The Nuclear Catastrophe (a fiction novel of survival) Read online

  A second youth stepped from among the prescription shelves. He, like his partner, carried a sawed-off-shotgun, and like his partner, he too was ablaze from the pharmacist’s stock. “Howie, what a chick!”

  Howie forced the gun deeper into her neck, inching Althea forward. “Yeah, man!”

  The second youth’s eyes rapidly jumped around as they flitted from Althea, to Howie, and back to the spoils in front of him. He wasn’t interested in Althea for long and he rapidly began filling his pockets with capsules as Howie backed Althea against a wall.

  Althea kept her attention on Howie while he drew closer and closer to her. She glanced over at his dirty finger wrapped around the trigger of the gun, as Howie extended his free hand to Althea’s hip and fondled the soft curve.

  She kept her face expressionless. Better not to show fear to the little creep. But, then, neither could she take much more of him. Every muscle in her body was taut with revulsion. Pounding through her brain was the single thought of what she could do to get the muzzle of that gun off her neck.

  His hand started up her back, pulling her nearer to him. Turning her head away, she caught a glimpse of the other youth stealing toward the door. His action was furtive as he cast a look back over his shoulder in Howie’s direction, then darted for the doorway. If she was going to take a chance it was now or never!

  “Look!” she shouted. “He’s leaving!”

  Howie whirled Althea around. “Jimbo! Stop, you son-of-a- bitch!”

  Jimbo whipped his shotgun in Howie’s direction.

  It was obvious he was going to fire. Summoning a surge of energy, Althea sprang out of Howie’s grasp and lunged behind a shelf.

  The first charge was released from Howie’s gun and the front of Jimbo’s face disintegrated into a thousand miniscule pieces of flesh.

  Althea screamed, holding her hands over her ears.

  The second explosion from Jimbo’s gun followed before the first died, almost as an after-shock. The pellets peppered Howie but failed to catch him in the full of its blast.

  By now Althea’s screams had stretched into one long continuous wail. As Howie stumbled toward her, she jumped to her feet and fled around the end of the shelves. There, crumpled on the floor, was the pharmacist, his chest a mass of drying blood. She knew from the glaze of his eyes that he was dead. Leaping his form she swept over him and toward the dying Jimbo. There was no time to question Howie’s intention should he catch her, so Althea charged around Jimbo, leaving him twitching from what must certainly be the throes of death, and sped out the door.

  Running to the curb, she expected to be in her car and driving off before Howie could reach the sidewalk. But the car was gone! In disbelief she hastily scanned the street. She’d parked it there....right in front of the store. She distinctly remembered stopping right in that spot. Then where...?

  She saw the tail of the coupe as it turned a corner at the end of the block. Oh God, now she recalled. She must have left the keys in it.

  Howie was somewhere near. She could hear him lumbering, his yells getting louder as he approached the front of the store. Throwing her head up, Althea began running, knowing her life depended on it. She ran until it hurt to inhale, then blocks later, gasping for air, she slowed to a stumbling walk. Looking back over her shoulder, she realized that not only was Howie nowhere to be seen but she had actually been running in the opposite direction from home. Grimly she altered her course.

  What could be done now, without her car? They were stranded as surely as if they were on an island, she and her aged parents. “Damn!” she exclaimed. “Damn this stinking city...damn this whole mess where a car is the difference between....oh, damn!” She lowered her head and increased her pace.

  Chapter Six

  Ben stood, squinting into the sunlight, as he tried to orient his thoughts. The light lacked intensity as it filtered through the haze, and he decided it must be early afternoon.

  His mind was a jumble. He had struggled to the freeway expecting to be immediately loaded into an automobile and driven to safety. Instead, he had found the major artery completely devoid of vehicles. Evidence of the morning traffic lay in twisted clusters. Although the vehicles had obviously contained people at the moment the tremendous force had hit the machines, there were no signs of life now. Bodies, yes, but no living persons were in the vicinity of the gnarled wrecks. It was evident to him that the traffic had been blown off the highway at the moment of impact. Survivors must have somehow straggled from the region—provided there were survivors.

