The highway did not go to the power plant. They had to turn onto a side road. There was an impressive stone guardhouse at the turnoff, and a red-striped gate, like the ones at a railroad crossing. It was lowered to bar the way. They pedaled around it.
The road wound through hillsides carpeted in desiccated grass and wilting yellow wildflowers. There were no homes or businesses near the plant. It was surrounded by hundreds of acres of emptiness in all directions. Steep hillsides and infrequent stands of trees, meadows and dry creeks.
Eventually the road veered down to the tumbled rock shoreline. The view was stunning, but the surf, normally explosive, was gentle, tamed. The road rose and fell, wound back on itself a couple of times, hid behind hills, and then opened on a new panorama of the ocean.
“There’s another security gate up ahead,” Astrid said.
“If there’s a guard there, I’ll kiss him,” Quinn said.
“This is all constantly watched and patrolled,” Astrid said. “They have almost a private army that protects the plant.”
“Not anymore,” Sam said.
They came to a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. The fence extended down to the rocks on the left, and disappeared up into the hills on the right. There was a much more serious guardhouse here, almost a fortress. It looked like it could handle a major attack. The gate was a tall section of chain link that could roll back and forth at the push of a button.
They stopped pedaling and stood looking up at the obstacle.
“How do we get in?” Astrid wondered.
“Someone climbs the gate,” Sam said. “Rock, paper, scissors?”
The three boys did rock, paper, scissors, and Sam lost.
“Dude. Paper? Come on,” Quinn teased. “Everybody knows you go with scissors on the first round.”
Sam scaled the chain link quickly, but the razor wire gave him pause. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around the most troublesome strand of wire. He carefully swung a leg over and yelped as the wire nicked his thigh. Then he was over. He dropped to the ground, leaving his shirt behind on the wire.
He entered the guardhouse. The air-conditioning was on full blast, making him instantly regret the loss of his shirt.
A bank of color monitors showed the road they had just come down, as well as a rotating array of outdoor scenes: ocean and rock and mountain. It also showed several passcard-protected doors to the plant.
In the restroom he spotted an electronic passcard on a lanyard, hanging from a hook. Some guy had been using the can when he disappeared. Sam hung the lanyard around his neck.
In a closet off the main room he found a gray-green military-style uniform shirt, many sizes too large. Against the wall was a locked rack of automatic weapons, machine pistols. The room smelled of oil and sulfur.
He looked for a long time at the guns. Automatic weapons versus baseball bats.
“Don’t go down that road,” Sam muttered.
He left the gun closet and closed the door firmly. But his hand rested on the knob awhile. Then he shook his head. No. It had not gotten to that point.
Not yet.
The force of the temptation made him queasy. What was the matter with him that he had even considered it for a second?
He pushed the button to open the gate.
“What took you so long?” Quinn asked suspiciously.
“I was looking around for a shirt.”
The power plant stood in perfect isolation, a vast, imposing complex of warehouselike buildings dominated by two immense, concrete bell-jar domes.
All his life Sam had heard about the power plant. It seemed like half the people in Perdido Beach worked here. Growing up he had heard the recited reassurances. And he wasn’t afraid of nuclear power, really. But now, seeing the actual plant—a bright, bristling beast crouched above the sea and beneath the mountains—it made him nervous.
“You could pile every house in Perdido Beach into this place,” Sam said. “I’ve never seen it up close. It’s big.”
“It kind of reminds me of when I was in Rome and saw Saint Peter’s, this really big cathedral,” Quinn said. “It’s, like, you know, you feel small looking at it. Like maybe you should kneel down, just to be on the safe side.”
“Stupid question, right, but we aren’t going to get radioactive, are we?” Edilio asked.
“This isn’t Chernobyl,” Astrid said tartly. “They didn’t even have containment towers there. That’s what the two big domes are. The actual reactors are under the containment domes so if anything does happen, the radioactive gas or steam is contained inside.”
Quinn slapped Edilio on the back, fake friendly. “And that’s why there’s nothing to worry about. Except, huh, they call this area Fallout Alley. I wonder why? What with everything being totally safe and all.”
Quinn and Sam knew the story, but for Edilio’s benefit, Astrid pointed at the more distant of the two domes. “See how the color is different, the one dome looks newer? The dome over there was hit by a meteorite. Almost fifteen years ago. But what are the odds of that ever happening again?”
“What were the odds of it happening once?” Quinn muttered.
“A meteorite?” Edilio echoed, and he glanced up at the sky. The sun was well past its high point and settling toward the water.
“A small meteorite moving at high speed,” Astrid said. “It hit the containment vessel and blew it up. Vaporized it. It hit the reactor and just kept going. Actually, it was good it was moving so fast.”
Sam saw the picture in his head. He could imagine the big space rock hurtling down at impossible speed, trailing fire, blowing the concrete dome apart.
“Why is it good that it was so fast?” Sam asked.
“Because it drilled into the earth and carried ninety percent of the uranium fuel down with it into the crater. It pushed it almost a hundred feet down. So they basically just filled in the hole, paved it over, and rebuilt the reactor.”
