Chapter 12

The bombs exploded in Chicago were conventional bombs fueled with chemical explosives. Even without the radiation of the atomic weapons used elsewhere, the damage was tremendous. O'Hare ceased to function when its runways were blocked with wrecked planes, or were cut where they passed over the I-190 access roads. Midway was closed by hundreds of commandoes who suddenly appeared spraying machine gun and rifle fire at anyone who moved.

Interstate bridges were collapsed, killing some and trapping hundreds of thousands of others in a city now controlled by the thugs who thumbed their noses at the strict gun control laws. Those few law abiding citizens who had guns hidden did their best to escape, but the roads not blocked by rubble were blocked by snipers, or squads of commando-like irregulars.

In New York their job was easier. Cut the bridges, block the tunnels, and three-and-a-half million people are trapped on Manhattan Island. Brooklyn disappeared in the lurid flash of the bomb that destroyed the Navy Yard. Kennedy, Laguardia, and Newark Airports followed O'Hare, and the story was repeated from Boston to Miami, Seattle to San Diego, and from Charleston to San Francisco.

He saw the gallon jar tip from its precarious perch on the high shelf and start its slow motion plunge to earth. The label of the glass container burned into the retina of his eyes and forced the premonition of disaster to the forefront of his brain. Phosphorus. A useful element when combined with others to create organo-phosphates, but in its pure form a deadly commodity that burns with a vengeance on contact with simple air. He dove below the level of the lab tables and scampered into the foot well farthest from the descending bomb. He struggled and whimpered his way into a corner, curling into a fetal knot of fear born agony. The muted crash and roar of the explosion shook even the heavy bench where he sought shelter, and screams filled the air as unseen others were consumed by the elemental flames. The flames gained substance, and took the form of questing fingers reaching to touch, and grasp, and pull him into the inferno, striving without surcease to devour all he was and all he ever would become. Closer they came, and further into the corner he tried to force himself, away from the fire-filled maw of heat who recognized him and called his name.

" Rafe. Rafe. "

The vocal tones so sweet, so inviting, surrounding him with requests, beseeching him to come, to relax, to allow his fear to recede in the flaming arms of oblivion.

" Rafe. Wake up. It was just a sonic boom or something. Rafe. Please wake up. Rafe."

He shook his head to brush the last vagrant webs of sleep from his mind. Eyes slitted against the harsh glare of the sun streaming over the parapet walls, he shook his head again. He knew it had been a dream and he was not in danger from the bright phosphoric fires.

" What happened? Where... where am I, and who are y... Oh, Sue. Jesus. I don't think I have ever had a nightmare like that before. " Again he shook his head to further brush the nimbus of sleep from his senses. " I guess I fell asleep. Is there any more coffee left down stairs? " Then he glanced at his wristwatch, " Or should I ask if all of the coffee has boiled away? "

He chuckled quietly and was pleased to see the light come back into Sue's green eyes. " How is our patient? "

" He is resting quietly. He even slept through the sonic boom that shocked me out of my skin, and sent you into your nightmare."

" Good. Let's go on down. I could use a cup of coffee. "

He watched her short blonde hair disappear into the darkness of the access well before he remembered he had left his rifle propped against the parapet wall. He turned, stepped twice toward the M-1 carbine and stopped.

" I'll be a son-of-a-bitch. Sue. Sue! " he almost shouted. "Come back up here."

" Rafe? I just climbed down. What is it? "

He stepped quickly to the carbine and turned his back on the rising ball of luminescing gases. " I'll show you from down there. "

His voice, now lower in register than before, wore an ominous presence of its own as he slung the M-1 over his sagging shoulder and turned Sue toward the window in the northwest wall. " There is no way you will believe me if I tell you. So I am going to show you. Stay calm, and don't worry about what's going to happen now."

She creased her brow with questioning lines as the large man, whom she knew to be a gentle man, bruised her upper arms with the intensity of his grip. He turned her toward the shuttered window, calmed her, and opened it. She looked at first for people, because she thought the madmen of the morning had returned but then noticed a strange cast to the sky, and the puffs of spritely cloud. A reddish orange, belonging in a beautiful sunset and not in the roiling black of the cloud rising to the west, was still spreading from a tall column of the same black, orange and red. Still in its infancy, a towering inferno formed a shape at once familiar, and strange. A shape she recognized outwardly, yet vehemently denied within. A thing of nightmares springing from the depths of an evil imagination. She turned to the solidly real figure next to her as the rest of the world wavered in and out of focus. He nodded a confirmation of the most terrible of all fears come true. Back to the spreading mushroom cap she turned, still attempting to deny the truth, seeking to wake from this dream as she had awaken Rafe from his. " No." she whispered, " No, No. " but still denial failed. " NO. NO. PLEASE GOD NO. No. no." the last a rending sob breaking through the pain-filled sleep of the youngest.

