The Last Science Fiction Writer

by Allen Steele

  She wasn’t alone. We weren’t doing anything illegal, but this bunch was awful conspicuous, and less attention I got from the law, the better. Although my record was clean, nonetheless I was Steve Cosby’s kid brother. So far as Bo was concerned, that alone made me a possible accomplice to every sleazy thing my brother did. Time to get rid of these guys, fast.

  “Sure.” I pointed down Main Street, away from the center of town. “Go that way two blocks to Adams, then hang a right. Follow it five more blocks to Route 10, then cut a left and follow it out of town. Plant’s about ten miles that way. Can’t miss it.”

  “Thank you.” The girl gave me a smile that would have melted the ice on the school hockey rink. “You’ve been most kind.” She hesitated, then added, “I’m Michaela. My friends call me Mickey.”

  “Michaela.” I savored the name on my tongue. “I’m Eric. Are you from…? I mean, I know you’re not from here, but…”

  “Pleased to meet you, Eric.” The big guy extended his hand. “I’m Alex. His name is Tyler. We’re…”

  “Alex, be quiet.” Tyler swatted his hand away from mine, and once again Alex went silent. What was it with them? Didn’t they want Alex to talk to me?

  The light changed. Bo cast one more glance in our direction, then his car slowly glided forward, heading in the direction of the theatre. I knew that he’d just swing around the block and come back for another pass. It would probably be a good idea to be gone by then.

  “We must go.” Tyler apparently realized this, too, for he took Mickey’s arm. “Thank you for the directions…”

  “Bye, Eric.” Again, Mickey turned on her smile. “Nice to meet you.”

  I was still trying to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth when Tyler led her and Alex across the street. He was in so much of a hurry that he didn’t notice that they were walking against the light. As it happened, a Ford Explorer was approaching the intersection from Birch. The SUV blared its horn, startling Mickey and Tyler; Alex, though, calmly stepped in front of his friends, raising his hands as if to protect them.

  For a second, I thought Alex would bounce off the Explorer’s hood. Or maybe—just for an instant—exactly vice-versa; Alex was utterly complacent, even the SUV bore down upon him. Yet as the Explorer skidded to a halt, Tyler grabbed Mickey and yanked her across the street, while Alex lowered his arms and sauntered behind them, ignoring the obscenities yelled at him by the driver.

  They continued down Main, heading in the direction I’d given them. Just before they passed Rumke’s Department Store, though, Mickey glanced back over her shoulder. I thought she smiled at me, but Tyler dragged her away before I could wave goodbye.

  I was still watching them go when Ted showed up. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’ve just met the perfect girl, and now she’s gone.”

  Again, I jumped. It was the second time that evening someone had snuck up on me. Even if it was only Ted, that was one time too many.

  “Forget it. They were just asking directions.” I looked up Birch; sure enough, I could see Bo’s cop car coming our way. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. Bo’s on my case tonight. Pizza at Louie’s?”

  “Sure. Why not?” Ted didn’t need to ask why Officer Beauchamp might take an interest in me; he knew my recent family history. When the light changed again, we crossed the street, then cut up Birch to an alley that would take us behind the block of buildings along Main, a shortcut to Louie’s Pizzeria. “So who were they? And who was the babe?”

  “I dunno.” I darted a glance behind us as we entered the alley. No sign of Bo. Good. “Just some guys asking how to get to Narragansett.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right.” Ted snickered as he gave me a sidelong look. “The way you were talking to her, I thought maybe you and she…”

  “Never saw her before in my life.” I caught the look in his eye. “She was just asking directions, okay?”

  Ted was my best and oldest friend, so I forgave him for a lot of things, not the least of which was being a total geek. We’d both recently discovered girls, and were trying to figure out how to deal with them, yet Ted’s interest in the other half of the human race was misinformed by comic books and TV shows. He didn’t want a date that ended with a kiss at the door, but a hot night with Lana Lang. He was no Clark Kent, though, glasses aside, and until he learned how to degeekify himself, he had as much of a chance of getting a steady girl as Brainiac.

  “Sure, yeah.” But now his expression had become pensive. “But why would they want to go out there?”

