Burt exchanged a wary glance with Zeke, who motioned ahead with two fingers. Burt leaned into him, his voice a barely audible whisper.
“What is it?”
“Red fabric. Up ahead. Probably a tent. Showtime, buddy. Take point,” Zeke instructed. Burt nodded and brushed past him, the snick of his safety flipping off the only sound besides the squishing of his boots in the mud.
The gunmen made their way along the trail, two staying back to mind the horses while the rest marched toward their target. Marauders would be easy to distinguish from ordinary travelers by their weapons and their numbers. The stragglers who found their way to Astoria from Portland traveled in twos and threes, and rarely had anything resembling impressive firepower – usually an old shotgun or rifle with a handful of cartridges, or a couple of gangbanger pistols with half-empty magazines. Marauders usually traveled in groups of ten or more and knew their way around weapons, having depended on them for years to steal and kill rather than do honest work to survive.
When asked by one of the townspeople what his group did, Zeke often compared his job to that of an exterminator – pest control. He experienced exactly zero remorse at the taking of life from those who lived by murdering innocents. That was how the marauders did business – they hunted in packs, targeted the weak, and slaughtered for amusement. Even the thugs that ran Portland and Seattle wanted no part of them, and the highways between the two cities were considered a death sentence by travelers.
At a signal from Burt, the men fanned out; the group was now ten yards across as the brush thinned and the trail widened. Up ahead Zeke could make out multiple tents but no animals, which struck him as odd. Marauders always had well-tended horses, and plenty of them. Maybe they’d run across a hapless group of refugees from Portland, who’d staked out a camp in the inclement weather? Zeke had a hard time believing the trading post would mistake them for a threat, though, and frowned to himself as he scanned the trail ahead, his finger on the trigger guard of his assault rifle and a coil of tension lurching in his gut.
Zeke stopped in his tracks at something in the periphery of his vision – something he’d seen before in his military days and which he instantly recognized.
“Burt, stop!” he called out, abandoning any pretense of stealth, but it was too late. Burt’s boot tripped the monofilament strung between two trees at shin height across the trail, and the dreary afternoon exploded in a blinding flash of orange flame. Burt vaporized into a hundred pieces before Zeke’s eyes as Zeke was hurtled backward, his legs numb, flying through the air in defiance of gravity as though weightless, the skin of his face melted off, but the synapses of his pain receptors unable to telegraph the blinding agony that should have instantly followed. The trees overhead pinwheeled as he tried to blink away blood, and some part of his reptilian brain vaguely realized that he no longer had hands with which to stop his fall.
Zeke slammed headfirst into the wet earth, already dead by the time his body bounced once and shuddered. The shrapnel and the blast from the IED had already shredded his patrol, leaving only the moans of the wounded at the rear of the group and cries of alarm from the men guarding the horses.
Chapter 2
Richmond, Washington
The cooling towers of the Columbia Generating Station hulked in the near distance as Richie and Loomis Vargas pulled open the gap they’d cut in the perimeter chain-link fence just beneath a rusting radiation warning sign affixed to the cross post and crawled through. Loomis, the older of the brothers, hoisted his stained army surplus rucksack and adjusted the shoulder strap. His younger sibling straightened and pushed the fencing back into position, so in the unlikely event anyone came by that remote section it wouldn’t be noticed.
They looked over the field covered in gray-white ash from the eruption of Mount St. Helens two days earlier, and Loomis elbowed Richie and offered a crooked grin.
“Looks like it snowed, huh, dude?”
“Christmas in March,” Richie agreed, and they set off toward the industrial gray buildings across the expanse.
The pair shuffled toward the main structure. The way was familiar after three prior foraging trips, when they’d found a treasure trove of small items they could easily carry – flashlights with dead batteries, coveralls, cleaning supplies, and solvents useful in making methamphetamine in their backwoods lab. The latter was the object of their current trip, their supply exhausted but the demand for the heady drug stronger than ever.
The brothers were scavengers, outcasts from the enclave in Richmond, which largely consisted of holier-than-thou survivalists who ran what remained of the town like a prison. Of course, repression always created blowback, and Loomis and Richie had discovered a thriving desire for anything that could numb the pain of daily existence or provide relief from a grinding reality with no bright spot in sight. Their little business had thrived, and they now wanted for nothing. Those in need of their product were willing to supply whatever they wanted – food, drink, ammo, sex.
The latter had been especially appealing to the pair of twenty-something men, who delighted in the charms of the daughters of the smug elite elders who dictated terms to their flock. All in all, they’d made the best of a bad situation and were as happy and prosperous as they could have imagined, given the circumstances.
Loomis had been a waiter at a chain seafood restaurant when the collapse had hit and his brother in his last year of high school. They’d been fortunate that some aspect of their genetic makeup had rendered them immune to the virus that ravaged so many of their fellows. Loomis’s stint in the army, which had terminated with a dishonorable discharge, had come in handy as society broke down, and the brothers’ naturally amoral tendencies had blossomed as the world became one in which it was kill or be killed. It didn’t hurt that both had been gun enthusiasts before the collapse; their father had possessed a half dozen illegally modified assault rifles, and when the lights went out, they’d been a fearsome trio of raiders until their dad succumbed to the bug, leaving them on their own.
