Yield

by Johnson, Bryan K.

  “Bad,” Devin answers. A chill shoots down his back. The fireman takes a couple of gulps from his sports drink, part of him still wishing for the burn of something much harder. “We came in nine or ten miles north of here when our plane went down on I-5.”

  “Jeez. Not many survivahs up that way.”

  “There are some, then?” Devin asks. His eyes probe the Creole’s scarred face.

  “‘At’s what I heard. Days like this, tho’, everyone’s gotta story.” The blind man stuffs another handful of chips into his mouth, chewing them loudly.

  “Any mention of downtown?” Devin presses. “One of the people I’m with has family there.”

  “Well, now,” the blind man says. He leans forward. Fiery shadows dance across his scarred smile. “It ain’t pretty in ‘dem parts. Can’t imagine much left alive. But…” he starts, taking a swig of his water. “Damned if people don’t defy ‘dem odds.”

  “Have people seen any relief aid or rescuers yet?”

  The blind man doubles over with laughter. He elbows the shoulder of the traveler next to him. “You hear ‘dat?”

  “I say something funny, mate?” Devin asks, his impatience growing. His emerald eyes dart around to the other faces by the fire. Their smiles are a mixture of anger and disgust, punctuated with the frightened humility of those now ceasing to hope.

  “Tah hah! Those gov’ment types won’t come ‘ere,” the blind man snickers. “They don’t like it when they’s netha’ regions start to burn from ‘da dust.”

  The Creole takes another long, dripping gulp before wiping a sleeve across his mouth. “Did hear one fella’, tho’. Says he heard somethin’ was being built down fartha’ south. Don’t much know ‘da purpose, tho’.”

  “Where?” Devin asks. He edges closer, thousands of questions trampling over one another in his mind. “What in the bloody hell happened today? All we caught was some rambling news report about the aftermath of all this.”

  “Bet you didn’t hear much,” the blind man laughs. His dark smile flickers in the orange light. “Did ya hear ‘da tone?”

  Devin looks sharply back at him. “Yeah. What was that?”

  The blind man tilts back. He cocks his head from side to side, checking to see if anyone else is listening. Shadows seem to darken around the warehouse. The Creole leans forward, lowering his voice to a growling whisper. “What the gov’ment don’t want us to hear. People be sayin’ a war is brewin’. And it ain’t lookin’ too good. Outnumbered and outgunned. You believe ‘dat?”

  “War?!” The word wrenches through Devin’s stomach.

  The Creole motions for Devin to be quiet before looking around again. A scowl cuts across his face. “Most powa’ful nation in ‘da world, and Hawaii fell in minutes. Minutes!” the blind man whispers. “They swept thru there like a crimson wave. Not long now…” the black man trails. He glances blindly up toward the massive doors. “Not long at all.”

  The crackling of the fire trinity bounces through the air, like machine gun blasts ripping across the battlefield. Hope drains from Devin’s eyes. He stares into the flames, the blaze consuming refuse and optimism alike.

  “Who?” Devin finally asks. His mouth is sanded ash. “Who would do this?”

  “Depends on who you talk to,” the Creole grumbles. “Some say the Mideast, some Asia. We don’t have many friends no more. If ya’ ask me, country won’t last ‘da month.”

  “There is no way anyone could be that daft,” Devin says. His tone hardens, fear turning to anger. “America has allies. Even if we were attacked, Britain and others would rise up beside us. Blooming rubbish, that is. Who’d you hear all that from, mate? A leprechaun on a purple uni?”

  “Easy now,” the blind man growls. His scars flicker in the firelight. “Or ‘dis lil’ talk is over. I may not look it, but my ties run deep, brotha’. Heard ‘da same story from several people I respect. And ‘at’s saying somethin’ for me. I don’t respect many.” The Creole leans toward him. Shadows over his eyes burn away to blistered flesh. “Specially no uppity Brit who don’t believe ‘da words I’m speakin’.”

  Devin stares at the blind man, hoping to find a shred of falsehood on the scarred face. The seriousness of the Creole’s conviction is chilling. Devin takes a step back from the eyeless gaze. “That just doesn’t sound possible, mate. How could we not see something like this coming?”

