
A grin flooded Shawn’s face, washing away the lines of worry. “Only one way to find out.”
Ness wrote on his notepad, held it up for Sebastian, and pointed at its laser. “Can I borrow that?”
“NO KILL DANIEL ROAN”
“Without that, we’re all going to die!”
It reached a claw into a seamless pouch in its bandolier-like clothing and handed him a second pistol. “A PRESENT”
Ness passed the rifle to Shawn and transferred the blunt alien weapon to his left hand. He wrote back to Sebastian with his right. “How do I use it?”
“BOTH BUTTONS BANG BANG”
Ness touched his thumb and index finger to the raised buttons on both sides of the thick handle, which sported a groove perfect for the circular claws of the aliens and fit his own fingers reasonably well. He looked up at Sebastian. It nodded. He pointed the gun at the carpet and tightened his grip. Blue heat lanced to the ground, setting a dime-sized spot of carpet on fire. Ness jerked the pistol, anticipating a recoil, but there was none. He removed his thumb. The beam stopped. He stamped out the fire. Hot, chemical-scented smoke burned his nose.
“All right,” Shawn grinned. He raised his eyebrows at Kristin. “Want to show us your pipe, girl?”
“Are you sure you two are related?” She turned to Miller and Zooey. “You two got this from here?”
“Oh sure,” Miller said. “Just give us a shout before our imminent demise.”
The rumble of the core pitched up, a billion angry bees converging on a single intruder. Kristin ran to a stairwell at the back of the room and keyed them through. The stairs and walls were bare concrete. Silver-white lights strobed from the walls. Kristin’s footsteps echoed from the tight walls. Near the bottom of the stark well, Ness realized he hadn’t heard the chitinous strike of Sebastian’s claws in some time.
“Where’d it go?” he said.
Shawn looked over. “Where’d what go?”
“The giant space-monster.”
“It bugged out a couple floors back.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
Shawn pushed his brows together. “I’m not gonna throw stones at a dude for running off in the midst of a nuclear disaster. I mean, yes I will. But I’ll put a little less zip on ‘em.”
Kristin stopped at the next landing. “If I’ve got the layout right, we can take this tunnel to the cooling station. If you can get the cap off and get the water flowing into the reservoir, we might be okay.”
Ness frowned. “And if you’ve got it wrong?”
“Then we’ll plunge into the reactor and be incinerated like Gollum at the end of Return of the King.”
“What!”
Her eyes skipped between his. “Totally kidding. Then we’d get lost, and hopefully find our way back before the core melts into the ground and shreds our DNA like a puppy with a Kleenex.”
“I can’t believe they let someone like you have access to this place.”
She opened the door. “Hey, I did my grad work at Stanford. Ph.D from MIT.”
“Really?” Ness said. “I think you might be too good for me.”
The halls beyond forked three ways, bare concrete lit by recessed white bulbs. Ness followed Kristin down the rightward branch. The rumble of the reactor rose through his shoes and settled in his chest.
“Is it safe in here?” Shawn said.
“Not really.” Kristin sprinted over the cement. “But it’s a lot safer than if that thing crashes through the floor.”
The walls were windowless. Their footsteps bounced from the tight spaces, echoing forward and back, multiplied. Ness glanced behind him repeatedly. Their own shadows shrunk and loomed as they streaked past the lights. They passed a featureless metal door, then a second with signs indicating a stairwell. He was certain they were far underground. How much concrete hung between them and the surface? If the core melted, would the foundation collapse with it?
Shawn grinned at him. “So what do you say we do about the bossman and his pit bull String ‘em up? Or show mercy, and just jail ‘em for life?”
“I promised,” Ness said. “If we don’t kill Daniel and Roan, Sebastian will whack us together like he’s trying to make fire.”
Kristin turned another corner. The tunnel widened in all directions. A culvert ran down its center. Above the culvert, a massive pipe extended from one end of the tunnel to the other, supported beneath by steel beams as thick as Ness.
“Shoot, that thing ain’t six feet across,” Shawn said. “Barely two.”
Kristin rolled her eyes. “Does it really make a difference?”
“Imagine it did to the guys who carried it in here.”
“Yeah, those trucks were real complainers. Wouldn’t shut the hell up.”
“Is that where all the gas was going?” Ness said. “To run Daniel’s pet projects?”
“How should I know?” Kristin said. “I’m not completely omniscient.”
