by Justin Bell
Angel drew in a breath and lowered his gaze for a moment, then lifted it again. “Look, brother,” he said quietly. “I didn’t ask for any of this, okay? I didn’t ask to get caught in the middle of a gunfight with the cops. I didn’t ask to get tried as an adult when I was fifteen years old, and I didn’t ask to get thrown in maximum security just because I’m a Mexican who was sitting five feet from a pistol. I didn’t ask for any of that, man, okay?”
Greer nodded his understanding but didn’t relax his stoic stance.
“I didn’t ask for a freaking nuke to go off in California. I didn’t ask for my mom and my brother, and my sixteen cousins to all get killed before they could even wake up and enjoy their last sunrise. Okay? I didn’t ask for none of it.”
Greer softened somewhat, his arms dropping to his sides, but he kept his face firm.
“This stuff with the cop killing, man, I didn’t do that. I was there, of course I was, the other cops found me there, but man, I was trying to be mister macho, trying to fit in with these older guys. Trying to be a tough kid because I didn’t know any better. Ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that’s no bull, okay, esé?”
The ex-sheriff placed a hand on his hip and looked sideways at the ex-convict as if trying to solve a complicated puzzle.
“I didn’t like what those guys were doing at the school, but what choice did I have? It was either them or nobody. Then it was either them or you all. I chose you all. Now, we gonna spend every spare minute hashing this out, or are we gonna sit our butts on those four wheel bikes out there and get outta here before we all start glowin’ in the freakin’ dark?”
A few moments of empty silence followed his question as Clancy measured the man with his eyes, studying the contours of his rigid face.
“Fair enough,” he replied, nodding. He glanced over to the retreating forms of Brad and the Frasers and jerked his head towards them. “Let’s move, Angel.”
Angel nodded and followed the other man towards the rest of the group, wondering just how much mileage his confession had bought him.
***
Another day had come and gone and the sky above dimmed to indigo, the sun creeping its orange, bulbous form down towards the horizon. FBI Agent Richard Orosco stood on the lip of the skyscraper, his toes stretching out over the edge.
How easy it would be. One simple step, thirty seconds of terror, then it would be all over. The memories, the deep, ragged gouges of pain. The endless flicker of a distant fire in the horizon where his home city used to stand.
Orosco looked out from the tall building. Not the tallest in Houston, not by a long shot, but tall enough for him to look out towards the Gulf of Mexico and to see the flattened, flaming, smoldering remains of what used to be the island of Galveston. He knew Galveston well. He called Galveston home. His wife and only child also called Galveston home, or they would call it home if they hadn’t been reduced to atomized shadows in the shock wave of a homemade suitcase-sized tactical nuclear device.
Those kinds of things have a tendency to interrupt the daily routine.
It hadn’t even occurred to him that it might happen right there. With the attacks in California that morning, he’d been called in, heading to the Federal Bureau of Investigation office in Houston. Closer to the west side of the inner part of the big city, it had taken him ninety minutes to drive there, with it being so early in the morning. His mind had been racing with the impossibility of it all, the fact that not just one, nor two, nor three, but as many as six nuclear devices had detonated on U.S. soil. There was an excitement, an anticipation, and a renewed sense of duty he had felt as the dim lights of Houston blurred into spaghetti streams on either side of his car windows. His heart hammered in his chest as he navigated the twisting city streets, free of traffic in the early morning hours.
At this point he couldn’t even remember how long it had been. Or where he had been. He vaguely remembered seeing the glint and flash out of the corner of his eye, a piercing white crack in the universe that had formed even as his abnormal day started to twist from abnormal to horrifying.
He worked in Houston. The entire nation was his jurisdiction, but most of what he did was in the largest city in the second largest state in the country. But Galveston was a part of him. It formed the core of not just what he did, but who he was.
Friends. Recreation. History.
Family.
Wife. Son. Father. Three sisters.
His heart fluttered as he moved forward another inch, the vacant air teasing at his shoe-covered toes. For one brief, tantalizing instant, he began to tip forward, the weight of his stance, carrying him, making him just top heavy enough to tilt and hover, balancing on the scant, narrow border of the ledge. He closed his eyes and felt the wind rush over him and on the wind he smelled his home, an ashen funeral pyre of his three and a half decade existence. Everything he’d ever done or known, now carried on the breeze. It had been the first time he’d smelled it. Strong ocean winds had been blowing during the initial explosion and early signs were showing surprisingly tolerable levels of radiation on the island. Miraculously, Houston wasn’t much the worse for wear. There was blast damage all up and down the eastern border of the huge city, a handful of wrecked buildings, a few dozen lost lives, and blown out windows for several blocks.
But somehow, by fluke of nature, this gulf wind had ridden on the back of El Niño and swallowed up the nuclear fallout, trailing it behind and scattering it all along the Gulf of Mexico.
Houston had been spared.
“Lucky me,” he whispered in the darkening cusp of evening. His eyes opened again, and he looked out onto the scattered fires that were once his city, almost an entire nation of flattened architecture, scorched earth, and blackened rocks. Somewhere out there a Homeland Security HazMat team was already on the scene, already taking readings, already starting some clean up, and already beginning the process of finishing what the nuke had started. Completing the process of wiping Galveston from further existence. Sweeping the smoldering ashes of his entire life into protective plastic carted off to some sterile laboratory for elimination from organic existence forever.
