Instead of returning to his office, Hargrove, his face tinged with the redness from too many years of boozing and from the morning’s pleasantries with his young employee, pushed the door in and stepped into Cecil’s office. Calmly he withdrew a thin, dark cigar, held a flame to the end until he was puffing smoke, then looked Cecil squarely in the eye as he spoke. “Guess you saw that out there.”
Cecil lowered his glance, without nodding.
“Yeager, I’ll get right to the point. I’ve just had a talk with McCormick.”
Cecil looked up, his eyes cool. Here it comes, he thought, that old fart is going to hand me a line of bull next....a lot of ‘you’re a fine man, Yeager.’
Hargrove puffed deeply, then continued, “You’ve been with us a lot of years....a fine, a really fine addition to our staff.” Hargrove paused, inspected the tip of the cigar. “I know you were next in line for promotion, Yeager, but the job went to McCormick.
A hot spasm of anger passed through Cecil’s body, but he sat unmoving.
Hargrove opened his mouth to continue when the shaking began. It was not a violent quake, hardly more than a tremor to Californians who had experienced many such rumblings over the years. But the man registered a trace of surprise and waited for the movement to cease. Within a fraction of a minute the quake was over.
Papers on the desk had shifted and Cecil scooped them back into a pile. As yet he had had nothing to say to his superior.
Hargrove cleared his throat. “Calmar, you see, is taking a new course in the advancement of its employees. We’re going toward younger men....men who have a lot of years to give us....men with new ideas, fresher drives.”
Cecil lifted himself from his chair and went over to gaze out through the glass wall.
“You’re an excellent chemist, Yeager, and you’ve done all right in marketing, but,” Hargrove flicked the ash from his cigar, “we need someone who is, well....more personable for public relations.”
With his back to Hargrove, Cecil replied, “McCormick is an ambitious young man. He won’t disappoint you.” And he’s a butt licker to make it after less than two years, he didn’t add.
“Yes....well, I’m glad you understand.” Hargrove drew a short puff on his cigar. “What’s best for Calmar, eh, Yeager?”
Cecil saw Hargrove’s reflection in the glass as the man reached for the doorknob. “Yes sir. Calmar,” he said to the departing form.
Returning to his chair, Cecil sank down into it. His palms were wet and he dried them on his trousers before starting up the marketing program and beginning his work. He hadn’t time to get to the second tab on the screen when suddenly a terrific boom sounded.
It was much, much stronger than the occasional sonic booms that people had grown used to. In the older wing, in the packing department behind the administrative offices, the windows high on the stucco wall shattered, sending splinters of glass raining down on the workers feeding the assembly line. At the same instant the south wall of the thirty-year-old building began to buckle and chunks of mortar cascaded through the haze of mortar dust to the floor.
Immediately conveyor belts ground to a halt, lights went out, and the ventilation system shut off. Within seconds the entire operation at Calmar had ceased.
For the space of two or three good breaths the only sound was falling mortar and workers scrambling to take cover.
Clerical workers and officials of Calmar drew themselves into a tight group on the main floor of the newer part of the building. Cecil, feeling the shock to the structure, rushed from his office into the large central room. In the dimness of the interior, it was apparent that many of the staff were frightened. This was no ordinary sound reverberation, and following so quickly on the heels of the quake, it seemed ominous.
Hargrove pushed his way through the group until he reached Cecil’s side. “Here, Yeager,” he said, shoving a small bullhorn into Cecil’s hand, “find out what’s happening in the packing department!”
Holding the bullhorn, Cecil watched Hargrove rush across to a telephone with intercom and start yelling into the speakerphone. It was dead. The phones were down. A dark thought passed through his brain as he saw the older man’s concern. So where’s your fair-haired McCormick, Cecil wondered, as he started down the corridor to the back of the plant.
At first the darkness of the older wing and the accompanying quietness sent a wave of fear through Cecil. Had they all fled—or was it worse? “Now hear me,” he yelled. “Are you there? Is everyone all right?”
His voice, strangely hoarse in the bullhorn, loosened the tongues of the workers. Questions were hurled out amidst isolated moans and more than a few, near hysterical screams. By this time everyone who could was frantically talking at once. It took several minutes for the din to die out so that Cecil’s voice could be heard again.
“Folks, try to stay calm! We’ve got to stay calm!” he commanded.
“What the hell has happened?” yelled someone from the darkness.
“Is it the Russians?” shouted someone else.
“Or the Red Chinese?” bellowed another.
Calmar employees had been shuffled about some by the shaking four minutes earlier, but recognized the source of the movement. Once they had regained their equilibrium, they had calmly gone on with their chores. This new jolt though—this was something entirely different.
“It’s the Japs again! I knew this would happen,” came from one of the older men.
“Naw. Not them. They own half of California by now,” someone snorted.
“Listen! People! Take it easy! This is Cecil Yeager speaking. As soon as we know, we’ll tell you, but right at this moment, we don’t know what has happened. Please vacate this department and meet out on the parking lot.” He stared at the south wall which seemed likely to collapse at any second. “Just gather in the parking area until I get back to you.”
