by Tom Abrahams
Dub nodded at the window. “Until what? The ash is gone, or the radiation has subsided? That’ll take forever. Now’s as good a time as any.”
She smiled and brushed her black hair from her eyes, her large brown eyes still somehow bright. “I agree with you, but I’ll do whatever you think is best. I’m with you, Dub.”
Dub turned from the window and opened his arms. Keri slid comfortably between them and the two embraced. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling her familiar sweet scent.
She pulled away first and ran her thumbs along the inside of her pack straps. “It’s hard to hug you with our packs on.”
Dub touched her face and kissed her forehead. “You managed it when we were hiking Santa Anita Canyon.”
Keri blushed, her eyes finding the floor, and she slapped his chest with her open hand. “Hush,” she said. “Now is not the time for that.”
Dub winked. “Let’s do this, then,” he said. “Have you seen Michael?”
Keri nodded. “I think he’s downstairs with Barker. They were getting suited up. They’re waiting for us.”
Dub snatched his mask and goggles from his desk and led Keri to the door. The two left the room and weaved their way through the eighth-floor hall in Rieber Vista, one of the Plaza dorm buildings on campus. The dim passageway was littered with microwave pizza boxes, ramen cups, full trash bags, empty soda cans and bottles. Keri folded her arm across her face to cover her nose. Dub held his breath and took Keri’s free hand to lead her to the stairwell, where they bounded down into the darkness, their loud footsteps echoing against the metal and concrete well. Dub was sweating by the time they reached the first floor. He hadn’t had much exercise in the days since the attack.
He pushed through the first-floor doorway and out into the open, sucking in a deep breath of air. Keri kept pace with him, her long legs striding side by side. Ahead of them, near the front entrance to the tower, their friends were already gathered. They were loaded for bear and apparently anxious to move.
“It’s about time,” said Barker as they approached. “We’re not going to have much daylight, and the less moving we do in the dark, the better.”
Michael pulled two mini LED flashlights from his jacket pocket and handed one to Dub. “I kept these in my lockbox, with my credit cards and cash. They still work.” He flicked the ice blue light on and off.
“Thanks.” Dub lowered his goggles onto his eyes, cinched the hoodie, and drew the burlap mask over his mouth and nose.
Michael pushed open the door and led them out into the ash. Dub held the door for Keri, as he was the last to step outside. The cold wind blasted against him as the door slapped shut behind him. It seeped under the edges of the cinched hoodie, chilling his exposed skin.
The lack of sunlight had dropped the Southern California temperatures a good twenty-five degrees. Add the wind to the cooler air and it was cold. The ash might have been mistaken for snow had it not been for its gray, sooty color.
Even though they’d been out in it, moving between the dorm and the dining hall, this felt different. They were trekking more than a mile, and the terrain wasn’t easy. It was a steep descent down the hill and then a climb up the steps on the south side of campus.
Dub’s feet trudged through the ash, following closely the tracks of footprints worn into the ash along the length of the plaza outside their dorm. Once they’d passed the dining hall, they started making their way down the long flight of steps.
There were no footprints here. If anyone had traversed the steps before them, the evidence was covered by the new-fallen ash.
Despite his protective mask, the overwhelming smell of char and death seeped into Dub’s nose. It was a sickening odor that clung to everything, everywhere. Gone were the pleasant notes of the jacaranda trees and rose gardens that dotted the campus, and the smell of freshly cut grass and hints of citrus that had welcomed him to the campus on his first visit there as a prospective student two years earlier. These were distant memories now. They’d never return, he imagined, as he stepped carefully through the slippery drifts of ash at the bottom of the first set of steps. He shrugged his pack up on his back and followed closely behind his trio of friends. Michael marched confidently, purposefully in the front, leading the silent procession.
Dub wiped flecks of ash from his goggles and listened to the sound of his breath as he walked. Keri moved a step ahead of him. She glanced over her shoulder and gave him a thumbs-up with her gloved hand.