  “I dunno.” We’d come out of the alley, and were walking across a parking lot. “Maybe they were part of a school group taking a tour.”

  “On a Friday night?” Again, he looked at me askance. “And since when did the plant let anyone inside?”

  He had something there. At one time, New England Energy allowed local schools to take field trips to the plant. But after 9/11 they closed the plant to the public, and it wasn’t long after that when Narragansett Point was decommissioned. The reactor may have gone out of service, though, but everyone knew that the spent fuel rods were still being stored on-site until they could be shipped to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada. So there was no way a school group would be allowed on the premises.

  “Maybe they were looking for a spot to go parking.” Even as I said that, it sounded wrong. Sure, the old visitors parking lot had once been a favorite make-out spot, but security patrols around the plant had put an end to that before I had a chance to borrow Steve’s car for my fantasized date with Pauline.

  Besides, how would some out-of-town kids know about the Point? And come to think of it, how where they going to get out there in the first place? The plant was ten miles from town, and I didn’t see them get in a car.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Ted said. “Unless they’re…”

  “You mean they’re not interested in the World’s Biggest Rocking Chair? Or the Farm Museum?” Despite my own misgivings, I grinned at him. “Where’s your civic pride? Aren’t you a proud citizen of Bellingham, Vermont, the greatest town in…?”

  I stopped myself. By then we’d come upon another alley, this one leading from behind the Main Street shops to Winchester Street, where the pizza place was located. A Chevy van was blocking our way, though, so we had to go around it. As we started to walk past, I saw that its side doors were open; within the light cast by its ceiling dome, someone was fiddling with something on a fold-down work bench.

  A girl just a little older than Ted and me stood in the open back door of the one of shops. She saw us coming, and raised a hand. “Hey, Eric. How’ya doing?”

  Sharon Ogilvy, who’d graduated from Bellingham High just last spring. I knew her because she’d gone out with Steve for a short while. Like a lot of my brother’s ex-girlfriends, she’d broken up with him because…well, because he was Smokin’ Steve, and there were better dates you could have than guys who’d make you walk home alone in the rain because you weren’t cool enough for him and his crew. But she and I had remained friends, although she never dropped by our house any more. Not that I blamed her; I often wished I lived somewhere else, too.

  “Hey, Sharon.” I strolled over to her, stepping around the front of the van. The workman barely glanced up at me; now that I was closer, I saw that he was a locksmith, using a portable lathe to make a set of keys. “Just getting some pizza. What are you doing?”

  “Working here now.” She frowned. “Or at least I hope I’ll still have a job tomorrow, after what happened today.”

  “Break-in?” Ted had noticed the locksmith, too.

  “Yeah. Found the door open when I came in this morning. Someone busted the lock…”

  “Busted, hell.” The locksmith didn’t look up at us. “Whatever they did to it, they didn’t use a crowbar.” Before I could ask what he meant, he reached forward to pick up the knob he’d just replaced. “Damnedest thing I ever saw,” he went on, handing it to Ted. “Like someone put an acetylene torch to it.”


  I took a look at it. As he said, the knob itself hadn’t been damaged…but the bolt looked as if it had been melted. “Whoever did this had a fine touch,” the locksmith continued. “No scorch-marks on the back-plate or the door frame. You’d wonder why they even bothered.” An apologetic look at Sharon. “No offense.”

  “Well, if they thought they’d find enough money…” Ted began.

  “You kiddin’?” Sharon laughed. “What do you think this is, a jewelry store? We barely make enough to pay the rent.”

  “What do you…?” I shook my head. “Sorry, but I must be missing something. What is this place?”

  “S’okay. You can’t tell with the door open like this.” Sharon stepped aside to half-shut the door. Now we could see the sign on its outside:

  SALVATION ARMY THRIFT SHOP

  DELIVERIES ONLY—NO DUMPING

  PLEASE TAKE ALL DONATIONS TO FRONT DOOR

  “Why’d anyone take the trouble to break into this place…” She shrugged. “I mean, we make maybe forty, fifty dollars a day, and it gets deposited at the bank after we close up. If you want to steal something, why bother? Most everything here would cost you less than a Happy Meal at McDonald’s…”

  “So what was stolen?” I asked, feeling a sudden chill.