He still wasn’t sure why Kramer had called him of all people. Did she not realize what he had lost in those few precious hours earlier today? Or was she calling him because she knew what he lost and she needed someone with that kind of fresh and exposed raw motivation?
Orosco had been an exemplary agent, making a name for himself throughout the Southern United States as a committed, intelligent, and skillful field agent, but that hardly made him qualified to be the regional lead on an investigation of this magnitude.
Maybe Kramer had known that he’d need something to cling to. Some sense of purpose that might keep him grounded and prevent him from doing something stupid. Something like standing on the roof of a tall building in downtown Houston, teetering too close to the edge without care or concern of what might happen if he toppled over. He doubted she had any knowledge of who he was, and if she did, he doubted she cared, but just the same, there was that tiny, glowing nugget now, that minuscule clump of purpose sitting in his gut. And he had a reason to let it remain there, festering, because it wasn’t just his family gone, but hundreds of families. Thousands of families. The spine and resilience of an entire nation had been bruised if not broken.
He alone could make a statement for those lost and those who might use this event as an excuse to lose themselves. A reason to give up and be swallowed by the night and by the streets of the city rushing up to greet them.
Ricky Orosco drew a deep, long breath, wondering not for the first time if he was sucking down deadly nuclear winter, and turned away from the edge of the building, turned his back on the burning city of Galveston, and walked towards the raised stairwell to head down to the street in preparation for Brandon Liu’s arrival.
Chapter 4
Brandon Liu had never served in the military or been stationed overseas, but as the chopper flew low over
what remained of Galveston, Texas, his mind could not translate what he was seeing into a former American city. It wasn’t possible. What lay down below was a war zone.
The small, twin engine plane had taken off from Chicopee and landed in Barksdale Air Force Base just east of Shreveport Louisiana, while Homeland awaited word from the onsite Hazmat team to determine if Galveston was safe to enter. Once down in Barksdale, Liu transferred to a Blackhawk helicopter, piggybacking on a squad of National Guard who were being dispatched to Galveston for support operations of Homeland Security.
In his role as a Customs and Border Patrol agent, Liu had spent some hours flying in helicopters, and he’d seen some pretty sketchy things, but as the flight path covered the southeastern curve of coastal United States, brushing north of the Gulf of Mexico, he got a good look at Galveston, Texas, and his breath nearly left him.
As it was, Galveston wasn’t so much a city as a slice of land carving the Gulf of Mexico. The City of Galveston was part of Galveston Island, a long, narrow barrier island no more than three miles thick at its widest place and a scant twenty-seven miles long.
The suitcase nuke had more or less obliterated the entire island. Where there had once been a thriving residential and coastal business center, there was now a shattered and broken slab of burnt rock, the entire island looking like it had been blown into several smaller chunks. The northern part of the island, where the city itself had once been, sat scattered and empty, a strange ring of broken land creating a circle of debris spreading out from the central impact point. Flooding water churned up by the raw might of the explosive device had flooded whatever remained of the island that wasn't wiped clean from the initial blast. Some water had receded and as Liu looked out of the Blackhawk, he could see the charred and burnt remnants of what had once been. Entire rows of houses and shops knocked flat by the blast, the skeletal remains of the buildings charred and burning. Chunks of buildings and scattered vehicles sat submerged in water at all places on the island, and there was a sickening, rising smoke crawling up from the ruination of the one-time resort community.
A thick, acrid blanket of smoke choked the landscape as they continued past Galveston towards the landing strip, clouding their view of the area below. Brandon could only imagine the horrors down on the surface underneath that dull gray cloud cover, which he knew wasn’t cloud cover at all.
Liu’s stomach churned as the Blackhawk began its descent, not heading into Galveston, but angling north towards Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base, just southeast of downtown Houston. As they traveled that way, Liu could see more devastation, with Texas City a flaming wreckage and cascading damage rolling across the large state like a crashing ocean wave. The earth itself was blackened on the cusp of the border with the Gulf, receding into lighter and lighter colors, and by the time Houston was in view, the landscape seemed undamaged. Liu shuddered to think what might have happened had the device detonated within Houston instead of Galveston, but then remembered that several devices did hit cities about the same size as Houston just the previous day.
Witnessing the devastation firsthand put a whole new perspective on what had happened in California and for a brief moment he felt the open maw of hopelessness stretching out below him, just waiting for him to tumble from the helicopter into it.
What could he do against the sheer force of such destruction? How could he do anything to assist in the recovery from such shattering annihilation? What gave him the right to think he had the power to change or fix any of this?
The rapid-fire thumps of the helicopter blades echoed off the flat slab of tarmac as the Blackhawk drew further down, lowering into a landing position on the pale gray asphalt. Metal on pavement scraped as the landing skids caught and held, the copter winding down. Liu didn’t wait for the blades to stop; he threw himself from his seat and hit the ground, keeping his head low and his feet moving as the wind drove down on him from the spinning rotors above. Up ahead he could see a dark-colored sedan parked at an odd angle to the helipad and a man standing outside of it, leaning back against the hood, arms crossed. He was ignoring the wind from the blades as it whipped at his jacket, slapping it around his waist.
