Fallout

by Ariel Tachna

  “I’m flattered,” Sambit said with a laugh. Deciding not to push his luck, he grabbed two of the folded-up cots, setting them up near Derek’s. He left the Army-issue blankets on one of them, but he took his time spreading them out neatly on the other. Anything to give himself a little more time before he had to face Derek again. When he couldn’t mess with the blankets anymore, he found the small suitcase he’d packed and moved it under the cot, pulling his toothbrush out of the front pocket and using the sink in the break room to brush his teeth. He glanced at Derek as he put his toothbrush away. Derek hadn’t moved from his seat on the cot.

  “If I try not to curse as much, will you teach me more of that yoga like we did earlier?”

  “In the morning,” Sambit said. “We’re both tired tonight. Yoga is not an exercise to do when your mind is fatigued. If you cannot concentrate on doing it correctly, you could make a mistake and hurt yourself. We should take Fido out one more time so he will sleep through the night.”

  “We?” Derek asked.

  “I will take him myself if you would prefer,” Sambit said. “You’ve already been outside once today with no radiation gear. You shouldn’t do that too often.”

  “He’s my dog, not yours.”

  “So he is, but I can help, can’t I?”

  “But why would you?” Derek asked.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do,” Sambit said. “Just like rescuing him in the first place.”

  “You are a strange, strange man, Sambit Patel.”

  Sambit grinned. “But you like me anyway.”

  “Maybe I do at that.”

  SAMBIT awoke at his usual time the next morning, rising and stretching lightly to get his circulation moving. He could hear Derek’s light snores in the darkness and Lyrica’s softer breathing as well as Fido’s occasional snuffle. He debated leaving Derek to sleep a little longer rather than waking him, but Derek had asked, and Sambit didn’t want to make matters worse between them. He padded softly to Derek’s side, bending to pat Fido’s head so the dog wouldn’t growl or bark and wake everyone else up too. Then he nudged Derek gently until the snores stopped and Derek rolled over.

  “Wha’ time is’t?”

  “Six a.m.,” Sambit replied. “You said you wanted to do yoga with me this morning. This is what time I get up.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re a fucking morning person.”

  “I thought you were going to try not to curse so much,” Sambit teased, ignoring the question inherent in Derek’s words.

  “Not if you wake me up at six in the morning,” Derek grumbled. “I suppose that means you don’t have coffee for me either.”

  “No coffee or tea until after yoga,” Sambit said. “You don’t want to be halfway through pigeon and have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Pigeon?” Derek asked, sitting up slowly and scrubbing at his face with his hands. “I’m in way over my head, aren’t I?”

  “I’ll go easy on you the first time,” Sambit said, “but don’t expect me to cut you any slack tomorrow.”

  Derek groaned and stood up. “All right. Torture me.”

  Derek’s sleepy face as he spoke sent wildly inappropriate thoughts through Sambit’s mind. He was glad he had slept in his pants rather than in just his boxers as he would usually do. He’d be leaving them on to stretch, too, if his body was going to react this way. He didn’t need to give Derek ideas.

  “Let’s go out in the hallway,” he said. “That way we won’t wake Lyrica up.”

  To Sambit’s surprise, Derek remembered the Surya Namaskar from the day before, moving through the twelve postures of the sun salutation with much greater ease than he had the first time. Sambit wasn’t sure if that was his natural athleticism coming out or if he was simply more relaxed this morning, but either way, Derek’s movements were much closer to the thing of reverent beauty they were intended to be.

  When they had finished four sets, Sambit smiled. “How do you feel?”

  Derek paused a moment, taking stock of his body. “Pretty good, actually. I always stretch before and after I run, not that I’ll be running here anytime soon. This is a little more intense than what I do, but it’s the same muscles for the most part, and after several days of being cooped up inside, it feels good to use them.”

  “That’s one of the things I like about yoga. All you need is enough space.”

  “And someone who knows what they’re doing,” Derek said. “I wouldn’t know where to begin without you here to tell me what to do.”

