“Probably.”
“You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?” Her eyes had no focus, her voice no energy. “That’s why you raced to get me. Why did you wait so long?”
“Lily didn’t want to live out here.” Dad twisted a switch on the radio. “She liked her technology and Starbucks too much.”
“She might be alive if she was here. It’s so boring, she wouldn’t be stressed out.”
“I’d have had to kidnap her.” His gaze became distant, and his voice quieted.
“You were gonna leave me there?”
Dad gnawed at his finger for a few seconds. “I knew it would happen, but not this fast. I… figured you’d be at least eighteen before…” He sighed. “Your mother made her choice.”
“She’s dead.” Riley let her head tilt forward until it touched her knees. “Amber’s dead. Kieran’s dead. Cora at Hernandez Grocery is dead. Sergeant Rodriguez is dead. Camila and Lyle and Wayne and Jaime and little Jesse… They’re all dead.”
Riley shut her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Squirrel.”
“They’re all dead.” Her voice came out barely audible.
Her father whispered soothing, meaningless things into her hair. None of it reached her brain as anything more than the presence of sound. The Internet had never shown up. She hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to Amber―now she never would. No tears came at the realization, but the hollow space in her chest grew. She tried to remember what her friend looked like. Random images of their last few minutes together in the Perkins parking lot felt like years ago.
“Dad,” she said in a hoarse whisper.
“I’m here.” He pulled her tight for a second and kissed the top of her head.
Riley gathered her hands together at her chin. “Did Amber suffer? Were they scared?”
“For an event like this, the government wouldn’t bother warning anyone. All it would do would create panic and add a short period of terror and misery before the nukes hit.”
She trembled, imagining Amber and her parents stuck in traffic, trying to flee population centers. Fights in the street, men grabbing anything female they can get their hands on. Amber’s imaginary scream made her cringe.
“I don’t think Jersey got hit directly. It’s possible they’re not dead. I don’t know.”
“Huh?” Riley lifted her head to make eye contact. “Jersey wasn’t hit?”
Dad smiled. “The missiles didn’t have any change for the tolls.”
Riley gaped at him for a second before tears slipped out with a giggle. “You’re an asshole.”
He chuckled. “I’ll try to find out as much as I can when the colonel is back on comm. Chances are, NYC was a primary target, which puts Jersey in a heavy fallout zone. The most likely scenario is that they weren’t incinerated by the initial blast, but are experiencing high doses of radiation, chaos, panic―”
“Stop!” yelled Riley. “Please… just stop.”
“Uh…” Dad winced. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Uh…” He scratched his head. “Look, I don’t wanna lie to you, but―”
“You don’t know.” Riley took a deep breath and let it out in a long, shuddering exhale. “Hiding from looters in their basement is better than evaporated. Thanks for trying to give me a little hope.”
Dad patted her shoulder. They sat for a few minutes without saying a word before he put on the headset and resumed broadcasting his call for survivors every fifteen minutes. Riley huddled against him, lulled to sleep by the sound of his voice reverberating through his chest.
ay Six.
With the lights off, the eerie red glow emanating from the box on the wall made the bunker seem like it belonged in Hell. Riley curled up at her dad’s side, sharing the cot. He snored, but she didn’t mind, as it lulled her into a fitful sleep punctuated by horrible images of Kieran disintegrating in a wave of nuclear fire or Amber being chased through an alley by the pervs from The Last Outpost. Riley dreamed of climbing the ladder to a smoking wasteland and stumbling through the scorch mark that used to be Dad’s house. Beyond the charred husk of her Sentra, Mom appeared as an angel to bring her back home. She started running toward her, arms outstretched, but the old man from the funeral burst through the white light and tore Mom’s wings off, screaming that she didn’t deserve them.
Riley shot upright, her face wet, equal parts devastated and furious.
