I didn’t see the face until I turned my head to the left and was confronted by a huge, unnaturally wide smile with rows of razor-sharp teeth that gleamed like metal in the faint light. Then his head started to burn, and I couldn’t look away as he laughed, the flesh blackening, cracking, blistering, and popping.
Even at this moment of horror, I tried to make a wisecrack—something about how this was what happened when Rice Krispies went to hell (no one said jokes have to make sense in dreams)—but couldn’t get any words out. Then I saw my dad standing a foot from me in his white lab coat, and from deep inside me erupted a howl for help. I howled and howled, and he did nothing.
Just stood there as the flaming man’s hands tore me apart.
CHAPTER 11
Maggie
I JOLTED UP in bed and looked at the clock. 4:14 a.m. What had awakened me? Nerf?
No, not Nerf. Ugh.
Mom’s voice was coming from downstairs. What was she doing up so early? Some animal emergency, no doubt.
I got out of bed and stretched one arm, then the other, over my head, my oversize Pure Prairie League T-shirt (I was a killer thrift-store shopper) flapping against my waist. The air felt humid and stuffy, which was usually the case when we had no animals inside; Mom liked to save on air-conditioning bills when she could. In her view, having a cat in the kennel was good reason to cool the place, but having a daughter upstairs was not.
I descended the stairs softly to find Mom in the front doorway leaning against the jamb, her arms folded. She was wearing shorts and a wrinkled button-up, as if she’d gone to sleep in her clothes.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said, sounding tired and resigned.
“I swear on a stack of Bibles,” responded a raspy female voice from outside.
“Hey,” I said.
Mom looked up at me with red eyes, something I hadn’t seen for a long time.
“You know Rachel,” she said, and looked out the door. I peered out and saw Rachel Anderson smoking a cigarette in the dark. She lived a few blocks down, in a house where they kept goats.
With the nearest streetlight a block away on Main, most of the light outside came from our yellow “24-Hour Emergency” neon sign. I stepped outside, if for no other reason than to get into the cooler air.
“Rachel’s sheepdog, I think you’ve seen him,” Mom said. “He had to get stitches last year. Anyway, I just put him in the back. Same condition Nerf had.”
“He’s been a good dog,” Rachel said. “Had him seven years, maybe longer. He went after the goats as soon as we got back from the camp. I had to put one of them down. Neck wound.” She took a long pull on her cigarette.
“I swear,” Mom said, “something’s in the air.”
“Radiation,” I said, and Mom shook her head.
“An army guy showed me his Geiger counter,” she said. “The levels are safe.”
Rachel dropped her cigarette butt and mashed it into the concrete with the tip of her shoe. “Then why won’t they let us out?”
“Aren’t we out now?” I asked.
“Not out of the camps,” she said. “Out of town. Head south, and Jefferson Bridge is out. They’ve been working on it since before the evacuation.”
“Well, yes,” Mom said, “but we can still go north up through Canville.”
“Closed off,” Rachel said. “Kent drove there just this last evening—he was headed up to the gun show—and he said they’ve got a tank on the road and a bunch of barricades. He was told we could get shipments in, and we won’t run out of food, but no one can go in or out for now.”
“How long is that going to go on?” Mom asked.
“Who knows? It’s not like we can check online or the TV for updates.”
“How about the Sentinel?” I asked. “That should be back, right?”
Mom waved a hand. “That’s hardly a paper. It’s Ronnie Stevenson’s two-page diary with ten pages of ads.”
Rachel lit up another cigarette. “So, they haven’t taken away freedom of the press, just access to the worthwhile press.”
“How is this not a big story?” I asked. “A whole town under lockdown, with no way to communicate with the outside world. You’d think Dateline or somebody would be out here with news vans and helicopters.”
“Right,” Mom said. “Send ’em an email.”
Mom wasn’t usually the sarcastic type. She seemed rattled.
“But, hey,” she said, stepping out from the door and onto the concrete, “they fixed our sign.”