Short on skills but long on viciousness, they’d defended themselves when necessary, occasionally ambushed groups of unwary travelers, and mostly survived by fishing, hunting, and scrounging. One of the positives to so many of their neighbors having died was that there was no shortage of canned goods and clothing, although over the years those had dried up as they’d been pilfered by others, forcing the boys into their new line of work and creating a windfall for them, if also a monkey on their backs.
Richie squinted at the slate gray sky, exacerbated by the clouds of ash from the recent eruption, and sneezed loudly as he trotted by Loomis’s side. Both carried AK-47s with the easy familiarity of guerilla fighters, the weapons their constant companions even on the infrequent occasions they bathed. Loomis was the taller of the two, powerfully muscled, his arms inked with caricatures of bulldogs and tribal tattoos. Richie was smaller, a wiry, fast fighter who’d become as good with a knife as anyone they knew. The duo made a potent team, and they feared nothing except the marauders from Seattle who occasionally swept through, leaving destruction in their wake.
The power plant, a nuclear facility of the same design and vintage as the one in continual meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, had been shuttered after the collapse, the reactors closed down and the radioactive rods stored in cooling ponds by a staff that had barely completed their task before succumbing to the virus. Only a skeleton crew of guards had remained, and those had expired after the first winter, leaving the plant a desolate ghost town, which the locals gave a wide berth.
“Place still gives me the creeps, even after this many trips,” Richie muttered as they neared the side entrance to the administrative building.
“Pussy.”
Richie’s grip on his weapon tightened, and he frowned at his brother. “I’m serious.”
“Let’s just find what we need and get out of here. Nobody’s asking you to live here.”
Richie slowed as they neared the huge structure and cocked
his head. “You hear that?”
“Dude, there’s nobody here. What are you talking about?”
“It’s like a hiss. Like a hole in a pressure hose or something.”
Loomis shrugged. “Whatever. We got business to deal with.”
Richie hesitated when he reached the door, and Loomis growled a curse. “Get out of the way,” he snapped, and brushed past his brother to pull open the metal slab.
“I don’t know about this, Loomis,” Richie said, his eyes darting around as though he expected to be attacked. “I’m getting a really bad vibe.”
“Cut it out, Richie. Seriously,” Loomis said, an edge to his voice. He retrieved a camping lantern from his bag and lit it with a disposable lighter, and then twisted the lever and heaved on the door.
Richie followed his brother in, past a room with a skeleton clad in a frayed uniform sprawled on the floor they knew from prior trips, and tromped into the bowels of the building. Loomis paused at a corridor and pointed to his left. “Wasn’t it that way?” he asked.
“I think so,” Richie said, his tone uncertain. “Does it feel kind of warm to you?”
Loomis didn’t answer, instead following his instinct, vaguely remembering the route from their last expedition, when they’d located the second cache of solvent in a maintenance room. They made their way down the hall, eyes adjusting to a pervasive gloom barely dented by the lantern, and then Loomis stopped and listened intently. “I hear it now too. Weird.”
“What do you think it is? Someone else?” Richie whispered. “Maybe we should get out of here.”
Loomis shook his head with a frown. “No, it’s too regular. Like…steam or something.”
“That’s what I thought.”
They continued, and the sound grew louder. Loomis drew up short and motioned with his rifle barrel at a steel door with a radiation sign, signaling access to the reactor and the cooling ponds. On the first trip they’d spent hours exploring, so they knew the rough layout of the plant, including which sections were filled with the bodies of the dead.
“Sounds like it’s coming from in there, doesn’t it?”
Richie nodded. “It wasn’t making that noise last time.”
“Maybe somebody’s been working on it? Could be they finally got their shit together?”
Rumors of a return of the government were common among the travelers they encountered, but as far as the brothers could tell, it was only wishful thinking for a time long since past. Still, even the most lawless hoped for a return of order or at least basic infrastructure, and stories of teams of engineers returning the grid to life were the most common wish-fulfillment tales among the survivors.
“We should bail, Loomis…”
Loomis shook his head. “Only one way to know for sure. Let’s take a peek.”
“I…I really don’t think this is a good idea, dude. Let’s just grab the stuff and get out of here.”
Loomis ignored his brother and moved to the door. When he touched the handle, he jerked his hand back like he’d touched a stove.
“Crap. It’s sizzling,” he said.
“It was cold last time,” Richie said, his voice barely a whisper.
Loomis fidgeted nervously. “Maybe you’re right. We should grab as much stuff as we can, and split.”
They reversed direction and made a right at a junction. Loomis’s eyes narrowed at the sight that greeted him: dozens of rats, bloated and obviously dead, littered the polished concrete floor of the hallway. Richie gasped behind him when he caught sight of the rodents.
“What the hell…?” Richie hissed from between clenched teeth.
“Probably got into some of the chemicals,” Loomis said.
“Or someone poisoned them.”
“Why would they?” Loomis asked. “No, they probably ate something they shouldn’t have, and it was hasta la vista, Mickey Mouse.”
