by Kyla Stone
No one said anything for a long moment.
“It’s the shockwave that devastates everything,” Dakota said. “A blast three times as powerful as the worst category five hurricane.”
Shay covered her mouth with her fingers and let out a gasp.
“And then there’s the fallout,” Dakota continued. “It’s the most hazardous closest to ground zero. If you can see it—like what’s outside—that stuff will give you a dose of radiation powerful enough to kill you within days or weeks.
“But just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it still won’t kill you, just maybe in weeks or months instead of days. And since you can’t see it, you won’t even know it’s killing you until you get sick.”
“If we get out of the immediate vicinity, will we be okay?” Zamira asked.
“No. The fallout follows the prevailing winds. Both the surface level we can feel, and the upper atmospheric winds we can’t. It can spread and contaminate hundreds of square miles.”
“We can’t stay here for months!” cried a skinny, sunburned white guy in pleated khaki shorts and a salmon-pink golf shirt.
He’d introduced himself earlier as Miles. He seemed like the uptight, neurotic type, the kind who got hysterical over nothing instead of dealing with real problems head-on.
“We don’t have to,” Dakota said.
“We’ll starve long before that!” Miles said.
“No, we won’t,” Logan said.
“We’re trapped!” Miles screeched. “We can’t survive in here—”
“Just shut up for a second, would you?” Dakota pressed her fingers against her temples, as if trying to block out the man’s shrill whining.
Logan wanted to drown them out with a stiff drink, too. Or a punch to the vocal cords.
“Let’s just take a breath,” Julio said in a soothing voice. He played the peacemaker well, probably a skill he’d honed quelling hundreds of drunken fights as a bartender. “We should stay calm. Panic serves no purpose.”
“I’m not panicking!” Miles said. “You’re the one—”
“Just how long do we have to be in here?” the pretty, curvaceous Middle Eastern woman named Rasha asked, cutting the man off.
She stood next to Miles, her posture perfect, as she stroked his bright red forearm with her manicured fingers.
They were married, a head-scratcher of a pairing to Logan’s mind—not because they were a mixed-race couple, but because Miles seemed like such a douchebag.
“My mom and sister live in Pinecrest,” Rasha said evenly, with only a slight accent. “We were going to visit them tonight. We need to make sure they’re okay.”
“The fallout level decays fast, but—” Dakota started.
“How fast?” Miles interrupted. His shook off his wife’s calming hand. “How many days?”
“It depends on the size of the blast and the wind and altitude—”
“Just tell us!” Miles snapped frantically.
“To be safe?” Dakota said, her voice measured and steady, though a muscle twitched tensely at her jaw. “I think we need to remain here several days, maybe a week.”
Logan’s stomach sank. Seven days trapped in the dark and the heat with a handful of frantic, panicking strangers sounded like a special kind of torture.
Worse, his flask would run dry long before then. His mouth went dry at the thought.
Miles’ eyes bulged. “A week? You’ve got to be kidding me. We’re taking the first flight out of this hellhole!”
Logan couldn’t disagree with the guy’s assessment, even if he was a clueless schmuck. He shifted uneasily against the wall.
“What about our families? Our friends? My wife?” Julio asked. “We can’t just leave them out there.”
“You can’t do anything for them now.” The muscle in Dakota’s jaw jumped. “What good will it do them if you go out there just to die? We have to wait. Then we can try to help them—”
“Enough is enough!” shouted a voice.
15
Logan
Logan watched as the heavy, thick-jowled woman with frizzed, coppery hair and furious eyes stormed down the far stairs from where she’d been sitting in the middle rows, a boy of about six trailing behind her.
He’d noticed her before when he’d conducted an initial scan of the auditorium. She hadn’t come down to wash her clothes or help collect the water. She’d been sitting up there all this time, doing nothing but brooding.