“I heard a guy was killed,” Sam said.
Astrid nodded. “One of the engineers. I guess he was working in the reactor area.”
“You telling me there’s a bunch of uranium under the ground and no one is supposed to think that’s dangerous?” Edilio said skeptically.
“A bunch of uranium and one dude’s bones,” Quinn said. “Welcome to Perdido Beach, where our slogan is ‘Radiation? What radiation?’”
Astrid led the way. She had visited the plant many times with her father. She found an unmarked, unremarkable door in the slab side of the turbine building. Sam swiped the passcard in the slot, and the door clicked open.
Inside they found a cavernous space with a high ceiling of interlaced I beams and a painted concrete floor. There were four massive engines, each bigger than a locomotive. The noise was incredible.
“These are the turbines,” Astrid shouted over the hurricane howl. “The uranium creates a reaction that heats up water which makes steam, which comes here, spins the turbines, and generates electricity.”
“So, you’re saying it doesn’t involve giant hamsters on a wheel?” Quinn yelled. “I was misinformed.”
“I guess we better look here first,” Sam shouted. He looked at Quinn.
Quinn performed a languid, mocking salute.
They spread out through the turbine room. Astrid reminded them that Little Pete usually wouldn’t come when called. The only way to find him was to look in every corner, every space where a little kid could possibly stand, sit, or hide.
Little Pete was not in the turbine room.
Astrid finally signaled them to move on. After passing through two sets of doors, they could hear normal speech again.
“Let’s go to the control room,” Astrid suggested, and led the way down a gloomy corridor and into a dated-looking control room. It looked like a set from a NASA space launch, with old-school computers, flickering monitors, and way too many panels with way too many glowing lights, switches, and ancient data ports.
There, sitting on the control
room floor, rocking slightly back and forth, playing a muted handheld video game, was Little Pete.
Astrid did not run to him. She stared with what looked to Sam like something close to disappointment. She seemed almost to shrink down a little.
But then she forced a smile and went to him.
“Petey,” Astrid said in a calm voice. Like he had never been missing, like they’d been together all along and there was nothing weird about seeing him all alone in the middle of a nuclear plant control room playing Pokémon on a Game Boy.
“Thank God he wasn’t in with the reactors,” Quinn said. “I was going to say a big N-O to searching that.”
Edilio nodded agreement.
Little Pete was four years old, blond like his big sister, but freckled and almost girlish, he was so pretty. He didn’t look at all slow or stupid; in fact, if you didn’t know better, you’d have thought he was a normal, probably smart, kid.
But when Astrid hugged him, he seemed barely to notice. Only after almost a minute did he lift one hand from the video game control and touch her hair in an abstracted way.
“Have you had anything to eat?” Astrid asked. Then she revised the question. “Hungry?”
She had a particular way of talking to Little Pete when she wanted his attention. She held his face in her hands, carefully blocking his peripheral vision, half covering his ears. She put her face close to his and spoke calmly but with slow, careful enunciation.
“Hungry?” she repeated slowly but firmly.
Little Pete’s eyes flickered. He nodded yes.
“Okay,” Astrid said.
Edilio was inspecting the dated-looking electronics that covered most of one wall. He frowned and wrinkled his brow. “Everything looks like it’s normal,” he reported.
Quinn scoffed. “I’m sorry, are you a nuclear engineer as well as a golf cart driver?”
“I’m just looking at the readouts, man. I figure green is good, right?” He moved to a low, curved table supporting three computer monitors before three battered swivel chairs.
“I can’t even read this stuff,” Edilio admitted, peering closely at one monitor. “It’s all numbers and symbols.”
“I’m going to the break room to find some food for Petey,” Astrid announced. She started to move away, but Little Pete began to whimper. It was the sound a puppy makes when it wants something.
Astrid looked pleadingly at Sam. “Most of the time he doesn’t realize I’m around. I hate to leave him when he’s relating.”
“I’ll get the food.” Sam said. “What does he like?”
“Chocolate is never refused. He…” She started to say more but stopped herself.
“I’ll get him something,” Sam said.
Edilio had moved on to what seemed to be the most up-to-date piece of equipment in the room, a plasma screen mounted on the wall.
Quinn was looking up at the screen as well, rotating slowly in one of the engineer’s chairs. “See if you can get another channel, that one’s boring.”
“It’s a map,” Edilio said. “There’s Perdido Beach. There’s some little towns back in the hills. It goes all the way to San Luis.”
The map glowed pale blue, white, and pink, with a red bull’s-eye in the center.
“The pink is the fallout pattern in case there is ever a release,” Astrid said. “The red is the immediate area where the radiation would be intense. It gets data on wind patterns, the contours of the land, the jet stream, all that, and adjusts it.”
“The red and the pink, that’s the danger?” Edilio asked.
“Yes. That’s the plume where the fallout would be above acceptable levels.”
“That’s a lot of land,” Edilio said.
“But it’s weird,” Astrid said. She guided Little Pete to his feet and went closer to the map. “I’ve never seen it look like that. Usually the plume goes inland, you know, from the prevailing winds coming off the ocean. Sometimes the plume stretches all the way down to Santa Barbara. Or else up across the national park, depending on weather.”
