Fallout

by Wil Mara

  The pilot came through the phones again—“Just so you know, ma’am, I have received word that the evacuation of the rest of the town is nearly complete.”

  Sarah glanced at her watch.

  “Right on schedule per General Conover,” she said. “Impressive, I have to admit.”

  “He’s a very smart man. I believe you and he have had some exchanges, but he really does know what he’s doing.”

  Sarah nodded. “I’m more aware of that than you might think. Anyway, what about the plant? The nuclear facility where all of this started?”

  “It was one of the last locations on the planned route. We have two evac units there now.”

  They rose above a tract of hardwood forest, then soared over a brief stretch of open grassland which was bordered by a road. The pilot worked the joystick and the searchlight followed the road as it curved through the landscape. Sarah leaned forward until her forehead was almost touching the slanted window. Every sense was operating at full capacity.

  The searchlight struck something metallic and threw back a bright flash.

  “There!” Sarah just about shouted this. “Did you see it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ll bet that’s Peter Soames’s car.”

  “Okay, let’s check it out.” The ’copter tilted downward and swooped toward the intersection.

  Closer observation eliminated any doubt—the color and shape of the roof was that of a Prius, exactly where Kate said it would be. As they hovered, wrinkles in the water spread away from it in jittery, concentric circles.

  “Move the light around,” Sarah ordered. “They’ve got to be here somewhere.”

  Visibility was limited by the ongoing rainfall, which was as heavy as ever, and blown about by winds of indiscriminate direction. The searchlight moved off the Prius’s roof and started eastward, down Juniper, which flooding had turned into a broad river, erasing the line where the pavement ended and the grass began.

  “No no,” Sarah said, pointing west. “They’ll be over there if they’re anywhere. If the car is here, then Peter went that way. That’s where the field is. He came to look for his son and his son’s friend.”

  The pilot grunted in agreement and sent the beam of light in the other direction, scanning the parking lot, a jungle gym put up in 2008, a swing set that was at least twenty years older, two Porta-Johns, a pay phone—one of only two left in town, Sarah thought—and a little utility building. To the right of all this was a towering line of conifers, which had been planted back in the 1960s, and beyond those, the woods ran wild to the horizon.

  “I don’t see anyone.”

  Sarah shook her head. “I don’t either, but they have to be around here somewhere.”

  “The wind’s getting worse, and I’m having enough trouble controlling this thing as it is. We won’t be able to stay out here much longer.”

  “Okay, okay. Umm … do this—move the light back to the car, then away from it and toward the park very slowly.”

  The pilot obeyed. “What’s the plan here?”

  “I’m trying to think like Pete Soames. His wife said he got out of the car after the water got too high. So, presuming he wasn’t foolish enough to go back into the car, he would have walked toward the park because that’s where—oh, shit!”

  Pete was there—a short distance from his engulfed vehicle, in a half-curled position, with one arm straight up as if reaching for something.

  “Move down there!” Sarah shouted, “Quickly!”

  “Four-four this is Baker Charlie,” the pilot said, and Sarah couldn’t help noticing that the people on the other end weren’t audible in her headset; she was being excluded from the conversation.

  “We have located one of the three missing persons, copy?” There was a pause as he waited for a response. “Roger that, Peter Soames. I don’t know if the subject is alive or not. He is located—” The pilot pulled the headset away from one ear and asked Sarah the names of the streets, which he then conveyed to whoever was listening.

  Returning his focus to Sarah, he said, “Where are the other two likely to be?” he asked. “Do you know?”

  “It’s a big park, they could be anywhere. By the way, since we’ve been interacting all this time, I think I should ask—what’s your name?”

  “Austin, ma’am. Austin McDonald, just like the old farmer.”

  They shook hands. “Nice to meet you, Austin.”

  “You, too, Sarah. Is that okay? Sarah?”

  “Yes, fine.”

  “Okay, Sarah—watch close.”

  The machine dropped as low as common sense would allow; McDonald kept the searchlight in constant motion as they circled the utility building, covered the whole of the parking lot and the playground, then ran along the river banks.

  “I don’t see them,” he said flatly.

  “I don’t either. Dammit.”

  The ’copter jerked from a sudden gust, and the engine roared as McDonald throttled to compensate.

  “We can’t do this much longer,” he told her. “The winds are getting bad again.”

  Sarah felt close to tears. “Okay,” she said, “go back to—no, wait.…”

  “What?”

  “Go to the other side of the utility building.”

  “There’s nothing but woods over there,” McDonald said.

  She was leaning forward to gain a full view of the area. “Yes, but there’s a path, too. Kids go down there all the time, doing all sorts of things they shouldn’t.”

  “Okay.”

  No sooner had the searchlight landed on the path than two bodies were revealed, on their backs and no more than five feet apart. Sharon’s arms were at her side; Mark’s were spread as if he was nailed to a crucifix.

  McDonald grabbed the mic for another brief conversation, which Sarah could not hear over her own chanting of, “Oh, my God … oh, my God.…” As soon as he was done, she said, “Go down!”

  “You’re not seriously thinking of going out there!”