“Well, that’s that,” someone remarked as the workers quickly moved outside. “They may as well let us go home because there won’t be any work done in that wing for a while.”
Assured that everyone was out of the damaged wing, Cecil hurriedly returned to the office area. The workers there still milled around the center of the floor, speculating on where the explosion had occurred. Having no knowledge of the collapsing wall in the rear area, they were loudly expressing their views but otherwise showed less concern than the packagers.
It was Hargrove dashing wildly into their midst, yelling and flailing his arms, which brought the group to quietness. “Listen! Listen! It was at White Water....there’s been an accident at White Water! A car just stopped out front for a moment, then drove off.”
“The explosion?” Cecil asked.
“Yes, yes! White Water has been leveled! There’s radiation everywhere! “ Hargrove started off again, then hesitated momentarily as he passed Cecil. “Yeager,” he ordered, “tell the people in the packing department that we’ve got to get out of here...’‘He moved off before the words were finished.
Cecil watched him scurrying off, a lemming now. Then grimly thinking of the workers outside on the parking lot he grasped the bullhorn more firmly and headed for the door.
Outside the employees had convened on the asphalt lot and were showing signs of recovery from their earlier shock. Most had their phones out and were trying to get on the internet or call or text someone. Relief that they had escaped without injury was evident in their hushed conversations. Occasionally laughter would break through from someone who felt very lucky to be standing there at all. As far as they were concerned, though, the danger was over. But there was muttering that they had no cell phone reception.
Cecil appeared on the steps with his bullhorn and began shouting. “Everyone back inside!! Get inside now! Come in through here!” He motioned frantically, beckoning to them.
The group exchanged glances of bewilderment but began to move in the direction of the building. When Cecil repeated his message and then darted inside himself, the stragglers sensed the urg
ency in the man and speedily closed the distance to the building.
When they were assembled, crowded inside a small meeting room, Cecil climbed on a chair in front of them. Trying to keep his voice from shaking, he made the announcement. “The White Water power plant has just had an explosion!” He waited for the reaction of panic from the people. Instead there was a moment of silence.
"Is that why we don't have any cell phone service?" someone called out and others assented.
“Then can we go home?” a voice asked finally.
“When will we be called back to work?” someone else queried.
“Wait. Wait! You don’t....” Everyone was talking suddenly; he couldn’t make himself heard above the noise.
“Yeah. How long will it take them to get this wall repaired so we can work?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Cecil shouted. “White Water has had a major explosion!” His emphasis was lost on the people.
“So we’re without electricity. Big deal,” came the retort.
“Yeah. They’ll fix it. We’ll have power soon.”
Could this be? Cecil wondered. Could these human beings, crowded here in this room, possibly be ignorant of the catastrophe that had just befallen them? His background as a chemist made the significance of the accident deadly clear to him, but surely other people....
“Look, folks! White Water was a nuclear power plant. It has exploded! Don’t you know what that means?” Cecil asked.
“Sure. We’re going to be out of electricity until they get it repaired.”
“They? Who are you talking about?” he questioned, appalled by their incomprehension. Here stood the backbone of the country—and they hadn’t the vaguest idea of the horrifying meaning of this accident. “There is no ‘They’ who will go out and repair White Water. It has been destroyed, people!”
Their faces reflected the lack of understanding, the incomprehension of lay persons who had never heard of beta or gamma rays, radioactive wastes, or fission reactions. The word reaction, itself, had no more meaning to them than the collection of angular buildings that sat on the horizon thirteen miles southward.
They were a younger generation for the most part. Atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs was internationally banned at the time they were listening to the latest music on their ipods, surfing the web, and getting their first automobiles.
As adults, they’d periodically notice an article in a local newspaper dealing with the installation of a nuclear plant or some group that was against the installation. Occasionally a blurb would appear about a leak of radioactive wastes and comments by a scientist as to its dangers. But that would be followed by officials denying that danger existed and stating that the public was ignorant for being spooked. These articles, though, had little bearing on the average man and woman as they thumbed cursorily through the news on the way to sports, the comics, and the food section.
The day of the fallout shelters was gone. The shelters had only served as havens for down-and-out winos. Since the threat of the cold war had ended and atmospheric testing had ceased, the shelters had been eliminated.
Perspiration rolled down from his armpits as Cecil tried to communicate the full scope of this disaster. “Don’t you see,” he pleaded. “It’s not a simple matter of the lights being out, for God’s sake. It’s an atomic explosion that we’ve had!”
There were some murmurings at this. An older man spoke up. “Like an atomic bomb? Is that it?”
“I’m afraid it is something like an atomic bomb. Do you remember what the radiation did to the Japanese when we dropped our A-bombs?” How could people who had been babies in 1945 or not even born yet grasp this? Unless they’d been educated with the facts, they couldn’t understand. He absently wiped sweat from his forehead. “Well, we’ve got that same kind of radiation in the air right now....right overhead.”
