by Schow, Ryan
“California is relatively safe because it shut down its nuclear reactors,” this gentleman said. “That’s why I say we stay here.”
“What’s your name?” Maria asked.
“Jeramiah,” he replied.
“Can I call you Germ, for short?” she asked.
“No ma’am, you may not.”
“Okay, Germ. So, in the old nuclear reactors, if you have a grid-down scenario, you have to worry about the backup system, specifically the backup generators. That’s what’s needed to keep the cooling systems operational. Without them, the fuel rods would melt, right?”
“Yeah, if you’re talking in laymen’s terms.”
“I am,” she said with a big smile. “So the big problem with a grid-down scenario isn’t the initial loss of power, it’s the longevity of the backup power. By now plants all across the nation have lost their backup generators. No fuel trucks, no power to pump the gas, no gas in the generators. This is how you get catastrophic nuclear fallout.”
“Exactly. So how is this one plant any different and why haven’t I heard of it?” Jeramiah asked.
“Good question, Germ,” she said. He frowned, but she continued. “NuScale constructed the first nuclear power plant of its kind. The test site was built in Idaho. Most people outside the industry don’t know about it, and those who are in it wouldn’t have heard much about it because, like I said, it was in the test phase.”
“How do we even know it’s operational?” Jeramiah asked.
“It was operational and running as planned right before the EMPs hit,” she said. “I have firsthand knowledge of it.”
“EMPs?” Danny said. “As in more than one?”
“Two of them were detonated in the atmosphere,” Maria said. “Before we get sidetracked—”
“What about the fuel rods, and the cooling system in NuScale’s facility?” Jeramiah asked, more congenial now that it seemed Maria knew what she was talking about. “You’re leading us out of a safe zone toward a nuclear power plant after a full scale grid collapse. Is that really smart?”
“At ground level you have a biological shield that covers each reactor. Each containment vessel is housed in a stainless steel lined concrete reactor pool. The containment vessel itself sits inside a huge pool and the reactor is inside, which holds the fuel pellet and cladding.”
“So what makes this any different from the others?” Jeramiah asked.
“The water inventory. It’s large enough to remove all core decay heat for an unlimited period of time without the need for additional water. That’s what’s different. Your cooling system is efficient enough and stable enough that you won’t have evaporation problems, certainly not enough to lose the water and compromise the fuel rods.”
“And it was both operational and tested?” he asked.
“I said that already.”
“That’s all fine in theory,” Jeramiah said, “but how long was it operational?”
“Long enough. Here’s the even better news. They were powering a small town nearby. That’s the big unknown. If the infrastructure was in place before the EMPs, and if the town’s grid was hardened against the pulse, then we could theoretically bring our people there and make it home base. But first we need people, food and water, and then we need transportation.”
“And that’s us?” Danny said. “We’re going to be in charge of that?”
“If you don’t know that by now, Danny, then I might start getting concerned about you,” Maria said. “Now scratch your head and think about it.”
“No need to, ma’am,” he said.
“Danny, go with Germ and get that fridge back here. Aaron, you finish working on the power, Ruby and Carver, you head out and see what you can find going residential, and—”
“What about Sally?” Ruby said.
“I decided that One will be cleaning the twelfth floor. We’ve got some chaise lounges by what’s left of the pool and a small fire pit we can haul up there. I want us all to have a nice meal under the stars and just relax.”
Nodding in agreement, their faces relaxing, the group seemed to appreciate that.
Chapter Seventeen
When Carver and Ruby went out, they walked for maybe an hour before she spoke. “Do you think it’s safe for us to be out here alone?”
“Not really,” he said. “But then again, nothing is really safe anymore, so I guess it’s just…whatever. I mean, most of the fighting is done, gangs have formed and disbanded, and food and water stores are down. Anyone smart already got out of the city.”
“What does that make us then?” Ruby asked.
He shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. At the first house, they went through it and it looked picked dry. Toilet bowls were empty, their tanks, too. He went to the garage and opened the spout on the hot water heater and a little bit of dirty water trickled out. He was tired of opening these things up and getting all the sediment. It was discouraging.
“Why not just get river water?” Ruby asked. “Why mess around with this?”
“A lot of this water was filtered before the power went out. The river water is an unknown. For example, how many people died in there? We don’t know? Maybe you’ve got river colonies of people taking all their dumps upstream and hoping it washes down away from them.”
“I understand your concern if that was a stream, but it’s a river,” she said.
“Fine,” he told her. “Before all this, the homeless encampments were having problems with feces in the water, so this isn’t really a far fetched issue.”
They went house to house, tearing through pantries, looking for hiding spots, inventorying anything they might not be looking for now but might need later. Most of the homes were pretty much looted of anything of value. It was discouraging. But then they found a house that was run down and nasty inside, but totally different from the others as far as they were concerned.
“Carver, you have to see this!” Ruby said from outside.
Carver came out of the house with a half can of shaving cream, a razor and a pack of fresh blades in hand. Smiling, practically dizzy with joy, he said, “Look what I found!”