  “I’m sure as hell not going to leave them here!”

  “Sarah, there’s no way—”

  “When is the evac team coming?”

  McDonald turned toward her but did not respond. She knew instantly what he wasn’t saying.

  “When they’re done with everything else, right?” she said angrily. “Which could be another hour or more.”

  He nodded. “Probably.”

  She jabbed a finger downward. “Then I want you to put this damned thing on that damned ground right now!”

  He rolled his eyes but again followed her command. She could just about read his mind—Clearly, the honeymoon of our friendship is already over.

  “Okay, okay,” he said.

  He landed roughly equidistant between Pete Soames and the other two; about thirty yards from each. The moment the skids touched the earth, Sarah was out the door and running, the oxygen mask pressed tight to her face.

  She went to Mark and Sharon first, and it occurred to her that the rationale for this was again based on the kind of torturous decision-making that was so common to leadership. They’re younger than Pete and have more of their lives ahead of them.

  She reached Mark first and dropped to her knees with a splash. In doing so, the plastic sheet that she’d been holding over her head ripped from her fingers in a gust of wind and went flying into the darkness. Terrific, she thought bitterly.

  Mark lay still, eyes closed and mouth open. There was a hint of blood at the corners of his lips but nowhere else, which puzzled her until she realized the rain had been vigilantly washing the rest of it away. She set her hand on his chest; at first there was nothing, no movement. He’s dead; oh, God, he’s dead. Then the smallest lift of respiration, and his head rolled slightly.

  Now she scrambled toward Sharon, who was twitching violently. When Sarah noticed the moderate swell in Sharon’s belly, she gasped.

  Racing back to the helicopter, she yanked the door open, pulled her oxygen mask a
side, and yelled, “I need your help!”

  “They’re alive?” McDonald asked incredulously.

  “I don’t know about Pete Soames because I haven’t checked, but the other two are! And the girl’s pregnant!”

  McDonald tilted his head the way people do when forced into an impossible position.

  “If we put them in here,” he said, “we’ll irradiate the whole cabin!”

  “We can wash it off our clothes when we get to safety, you know that! As long as we keep our masks on, we’ll be fine!”

  “You can’t guarantee that!”

  “I can guarantee these people will die if we don’t get them out of here! And I guarantee something else, too—there’s a woman who’s been blogging pictures and updates from the Corwin plant. She’s a local reporter—and I’m a local politician, so we know each other. And I guarantee she’ll be more than happy to write a story about the guy who let three people die out here!”

  The pilot clenched his teeth and shook his head just once, very slowly. Then he began to unstrap his harness with the speed of a game-show contestant.

  “Sarah, you’re a real trip,” he said bitterly, elbowing his door open and climbing out.

  * * *

  Pete Soames was also alive and unconscious. When Sarah rolled him over, she found a puddle of fizzy, peanut butter-colored vomit under his cheek. He was the last and most difficult to get into the ’copter due to his height and weight. When they finally lifted off, the three new passengers were strapped into seats in five-point harnesses, their heads resting against each other like a group of college kids being taken home after a night of alcoholic indulgence.

  As they soared over the town, Sarah looked upon the carnage below in silent horror. There were military trucks, police cruisers, and school buses gradually moving away from the “zone of exclusion”—a phrase she had come to loathe in a very short time. The sight of the school buses was particularly heartbreaking, as she previously only associated them with childhood, friendships, education, and other hallmarks of youthful innocence. She could see orange-and-white barricades blocking certain roadways, originally set up due merely to flooding—which had become extensive—but now there for more nightmarish reasons as well. There were phone poles down, their transformers spewing sparks, and abandoned private vehicles. And in the distance, glowing in the dark with the aid of emergency lighting, was the facility that had caused this dark fantasy, the smoke still rising from its wounded body.

  McDonald said, “I’ve been instructed to drop them at Checkpoint 3. There’s an ambulance waiting to take them directly to County General.” Before Sarah had a chance to respond, he added, “If, of course, that’s all right with you.”

  She smiled humorlessly. “That’s fine.”

  “Well, thank God for that,” he replied with a chuckle. “Afterward, we’re going straight to the decontamination site.”

  Sarah knew the decontamination process was a necessity, even though she was sure she’d been exposed for no more than thirty minutes. She didn’t know enough about radiation poisoning to make even a wild guess as to how much damage her system might have sustained.

  Remembering one of the bullet points in the email she’d sent to the town’s residents earlier in the day, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at its simplicity: You can eliminate much of the radiation simply by removing your clothes, then washing yourself thoroughly in the shower using soap and shampoo. Did this decree apply to clothes that had been soaked by radioactive rainfall? She had no idea, but the thought of those wretched little particles pumping out noxious waves along the microscopic hills and gullies of her skin gave her a major case of the heebie-jeebies.

  “And, just so you’re aware, the general has given me a direct order to see that you’re delivered without further detour. The weather’s not slacking off and I’m about to be officially grounded. The storm is supposed to begin losing steam just after oh-one-hundred hours, but until then it’s going to hold steady and possibly even kick up a little more.”