The woman halted inches from Dakota, who’d risen to her feet at the first sign of trouble. She jabbed her finger at the waitress. “No one else seems capable of saying it, so I will. You’re scaring my son to death with this nonsense!”
“What? No—” Dakota started.
“What are you? Some sort of doomsday cult? You all on drugs? This some sick joke you cooked up to prey on innocent, God-fearing citizens?”
Dakota raised her chin and didn’t back down an inch. She batted the woman’s finger away. “You better take a step back, lady.”
Logan tensed. Instinctively, he stepped forward off the wall and uncrossed his arms, keeping his hands loose and ready at his sides. Just in case.
The woman dropped her finger but didn’t lose an ounce of vitriol. Her gaze roamed over Logan’s damp, wrinkled shirt and unkempt hair.
Her lip curled in derision. “I won’t have it. My son has soccer practice. I have a dinner date. I have a life!”
She whirled on Schmidt. “You can bet I’ll be demanding a refund and blowing up social media about this. This is the worst service I’ve ever experienced anywhere, in my life!”
“We saw it,” Julio said, attempting diplomacy. “There was a blast, a flash of light—”
“Oh, a flash of light, was it?” the woman snarled. “Next thing you’re gonna start spouting on about aliens.”
The woman and her kid hadn’t even left the auditorium after the blast. She hadn’t left when the building trembled, the shockwave roared past, or when the power went out. She hadn’t seen the windows shatter, the mushroom cloud, or the eerily darkening sky.
She’d simply sat there and waited, expecting the electricity to be restored and her movie—and her life—to continue on as normal.
“America is under attack,” Zamira said solemnly. “At least three bombs have detonated—”
“No one’s attacking America,” the woman huffed. “No one would dare. Besides, even if they did, radiation is a myth. The danger is nothing like the scaremongers claim it is.”
“I can assure you, the danger is very real,” Dakota said through gritted teeth.
“Whatever this—” the woman waved her hand dismissively “—event is, if it’s even real, we’re safest at home. That’s where we’re going.”
“It’s chaos out there.” Dakota’s voice went low and dangerous. “The fallout is still deadly. You’re putting that boy in danger.”
“No one’s gonna tell me how to raise my family. That’s it. We’re outta here. You’ll be hearing from my attorney for harassment, mark my words.”
Dakota moved to stand in front of the woman, her hands balling into fists.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. I’m twice your size, girl. Whatever your game, I’m not playing. I’m going home.”
Dakota didn’t back down. “You go out there, you’re gonna kill your kid, lady.”
Logan wasn’t a man for drama. He preferred a simple life with simple pleasures. When given a choice to get involved or walk away, he walked away ten times out of ten.
And yet—
The frightened gaze of the little boy peering around his mother’s solid thigh wouldn’t let him go. He felt the child’s gaze like twin lasers boring into his soul.
Dakota could take care of herself. He could see it in her stance—feet shoulder-width apart, one leg slightly in front of the other for stability, balanced easily on the balls of her feet, hands loose at her sides. A good confrontational position, but one ready for defense—or offense.
Someone had taught her more than how to survive a nuclear apocalypse. She knew how to fight.
But even the best fighters needed a wingman, someone to have their back. The truth was, he didn’t want that kid going out into the fallout any more than she did.
With a sigh, he strode across the aisle and stood beside Dakota. “Lady, it’s real. Half the people here saw the mushroom cloud for themselves. You see the cuts all over Julio? He got those from the shockwave shattering every piece of glass within miles. Don’t put your boy’s life in danger. Wait even a day at least. Give yourself and him a fighting chance.”
“You’re the one scaring my kid,” the woman snapped. “You can’t keep us here. Let me pass.”
He didn’t move.
“You’re scaring my kid, now. Is that what you wanted?” Her face purpled with anger—and fear. She seized her son’s hand and yanked him against her side.
The boy looked up at him, blinking wide and frightened. His eyes were green, not dark brown. His fine, wispy hair was red like his mother’s—not black and curly, like the hair that framed the face from his worst nightmares.
