(Wrath-06)-Smoke & Dust (2012) Read online

  Sam didn’t answer. A long silence filled the room.

  “They say they’re evaluating the situation and expect to make progress very soon in restoring normal services,” Bono concluded.

  Sam watched him carefully. “You surely don’t believe that?”

  Bono looked away and thought again. “Electromagnetic pulse isn’t something I know a lot about, other than the basic stuff they teach us. I remember one thing, though: It becomes a vicious cycle of destruction. What few basic capabilities or electro-infrastructure does survive is quickly overwhelmed. It becomes swamped and soon fails. Yes, I think we’ll rebuild, it’s not impossible, but it will take months, likely years, and meanwhile everyone has to rely and live on what they can provide for themselves. Which, if you understand America, isn’t a lot.”

  Sam nodded slowly. “So what do we do?”

  Bono stood. “First, we’ve got to get in contact with our unit. As you know, a majority of critical military command, control, communications, and computers are hardened against an EMP. The military is the one thing that isn’t going to crumble, at least not right away.”

  “So what then?”

  “How far is it to Fort Belvoir?”

  “I don’t know, maybe eighteen miles.”

  “Is that the closest army installation?”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  Bono reached for his backpack. “All right, Cherokee, that’s where we’re heading. We gear up, take what we’ll need from your house, then head out. Eighteen miles. We can be there by late afternoon if we run.”

  Sam stood and looked around the empty house. “I guess we don’t see our families, then.” He said it as a statement, but he meant it as a question, though he pretty much knew what Bono was going to say.

  “I don’t know,” Bono surprised him. “Everything is suddenly pretty crazy. I don’t really know what to expect now. But I do know this. I’ve been away from my family for more than a year. I’ve been home a total of three weeks in twenty-two months. So I’d better have a chance to go home and check on them or I’m going to be one unhappy soldier. Low morale isn’t even going to begin to describe what I’ll be feeling then.”

  “Roger that, dude. Same for me. My family is out there somewhere. I’ve got to find out how they are.”

  Bono walked into the kitchen. “Let’s pack up anything we can carry that’s not going to spoil.” He opened the fridge. It was already growing warm. No electricity, no refrigeration, one of the nastiest results of the EMP. He shook his head, knowing that lots of people around the United States were going to be hungry before the day was even through. And what was true in every home was true in every business, from local restaurants to small markets and huge grocery stores. A billion pounds of food was going to spoil in the next few days.

  “You got any extra canteens?” he asked Sam as he closed the refrigerator door.

  “Downstairs in the storage.”

  “Get ’em. Fill ’em from the hot-water tank. No one’s going to have any water and it’s going to be very dear. Any iodine pills?”

  “No, but we have portable water filters.”

  “Even better. Short of our guns, they’re the things that are likeliest to save our lives. Grab them, anything else you can think of, and let’s head out. We’ll report in at Fort Belvoir, get our orders, then beg them to give us a little time. After all, it’s not like they need two such highly trained combat killers. Snipers, counter-intelligence ops, counter-insurgency ops, those are the things we’re good at, and I don’t think they need that particular field of expertise inside the U.S. right now. Riot control, traffic control, medics, nurses, civil engineers, JAGs, civilian affair officers, those are the specialties that will save us, not combat troops.”

  “Kind of nice to let someone else carry the water for a while, isn’t it, Bono?” Sam smiled. “They might need us in a few weeks, but probably not right now.”

  Bono hoisted his backpack. “Let’s get going. Eighteen miles to Fort Belvoir, nothing but a gentleman’s hike. No desert. No one shooting at us, at least we hope not. No IEDs or roadside explosions. Like a day in the park.”

  NINE

  Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

  It began to rain, first a drizzle, then a solid pour.

