by Ryan Husk
“Wait!” Janet screamed. The two men turned to face her. “Wait, isn’t the rain, like, poison?”
“A little maybe, but not much. C’mon, we have to—”
“I…I don’t know. What if we get poisoned, or…?” She shrugged.
Edward sighed heavily. “Janet, it’s fine. A couple drops won’t kill us, okay? But if we stay in here, we’re likely to get drenched. If it worries you that much, take off your shirt and use it as an umbrella above your head. Okay? Now, let’s move.” He opened the door and darted out. He doesn’t even look back at me, she thought, watching him go, with Atlas barking and following him close behind.
Gordon at least unbuttoned his top shirt, and removed it. “Hold it above your head, like this,” he said, stretching it out and making a sad little trampoline above his head. He handed it to her. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“What about you? Don’t you need an umbrella?”
“I’ll be right behind you,” he repeated.
Janet looked out the window, saw the rain coming down in great sheets. The wind had picked up, blowing the rain sideways. It didn’t look any different than normal rain. It wasn’t glowing or smoking, it wasn’t eating away at the concrete like she figured acid rain might. And yet still, she felt convinced that stepping out into it would kill her. Then, she remembered how easily Edward had done it. Janet took one last deep breath, grabbed up her medicine bag, and leapt out of the back seat, holding the shirt above her.
She made the mistake of squinting, as if that would somehow help, and when she entered the warehouse bay she smacked her whole body against a large tractor wheel, spun to the ground, and landed in a growing puddle. Janet screamed. The acid was eating into her skin! It burned! It burned!
Then, a strong arm reached around her waist, lifted her off the ground, and carried her farther into the warehouse. She was still screaming and even kicking. Gordon released her, and she pulled away from him immediately. “Get away! You lied! Help me! Someone help me! I’m on fire!” Her hands were on fire! Her whole body was! It had to be—
That’s when someone slapped her. Janet gasped and leapt back, smacking her back against the side of a riding lawnmower. “Hey!” someone shouted. “Don’t hit her!” It was Margery, coming out of nowhere.
But Edward was in Janet’s face, ready to slap her again. He was standing there, a wad of Janet’s shirt balled in his fist. He now turned his slapping hand on Margery. “Back off,” he said calmly. “Right—fucking—now.” The large woman stared at him, eyes focused like an enraged animal, and her man Marshall stepping in front of her. Gordon was right beside Margery, and looked ready to back her up. Edward looked back at Janet. “You’re not on fire, you just got a little wet.”
“B-but I could f-f-feel it—”
“You felt nothing but fear. You let it creep in, and now it’s got you in its thrall. Now, you listen to me, missy. You’re gonna go with Margery here and walk around those trucks over there,” he said, pointing to the parked Fords. “You’re gonna undress and give her your clothes. We’ll find a faucet somewhere, wash you off, and then find something to dry you off with. I’m not gonna lie, you might’ve been exposed a little, but your flesh isn’t going to fall off, not with that small of a dosage.”
“Wh-what’s gonna happen to m-me?”
“Same thing that’ll probably happen to Colt and Greta over there,” he said. Janet looked where he was pointing, and saw the old couple drenched, already removing their clothes and tossing them to one side. “You guys got a little wet. At most, maybe one or two Gy; might get a little nauseous, might be some vomiting, maybe a headache. Probably will be nothing. Now, go with Margery. Do as I say.”
Janet sniffled a moment, tried to control her shaking. Another blood-sugar drop, no doubt, she thought. Finally, she nodded. Edward stepped aside and let Janet walk over to Margery, who knelt and accepted her with open arms. To Edward, Margery said, “You didn’t have to slap her like that.”
“She was hysterical.”
“Bull crap, she was actin’ like a frightened little girl.”
“Look up the origins of hysterical, from the Latin hystera, and you’ll see that you and I are actually in total agreement.”
Janet looked up at Margery, who bristled. “You’re one o’ them thinks you know everything, aint’cha?” There was the unspoken codicil…you son of a bitch! Then, she looked down at Janet and smiled wanly. “C’mon, sweetie. Let’s get you outta those clothes.”