  “Give it a few days,” Sambit said, “and you’ll know enough to do a full, if basic, workout without me. Ready for something a little more challenging?”

  “I’m always up for a challenge.”

  Sambit had already learned how true that was, even after less than twenty-four hours. Grinning with mischief, he slid down into Hanumanasana, his legs in a complete split, his arms overhead as he arched his back. When he had his balance, he looked up at Derek. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  “You’re going to have to offer me a hell of a lot more than you have if you want me to spread my legs like that,” Derek retorted.

  Sambit shook his head. He should have known Derek would turn it into something suggestive. Well, two could play that game. “And what, exactly, are your requirements for spreading your legs?” He curled out of the monkey pose and rolled back into plow pose, his feet touching the ground above his head.

  “If you keep sticking your ass in the air like that, Sam, I’m going to get ideas.”

  “Talk, talk, talk,” Sambit teased. “I thought you wanted to do yoga.”

  “The human body is not meant to bend like that.”

  “Sure it is,” Sambit said, rolling out of the pose and assuming the lotus position. “You just have to teach it how. We’ll start with something a little more basic and work up to more advanced poses later.”

  Derek looked skeptical. Amused, but skeptical.

  “Sit down,” Sambit urged. “We’ll do some forward bends and backbends. Go as far as you can into the pose and then stop. You don’t have to do everything I can do the first time you try. I started doing yoga as a child with my mother over thirty years ago. I could barely walk, but I could sit in a lotus pose by the time I was a year old.”

  “Maybe that’s why you couldn’t walk,” Derek grumbled as he tried to imitate Sambit’s crossed legs.

  “Don’t go that far yet,” Sambit said when he saw the grimace on Derek’s face. He reached over and pulled Derek’s hand off the foot he was trying to raise onto his opposite knee. “For now, do a half lotus, just one foot on top of your thigh with the other underneath. We’ll switch in a moment, and that will stretch both hips and ankles.”

  Derek’s skepticism didn’t fade, but he moved as Sambit directed.

  “I like this biddable side of you,” Sambit joked. “You should follow directions this well in other contexts too.”

  “If I did that, we’d be stuck following Tucker’s orders instead of doing what really needs to be done,” Derek replied.

  “True,” Sambit had to agree. “But you could maybe try following Lyrica’s directions today?”

  “Unless you tell me to do something different,” Derek said.

  That was enough to stun Sambit into silence. He wrestled with the potential implications of that one sentence for the rest of their yoga workout and all the way through breakfast. When they reported to the control room to take over from the other team, he was no closer to having an answer than when Derek had first said it.

  Chapter 6

  BY THE time they took a quick break for lunch, Derek’s good mood from the morning had worn off. Tucker had been even more officious and offensive than the day before, insisting they follow protocol to the letter even when Lyrica and Sambit both argued for quicker action. Derek would have bucked Tucker’s authority on his own, but he didn’t know what to do without either Lyrica or Sambit directing him, and Tucker had kept them from doing that.


  “What are we going to do about that shmuck?” Derek asked as they ate their canned soup in the hallway outside the break room where the other team was sleeping. “We aren’t getting anything done today because he won’t let us, and I know the situation didn’t drastically improve overnight.”

  “I can try going over his head,” Lyrica said, “but that could backfire on us. At the moment we’re working around him when we can because no one’s told us not to. If I go to my boss or his boss and they say we have to follow his directions exactly, I won’t have any choice but to listen.”

  “I don’t have to,” Derek said.

  “No, but you still need us to tell you what to do.”

  “Sambit?” Derek asked. “What do you think?”

  “I think we’re gambling with our lives here already,” Sambit said slowly. “We haven’t had enough exposure yet, I don’t think, to worry about acute radiation sickness, but it’s building up in our systems, doing a little damage here and a little damage there. The sooner we can get things under control and get ourselves far away from here, the better.”

  “So what do you suggest?” Lyrica asked.

