by Tom Abrahams
“Safe places?” asked Keri.
“Yes,” said Dub. “There have to be preppers out there who have bunkers or stockpiles or whatever. I’ve read about them. They took the end of the world seriously. They’re bound to be out there.”
“This is Southern California,” said Barker. “Nobody takes anything seriously.”
Keri climbed up onto Dub’s bed and lay down. She stared at the ceiling for a moment and closed her eyes. “Dub’s got a point,” she said. “We might never go home again. But if we work at it, we’re smart enough to make a new home.”
“Why can’t that home be here?” asked Barker. “Why can’t we load up and defend ourselves, likes soldiers holding a line? We’re on a hill. We have a tactical advantage.”
“Not without weapons,” Keri said.
“That’s our other plan,” said Dub. “We need to find weapons. The most obvious place?”
“USC,” said Barker.
Keri groaned. “Be serious.”
Barker smirked. “I was.”
Dub shook his head. “UCLA Police. They’re right here on campus.”
“Don’t you think they’d have taken everything?” asked Michael.
“There’s no way to know unless we look,” said Dub. “Barker, you’re coming with me. We’re going to the police station.”
“And me?” asked Michael.
“Keep working the radio,” said Dub.
Keri opened her eyes and turned toward Dub. “What about me?”
“You’ve got a migraine,” he said. “Keep Michael company.”
She didn’t argue with him, which told Dub how intense her headache must be. Typically, if he tried to sideline her in any way, which was rare, she protested. This time she nodded and looked back to the ceiling.
“Then it’s settled,” said Dub. “By tonight we’ll have a better handle on our future.”
***
The campus police department was a red brick building with long slat windows that jutted out from its main façade. It was on a corner near the school’s main entrance on Westwood Plaza. The building, which neither Dub nor Barker had visited before, looked as abandoned as the rest of the campus below the hill. As he walked by a black and white squad car parallel parked at the curb in front of the building, it struck Dub that so many people, including first responders, had vanished in the hours after the attack. Where had they gone?
He imagined in some cases they’d rushed toward the danger. Others had likely cut and run. They’d left to be with their families or escape Southern California altogether.
They reached the front entrance, both of them checking over their shoulders for onlookers or threats. Both carried empty school backpacks on their shoulders. They’d decided, as a group, to leave them empty to fill them with as much as they could carry from the police station.
“Have you seen any cops since the attacks?” Dub asked. He was checking the front doors, which were bolted shut with chains and a combination lock. He spun the dial and then dropped it. The lock clanged against the aluminum frame.
Barker turned and eyed the squad car. “What do you mean? Like working?”
“Yeah,” said Dub. “I haven’t seen a single one. I guess in those first few minutes, when we were leaving the gym, there were some helping direct people to safety. But other than that, nothing. Nobody’s come by the Hill. Nobody’s checked on us or offered protection of any kind.”
Barker twisted his mouth to one side and squeezed his eyebrows in thought. Then he pivoted and moved past Dub to the intersection with Charles E. Young Drive. “I guess not,” he said. “I remember a few of them helping out that first day, but not since we holed up in Rieber Vista.”
“I can’t blame them,” said Dub. “If I had somewhere to go or someone to go to, I’d have left. Maybe that makes me a coward or something.”
Barker checked a window for access but apparently found none. He chuckled and shook his head at his friend. “You’re a naïve moron,” he said with a broad grin. “And you worry too much about what other people think of you. But you’re not a coward. Far from it.”
Dub smirked. “Is that a compliment?”
“It’s the truth. You’re not a coward. You are a naïve moron.”
They walked along the sidewalk shoulder to shoulder through the drifts of ash that had built up along the spots where the walk met the side of the building. They slalomed around a series of low brick columns that had served as protective barricades to prevent vehicles from ramming the building. When they came to a side entrance, they stopped.
“I’m a naïve moron because I agreed with Keri?” asked Dub. “Because I wanted to give those people food?”
Barker bent at his waist and ran his finger along the edge of the door near the handle. He tried the handle, which didn’t budge. He shook it. It rattled but didn’t open. The door and the windows above it and to both sides were frosted green. There was an electronic card scanner next to the handle. Off to the side was a waist-high red metal placard affixed to the wall.
Building #061
Police Station 601
Westwood Plaza
Automatic Fire Sprinkler Fire Department Connection 1
45 PSI Working Pressure
“You’re a moron because you took out the trash by yourself,” he said. “It was your rule that everybody travels in pairs. You didn’t do that, and it put all of us at risk.”
“I said I was sorry.”
Barker ran his hand across a three-foot-high clump of pipes and valves. Together they looked like the distant cousin of a fire hydrant or a residential outdoor backflow valve. He dusted it off with his glove and then made a halfhearted attempt at turning the valve on the top, then seemingly thought better of it. He looked up at Dub. “I know. I get it. I’m over it.”
“Naïve though?”
“Because you fed those people,” said Barker. “At some point you have to stop thinking the best of people. You’ve got to be more cynical. Being nice all of the time is going to get you killed.”
“So be more of an ass?” asked Dub. “Like you?”