They started off, but Edward called after them. “Hold up.” He bent down, and picked something up. It was her medicine bag. “Don’t forget this,” he said, handing it to her. Janet had freaked out, and forgotten what was important. She felt ashamed. How easily she had lost her cool. How quickly she had gone from calm acceptance just minutes ago in the back of Edward’s Wrangler to utterly freaking out. She’d always watched those horror movies where people panicked and did something stupid to get themselves killed, rather than run for an obvious exit. She was now forced to admit that she wasn’t above such loss of emotions and control.
Janet accepted the bag, and muttered a thanks perhaps too low to hear. She looked back at all of them as she was led away. Edward had already dismissed her. He was kneeling and rummaging through his go-ready bag, apparently moving along to his next challenge.
* * *
Edward used a towel from his go-ready bag to dry off Atlas. “Hell of a day, huh, buddy?” The dog stood faithfully by his side, grinning happily as he got the rubdown. “You’ve been a good boy through all o’ this. You’ll get two milk bones tonight. Got a few in the kit for you. Would you like that?” Atlas licked his hand.
With that done, Edward took a moment to get a gander at the inside of the warehouse. The ceiling was twenty feet high with steel beams, chains hanging from them on pulleys, likely used to change an engine from time to time. This place looked fit to both store lots of extra shit, and act as a build and repair shop. Parts of it were set up like an auto garage, with pneumatic tools lying about in general disarray. Fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, but they weren’t on at the moment. There were tall, long shelves at the far end of the warehouse, and a forklift that didn’t look like it had seen use since the Clinton era. The air wasn’t stagnant, which meant the doors were frequently left open to let the stuffy air out, though there was the stench of oil and cleaning solvents hanging heavy.
The Geiger counter was inside the bag. Janet had done that much right. Edward stood up, tapped the black button on its top, looked at the screen, and watched it scroll its brief greeting. He tested the settings.
“Edward,” Gordon said, stepping up to him.
“Don’t even wanna hear it, Gord-O,” he said.
“Just gotta say, that was a little harsh. Just putting it out there.”
“Duly noted.”
Edward stepped away from their group. The bikers watched him walk to the edge of the bay, tap a button, and lower the garage doors. He stepped around the puddles of water leaking in, then knelt at one and held out the foot-long analyzer stick, which was connected to the Geiger counter by a thin gray cord. He then dipped the very tip of the stick into the water, and looked at the counter’s screen. He heard scuffling behind him. He turned, saw the O’Hares using some paper towels they had found on a workbench to dry themselves off, and looking pretty frantic. In truth, maybe they ought to be scared.
What Edward had said to Janet about the rain was mostly true. What he had held back for the girl’s sake was the fact that about four or five percent of people with radiation exposure of one or two Gy ultimately die. Everyone in the warehouse had gotten a least a little damp, but it was negligible compared to how badly the O’Hares had gotten soaked. And Janet…she was doing fine until the puddle. Probably fine. At least, as long as she took the iodide pills.
The Geiger counter made a few clicking sounds. Wade stepped over beside him, put an arm against a tractor and leaned. “What’s it sayin’?”
�
��Getting the first readings now, Detective.”
“Ya know, I heard Geiger counters ain’t all that great at detecting radiation in drinking water.”
“This one’s a newer model, it’s got a mini ICPMS setting.”
“Eh…?”
“Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer. Not as good as a big machine version, but it’s a new one outta Germany, does the job well enough.”
Wade nodded. “Ya know, I realize we’re all in strung out shape, but—”
“Don’t really want to hear it right now.”
“Hear what?”
Edward snorted. “Slapping has a long and storied history of getting people to snap out of panic, fear, or a violent spell.” Wade looked like he was about to say something else, but just then the Geiger counter started clicking louder, and the screen started feeding back some information. The biker squatted beside him, and the two of them looked over the readings: 619.6 milliRem (mRem) / 12.5 milliSievert (mSv). “Hmph.”
“Is that bad?”
