Revelations

by Mark Kelly

  Emma jerked her head to the side, puking the contents of her stomach onto the concrete walkway. Simmons barely avoided doing the same. If it was this bad here, they would never be able to handle the stench deep inside the hospital.

  “Are you all right?”

  Using her shirtsleeve, she wiped the vomit from the corners of her mouth and nodded.

  “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  He ran to the motorcycle and grabbed a washcloth from a bag in the trailer. He dipped the cloth in the motorcycle’s gas tank, soaking the end of the fabric with kerosene. Then he ran back to where he had left Emma and squeezed a few drops of kerosene on both of their masks.

  “Ready?”

  She nodded.

  A wave of hot air washed over them when they stepped inside. Most of the stench was gone, its disgusting odor masked by the strong smell of kerosene. Simmons flicked on his flashlight and looked around.

  Magazines and patient paperwork lay scattered on the floor. All the chairs in the waiting room had been removed to free up space for hospital cots. He heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the cots were all empty. They must have closed the hospital before they needed to use them.

  “We’re not going to find what we need here,” he said. “We need to locate a lab or a supply room.” Spotting a door with the words ‘Hospital Staff Only’ painted on it, he pointed to it. “Let’s try through there.”

  The door led to a long corridor lined with gurneys. Simmons shone his flashlight on them. Most of the gurneys were empty, but a few contained desiccated corpses partially covered by white linens. Emma choked back a gasp of horror and grabbed the back of his shirt.

  “Stay close,” he said, but didn’t have to. She was so close he could feel her anxious breath on the nape of his neck.

  With Emma right behind him, he began to walk, sticking to the middle of the corridor to avoid the gurneys. As they went deeper into the hospital, the natural light from outside faded. Soon, it became pitch black and the only illumination came from the narrow beam of the flashlight.

  The first door they reached was locked. The green and white sign on the wall beside it said, Lodge—Long Term Care Facility Staff Entrance. Simmons ignored it. There wouldn’t be anything in there except bodies.

  They turned left, continuing down the corridor. Simmons swept his flashlight back and forth, checking the signs on the wall beside each door.

  A criss-cross of yellow biohazard tape blocked one of the doors. He stopped and pointed his flashlight through the window panel. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of corpses piled one on top of each other.

  “What’s in there, Professor Simmons?”

  “Nothing that we’re interested in,” he said, moving a little faster down the hallway. They had almost reached the end of the corridor before he found what he was looking for.

  “Come on, let’s check in here,” he said, stopping beside a door with a sign, Diagnostics and Imaging.

  The door was unlocked and they went inside. The room was actually two rooms connected by a short hallway. In the first room, a large X-ray machine took up most of the space. A stainless steel counter with a massive fume hood above it and cupboards below it ran along one wall.

  “Over there,” Simmons directed Emma, using the beam of his flashlight to point at the counter. “Start looking in the drawers and cupboards for items that might be useful.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Glassware, scales, plastic tubing…stuff like that. If you find anything, pile it in the center of the room, and we’ll sort through it before we leave.”

  “Where are you going?” Emma asked as he took a step towards the second room.

  “In there.”

  “What if someone comes?”

  “I’ll be nearby. We’ll hurry. No more than ten minutes, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Simmons waited long enough to see that she was doing what he asked before he went into the second room. Unlike the first room, this one had multiple workstations and was filled with laboratory equipment he didn’t recognize but guessed had some type of diagnostics purpose.

  Following the same advice he had given Emma, he moved from station to station grabbing anything that looked useful and piling it on the floor in the center of the room. Preoccupied by the quantity and variety of equipment, he lost track of time and was rummaging around in a drawer when Emma called out.

  “Professor Simmons?”

  Simmons jumped at the sound of her voice, pricking his fingers on the tip of a pair of surgical scissors jammed in the back of the drawer. He angrily grabbed the scissors and tossed them into the middle of the room.

  “What is it?”

  “I think it’s been longer than ten minutes.”

  Damn. She was right.

  “Did you find anything?” he asked, his heart beating a little faster.

  “A few things. I did what you said and piled them in the middle of the room.”

  “Good. Grab an empty drawer and put everything you found in it. I’ll be there in a second.”

  Simmons yanked two large drawers out from under the workstation he was standing next to and emptied them on the floor. Then he began to refill them, choosing quickly from the most useful items in his pile. The small agitators and vibrating plates were must haves. Same as the heaters and the thermocouples. He ignored the scissors he had pricked his fingers on and set aside most of the glassware for a second trip. When the drawers were full, he called out to Emma. “Come on, let’s go.”

  With the faint light from the penlight he held in his mouth to guide them, they retraced their path out of the hospital. When they reached the motorcycle, Simmons placed his drawers on the ground next to the trailer. He looked around. The scavengers were nowhere to be seen.

  “Stay here, I’m going back in to get one more load.”

  “Professor Simmons, I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if something happens to you?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

  Emma glanced down the road. “Then what if something happens to me?”

  “No one is coming,” Simmons said. “You’ll be fine and I’ll be quick. Start loading the trailer.”