“Agent Liu?” the man asked, uncrossing his arms and taking a few steps towards him as he brought himself upright, the wind dying down around him.
“Agent Orosco, I take it?” Liu asked, nodding confirmation of his appropriate identification.
They walked back towards the car, Orosco looking over his shoulder at him. “Call me Ricky.”
Liu nodded. “Brandon.”
As Orosco pried open the driver’s side door, Liu rounded the hood and entered the passenger side.
“Looking pretty ugly out there,” he said as the other agent started the engine.
“That it is.”
The car shot forward and angled left, making its way out of the reserve base back away from the city of Houston.
“Hear anything from Hazardous Materials?” Brandon asked. “Are we clear to head to the island?”
Orosco shook his head. “Not yet. We’re heading to League City first; there’s some residual damage there. I’ve got some agents back at the office investigating police reports as well.”
“Police reports?”
“Yeah, turns out a couple of beat cops might have seen the vehicle before it exploded.” Orosco pulled out into traffic and turned right, joining the flow of cars. There weren’t many of them today, the City of Houston brought to nearly a standstill in the aftermath of the devastation. As they moved south, a pair of Army National Guard transports came from the other direction.
“Not sure I’ll get used to that,” Liu said.
“Lots of things will be tough to get used to,” Orosco replied, his voice dimming. Liu glanced over at him, noting the turn in his voice.
“Must be tough dealing with this in your backyard.”
“Or my front yard.”
Liu directed his eyes back out of the windshield. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” Orosco replied, but he just left it at that.
They rode in silence, the streets completely emptying out as they left the outskirts of the city and approached the smaller clutches of homes and businesses. Interstate 45 stretched on through Southeast Texas, until they turned left towards Route 3. A personnel carrier eased past them on the left side, and Liu glanced out the window, following its progress, noticing the people in yellow suits stacked inside like sardines.
“So they cleared this area, I take it?” Liu asked.
“Yeah. Gulf winds scooped the fall out right up and dragged it out to sea. Still some lingering radiation on the island itself, but we’re okay down here.”
“How much damage did you guys get?”
Orosco pointed to a few buildings as they passed and Liu noticed smashed out windows on the south facing sides of nearly every building they passed now. A few moments went by, and then as they came into League City and Dickinson, he noticed some strange damage all along the low parts of the buildings, with trees down, and a few smaller structures completely smashed into rubble. They’d crossed from normal to the new normal and the visible destruction struck Brandon Liu like a fist.
“The explosion turned Trinity Bay upside down,” Orosco said, “flooded all the nearby towns, so even places that might have escaped the initial explosion got trashed by a mini tsunami. Areas as far north as Baytown got hammered, and I think the bridge over Tabbs bay is totally wrecked.”
“Wow,” was all Liu could think to say.
“Yeah. That’s not even mentioning the ports of Houston,” he said.
“I thought Houston was relatively unscathed?”
“The city? Yeah, it made out okay, but the ports are toast. The various ports in Houston are the busiest foreign ports in the country, and the thirteenth busiest ports in the entire world.”
“You’re kidding.”
Orosco shook his head. “Twenty-five miles worth of ports and every single one flooded
, trashed, or blown off the map.”
Liu sat in silence, letting this information sink in. The West Coast. Attempted sabotage in Boston. Now Galveston and Houston? This was systematic isolation—cripple the infrastructure then separate us from any foreign assistance by destroying access to supplies and support.
“So where are we headed?” Liu asked, completely running out of anything else to say.
“Far south as we can go,” Orosco replied. “Down by Texas City and La Marque, the damage is extensive, but the radiation is sparse. Those will be the best places to get eyes on what we’re dealing with.”
Liu didn’t have to wait for Orosco to tell him when they’d arrived. It became clear within moments, not just by the structural damage, but by the radiating, rippling heat that he could feel through the car, and the raging wall of flame ahead. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before, a sprawling and stretching column of orange and red fire, almost one constant stream of inferno from east to west, covering the entire horizon of his vision.
“Unbelievable,” he whispered.
“Texas City is wall-to-wall refineries. We nearly lost the entire city in 1947 and there have been countless explosions and accidents since then, but never anything like this.”
They sat in the car, just watching the hypnotic dance of rippling flame, the curling fingers of fire reaching up towards the darkening sky. A thick, black smoke bellowed from what seemed like the ground itself, as if the explosion had cracked the earth’s crust and released an ancient evil.
As they watched, a modified DC-10 airliner painted up in the slate gray colors of the Air National Guard screamed overhead, spilling red dust from its belly, blanketing the entire city in a kind of fire retardant chemical spray. It made a pass, then banked left and angled back towards Ellington Field, likely for a refuel and redeployment.
Liu still sat there in complete astonishment, just watching the wall of fire ahead, licking at the gray skies, releasing clumped clouds of dark ash and smoke, and he realized then and there that they wouldn’t be going anywhere closer to the island than this.