“No way,” she replied. Lifting up her arms, she showed him her hairy armpits and said, “Please, let me go first!”
“What’s your big news?” he asked.
She turned and pointed to a white, fat bellied pesticide sprayer. It was sitting on a small step stool under a tarp with a dried out bar of soap next to it.
“Is this…?”
“Yep,” she said. “Redneck shower.”
He went and picked up the tank and it was dry. It said Husqvarna on the side of it and looked like it had straps on it for over-the-shoulder and around-the-waist holds.
“How much water do you think it can take?” Ruby asked.
“Three gallons, maybe four.”
“So two gallons for you and two for me,” she said with a grin.
His head slowly began to nod itself and suddenly the idea of a shower and a shave sounded like the best thing ever. Two houses down they found a hot water heater with water. He knocked on the metal with a knuckle, found the level, then looked back up at her with a grin.
“I hope you’re not shy, Miss Ruby, because I do believe we have shower water.”
“I am, but I’ll get over it,” she said. “How do we get it out?”
Using a fist-sized river rock, Carver knocked several small holes into the tank using a spare car part he found inside a picked-over tool chest. It took a little while for the plastic sprayer tank to fill. It did fill up though. He fit the contraption over his shoulders, then strapped it around his waist and said, “Alright, you first then.”
Back at the house, they wet the soap, found it lathered fine, then Ruby took a breath and said, “Not a word.”
He rolled his eyes and she took off her clothes.
At first she was shy, but then she didn’t seem self-conscious anymore. He liked the way she looked, like she had a wild life before
all this. There was a scar from surgery, some tattoos, the little line of stretch marks on the sides of her butt he found attractive, a chest that didn’t look shoved out by implants or too deflated from childbirth.
“Stop staring,” she said.
“Sorry, not sorry,” he said with a grin. He stood up on one of the nearby blocks so he was above her and said, “You just look like you’re enjoying yourself is all.”
She got the shaving cream, lathered up her underarms and her legs, which he thought completely unnecessary since the hair would be back in a month or two anyway. He didn’t say a word, though, because he found almost as much delight in seeing her enjoy this shower as he did in seeing her naked.
When she was clean, he sprayed her off one last time, and then she looked at her clothes and her wet skin and she said, “Do you have a problem with me air drying?”
“You didn’t see any towels inside?” he asked. She shook her head. “Me neither. What about in the kitchen? Like a hand towel or something?”
“Nope.”
“Well alright then,” he said, taking off his clothes. He felt a little heat steal into his cheeks, but knowing she was mostly into women, he didn’t care that he was naked in front of her.
For the next little while, he showered, forgetting she was even there, feeling better with a clean shave, and much better with a clean body. There was no substituting a shower in the apocalypse, that much he was sure of now.
“We need to take this with us,” Ruby said.
“I agree.”
“Carver, can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“Can we just go? You and me, just leave here together?” she asked. “I know you’re close with Maria, and she’s beautiful and all, but I can also see you’re scared of her. And that she doesn’t treat you right.”
“What gave it away?” he joked.
“That giant bruise on your face,” she said, making hand signs like it was HUGE.
He laughed and said, “There are reasons to be with her.”
“She can make our lives easier?” she said. “All those promises, is that it?”
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“One?” she said.
“Sally,” he replied. “And yes, she’s part of it.”
She started to put on her clothes, smiling as he stood there and watched her. “I would have thought you’d be grossed out by me, being with someone as perfect looking as her.”
“Not at all,” he said, putting on his own clothes.
“You into average girls?” she asked. “Or are you just tired of perfect?”
“Tired of perfect,” he said.
She punched him in the arm pretty hard. He was pulling up his pants and halfway in the leg, so when she hit him, he fell over, hit the ground with a thud and started laughing. That got her laughing too, which in turn fueled their laughter to the point that Ruby started crying.
It happened on the turn of a dime.
For a second Carver didn’t know what this was, but he soon realized she was hiding her pain and somehow it rushed it to the surface, unbidden.
“All my friends and family,” she cried, hiccupping her words out, sobbing in between. “And the people…those guys I killed…”
“It’s okay,” he said.
“They…they…they killed everyone.”
He hadn’t seen someone let go to this degree since all this began. It made him feel so sad for her. Rubbing her hair, holding her close, then holding her hand, he said, “It’s okay. Let it all out.”
Chapter Eighteen
Kalfu was plagued by dreams. He was not one to dream often, but when he did, the voodoo practitioner did not remember what he dreamt about. He only knew he was restless. It didn’t help that he slept the day away on a lumpy bed in a room that smelled dank and somewhat moldy. Unable to shake the dragging feeling, he decided the dreams were a result of his ceremony.
He shouldn’t have done that.
But he did.
The only thing he could think to do was to put as much distance as he could between the woman called Maria and himself. When night fell, he packed his things and set out.
He was walking out of town when the spirits attacked him. They dragged him to the ground, invaded his body to the point where he felt the tremor of possession in every shaking limb. Crouched down on his knees in the street, hands clapped over his ears, his head sounded like a thousand beating wings and a cacophony of tribal chanting.