  Painfully, doggedly, he once again started the long trek toward home. It seemed hours that he’d been pushing his aching body forward. There had been periods when his mind had momentarily blacked out, shutting out his anguish; then he’d emerge from the mental darkness, feeling his strength somewhat renewed. Gathering himself, he continued to push forward, slowly, and each moment the searing pain renewed itself.

  He tried mentally blocking out the agony, but that didn’t work. With each step a sharp jolt of pain would shoot through his chest, setting off another tiny explosion of misery. Each swing of the leg was becoming more and more difficult until finally he stopped. Maybe it would be easier to simply lie down and wait. For what, though? To die? Thoughts like this only deteriorated what little will he had left. And will he needed. There was one place that promised peace and comfort to Ben at this point; it was home.

  Home. He set his feet determinedly in motion once again. Home and Sara. The beautiful, soft Sara. He knew his thoughts were fragmented and rambling. His image of Sara as he’d left her this morning—it was this morning, wasn’t it?—suddenly gave way to his childhood:

  “Benny! Benny!” called his mother from the back porch. He sat high up in the oak tree, secure and safe; but he detected the irritation that crept into her voice. “Benjamin Harrington! You get in here right this minute!”

  He flattened himself out on the floor of the tree house lest she come into the yard and glance upward at his hideaway. He pressed closer to the planks as she called out once more. The humiliation, the shame of it. He had been in the bedroom and she had simply opened the door and walked in while he stood in front of the dressing mirror. It wasn’t enough that he should be caught admiring his naked body, but that he was handling the pink turgid penis....

  “Benjamin!” she’d screamed at him. “Quit that, you nasty boy!”

  He’d stared at his mother with fright.

  “Don’t you know you’ll go crazy if you do that?” She’d reached out and slapped him on the cheek.

  The sting of her hand had sent him dashing past her and into the bathroom where he hurriedly dressed. The pain wasn’t erased by her saying through the door that she was sorry she’d hit him. It wasn’t the smack that really hurt; it was having his mother find him naked and playing with himself....the awful shame and guilt stunned him.

  Clothed, he’d opened the door and run around her arms and out of the house. Would she ever forgive him? Would he always be a nasty boy to her?

  The incident was never mentioned by her again. But she’d changed, he knew that. The old closeness between the woman and her child had gone....

  “Yes, Mr. Harrington?” The professor smoothed his goatee as he stood over Ben’s desk.

  The words didn’t come easily. He’d thought he was prepared to do the problem but the formula had escaped him—it was completely out of his memory. Ben gulped. “I can’t seem to figure this out.”

  “Obviously,” smirked the professor. “Mr. Harrington, have you considered that calculus may not be your cup of tea?”

  Ben was embarrassed. The whole class laughed at him....

  Ben’s foot connected with a large rock, causing him to stumble, then sprawl in the hot sandy soil. He lay there for what seemed minutes. Everything was swimming before his eyes. At last the blurred vision returned to normal, and he rose to continue the slow trek home.

  It was nearing dusk as Ben detoured through an open field that would shorten th
e route to his house. He could see it now....in the distance, on a street that was strangely empty. The last hundred feet separating him from the sanctuary could have been a mile until he heard her scream.

  He knew his wife’s voice well, and that was Sara. Sara screaming. Pushing thoughts of his own agony aside, he summoned his last vestige of adrenalin and broke into a stumbling rush toward the house. Reaching it, he burst through the door to the inside.

  Sara was fighting madly, twisting her slim pale body away from a man, as she desperately tried to rip away the burlap bag he held in his grasp. With a swift chopping blow, the man’s fist smashed into the side of her head, snapping it backward. But still she held onto the bag. He lurched toward the fireplace, the young woman attached to him and screaming uncontrollably with fear. His hand then closed around the handle of one of the fire tools.