When they reached the bottom of the second set of steps, Dub exhaled, trying to catch his breath. He didn’t want to inhale too deeply, but his quickened pulse was thumping against the burlap at his neck. He pulled up his mask, adjusting it over his nose.
A gust of wind blew the ash sideways against them. Drifts of it shifted on the wide path ahead of them that ran alongside Pauley Pavilion. Two of the glass entrance doors were shattered, thin spills of ash crossing the threshold into the arena’s concourse.
Other than the damaged pavilion doors, there was no evidence of life anywhere. They were in a nuclear wasteland devoid of anything recognizable other than the structures cemented into the high desert soil of Southern California.
Dub raised his chin and looked skyward, despite nothing to see. From the ground upward, everything blended together into the gray of the ash. Shades of that gray, bordering on black in places, drifted like vapor clouds through the opaque curtain of debris. A shudder traveled along Dub’s spine, and the group approached the iconic bear statue outside the Ackerman Student Union. Its bronze was layered with silvery fallout. Dub noticed all three of his friends glanced at the bear as they passed it.
“Not far now,” said Michael. His voice was muffled by the thick yellow scarf he wore over his nose and mouth. Everything looked incandescent against the colorless surroundings. “We’re almost there.”
Dub kept walking, his thighs burning as he waded through a particularly deep ash drift. He imagined the radioactive dust filtering upward and into his nose, seeking out the cells in his lungs. He coughed reflexively and pushed past the drift.
Finally, after a normally ten-minute walk that took twenty, they were there. Michael pointed up to the building’s roof and a grouping of radio antennas perched at the edge. This was the place.
Boelter Hall was one of the buildings that made up the Court of Sciences on South Campus. It was eight stories with a basement and decorated in pale red brick. Its entrance was a set of ten wide steps that led from the court and into the building.
The hall was guarded by keycard access on weekends and after hours. A student or faculty member had to wave their Bruin Card across a panel at the door and the entrance unlocked automatically. That, however, was no good when the power was out.
Michael vigorously pulled on the handles for the twin glass doors. They wagged, but neither gave.
“We’re going to have to break in,” said Barker. “There’s no other way.”
“What about a utility access around back?” asked Keri. “Through the alley?”
“We could try it,” said Michael, “but if this is locked, so is that. All of these keycard doors are on the same system. I think Barker’s right.”
Dub walked down the steps to a landscaping square that surrounded the base of a large oleander. He picked up a couple of round river stones with his gloved hands and moved back to the base of the steps.
He waved his hands, motioning for his friends to move. “Back up. I don’t want you to get hit.”
He took the first rock and chucked it at the door. It hit dead center and splintered the glass, decorating it with a large spiderweb crack. He switched the remaining rock from his left hand to his right and tossed it at the crack. Bull’s-eye. The glass shattered, and large angular shards bounced from the landing down the steps.
“That’ll work,” said Barker, nodding with approval.
The foursome stepped carefully from the glass-laden doorway into the building. None of them had been there before.
“Let’s try the basement first,” said Michael. “We know the antennas are on the roof, but there’s a chance that any radios up there would be fried from the blast. Maybe they have some stuff in the basement.”
“It would save us from having to climb eight flights of stairs too,” said Barker. “I’m all for that.”
Keri pointed along a hallway. “The stairs are right here.” She led the group toward the stairwell. They hurriedly made their way to the basement level, the white arcs of LED lights flashing on the steps as they descended into the darkness. They walked the corridors, checking every room for anything that might resemble radio transceivers.
Then they came to 3420, a room outside of which a bronze plaque proclaimed the space as a historic site. Inside the room, in the far corner, was a tall, thin machine that looked like an air-conditioning furnace. Michael held his light on the wall.
Barker ran his fingers along the raised lettering on the plaque, reading it aloud. “At 10:30 p.m., 29 October 1969, the first ARPANET message was sent from this UCLA site to the Stanford Research Institute.”
