The Nuclear Catastrophe (a fiction novel of survival)

by Billig, Barbara C. Griffin

  Flicking on a flashlight, he cast a beam across the interior of the chamber. Lying in rows, were the bodies of those who had succumbed over the past four days.

  “That’s really something, isn’t it? Look at them. Most of them appear perfectly fit,” the group leader observed.

  They did form an eerie collection there on the cold floor. Superficially, they seemed like absolutely healthy people who had, with alarming suddenness, died. No bandages and no broken, misshapen limbs were present. There were no open wounds, no purplish bruises. Except for the pallor of death, and fixed expressions of pain on their faces, they appeared to be asleep.

  The ghastly waxen bodies and sickeningly sweet odor of decaying flesh was enough to send Arnie stumbling back out the door to the concourse.

  In Cecil’s mind was the incongruity of the generally more able persons he had seen upon arrival and these dead testaments to the ravages of radiation. “How strange,” he said, as he observed them.

  The spokesman agreed. “It was really hard to believe. They’d begin to feel sick—by Tuesday night and Wednesday was when we first started noticing them—and then they’d get very weak. Within a day they’d become so helpless that they couldn’t move. They’d complain of pain. Then, without any other warning, they’d die. Just die.” said the man as he played the light on them.

  “By Wednesday, you say?” asked Cecil. “In such a short time?” He was thinking that the radiation would have been exceedingly high to cause such early deaths.

  The other nodded. “I was lucky, I guess. I knew a little about radiation. I was a lance corporal in World War II and my company ended up in Japan right after we dropped those two A-bombs. I’ll never forget the sight of some of those poor devils— it’s haunted me for all these years.”

  Cecil understood. “The devastation must have impressed you.”

  “You’re not kidding,” said the spokesman as he steered Cecil out of the small room and into the concourse. “I was a tinhorn medic at the time and we got some of the Jap casualties to treat. You know, ever since then I’ve read nearly everything I could lay my hands on about radiation.”

  “Are you a doctor?” asked Cecil.

  “No. I run an import business, in Dallas. That’s why I was on my way to Tokyo. You may have heard of me if you’ve been in Texas. My name is George Fenimoore Kingsley of Kingsley Enterprises.”

  “Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Kingsley. I’m Cecil Yeager. The pilot of the chopper is Arnie.”

  Arnie was finding the odor repulsive to his sensitive stomach. His brain held an image of the rows of bodies and the recollection caused goose bumps to race down his arms. By all calculations there must have been at least three dozen forms incarcerated in the darkened chamber. He had sought an area of fresh air since leaving the gruesome chamber, but had yet to find it. “I’d like to do a check on the upper level,” he announced as he started up the frozen escalator. The others fell in behind him.

  “You know, last Tuesday was a fair day for traveling,” said George. “By nine o’clock in the morning, the terminals had very few passengers in comparison to what they’d have been like on a Saturday—or Friday afternoon. I had an hour lay-over and was in the waiting lounge reading when the public address system brought the bad news.”

  “That must have been a hell of a shock to you,” suggested Arnie, taking the steps two at a time.

  George appraised the younger man from under his hooded lids before he replied. “Shock? Hell, it scared the daylights out of me. But you know, most of these jokers acted as if nothing had happened—that is, for awhile. When all incoming and outgoing flights were canceled, they began to get the message.”

  “How did they act?” asked Cecil with interest.

  “Why, just like a bunch of rats leaving a sinking ship,” he said. “First, there was a lot of talk and yelling, then someone broke out running. The next thing I knew everybody was running and screaming. They trampled anybody who got knocked down....just stomped one old lady to death.”

  Cecil asked, “What were you doing, George, with no place to go?”

  “Well, I was like some others. Caught here, out of pocket, we didn’t have any choice but to stay put. There wouldn’t have been any point in checking into a hotel, anyway,” he said.

