by JJ Pike
Bill’s stomach clenched. She’d said it was bad but he hadn’t expected to inhale the fumes of the underworld.
The ground shook. Then the sound hit them, steel and concrete and glass all exploding. Bill stopped. They needed to stick together but that meant taking Paul into more danger. “Head down, coat closed. Do you have your sunglasses?”
Paul rummaged around in his pockets. “Dang, I must have left them in the car.”
“Have mine.” Bill handed him his glorious goggles. He never went anywhere without them. Never know when you might need eye protection. Now was that moment.
After the initial shock, people started running. Heels off, briefcases and handbags and tote bags clutched to their chests, flat out running. They were going to need to be in the center of the street if they were to make any headway. Bill beckoned Paul into the road. There was barely any traffic, just the occasional taxi crammed full of those lucky enough to snag a ride.
Then the sirens started up. He could hear them even though they were an avenue over. They were headed towards the explosion site.
Then, another blast, this time louder. Followed by another. “What in the name of all…”
The fourth blast was deep. It felt like it went on forever and ever. The ground beneath them shook. Masonry fell. Something glanced off Bill’s head, but it didn’t take him down. He was bleeding from a skull wound but still running.
They rounded the corner on to 39th and 11th. K&P was on fire. Correction, the place where K&P had once stood was on fire.
“Back! Get back!” The firefighter was shouting, waving his arms. “This isn’t a stable situation!”
Bill didn’t move. The firefighter had his arms around him, pulling, but Bill could only watch. It wasn’t just K&P, it was the entire block.
“Dad!” Paul was shouting now, pulling on him just like the firefighter. “We have to get out of here!”
“She could be in there!” Bill was transfixed by the flames, the smoke, the billowing black.
Another retort echoed towards them.
“They’re ours,” said the firefighter.
“What are?” The blood was in his eyes and his brain had turned to mud. He couldn’t process what he was seeing. It was as if hell had opened up and swallowed 39th Street and with it, his wife.
“The explosions,” said the firefighter, walking him back. “We rigged the building for a controlled take down, but it collapsed before they were detonated. Something must have set them off. You have to leave the area right now!”
“I can’t,” said Bill. “I can’t. I will never leave her. Never.”
He felt the ash, hot and punishing. He deserved it. He’d let her down. He would stay here with her. They’d go together.
Paul knelt down beside his father. “Dad. Midge can’t do this without you.”
Bill smiled. Midge. Darling Midge. She’d do fine. They all would. They had their mother’s blood. They’d be fine. Petra was a fighter. Aggie had more sense than all of them put together. And they’d never leave Midge on her own. They were too good for that.
“Look after Midgelette. She’s still so little. I don’t want her to take on too much. Keep her safe.” He grabbed Paul’s lapels and held on tight. “Promise me you’ll keep her safe.”
“Who’s he talking about?” said the firefighter.
“My sister. I think he’s concussed.”
“Get him to an ambulance. They’re parked over on 37th, waiting.”
“Waiting?”
“This is a major disaster. There are going to be injuries.”
“Leave me here,” said Bill. “So I can be with her.”
“Pick him up,” said Paul. “Just do it. I don’t care what he says.”
Bill looked into his son’s eyes. “I love you, Paul.”
“Dad, you’ve got to get out of here, you’re bleeding.”
“Huh,” said Bill, his hand in front of his face, “so I am. That’s from before. From the bear.” He tried to pull focus, but it was beyond him. “I’m sorry I let you all down, Paulito.”
“You didn’t, Dad. This isn’t over. We don’t know she’s in there. She could be anywhere. There are K&P people over by the truck.”
“The truck?” said Bill.
“Yes, the truck. We’re behind a fire truck. We’re going to get out of here.”
“Why is it all melty?” said Bill.
“Ugh,” said Paul. “Is this what shock does to you?”
“No,” said the firefighter. “Look around you. The paint is dripping off the cars. He’s not in shock. The paint on the cars is dripping.”
“Everything is melting,” said Bill. “I can’t let her melt. Do you understand? I can’t.” He was up and running towards the flames before Paul or the firefighter could stop him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alice was alone in the subway, the roof over her creaking and groaning. The cracks were wider now, the dust and dirt and ground down particles of plaster and concrete coming down on her even thicker, like a winter snowstorm that blinded you and made your headlights a hazard rather than a help. But the tunnel hadn’t caved in. Not yet.
She checked her jacket. It wasn’t disintegrating on her head. Good. That meant MELT hadn’t made it this far down. Perhaps Barb would luck out. Perhaps she’d make it to the last station they’d passed and scramble up the stairs and be clear of the inevitable fall in.