Dad shook coffee grinds out of a metal tin into a glass beaker by the mini-kitchen. The hot plate smoldered and gave off the stink of burning silicon. Dream. She covered her face with her hands for a moment to take a few breaths. Mom deserved her wings. With a sour face, she wandered to the toilet, indifferent to Dad being up and about. He added water from an electric kettle, replacing the stink of silicon smoke with the fragrance of coffee. Dad kept his eyes down until the sound of a flush broke the silence.
She got up and went to the shelf, picking through the bottom row where Dad had stashed a number of articles of clothing. Most of it looked military in design, and all of it was for an adult man. The plain ochre boxers would fall right off her, the tank tops as well. Forget the fatigue pants. Fatigue jackets on the other hand might work, though they’d be more like a long-sleeved dress.
“You should change, hon. You’ve been wearing the same shirt for a week.”
When I put this shirt on, Kieran was alive.
Riley looked up at him with a ‘so what, who cares’ expression. “None of this stuff will fit.”
“Look in your bag.” He smiled. “Coffee?”
“Yeah.”
He handed her a metal mess kit cup half filled with harsh black coffee, and joined her at the folding table for another breakfast of MREs. Again, she cradled the food in two hands. He dropped another iodide pill by the cup. Riley stuck it in her mouth like an automaton and reached for the coffee.
“We’ll be okay, Squirrel.” Dad ran his hand over her head as if stroking a cat.
She shrank inward, exacerbating the similarity of her posture to the animal from whence her nickname originated. After the entrée pouch crinkled empty, she looked up at him. “I’m scared.”
“I am too.” He pointed up. “There’s enough dirt between us and the outside world to stop any radiation from getting in. The whole place has a faraday cage around it, so nothing bad can touch us.”
Riley reached a trembling hand for the pretzels. “‘Kay.”
Dad caught her wrist. “Your hand is shaking.”
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
At her squirrel routine with the pretzels, Dad put an arm around her and held on. “You’re worrying me, kiddo. You haven’t eaten like that since you were seven.”
She mumbled through nibbles on the pretzel. “I’m scared.”
He patted and squeezed for a few minutes as she snacked, before crouching by his backpack. Riley watched water drip from the overhead copper pipe running to the mini-sink, trying to track each droplet as it plummeted. What if we’re the last two people left in the world? What’s it going to be like outside if we ever get out of here? She thought of the thugs from the game. Is someone gonna try to kill Dad to kidnap me? She pulled her feet up onto the chair and wrapped her arms around her legs as another fat droplet fell.
Clonk.
The Beretta, plus Dad’s hand, landed on the table in front of her. “It’s fully loaded with one in the chamber. Safe is on. Keep this with you at all times.”
She stared into nowhere. “Okay.”
He leaned around to put his face in front of hers. “Riley? Come on, hon. You’re still alive. I’m still alive. Don’t give up on me, please.”
She let a half-eaten pretzel tumble out of her hand and clamped on to him, trembling. She relaxed after a long while of him rocking her and running a hand over her hair. He startled and glanced at the radio all of a sudden as if he’d heard something. After giving her a kiss on top of the head, he ran to the chair and fumbled with the headset. Riley glanced over her shoulder at the radio tabl
e. I didn’t hear anything. Did the bombs hurt my ears?
“This is Black Sheep, proceed, Colonel.”
Riley sucked down the last of her coffee and stared at the camo backpack. While Dad muttered a series of noises and short ‘yes’s’ and ‘no’s,’ she dragged it over to the cot and opened it.
Six pairs of panties, six sets of socks, two full canteens, four MREs, two pairs of black fatigue pants in her size, four plain white shirts, and a pair of small combat boots. She stuck her foot, dirty and bare, into the boot, testing the size. A little big, but workable. She pulled it off and dropped it.
“So, close to a worst-case scenario then.” Dad grumbled for a moment. “No, there’s been no contact from any of my assets since we went underground. I understand, sir. Six months is very doable. We’ll see you then.”
“Sounds bad,” said Riley.
“Major strikes have hit all US population centers. Manhattan, Trenton, that whole area you lived is…” Dad choked up.
The hollow in her heart grew out to touch her ribs. Numbness colored the world grey.