“Lordy, I remember reading about where those Japanese got burned to death. And others got real sick from something in the air and died.” Someone had begun to catch on.
“What are we going to do?” begged a voice from the crowd.
“I don’t know....I just don’t know,” said Cecil, relieved that he had at last aroused some concern. “But there’s no reason for you to stay here. Maybe try to get your families together, because there’ll certainly be an evacuation.”
“Leave our homes?” asked a chorus of voices.
“I guess so. With the radiation in the air the longer we’re around here the more of it we’re going to absorb,” he said.
A female voice, near hysteria, shrieked, “But where do we go? Which way?”
“Away from here—from the White Water site—I don’t know. Someone will have to direct us. Turn on whatever you can get to work when you get home. Hopefully you or someone in your neighborhood will have an emergency generator. Somebody is going to have to tell us the safe routes....but stay away from White Water!” Cecil cautioned from the darkness.
A few people began to panic at this. They turned and ran to their automobiles. Outside, one lady dashed across the lot, her head covered with a packing box as though to protect herself from the penetrating rays. The disbelievers in the strange danger of the airborne particles strolled, their lack of haste indicating their disdain for the fright that had begun to flow.
“Hell, I don’t feel anything in the air. I’ll bet you that guy Yeager is a crock,” said a young man.
“Yeah,” agreed his friend. “He don’t know what he’s talking about. There’s nothing burning me.”
“Naw. Me neither,” agreed the other as they walked slowly toward their automobiles.
Screeching tires and the mad rushing of employees quickly became contagious to many of the skeptics—and there were many. Seeing their fellow workers dashing away set them to thinking, and before many more steps, they, too, began breaking into a run. Their private thoughts failed to assure them that this was some sort of monstrous lie, that nobody would have let anything that dangerous be put up on the edge of a megalopolis that contained nearly eleven million people.
Because metropolitan Los Angeles and its neighboring Orange County were crisscrossed with a massive, arterial system of freeways, a public transportation system of buses or trains was virtually nonexistent. So, as the Calmar workers piled into their automobiles, they wheeled either north or south to get to minor routes near their homes. All southbound traffic passed within a few hundred yards of the White Water site. With car windows securely rolled up, most felt that even if those strange foreign things were really in the air, then they certainly wouldn’t get inside a car with its windows closed.
While others, in the offices, frantically snatched their belongings from desk drawers and files and exited in a headlong rush, Cecil Yeager methodically pondered on those few articles which he thought might be useful in the days to come. Company records that he had been personally responsible for were not among his list of considerations. The computers had automatic back up systems. Anything that wasn't backed up now, it was too late. His employer had been too cheap to put in emergency power generators. But no one was going to stick around to do any work, anyway.
He leaned against the edge of his desk, his head lowered in concentration, when the last employee raced through the clutter, en route to the parking lot.
Frank Waring, a junior accountant at Calmar, paused only long enough to ask, “Hey, Yeager! What are you doing standing there? I had you figured to be the first one out!”
“I....I’m just trying to decide on what to take,” Cecil explained. “I expected you to be long gone,” the man said, dashing out. This comment from his fellow worker was the kind of stinging, acid barb that people often threw at him. For some reason, unexplained to him, others seemed to picture him as the first one out, the one least likely to cope, the one who was always intimidated and easily frightened. That image was inconsistent with his picture of himself. He knew he was probably one of the best-read and most knowledgeable men in the chemical company. His lack
of aggressive behavior was simply due to a deeply ingrained timidness in his relations with other people.
An unmarried, lonely man, and without kin, Cecil sought refuge from his loneliness by embedding himself in piles of books, journals, and papers. Naturally scholarly in his early life, he had read to learn, but as the years began quickly ebbing away, he continued to read, not only to learn, but also to fill the vacuum that was the solitude of his evenings, his weekends, even his vacations. A promotion to public relations would have plugged the hole in his life, would have made him become more outgoing. But it wasn’t to be, now.
In his assessment of the situation, he concluded that the dangers of the radiation hung like a giant lethal cloud above his head—nothing short of a rapid evacuation from the region could save him from its horrors. In the brief span of a few moments, he could not determine the course to follow, the direction to take. Whatever seemed the easiest, and the most expedient, that’s what he’d do. Meanwhile, he must prepare for the eventuality that he may never see Calmar Chemical again, nor perhaps, even this once beautiful countryside.
From the corners of his memory came the knowledge that metals absorb large amounts or radiation, and if worn close to the body, served as pools for the deadly rays that would steadily and continually irradiate his tissues....ultimately destroying cells of his body.
Carefully he removed his watch and laid it on the desk. Next, the class ring was tugged off his finger and placed beside the watch. Metal coins were removed from his pocket and dropped into the collection.
With these things done, Cecil went into the small room used by the night security guard. Swiftly he pried the lock off the guard’s locker. Inside he found the oily thirty-eight caliber pistol that was carried on night rounds, which he slipped into the outer pocket of his jacket. It was metal but he would stow it away from his body once he got outside.
The Nuclear Catastrophe (a fiction novel of survival) Page 4