  Ben saw the metal poker lifted into the air, poised over his wife’s head; he saw the cords of muscles standing out in the man’s arm, ready to unleash their power into her frail body.

  Reaching blindly, Ben felt his fingers on the heavy ceramic vase which adorned the entrance of the house. With a strength that he had never before possessed, he raised the vessel threateningly and squawked in a coarse voice, “Drop it, you bastard!” His voice had an effect.

  The man dropped the bag, allowing its contents of silver flatware and rings to spill on the floor as he turned to face his challenger. Standing between him and the doorway was a hideous figure of a man—one arm pulled close to his chest and the other suspending an enormous vase. The lower part of Ben’s left ear was connected to his scalp by only a thick slice of tissue, and the skin of his face was a meshwork of wet, bloody cuts. The eyes of the lone survivor of White Water were black balls of hatred set within two dark cavities.

  With a darting glance to the woman, the thief raised the tool even higher and began a menacing stalk toward Ben. As he neared the ragged, bruised form, he began to execute a series of half steps, feinting first to the right, then to the left.

  Ben stood motionless, moving nothing but the slender threadlike muscles that permitted his eyes to follow the other man.

  Guessing as to the weakness of his opponent, the thief pulled the long poker to the apex of the arch, and rushed straight at Ben.

  Delaying until the last fraction of the second, Ben thrust his body aside and sent the massive vase crashing into the temple of the man. A dull thud blended with the cracking of pottery, drowning out a subtler splintering that occurred in the plate-like bone that had once covered the man’s brain.

  Reeling, the thief fell against the wall, then slowly sank to the floor. He was dead before his head touched the carpet.

  Across the room, collapsed in a corner, was Sara. Her eyes were wide with fright, with bewilderment, with surprise. Cowering, her dress disheveled from her struggles, she stared at the mangled and bruised man still standing in the doorway. Before making any movement, she asked with uncertainty, “Ben? Ben? Is that you?”

  He didn’t answer at once, but continued to stand, looking across at her.

  Suddenly, Sara realized. “Ben! Ben!” she wailed, as she started in a rush toward him.

  Throwing up his hand he shouted at her. “No! No, Sara. Stay away from me!” His outburst halted her flight.

  “Oh, Ben. Oh, my God. I thought you were dead. Oh darling, I don’t see how....” She reached in anguish for him.

  He pulled away from her searching arms. “Sara, don’t come any closer! You must not touch me!”

  She paused, obviously torn between the desire to touch him and confirm the truth that he still lived, and the urgency in his voice to obey his order. Night was falling, but even in the near darkness she had seen the condition of his ravaged form. “What can I do? Ben, oh Ben, what can I do to help you?”

  Ben’s last surge of strength to protect his wife had drained the remainder of his energies. A wave of weakness washed over him; yet he knew there was still more to be done. His clothing and skin had received over nine hours of radioactive fallout, and he was an intense threat to Sara. He needed to think, but his mind wasn’t working well. He hadn’t considered what would happen once he reached home.

  “Sara, stay away. It’s not safe for you to touch me.” He made a hesitant movement, then mumbled, almost to himself, “I guess... the dust...wash as much of the dust off as possible.”

  Dust particles in the air absorbed radiation and Ben was covered with a visible layer of grayish dust. But washing would only remove the surface matter; nothing could be done to remove the irradiation he’d already received to his tissues. Some of that would be with him longer than he could hope to live. He knew his chances of survival were slim.

  Ben walked waveringly through the house and out the rear entrance. Going to the far corner of the lot, he carefully removed his shirt, tearing it away from the shattered arm, and then the remainder of his clothing. After he had dropped the garments, he returned to the house. He could see the stranger still folded on the floor of the foyer as he groggily felt his way into the bathroom.

  Sara already had the shower running, and he stepped beneath it. Contact of the warm water on abraded skin caused him to gasp in pain. But it was nothing to compare with the hurt that followed with the thick laying of soap, the soap that was essential for thorough cleanliness. He ground it under his fingernails and into the tiny crevices of his body. Finding himself too weak to stand, Ben dragged a small stool into the shower and sat under the running water, hoping against his better judgment that the water would purify him.