  “So quick to doubt now,” the blind man says. He leans back into the shadows. “Who say’ we didn’t?” The warehouse drifts into fractured silence. Only the popping noises within the drums echo in the night.

  “I saw it come down, ya’ know,” the blind man whispers.

  “What’s that?” Devin sighs, growing tired of the man’s riddles.

  The Creole moves around the drum closer to him. Flickering darkness deepens one side of his face. “The flash,” he growls. His blistered eyes look up to the heavens, his crucified arms out wide. “Like a ray of God, it was.”

  The black man gulps down the rest of his water, sighing loudly. “Closa’ than I shoulda’ been. Workin’ up at ‘da greenhouse, top o’ my building. Everytin’ was fine. And in one instant, boom,” he gestures with his scarred hands. “Sky turn’ bright white…” His voice drops to a whisper. “Bright white…”

  “I try’ to get a picture,” the blind man continues. He digs into his pocket and pulls out a cell phone.

  The Creole’s dark hands shake with excitement as he passes the phone to Devin. The edges of the small LCD screen are cracked and blistered. The phone’s grey body is darkened. Crystals on-screen burn with the last image the man will ever take.

  The blurred light of a nuclear blast is disintegrating every building in its path. The white areas on the LCD sparkle with the frozen picture, flickering death in the fire’s glow.

  “They tell me it’s still on ‘der somehow, bu’ I can’t tell,” the blind man says. “Last damn thing I saw ‘fore ‘da light took my eyes.”

  The Creole looks around as if he were still there, his voice taking on a reverent tone. “‘Da world was white. No shadows. No colors. Just ‘da purest white ‘der eva’ was.” He taps his scarred eyelid. “Still is.”

  Devin is silent. He stands transfixed by the image of Seattle’s zero point.

  “I’m sorry,” the fireman says. He hands the phone back to the blind man. “Keep it safe. People need to be reminded of the evil we’re capable of.”

  “Here, here, brotha’,” the blind man shouts. He raises his empty water bottle. “Here, here.”

  * * *

  A 12-year-old boy rummages beside them through a growing pile of garbage towards the back of the warehouse. His dirty fingers tremble, looking for anything valuable enough to trade for food. His stomach hurts. He wades through the rotting trash, his hand suddenly stopping on a rectangular wooden box with an inset speaker. The boy pulls the transistor radio out quickly and sits down by a nearby fire.

  He takes out his treasured Nintendo DS from a backpack containing the rest of his small world. The boy hesitates for a moment, looking longingly at the device.

  His stomach gurgles again. The boy grudgingly takes the four double-A batteries out and stuffs them into the radio. It pops on with a whine. His heart jumps. The boy twists the round dial and turns up the volume, putting the device up to his ear.

  Only static and a high-pitched alert tone hiss back from all channels.

  His deep blue eyes tear up in disappointment. The orphaned boy snaps the broken radio off. He curls up around it, settling down for a restless and hungry sleep.

  Chapter 31

  “I think we should turn back,” Jean whispers. Her eyes drift across the metal and concrete dotting the top of Lake Union. The bridge fragments protrude like derisive stepping stones from the black water. The north side of Seattle is barely visible, its shadow just out of reach beyond the troubled waves.

  She lays a hand on Jonathon’s arm, pulling him back to the water’s edge. “If the Washington and Fremont are g
one, there’s no way the other two bridges are still there.” Her eyes glance around to make sure their conversation is private. “We can’t make it from this side, Jon.”

  “We’ve come a long way just to turn around now,” he says. His stomach sinks at the thought she may be right. “It’s only a couple more miles; then, we’ll know for sure. Besides, Dave says there’s another translator nearby that may have been shielded from the blast. His scope’s reading a low power signal, weak but still pulsing.”

  “Can we get through?” Jean points to the west. “It looks like the whole damn industrial district’s on fire.”

