Fallout

by Wil Mara

  “Jesus, no…”

  He flipped to another page. “Now, concerning Mark specifically, let me ask you—is Sharon’s child his?”

  Kate shook her head dazedly. “We don’t know yet. We just found out she was pregnant today.”

  She wasn’t the only one who had been surprised by that news. Sharon’s mother and stepfather du jour—she was a thin and pretty forty-six, he looked like he’d stepped out of a ZZ Top video—had arrived a few hours earlier, snarling at each other like wolverines. They barely took notice of their daughter as the accusations flew—“You weren’t keeping an eye on her” … “You’re a whore and you raised a whore!” It was a galling display of human behavior by any measure.

  Kate stood no more than twenty feet from them, but they never acknowledged her. She’d gasped when the husband took an open-handed swing at his wife, and was doubly stunned when the latter blocked it with the kind of fluidity that only comes with practice. Hospital security removed them from the property. A short time later, only the mother returned.

  Hale took on an expression of profound regret. “Well, if it is, it’s doubtful Mark will be able to have any more.”

  She stared at him, open-mouthed.

  “Even if he’s able to produce viable sperm,” the doctor said, “the risk of mutation would be extremely high.”

  Kate shook her head but said nothing.

  “I’m deeply sorry,” Hale told her.

  “What about Sharon? What about—”

  “The fetus?” He shook his head. “We’ll have to wait and see. Honestly, I’m not … if she was closer to the end of the pregnancy, maybe. But I’m not hopeful, to be honest. Again, I’m so very sorry.”

  He gave her his personal cell number and told her to call if she had further questions or just wanted to talk. Then he exited the corridor, leaving Kate with her thoughts.

  Skin discoloration, hair loss, cognitive impairment … this can’t be happening. It can’t.

  She watched them through the glass for a while longer, then went to the swinging doors and looked out the little window. The lobby was filled with people she knew—a couple whose daughter went to school with Cary, one of the women who worked at the bank’s drive-through window, the man who ran the Chinese takeout place they liked so much. Some she recognized but could not name, and others were completely unfamiliar.

  They were all residents of Silver Lake, though, of that Kate was sure. And the town was no longer habitable. What does that mean for those of us who call it home?

  After the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, many communities had been pulled up by the roots. While the majority of former residents suffered no significant physical aftereffects, there had been an incalculable emotional toll. The stress of relocating drove a significant percentage of the survivors to suicide and an even higher number into severe and lasting depression. Related symptoms, such as alcohol and substance abuse, became common, as did weight gain and sleep deprivation.

  Kate hadn’t paid much attention to Fukushima news at the time, but in the last few hours she’d read more than one article about the aftermath of the evacuation. Temporary housing for the displaced, when available, was rarely adequate, and the insurance companies, exercising the brutal insensitivity that only greed can cultivate, held off making payouts for as long as they were legally able.

  Will we go through the same nightmare? she wondered, scanning the faces before her. Which of these people will take their own lives? Which will turn to the bottle or the needle and commit slow suicide? Who will turn violent against their children or their spouses, or both, because they can’t strike out at their true antagonists? How many turn into someone they don’t recognize when they look in the mirror?

  She didn’t know. Only one thing seemed certain at that moment.

  The life she knew and cherished was gone for good.

  32

  Two floors above, Marla Hollis sat alone in a small anteroom outside one of the hospital’s rarefied private suites, typing furiously on her iPad. Even though the door to the hall was closed, the muffled sounds of ongoing chaos seeped into the little room.

  She wanted to blame the noise for the trouble she was having writing her articles. For the last half hour, she’d been stuck in an unusual and unfamiliar rhythm. She would type a few lines, review them, curse under her breath, then delete everything and start over.

  She’d never had this much trouble laying down the words before, but then her writing had never been so closely scrutinized. Over the years, a few of her articles had stirred some national notice, but nothing that hadn’t been smothered by the next day’s headlines. Now that she had the attention of millions, she found herself second-guessing every syllable.

  It astonished her that a simple blog could have such a polarizing effect. People on both sides of the nuclear issue were coming forth in hordes; the environmentalists regarded her as a saint while the corporates implied her writing ran the gamut from exaggeration to outright lying. A few people attacked Corwin directly, stopping just short of calling him a traitor. Marla found it incomprehensible that he could be viewed as anything but a hero.

  The door to the suite opened and Harlan Phillips stepped out. Despite his age and recent heart trouble, he was still an imposing figure, with a lush wave of steel gray hair. He moved smoothly, with the kind of grace that seemed to be evidence of an athletic youth. He was dressed in slippers, lounge pants, and a wrinkled hospital shirt; Marla saw a leather glasses case peeking out of the shirt’s breast pocket.

  Marla just about jumped out of her seat when she saw him, and he responded by first putting a finger to his lips, then holding the hand up flat.

  “Please, keep your voice low,” he said, gently closing the door. “She’s finally asleep.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She had to be sedated.”