“Exactly,” said Barker without hesitation or the slightest hint of his trademark sarcasm. “Without question.”
The two fist-bumped each other with their gloved hands, offered a mutual one-armed hug, and slapped the ash on each other’s backs. They’d made up. All was good, at least as far as their friendship was concerned. Getting into the police station, however, was another matter.
Beyond the glass door, at the part of the building where it merged into Mattel Children’s Hospital, there was what was best described as a sally port. It was a two-story-high mesh gate that controlled access for emergency vehicles. To one side was a black and white UPD squad car parked flush against the police building. To the other was a row of parking spaces. They were empty except for a salting of ash and a single white and blue ambulance.
To the gate’s right was a mesh metal door made of the same heavy gray material. It was also armed with an electronic lock and a crank handle that turned but didn’t open. Barker stood with his gloved hands on his hips, surveying the gate for any opportunities.
“I bet that ambulance has first aid supplies,” said Dub. “And that cop car might have some usable stuff in the trunk.”
Barker motioned toward the frosted door to the right. “Maybe we should break the glass. That might be the easiest move.”
Dub shook his head. “I bet they’ve got shatterproof or ballistic glass,” he said, stepping close enough to the gate to slip his fingers through the narrow horizontal gaps in the gate. “But I bet the hospital doesn’t,” he added.
“I’m not interested in the hospital. We need weapons. We need things to protect ourselves. Bedpans and scalpels aren’t going to help a whole lot.”
Dub checked his footing and hoisted himself up onto the fence. He climbed a couple of rungs and pressed the left side of his face against the cold metal. Then he hopped down onto the sidewalk. A plume of ash billo
wed like a cloud of chalk then settled.
“Maybe I’m naïve or a moron, but I disagree,” said Dub. “Bedpans and scalpels could make good weapons in the right hands. But I’m not talking about taking anything from the hospital necessarily. Well, we could, but that’s not my point.”
Barker narrowed his eyes and moved up to the gate. He craned his neck, looking in the same general direction as Dub. Then he backed away and shook his head. “What am I missing?”
Dub pointed toward a set of wide, aluminum-framed glass doors beyond the ambulance. It appeared as though they led directly into the hospital. They were cracked open. He then watched Barker as his eyes widened with recognition.
“If we find a way into the hospital,” said Barker, “we can get into that sally port. That gets us a step closer to getting into the police station.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” said Dub, “and I’m pretty sure that’s our way into the hospital. Plus, look up there.”
Above the open doors, leading from the hospital’s second floor to that of the police station, was an enclosed walkway. That was an option too.
“Either way,” said Dub, “I think we can get there.”
He motioned to their left. Between the building and the sidewalk, there was a sign directing them to the emergency room entrance to the hospital. They followed the arrow and quickly found themselves at the wide, covered entrance. Like the double doors in the sally port, those leading into the emergency room wing were cracked open.
Neither Dub nor Barker could widen the gap between the frozen doors, but both were thin and agile enough to squeeze through the existing opening and into the dark space of the hospital.
Other than the darkness, the first thing that struck Dub about the space was its odor. Even through his scarf, he smelled the rot. Evidently Barker smelled it too.
“I hope that’s cafeteria food.” Barker grimaced, sliding his glasses up above his eyes and resting them on the heavy ridge of his brow.
Dub swallowed hard, his mouth and throat suddenly dry. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the LED flashlight he’d been keeping for weeks. Incredibly, it still worked without having had to change the batteries yet. He flicked on the bluish white light, and it illuminated a wide cone, which Dub swept across what was clearly the waiting and reception area of the hospital’s emergency wing.
There was a dusting of ash across the floor that lessened the farther into the building they walked. To the right, the waiting room sat with its chairs tossed onto their sides. Some of them were broken into pieces. A table was missing one of its legs, and the floor was covered with the pages of old magazines Dub assumed had once served to occupy the loved ones of emergency patients.
In the corner of the waiting room was a colorful rug decorated with a road for toy cars on one side and a collection of hashtags on which children could play tic-tac-toe. There was a television mounted on the wall. It was unplugged, and the cord dangled from beneath the lower bevel of the screen.
Keeping his hands gloved and the burlap scarf up over his nose and mouth, Dub used his free hand to slide his goggles above his eyes and onto his forehead. He flipped the hood of his jacket hood back. As much as it itched, which it did after he began sweating, the annoyance was better than the alternative of smelling whatever foul stink was permeating the air like an overspray of cheap perfume.
“Shine the light over here,” Barker said. He was standing by the reception area. “I think I found what’s causing the smell.”
Dub shone the light on Barker and then to either side of him. He was against a chest-high counter that housed a pair of computer monitors, one of which was facedown, and was the barrier between the reception area and the workstation for nurses and administrators responsible for maintaining order in the lobby area. He panned the light slowly, checking the space in front of him. His boots crunched on the tile floor, the ash and debris flattening underneath his steps.
He reached the counter and leaned over it. The odor, overpowering him, forced his gag reflex and he almost puked. But he held it together and looked at the culprit. On the desk behind the counter was an open pizza box. In the box was the remains of a half-eaten pizza. As Dub shone the light on it, countless cockroaches scattered. Some of them skittered under the spoiled foot-long sub sandwich on a piece of wax paper next to the pizza box.