“I wouldn’t have even known what hit me.” She went to the bookshelf and picked The Hunt for Red October. Apparently, Dad did have every Tom Clancy book ever written―in chronological order. “Right? Just flash, gone.”
He forced a choked reply. “Yeah.”
“Well, then I’m glad I’m with you.” She snagged the Beretta on her way to the cot and dropped it next to her while taking up her usual cross-legged position.
“It might’ve been kinder,” Dad muttered. “Colonel Bering says society has collapsed. He’s not sure if there will be a rebuilding. The generals are at each other’s throats trying to figure out who’s to blame. Can you believe they’re fingering the Democrats for this? Even after the end of the world, it’s all fucking politics.”
“You want me to die now?” Riley looked over, not feeling much of anything at the idea.
“No. No. Never. I just mean… The world out there now. It’s not a great place to be a pretty, young girl. Some guy sees you and…”
She shivered. That was just a video game. Even murderers hate kid-touchers. “Everyone can’t all be rapey lunatics.”
“No, you’re right. Everyone can’t be… but all it takes is one.”
Kieran… Riley daydreamed about finding him dancing around a bonfire in full Native regalia. He’s an Apache; he can survive. She opened the book. Stop lying to yourself. You’re never going to see him again. She slid the book up to her knees to keep the tears off it.
At the end of chapter four, she looked over. “Dad? If Bering isn’t coming for us, how long do we have to stay underground?”
“Until it’s safe.”
She glared at the box on the wall. “What do you think it’s like out there?”
He moved from the radio chair to sit on the cot. She leaned against him.
“Hard to say, really. There’s so many variables. It depends on the quantity and yield of the devices used, as well as where they landed. Radiation and post-detonation fires are usually worse than the initial blast, over time. Some areas will have been wiped out, and others will fade slowly as radiation poisoning takes ten times the lives the primary release did. If enough matter was ejected into the atmosphere, it might be a dark nuclear winter out there with no sunlight, no crops, and pockets of survivors without food.”
She shuddered. “Sorry I asked.”
“Of course, since there’s so little out here, we might find it better than we think. I doubt our enemies would waste a full-scale weapon on empty desert… unless they believed all those stories about aliens at Roswell. Really, it’s anyone’s guess until we look.”
“Okay.” She scooted her feet back and forth under the blanket to warm them. “So how long until we look?”
“Most survival guides advise at least two weeks or so after there’s no detectable radiation.” He gestured at the wall by the armored door. “About fourteen days after that red light goes off.”
“Oh.” Riley leveled her glare at the radiation monitor, trying to turn it off by sheer force of will.
The light flickered, but remained on. Riley sighed and frowned at the book. A few chapters later, her stomach growled. She set the book down, using the blanket to mark her place, and trudged to the storeroom, where she stood between shelves and shelves of MREs and canned pasta, broken up by a small collection of canned veggies and several boxes of store-brand granola bars. Five years’ worth of food. She reached under her shirt to scratch at her belly. Dad said we should only eat twice a day.
“Since you’re in there.” Dad not-quite-yelling from the radio table made her jump. “Check the water light?”
Riley looked down at her dirty feet, flexed her toes, and sighed. “Why didn’t you put the light upstairs?” She plodded over to the hatch.
“I meant to… wasn’t expecting the world to blow itself up so soon. Thought I had time.”
She lowered herself into the crawlspace and scampered around the nearest water tank to the gap between them. Crawling around in the dirt was getting her filthy, but who cared anymore? Much to her relief, the radiation warning light remained off. Her eyebrows came together. She crawled back to the entrance and climbed out, swatting dirt off her hands and legs before closing the hatch and heading for the main room.
Dad muttered at the mic, repeating his usual survivor mantra. Riley paused by the vibrating support column, standing in the warm downdraft of air while staring at the radiation light on the wall. That doesn’t make sense.
“Dad?” She crept over to the wall by the door, stopping when her toes hit a thin puddle. “The light is off downstairs. Why is this one on?”
“Sorry.” He took the headphones off and smiled at her. “What?”