“This is the place the internet was born,” said Michael. “Well, what became the internet?”
“I’ve been here two years and never knew this existed,” said Barker. “Crazy.”
“Yeah,” said Michael. “UCLA sent the message to Stanford, but Stanford couldn’t respond. The joke is that UCLA invented the internet and Stanford broke it.”
Everyone chuckled at the humor. Then Dub sighed.
“C’mon,” he said, pointing the flashlight onward. “We need to keep going. It’s going to be dark soon.”
Nights were no longer what they’d experienced the first two decades of their lives. Since the attacks and the subsequent sky-blanketing fallout, nightfall was earlier, and it was black. There were no stars, no moon, no ambient light from streetlamps or building windows. It was an unearthly experience to be outside once the opaque sunlight disappeared. And as far as they knew, it wasn’t safe.
Dub led the group from door to door. They found nothing until Keri turned the knob on an unlocked closet toward the end of a hallway. To one side of the door was a room label that read W6YRA SUPPLIES. She stepped inside, Dub guiding her way with his flashlight.
The closet was lined on three sides with floor-to-ceiling metal shelves encased in mesh cages. They were effectively see-through lockers of various sizes.
Dub’s and Michael’s icy lights swept across the shelves, casting shadows on the contents. Keri pulled up on a latch at eye level and swung open the door. She reached inside and pulled out an oval-shaped handset.
“That looks like a CB microphone,” said Barker. “My dad was a long-haul trucker. He used to let me push the button and call out some of the lingo. My handle was Little Bark.”
“It’s a radio mic,” said Michael. “That’s a good start. But it’s no good without a radio.”
Keri shoved the handset back into the locker, shut the door, and opened the next one. Dub stepped behind her and shone his light into the space. There was a stack of rechargeable batteries inside.
Another locker held differing sizes and lengths of wiring. A fourth stored stacks of circuit boards. A fifth was empty.
“Hey,” said Michael, opening a locker on the back wall. “I think I found something.”
He opened the door and pulled out a squatty silver radio with a long black antenna. He handed it to Keri, reached back into the locker, and pulled out a second identical radio.
Michael held up the one in his hand. “These could work!” he said excitedly. “These are handheld ham radios, and they take AA batteries.”
He set his flashlight on the edge of the locker, aiming it at the radio in his hand. It was a Kenwood.
“Kenwood?” asked Barker. “Like the subwoofer in my brother’s Mustang. It’s in the trunk and—”
“Your brother has a Mustang?” Keri cut in.
“Yeah,” said Barker.
“Figures,” said Keri. “I always figured you for a Ford guy. I like Chevy.”
Barker smirked. “Figures.”
Michael picked up another radio, a Yaesu. He turned it over in his hands and used his index and middle finger to pop open the battery compartment that ran along the back of the device. It was empty. He snapped the cover back into place.
“We’ve got a couple of options,” said Michael.
“Maybe,” said Barker, “but, one, we don’t even know if they work. And two, where are we going to get batteries?”
“I’ve got some in my room,” said Keri. “I haven’t taken them out of the packaging yet.”
“I’ve got some too,” echoed Dub.
“And we could probably find a big supply of them in Ackerman,” said Michael.
Dub shone his light at Michael. “Ackerman?”
“Yeah,” said Michael. “Assuming it hasn’t been raided already, we could probably get what we need there. As a backup.”
Barker mumbled his dissatisfaction with having been wrong and opened another locker. He blindly fished around inside it and pulled out a larger set-top transceiver. It was a rectangular box with a DC cable attached to the back of it. “What about this?” he asked, holding it up for redemptive approval. “Is it useful?”
Michael aimed the arc of LED light at the box and shrugged. “Can’t hurt to take it. It’s not battery powered, which could make it tough. But sure, bring it.”