  “Just a few clothes, so far as I can tell. Found the hangers on the floor.” She glared at the locksmith. “You could’ve gotten here earlier, y’know.”

  “Sorry. Been a long day.” He finished with the keys, test-fitted them into the new lock. “Had another break-in just like this at Auto Plaza. Wonder who stole the welding equipment…?”

  I was no longer paying much attention. “Gotta go,” I said. “Take it easy.” Then I nudged Ted and continued heading down the alley.

  “You’ve got something on your mind,” Ted said quietly, once we were out of Sharon’s earshot. “Want to talk about it?”

  “Maybe. I dunno.” Clothes stolen from a thrift shop. The same sort of clothes I’d seen some guys wearing only a few minutes earlier. The same guys who’d asked me the way to the local nuclear power plant. “Let’s talk about it later. I think better when I’ve got some food in me.”

  Louie’s didn’t have the best pizza in town—that distinction was held by Le Roma, out near the interstate—but it was the cheapest, if you didn’t mind a bit of grease. Ted and I ordered our usual Friday night poison—a large pizza with Italian sausage, mushrooms, and green peppers—and a pitcher of Pepsi, and threw a couple of quarters in the pinball machine while we waited. We’d tucked away about half of the pizza before either of us brought up the guys I’d met an hour ago.

  “What if they’re terrorists?” Ted suddenly asked.

  I’d just taken a drink from my soda when he said that; it almost came out through my nose. “Aw, man…” I forced myself to swallow, then pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser and wiped my mouth. “You gotta be jokin’. Terrorists?”

  “Seriously. What if they’re scoping out the plant?” Ted stared at me from across the table. “Look at the setup. It’s perfect. Closed-down nuke only about a hundred miles from Boston…”

  “A hundred and ten miles from Boston. Northwest and upwind…”

  “Whatever. It’s still a sitting duck. You break in, set a bomb near the reactor, blow the thing…”

  Ted may have been my best friend, but there were times when his imagination got the better of him. I glanced around to make sure no one was overhearing us; we were in a corner booth near the front window, and the waitress was on the other side of the room. Still, I wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Keep your voice down, willya?” I murmured. “Dude, the containment is steel-reinforced concrete, twenty feet thick. It’s built to withstand meltdowns, earthquakes, airplane crashes…”

  “Yeah, but what if…?”

  “Just listen to me, okay?” I peeled off another slice of pizza. “Even if you had a bomb big enough to crack the dome, how would you get it in there? You’ve seen what kind of security they’ve got around that place. Chain-link fences, vehicle barriers, checkpoints, TV cameras, motion detectors, vault doors with keycard locks…not to mention a lot of guys with guns.” I smiled. “I pity da fool who try to break inta dat joint.”

  As always, Ted grinned at my Mr. T impersonation; we’d grown watching A-Team reruns on cable. “Yeah, but still…”

  “Besides, there isn’t any uranium in the reactor.” I took a bite, talked around a mouthful of food. “Don’t you read the paper? They started removing the fuel rods last spring, storing them in casks outside the building…and don’t get me started on how big those things are. Not only that, but…”

  I stopped myself. Until now, I was feeling rather smug, being able to rattle off stuff about the plant that I remembered from the tour we’d taken back in the sixth grade. What I’d been about to say, though, was so dumb that I swallowed it along with the cheese and sausage.

  “But what?” Ted asked.

  “I dunno.” I shrugged. “They just didn’t seem like terrorists.”

  “They didn’t seem like terrorists?” He laughed out loud. “What do you think they do, wear little stick-on name badges? ‘Hello, my name is Osama…’”

  “You know what I mean.” Even as I said this, though, I couldn’t help but remember the way Mickey reacted when she spotted Bo. Sure, cops tend to make guys my age a little nervous, even when we’ve done nothing wrong. If someone was murdered, and the police were to round up five suspects—Al Capone, Charles Manson, Saddam Hussein, Jack the Ripper, and me—and put us all in a lineup, guess which one the eyewitnesses would probably finger?