She had no plans on dying, but she had one last duty she had to perform. She pointed Barb’s camera phone at the ceiling. “This is Alice Everlee. I am a Senior Vice President at Klean & Pure and I’m documenting as much as I can. This is the subway below K&P. My jacket, which is a polyester-wool blend, has not disintegrated. Either MELT is so widely dispersed it has no effect, or it has yet to penetrate this level. I am going to take as many pictures as I can so we can piece together what happened.”
She stopped recording to take some stills. Were the cables above her corroded? Were the metal struts already that strange color before this all went down? She had no baseline so she couldn’t decide what was “normal” and what was altered. She just needed to record as much data as she could for the good of the project.
Snap, snap, snap. Barb had her phone camera set to make the sound of an old-school shutter even though there was no shutter in the lens. Strange how we cling to the things of the past.
She blinked away the grit that was raining down on her. It was in her eyes, her nose, her mouth. She used her shoulder as a wipe but went on taking pictures. “No detail is too small.” That’s what Baxter always said.
Damn. Baxter. She’d given her a thumb drive and pressed her to review it but Alice had never gotten around to it. She removed her jacket from her head for a moment and felt her way through the pockets. Miraculously, it was still there.
She flipped the camera’s orientation so it was facing her and hit play. “I don’t know what’s on here.” She held the thumb drive up to the camera. “But I am stashing it in the inside pocket of my jacket. If I don’t make it out of here but you get this message, find the thumb drive. I need someone to know what Baxter knows.” She paused. Perhaps now that Jake was dead and K&P was in ruins, Baxter would be freed up to talk directly? That would be a bonus because Alice had no idea what it was she was supposed to find on the drive. Data? Stats? Proof that MELT had not been ready for public release just as Baxter had said? Evidence that Jake and the Board had brought this down on their heads?
The walls around her shook. The screech and rumble above her told a tale of a building folding in on itself. The ceiling bowed under the weight of the collapsing building. She needed to get out. She picked her way down the tracks, filming as she went.
She had done enough, hadn’t she? She’d stayed until the eleventh hour, made sure her people were safe, done what was necessary with no thought of her own safety?
Her mind ran to Angelina. How was she doing now that she was covered in fish skin? Would that save her? Were the nurses doing any bett
er? She had a pang of guilt. She’d never even thought to visit the nurses who had sustained burns. She’d been so focused on Angelina and what MELT was doing to K&P that she’d let them float completely out of her mind.
Another blast above, this time louder. She felt rather than heard the crack. The whole world was about to descend upon her. She threw her hands over her head, though the gesture was futile. If a 15-story building was collapsing above her, that wasn’t going to do jack. She needed to run as fast as she could.
The ground moved, just like the earthquakes of her youth. If they went both ways you knew you were near the center of the action. The ground moved both ways. She was near the center.
Then it began, the rocks and beams and wires coming down. It came to her, in that moment, that she absolutely did not want to die. And still the destruction rained down on her, slabs collapsed, smashing into the rails beside her, crushing what had been the Seventh Wonder of New York City.
The debris gouged great holes in the walls, the floor, the rails. She felt a chunk of rock or drywall or metal sheeting, something sharp and heavy and relentless, slide down her back, digging into her flesh.
Then she was on the ground. There was no light, only sound and metal and fury.
The smoke was thick, filling her lungs, choking off her air. She pulled her shirt up, hacking and coughing and wishing her lungs weren’t on fire, and ripped off a strip, using it to cover her mouth. It barely made a difference, but “barely” was better than “none.”
The gash in her back raged and stung but she wasn’t pinned. In triage terms she was a two, not a three. She required care, but death hadn’t marked her card permanently. Not yet. She had to press on.
She felt her back. The wound was open, streaming. She winced. It was superficial, for all the pain it brought. She could survive that. She’d be bloodied and scarred but she could survive.
She finally removed her jacket from her head. If MELT was raining down on her now there was nothing she could do about it. It was in her blood, not just on her skin. She pushed her arms into the sleeves and hauled her jacket on, biting her lip. Even with no one there to hear her, Alicia Sayda Marroquin did not scream.
She pushed herself onto her knees then rocked back onto her haunches. She felt around for a beam or a rock, anything that might steady her. Nothing. She couldn’t see an inch in front of her, but that didn’t matter because her eyes were scratched and bloodied. She was in a pitch-black cave. She stumbled as she stood but she was upright.
She shuffled, hoping she’d find the rails or the wooden slats that supported them, but there was nothing but a scrambled mess of building material at her feet. She held her hands out in front of her, hoping she’d be able to feel the wall to her left and be able to avoid the third rail. Even with this level of damage she had to assume it was still live. Her toe jammed into a hard surface at the same time as her hands. She felt, gingerly, up and out. The tunnel was blocked side to side and as high as she could feel. There was no way she was going to be able to pass without climbing. Then climb she would. There were people out there who were counting on her.