  Before the clouds broke open, Ammon and Luke cut through a barbwire fence and pushed their car and Mary’s a short distance to the cluster of trees that separated the freeway off-ramp from the farmland to the east. Using a hatchet they had packed in the trunk, they cut branches and piled them atop the vehicles to conceal them from the road. Mary and Sara worked together to organize and pack the things they would take with them. While Mary was distracted, Ammon pulled the cash and gold coins from the car, moved farther back into the trees, and dropped the valuables in a hole Luke had dug. The boys buried the money, then covered their tracks and moved back toward the road. The boys then huddled over a map and, with a compass and non-ephemeral points, wrote precise instructions to find their cache in the uncertain future.

  When the packing was almost finished, Mary pleaded, “Can we go now? I want to get my little girl home. And I can’t leave Azadeh any longer. She has no idea what’s going on.”

  Ammon nodded toward the freeway, looking north toward where they had heard the gunshots, thinking of the two goons they had had the trouble with the night before. “Before we leave, I want to go up there and check it out,” he said.

  Mary flinched. “It won’t take long, will it?” she wondered.

  “Not too long. But after hearing the gunshots, I want to know what’s up there before we head out.”

  He looked at the dark sky. The rain had settled in for the day. Sara pulled out a dry poncho and handed it to him. “You be careful, then,” she said, kissing him on the forehead. She and Ammon had obviously discussed his leaving them to check out what lay ahead—and it was clear that she didn’t like it.

  “I won’t be gone long,” he assured her. “A half hour. Maybe an hour. Be back as quickly as I can.”

  Ammon hugged his mom, nodded to Luke, and set off through the trees.

  An hour passed. Another hour. Luke started pacing. Sara’s face grew more and more tense, her eyes more wide. They had cleared off the brush so that Kelly Beth could rest in the backseat of Mary’s car, and Mary climbed in and sat with her. Luke paced among the trees, feeling worthless, growing more frustrated with each passing minute.

  Sometime midmorning, Kelly Beth woke and asked for some water, then complained of the growing pain inside her bones, back and sides. She closed her eyes as Mary held her, clutching her tightly to her chest.

  “Mama, is it time to take my medicine?” the small girl asked hopefully.

  “Yes, baby, it is. But we don’t have any right now.”

  “Can you get some for me, Mama? My body hurts.”

  Mary shook her head. “I’m trying, baby.”

  Luke and Sara listened, realizing that the child wasn’t even really aware of where she was. Sara turned to Luke and whispered, “She’s in a lot of pain.”

  Luke grimaced. “I can see that.”

  Sara dropped her voice even lower. “Luke, how are we going to get her to Chicago? She’ll never make it. She can’t even sit up in her wheelchair. She’ll get soaked, sitting in the rain.”

  Luke watched Mary through the back window. “I will carry her,” he said.

  “It’s a long way, Luke.”

  “I know, Mom, but I’ll carry her. What else are we going to do? I mean, this isn’t what we would have asked for, taking responsibility for this little girl, but at least it gives us something, something to work for, something—I don’t know, something worthy. Otherwise, what would we be doing? Sitting here, worrying where to go and what to do. This way, we have a purpose, a goal to work for, a place to go, which might turn out for all our good anyway.”

  Sara nodded, understanding. The rain began to fall harder, splattering on their raincoats and running down their cheeks. “
I’ll carry her all the way to Chicago if I have to,” Luke assured her.

  “I just hope—” she hesitated. “I just hope she makes it home.”

  Luke wiped a raindrop clinging to his nose. “I hate it, the thought of her dying out here in this mess.”

  Sara looked at him, apparently lost in thought.

  Luke pressed his foot against the muddy ground. “We should pray for her,” he offered.

  “It’s not enough.”

  “I know, Mom, but what else do we have to offer?”

  Sara was silent for a few moments longer. Finally she took a deep breath and said, “We keep on praying, then.”

  * * *

  Forty minutes later, Ammon made his way back through the trees, crouching as he went. The rain had let up, leaving a heavy mist in the air.