  “Okay,” Sarah said.

  They flew on in silence, transversing the soccer fields and the residential section known as Atlantis. Sarah saw that many of the homes in the latter were submerged up to their rooftops. She couldn’t even begin to comprehend what it would cost the insurance companies to bring the neighborhood back to life yet again. Then a small voice in her head said, No one will be coming back this time. This time it’s for good. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she turned away before wiping it so McDonald wouldn’t notice.

  “We’re going to be landing in a minute,” he said moments later, gesturing to a cluster of military vehicles and bright lights atop a fast-approaching ridge. “Please step out and let others remove the passengers so the EMTs can get to work on them. Then get back in and we’ll go. Shouldn’t take more than a minute or two. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  EMTs … Emilio. Will he be there?

  As if reading her mind, her cellphone’s text alert jingled. The ringtone indicated it was someone who wasn’t on her contacts list. The number she found on the screen looked familiar, and a few seconds of memory grazing produced the name of Sissy Morton, a longtime friend of both hers and Emilo’s. Sissy had moved down to one of the Carolinas—Sarah could never remember which—after getting married two years ago.

  She probably heard something on the news, Sarah figured, and wants to see if I’m okay. Sissy had always been that type, checking up on her friends whenever she got wind of a crisis. It was one of the qualities Sarah liked most about her.

  She tapped the screen to open the message and found the following—

  FROM: Sissy Morton-Danville

  TO: Sarah Redmond

  Dear Sarah—I’ve been wanting to call to see how you’re making out up there, but I’ve been holding off because I’m sure you’ve got your hands full. However, I received the following text message from Emilio just now and I don’t know why or what it means. I’m sure it was a mistake, so I’m forwarding it to you.

  You’re in my prayers!

  -Sis

  Fwd:

  FROM: Emilio Rodriguez

  TO: Sissy Morton-Danville

  gr;p nr o, sr thw dvgop;

  Sarah stared at the nonsensical string of letters, trying to figure out what they meant, then tried calling Emilio again. When she got no answer, she called his boss.

  “Tim? It’s me. Have you heard from Emilio yet?”

  “I haven’t. Have you?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve tried him a bunch of times, both on his phone and on the unit’s radio. Frankly, I’m getting very wor—”

  Sarah killed the call and turned to McDonald.

  “Sorry, we have to go back.”

  His head snapped around, his face still just a mouth moving beneath a reflective mask. “What?!”

  “There’s another missing person.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “It’s my husband, pal! He’s an EMT and even his station has lost contact with him! No one’s heard from him in hours!”

  “He might be at the checkpoint.”

  Sarah shook her head. “I just spoke with his boss, who says he’s missing.”

  She could see the site in more detail now. The canvas walls of the temporary shelter were flapping madly in the wind, and half a dozen figures in yellow suits huddled together in front of one of the military trucks, illuminated by its headlights. Nearby was an ambulance with its lights swirling, and alongside that was a plain sedan; probably some sort of unmarked government vehicle.

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I cannot disobey the general’s last order!”

  She knew he was right, and a part of her doubted she could push this guy any further. But what was the option?

  “I can’t just do nothing!”

  “Do you have any idea where he is? Any clue at all?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “Then the best I can do is inform them when we land. I’d radio
them, but we’ll be on the ground in just a few minutes. It’ll then be up to them to send out search and rescue teams.”

  Furious and frustrated, Sarah gave up the argument.

  So what now?

  When the helicopter set down a few moments later, she opened the door and stepped out. The EMTs rushed forward, all but shoving her aside. Once everyone’s attention was on the three patients, she broke for the unmarked sedan.

  She managed to get the door open and jump into the driver’s seat before the yelling started behind her.

  29

  The military transport rumbled north along the gravel road, putting distance between itself and the nuke plant as quickly as possible. The transport in question was an ancient school bus that had been repainted and repurposed. One yellow-suited soldier was at the wheel, another stood nearby, keeping watch over his charges. Other than the geriatric rattles of the vehicle, there was very little noise. A few passengers spoke in hushed tones on their cellphones; others appeared to be texting or on the Internet. Some were sobbing, the sound barely audible since everyone was wearing oxygen masks. Duct tape had been used to seal the windows and, once everybody was onboard, the doors, both front and back.

  Marla Hollis sat alone about midway along, next to a window. The person originally seated next to her had moved soon after the bus pulled away from the plant, indicating without a word that she was persona non grata. He wasn’t the only one; resentment was plain on the faces of the people around her. The fact that she had experienced such hostility many times before, and knew how to go about her business without appearing affected by it, did not improve the situation.

  She spotted the digital recorder sitting atop a pile of other items in her bag. She’d forgotten all about it, and she felt a touch of melancholy at the thought that Corwin’s voice was on there, engaged in one of the final conversations of his life. Though she would never admit it to anyone, she knew she had grossly misjudged him. If she’d taken the time to really examine Corwin from all angles, consider all possibilities, would it have been that hard to spot what was brewing under the surface? Or would it all have remained concealed under his veneer of politeness and projection of untouchability?