“I’d always heard roaches would survive a nuclear bomb,” said Barker. “Now we know it’s true.”
Dub pinched the burlap against his nostrils and tried breathing through his mouth. Then he lifted the beam of light from the molded carcasses of what had been a last supper to what he now knew was the real source of the stench.
On the floor a few feet from the desk, sticking out from behind the corner of a wall, was a pair of white-stocking-clad legs. The feet were shoeless and turned at odd angles. Dub swallowed again and held the light in its position while he directed Barker’s attention to it.
“I don’t think it’s just the food,” he said. “Look.”
Barker followed the light and his crinkled, sour expression relaxed. His eyes filled with horror, and he pulled his gloved hands up to his mouth, covering the blue paper surgical mask he favored over scarves. He stepped behind Dub, slipped into the gray darkness beside the reception counter, and then reemerged into the icy light near the body. He looked back at Dub and squinted into the light. It made his skin appear translucent, and he shuffled the final few steps to the wall, stopping short at the stocking-clad feet.
He crouched down, leaning one hand on the wall. Dub did his best to aim the light where Barker could see.
“Can you bring the light around?” Barker asked. “I think it’s a nurse.”
Dub followed Barker’s path around the side of the high counter. He slid behind the counter and the attached lower desk to stand directly behind his friend. Shakily, he lifted the beam until it shone on the ghastly form of the dead body.
Dub tasted the bile in the back of his throat. His stomach lurched. But he held himself together and put both hands on the small flashlight, trying to steady it. “Is that a woman?” he asked.
“I’m pretty sure,” said Barker. “She has fingernail polish.”
The woman’s body, assuming she was a woman, looked as if it had popped. There were too many different colors of dried fluid to know what was what. But it was clear to Dub there was vomit, a lot of it, dried near her mouth and under her head. Her tongue hung from her lips. There were roaches crawling in and out of her mouth. There were maggots everywhere. She was, in short, something out of a horror movie. It was so grotesque it looked fake, like the work of a special effects artist in Century City who’d gone overboard.
Barker pivoted on his toes, holding onto the wall and turning away from the body. “What do you think happened?”
“Radiation sickness?” said Dub. “There’s a lot of…” His voice trailed off. He wasn’t sure how to explain what he saw.
But he did know the basics about the effects of intense radiation exposure. His mother was a breast cancer survivor. Well, she had been. He didn’t know if she was alive now. Before the attack, she’d lived seven years since remission. She was technically cured.
While she’d fought the disease with chemotherapy and radiation, Dub had spent countless hours researching the effects of the treatment and how they were, in some cases, worse than the illness itself. He was thirteen and a voracious consumer of all things YouTube and Wikipedia. He’d retreated into the glow of his laptop during his mother’s long fight. His father wasn’t around much, spending a lot of time at work when he wasn’t tending to his wife. That gave young Dub unfettered access to the internet without any guidance.
Once, when rechecking radiotherapy’s side effects during week five of a seven-week course, he’d stumbled upon a video that detailed the four stages of acute radiation syndrome. The first stage, the prodromal stage, included nausea, vomiting, and likely diarrhea. They could start manifesting within minutes of exposure or
take days. The latent stage was a respite. The exposed might look, and even feel, healthy. That too might last for hours or weeks. The manifest illness stage varied. Its symptoms depended on the type of syndrome, the affected bone marrow, the gastrointestinal tract, or the cardiovascular and central nervous system. The final stage had two options: recovery or death.
Given the state of her body, there was no way to know for sure, but the amount of bodily fluids from all parts of her body made Dub think she’d been exposed on the day of the attack.
“You might be right about the radiation,” said Barker. “Look over there.”
Dub followed Barker’s direction and aimed the light at a metal rolling cart. It was the kind used to move around meals or surgical tools. On it were several open boxes labeled DOSIMETRY BADGES. There were shredded packages left on the top of the cart.
“They were checking for exposure,” said Dub. “But the attacks were miles from here. We’re nowhere near the blast zone. Why would they be exposed?”
Barker used the wall to help him to his feet. He leaned on it for support and adjusted the mask on his face. He exhaled loudly, pushing the air from his lungs. He shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We don’t know where she was when the attack happened. She might have been in the middle of everything. Or maybe she got exposed to something here.”
“Should we even be here, then?” asked Dub. “Is it too big a risk?”
Barker stood up straight and lowered his shades to shield his eyes from the flashlight beam Dub had pointed toward him. He adjusted his mask again, pinching the metal clip at the bridge of his nose. “Dude, we’ve already been exposed. The ash all around us is radioactive. It gets in our hair, in our eyes, into our mouths. Seriously, we’re already exposed.”
Dub felt the muscles in his neck and shoulders tense. “I haven’t gotten sick,” he countered. “Nothing. No nausea, except for when I see a dead body like that. You?”
Barker shook his head. “No. Not yet. But it could take longer for us. We were pretty far away from the blasts, however many of them there were.”