I glanced up at it. The “u” had been burned out for years, so it had read “24-Ho r Emergency.”
“We never did get to experience a twenty-four-whore emergency,” Mom said.
Rachel laughed—a coarse, tobacco laugh. “If Mount Hope is going to be our lifelong prison, you two will be good cellmates.”
I smiled for the first time since waking up, but this nice moment was interrupted by a spasm of barking from inside. Rachel’s dog was waking up.
“Do you want the ashes?” Mom asked Rachel. “Some people do.”
“No,” Rachel said, tapping out her cigarette. “Dispose of him how you like. Tiger’s never been a pet; he’s a workin’ dog. Chasing the goats, rounding them up. We’ll get a new one. I heard Eugene out by the drive-in just had a litter of border collies. We’ll pick one up and get him to work.”
Mom nodded. “I delivered those pups. They’ll be good, not a runt in the bunch.”
“Well,” Rachel said, “thank you for this.” She held out her forearm, marked by a dog bite, deep and ugly, that Mom apparently had stitched up. “You’ll send me a bill? I’m sorry to get you up in the middle of the night.”
“That’s why we’re here, Rachel,” Mom said.
After an exchange of handshakes, Rachel gathered up her rope and muzzle, loaded them into her pickup, and drove off.
“I hope we’re not trapped in this town. What if we have a medical emergency?” I asked. I still hadn’t decided to tell her what I thought was going on with me.
She shrugged. Apparently, we were on our own.
CHAPTER 12
Jordan
WHEN I WOKE up and looked at my watch, I was surprised to see it already was 9:45 a.m. I didn’t usually sleep that late. Well, I had a concussion—and my head ached like a guy suddenly cut off from a heavy coffee habit—so maybe that was a factor.
Coffee sure would have hit the spot around now, preferably something made with freshly ground beans (light roast, please; African origins preferable to South American) in a French press or a pour-over. I was a connoisseur, so I suffered in the camps as they used up what must’ve been a stash of Maxwell House cans dating back to the 1960s. ADHD medication is basically a stimulant, and I had found that a good, tall morning mug of coffee—with that oh-so-popular stimulant, caffeine—helped me to focus. Right now, I certainly needed to do that.
When I opened my bedroom door, I didn’t smell coffee but something even more pleasing: bacon. Fatback. That could mean only one thing.
I didn’t bother getting dressed, just ran down the stairs in my T-shirt and basketball shorts and rounded the kitchen door to see …
“Dad!”
There he sat at the kitchen table. He’d shaved his head and had lost the close-cropped beard he’d worn ever since I could remember. He was clean-cut, like a different person. Mom stood at the stove, three frying pans going, a cast-iron family heirloom in the back with slices of fatback sizzling and popping.
Dad stood up and wrapped his arms around me. I shook off my recollection of the nightmare and rubbed his bald head. “Please don’t tell me this is from the radiation,” I said.
“Radiation gives you cancer,” he said seriously as he sat back down at the table. “Chemotherapy is what makes you lose your hair. I’ve never had my radiation tag go off, and I’ve certainly not been prescribed chemo.”
Charlie spoke up. “Dad said that he’s on R and R. Rock and roll!”
Dad smiled, yet I could s
ee him forcing it. I aimed a theatrical wink at Charlie while Mom placed a plate of pancakes on the table next to a bowl of her signature peach compote. She was going all out.
“What’s it been like?” I asked. “What do they have you doing?”
“My role is the same. I monitor a workstation and make sure that our cooling systems are working.”
“Did you paint the house?” I asked. “And tend the garden?”
“That was the military. They’ve gone to great lengths to make sure your return was smooth and positive.”
I nodded. I realized that after many months apart, our free-flowing family dynamic might need to shake off the rust, but still, something was off. It was in the clipped way he spoke, how he wasn’t joking with us or cracking a believable smile. Maybe he’d grown too used to talking to other engineers and military folks. Or something else was occupying his mind.
“Does the Tin Man need some oil?” I asked him.