She pointed at the dull red glow behind the plastic window. “The well light’s off. If there’s radiation, wouldn’t it be on too?”
“The well’s sensor is on the intake pipe at the bottom of the well. That detector is wired to sensor posts arranged around the hatch on the surface. It’s picking up fallout, which didn’t get into the well… remember, I have a covered well.”
“But if it’s radiation, wouldn’t it go through the cover?” She backed away from the slimy spot of floor, wiping her left foot dry on the concrete.
“Fallout is irradiated dust and soil, sucked into the air by the detonation and deposited over a wide area. It’s fine particles. The well is sealed, but there’s a layer of it on the ground over our heads.”
She trudged to the cot, eyes downcast. “Fallout lasts for years, doesn’t it? We’re gonna be in here a while.”
He grumbled. “Yeah, probably.”
Riley put her hand on the Beretta. Dad’s voice replayed in her head. Could you kill a man to protect yourself? She bit her lip, wondering how terrified she’d have to be to point that thing at a human being. Her hand trembled, not liking the answer her brain came up with.
“Dad?” she whispered.
“Yeah?” He didn’t turn around.
“Please don’t die.”
He looked back at her. “It’s not on my to-do list, hon.”
ay Eight.
A persistent smell saturated the air in the bunker, which Riley could only think of as ‘sweat sock.’ She stared over the top of The Cardinal of the Kremlin at her toes, and past them at Dad. He’d gone into a robotic recitation of the same transmission every fifteen minutes for the past two days. Between each two-hour period of survivor spam, he’d try to raise people with military sounding callsigns like ‘Foxtrot-Two-Two’ or ‘Baker-Four-Nine.’ None of them answered.
Her new world seemed on the low end of tolerable until Dad broke his rhythm, lowering his forehead to rest on his hand. Riley shivered, sniffling at the sight of her father looking so tired. He seemed about ready to give up on the world. She hunkered down, trying to focus on the story in her lap. Five minutes later, his voice startled her.
“Attention anyone who may be receiving this mes
sage. My name is Chris McCullough, and I am at a place of safety. If anyone is receiving this message, we are located approximately twenty miles due east of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.”
She dipped her gaze back to the page, and squirmed. “Dad, I’ve got an itch.”
“Scratch it.” He sat straighter. “Unless you mean like you want to touch yourself… which is perfectly natural.”
“Eww, Dad, really?” She rolled her eyes. “No, I mean like an itch itch. It kinda hurts.”
“Where?”
Her silence answered.
“Well, you have been wearing the same underwear for eight days.”
“Open the door. I wanna use the shower in the hall.”
He shook his head. “Not shielded out there.”
“What kind of idiot puts the shower outside the vault door?”
“The kind of idiot that doesn’t want to waste drinking water. Use the sink. That’s not a cleaning shower, Squirrel. It’s meant for coming in from the outside and getting rid of fallout particles.”
“The sink?” Blood rushed to her cheeks. “Are you nuts?”
“No. Wet a washcloth and hit the critical points. They call it a field shower.”
“Critical points…”
“Face, pits, crotch, and crack… hopefully in that order.”
Riley looked at the page; the words became meaningless squiggles for a second. She wasn’t sure what bothered her more: that Dad suggested she wash herself in the bunker with him there, or that she didn’t die of embarrassment when she gave it serious consideration.
“Will you put like a bag over your head or something?”
Dad swiveled around in his chair, raising both eyebrows. “You could also go into the storeroom and close the door.”
Duh.
Riley dropped the book and leaned down to grab clean undies from the backpack. She bounced to her feet and snagged a cloth from the peg on the wall over the sink.
Dad pointed at the stack of five white pails behind the toilet. “Grab a bucket, take some water with you.”
Riley pulled the top one out, ran some water in it from the sink, and carried it to the storeroom. She wedged the door closed, peeled off her fetid clothes, and proceeded to run a bar of plain soap and the freezing washcloth around ‘the critical points.’
The Summer the World Ended Page 22