Logan jerked his gaze away. “No.”
“They’re trying to save your life, that’s all,” Julio said calmly from behind them.
“There’s a few other kids here,” Shay said. “You’re welcome to stay—”
The woman ignored the others and kept her glare trained on Logan. “Then get the hell out of my way.”
“This isn’t right,” Dakota said, her voice shaking.
“Dakota.” Julio touched her arm, his voice soft and pleading. “I think it’s best to let it be.”
Julio was right. The woman wasn’t going to stay unless they bodily restrained her. From the looks on everyone’s faces, no one was ready to go to such an extreme.
Neither was he.
Logan pushed down a prick of guilt. This lady wasn’t his problem. He had enough of his own right now. They all did.
He stepped aside and made a sweeping motion with his hand. “Suit yourself, lady.”
Dakota stood there, trembling, her rigid expression betraying her anger.
But she didn’t try to stop the woman as she stalked past them with a triumphant huff, dragging her son along behind her.
“Don’t go home,” Dakota called to her retreating back. “Travel as far as you can as fast as you can, and go perpendicular to the wind. It’s your only chance.”
The woman said nothing as she disappeared into the darkness, the clang of the doors echoing through the auditorium behind her.
16
Logan
For a long moment, everyone just stood there, staring at each other in shocked silence. Logan wished he were surprised, but he wasn’t.
The world was full of the willfully ignorant. There wasn’t a thing you could do about it. Getting all worked up over them was a waste of time and brain cells.
But that kid…those wide, haunted eyes wouldn’t leave his mind.
“She knows which way to go,” Shay said shakily. “Dakota warned her. Hopefully, they’ll get out okay.”
“No,” Dakota said, her voice sharp as steel, her eyes flashing, “they won’t.”
“Forget her,” Logan said. “They’re beyond our help now, anyway. She made her choice. That’s not on us.”
Dakota shot him a look, but she didn’t argue.
“You were explaining radiation,” Julio said gently. “We still need to know this stuff. Keep going.”
Dakota sucked in a sharp breath. She turned away from the auditorium doors and faced the group. Her hands were still balled into fists at her sides.
“How will we know when it’s safe to go outside?” Julio prompted.
“Okay,” Dakota said. “So, radioactive fallout decays exponentially. The highest hazard from fallout is within the first four to six hours. I believe the worst of it will descend to the ground within twenty-four hours.”
“You believe?” Schmidt scoffed. “How are we supposed to trust you with our lives? You could be making this up, for all we know!”
“She’s right,” Shay offered. “I’m a third-year nursing student at the U. I’m also a registered volunteer first responder. I took a disaster preparedness and response seminar last January. We covered medical responses to nuclear disasters as part of the certification. Risk assessment, decontamination procedures, triage and emergency patient care in the field, et cetera.”
Dakota dipped her chin to acknowledge Shay’s support. “Look, I’m no expert. But someone extremely smart—and well-prepared—taught me what he knew. That knowledge is gonna keep us alive.”
“Bah!” Schmidt sputtered. “You’re both barely out of high school! Just two more millennial morons who think they know everything—”
“Just let them talk,” Logan cut in. What little patience he had was already long gone. “Then you can decide what you want to believe.”
Several people nodded in agreement. Miles folded his arms across his chest. Schmidt shot Logan a look of pure loathing, but he kept his mouth shut.
He didn’t care whether the asshat hated him. He didn’t care whether they all hated him.
“It’s called the seven-ten rule,” Dakota said. “For every seven-fold increase in time after the detonation, there’s a ten-fold decrease in the exposure rate. Or, when the amount of time is multiplied by seven, the exposure rate is divided by ten.
“In a nutshell, in twenty-four hours, the radiation dose will be at ten percent of what it is now. In forty-eight hours, it will be at one percent.”