  “Actually, that concourse is probably one of the safest areas people could have been to avoid a lot of the radiation,” commented Cecil. “Down there in the center of this huge building you’d be shielded by several rather thick walls and floors. Presumably, many did stay down in the center of the terminal. Otherwise, there’d have been more casualties than there are.”

  They had reached the upper level by now, a level almost completely walled in by thick, tinted-glass plates.

  “Yeah, I knew that,” George replied. “But for the life of me I couldn’t convince some of those folks to go down to the concourse. They’d sit in here, gazing out through those tinted glass windows, talking nonsense—like any minute they expected a big jet to pull up and take them aboard.”

  The men were standing a floor above the concourse and were staring out across acres of pavement. To some, a favorite pastime at any airport was watching the jets being steered along the white lines until they were even with the passenger ramp—or listening to the huge engines being revved, in preparation for flight. For them, the excitement would be hard to recapture after today.

  George remarked, “Frankly, I’d bet that nearly every one of those people in that little room below had spent most of his time right here by these windows.”

  “It’s difficult to persuade some people that something—like radiation—that they can’t see and can’t feel, is harmful to them,” murmured Cecil, gazing out over the field below.

  “Don’t I know that!” George replied.

  They moved back down to the concourse, and threaded their way out toward the terminal entrance, anxious to get back outside.

  Streams of morning sunlight were scattering over the airport, highlighting the broad Century Boulevard, and lending an air of normality to the entire complex of pavements and buildings. Climatically, it was going to be a pretty day.

  George stepped in closer to Cecil, and leaned toward the box-like instrument Cecil carried. He put his hand out, touching it. “What does your counter say?” he asked.

  Cecil flicked on a tiny switch and checked the numerals on the dial. “Here, on the Street, around one hundred rads.”

  “A hundred. I, uh, never did get the hang of that word rad,” George said. “What does it mean in relation to hazard potential?”

  Cecil had acquired a healthy respect for the Texan. In all probability, the man had been responsible for saving many of the hundreds of lives now awaiting relief in that building. “Rad is the term used to describe a given amount of absorbed radiation.” Cecil’s cheek twitched after he completed the statement—it always twitched when he had given an explanation of something that had no relevancy, no coherency to the listener. “Rad is often used interchangeably with roentgen. Whereas rad refers to absorption in soft tissue, roentgen refers to a measure of radiation exposure in air,” he explained. “This machine is old. Now they use a newer term called millisieverts. They all are just a measure of what radiation is out there.”

  George was still looking at the speaker, waiting for the moment when something would be said that he understood. When he realized that Cecil had finished, and that no other elaboration was intended, he shrugged his shoulders, a weak smile on his lips. “Well, I guess I’m too dense for your kind of talk, Cecil. I was just wondering about how dangerous it is out here right now.”

  “Maybe an example would shed light on the subject,” Cecil hastened to add. “For instance, it is believed that a dose of radiation in the range of four hundred fifty rads would result in death for the majority of people. Above that, very, very few, if any, would survive doses as high as one thousand rads.”

  The statistics were sinking in, as George listened with his head slightly bowe
d.

  “However,” continued the scientist, “very few, if any, would die following exposures up to two hundred fifty rads.”

  “How high do you suppose it got during the thermal inversion?” asked the Texan.

  “I wouldn’t even want to guess, George. Eventually, the radiation extreme will be calculated, but I don’t think we’d have any means of knowing precisely—it’ll just be an educated guess.”

  “That people have died from the radiation is fairly conclusive proof that it got high, though. Up to four hundred fifty or above?” asked George.

  Cecil didn’t wish to demoralize the man, but still he wouldn’t lie to him, either. He’d give his own estimate. “Yes, I’d say it got well above four hundred fifty. But I wouldn’t want to speculate on the upper level.” Noticing the other’s concern, he said, “You’re in good shape, George. Very good shape. I wouldn’t think you should worry. Down in the concourse you were reasonably well protected from the radiation, and generally speaking, the smaller the dose, the better it can be tolerated.”