  “I don’t know,” he whispers. His eyes trace out to the flames of hell across their path. “But I’d rather take my chances with the fire. It didn’t end with the explosion, Jean.” He looks down. “Survivors of Chernobyl died over the months that followed their reactor leak. That was just one reactor. Imagine something hundreds of times greater than that back in the city.”

  Jonathon begins to scratch at his hands. “Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Fallout can kill almost as many as the blast itself.” He looks out toward the flattened remains of Seattle. Jon tries to picture the compound angles of its unmistakable skyline, but the shapes are fuzzy—obliterated from memory like the structures themselves. “This dwarfs them all.”

  Jean’s eyes flicker. She stares at the glow of fire on the horizon beside them. The brilliant oranges and reds pulse eerily in the dark. The unnatural twilight crackles against her skin.

  “It’ll be okay,” he says. Jonathon puts a hand hesitantly to her back.

  She jumps, surprised by his unusually public display of affection. Jean sinks back into his embrace. Warmth pours from him like a familiar blanket on a dreary winter’s day.

  “Alright,” Jean sighs. She turns, putting a hand up to his chest. “Let’s just take it slow through there. God knows what chemicals are burning in those warehouses.”

  She looks up into his navy eyes. Their certainty and assurance soon becomes hers, pushing away all doubt the way that only he ever could. Just being around him makes her stronger—more hopeful somehow. Jean thinks back to all of the glances at one another around the office and how they tried so hard to keep their passions quiet. She smiles mischievously.

  Jean lets her chest rub ever so slightly against his body before spinning away. “Lead the way, lover.”

  He exhales loudly. Jonathon watches her body strut back to the KOMO news team, not caring in the least that he’s staring like an infatuated schoolboy.

  Feeling his eyes still upon her, she grins. “Get what we’ve shot so far ready to feed to the network,” Jean orders her photog. She begins bundling the video cables up around her arm. “We should be able to get some sort of sat link from the tower site. Edit together all the b-roll, too. Just make sure they know it’s from Seattle.”

  She looks around at the homeland she loved, in ruins. “I was born here, and I don’t even recognize my city.”

  * * *

  The KOMO 4 News team loads up and turns northwest onto the six cracked lanes of Westlake. They soon merge onto what’s left of Nickerson Street. Huge piles of building and vehicular debris, catapulted out by the city’s blast, lie crushed along the pavement. The projectiles score the ground like demonic claws, carving wide swaths into rock, metal and bone as they flee.

  The caravan swerves in and out of lanes to avoid the mounds of rubble and cars still smoldering on the pavement. Lines of flame stretch across both sides of the street now. The buildings caught in their path blister as the superheated structures cave and writhe within the fires.

  Resuming his spot in the sat truck’s passenger seat, Jonathon looks out at the inferno beyond his window. The neon orange radiance of flames to their right rages uncontrolled in the industrial district’s warehouses and shipping docks. Random explosions light up inside the remains. Toxic smoke billows out. It glows a vibrant burgundy color, merging with the flashes of lightning in the poisonous clouds above.

  Dave flips on his wipers as the rain streaks down again. The usually annoying sound of frayed rubber on glass feels familiar and comforting to Jonathon tonight. It reminds him of all the foul weather promotional shoots he’s driven this truck to. Severe weather spots. News investigations. Hard to believe life was normal just a little while ago.

  Rain pounds onto the truck’s metal canopy. The sound is relaxing—the roar of nature cleansing the world below. Jonathon closes his eyes, imagining it’s the crash of waves against a peaceful shoreline…

  “Damn!” Dave suddenly shouts. Several chemical tanks ignite in the warehouse right beside them. They send flames launching hundreds of feet into the air. Tank fragments shoot over the tops of their vehicles, ripping through the other side of the street.

  Jonathon shields his eyes from the blast. Intense heat pulses through the window, warming the right side of his face and hand. Brilliant yellows shimmer across the glass. Their lapping shapes twist and swirl upwards into the night.

  “Hold on!” Dave yells. Almost as one, Dave and Jean both punch their accelerators, trying to get clear of the unstable industrial district.

  The fires of chaos stretch out. Flames begin to eat into the blacktop. They leap across the spilling chemicals, creating giant rivers of flame.

