by Wil Mara
“That’s about it,” Ellerton said, wringing his hands as if sanitizing them with invisible gel.
“You don’t have to be nervous,” Marla told him, and was slightly surprised at how concerned she had suddenly become for Ellerton’s feelings. In that moment, it occurred to her that she had gone from fearing the man to genuinely liking him. “You’re doing the right thing. What Leo Corwin has done is pure evil. He’s repeatedly put his employees and the citizens of Silver Lake at great risk, all for the sake of increased profits. I’m not against making a buck; I like having money in my account just like everyone else. But when you’re already worth millions and you play Monopoly with people’s lives just to pile up a little more, that’s not a capitalistic instinct, that’s an illness.
“The public has every right to know what’s going on here. Like I said before, I wouldn’t be surprised if the investigation into what’s happening today turned up something Leo Corwin did, or didn’t do, as the chief cause of it.”
Ellerton nodded. “He didn’t put up lightning rods. Three different companies approached him with bids to do it back in the midnineties, but he didn’t want to spend the money.”
“The plant manager, Gary Mason, told me that lightning rods aren’t required by law.”
“They’re not.”
“So, of course Corwin wouldn’t bother. Look at all the things he didn’t do that were required by law.” Marla shook her head in disgust. “I’m going to bury those two. I’m going to personally see to it that nothing like this ever happens again. And if that means ruffling a lot of feathers, too bad. How many innocent people will need to be literally buried because of what’s happening right now? Because of the Corwins’ greed? A hundred? A thousand? Even one is too many.”
Ellerton’s hands were rolling around each other again. “I agree.”
Marla looked at him and softened. “It’s going to be all right, don’t worry.”
“I hope so.”
“It is,” she stressed. “I didn’t mention you in any of my posts, and I didn’t take any pictures of you. I always protect my sources.”
“But people here have seen us together.”
Marla thought about it, and he was right—during their travels around the plant, they had encountered a few employees here and there. And as time passed and Marla’s blogs drew more attention, the reactions of those employees became more pronounced and, in some cases, menacing. One man in a white lab coat stopped in mid-jog from high on a catwalk and pointed at them. And when a small cadre of engineers entered the reactor room where the boric-acid corrosion occurred, Marla was certain she heard the phrase There she is! In such instances, Marla and Ellerton avoided eye contact or any acknowledging gestures and walked briskly to the nearest exit.
Ellerton’s cellphone trilled, as it had several times during their tour. He always checked the caller ID, but never answered. This time he did, walking a few feet away from his guest. He did more listening than talking, and spoke in hushed tones. The look of grainy bewilderment on Ellerton’s face after the call ended made Marla think of a child who has lost his mother in a department store.
“Is everything all right?”
“Uh … yeah, fine.” He patted his lips thoughtfully with one finger. “There’s one more thing I think you should see.”
“Okay.”
He led her back to the subterranean storage area where the fenced-off supply area camouflaged the dry-cask repository. Nearby was a glass-walled partition surrounding a bank of older computers. Most sat crookedly, with cables hanging over outdated CRT monitors. Marla’s curiosity was piqued when Ellerton tapped a six-digit code into the keypad by the door. An electronically locked door to protect a collection of aging computers?
Ellerton led her to the computer at the back and sat down in a worn office chair, one of several in the space, all with broken backs and torn upholstery. With the push of a couple of buttons, the computer came to life. The desktop pattern was a simple field of faded blue, and there were only two icons visible: My Computer and the Recycle Bin.
The security guard navigated to an apparently empty folder named “Firefox Updates,” then clicked the button for “Show hidden files, folders, and drive.” A .zip archive named “Most Recent Firefox Updates” appeared.
“Can I assume that’s not actually Firefox updates?” Marla asked.
“That would be an accurate assumption, yes.”
He opened the file, which was password protected, then got up and gestured for Marla to sit. She did so and looked at the screen. Nothing in her professional experience could have prepared her for what she saw next.