Barker tucked the box under his arm and shut the lockers. “We good, then? It’s got to be getting late, and if we’re stopping at Ackerman, we’d better head back outside.”
“Yeah,” said Michael, “I think we’re good.”
Dub waved his light toward the doorway and led his friends from the closet to the hallway and to the stairwell. They trudged up the steps and back to the ground level, winding their way back to the shattered doorway through which they had entered. It was nearly dark, and it was getting colder. The breeze that had chilled them as they walked from the Hill to the Court of Sciences was more of a biting wind now. It swirled through the plaster and rustled the remaining leaves on the dying trees that had once been a beautifully crafted canopy above the plaza that connected the collection of buildings dedicated to various scientific disciplines.
The foursome trekked back in silence toward the center of campus and the Ackerman student union. Dub held the burlap mask against his face with his free hand, trying to stop the whirl of briny ash from getting into his nose or mouth. Keri edged alongside him and put her gloved hand on the small of his back as they moved together.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice muffled through her scarf. “You’re unusually quiet. You’ve always been the strong, silent type, but other than directing us, you’ve hardly said two words since we left the dorms.”
Dub shrugged. “I’m okay. No better or worse than anyone else. Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“What we’re becoming,” he said.
Keri stopped rubbing his back, quickened her pace, and stepped ahead of Dub. She craned her neck and glared at him. There was a sting in her voice he hadn’t heard before.
“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked pointedly.
Dub shook his head as if to nonchalantly downplay the hyperbole of his opinion. “I don’t know. We broke into Boelter Hall. We—”
“You broke into Boelter,” said Keri. “You threw the rocks, remember?”
“Okay,” Dub conceded. “That’s semantics, but fine. I broke into Boelter. Now we’re going to break into Ackerman.”
“We’re trying to survive,” said Keri. “We’re doing what anyone trying to survive would do.”
“That’s my point,” said Dub. “I’m not bothered by taking radios from Boelter or batteries from the union. It’s what I think is coming. Today it’s breaking into buildings and stealing radios and batteries. What will we do next? What will we be able to justify with the reaso
ning that we’re trying to survive? It’s only been two weeks, Keri. Two weeks.”
Keri slowed and eased beside Dub. She didn’t correct him or tell him he was being overly dramatic. Dub instantly wished he hadn’t said anything. He wished he’d told her nothing was wrong and that he was quiet because he was tired. She’d have believed that, and it would have prevented the tension between them. Neither of them spoke another word until they’d reached the main entrance to Ackerman.
Barker tried the doors, the set-top radio still under one arm. They were locked. He faced his friends and nodded at Dub.
“You have any more rocks?” he asked. “Because we aren’t getting in otherwise.”
Michael stepped back from the doors and surveyed the area. He craned his neck from side to side and swept the bright flashlight beam across the front of the building. “I don’t think anyone else has been here,” he said. “That’s surprising. I would have figured someone would have beaten us here. We might have hit the jackpot.”
“Maybe I can score free textbooks for next semester,” Barker joked. “I’ll splurge and go with new ones. Nice clean pages without any scribbles or notes to confuse me.”
“Funny,” said Michael. He stepped forward and tried the doors. They were locked. He turned to Barker, his eyes on the handheld radio. “Since we don’t have any rocks…”
“You want me to throw the radio?” asked Barker.
“Or maybe that concrete planter,” Michael suggested. We could do it together.”
Barker adjusted his goggles and with Michael’s help, the two of them heaved it through the glass.
The door shattered, and the four stepped carefully into the union.
“How about you guys look for the batteries?” Dub suggested. “Keri and I will look for food.”
“Cool,” said Michael.
Dub used the flashlight to guide Keri past the computer and electronics store, such as it was, on the left. The two of them moved straight back toward what passed for a convenience store. Barker and Michael weaved past the racks of blue and yellow sweatshirts, hats, and T-shirts toward the batteries.