The pink pattern was a perfect circle. The red zone was like a bull’s-eye inside that outer circle.
“The computer’s not getting satellite weather data,” Astrid said. “So it must have reverted to its default setting, which is this red circle with a ten-mile radius, and a pink circle with a hundred-mile radius.”
Sam peered at the map, unable at first to make sense of it. Then he began to locate the town, beaches he knew, other features.
“The whole town’s inside the red zone,” Sam said.
Astrid nodded.
“The red zone goes right to the far south end of town.”
“Yes.”
Sam glanced at her to discover whether she saw what he saw. “It runs right through Clifftop.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “It does.”
“Are you thinking…”
“Yes,” Astrid said. “I’m thinking it’s a pretty amazing coincidence that the barrier seems to line up with the edge of the danger zone.” Then she added, “At least what we know of the barrier. We don’t know that it includes the entire red spot.”
“Does this mean there’s been some kind of radiation leak?”
Astrid shook her head. “I don’t think so. There’d be radiation alarms going off all over the place. But what’s weird is, it’s like cause and effect, only backward. The FAYZ is what cut off the weather data, which caused the computer to default. FAYZ first, then the map goes to default. So why would the FAYZ barrier be following a map whose lines it caused?”
Sam shook his head and smiled a little ruefully. “I must be tired. You lost me. I’ll go find some food.” He headed down the hall in the direction Astrid had indicated.
When he looked back she was standing, staring up at the map, a tight, grim expression on her face.
She noticed Sam watching her. Their eyes locked. She flinched, like he had caught her at something. She put one protective arm around Little Pete, who had buried his face back in his game. Astrid blinked, looked down, took a deep shaky breath, and deliberately turned away.
TWELVE
272 HOURS, 47 MINUTES
“COFFEE.” MARY SAID the word like it might be magic. “Coffee. That’s what I need.”
She was in the cramped, narrow teachers’ room at Barbara’s Day Care, searching the refrigerator for something, anything, to feed a little girl who refused to eat. She had almost fallen into the refrigerator, she was so tired, and then she spotted the coffeemaker.
It’s what her mother did when she was tired. It’s what everyone did when they were tired.
In response to Mary’s desperate, late-night plea for help, Howard had supplied the day care with a single box of diapers. They were Huggies for newborns. Useless. He had sent over two gallons of milk and half a dozen bags of chips and Goldfish. And he had sent Panda, who proved to be worse than useless. Mary had overheard him threatening to smack a crying three-year-old and had shooed him out of the building.
But the twins, Anna and Emma, had come on their own to help out. It wasn’t enough people, not by a long shot, but Mary had been able to get two full hours of sleep.
But then, when she woke that morning—no, it was afternoon, wasn’t it, she had lost track. She was so groggy, she not only had no idea what time it was, for the first few seconds she had no idea where she was.
Mary had never made coffee before, but she had seen it done. With bleary eyes she tried to figure it out. There was a scoop. There were filters.
Her first effort was a long wait for nothing. Only after sitting and staring in a comalike state for ten minutes did she realize she had forgotten to put water in the machine. When she did put the water in, it erupted in a spout of steam. But after five minutes more she had a fragrant pot of coffee.
She poured a cup and took a tentative sip. It was very hot and very bitter. She had no milk to spare, but she did still have some sugar. She started off with two big spoonfuls.
That was
better.
Not good, but better.
She carried the cup back into the main room. At least six kids were crying. Diapers needed changing. The youngest kids needed feeding. Again.
A three-year-old girl with wispy blond hair spotted Mary and came running. Without thinking, Mary reached down. The coffee spilled onto the child’s neck and shoulder.
The girl screamed.
Mary shouted in fear. “Oh, God.”
John came running. “What happened?”
The little girl howled.
Mary froze.
“What should we do?” John cried.
Anna came running, a baby in her arms. “Oh, my God, what happened?”
The little girl screamed and screamed.
Mary carefully sat the coffee cup on the counter. Then she ran from the room and from the school.
She ran weeping to her home two blocks away. She fumbled the door open. She could barely see through her tears. Deep sobs racked her whole body.
It was cool and silent inside. Everything just like it always was. Only so quiet, so quiet that her sobs sounded like harsh, animal sounds.
Mary soothed herself. “It’ll be all right, it’ll be all right.” The same lie she’d been telling the kids. She quieted the racking sobs.
Mary sat at the kitchen table. She laid her head on her arms, intending to cry some more, quietly. But the time for tears was past.
For a while she just listened to the sound of her own breathing. She stared at the wood grain of the table. Exhaustion made it swirl.
It was impossible to believe that her mother and father were not home.
Where were they? Where were they all?
Her bedroom, her bed were just up the stairs.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t go to sleep. If she did, she wouldn’t wake up for hours and hours.
The kids needed her. Her brother, poor John, coping while she freaked out.
Mary opened the freezer. Ben & Jerry’s fudge brownie ice cream. DoveBars. She could eat them and then she would feel better.