Chapter 19

By Thursday, Mike’s forecast of a steadily rising UV index proved remarkably accurate. Students, teachers, and soldiers alike developed unexpected sunburns from prolonged exposure to the midday sun, and even Linda, who still publicly rejected his dire predictions of global catastrophe, restricted outdoor time for the students to early mornings and late afternoons.

Charmagne and her squad dug eight new graves for the remaining members of Chapman’s unit, and six more girls, who succumbed to radiation sickness, bringing the total number of dead to thirteen. Over two dozen students, plus PFC Skansi, remained in the trauma ward. Of those, two thirds were deemed terminal, with only weeks to live. The rest were given a fifty percent chance to survive.

Mike and Marcus worked together to estimate the dosage of radiation each student received, by graphing the severity of their symptoms against the amount of protection they had, based on their known locations on campus when the gamma-ray burst occurred, then compared the resulting scatter plot to a table of dose effects they had access to on Mike’s computer. Although highly qualitative, their model correlated well enough with the observed results that Kali was able to use it as a rough guide to help prioritize treatments and refine her prognoses.

The haphazard sleeping arrangements had also been sorted out, but only after much heated debate, when Kali suggested to Linda that she open up the guest rooms in her spacious house for use by the homeless faculty members. Linda made up a litany of excuses about why this was a terrible and unworkable idea. It was too far away from the students. She didn’t have enough spare beds. The rooms were packed to the ceiling with items in storage.

The matter was finally put to rest when Linda took it upon herself to rearrange the entire dormitory, just so she wouldn’t have to share her home with anyone else. Overton House had thirty-one double bunk beds, distributed between eight bunk rooms, across four floors. Nearly all of the sick or deceased students had been residents of either the second or third floors, so Linda consolidated their healthy bunkmates into the three rooms on the third floor, freeing the three on the second floor for use by the faculty.

Mike shared a room with Marcus, Theresa and Rachel shared another, and Renata took the third. Due to her vital role as the lead medical professional, Kali was allowed exclusive use of the dormitory supervisor’s bedroom, so that she could remain close to her patients at all times.

This arrangement proved convenient for Kali and Mike to meet up in her room for frequent, stress-relieving fucks. If one of them had a particularly hard shift in the trauma ward, or if a student passed away, they would silently communicate to the other that they needed them right then and now.

The sex they had was both urgent and efficient. Once inside the room, they stripped and got right to it. There was never any foreplay. No kissing or fondling or oral. All of that took way too long, and was completely unnecessary. One was always ready to get fucked by the other, and all they really wanted was orgasmic release as quickly as humanly possible.

Mike learned that Kali preferred to lie on her back, with her knees pulled back as far as they would go, and be fucked that way. She told him that being on top, or bent over, was often painful because of the weight of her breasts. He was fine with that. With her legs pulled back, he could drive himself more deeply inside of her, and rub his pelvis against her rather prominent and sensitive clit. He liked to watch the evolution of her anguished expressions as he brought her closer and closer to her orgasm.

He always came inside of her. She demanded it, and the mere act of it usually brought her to a swift orgasm herself. Apparently, being creampied drove her wild. After the first time, he confessed to being worried about impregnating her, but she told him not to worry about that. As a pharmacist, she had absolute control over that aspect of her biology. So he did what she asked, and filled her pussy with his cum.

When the deed was done, which usually took less than five minutes, and never more than fifteen, they cleaned up, quietly dressed, and then separately left her room to go about their business. Mike insisted they keep their arrangement a secret. The last thing they needed was to make an already high-stress situation even more volatile by sprinkling judgment and jealousy into the mix.

Their meetups happened with increasing regularity, however, and each new hookup increased the odds of discovery. But they couldn’t help themselves. At first, they did it because it helped them decompress and get through the day but, increasingly, they did it for no other reason than it felt good to fuck and get fucked. For the sheer pleasure of it.

It was, therefore, no surprise when they were eventually caught.

–--

In what he believed to be a colossal waste of both time and fuel, Sgt. Fulton Chapman led the small convoy of National Guard vehicles on a route drawn up by Staff Sgt. Pollard. The mission was simple: to settle, once and for all, the question of whether a high-altitude nuclear detonation could have been responsible for Sunday’s event.

Every eyewitness interviewed about the event agreed on two important facts. One: the strange, bright light appeared in the northeastern sky, at an altitude of fifty to seventy-five degrees above the horizon. Two: there was one, and only one, light observed. A single blast.