A big metal button shined from the wall beside the pipe. As they approached, it seemed to grow from the wall; it was another pipe, just as wide as the other, sealed on its end by a welded cap. They halted in front of the wall. Machinery shook the walls, Ness’ guts. Their footsteps echoed for a second after they stopped running.
“How was it suppo
sed to stop terrorists when the pipes are right next to each other?” Ness said.
“The backup intake is a half mile upstream from the first. They just converge here.” Kristin pointed to the channel running down the middle of the concrete floor. “There are drains in the floor. After I saw the backup coolant was down, I rerouted the pump to push anything in drainage back into main cooling. All we have to do is flood the place.”
Shawn gazed up at the pipe, hands on his hips. “And this thing’s got pressure?”
“I sure hope so.”
“Well come on! Give me that laser and stand back.” Shawn held out his hand. Ness passed him the alien weapon. Shawn winked, braced his feet, and aimed at the pipe. A blue line flicked to the metal, scorching it, drawing the first bead of silvery melt.
Shawn’s head snapped forward. A bang clapped down the tunnel. Shawn swayed and toppled to the concrete. Blood painted the cap of the pipe.
Ness turned. Thirty feet down the brightly lit tunnel, Roan pointed her pistol at his head.
34
She was about to lose him again. Not to the endless rolling spaces of the country, but to the even vaster spaces of the head. And this time, if she lost him, there would be no getting him back.
She felt him growing further by the day. Alden was relocated from his bunk in the longhouse to one in the barracks. At meals, security segregated its seating from the workers. Not by official fiat—Tristan could walk across the open dining space if she wanted—but the officers would stare her down the whole time she spoke to Alden. No privacy. No hope of opening his eyes. In the five days following Alden’s beating of the man who’d set down his saw, Tristan had held one proper conversation with him, at breakfast the morning after. Alden had risen from his bench with the other men in black and crossed to her picnic table. She was seated alone, but he stayed standing.
“What did Lt. Hollister do to you?”
She glanced across the tables to the guards, who laughed together, gesturing broadly. “He didn’t tell you?”
“He said he gave you a warning.”
“A little more than that. More like house arrest. With probation.”
“Why’d you have to hit him?”
She frowned at him. “He was about to hit me. With a stick. Sticks are generally used to break things.”
He scowled at the dirt. “Well, can you not do it again? They’re calling you Wonder Woman. One of them asked me if he could ask you out.”
She kept her face blank. How had they turned him that fast? Teens were probably even more pliable than children; so willing to fit in, so needful of unjudged acceptance. It was more than that, though. They were tapping his anger. His fear. His impotency. All the feelings simmering inside since the Panhandler had wiped out everything they knew: parents, security, friends, a future. She blinked at the other workers in horror. They all felt it, didn’t they? She sure as hell did. It had felt great to smash Hollister from his feet, and not just because he was about to strike her. Because she had finally been able to hit back.
Everyone felt it. That was the aliens’ legacy. They had turned the world into a grave—and the few survivors into agents of a deathless wrath.
Including her own brother.
“Why?” she said. “Do you like it here?”
“It’s pretty cool,” Alden shrugged. “Lt. Hollister is going to show me around the power plant.”
“I don’t know if we should stay.”
“Why not?”
She smiled dryly. “They’ve made you a security guard. What do you think you’re guarding?”
He angled his head, searching her face for tricks. “The settlement.”
“Is the electric fence there to guard the settlement, too?”
“I mean, yeah.”
“So why is it twelve feet tall? To keep out eleven-foot-tall bears?”
Alden shrugged. “Well, they can’t just let people run off. We need them.”
She ran her fingernail into the weather-worn wood of the picnic table. “I thought we’d go somewhere together. That’s why I let myself be captured.”
“Like where?”
“Anywhere. We can do anything, Alden. Be anything.” She smiled at him. “If you really wanted, we could be like Caine from Kung Fu. Wandering warrior-monks who right wrongs one episode at a time.”
“Who’s Caine?” He made a face at the ground. “I mean, we’d starve, wouldn’t we? Do you think anywhere else even has power?”
She pressed her tongue against her teeth. “Here’s the thing. We can’t stay here. This place, it isn’t good. If we don’t—”
“What’s going on over here?” Hollister strolled up behind her, gazing down his nose in concern. “Come on, Alden. I told you about mingling. Discipline!”
Alden straightened. “Sorry, Lieutenant.”
“Get back to your people. Sergeant Fredrick’s got a job for you.”
Alden’s face brightened. He saluted, then glanced at Tristan. “Well, see you later.”