“So then we can get out of here and find my mom,” Piper chirped. She looked as earnestly hopeful as a lost puppy. “Right?”
Dakota shook her head. “It’s still far from safe. I estimate we’re about a mile and a half from the blast, but we’re downwind, directly in the path of the fallout, which could be as high as one thousand rem an hour right now—”
“What does that mean?” Logan asked. “I flunked high school chemistry.” In reality, he’d dropped out of high school at sixteen, but no one needed to know that.
“A Roentgen is a way to measure the amount of radiation emitted at the moment,” Dakota said. “Rem means ‘Roentgen Equivalent Man.’ Rem measures the amount of radiation that’s present, while the unit of measurement for the dose a person absorbs is called a gray.
“Just remember that rem refers to the amount of radiation in an area, while gray refers to the dose absorbed by a person. 100 rem is equal to one gray. And the exposure is cumulative.”
“And what do the dosages mean?” Julio asked, his brow wrinkling in confusion.
“I know this one,” Shay said. “Between one and two grays the typical person succumbs to acute radiation syndrome, with nausea and vomiting, headaches, and lethargy. Many people can survive lower doses of radiation, but at higher levels, it will kill them.”
“How many people are already dead?” Zamira’s wobbly chin lifted bravely as she stroked her granddaughter’s hair, but tears glistened in her dark eyes. Piper nestled next to her, her head on the old woman’s shoulder, her glasses still crooked on her nose.
“We don’t know,” Julio said. “Tens of thousands. Maybe more.”
“There were three bombs?” Rasha asked.
“That we know of,” Julio said in a strained voice.
Several people wiped away tears. Others stared in numb shock, unable to grasp the magnitude of the atrocity that had overtaken them.
Logan’s mind kept shying away from it, trying to brush the heinous numbers aside, to pretend it couldn’t possibly be this horrific. He forced himself to accept it, to adjust to this new reality as quickly as he could.
“Tens of thousands of people near ground zero will be exposed to fatal doses of radiation,” Dakota said. “Hundreds of thousands more will have to evacuate from their homes due to the fallout. But even after everyone is evacuated, the area will be contaminated.”
Logan found himself leaning forward despite himself
. He might have been a dropout, but he’d always had a keen mind for acquiring valuable information.
Rasha gasped in dismay.
“Rain will wash away contaminated soil within a few weeks or months,” Dakota said, “but urban and suburban areas are a different story. Homes, schools, hospitals, prisons, and factories will be unusable. The government will have to demolish buildings and undertake extensive decontamination measures.”
“That will take years,” Logan said.
For a moment, they all stared at each other, letting the overwhelming horror sink in. The destruction would be enormous, with far-reaching consequences they couldn’t even imagine yet.
“Mother Mary and Joseph,” Julio murmured, crossing himself. “God help us all.”
Zamira fingered a cluster of prayer beads she’d pulled from her pocket. “We should pray for all the lost and suffering souls.”
Prayer had never done anything for Logan. Only one thing worked, though never for long.
That burning urge filled him, a wanting always clawing at his insides, a hissing whisper haunting his every thought.
What he wouldn’t give for a bottle of Absolut vodka or Jack Daniel’s whiskey. Why couldn’t they have found refuge in one of those dine-in, full wine-list cinemas?
Now that would be a fine way to ride out the apocalypse.
17
Eden
Eden pressed her fist to her mouth in terror. She gasped in frantic, silent sobs, her body quaking with tremor after tremor, like the aftershocks of an earthquake.
But this was no earthquake.
The roaring noise had stopped. The shaking had stopped. The light blaring through the cracks in the door frame had faded.
There was only the darkness now. Black so thick and soupy she couldn’t make out her hands in front of her face.
She strained her ears, listening for people, for her foster parent, for someone coming to rescue her. The only sound was the drip, drip, drip of the water in the sink. And the thump of her own heartbeat in her ears.