It was the kind of material prosecutors didn’t even dare dream about. There were before-and-after spreadsheets showing the accounting that the elder Corwin had reported to the Feds, and the actual figures, the ones he’d kept to himself. Other spreadsheets illustrated a complex tax-evasion scheme where Corwin paid freelance workers in cash and then had the charges routed through a third-party vendor that was actually a dummy company set up by him in Brussels in 2004.
She saw emails between Corwin and middlemen representing three different uranium dealers in Africa and Central Asia, all of whom were embargoed by the NRC due to possible connections to paramilitary groups in the Middle East. Emails between Corwin and attorneys from many firms, concerning everything from getting out of liability suits to a copyright infringement claim that he’d stolen the core idea for a new kind of pump that was being developed by a group in Colorado.
There were fabricated purchase orders and a scanned check stub from Corwin’s personal account made out to an expert in corporate sabotage back when he was competing for the utility rights to two counties in northern Pennsylvania. Another stub showed payment to a woman who had infiltrated Greenpeace on Corwin’s behalf in 2008.
When Marla got to the sound files—which included eleven between Leo Corwin and Governor Kent—she looked up at Ellerton with her mouth shaped like a capital O.
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah.”
“I have never seen this much hard evidence of corruption before. Never.”
“Well, now you have.”
Ellerton reached over her, took the mouse, and launched the web browser. Ironically, it was Internet Explorer, not Firefox.
“You have online storage somewhere, I assume. FTP, cloud, whatever.”
“Sure.”
“Upload the .zip file.” He stepped back a few paces. “Go ahead, I’m not going to look.”
Marla didn’t hesitate—she navigated to her iCloud site, entered her username and password, and began the upload. In spite of the wealth of incriminating material, the file was only 110 megabytes and took less than two minutes to copy over. She logged off and exited the browser.
“Okay, that’s done. No turning back.” Getting to her feet and turning around, she was surprised to see that Ellerton had retreated farther than she’d expected; he was standing in the shadows.
“Ted? Are you okay?”
She went closer and found him sobbing quietly, one hand up against his mouth. In the other hand was his iPhone, and on the screen was a text message.
“Ted, what’s wrong?” she asked, gently lifting the hand holding the phone so she could see what had got him so upset. Then, “Oh, my God.…” She said this very quietly at first, quickly reading over the message from Andrew Corwin. She repeated it much louder when she read it again.
“Ms. Hollis—”
She broke into a run, and when Ellerton tried to go after her, he got tangled in one of the inoperable chairs and went down in a noisy crash.
“Marla!” he called out as he lay sprawled on the floor. “Don’t!”
But she was already out the door and gone.
20
Kerrick’s vital signs improved slightly during the twenty-minute ambulance ride to the hospital. In the back, Brody determined that the patient had at least four broken ribs, a broken collarbone, a dislocated shoulder, a concussion,
apparent nerve damage in his left arm, and possibly a ruptured spleen. Some of the lacerations on his face were horrifically deep, and his left eye was so damaged it seemed unlikely he would ever see out of it again.
As the gurney was pulled into the ER’s access way, Emilio told Brody, “Unit Four will be here to pick you up in ten minutes. There’s something going on at Charter House, and they need your help.”
Brody nodded without looking back, crashing through the swinging doors. Emilio knew that Kerrick would have to be decontaminated before treatment could begin, and hoped the time spent there wouldn’t be the deal breaker in saving his life.
Back on the road, with the wipers swinging madly, Emilio reached up to turn on the radio. What he’d already heard on the way to County General had been almost impossible to believe—hundreds suffering from radiation poisoning, many of them people he knew, people he saw nearly every day. Helen at the post office, Cindy at the bank, Kira at the sushi place—he had long ago come to understand that a person’s life was a fabric, with threads of many colors woven into any number of designs. Now a lot of those threads—threads that he liked very much—were being pulled out and thrown away.