  Sara, still hurt and frightened, eased herself down on the tile and leaned against the outside of the shower door. She needed to be near him after this long, horrifying day. Maybe he’d call her for aid—maybe he’d collapse. At any rate, she’d be within arm’s reach of him. The warm steam seeped over the door and saturated her clothing with moisture, but she waited patiently for almost an hour.

  She hadn’t learned to share the Californians’ inordinate calmness about earthquakes. Every tremor, no matter how inconsequential, sent a wave of fear through her—as had the one this morning. When Ben was with her it wasn’t so bad. He’d laugh and hold her close until the shaking ended. But today she’d been alone, writing a piece for his alumni newsletter, when the earth began shifting. She’d forced herself to remain at her writing table through the ordeal. And it had ceased shortly.

  Then, being too unnerved to continue, she had gone onto the patio and gazed out at the Pacific. It was a windless morning; the ocean was glassy calm. In all, the thick haze and stillness seemed to cast an ominous note over the day. The air had grown depressively heavy, she’d observed, and was about to return to the inside when the loud boom rocketed off the canyon walls below the house. At that sound an icy shiver had run the length of her body, raising goose bumps in her skin.

  How had she known? Was there some mystical, other sense that flashed the warning to her? She was no believer in mystical powers and yet, as soon as the thundering racket had sounded, she somehow had sensed that this was the culmination of her most dreaded fear, that the sound was somehow connected with White Water. She had immediately run to the telephone and dialed the facility. For the first time, ever, the call did not go through. Then she knew.

  It had taken her less than five minutes to confirm the awful truth. A helicopter unit patrolling freeway traffic had witnessed the destruction of the plant—the news was broadcast immediately by emergency frequency. Then units were dispatched to broadcast from loudspeakers before they abandoned the task and the drivers fled the area as best they could. The lack of electricity downed the cell phone towers and internet servers.

  Distraught and believing Ben could never have escaped, Sara had thrown herself onto their bed and wept until there were no more tears to come. She had gone through the remainder of the day much like a zombie. With no one to talk to, and the media broadcasting down, she had avoided considering what was to become of her....until the gardener, the thief, had slid surrept
itiously into the house.

  The shower stall opened and Ben stepped out. His cuts had turned pink and were curled at the edges; his skin was wrinkled and logged with water. With the grime removed, a deep red imprint of his dark necktie was embossed down the length of his chest. The pattern of his belt buckle was burned into his abdomen. Radiation damage was grossly evident.

  “Ben?” asked Sara, shaken. “Is it all right for me to touch you now?”

  Ben shook his head from side to side. “I don’t think so.” He dragged himself into the bedroom and gingerly lowered himself onto the bed. “It’s best if you don’t—for your own sake.”

  She hastened to him. “Don’t you think we ought to try to get you to a hospital?”

  He stared at her for a long moment before replying, slowly, “Morning will be soon enough, Sara. There’s no rush now. What’s a broken arm in comparison with the other?” He hesitated. “What’s it been like since the reactor blew?”

  She sat down near him, holding out a glass of juice she had prepared earlier. “Terrible.” Then she started telling him the story as she held the glass to his lips.

  “None of the stations from Los Angeles are broadcasting?” he asked, refusing more than a sip of juice and weakly stretching out on the coverlet.

  “No. But with no electricity we can't even get the distant ones. Everything I’ve learned has come from a van broadcasting over a loud speaker.”

  “Are they giving instructions for evacuation?” he asked.

  She nodded in assent. “But we can’t leave here, Ben. We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

  Ben lay quietly on the bed. “You will have to leave here, Sara... without me.”

  She reacted instinctively. “No! I’m not going to leave you.” She reached out and wiped a wisp of dark hair off his forehead. “I’ll never understand how you could have possibly survived the....that force that destroyed the plant.”