He jogged off. Tristan nodded slowly. “Is that the plan? Isolate them? Convince them they’re different? Special? Would be hard for them to beat someone they spend breakfast with, wouldn’t it?”
Hollister thumbed his dry right eye. “Standard matter of discipline. Dunno where this conspiracy shit’s coming from.”
“You’re conscripting fourteen-year-olds into your little army.”
“I don’t see any schools out there. We’re back to the apprentice system.”
Tristan took a half step nearer. He reached for his baton. She rolled her eyes, half surprised he hadn’t gone for his gun instead. “I’m his legal guardian.”
“You got a court order?” Hollister laughed. “I’d say I’m his guardian now. And if you don’t watch the way you talk to my ward—and to me—I’m going to make your life hell.”
He lifted his brows, waiting, then smiled and returned to his men. She didn’t want to push him. Things were too delicate already. If she lost all contact with Alden, she might not be able to get him to leave once she was ready.
So she walked away, too, trying to see the farm with fresh eyes. Digging a tunnel was out the question. Even if she could trust all five of her roommates in the longhouse room, extending a tunnel from beneath her bed to beyond the fence would take weeks, if not months. She didn’t think she had that long before she lost Alden for good.
Digging a hole right beneath the fence was more plausible. She might be able to do that much within an hour. But even if she were able to pull that off without being seen, she didn’t see how she could leave her room without waking her roommates. Their rooms were padlocked at night; they had four windows, two on one wall, two on the opposite, but they weren’t made to open. Which was an obvious fire hazard. She would have to raise the issue with Daniel Morgenstern straightaway.
It would be easier to dig a hole under the fence by the river, grab Alden, and float downstream in broad daylight. But Hollister would notice Alden’s absence within minutes. He’d send the dogs after them. That meant they needed enough of a head start to reach a vehicle before security realized they were missing. They could only do that by leaving at night.
She woke to the old man’s voice every morning and worked all day. While others poured the foundation for a new longhouse, she was given a handsaw and boards marked with thick pencil. She soon learned why the other man had complained. Even a tool as simple as a saw took touch to use right; the teeth often skidded off her line or dug too deep and got stuck. For several days, she had to concentrate just hard enough that she could spare no thought to her schemes, and even after she got the hang of the tool’s use, her thinking time was fragmented, constantly broken up by the delivery of more boards or the orders of Jorge, a kindly but driven man who’d found himself managing twenty of the workers after Hollister discovered he’d once been foreman of a work crew of his own.
Her talks with Alden were rare and brief. When they arose, she probed for information on the progress of his app
renticeship, pushing any point where he showed signs of doubt. Even when she bent his confidence, his desire to stay held firm. Even so, she expected he would follow her out if she showed up in the middle of the night, but in the meantime, she couldn’t count on him to help.
Despite that, piece by piece, her plan came together.
Tristan complained of blisters, which was true, and was granted the use of a pair of leather gloves, which she had to sign out of a warehouse of goods from an old woman with heavy jowls and a pen tied to her wrist. Two days later, Tristan returned for a roll of duct tape and a plastic tarp.
The old woman glared over her bifocals. “For?”
“My job,” Tristan said.
“For what at your job?”
“They’ve got me cutting lumber. Every morning I go to the pile and there are spiders everywhere. I’ve seen black widows.”
The woman’s jowls bunched in a frown. “You’ve got gloves.”
“Think those will stop a rattlesnake?” Tristan laughed at herself. “Look, I’m not asking for a battleship. But if I throw down one more load of boards because a wolf spider’s racing up my arm, I’m going to pitch myself in the river.”
The woman craned her neck at the rows and rows of racked goods, then leaned forward and rolled from her chair. “Duct tape. Tarp.”
“Can you make the tarp a clear one? I’d prefer to see the snakes before I get within striking distance.”
“Duct tape. Tarp, transparent.”
The woman disappeared into the stacks. Tristan swore silently. She couldn’t push the woman with another request. She’d have to steal. She signed for her materials and took them to the site. The site itself had any number of tools—including several hammers, which she made sure to note the locations of—but no wire cutters. Scissors wouldn’t be thick enough. She kept her eyes open, scanning benches and workstations as she shuttled cut lumber back and forth. And spotted a pair of fat-headed tin snips.
She kept one eye on them through the rest of the day, tracking them from one workstation to the picnic table used as a makeshift tool bench and back to another station. As the sun drew toward the western hills, she snagged them from the station, wandered to the pile of uncut lumber she had yet to get to, and hid them under the boards.
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 141