  “The core temperatures have stayed within expected range overnight,” Sambit said, “so the boron injections we did yesterday are working. I’m not saying the danger is past because it won’t be until we have the entire system cooled down, but it’s on the right track. The greater concern, from where I’m sitting, is the breach in the secondary containment system and the Standby Gas Treatment system. We know there was at least some radiation leakage because of the numbers we saw yesterday, and without the SGT online, that radiation is getting out into the environment.”

  “So how do we fix it?” Derek asked.

  “That’s where it gets complicated,” Lyrica said. “We know there was a leak, and we know it’s getting out into the environment through the breach in the secondary containment system, but we don’t know where it’s coming from in the first place. The secondary containment system is a backup. It shouldn’t have to contain that level of radiation except in case of an emergency.”

  “Which this is.”

  “Which this is,” Lyrica agreed with a nod in Derek’s direction. “We need to find where the radiation is coming from in the first place. That’s where we have to concentrate our efforts.”

  “So we need to get Tucker to let us go exploring,” Derek replied, “either in person or with Number Five. My guess is he’s not going to approve us going in person.”

  “After yesterday?” Lyrica said with a bitter laugh. “He’s got the hazmat suits under lock and key. We won’t get anywhere near them without his approval, and we won’t get anywhere near the source and survive without them, based on the Geiger counter readings yesterday.”

  “Then we have to get Number Five where we can’t go,” Derek said. “How do we get around Tucker long enough to do what we need to do without him barging in and stopping us?”

  “You could try pissing him off to the point that he storms off and calls your boss,” Lyrica said.

  “I could, but if he drags me with him to talk to Kenneth, I won’t be there to operate the robot.”

  “And don’t expect me to operate it in his place,” Sambit added. “I’d never get where we were going.”

  “We need a diversion,” Derek said. “I don’t suppose we can just throw Tucker in a closet and lock him in for a couple of hours.”

  “I’d prefer a diversion that didn’t cost me my job,” Lyrica said with a shake of her head. “I’ll just have to take one for the team. I can get Tucker into a debate about regulations, insist he show me the protocols for everything. You don’t need the main computers to work with Number Five. You can do that from anywhere, right?”

  Derek nodded.

  “So you two go somewhere else and see what you can find,” Lyrica directed. “Take Number Five out the way we went and in through the hole in the secondary containment system. Hopefully you can track down the leak.”

  “Then we have to convince Tucker to let us fix it.”

  “If we can identify the source of the leak, he has to let us fix it,” Lyrica said. “Right now he’s trying to deny that there is a leak because he wasn’t out there with us. He thinks it’ll make him look bad to have a leak on a project he’s overseeing.”

  “Maybe so, but wouldn’t it look better to find and contain a leak than have it cause environmental problems?” Derek asked.

  “You’d think,” Lyrica said, “but hiding his head in the sand seems to be more his style. Of course I’m sure he’ll be happy to take all the credit if we do manage to find and fix the leak.”

  “I don’t need credit,” Derek said. “I need not to die here.”

  Lyrica laughed, the sound rueful. “That’s one way of putting it. Okay, let’s go see if I can keep Tucker occupied for a while. Where are you two going to set up?”

  “In the break room,” Derek said. “He tries to avoid going in there out of respect for the off-shift people. Sam and I shouldn’t need to talk much, so we won’t disturb them either.”

  “And if they wake up and see you?” Lyrica asked. “Melanie and Thomas might not care, but you’ve made enough of an enemy of Jeremiah that he’d run and tell Tucker just to spite you.”

  “Where else is there?” Derek asked.

  Lyrica grinned. “Well, there’s the janitor’s closet. It’s not glamorous, but I can guarantee Tucker won’t look for you there.”

  “And neither will anyone else,” Derek said, returning her grin. “Well, Sam, shall we go back in the closet for a couple of hours?”

  To Derek’s surprise, Sambit grinned too. “I thought you hated the closet.”