“Six hundred mRems is about as much radiation a human being naturally absorbs in a year,” he said, standing up. “That’s not bad when meted out over an entire year, but all at once?” He shrugged. “It’s certainly not good, especially when there’s that much in just one puddle of water.” In the silence that passed, they all just listened to the roaring rain on the warehouse’s tin roof. The implications of each raindrop were written on everyone’s face. They could hear leaks drip-drip-dripping in various places all around the building.
Wade sighed. “Jesus. It’s gonna be like Chernobyl out there.”
“After a few heavy rains, sure. The topsoil in this region is completely ruined. Probably the water table, too. Whoever did this didn’t just kick us in the nuts, they stomped our heads in the pavement while we were down, an’ then burned our homes. Kinda like General Sherman did in his March to the Sea.”
Edward shook his head in wonderment.
“Huh, I never really thought of it like that until now. I guess this is the modern version o’ the devastation Southerners felt back then. It must’ve seemed like the end o’ the world when Sherman came through, burning crops and setting fire to Atlanta, destroying the railroads, twisting the train tracks around trees so that the cars couldn’t run. People completely cut off from civilization, from each other, and didn’t even know who won the war, that the war was even over, for weeks or months after. No mail running, no telephones back then. Hospitals destroyed, though they were supposed to be left alone. That’s us,” he said, looking to Wade. “Right now, that’s us. For probably two hundred miles in all directions from Atlanta, nobody knows anything. They don’t know what to do or where to go. They can’t call anybody or get answers from the radio. All of them looking up at that Face.”
He snorted.
“And how many of them truly understand that they’re being irradiated right now? The rain falling on their heads doesn’t smell or look any different than any other rain they’ve smelled, but it’s killing them. How many of them are going to need hospitals, but can’t reach one?”
Wade looked at him a beat. “How bad is it, Eddie?”
Edward walked over to a nearby window, looked out at the angry downpour. The wind was picking up, bending trees and pushing puddles across the pavement. How bad, he says. Does he really wanna know? He looked back at Wade, then gestured briefly at the puddle still gathering water from outside. “Well, Detective, if that little bit there is over six hundred mRems, then I imagine anybody soaked by it will only gain one or two Gy, like Janet and the O’Hares. That is, if they dry off immediately, and don’t get any in their eyes, nose, or mouth.”
“And if they do? If they start drinkin’ the water from their faucets, an’ eatin’ foods not coming out of a can?”
Edward thought for a moment, doing the math, filling in the gaps in his knowledge with approximations, then said, “A month from now, forty or fifty thousand sick with life-altering or life-ending radiation poisoning. That’s if the word starts spreading quickly about the radiation in the rain and soil. Without phones or internet, it’ll take at least that long to get the information out. But a lot of people’s idea of surviving the Apocalypse is to go caveman, grow their own food, hoping to survive the long haul. They’ll eat canned food for a while, but then I imagine some will try the foods grown in their gardens, and when they don’t get immediately sick, they’ll think it’s okay for them and their kids. They’ll eat more and more, slowly increasing the doses of radiation inside their bodies day by day. They’ll eat their cattle, their pigs, whatever animals they have to, and all those animals will have drunk plenty of irradiated water. Also, there’s random exposure, like kids running out into the rain, oblivious, opening their mouths to drink rainwater. Some people’s plumbing will go out on them, and they’ll start collecting rainwater in jugs on their back porch.”
Wade nodded. “So, forty or fifty thousand if the knowledge of radiation gets out as fast as it can. What’s the number if the word doesn’t get out?”
“More like two or three hundred thousand dead inside a year, the number approximately cut in half every year after that.”
Wade blinked. “Jesus. If you’re right, that’s…that’s at least another four hundred thousand people dead inside o’ five years.”
“Yep.”
Edward stared out at the downpour, and Wade stared out with him. After a moment, the big man said, “What is it, Ed?”
Edward knew what he was talking about. He was talking about the Face, the Big Red Eye. “I don’t fucking know, Wade.” Except maybe he did.
“It’s like…somethin’ out of a dream. A face stretched over the whole damn sky.”