  Still, Mickey had been awful skittish. So was Tyler. And Alex…Alex was weird as a three-dollar bill.

  Nonetheless, I shook my head. “Look, whatever they are, they’re not terrorists. Probably just some guys from out of town who want to see the plant…”

  “On a Friday night? C’mon…this town ain’t that dead.” Ted started pulling bits of sausage off the pizza. I hated it when he did that. “You saw the way they were dressed…”

  “Yeah, right.” I rescued another slice before he could dissect it. “This from the guy who wears a Fantastic Four T-shirt to gym class.”

  He glared at me. “Eric, no one dresses like that…not even me. And don’t tell me it’s just a coincidence that the Salvation Army store gets broken into, with nothing taken except some clothes.” I started to object, but then he pointed out the window. “Remember what that guy said? About a break-in just like it at Auto Plaza?”

  I remembered, all right. What the locksmith had told us sounded odd even then, but I’d pushed it to the back of my mind. Auto Plaza was the biggest car dealership in town; they sold mostly new Fords and GM trucks, but also had a lot full of used cars that they’d acquired as trade-ins. All makes, all models, best selection in southern Vermont! the radio ads went. We’ve got hot coffee for Mom and Dad, and free balloons for the kiddies! If you were passing through Bellingham and, just for the hell of it, decided to steal a car, this was the place to go. They even advertised.

  “Look…” I reached for the pitcher, refilled my glass. “Let’s put this together. I run into three guys about our age…”

  “Whom you or I have never seen before.”

  “Who dress funny…”

  “The same day a thrift shop has been broken into.”

  “And they ask directions to Narragansett Point…”

  “Uh-huh.” Crossing his arms, Ted regarded me with the patience of a priest. “Go on. And they’re not quite right, are they?”

  I paused. No, they weren’t quite right. The way Tyler had spoken, as if English was a foreign language. Mickey getting twitchy when Bo cruised by. Both of them trying to prevent Alex from talking to me. Alex stepping in front of the Explorer that was about to run them down.

  “Yeah,” I admitted, “they were acting pretty strange…”

  “And how do they think they intended to get to the plant?” Ted raised an eyebrow. “Wal
k? Or maybe use a car…a stolen car…that they’d parked behind a house or in an alley just a few blocks away?”

  “Yeah, but…” I let out my breath. “C’mon, man…terrorists?”

  Ted said nothing for a moment. Clasping his hands together, he idly gazed out the window. Night had fallen on downtown Bellingham, all five blocks of it; the stores had closed, and there were only a few cars on the street. Right now, Mom was serving drinks at the local watering hole. At least she behaved like a responsible adult; Ted’s parents were probably whooping it up at the same place. With any luck, they’d get home without one of them having to take a roadside test. Neither of us came from happy, wholesome families.

  “Yeah. Terrorists.” He said this as if it was a matter of fact, not conjecture.

  “Get real…”

  “Okay, then let’s get real. Let’s head down to the plant, see if they show up.”

  “Be serious…”

  “I am serious. If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong. But if I’m right…”

  “If you’re so sure, then call the cops.” I fished a quarter out of my pocket, slapped it down on the table. “Pay phone’s over there. Go do it.”

  Neither of us had cell phones. Those are for rich kids. Ted gazed at the quarter, a little less certain than he’d been a moment ago. He knew as well as I did how the rest of this would go down. Hello, Bellingham Police? Yeah, I’m calling to report a terrorist plot to blow up the nuclear power plant. How do I know this? Well, my best friend and I met just some guys who asked directions how to get there. Oh, and they dress funny, too. Who am I? My name’s Ted Markey and my friend’s name is Eric Cosby, and we’re calling from Louie’s Pizzeria, and…Five minutes later, Bo shows up to give us a free ride in a police car. Mom would just love that. I’m sure Ted’s folks would be similarly amused.

  “Yeah, well…” He pushed the quarter back across the table. “So what do you want to do tonight? Catch a movie? Or go down to the nuke and see if these guys appear?” He shrugged. “Up to you, man. Whatever you want, I’m game.”