Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

COUNTDOWN TO ZERO HOUR 15 HOURS AND 19 MINUTES

CARLA COULDN’T BELIEVE she was leading two children into a nuclear power plant while it was melting down.

She and the kids sat quietly in the cab as they watched Marion cross through the tall weeds and overgrown grass to an abandoned security shed. “Stay here,” Marion had said moments earlier before slipping a breathing mask over his head and getting out of the truck. Now Carla watched as he tried the shed’s door handle, then put his hands up to the glass to peer inside.

“Where are we?” Brianna asked, her voice sounding bigger in the small space of the cab.

Carla shook her head. Obviously, they were at Clover Hill, but this was a way she’d never been and didn’t even know existed. The better question was why were they here?

She watched Marion try to lift the security gate’s lowered arm, but it barely budged. Taking a Leatherman from his pocket, he crouched in front of the post where the arm connected and forced open a pressure-fit plate. Sticking the end of one of the tools inside, he jiggled and twisted. Eventually, the arm dropped a couple inches as the restraining gear released. Standing, Marion tried the gate again. This time, it began to lift with ease.

“Scoot,” Carla said, lifting Brianna off her lap to switch sides with Matt so she could get behind the wheel. She shifted the truck into drive as Marion lifted the gate up over his head. But as she inched the vehicle forward, it was obvious Marion alone wouldn’t be able to lift it high enough to clear the truck. Carla backed up.

Marion lowered the arm and put his hands on his hips, thinking.

“Matt,” Carla said, reading Marion’s gaze into the cab. “Do you know how to drive?”

A few minutes later, Carla was outside in a mask and rubber gloves and Matt was behind the wheel looking entirely too pleased with himself. Brianna stood with her hands on the dash, talking a mile a minute, probably reciting the rules Carla made Matt swear to before she got out.

“Marion, what are we doing here?” Carla hissed, joining Marion at the gate, the first chance they’d had to speak alone.

“It’s the safest place—”

“Here?” she said, the frustration and incredulity making her voice rise. “ At the plant?”

“Will you trust me?”

“But we’ve got the kids! We’ve got Brianna, Marion! You’ve taken us to the problem. In what way could that possibly—”

“Trust me!” Marion’s voice boomed, even with the mask muffling his words.

Carla glanced over her shoulder and saw both kids staring wordlessly, watching the adults argue. She turned her back to them and lowered her voice. “Marion, we need to evacuate. We need to get them away from here.”

“To where? To sit in traffic? With the truck running out of gas when we can’t get more? I am protecting my granddaughter. I am protecting my family,” Marion said, pointing at Carla. “You know that. Now trust it.”

The two adults stared at each other for a moment before Carla ended the conversation by joining Marion’s side.

Adjusting her grip on the gate’s arm, she gave a nod, at which point Marion counted down, then they both lifted the barrier together, slowly working their leverage down the arm until it was raised all the way up. Holding the gate’s arm high above their heads, the adults nodded to Matt, and the Dodge slowly rolled forward. Once it cleared, Carla and Marion lowered the arm back down and hustled over to the truck. Carla went to open the passenger side, but the door was locked.

“Matt, c’mon,” she said, her voice muffled by the mask. Matt grinned mischievously and the truck began rolling forward. “Matt!” she said again as Brianna jumped up and down. After the Dodge made a few more stops and starts, Marion’s glare finally convinced Matt to put the truck in park. As the adults piled back in, Carla scolded Matt, but not half as hard as Brianna did. Marion, though, was hiding a smile.

As they drove down the plant’s back forty, the looming pillars of black smoke got closer.

“Is Mommy here?” Brianna asked. “Is that where we’re going? To see her?”

Neither of the adults answered right away. They had no idea where Dani and Levon were, but the child didn’t understand that no answer was the answer.

“You know, I don’t know where your mom is,” Carla said in a faux-casual tone. Were they here? Were Dani and Levon at the plant too, in the thick of it, being exposed to who knew what?