The fingers of depression had begun to claw at him, of a kind he’d not known since he was a boy and his stepfather was beating him three or four nights a week while his mother cowered in the corner, tearful and impotent. At times like this, he needed Sarah. Nothing made the demons turn and run like the sound of her voice. She was his magic antidote—her voice, her cheerfulness, her bubbling positivity, her wellspring of strength.… Sometimes he felt bad about his emotional dependence on her. Whenever he thought about it, he pictured a child of eight or nine with his arms wrapped around his mother’s neck as she hauled him along, far too old to be carried but unable to move on his own. He hated this about himself, but there were times when he just couldn’t do without her.
This was one of those times. The president had recently made a live address, assuring everyone that emergency responders in all major cities within close proximity—most notably Philadelphia and New York—were ready to act. In spite of the president’s calm demeanor, the analysts spared no time cranking up the sirens of doom, laying out the unthinkable details. The commentators had said thousands might die, and tens of thousands more would suffer lingering illnesses—everything from blindness and bleeding bowels to birth defects. New York and Philadelphia might turn into ghost towns overnight, uninhabitable for years to come, with the stock market shuttered. America’s economy could topple, plunging lower than in the Great Recession of 2008, or the Depressions of the 1930s and 1870s.
What made it all particularly chilling was the fact that it wasn’t just a media fantasy. If the storm maintained its current course and strength and fissile material continued pouring out of the damaged reactor, radiation could carry far enough to settle on the major industrial corridors of the northeast. When Emilio first thought that, gooseflesh broke out all over him. He’d been so focused on the welfare of his town, and peripherally concerned about a few others close by, that the wider consequences hadn’t occurred to him. America, shut off as if someone had thrown the emergency switch.
Wanting desperately to talk to his wife, Emilio reached up to press the button on his Bluetooth, which was nestled in his right ear, when a call came in. For a moment he filled with anticipation, until the female cyber-voice announced a number that was familiar but wasn’t hers.
“Hey, Tim,” he said. Tim Evans had been Emilio’s boss for the last four years. A longtime veteran of the emergency-response profession, he was smart, level-headed, and fair. Emilio liked him immensely.
“How’s it going out there?”
“As good as can be expected. We just got Mr. Kerrick into County.”
“You’re headed back here now?”
“Yeah, I’m on my way.”
“Okay, good. You need to change and take a break.”
“I suppose.”
He didn’t like the idea of taking a break, not with so many people still needing help. But his logical, reasonable side knew it was necessary. He had been going since early this morning, immersed in circumstances so unusual that they were taking a toll emotionally as well as physically. Part of him, a part that he considered somewhat heroic, thought, If I just keep going, stay fixed on the job at hand and on my desire to reduce suffering, then some otherworldly force will carry me through.
But that was fantasy, and the reality was that he was merely mortal. He wanted nothing more than to spit in the face of Fate by ensuring that there was as little human damage done as possible. He wouldn’t be able to do that unless he took a little time to change into a fresh outfit, shower, rest, and even eat something. Then he would be even better prepared to come back and save the day.
“… Evacuation,” Evans said in his ear.
“Hmm?” Emilio was shaken out of his reverie. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”
“I said, you’ll need to have your wits about you when they start the evacuation.”
“Right.”
“So come on back and power down for a bit. There are three other units out there. We’re on top of it.” He could hear the smile in his boss’s voice.
“All right, see you shortly.”
He returned his attention to the road, which was only visible for a few car lengths before being erased by the misty, deadly rain. Dizziness swept through him, in concert with a churning in his stomach that reminded him of the light-headed nausea he’d felt when he’d gone fishing with his Uncle Miguel in Puerto Rico a few years ago. It was the first time he’d ever been on a boat and, he’d decided, the last. He didn’t throw up over the side, but he came close. That same blurry feeling came over him now, and for a moment he thought he was going to black out.