  The older man lifted his gaze to Cecil. “I understand that there’s a ten-to-twenty year latency period for the development of cancerous tumors—from radiation exposures. That’s what we, who survive this, have to look forward to. Some future, huh?” he said bitterly.

  Cecil couldn’t deny the truth of those remarks. He couldn’t find anything appropriate to say. The silence was embarrassing.

  “When will the rescue team arrive for us? George finally asked.

  Glancing at his watch, Cecil replied, “It’s after eight o’clock. They were instructed to start rolling at the same time we got our orders to move. Of course, they’re traveling via the highways, and not too fast. But I figure they should reach the city in a couple hours, at the latest.”

  George nodded.

  “Arnie will call in for a medical detail to be flown to you folks, though,” promised Cecil. “As soon as he phones, a squad should be in the air within a few minutes. So it shouldn’t be too much longer, George.”

  He and Arnie returned to their helicopter, gave a short salute to the lone man on the sidewalk, and flew off in the direction of their second destination.

  Once clear of the airport, Arnie put in the call to his command center. He rapidly relayed the news of the conditions they had found at the site. Although Cecil could not hear the conversation at the other end, he knew by the pilot’s comments that instructions for proceeding directly to the second reading site had been somewhat altered. When the call was terminated, he asked, “What’s changed, Arnie?”

  The pilot answered, “Seems someone is worried about the condition of the County Art Museum. We are to go straight there and report on what we find.” His tone indicated bewilderment.

  Cecil didn’t question him further, but sat back in the bucket seat and routed their journey on Arnie’s map of the city. He hastily pinpointed the area, then checked the scene below.

  “Isn’t it on Wilshire, Cecil?” asked the pilot as he searched for familiar structures.

  “Right,” said Cecil. “I think we’re over the boulevard now. Veer eastward and we should spot it pretty easily. It’s by Hancock Park.”

  Wilshire Boulevard cut its swath through the business district of gleaming modern buildings, its peculiar absence of people and traffic marking this as an unusual day. They followed the street for no more than a couple minutes when Cecil spotted the park below. “That’s it, Arnie,” he said, pointing. “That’s Hancock Park, and the La Brea Tar Pits next to the museum.”

  The park was its lovely serene self of natural foliage and lush beds of flowers bordering the expanse of brilliant green, if somewhat overgrown, lawn.

  Arnie seemed impressed, not by the beauty of the park so much as the huge pits of black bubbling tar. “We sure don’t want to set this bird in the middle of one of those pits, Cecil,” he said as they slowly circled the area. “Which one is the museum?” he asked.

  “The white building there,” Cecil replied.

  Without hesitation, Arnie lowered the craft into the center of Wilshire Boulevard and cut the rotors. Before moving from his seat, he looked toward the many steps leading up to the front of the museum.

  Cecil detected the hesitation, almost a reluctance, in the pilot to go inside, but he didn’t say anything.

  Finally, Arnie heaved a sigh and unbuckled his seat belt. “Well, I guess I’d better go on in,” he said.

  “Do you want me to go in with you?” asked Cecil.

  Arnie seemed relieved. “Yeah. I wish you would. I....the commander said that there might be some kind of trouble in there, Cecil.”

  Cecil watched Arnie checking around the cab of the chopper— the sort of thing that might be done if he were searching for a weapon. Indeed, Arnie’s fist closed around the handle of a wrench, and then he started exiting the plane.

  Unwilling to ask his motive for the wrench, Cecil got out and walked side by side with Arnie up the flights of stairs. They paused at the entrance to the museum. Its glass doors had been smashed to slivers. Cecil looked expectantly at Arnie. The young man had paled, and his fist clenched the wrench until his knuckles were white under the skin. Together, they walked on through the foyer, their feet making crunching noises as they carefully eased over the shards of glass.

  They hesitated at the inner door, and listened. There were no sounds from within. Using the head of the wrench, Arnie pushed the door in, and they stepped cautiously inside. The main chamber was an ordinary, empty viewing room. Its gray walls, the repositories of masterpieces of paintings, had been gutted.