  “But beyond that. What’s happening?”

  Phillips shrugged. “I … I just don’t know what, um … how much I should—”

  “Harlan, I’m not going to write about it. I’m asking these questions because she’s always been good to me in her position. I like her, and I care about her. I assure you this is entirely off the record.”

  The big man nodded. “Well, she’s hanging in there. They don’t think she absorbed enough radiation to do any lasting damage.”

  “I assume she’s in a private suite for the obvious reason?”

  “I don’t want anyone seeing her like this.” He looked at Marla squarely. “I’m really trusting you with—”

  “I won’t say a word about it. Not one word.”

  “Thank you. I wish I could be so trusting of the other reporters running around this place. None of them will want to cover something boring like the incredible amount of heroism she’s exhibited today. She stayed in her office until the last possible minute, held her own against two of the most powerful men in the state, and put her very life on the line to help locate three wayward residents. But will anyone write about that? Probably not. Instead, they’ll focus on her current state of mind, because that’s juicier. I guess you know what she was like when they brought her in here.”

  “Delirious?”

  “Completely out of her mind. It’ll be hard enough to keep that quiet.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “She was screaming like a lunatic. Screaming for Emilio, over and over.”

  “Have they found him?”

  Phillips shook his head. “No, and they’ve still got people out there looking. People who shouldn’t be out there.”

  “How bad is it now?” she asked. Then her own hand came up. “Before you answer, know that this is information I’ll want to release.”

  “Well…” He took a deep breath. “From what I’m told, the levels are about a hundred and thirty times higher than that which is considered safe.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “But that’s not the worst of it.”

  “Excuse me?”

 
“You know how radioactive decay works, right?”

  Marla nodded. “The energy stored in the nucleus of an unstable atom diminishes as the atom sheds radioactive material, usually in the form of particles or rays.”

  “And considering the nasty elements that blew out of that reactor—primarily uranium, plutonium, and cesium—do you know how long the decay process will take?”

  “I haven’t really given it much—” Then the numbers started flowing through her head. “Oh, God.”

  “Uh-huh. We’re talking thirty, maybe forty years before anyone can live here again. We can’t even go back and get our possessions. Everything’s going to be untouchable for ages.”

  In a whisper—“Jesus.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does anyone know yet? Any of the residents?”

  “No. I’m going to tell them as soon as possible. As soon as, um…” His eyes filled with tears and he took a deep, hitching breath. “Oh, man, what a day.” He shook his head, then looked at the ceiling and opened his eyes wide. “As soon as I figure out how to tell them, I will.”

  Marla put a hand on his arm. “Let it out, Harlan. It’s okay. I was holding it in all day, too, and it was killing me.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “You just had heart surgery.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Please tell me you’re not taking up your official duties again,” Marla said. “There’s no way—”

  His hand came back up. “I’m not, I’m not. I’m covering for Sarah on some small stuff, but others are picking up the slack for now.”

  Marla studied him a moment before deciding he was telling the truth.

  “Y’know,” Phillips went on, “I did two tours in Vietnam and one in Korea, and I was in New York City on 9/11 because I had to see an eye specialist that day, so I helped out with emergency services.”

  “I know. I know about all of that.”

  “And yet—and I’ve really given this some thought—what happened here today might be worse than any of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t see an end to it. With those wars, you knew they wouldn’t last forever. Sooner or later one side would gain enough of an advantage to force an endgame and shut it down. And with September 11, you knew we’d clean up the mess, rebuild, and go after the bastards responsible. Even if you didn’t know when, or how long it would take.

  “But with this, everything is unclear. Everything. Whose children or grandchildren will have birth defects? Who’s going to develop cancer five years from now, or ten, or fifteen? How many people are going to kill themselves over this? And those who summon the strength to build a new routine and go on, they’ll still live with the constant fear that something might go haywire and they’ll wake up one morning with a dead eye or a tremor in their hands.

  “And if and when that happens, the person’s first thought will be: Is this because of the nuke-plant accident? It’s a puzzle with no solution. And what about our town? When will the cleanup begin, assuming that there is one? Who will pay for it? How long will it take? And who’ll want to live here afterward? What about the lawsuits? How many, and how much, and how long will they be dragged out? Who will and won’t live long enough to see some kind of compensation?

  “And the big one: how does a person start their life over, from scratch, after leaving everything behind?” He shook his head. “That’s why this is the worst—because in one way or another, we’ll be trapped in this nightmare for the rest of our damn lives.”

  Tears rolled down his face and Marla gave in to an overwhelming urge to hug him.

  * * *

  After Harlan went back into Sarah’s room, Marla returned to her seat. She picked up the iPad and set her hands across the keyboard. It was time to post her final blog entry for the day. But her fingers did not move, and she remained stationary for some time.