“I hope not,” said Bri. “Granddaddy, you always said if she was called to the plant, it was because something bad happened.”

Marion didn’t say anything.

“If something bad happened, then why are we here?” Matt asked.

Carla honestly didn’t know, so she didn’t say anything—but it struck a nerve. Matt’s question echoed what she said to Levon whenever they discussed raising a family in Waketa:

If it’s possible that something could happen at the plant, why would we raise our children here? How could we knowingly put them in that kind of danger?

The answer was complicated. This was where they were from. Where they knew people, where their roots were. They were happy here. This was home.

Beyond that, they had been raised here. And nothing bad had ever happened at the plant; who’s to say it ever would? Sure, it was a risk—but what were the odds?

Plus, if they did leave, where would they go? They’d have to start all over. Who would they know in this new place? What kind of community would be there, what kind of support would they have?

The conversation always went round and round, both sides being valid, with neither Carla nor Levon willing to take a firm stand either way. But if they were honest, they knew their discussions were more hypothetical than anything. Because the truth was, a move to a city bigger than Waketa would cost money. Money they didn’t have.

Carla knew if she got pregnant— when she got pregnant, she corrected herself—they’d simply have to live with the doubt, fear, and guilt of staying because the bottom line was clear.

They couldn’t afford to leave even if they wanted to.

After a few more moments of driving along the trees, Marion cleared his throat.

“We designed this place during the Cold War. And Japan, the Cuban missile thing, they weren’t so long before.” He paused to glance over at the kids, seeming to understand they had no idea what any of that meant. “Well, at the time, it didn’t feel too long before. Anyway. We designed an underground system, a network of bunkers.”

Marion turned left. Up ahead, Carla noticed a rusty door in the middle of a concrete structure built into the natural contours of a hill in a wooded area. To anyone not looking closely, it was just another foliage-covered hill.

“The idea was short-term protection,” he said. “Somewhere to go, just for a bit, while everything settled down. Somewhere safe, not caught up in the panic of evacuation traffic. Somewhere to be while officials figured out what had happened and what to do about it.” He paused and glanced over at Carla. She gave a barely discernible nod. “But,” Marion continued, “time went on. No attacks came. Public fear eased. And so Clover Hill decided the budget for the bunkers didn’t make sense.”

He parked the truck in front of the door, turned it off, and glanced around the area, the engine clicking as it cooled.

“We got only one of them built. Never used it either,” Marion said, looking through his janitor-style ring of keys. “I’d be willing to bet most of the people working at the plant nowadays don’t even know this place exists. Which is why”—Marion held up a key—“they never asked for the key back when I turned in my badge.”

“Why are we discussing this as if there’s a choice?” Joss said, her frustration starting to show. “We don’t have options. We do everything we can to make sure that pool doesn’t ignite. That is our option. Public perception, panic, a few people who may or may not get cancer down the line—it doesn’t matter. Not when you consider the alternative.”

“It matters to the people who work at this plant. The ones who are at highest risk,” Ethan said, the calm in his voice trying to counter the rising anxiety in hers.

It had taken all of three minutes for the Blue Team’s measured conversation to turn combative.

“I agree with Joss,” said Vikram.

“You’re fine with releasing a radioactive plume into the atmosphere?” said Maggie.

“Of course not,” he said. “But I am when I consider the alternative.”

“Exactly,” said Joss.

“But we don’t even know that enough hydrogen would collect to create an explosion,” countered Ethan.

“And you’re willing to take that chance?”

“Let’s say we do vent,” Maggie said. “We issue an official evacuation order. Panic ensues. We go from a controlled incident to an actual accident. And that is a whole different scenario for the public. Plus, we officially have radioactive exposure, with all the downwind effects. When, maybe, if we don’t vent, the hydrogen levels stay manageable, and there’s no panic, no radioactivity, no explosion at all. It’s all fine.”