  It was those little bits of humor that always caught Derek off guard. He had this image of Sambit, lingering from their first meeting, of a starchy, buttoned-up, prim man, and while that was true in some respects, Derek was discovering how untrue it was in others. Sambit might be prim, but he wasn’t repressed, and underneath that proper exterior lay a wicked sense of humor. “Only if I’m forced into it,” Derek replied. “I’ve found closets quite interesting when I choose my company.”

  “Oh, really?” Sambit said, finishing his tea and standing up. “I don’t remember you choosing my company.”

  “I got up at six a.m. to do yoga with you,” Derek reminded him, tossing his bowl in the trash. With no running water because of the flooding, they couldn’t wash dishes and had to use disposable ones instead. “If that isn’t choosing your company, I don’t know what is.”

  “Why, Mr. Marshall, I didn’t realize what an honor that was,” Sambit simpered, batting his eyelashes at Derek.

  Lyrica burst out laughing, breaking the sudden tension that invested Derek’s frame at Sambit’s flirting, however jokingly. “You two are something else. The closet is at the end of the hallway on the left. Get your computer and get started while I go distract Tucker.”

  “I’ll get the computer,” Sambit offered. “You get Number Five outside and join me.”

  “Sounds good,” Derek said, still a little off kilter from the unexpected banter. He took a few deep breaths as he walked into the break room and unplugged Number Five from where it was charging, trying to dismiss his sudden susceptibility to Sambit’s teasing. The other man wasn’t at all Derek’s type, except that appearances, in this case, were deceiving. Sambit didn’t look like Derek’s type, but he was acting more and more like the kind of man Derek could be very attracted to. Of course there was the issue of Sambit being essentially in the closet, and the fact that Derek had no idea if Sambit found him attractive in return. Oh, and the fact that they could all die of radiation sickness if the core had a meltdown or if the radiation leak got worse.

  He couldn’t think about that or he’d go crazy or go looking for a bottle of booze. They’d been careful, and his Geiger counter had only beeped when he was wearing the hazmat suit, so he hoped they were safe. The dosimeter on his belt that measured his personal exposure to radiation ov
er time hadn’t sounded any kind of alert. Maybe he’d look into radiation sickness a little later, though. Just so he knew what signs to watch for.

  He carried Number Five to the door and set the robot down outside, glancing at his Geiger counter out of habit, but the readings, while higher than inside, were not at dangerous levels. He took a moment more to make sure Number Five was receiving the signals from his remote, then went in search of the janitor’s closet and Sambit.

  “So what are we looking for?” Derek asked as he maneuvered in the small space to find a spot where he could see the computer screen and still sit comfortably.

  “Anything that isn’t as it should be,” Sambit said.

  “That’s so helpful,” Derek joked, “since I don’t know what anything is supposed to look like. Lyrica said to start where the containment system was damaged, right?”

  “Right,” Sambit said. “That’s where we have the highest radiation levels so far. If we can trace that back to the source, we should be able to find the leak.”

  “Okay, let’s do it.”

  Derek guided Number Five across the open space, noticing that the puddles weren’t quite as numerous or as deep as they’d been the day before. “It looks like the flooding is going down.”

  “As long as we don’t get hit again with runoff from inland,” Sambit agreed. “The Colorado River isn’t very far away.”

  “One disaster at a time, please,” Derek said, navigating around the rubble that had killed the second shift manager. “Two at a time might be more than I could handle.”

  “I don’t believe that for a moment,” Sambit said. Derek gave him a sharp look but let it go for the moment. This wasn’t the time to discuss the new awareness that had plagued Derek since their yoga session that morning.

  “Okay, here’s where the Geiger counter went ballistic yesterday,” Derek said. “Number Five’s readings aren’t quite as high as the Geiger counter said, but they’re still higher than they were when I first put it outside.”

  Sambit accepted the change of subject without comment, focusing back on the computer screen and what he could see through the robot’s cameras. “Radiation can come from two places: the reactor itself and the spent fuel rods. I haven’t even asked Lyrica if anyone checked on the spent rods, other than when we put her colleague in there to get him out of the elements, but I don’t think that’s the source of our problem. I think we’ve got a valve that’s leaking or something like that.”