Fingers pulled at his eyelids, a shroud of darkness coating him like fresh oil. Then his mouth felt clamped shut by invisible hands.
He tried to open his eyes, shout through his mouth, but he was instantly, horrifyingly contained. He snorted in air through his nose, but the action left his lungs feeling sucked shut. Was he dying? I’m dying, he thought.
Just like his aunt...
Everything went silent and still, and that’s when the vision overtook him. He saw Maria with multiple spirits sweeping in and out of her body, like they were trapped, restless, fighting to break free if only they weren’t somehow tethered to her.
His body started to convulse from lack of oxygen, but his thoughts were stable, consistent, pointed.
Maria’s face began to change color, to grow light, to stop smiling. Her eyes glazed over silver and then her face began to glisten with ice crystals. The crystals frosted over and then the pure white look of her began to soften and shine.
Soon, before him, there was a perfectly silver face.
Still fighting for breath, still anchored to this vision, Kalfu tried to calm himself. To stop seeing. But he couldn’t stop seeing this because this was a vision from the Loa. He knew that now, and this comforted him.
The ice of her face began to run with veins of rot until all he saw was the spread of decay infecting her every feature. When her eyes flew open, dirt puffed off the lids and the eyes were dark black and so evil, he’d startle if he could move, or breathe.
That’s when the hold on him let up and he gulped in a giant breath. Falling over in the road, the dusty smell of a world abandoned and the cool night air upon him, he nearly hyperventilated. He was alive! Not dead like his aunt!
When he pulled himself to his feet, he made his way back to the home he’d been squatting at, preparing to carry out the will of the Loa and hope that whatever happened, he didn’t get the poison of Maria’s soul on his own.
In the house he’d fled from earlier, in the bedroom he stayed in, he saw Jaw-Long’s body, the salt circle, the candles. He dragged the corpse out of the room, the decaying smell not lost on him. This was the room, though. This was the circle.
Closing the breaks in the circle made by Jaw-Long’s dragged heels, he lit several candles and moved his things inside the protected area, even though that wasn’t required. He’d never created this kind of a mixture before, so it was important to account for the unknown. With that, he opened his bag and began to mix up something special.
When the powder was complete, he slowed his breathing, blew out all but one candle and closed his eyes. He prayed for safety from the Loa. The darkness behind his eyes was empty, however. Was this a sign of what was to come? Was the nothingness a bad omen, or a good one?
It could mean death or success.
Time to find out.
He stood and went outside, leaving his things behind. Night railed on the city as Kalfu crept through the shadows, then waited. He didn’t see her coming as much as he felt her. She stalked through the empty streets, a small lamb slung over her shoulder. He sniffed the air as she walked by: blood, sweat and earth.
The blood was different. He sniffed the differences. Human. Animal. Is she wounded? he wondered, surprised.
She wasn’t walking the same. Her body looked weak, as if she were low on energy. Her pace slowed, then her feet wobbled a bit. She staggered to a stop, sunk down to a knee and then swung the animal down over her shoulder. It flopped dead on the sidewalk.
She drew a blade fr
om a sheath on her hip and sheared the animal’s side. Cutting out a chunk of the animal, she gobbled the meat down raw, snorting and making noise as she chewed.
Then, suddenly she stopped eating and listened. She heard something. After a moment, he heard them, too.
A pack of dogs.
Looking up, she saw them and they saw her. Kalfu saw them both, tucking himself even farther back in to the shadows.
Glaring at the animals, her body tense, focused, the blade at her side and ready, she stared down the alpha. Eventually the dog glanced away, then turned and lead his pack in to the night.
Maria took another bite of the animal, and then another. She chewed, spit out the blood, then chewed some more. When she was done, she perked up, looked around, then dragged a sleeve over her face, wiping her mouth clean.
Seemingly better, she stood, hoisted the lamb back over her shoulder and headed for the building she was living in. He followed her, moving like liquid grace through the pools of darkness, his feet light, his connection with the earth astute.
She disappeared in to the entryway of the apartment tower she was staying in. He moved to the door, listened. He heard her say, “I’ll fetch you when this is ready to eat.”
He waited a long moment, and then slowly he began to work the door open, if anything to allow himself a better grasp of the movements inside.
“You mind if I get a little shut eye, at least until dinner’s ready?” one guy said to the next.
“Sure, bro,” he said. “Do your thing.”
Inside of a few minutes, the man was snoring. With each ragged breath, Kalfu eased the door open. His eyes adjusting to the darkness, Kalfu saw the other man. He was standing before the window, but then he stopped, turned around and started toward Kalfu.
Letting the door ease shut, his heart reaching a quick, hard gallop, he stood aside as the man burst through the front door. The second he was out, Kalfu caught the door, slipped inside and waited. He was not a fighter, so he didn’t know what he’d do if he was caught, but the man wasn’t after him. He was unzipping his fly, pulling his donger out, emptying his bladder.