“What?” he said, turning to me with steely eyes.
“You seem a little … tight,” I said, my voice growing softer with each word. I liked to joke around with my dad, but I didn’t sass him.
He kept his eyes fixed on me for a couple of uncomfortable beats, then put on a stiff smile. “It’s good to see you, son.”
“You too, Dad.” I changed tactics. “So what’s the scoop? We’re not getting much in the way of the 411.”
Mom slapped a serving fork onto the table. “Jordan, when have you ever dialed 411?”
I turned back to my dad. “How goes the cleanup?”
“There is no cleanup. Everything worked exactly the way it was supposed to work.”
“Then why did the evacuation take so long?”
“You’re familiar with how the plant operates?”
“Mmm-hmm. Nuclear fission, fueled by uranium, heats water to become steam, which drives turbines, which power electrical generators.” My dad was one of those physics guys who’d given me little choice in learning this stuff.
“Right,” he said, “and then all the steam turns back into water in those big cooling towers and gets reused while the electricity supplies us with power.”
I waited for him to say more, but instead he took a leisurely bite of pancake. “So what was the problem?” I asked as I loaded pancakes onto my own plate and slathered them in compote. “Are we all getting irradiated?”
“No,” he said.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” I finally said. “So what happened here?”
“Like at Three Mile Island, there was human error: The wrong valve was opened when someone thought the pipes were empty. Before the water could be contained, one of the turbines exploded and threw radioactive material several miles, mostly on the east side of town. The reactor was damaged, and there was no way to save it, so we’ve spent the last year sealing it off like a sarcophagus. Inside the lead-lined room, there’s a deadly force that can destroy whole populations.”
“Holy shit,” I blurted out, prompting a dirty look from Mom, giggles from Charlie, and nothing from my dad. And here I’d thought we lived in an inconsequential little town. “Are you building the sarcophagus?” I asked him.
He shook his head and put down his fork. “I’m a mechanical engineer. I’m trying to get the power up and running in the remaining reactors. The military did all the concrete work on the sarcophagus.”
“So, bottom line,” Mom cut in, “is it safe to be here?”
He stared down at his plate. “You have nothing to worry about.”
I chewed my pancakes slowly, taking this all in while trying to think of a way to keep the conversation going—and to knock Dad off of autopilot. He hadn’t even asked me about my time at the camp or how my injuries were healing. Maybe he was just tired.
“Who’s Ishango?” Charlie chirped up.
Dad gave a start and caught himself—I saw it. It was as if he’d willed his face to turn to stone. Charlie was oblivious, jamming a huge pancake wedge into his mouth.
“Where did you hear that name?” Dad asked quietly.
“You,” Charlie said with his mouth full. “When you were on your walkie-talkie.”
“Is that who you’re working with?” I asked Dad, trying to give him an out. I knew he was dealing with lots of classified information that he couldn’t share with us.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s who I’m working with. I can’t say much about it.”
“Ishango,” Charlie repeated, and I swear Dad gave another start. “Ish-AN-go.”
“That’s enough, Charlie,” Dad said.
“Sounds like he’s from AF-rica!” Charlie added.
Dad gave a mirthless smile. “In a way.” He stood. “I have to go. My furlough was only for the morning.”
Charlie hurled himself into Dad’s arms but was rewarded with only a limp pat on his head. I bristled—after almost a year away from us, why wasn’t he being nicer to Charlie? Or to Mom? Or to me, for that matter? He was so formal.
“You’re leaving?” Mom asked.
“Afraid so,” Dad said, not breaking his stride out of the kitchen. “Good-bye,” he called out, not looking back as he opened the front door and shut it behind him. Mom stood stock-still in the kitchen, the spatula in her hand. He hadn’t kissed her good-bye or given any of us a farewell hug. I took the spatula from her and turned on the faucet to start the dishes.
“Wasn’t it nice to see Dad, Charlie?” I asked over my shoulder.
“He looked weird,” Charlie said. “I miss his beard. It made him funner.”