“Or,” Vikram countered, “the levels do become unmanageable, the building blows, and then we sure as fuck are releasing radio-active material. Except now, it’s an uncontrolled release.”

“Without having an evacuation already started,” Joss said.

“Exactly.”

“So it’s risk management,” Maggie said. “Do nothing, it might be okay. Do something, we for sure vent radiation into the atmosphere, but we limit the damage and fallout.”

“Again, the risks don’t matter,” said Joss. “The pool is the priority. It is the whole ball game.”

“There’s a bigger picture, Joss,” Ethan said.

“Ethan. The bigger picture doesn’t exist if we get this wrong. You know this.”

As Joss and Ethan stared at each other, she wondered how they could possibly be having this argument. She was used to people not getting it. She’d spent fifteen years in Washington being on the losing end of the “low-probability, high-consequence” debate with bureaucrats and businessmen who were more concerned with re-election or the bottom line than public safety. She was used to being dismissed as an alarmist. She was accustomed to the perverse mentality that big risks were fine, a nuclear meltdown be damned. Because the counterargument was always What are the odds such an unlikely scenario will ever happen? Well, it was happening right before their eyes.

She’d accepted that some people—many people—wouldn’t get it.

But she’d never imagined Ethan would be one of them.

How many nights as undergrads had they spent howling at the moon? In their particularly nerdy, ideologically pure, long-winded railings, they’d ranted against a system that refused to address its own vulnerabilities. They had been idealists, kids of a nuclear community, born in the shadow of Clover Hill. They’d been raised in awe of the potential for good in nuclear power. A limitless source of clean energy that protected the environment while lifting their community, the country, the world. A way out of the country’s reliance on foreign oil. An alternative to carbon-emitting fossil fuels. Nuclear wasn’t the problem; it was the solution.

They weren’t idiots. Of course they knew nuclear came with risks. They were fifth-graders when Chernobyl happened. They understood exactly what could happen if something went wrong. So the answer—at least according to the voices of influence they heard around their respective dinner tables and in the drugstore checkout line and from the teachers talking in the hallway at school—was not to be like the Soviets. They would do it right. The answer was to respect the risks and address them from the start. Regulate appropriately so Clover Hill would never become a Chernobyl.

For most people, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl introduced fear. For Joss and Ethan, the incidents merely added another layer of respect to an industry, an idea, they had already been taught to revere. The problem wasn’t nuclear. The problem was the system. The people in charge who weren’t willing to pay what it cost to ensure the worst never came to pass. A small price to pay, Joss and Ethan assumed, if you considered the alternative. With the right people convinced, the future would be secure.

They had been naive. She saw that now. She’d had no idea how impossible it would be for common sense to outweigh profits. They’d been hopelessly naive.

But they weren’t wrong.

There was a difference.

And despite the diverging paths their lives had taken, Joss had always assumed Ethan knew that.

“Joss,” Ethan said. “You don’t get to decide what is small enough to sacrifice for the greater good.”

“Then who does?” she snapped. The question hung unanswered. “No, I’m asking, Ethan. What other room has people sitting around making these calls? It is up to us.”

“Then we make the decision together—”

“ What decision? Ethan. It’s as—”

“Damn it, Joss!” Ethan smacked the table. “You may be the smartest person in the room, but you are not the only smart person in the room.”

The door opened and a woman from the emergency response communications team stuck her head in. She held out a satellite phone to Joss, the palm of her hand covering the mouthpiece.

“Dr. Vance? You’re needed to do a briefing.”

“Like fuck you want me talking to the press.”

“It’s the president. You’ll be briefing the president.”

President Dawson along with everyone else in the bunker Situation Room watched the screens in silence. The images spoke for themselves.

“It’s Coastal… we… please help. He’s dead. The captain’s dead. He had a medical, I think a heart attack. The FO’s in the lav. He’s not here. He’s… the pilots are gone!”