  Cecil moved over to the nearest framework of a painting. It was a large square case that had been built nearly flush with the wall. Covering it had been a three quarter inch thick plate of plexiglass, a special precaution taken to prohibit defacing of the work. The painting was now gone—as were all the others that had been on display. He didn’t need to ask Arnie the significance of this bit of thievery. He knew.

  Arnie mumbled under his breath, “Every God-damned one is gone.” When at last he turned to Cecil, he said, “This is really going to raise a stink. Jesus, is it ever! Cecil, this was a Russian exhibition, and now every one of their damned paintings has been stolen!’’

  “Yes, I know,” answered Cecil. “I was in here looking at these two weeks ago. The exhibit was a collection of impressionistic art—Picasso, Gauguin, Van Gogh—they’re priceless pieces.”

  “And they’re gone,” Arnie reiterated. “I got to call in about this, Cecil,” and he hurried out the door.

  Cecil took one fast reading, duly recorded the radiation level, and trailed Arnie back to the chopper.

  When his report to the command center was completed, Arnie asked, “What do you make of those paintings being gone, Cecil?”

  It was a nebulous question from the youthful pilot. In his precise manner, Cecil formed an answer. “If you’re thinking about the diplomatic angle, I’d say the Russians are going to be very upset by this. They haven’t been all that eager to make cultural exchanges with the United States, anyway. And now, with such a valuable collection gone....well, I’d imagine they’ll come out with some nasty accusations about how those paintings disappeared.”

  “You’re thinking this will add some heat to the cold war?” suggested Arnie.

  “Undoubtedly,” Cecil replied. “There have been masterpieces on loan to the museum before, but these were the first ones that had to hang behind those extra thick plates of glass. The Russians made a big to-do about special packing for shipment and special protection while the paintings were on display. It almost seemed that they expected the art-work to be sabotaged somewhere along the way.”

  Arnie said, “But there must have been guards stationed with the exhibit, then. Someone beside the regular museum staff.”

  “No, I don’t believe there were. At least, not when I was in here to see them,” answered Cecil. “Not that it really matters whether guards had been here or not. Once White Water went, e
verybody would have been expected to make himself his primary concern.”

  “Well, it looks like somebody was enterprising enough to get in there and take every blasted painting. Man, he must have been crazy to come into the radiation for them.”

  Cecil fastened his seat belt before replying. “I don’t see it as having been such a gamble, Arnie. Not when you weigh the hazards against the value of the paintings. Not for someone who had a plan to remove them quickly, then get away.”

  Arnie looked at his partner quizzically. His face showed respect for the shrewd brain of the chemist. “You sound like you could have done it yourself, Cecil,” he said lightly.

  Cecil checked the belt and settled back in the seat. “No, not me, Arnie,” he answered. “But I do have an idea about the system. I’ve always thought that if you understood the system, you could beat it.” His gaze returned to the front of the museum, and came to rest on the scum covered reflecting pool. “That’s what it really takes to stay ahead,” he added.

  For Arnie, the subject was getting a little deep. “We’ve got three more reading sites to cover, Cecil. I guess we’d better get on with it,” he said, not completely understanding Cecil.

  “Arnie, when we’re finished, I’d like to be dropped off at the spot where my friends are to be.” Cecil used the term ‘friends’ loosely. What he had in mind was re-joining the volunteer crew from the little mountain town.

  “Sure,” Arnie replied. “No problem. Our work will be over after the third stop.”

  In the recesses of every mind there lurks an indomitable fear of the unknown. It may lie dormant in courageous souls, only to rear its ugly head over the foot of the death bed. In others, it surfaces unexpectedly on a darkened street in the late of night, and in some, in the middle of a sunny morning. To those men traversing the roadways on a clear, warm California day, fear had been well hidden, placed far and deep in the crevices of gray matter. As in others before them, they had no knowledge of the sort of things to expect within the irradiated area. But as the trucks and jeeps hauled them nearer, more than a few hearts began to entertain doubts and fears.