  Everything Phillips said was inarguable; she knew that. This wasn’t merely another story to cover—this was the first chapter in a new life for everyone. The fact that she couldn’t return to her home to retrieve her things was bothersome, but she had never been particularly materialistic. Other people, however, would be much more upset; they would be losing not just possessions but the records of their lives—photographs, carefully preserved schoolwork, countless other mementos gathered over decades. The history of their dreams, desires, victories, and even their failures.

  Her own cherished dreams had been of achieving global recognition—and yes, she admitted to herself, a modest measure of fame—in her chosen profession. To do that, one had to establish a distinct identity. This disaster would be hers; going forward, she would be known as the woman who stood in the middle of the worst nuclear accident in American history and not only reported it in real time but also uncovered the corrupt practices that precipitated it. There was a certain dignity, Marla felt, to using the immense power of the media to inform the public of the dangers created by people whose influence outweighed their ethics. She’d always felt great pride about that facet of her work—and on a personal level, the delight that came with exposing the “bad guys” never lost its allure.

  Her editor had told her there was already Internet chatter about a possible Pulitzer. Though she felt that was probably a long shot, it seemed likely that she’d earn some of the industry’s lesser accolades, and in anti-nuke circles she was on the fast track to deification. That would lead to more fertile opportunities and greater respect and a much bigger paycheck. All those things were terrific, no doubt. But Harlan Phillips was right—what now?

  The answer finally came, as it so often did, from something she’d learned in childhood. Specifically, a little instruction she’d received on a hot summer afternoon while visiting her grandmother in North Carolina.

  You know the old saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?” That has endured because it’s true, Marla. Remember—anyone can sit on the side of the road and cry. But those who keep on going are the ones who make the deepest mark in this world.

  Marla Hollis knew what she had to write next. Could see the words in front of her as clearly as if she was reading them. Because she had, earlier in the day.

  Reaching into her bag, she took out Corwin’s letter.

  EPILOGUE

  APRIL 2047

  The gates rattled and squeaked as the guard pulled them back together and replaced the chain and then the padlock. The limo moved away from him in a cloud of dust.

  Sarah Redmond, now just two months shy of her sixty-third birthday, sat alone in the vehicle’s backseat. She had not returned to Silver Lake since the night she’d been dragged kicking and screaming down this very road, and she’d sworn she never would. The fact that the place had been federally quarantined, inside an eighteen-mile exclusion zone, until six months ago, had nothing to do with that vow.

  Though she’d been forced to abandon the town, she’d never abandoned the residents. Driven by the certainty that Emilio would turn up at any moment—perhaps he’d gone on a rescue call several towns over, or been swept up in one of the western flood zones and forced to seek shelter in Kimson Forest—Sarah had established her headquarters at a Holiday Inn twenty miles away.

  The binder-clipped sheaf of printouts she’d been using as a makeshift town directory became her bible, and she had been determined to ensure that every person found a new home and some way of generating income. She oversaw their insurance claims—health, life, and property—which eventually totaled more than a billion dollars. Over time she created a massive database where she tracked huge amounts of information about every person in her care, a file which she backed up regularly and moved from computer to computer as she upgraded, in addition to storing it in the cloud.

  Emilio was found seventy-two days after the evacuation, when some bright young government decrypter, who knew that radiation poisoning often caused blurred vision, decoded his final text message to reveal his location. Sarah attended the memorial service—his body coul
d not be displayed due to its ongoing radioactivity—in proper black. Then she disappeared for three weeks without a word to anyone. Many people were certain she would never return, and no one ever found out where she went.

  When she came back, she quietly resumed her duties. It would take another year and seven months before every name on the list was crossed off. The day after that, she packed her meager belongings into her car and headed southeast.

  She had an undergraduate degree in political science from George Washington University, and she’d always dreamed of returning there to get her master’s. Worth nearly two million dollars after her insurance claims were settled and Emilio’s life insurance paid out, she did just that. If they’d been asked, her classmates would have described her as pleasant but distant, focused on her studies, which also included a variety of environmental courses plus numerous classes at the Institute for Nuclear Studies. Despite earning top grades and honors, she did not attend graduation.

  With characteristic thoroughness, she submitted more than a hundred résumés to environmental NGOs with decidedly anti-nuke positions as well as plenty of connections and funding. She received eleven offers within the first month and an additional twenty-one by the middle of the second.

  Three years into her new position, she returned to school for her doctorate. Her thesis, “An Argument for the Abandonment of Nuclear Energy,” caused a minor stir in political circles, with some on the left using it as a battle cry while the right denounced it as anticapitalist tripe. When New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand was elected president in 2024, she asked Sarah to head up the Office of Nuclear Energy. Sarah leveraged the president’s emphasis on corporate accountability to ensure that safety violations at nuclear plants garnered the maximum penalties. She defeated legislation that would have paved the way for public subsidization of new nuclear plants even if the plants weren’t supported by voters who lived within close proximity of them. She traveled extensively, studying the energy policies and industries of other nations that were closer to atomic independence than the U.S., and channeled millions of dollars into R & D for safer energies such as wind, solar, and hydro.