  Sara and Luke moved toward him, running through the wet leaves and trees to meet him. His face was tight and he was out of breath.

  “Are you OK?” Sara asked, rushing toward her son.

  “I’m fine, Mom,” he answered quickly.

  Luke handed his brother a small towel, and he wiped his face and wet hair. “What’s going on out there?” Luke asked.

  Ammon glanced back, his eyes tense. “We can’t go that way, not along the freeway. It’s not safe anymore.”

  “What is it?” Sara asked, moving closer to her son.

  Ammon wiped his face again and shook his hair. “We’ll have to stay here awhile,” he said. “At least a night, maybe more.”

  “What is it?” Sara repeated.

  “A couple miles up, there’s a group, I don’t know who they are, they seem like locals. They’ve set up a barricade across a bridge and aren’t letting anyone pass. Only those who are willing to pay are getting by. Some are heading off across the fields. The men at the barricade are chasing after them, but some are getting through. Some are heading for a small river that’s up there and getting across. The river isn’t very wide, but it won’t be easy, and we sure couldn’t carry any of our things if we decided to try to cross it. I’m not a strong enough swimmer to cross a river, even a small one, with a pack on my back. None of us is. And as far as Kelly Beth—” he paused, the problem obvious.

  “That’s crazy!” Sara answered. “I mean, they can’t do that. What right do they have to stop people from traveling on the road?”

  “They’ve got no right, Mom, but they don’t care right now. There’s a lot of people heading north, toward the city. Everyone who was leaving the city is heading back, and everyone, like us, who was heading toward the city is still trying to get there. With all these stranded travelers, these guys seem to think—and so far they’re right—that no one is going to stop them from doing pretty much whatever they want. The police don’t know about them yet. How are they going to find out? No one can call them. And when they do learn what’s going on, they may try to send someone out, but how are they going to get there? It might take a couple days.”

  Luke pressed in anger, “Who are they, Ammon? A handful of goons?”

  “I guess that’s a pretty good description. A group of a dozen, maybe fifteen men. They all seemed to know each other. They’re demanding money, watches, cell phones, whatever people are willing to give them in order to pass.”

  “OK,” Luke said, “we’ll do what everyone else is doing. We’ll go and pay them to let us pass.”

  “That might be a problem,” Ammon answered.

  “And why is that?”

  Ammon shot a wary glance toward his brother. “Those two guys from last night are up there.”

  Luke turned away, gritting his teeth.

  Sara drew a quick breath and held it. “Do you think they’ll recognize us?” she pleaded desperately.

  “Oh, they’ll recognize us,” Ammon answered. “I’ve already tested them. Believe me, they recognized me.”

  Luke turned looked away, holding his hands to his head. “No, no, no,” he repeated, then glanced toward Mary’s car.

  “I know,” Ammon said, as if reading his mind. “I understand the situation with Kelly Beth. But we can’t go up that way, not right now, anyway. We need to wait here until morning, give it a day. Maybe the Highway Patrol or National Guard or someone will show up. Until they do, there’s nothing we can do. We simply can’t make it up that road.”

  Interstate 495, West of Washington, D.C.

  Sometimes they ran, sometimes they walked, and sometimes Sam and Bono stopped to rest while adjusting their backpacks. They stayed on the roads, knowing better than to try to cut through the backyards, fences, highways and barriers that made a cross-country hike through the city virtually impossible.

  As they ran, they were shocked at the state of the city. To their left, thin trails of smoke still rose from the downtown area. They knew what it was like down there, the rescue efforts under way, the death and destruction. Both of them shuddered, thinking of the devastation just fifteen miles to the east. The nuclear warhead was small and had been detonated too low to generate an enormous cloud of radiation, and most of the radiated material had already blown away in the wind, but being so close to the detonation still required them to move cautiously.

  Once or twice the soldiers stopped while Sam pulled out a portable radiation detector. As he worked, Bono looked up, covering his eyes to protect them from the sun.