She needed to leave one last message, just in case, for her children. She felt around on the ground for the phone. There it was, intact. The things survive but we do not. We are so fragile, so easily broken. Why did not God make us more like our buildings and appliances and devices? Why weren’t we made to withstand what the world has to throw at us? Why was her body screaming with pain? Why had she not been born a rock so that she might feel none of this agony?
Bill’s face rose up in her mind by way of answer. She hadn’t screamed in pain, but when her amado, her beloved, appeared to her she could not prevent the tears. They slipped down her face and onto her shirt, each one a testimony to how much she owed him.
She wiped her face with a grimy hand, flipped the camera on again, and forced a smile.
“I’m headed for the walkways which run alongside the subway tunnels. If I am lucky, I may find a place to shelter. If I’m not, I’d like to say…”
What could she say? She’d put her life in danger. For what? For science? They could find out anything she’d found without these simple pictures of the subway. No, she’d done this thing—this foolhardy, dangerous thing—to honor the children she could not bear to fail. She’d put her life in danger for Angelina. For her sister. For her own children.
The tears came hot and fast, but clean and good. She was free, finally, of the demons that had chased her through the forests of Guatemala and into her dream space. She was Alice Everlee, wife and mother. She was beloved and she was whole.
“I would like to say that I love you, Bill of my heart. I would never have made it without you. I would never have had our darling children without you. I would never have been anything. I did my best, but that was nothing to what you have given me. Because you gave me the one thing that makes life worth living. You gave me your heart. And, my darling, I must keep it. Because without it, I would be lost. I am going to climb—you know me, I will never give up, I will always do what I can to survive—but if I do not make it out of here, then I want you to know. I have your heart. I have it safe. And if I am to move on, then God will keep it safe for me. Tell the children how much I love them. Tell them I did my best. Tell them I am proud of them. But, mi corazón, it is you I live for. Always you.”
Explosions rocked the ceiling and the tunnel finally caved in.
Epilogue
Since its discovery in 1839, plastics of all kinds have fascinated us. First used as a substitute for the ivory in billiard balls, plastic-makers have gone on to create everything from vinyl records to women’s nylons to space blankets and everything in between.
Plastics have revolutionized the way we live. Super-light and wafer-thin plastics allow us to store and transport food from all around the globe, which allows for less food waste and a smaller carbon footprint. Plastics also make up 50% of today’s cars, making them lighter, which means they consume less fuel. We all know there are plastics in our take-out coffee cup and garden hoses and kids’ jungle gyms, but what is less obvious is that plastic is also in caulking agents, plumbing pipes, siding and paneling. Plastics are everywhere.
World plastic production is increasing exponentially. More plastics were produced between the years 2000 and 2017 than in all previous years combined, and that rate of increase shows no sign of slowing down.
Plastics have revolutionized life as we know it, but there’s one problem—disposal. Why? Because when it breaks down, plastic becomes toxic. When exposed to sunlight, oil-based plastic degrades releasing bisphenol A (BPA) and PS oligomer. In high doses, both are considered extremely harmful to the production and regulation of hormones.
As of 2015, more than 6.9 billion tons of plastic waste has been generated. Around 9% of that was recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% accumulated in landfills or the environment. It’s estimated that 5 trillion pieces of plastic have made their way into our oceans. Marine animals that we and other animals eat are frequently found with plastic in their gut, posing a substantial health risk as plastic contamination grows.
Jun Yang of Beihang University, Beijing, discovered that a bacterium in the digestive tract of the lowly waxworm could digest and dissolve polyethylene (previously believed to be indestructible).
Then, in 2016, scientists discovered a bacterium—named Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6—in a Japanese landfill. This organism had developed the capacity to dissolve PET plastics (used in soft drink bottles).
Professor John McGeehan, at the University of Portsmouth (UK), led a team who isolated the enzyme that Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6 uses to break down the plastics—and went on to create a mutant enzyme that was orders of magnitude faster than the original plastic-eating bacteria.
It doesn’t take a genius to imagine the awesome possibilities this mutant enzyme encompasses. Landfills: cleared. Oceans: cleaned. The need for more and more oil (to create more and more plastics): slashed.
B
ut neither does it take a genius to imagine what might happen if that mutant enzyme was further refined or, worse yet, weaponized. In our race to rid the Earth of this quasi-permanent pollutant and poison, what would happen if that bacterium spawned a plague that ravaged the planet? Enough of our society’s infrastructure depends on plastics and plastic-based compounds that an exponentially growing plastic-destructing bacterium could send us back to the stone age.
What if, in our haste and short-sightedness and urge to turn a profit and clean up the mess that we’ve created, some steps are forgotten along the way and some corners are cut? We’d let loose a compound that wouldn’t kill us directly—but would devastate our way of life and cause a collapse of civilization that would be nigh-on impossible to recover from.
MELT – Book 2
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