There was so much fear in the flight attendant’s voice as it came over the PA and through the cabin in the now-viral videos the passengers of Flight 235 had posted and live-streamed on their social media accounts as the plane went down. One heartbreaking moment after another played out in surreal real time, the entire crash captured for the whole world to see.

The destruction in the cabin. The parts of the aircraft as they broke off, flying past windows. The beverage cart careening down the aisle. The first officer pounding on the cockpit door. The door opening. The captain’s body. The ground getting closer… and closer… and closer. And all the while in the background, the passengers were doing the only things they could do: scream, pray, beg, profess, atone, forgive.

“We’re going down. Please help us!”

President Dawson turned his attention to the plant’s security-camera feed, which was no less harrowing: The wing clipping the power line. The plane cartwheeling. The resulting damage. The debris field. There was no doubt in his mind that the first officer had tried to pilot the plane away from the plant.

No terror group had claimed responsibility. None of the intelligence agencies had found any indication that the crash was anything but an accident. Every plane in the domestic airspace had been accounted for. And the footage from the plane was the final convincing piece. This was a human tragedy, but it was not a terrorist attack.

“Mr. President?” said the deputy national security adviser. “Homeland Security and the FAA are advising we pull the nationwide ground stop.”

“Agreed,” said Dawson, clearing his throat as he turned from the images. “Tony. I want to see the statement.”

The chief of staff looked up from his call with the speechwriters and gave a thumbs-up.

“Mr. President?” said another staffer. “I have the NEST contact at the plant for you. Line three.”

Joss waited in the empty hallway, listening to the silence on the other end of the line and thinking about the cup of coffee, half drunk, still sitting on her kitchen table next to the morning paper, half read. That morning when she’d heard the distant boom, she’d been worried. In her gut, she knew it was bad. But she’d had no idea it would be waiting-to-talk-to-the-president bad.

“Ms. Vance.”

The deep baritone was instantly recognizable. “Mr. President,” Joss replied.

“Where are we at?”

Joss gave him the rundown from their angle, assuming she wouldn’t need to explain things people had no doubt already briefed him on. His silence affirmed that; he listened intently, seeming to absorb the information on the plant damage, the spent fuel pool, and the ramifications of the damage. He only interrupted once she began discussing the debate on what to do about the white smoke coming from the spent fuel pool building.

“What happens if you don’t vent?” he asked.

“Potentially nothing,” she replied.

“Or potentially…”

“You know the Hindenburg ?”

“Yes.”

“That.”

“Plus radioactive material.”

“That too.”

The president was quiet. Then he said: “Ms. Vance, do you have children?”

“Ah… sir?” she said, not expecting that. “No. No, I don’t.”

“Me neither.”

“I know. That’s why I voted for you.”

When he didn’t laugh, Joss immediately regretted her comment. Before she could backtrack, Ethan poked his head out of the control room.

“We’re venting” was all he said before disappearing back into the room.

“Did you—” Joss started.

“I heard,” said Dawson. “What are the next steps?”

“We issue a formal evacuation declaration for the plume zone.”

“How large is that?”

“Based on anticipated radiation levels and wind patterns, we’re calling it fifteen miles.”

“Make it twenty.”

Joss was stopped cold. Never, not once in her twenty-year career, had she encountered a politician who wanted to exceed a recommended health and safety guideline. “Yes, sir.”

“I understand I-35 is completely shut down in both directions.”

Joss shrugged. “I’m here. You know more than me.”

“Are there suitable alternates for evacuation routes?”

“Does your staff know how to use Google?”

She could tell in the silence that followed that President Michael Dawson wasn’t used to being talked to like that. Now, whether that was good or bad, that she couldn’t tell.

“Fair point” was all he said. “What kind of time frame are we looking at?”

“They’re probably issuing the evacuation order as we speak. We’ll need to do minor preparations, then we go. I imagine we’ll vent in approximately twenty minutes.”