The dizziness cleared quickly but the percolations in his gut lingered for a bit. Hungry, he thought. I need something to eat. And not soda or chips. An apple, perhaps. Yes, that sounded good. The fridge at the station was always stocked with healthy stuff like apples, oranges, strawberries, raspberries, bottled water, and juices. Then I’ll take that nap, he told himself. I guess I really do need it. First the decontamination and a shower, then some fruit, and then a little rest.
* * *
He cruised down Piedmont Boulevard, tapping the brakes through the particularly steep segments, then eased left onto Culworth. His gaze wandered from the road to Stockbridge Elementary, which stood at the far end of two fields—one soccer and one baseball—to his right. The main building was a plain brick structure, built in the late 1960s with help from Lyndon Johnson’s administration; additions had been put on in 1977, 1993, and 2009. There were vehicles parked all along the wide road that led up to the building—unsurprising, since the school was the third refugee center. What was surprising—was shocking as hell, in fact—was the succession of open windows on the roof, all tipped up at a forty-five-degree angle.
“Oh, shit,” he said, almost unable to believe what he was seeing. “There must be a hundred kids in the building!”
He knew immediately where the windows were located—the original boiler room, set in the westernmost corner of the original building. They were used to vent heat from the three hulking vessels inside.
He turned onto Stockbridge Avenue and stomped the accelerator. If he went in the main entrance to check in with whoever was running things and announced the reason for his visit, he’d carry contamination into the school and perhaps cause even greater panic. It was possible that no one even realized the windows were open in the first place. Surely if someone had, they would’ve contacted the authorities.
The simplest and most immediate solution, he decided then, is to take care of the problem myself.
He drove down the narrow service road that ran off the southwest side of the cul-de-sac, passing a little sign that read FOR MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL ONLY. Edging between two minivans, he headed along the backside of the property, where he spotted a caged power transformer, a pair of a
luminum storage sheds, and a Y-head fire hydrant built into the wall. The third door along the rear wall was marked “Boiler Room” in blocky, spray-painted letters.
Stopping under a leafy oak tree, Emilio killed the engine. Then he jumped out and ran to the boiler-room door, praying it would be unlocked. When he’d attended school here, the janitor had been a portly, waddling man with the patience of an angel who never bothered locking it. In fact, he usually left it wide-open so the kids could visit. But he’d since retired, then passed away many years later, and Emilio knew nothing about the person who’d replaced him.
With the sound of the rain pattering against the outside of his hazmat suit like a million tiny pebbles, Emilio wrapped his hands around the steel handle and pulled. It held as firm as if it were riveted onto a boulder. Then he noticed the beak-shaped release lever; when he pressed down on it with his thumb, the lock gave way with a decisive click and he pulled the door open.
It was something of a surprise to see that the room was essentially unchanged since the last time he’d been in it. The janitor, whose name was Tom Tilton but was more commonly known as “TT” by the many students who’d befriended him, had warmly welcomed many visitors. This was back in the day when no one thought twice about leaving a grown man alone with an adolescent. And they had no reason to worry in TT’s case; he never did anything more than give the boys advice about life and, if they were interested, show off the school’s machinery.
Stepping in, Emilio saw the familiar sight of the three boilers, each a massive steel can set on its side, with the ignition modules jutting out of one end like pig snouts. Opposite these vessels was a long, rough-hewn table mottled by years of use. Mounted on the pegboard above was an array of rulers, squares, and levels, as well as a small corkboard with various work orders pinned to it.
To the right of the table stood a two-tiered tool chest with rollout drawers, and to the left was a set of tall utility shelves stacked with cardboard boxes. Wedged between the last shelf and the filthy cinder block wall was a standard stepladder that appeared to be relatively new. The shiny aluminum, some of its parts rubber-coated in bright yellow, stood out brightly in the otherwise somber and sooty environment.