“Doesn’t look like they died that long ago,” Richie observed, his nose wrinkling at the stench of death.
Loomis gestured at a door down the hallway. “That’s it.”
The room was exactly as they’d left it, with the solvents in plastic containers along the floor. At the sight of the trove, Loomis grinned at his brother, and Richie hesitantly returned the expression.
“Good as gold. You were right,” he acceded.
“Pays to have a set of balls. You almost had me spooked back there.”
Richie wiped perspiration from his brow and slung his rifle’s strap over his shoulder. “Let’s get this over with. Place is still giving me the creeps.”
They loaded their duffels, sweating from the unexpected warmth that now seemed to permeate the building. Richie frowned at the walls, where the gray paint was bubbling from around the base, and nudged his brother.
“Wasn’t like that last time.”
“What?”
“The paint.”
Loomis shrugged. “It’s a lot more humid now.”
They continued their work, picking between the canisters, their nerves still on edge from the rats. When they had packed as much as they could carry, they did a final sweep of the room, and Loomis shook his head.
“Looks like there’s only one more trip’s worth, and then we gotta find a new mother lode.”
“Probably more storage areas deeper in.”
“We’ll save that for next time. Let’s get out of here.”
The brothers hurriedly retraced their steps to the exit, skirting the dead rats while holding their breath. For all of Loomis’s bravado, they were both uneasy and anxious to be rid of the plant.
Had they opened the door with the firebrand handle and continued toward the reactor, they would have learned the source of the sound and heat. The main cooling pond, jury-rigged by the surviving engineering crew to refill with water from a nearby spring without requiring anything but Mother Nature’s pressure, had cracked from the earthquake that had accompanied the eruption of Mount St. Helens. The massive inlet duct had collapsed, so only a little cool water was making it through – and what did had been boiling off in a steady cloud of toxic steam for two days, leaving the rods mostly exposed and melting down, destroying everything in their vicinity and superheating the area with lethal radiation, which in turn was contaminating the river and the water table. As with its Japanese cousin, the plant was now destined to irradiate the waterway in perpetuity, extinguishing all life in the fishery and inexorably poisoning the Pacific Ocean, the cumulative effect destined to get more severe with time.
Not that the environmental catastrophe would matter to Richie and Loomis, who within forty-eight hours would die as the rats had, in agony from severe radiation poisoning. In fact, the damage had been invisibly done before they’d entered the building – had they been paying attention, they would have noticed several dead birds in the field outside the reactor, victims of the silent killer brooding behind the fence.
Unaware of their imminent demise, the brothers beat a hasty path for the fence, lugging the containers of solvent as though they were filled with gold, their footfalls muffled by the layer of fine ash on the hard-packed ground, expending the final hours of their lives in a pursuit as pointless as their existences.
Chapter 3
Pagosa Springs, Colorado
Lucas held Sierra close, her face pressed hard against his chest, their embrace both passionate and tender. When she raised her eyes to him, they were moist, and she blinked away tears as she pulled away. The living room of their adopted home was warm and cozy after months of work, the woodstove in the corner emitting a pleasant smell and occasional crackle.
“Only for a few weeks, Sierra,” he said.
She looked away at the rustic log walls of the house. “More than a few. At least a couple of months, you said. Maybe more, depending on conditions in the pass.”
“Shouldn’t be too bad. Snow’s thawing early.”
“It’s not the snow I’m worried about.”
Lucas nodded and released her. Eve came running into t
he room, followed by Sierra’s son, Tim, and it was the little girl’s turn to hug Lucas when he knelt down to her level. Tim stood a few feet away, shifting from foot to foot, unsure how to react, and his mother saved him any embarrassment by joining him and tousling his hair.
“Don’t worry, Eve. I’ll be back,” Lucas said.
“Promise?”
“Don’t I always?”
She stood back at arm’s length, her face serious. “Say it.”
“You should be a lawyer when you grow up.” He paused. “I promise. And you promise to take good care of your mom and Tim while I’m gone…and behave.”
The little girl considered him gravely. “I promise. Although he can be a snot.”
The trace of a smile tugged at the corner of Lucas’s mouth. “I expect he can. Do your best. For me.”
“Okay.”
It had been four months since Lucas and Sierra had returned to the new Shangri-La with Tim. He’d been distant for the first weeks and had awakened most nights, screaming and thrashing. But over time he’d settled down, the demons of his past slowly fading, and they were now a functioning family unit, each with their chores and place in the household. Lucas had taken to teaching the boy everything he could about weapons and horses, and had found him to be withdrawn but whip-smart, absorbing information like a sponge. He attended classes in the town church five days a week and had slowly made a few friends with the other children.
Lucas straightened and stepped over to where Sierra waited with Tim, and offered his hand to shake. “Take care of yourself, pardner,” Lucas said.
Tim took his hand with the stern gaze of a prosecutor and nodded once but remained silent. Lucas offered Sierra a farewell glance and then moved to the door, where his beaver-felt hat hung on a wooden peg beside the M4 and his holstered Kimber. He donned his flak vest and strapped on the pistol, and then pulled on a heavy jacket and fit the hat in place.
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