  “You notice anything?” he asked.

  Sam didn’t look up from his work as he answered, “Like the fact there are no airplanes in the sky?”

  “Yeah. Like that. Dulles is just west of here. Reagan International and BWI to our east. On a normal day, you’d be able to count dozens of aircraft landing or taking off.”

  Sam kept on working, hooking a small wire from a portable battery into his portable radiation detector. “Guess that makes this, what, an ‘un-normal’ day.”

  Bono grunted. “Yeah. Pretty much ‘un-normal.’ I mean, how weird is this? Civilian air travel within the United States is a thing of the past. The military birds will keep on flying—I’m guessing most of them were hardwired to protect against EMP—but civilian airliners, they’re all but gone now.”

  “I’m just glad I wasn’t in one when the blast hit,” Sam said.

  Bono lowered his gaze, looking east. He knew that most of the residents of Washington, D.C. were surprised, even shocked, to discover that, having survived the initial blast, their lives wouldn’t immediately come to an end. It was a common fallacy, the thought that nuclear fallout would kill everything within an enormous radius of the explosion. Bono knew that wasn’t true. Yes, many would die. The total death toll wouldn’t ever be known, because it would take many years as a result of the radiation exposure. But he also knew that most Americans expected downtown Washington, D.C. to be uninhabitable for a thousand years, which wasn’t the case. The half-life of the initial contamination was relatively short, as little as seven hours for the worst of the radiation. The city was located near the eastern coast, where the prevailing winds blew from west to east, which meant that most of the nuclear fallout had already blown out to sea. The area upwind of the explosion received little radiation. Cities west of Washington, D.C.—Fairfax, Falls Church, Arlington—had not received any fallout at all, and wouldn’t, if the west winds kept blowing for another week or so. Areas downwind would surely suffer, but even those would be relatively safe to travel through at some point in the next few months.

  Looking skyward, Bono imagined an elongated, cigar-shaped area of nuclear contamination that had spread east. Washington, D.C., was at the tip of the cigar, and the band of fallout, twenty to thirty miles wide, spread eastward for a couple of hundred miles.

  He dug into his pocket for the copy of the report that had been given to the U.S. soldiers on the flight back to the United States.

  In a nuclear detonation, large amounts of soil or water will be pulled into the radioactive cloud by the fireball. This material becomes radioactive when it joins with radiated contaminants in a process similar to water vapor condensing ar
ound dust particles to form rain. This is what is referred to as nuclear contamination, or fallout, when it falls back to earth.

  The large particles (larger than 50 millimeters) are too heavy to rise into the stratosphere and will fall back to earth within 18–30 hours. The smaller contaminants (less than 100 millimeters) will remain aloft and be dispersed by stratospheric currents.

  The ground track of fallout from an explosion is a long and irregular ellipse that will extend downwind from the location of the explosion. Individuals within this contaminated area are at greatest risk.

  Perhaps more than any other variable, meteorological conditions will influence local fallout. A nuclear detonation with a significant body of water nearby (i.e., the explosion that was experienced over Washington, D.C., with the waters of the Chesapeake Bay within range of the fireball) will produce water vapor particles that are lighter and smaller than an explosion over land. This generally creates less contamination in the immediate area but more downwind, covering a greater area.

  Effects of fallout vary. Rapid death will follow high doses of radiation. Low exposure to contaminants may not preclude an otherwise normal life, though the development of delayed radiation effects may produce late-term effects.

  At the writing of this report, tests indicate significant fallout, with its anticipated effects, over all the eastern portions of the District (Suitland, Clinton, New Carrolton, etc.). This band of fallout extends from roughly Annapolis in the north to the southern Maryland coast along the Potomac River, the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, the eastern shore of Maryland, and the Atlantic Ocean.

  Except for the immediate area around Washington, D.C., much of the contaminated area is sparsely populated. Still, some casualties are expected beyond those already killed in the blast.