  He turned and ran back into the hospital and was in the main lobby, on his way back with his second load, when the sound of distant shouting came from outside. He dropped the drawers and ran through the sliding doors. A group of twenty or thirty scavengers were shambling down the road towards the hospital, led by the three who had tried to ambush them earlier.

  “Time to go,” he yelled to Emma.

  Simmons jumped on the motorcycle and notched it into neutral. He flipped the kickstarter out with his toe and pushed down hard with the arch of his foot. The engine turned over but didn’t start.

  “Hurry, Professor Simmons, there’s more of them coming.”

  Simmons glanced over his shoulder and froze. The greyhound bus from the crossroads was coming down the road towards them, and the only thing separating the bus full of roamers from he and Emma was the crowd of scavengers.

  “Professor Simmons…”

  “I’m trying,” he shouted as bullets ricocheted off the pavement.

  Emma screamed. Fearing the worst, he turned to find her standing by the side of the trailer with a shocked look on her face and the contents of the drawer she had been holding lying on the ground by her feet.

  “They shot my drawer,” she said, wide-eyed.

  “Forget it, get on.”

  With one last desperate effort, he threw himself up in the air and brought his right foot down onto the kickstarter. The engine caught, and he twisted the throttle to keep it running as a series of gunshots broke out.

  Bang…Bang…Bang…Bang.

  The shots were so close they nearly deafened him. Simmons turned to find Emma standing with her feet apart facing the roamer bus. Gong’s gun was in her hands.

  The crowd of scavengers scattered like a flock of startled birds, opening up a
path for the greyhound. Through the front window, Simmons could see Lilanne urging the driver to go faster.

  “Emma…Get on the damn bike NOW!”

  Breathing heavily, she said, “They shot my drawer.”

  “Get on or that won’t be the only thing they shoot.”

  The second he felt her arms around his waist, Simmons gunned the throttle and raced off, zig-zagging wildly as more gunfire rang out behind them.

  14

  Radioactive

  When he was certain they weren’t being pursued, Simmons steered the motorcycle to the side of the road and parked on the gravel shoulder. He climbed off and walked around checking for damage.

  “Damn it…look at that,” he raged as he stared at the trailer full of broken glass and bits of shattered plastic. Of the six drawers of equipment they had taken from the hospital, three—including the one shot out of Emma’s hand—had been struck by bullets.

  He tugged a smashed agitating machine out of the cart by its electrical cord and tossed it into the ditch.

  “Do you know how important that was?” he ranted at Emma while she watched in silence. “Without an agitator, the bioreactor will never work.”

  “What do you want to do now, Professor Simmons? Go back for more?”

  He shook his head in frustration. “No, we can’t. They saw us come out of the hospital. They’ll be all over it looking for things to scavenge.”

  “What about there?” she said.

  “Where?”

  “There.”

  She pointed to a road sign that read Chalk River Laboratories 5 miles.

  He had completely forgotten about the nuclear lab and now they were only a few miles away from it. The whole place glows. That’s what Abrams had said. Alarmed, Simmons searched through his pockets for the small dosimeter the soldier had given him. He felt the outline of the credit card-sized device through the fabric of his shirt pocket and pulled it out.

  The bands were all light.

  Thank God.

  “What does it say?” Emma asked as he put it back in his pocket.

  “It hasn’t recorded any radiation—not yet.”

  “Since we’re already here, why don’t we take a look? Maybe you can find some of the equipment you need.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “But won’t the card do something if we get too close?”

  He was about to tell her he didn’t have a death-wish, but she had a point. That’s what the dosimeter was for—to warn them—and right now it was saying that there was nothing to worry about.

  He pulled it back out of his pocket and studied it. From what he could tell, it functioned like a radiation thermometer, displaying a series of bands that marked off increasing levels of exposure. He knew from the radiation safety program he had taken at Stanford when he was doing his PhD that if they minimized their exposure, they would be safe up to fifty rads.

  “What do you think, Professor Simmons?” Emma asked expectantly.

  Simmons mulled it over. If they drove slowly and checked the dosimeter frequently, they would probably be safe. And even if the lab wasn’t reachable, they might find somewhere else to scavenge. But the sun was skirting the top of the trees to the west ,and it would be dark soon.

  He decided it was worth a try. “We’ll check the lab out tomorrow on our way home, but right now we need to find a place to camp for the night.”

  They rose with the sun and took the road leading to the lab. Simmons drove slowly, stopping every quarter-mile to check the dosimeter. The first sign they were nearing something of importance was the appearance of a tall chainlink fence ringed with strands of barbed wire.

  He geared down, slowing as they approached a guardhouse with a red and white boom barrier blocking passage through a gate, and fished the dosimeter out of his pocket.

  Clear. Still no radiation.

  When he lifted his head, he saw the fifty-five-gallon steel drums for the first time. They were lined up three rows deep on the other side of the gate, blocking the road. Panicking at the sight of the familiar yellow and black radioactive symbol stenciled on the drums, he slammed the motorcycle’s brakes on.