Edward nodded, for lack of anything else to say or do. He didn’t like considering what it might be. All his planning and calculations had to do with nuclear winter, Russian attacks, terrorist bombings, World War III. None of his calculations included an actual ecophage.
“Me an’ the boys, we can’t just hop on our bikes after this, can we? Not with that rain liable to come back.”
“No.” He turned to face the two Fords parked just inside the bay doors. “You’ll have to leave your bikes here. We can try to find keys to these trucks, and if we can’t, I believe I can hotwire them. If none of that works, you guys can ride with us, I suppose.” Edward didn’t like that last option, because it meant forging more ties to more people. The bigger this caravan gets, the harder it’s gonna be to drop them if we need to. He looked at the biker. “Ya ready to leave your choppers behind, maybe for good?”
“Jeb won’t like it. Marshall’ll hate it. I imagine Marge will shed a tear or two. Marshall’s Classic was as much a gift to her as it was to himself. A final gift, since…”
Edward looked at him. “Since what?”
Wade’s face was that of a man wrestling with whether or not he ought to spend money his wife told him he couldn’t. Finally, he lowered his voice, and said, “It’s a…well, kind of a private matter. Don’t say anything, but I guess it’s important to know. Eh…I don’t know if you’ve seen her tearin’ up some? Maybe pinchin’ the bridge of her nose?”
Edward had to think about it, but now that Wade mentioned, he believed he’d seen Margery doing that very act when they had stopped in the road to look at the map. He nodded. “I think I caught that, yeah.”
“Yeah, well…” Wade trailed off. Then, he touched his head. “A tumor. Stage four. It’s just behind the ear, in a place where they docs can’t operate. She hasn’t got long.”
“Fuck,” said Edward, now glancing over at the tractor, behind which Margery and Janet were doing the business of cleaning up. He looked back at Wade. “Stage four, you said? What the hell is she doing just walking around? The pain has got to be immense.”
“She’s not supposed to be up and around, but, well, she’s always been strong willed. She’s been in the bed, taking this special pain medication to ease her suffering. Had a doctor coming out to visit her once
a day. Marshall’s been paying for it out of pocket. All they can do is…ya know…ease her into the next world.”
“Jesus.”
Wade shrugged. “Doctors told her to take it easy, but Margery wanted to ride with her Marshall again, wanted him to get that Classic him an’ her were always talkin’ about, wanted to ride it with him a few times before she can’t ride anything. Some days she looks bad, all pale and dull-eyed, but actually most days she looks like she does now, like nothing in the world is wrong. Just some hurtin’, some days lots o’ migraines, but able to get up an’ walk around. Doctors said at her stage it’s rare for people to be up and about, but it happens. Tough girl. A bitch sometimes, but I guess that comes with the territory.”
The downpour intensified, if that could be believed. But Edward’s focus was on Wade’s every word. Indeed, each word now hit with about as much force as each raindrop against the tin roof. Fucking God Almighty, he thought, fighting to hide his feelings on the matter. Not only are we juggling a diabetic, but now a dying woman? He felt like he was developing a migraine himself.
“How long?” he asked.
The biker scratched his voluminous beard and shrugged again. “They gave her a year an’ a half, an’ that was two years ago. Another doctor they visited a month ago gave her eight months, or somethin’ like that. Most of ’em agree it could happen any second now. She’s walkin’ around with a time bomb in her brain, and nobody knows how many seconds are left on the counter.”
Edward didn’t know where to look, so he looked down at his Geiger counter. It had dropped, but not quite to zero. It was still detecting the ambient radiation inside the warehouse, just the usual amounts, nothing too serious.
“What about when we step outta here?” Wade said, taking the subject back to radiation. His eyes had followed where Edward’s had gone. “I mean, there’ll be moisture in the air. And even when the rains are completely gone, won’t there still be radiation in the air?”
Edward nodded. “There will be. And it’ll be dangerous if we were to stick around here a couple of months—even hiding from the rain, there’s the moisture in the air, as you say. We gotta get beyond the roadblocks. We gotta get outside of the range of all fallout clouds. That’s all there is to it. We have to get out of here.”