“I’m making an address in five. Have your comms team send my chief of staff details and talking points, and I’ll reinforce the evacuation order. After that, I’ll find an intern for all my googleable questions. And, Ms. Vance, I want regular updates from here on out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ms. Vance?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Do you have a favorite president?”

She paused. “This feels like a trap.”

“Mine’s Kennedy. Seventh-grade social studies, we all had to choose a president to do a project on. I chose JFK, and that was it. My whole life decided right there in Mrs. Knapp’s third period. I was blown away. His vision. His boldness. What he accomplished. The leader he was. How he went after hard policies, no matter how unpopular they were, no matter the cost. He was my superhero. He was exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. Even his assassination—I mean, I was an amped-up seventh-grade boy. I thought, Well, not everyone will like what you’re doing. Sometimes, progress and change come at a price .”

Joss glanced at the clock on the wall, wondering where this was going. Any other day she would have loved a casual retrospective therapy session with the leader of the free world—especially after that whole Make it twenty executive flex. But right now, she should be elsewhere doing more important things. Namely, preventing a nuclear meltdown.

“I remember being in the library when I found the picture of John-John saluting the casket,” he continued. “Caroline, she was right there too. Everyone in the picture wore black. But the kids were in those red shoes and those matching powder-blue jackets. And I thought—how silly. That they dressed them like that. As if people didn’t already get that they were just innocent little kids. I’m the oldest of five, and when I found that picture, my younger brother and sister were the exact same ages as Caroline and John were in ’63. And I thought of the idea of them, my brother and sister there, like that. And I just remember thinking… Why’d he do that to them? ”

Kennedy, Joss thought. Not Oswald. He means their father .

“I’ve read your file, Ms. Vance. I know the work you were trying to do here in Washington. Something tells me we’re more similar than you might think.”

“As I said, Mr. President,” Joss said, “it’s why I voted for you.”

She sensed the president nodding in agreement. He said, “I’ve got four years to do some good. Eight if I’m lucky. After that, I want kids. I want a great big family, just like the one I grew up in.”

Now Joss was nodding. “Yes, Mr. President. And I will do everything possible to make sure we have a world you’d want to bring them into.”

Carla sneezed as she folded up another dusty white cloth. This one had been covering a small couch next to a midcentury-modern parquet coffee table. It was the last dustcover, and looking around the space, she couldn’t help but marvel at how much the bunker was like stepping back in time.

There were two bedrooms with four bunk beds in each. A small bathroom with a tub shower, pedestal sink, and toilet. Two large pantries. One had medicine, toiletries, and first-aid supplies—including potassium iodide, which they’d all immediately taken. The other was stocked with shelf-stable food that had expired twenty years ago. A small gas stove was the only appliance in a tidy kitchenette besides a large water-filtration system. And on the opposite side of the modest living room was a built-in desk that ran the entire length of the wall. The shelves were full of various devices and electronics, and as Marion fiddled with them, one would occasionally beep or light up.

Matt stuck his finger in and out of the VCR, pushing the little plastic flap up and down. In one of the bedrooms, Brianna sat down on a lower bunk as though considering what a night’s sleep there would be like. Carla knew the novelty would wear off quickly for the kids and she looked around for anything they might enjoy—books or crayons or toys, anything—but idle young hands clearly weren’t considered in the bunker’s design. Before she could figure out what to do about this, though, the room crackled with static.

“Hot dog,” Marion said to himself.

“What is that?” Brianna asked.

“This,” Marion said, fiddling with dials as the static went in and out, “is the plant’s old communications system. If I can find the right wavelength, there’s a radio-based plant-wide emergency line that connects all the different zones, put in place in case the phone lines ever went down. This was before cell towers, when landlines were the only phones.”

“So it’s like a CB party line?” said Matt.