  A person garbed in a bright yellow containment suit and wearing a gas mask stepped out of the guardhouse. They held a small metal box in one hand and yelled, “You need to leave immediately, there was an accident at the lab. The reactor leaked.”

  Simmons froze in place. “Are we in danger here?”

  “Yes, there’s radiation everywhere,” the muffled voice said.

  As if to make his point, the figure waved the black metal wand in his hand over one of the drums. A clicking-staticky-chatter noise came from the box he held in his other hand. The sound was slow and low at first and then more frantic as he moved the wand closer to the drum.

  Simmons immediately recognized the device as a Geiger counter. He took a quick look at the dosimeter hidden in the palm of his hand.

  Clear…no radiation.

  “What’s in the drums?” Simmons asked.

  “Radioactive waste from the reactor. It’s not safe for you to be here. You have to go now. Please leave.”

  Simmons stared at the steel drums wondering why anyone would place radioactive waste on the road? It made no sense. The more he thought about it, the more he realized none of it made sense.

  He held up his hands to show he meant no harm and climbed off the bike and took a step forward. “I don’t know what’s going on, but are you from the lab?”

  “Stay back!” the figure yelled, touching the tip of the wand on the top of the drum. The Geiger counter screamed a warning with a burst of frantic static. “There’s radioactive Bohrium everywhere.”

  “No, there isn’t,” Simmons said, smiling as he moved closer. “Bohrium is a man-made radioactive element with a half-life of seventeen seconds. It doesn’t exist in nature.”

  Spotting a tiny glass vial on top of the drum, Simmons leaned forward and looked at the label. Molybdenum-99—That must be the source of the radioactivity causing the Geiger counter to go nuts.

  “I assume that’s not dangerous,” he said, nodding towards the vial. “You’re just using it to provide enough trace radiation to trigger the Geiger counter, right?”

  A radio crackled from inside the guardhouse. The garbed figure jerked his head towards it. Simmons heard a voice through the crackling static.

  “Check in, Greg…This is base, check in.”

  “Is that your name?” Simmons asked. “Greg, why don’t you go tell whoever is on the radio you have two visitors who want to trade?”

  The figure turned and bolted into the guardhouse, returning seconds later with a hunting rifle that he pointed menacingly at Simmons.

  “Get out of here.”

  “Whoa…take it easy. We’re just here to trade,” Simmons said.

  “Put your gun down!” Emma shouted from behind Simmons. She stepped forward holding the Glock in a two-handed grip and pointed it directly at the figure.

  “No, you put yours down.”

  “I asked you first,” Emma said back to him.

  Simmons took a careful step forward. “Why don’t you both lower your guns, and we can talk about it?”

  “You first,” the figure said to Emma.

  She shook her head.

  Simmons placed his hand on her arm and gently pushed her gun down. He motioned at the figure to do the same. “We’re not here to hurt anyone or to steal anything. We have items to trade—valuable items.”

  “We don’t trade with anyone—especially roamers,” the figure said, pulling off his gas mask.

  To Simmons’s surprise, it was a teenage boy. A red band ran across the boy’s forehead and down his face where the mask’s rubber seal had pressed tight against his skin. He was drenched in sweat and clearly irritated. Simmons wasn’t surprised. Under the sun, it must have been close to one hundred degrees in the containment suit.

  Emma crossed her arms indignantly and said, “We aren’t roamers. Tell
him, Professor Simmons.”

  “If you aren’t Roamers, who are you then?” the boy asked. He looked at Simmons. “Are you really a Professor?”

  “I was a Professor of biochemistry at Georgetown University before the pandemic,” Simmons replied. He picked up the glass vial and showed it to the boy. “That’s how I knew this wasn’t dangerous. It’s used to create isotopes for nuclear medicine. Is that where you got it? From the research lab?”

  The sound of a car engine came from around a curve and a blue sedan appeared out of nowhere. Simmons and Emma both reached for their guns as the car skidded to a stop behind the steel drums. A middle-aged man jumped out with a rifle. He bolted towards them and pointed his gun in their direction.

  “Greg, Are you all right? Did they touch you?”

  “I’m fine, dad,” the boy said. “They didn’t touch me. They told me they’re just here to trade.”

  “What do you want?” the man asked, eyeing Simmons suspiciously.

  “I’m hoping you’ll be able to help me.”

  “Help you how?”

  “I’m looking for laboratory equipment,” Simmons replied. “It wouldn’t be charity, I’ve brought things to trade.”

  “What kind of equipment?”

  Simmons reached into his pocket and pulled out the list he had composed back at the farmhouse. He offered it to the man who shook his head and said, “Just read it to me.”

  Simmons made it halfway through the list before the man stopped him and raised an eyebrow. “What do you need all of that for?”

  “He says he’s a professor at Georgetown University,” the boy told his father.

  The man grunted with surprise. “What brings a professor from Georgetown this far north looking for that kind of equipment?”

  “No offense, but it isn’t any of your business,” Simmons said. “Besides, does it matter if we have things to trade?”

  “It might.”