" Hey, what's wrong with Sue?" came the question directed at Rafe as he lowered a sobbing Susan Hudson to the wilderness mat spread close by their injured companion. " What's going on? Ohh." Robby's movement pulled his features tight with pain.

" Robby, I don't know exactly what is going on, but some sort of nuclear bomb has destroyed Texarkana. There is a good possibility we will get a lot of fallout very soon. I'm going to need your help Robby. I need you to do some things in here while I go around and try to seal this garage off from any dust which might fall. I've no idea what the prevailing winds are, but there is no chance, this close to the blast, we would be missed because of blow-over. We need to be real careful because until I can put together some sort of radiometer we won't know how bad it is going to be. Stay put and try to calm Sue down, because we will need to work together if we expect to survive this. Can you handle that, or do you need me to stay for awhile? " The last was said in a tone which gave the younger man strength. It was obvious by his inflection that Rafe would be willing to stay, wanted to stay, but needed to build his device before he too capitulated to the fear he knew Robby was experiencing as well.

" I'll see what I can do for her, you do what you can about the rest. If there is something else I can do from here tell me. "

The young man's voice was steady as he offered Rafe his assistance, but his fear was evident in the tears coursing through freshly hewn lines of worry.

There wasn't a lot Rafe could do, but he knew he must do something if they were to live. His main concern was fallout, the invisible killer that reaches through walls and does its damage in inches. He mentally kicked himself again for not looking ahead to what was almost inevitable, a nuclear war.

" Well it's no use kicking yourself over might have beens. Sure you're a nuclear engineer. So what? You are still subject to the same natural laws as every other human on the planet. You are still going to be just as dead as those two scum you killed earlier today, unless, yeah and maybe even if you do think of something. But for Christ's sake if you find out you are going to die, at least you'll be ahead in the game. You'll know something more than you do now."

He paced back and forth in the evermore confining space of the enclosed garage. He looked through the shelves of cans and boxes filled with the junk that always accumulates in any often used storage area. Much of it was clutter, but there were three large cardboard cartons arrayed against the wall that piqued his curiosity. The one closest to the door was half-filled with glass bottles and jars, ranging in size from spice bottles to three liter wine bottles. The second contained plastic milk jugs and two liter soda bottles, while the third was two-thirds filled with an assortment of cans including many beer and malt liquors. Rafe puzzled over the contents momentarily, then completed his circuit. He felt something was missing, and there was something out of the ordinary about how things were stored, but those thoughts were the merest tendrils in the convoluted skein of emotions and thoughts through which he trudged.

" Robby, whose place is this? Didn't you say you know the people who live here."

The youngster had moved around to cradle Sue's head on his uninjured thigh.

" Shh. Yes sir. Mr. Hardesty, one of the big wigs at the bank, just moved out here a couple of months ago. I know him because I used to ride over this way on the weekends. He had me check up on things for him before the house was built. "

The last comment brought Rafe's flagging attention back to what the boy was saying, " He asked you to keep an eye open and check on things, before the house was built. What do mean?"

" Well, he and another man did all the digging for the septic tank and the house slab a couple of years before he actually built the house. They did a lot of work with a back hoe. Anyway, they spent most of a month out here, or the other man spent almost a month out here, digging and leveling out the foundation and all. I think they did something to the creek over there too, because it stayed muddy for a couple of weeks toward the end of the summer."

" Have you ever been in the house here?"

" Well, sort of. I walked through it a couple of times, before they got the bricks up, but I haven't been in since they finished. Why?"

" I don't know Robby. I just feel like there is something in here that doesn't belong, and something else should be here, but isn't. I don't know."

Rafe wandered again around the open areas of the garage finally stopping at his daypack. He poked aimlessly through the contents taking out the freeze-dried foods, the coffee and other camp supplies from the large body of the pack. Then replacing them in a slightly different order. He did the same to the side pockets and had pulled three paperback books from the front pocket when he stopped, and picked up the book he had just laid aside.

" I knew it. I knew it. "

" What did you know?"

" I knew I had what I needed. Here I am sweating not having a radiation meter, or any of the tools to build a good one, when I don't need a radiometer. All I need is an electroscope. "

" A what?"

" An electroscope. A way to measure the ionizing radiation. "

" Mr. Simpson, I know radiation is dangerous, but how can you measure it without something like a Geiger Counter? "

" I'm not going to take the time right now to explain it, Robby. Give me a minute to refresh my memory on what I'll need to build it, and I'll let the book explain. Dean Ing will do a lot better than I could, and with you studying the subject too we'll be able to help each other build, and maintain it. "

" OK. "

Robby watched as Rafe eased his bulk into an Indian squat and opened the paperback novel. The brightly colored cover had a picture of a large man, a leopard-like cat, and some sort of a vehicle. In the distance, partially covered with the title PULLING THROUGH, was a squat mushroom of black, yellows, and reds. He mentally questioned how much useful information could be contained in a book with the words Science Fiction printed on the binding, but dismissed the thoughts as Sue stirred from her daze.