Marion and Carla turned, surprised, although they shouldn’t have been. Matt was a tech-obsessed kid who’d grown up in farm country, where old-school gadgetry like ham radios and citizens band radios were still commonly used.

“Yes, it works like a CB party line. Very good,” Marion said.

They all stood there expectantly while Marion continued to fiddle with dials and knobs. The most use Marion would get out of a smartphone would be as a coaster. But this? Marion was in his element.

“Does anyone copy?” he asked, holding down the button on a handheld microphone. But no one answered, not even after multiple attempts. The excitement wore off quickly. After a while, Matt flopped down on the couch with a bored sigh.

“Miss Carla,” said Brianna, “I’m hungry.”

“All right, let’s see what we got…” Carla crossed to the large pantry with the little girl and began checking it out. “Expired in 2002, expired in 2006, expired—”

A thumping noise made them both spin, but it was just Matt absently picking up the leg of the coffee table and letting it drop.

“Hey, now!” Carla said, turning back to the pantry. “This one’s still good. How does meat loaf sound?”

The little girl stared blankly at the nearly twenty-year-old cardboard box in Carla’s hand. Matt let the table drop down again with a thump.

“I agree,” Carla said, putting the meat loaf box back on a shelf and digging deeper into the pantry. “There’s got to be peanut butter or something…”

“Does anyone read?” Marion asked into the radio.

Thump . Matt again.

Marion pressed the mic’s button again. “This is the emergency bunker. Does anyone—”

Thump.

“Matt, please!”

“Knock it off!”

Both adults snapped at Matt at the same time. He stared up at the ceiling—but he didn’t drop the table again. Carla kept looking for food. Marion continued twisting dials. Suddenly, crackly voices came over the speaker.

“—within minutes.”

“So if we don’t do that, when the vent starts—”

“Dad!” Matt said, jumping up off the couch. “That’s my dad!”

Marion shushed him as they all circled around to listen to the radio. Matt’s dad and the other voices were discussing the next steps of whatever they were about to attempt; who was going to do what, how, and when. Carla tried to follow.

“So,” she said, “they’re going to vent the built-up gases to avoid a potential explosion, but when they do, what they vent into the air will be radioactive?”

Marion nodded. “Correct.”

“So how are they telling everyone to evacuate?” she said.

Carla and the kids looked at Marion, but he had no answer.

“They won’t know,” she said. “There’s no power, no TV. There’s barely any cell service. There may be none now. How are people going to know about the radioactive cloud?” Carla thought of the school bus filled with students and her colleagues. She thought of the businesses on Main Street. All the families and homes around the community. The voices continued to talk over the radio, but she was no longer listening.

Then it clicked. She pointed at the radio.

“Is there a radio like this one at the plant, one that can reach the community?”

Marion considered, quickly catching up to where she was going. He wheeled the desk chair down to another stack of equipment and turned a few dials; red and green lights lit up next to digital readouts. “Yes,” he said. “CB. Like Matt said. We can talk to any farmers listening—”

“School buses have CB too—” Carla said.

“We get them to spread the word to tune in to that channel—”

“Then we feed them regular updates from here, from what we hear over the plant’s radio. They spread it via word of mouth and any text messages they can get through. This is it, Marion!” Carla said, pulling up a chair next to his. “This is how we help.”

“Okay,” said Marion. “Then we need to figure out how to—”

“Where’s Matt?” Bri asked, facing the room, her back to the adults.

Carla and Marion spun around.

Matt wasn’t there.

“Matt,” Carla said, her voice rising as she went from room to room. “Matt, c’mon.” Back in the big room, she found Marion closing a closet. He shook his head.

“His backpack’s gone,” said Brianna from the entryway. They both hurried to the door leading up to the surface and found the little girl looking up the stairs at where they’d left their hazmat gear. Carla pulled Bri away so she could see. There, at the top of the stairs where their masks were hanging, was an empty spot.

Matt’s mask was gone.