  Dave crushes his pedal to the floor. The windows bubble and steam on both sides as moisture is pulled from the air around them. The sat truck flies like a white speck across a sea of fire.

  The heat inside the steel vehicle is stifling. Thick air comes in choked gasps.

  “Faster!” Jonathon yells, wiping away the beads of sweat now pouring into his eyes.

  Flames attack the edges of their tires, clinging to the rubber with its claws.

  “Gutless piece of…” Dave shouts. “Come on!”

  Huge walls of fire fill their windshield and mirrors. The writhing color is all around them.

  The truck shoots out of the fiery grasp, finally launching out into the night. Fresh rain sizzles as it hits the vehicles. The drops evaporate almost instantly from the blackened metal.

  Pulsing red recedes angrily in the side mirrors. Its opening is quickly erased, the fires along both sides merging into one coalescent bonfire to the heavens.

  “Thought you gave this thing a tune-up, Dave,” Jonathon says. He claps the young engineer heartily on the shoulder.

  Dave’s held breath erupts out of him. His death grip on the steering wheel gradually loosens. “Right. Let’s not do that again.” Adrenaline flooding through his veins makes his heart feel like its beating ten times faster than it should. He wipes the perspiration from his forehead and rolls down the window.

  The engineer gulps at the wet air coming in. The water splashing against his face is more refreshing, more sweet than anything he’s ever felt before.

  Jonathon looks over at the large peak off to their left. Only a few orange glows spread along its black surface. “Is that the new translator site?”

  Dave turns left onto west Third, heading directly towards the butte. “Yeah. We installed a low power repeater at North Queen Anne before the whole DTV conversion a few years ago. I thought it would be a good idea to bridge our old systems here just in case the high power digitals ever went down.”

  “Engineers and their back-ups,” Jonathon says with admiration. “You guys are always three moves ahead.”

  “Never thought we’d need it for this,” Dave corrects. He’s usually not one to diminish praise with any veneer of modesty. Quite the opposite most days. “But it’s definitely capable of broadcast. Our tower’s on the back side of that bluff, so it probably avoided most of the blast winds.”

  They drive past the ruins of businesses and into an upscale neighborhood. The meticulous lawns and triple-stories of the elite are now engulfed in fire.

  Dave takes a right and begins winding up the paved access road to the north side of Queen Anne peak. Grass and trees lining the once scenic hilltop are gone. Fragments of charred ash billowing through the air
are now the only signs of their existence. Blackened gravel cracks under their tires. Powdery remnants blow around them as the hot winds begin to gust.

  They drive and twist up the road, stopping at a fenced gate blocking their path. Both sides of the fence are crumpled and twisted back, but the gate has somehow held. Dave fishes out a large set of keys from his pocket, sifting through them by headlight. The double gate doors open with a loud and rusty creak.

  The vehicles move forward another twenty yards and stop at a small building with no windows. Behind it, the 50-foot broadcast tower rises up, flanked on both sides by outcroppings of rugged hilltop. The tops of the hill are blackened. Just below the crest, a dull green still clings to life.

  “Alright,” Jonathon says, jumping out into the rain. “Let’s go see if we’re worth all those big market salaries.”

  Chapter 32

  As the warming fires burn down inside their metal prisons, the last of the warehouse refugees collapses. They drift—not to rest, but into a bleak and exhausted purgatory. Their eyes are lost, their dreams uncertain.

  The thundering of rain on the steel roof creates a monotone static all around them. It drowns out the whimpered cries and pleas for help from the forgotten.

  Devin’s head rests atop the black munitions bag. His body shakes. The polished concrete floor feels like packed snow. Isabel lies between him and Chris, curled protectively around the baby inside her. Terra lies close to the basketball player on the other side. His blue, white, and red letterman jacket covers her like a patriotic blanket.

  The fiery embers finally sputter and die. Shadows reach out from the dark.

  Mischief awakens.

  A shape in filthy clothes emerges from the black. Slashes of white glance around as the last of the bodies succumb to sleep.