“Me too,” I said. “I think we all miss his beard.”
Mom still was standing there, a bit of liquid rimming her eyes. I put my lips up to her ear and muttered, “I think some of the plant’s coolant might have escaped up Dad’s ass.”
She did a dry spit take and whipped her head toward me, trying to look annoyed—one doesn’t say such things about one’s father—but unable to hide a softening around her eyes. “You can get away with that just this once,” she said, and kissed my cheek.
As I turned up the water and ran the brush over each plate’s sticky surface, I pondered this change in my father. Maybe it was simple: he was overworked, exhausted, stressed out from containing a situation that might be even more dangerous than he’d let on.
But those explanations didn’t quite cover it. He acted as if he didn’t know who we were anymore.
And didn’t care.
CHAPTER 13
Jordan
THE TWO-MILE bike ride from home to school was going faster than ever. I was nervous; that was it, sure. It just so happened that everything I was doing lately was at a greater speed than at any previous time.
I knew I’d have to run laps once I arrived and make up for lost time, but I felt decent, other than the headache that still lingered a bit. I knew this was the concussion’s aftereffect, but I’d decided to power through it. I’d beaten up Troy and Luke with the injury still fresh, after all, so I could handle a practice where I got to wear the don’t-hit-me-I’m-a-quarterback green jersey.
And, hey, if anyone wanted to get revenge for what I did to those two guys—well, I felt ready for that, too. In my mind, I still didn’t know how to fight. I shouldn’t know how to fight. But I realized there was evidence to the contrary.
I was supposed to lead the team now. I hoped I wouldn’t have to fight everyone to get their respect. I dreaded the eyes that would be on me in the locker room, but that just made me pedal harder—the sooner to get it over with.
Up ahead of me, a squad of soldiers stood beside a few Humvees. One of the men waved for me to stop. They weren’t in the desert camouflage worn by the modern army but rather digital green-and-gray camo. The vehicles matched their uniforms.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I pulled over.
“Routine patrol,” said the soldier who had waved. I recognized the patch on his shoulder: three chevrons with a curve on the bottom. A staff sergeant.
“I’m just going to football prac
tice,” I said.
“Do you have your school ID on you?”
I nodded and pulled it out of my shorts. It was worn from years of going in and out of my pocket, and the lettering was beginning to wear off. The picture hardly looked like me anymore, or anyone.
The staff sergeant swiped the card in his reader, and he looked at the screen.
“You’re the one who found that bear,” he said.
“Yeah, or it found me,” I said, vaguely pointing to the east. “It was thataways, behind the lumberyard.”
“Hey, Conners,” another soldier said. It took me a minute to recognize him with his helmet and sunglasses.
“Ears,” I said, remembering him from the camp. He was a radio operator, and his office was in the same building as the mess hall. He wasn’t much older than me, maybe a couple of years. He must have joined up on his eighteenth birthday or lied about his age. “What’re you doing here?”
Ears turned to the staff sergeant. “He’s okay. I know him.”
The sergeant handed my card back to me.
“We’re looking for a coyote,” Ears told me. “Have you seen anything? Paw prints in the mud, scat, newly dead animals?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t realize we had coyotes around here.”
“They’re uncommon this far south,” the sergeant said. “But it’s also uncommon to find a bear in town. I think some creatures moved in after everyone moved out.”
“So, wait, they dispatched a whole squad and two Humvees to track down a random coyote?” I asked.
“Disease,” Ears said. “At least that’s what we were told.”
The sergeant scowled at Ears, apparently not happy to hear his input.
“You should call the vet here in town: Dr. Gooding,” I said. “She deals with that kind of stuff.”
“We can handle it,” the sergeant said sharply. “Now head off to practice.”
Ears kind of smiled, a little redness in his face. “If you see anything, let us know,” he said. “Here, let me give you my number. Call me when you join up.” He scrawled his number on the back of an “If You See Something, Say Something” flyer.
The Warning Page 5