The destructive radius of a nuclear weapon is immense, but not infinite. It stood to reason that the farther southwest they traveled, the less evidence of radiation sickness they should find. At a distance of forty miles, not even the largest weapons in any known arsenal should have been able to cause damage. Therefore, whatever they found in Waynesville would tell them everything they needed to know about Mike’s hypothesis.

It didn’t help matters at all that Cpl. Ibarra had completely bought into the science teacher’s wild theory, hook, line, and sinker, and wouldn’t shut up about it the entire journey.

“I’m telling you, Sarge, my boy Mike’s been spot on about everything so far. Everything, man. It’s fucking spooky, is what it is. Did you see all those charts and graphs he and that other egghead put together? Had all these sick ass equations on it and shit. And you heard what he said about the ozone layer and ions and all that. I’m just saying, Sarge, it doesn’t make any fucking sense to me why you’ll listen to everything else he has to say, but not this.”

“No one can be right about everything, all the time,” Fulton said. “Not even your boyfriend. Don’t get me wrong. I respect the guy. A lot. He helped us out when he didn’t have to. But, come on. A laser gun from outer space? Really?” He shook his head. “And you heard what he said in that meeting. The arrow of Asterix.” He wiggled his fingers in the manner of a voodoo priest. “Are you fucking kidding me? The guy spent way too much time in Hollywood dropping acid with script writers, if you ask me.”

“Asterius,” Ibarra corrected. “Not Asterix. Mike says it means ‘starry’ and is the name of the Minotaur from Greek mythology. Now tell me that’s not the perfect name for a star in the Taurus constellation.”

“My old man used to drive a Taurus,” Fulton mused. “Biggest piece of shit car of all time. You wanna know what happened when it finally exploded?”

“Enlighten me.”

“Well, it sure as shit didn’t shoot a goddammed fucking laser beam!” Fulton howled, slapping the steering wheel and doubling over in laughter.

Ibarra turned his head away to face the road. “Funny.”

Fulton brought himself under control and wiped his eyes. “Look, just don’t get all butthurt when we get there, and everyone’s hanging out in their backyards, smoking ribs and playing cornhole, okay?”

At least the trip to Waynesville wouldn’t be a complete boondoggle. They would pass several small communities along the way, and get a better sense of the blackout’s extent. Even if the residents were unharmed by the bomb’s radiation, they would most likely still be without power. From everything he’d heard about high altitude detonations, the resulting EMP might well have knocked out power from New York to Jacksonville.

Fulton exited the interstate onto US 74. They were only six miles from Waynesville now, but Staff Sgt. Pollard wanted them to make a stop along the way.

“Where does the map say that hospital is?” Fulton asked.

Ibarra unfolded the old Rand McNally paper map and traced his finger along their route. “Up ahead, about two mikes. South side.”

As Fulton approached a spot on the highway that would give them a view of the regional medical center’s sprawling campus, he slowed down and both men turned to look.

“Holy shit,” Fulton said under his breath

A veritable encampment had sprung up around the multistory hospital. Thousands of sleeping bags and camping tents filled the wide open lawns and lined the surrounding hillsides. Municipal vehicles, their emergency lights flashing, blocked access from every road leading in, supported by heavily armed police. Giant white tents stood in the middle of the hospital’s parking lot, each with a long line of people sprouting from its entrance.

Fulton pulled over onto the shoulder, followed by the deuce and the International.

“I guess that answers the question,” Staff Sgt. Pollard said when the four guardsmen gathered together on the side of the road, squinting against the bright sun at the spectacle on the other side of the highway. “We gotta be over thirty miles from Asheville by now. At least forty from that school. Ain’t no fuckin’ way a bomb did this, I don’t care how big it was. No fucking way. And if it weren’t a bomb, then what the fuck was it, Corporal?”

“A motherfucking arrow from space, Staff Sergeant,” Ibarra said.

“A motherfucking arrow from space is right,” she agreed, then turned to face her squad. “I’ve seen enough. We’re going to one-eighty back to the HHQ to resupply with every fucking thing the deuce will carry. Then we’re going to hightail it back to the school.

“That teacher’s been dead on the money about every fucking thing so far which, in my book, makes him the single best source of intel we got. So I’m not letting him, or that doctor friend of his, out of my fucking sight. If this really is the end of the world, then we need to do everything in our power to secure those assets. We clear?”