Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

COUNTDOWN TO ZERO HOUR 14 HOURS AND 43 MINUTES

CONNOR AND THE FIREFIGHTERS at the bridge were not only downwind of Clover Hill, they had no clue that a risky venting procedure was about to happen there. A procedure that, if it went wrong, would expel untold quantities of lethal radioactive material directly at them.

But even if the firefighters had known, it wouldn’t have changed anything.

Until Connor was safe, they’d stay exactly where they were.

“All right,” Levon said to the firefighters, grabbing the megaphone. “Let’s try one more time. Hey, bud!” His voice boomed across the water. “What do you say we try to open the door again?”

But the boy just sat there glued to his seat like every other time they’d tried to get him to do it.

Frankie said, “Maybe he can’t hear us?”

“He can. He looks up every time we talk to him,” said Boggs. “Maybe he doesn’t speak English.”

“His dad spoke to him in English,” Levon said.

“Is he like, I don’t know, learning disabled or something? Maybe he doesn’t understand what we want him to do.”

“Wait, can kids that age talk?” Frankie said.

Everyone turned.

“Are you serious?” said Boggs.

“For God’s sake, Frankie,” said Levon. “The kid’s, like, five.”

Frankie held his hands out. “The kid’s five? I don’t know. I don’t have kids. I don’t know what that means.”

Dani had stopped listening to them. She focused on Connor instead.

It was hard to see him clearly through the window’s glare and the far distance—but she had an idea. She asked Levon for the megaphone and stepped forward.

“Connor, sweetheart,” she said, her voice as soft and comforting as she could make it through a bullhorn. “Are you in your car seat?”

The boy nodded yes.

“Can you unbuckle your car seat?”

Connor shook his head no.

The radio in Joss’s hand squawked: “We’re set up. Ready for venting when you are.”

The transmission came from a National Guardsman in one of the twin-engine Bell 412 helicopters that were currently hovering over the Clover Hill campus. The chopper had been outfitted with radiation-sensing devices, and the plan was for it to conduct low-altitude flights over the building and surrounding areas to measure background radiation. This would give accurate, real-time figures that would not only inform the evacuation needs, but also provide immediate feedback on the success of the venting.

Joss pushed the talk button. “Roger that. Affirmative. Stand by for venting.”

“We’re ready when you are,” Maggie said from the panel across the room.

Joss and Ethan shared a look, their expressions identical: Last chance. We’re sure, right?

This was the last moment to call it off.

“Go” was all Ethan said.

Maggie and Vikram turned to the board. “Venting in three, two…”

Leaves crunched under Matt’s feet as he crossed the open field on the far side of the Clover Hill campus. Inside the mask, his warm breath left moisture around his mouth, a contrast to the cold, dry air outside. He looked up at the trail of white smoke in the distance and the helicopter hovering near it. That’s perfect, Matt thought.

The plant was eerily still and quiet. Not a person in sight. No utility trucks driving by. It was nothing like he remembered. Whenever he visited his dad at work, the place was always rushing with noise and activity. Today it was a ghost town. In the nearly empty parking lot, he stopped to look at a silver four-door sedan surrounded by broken glass and buckled plastic parts. A huge aircraft tire lay on top, having flattened the car’s roof.

Matt slipped his backpack to one shoulder and continued on. If only the sixth-graders could see him now. They’d definitely think this was cool: Sneaking out. Being where he wasn’t supposed to be, alone, because everyone else was too scared. He was being dangerous and awesome and he could imagine everyone surrounding his table at lunch, listening to him tell the story. Everyone would think he was so badass. Matt wondered if this might even get him a seat in the back row of the bus.

Walking out into an open area between buildings, he unzipped his backpack and carefully pulled out the drone the sixth-graders had been so eager to see. Miss Carla wasn’t here to stop him now. Unfolding its four arms, he set it down on a flat patch of grass, took the remote control from his bag, and tossed the bag off to the side before pressing the power buttons on both the remote and the drone.

Blue LED lights flashed on the bottom of all four propellers as Matt went through the stabilization and calibration sequences: connecting the drone to the remote, connecting the device to GPS, waiting the forty-five seconds for the GPS to acquire a signal. Matt then connected the app on his phone to the drone via Bluetooth, and a moment later, video feed from the drone’s camera began playing on the screen. Leaning his phone up against a rock, Matt could now see everything the drone saw.

He pressed the geomagnetic correction button on the left side of the control, and red lights on the front and rear of the drone flashed. He picked it up and rotated the drone counterclockwise horizontally until the red lights turned from flashing to steady, indicating the internal gyroscope was attuned and the calibration process was complete.

Matt set down the drone and took a few steps back. Taking the remote in both hands, he began manipulating the joysticks with his thumbs—and the drone lifted off the ground. It took a moment for Matt to stabilize it, but once he had it flying level, he went for the top of the remote to adjust its speed.

Matt pressed a button and the drone headed straight for the column of smoke.

At the bridge, there was finally some progress. Dani and Connor were now working together.

“Is there a big red button on the harness?” Dani asked.

Connor nodded.

“I bet you already tried, but it’s tough to push down, huh?”

Again, the boy nodded.

“That’s okay. It might be a little stuck. Let’s try again,” said Dani. “I’ll count down, and when I say go , push really, really hard! Okay? Okay, here we go. Three. Two. One—go!”

The firemen all cheered him on, clapping and calling out his name, yelling all sorts of variations of You got this, bud . But the boy stayed still in the chair.

“Explain to him that we need that door open,” Frankie said. “Because that wing and bridge and van will never be more stable than they are right now. We need to gain access while it’s still okay to be moving it around.”

“I’m honest-to-God serious, Frankie,” said Levon, “have you ever met a child?”

“I just think if he understood—”

“It’s not a conceptual issue. It’s a strong-opposable-thumb issue.”

“Connor, do you like superheroes?” Dani asked.

Connor nodded—with a smile. The first that they’d seen.

“Me too,” Dani said, returning the smile. “Who’s your favorite?”

He was too far away for them to hear perfectly, but the fire-fighters mumbled to one another, confirming what they’d interpreted his moving lips as saying.

“Batman?” Dani said. Connor nodded. “He’s my favorite too. Know why?” Connor shook his head. “’Cause he’s just a guy. He’s just a person like you and me who worked really hard and became Batman. Bruce Wayne is just a person who made himself into a superhero. He was just a kid like you, you know? I bet he started his training when he was about your age.”

She omitted the fact that Bruce Wayne was only a little older than Connor when his parents were killed, which was what set him on his path to becoming a superhero. Like Bruce Wayne, Connor was now an orphan.

“You want to start your training right now?” Dani asked. At his head nod, she said, “Okay, let’s begin with your strength. If you want to be a superhero, you need to be superstrong. So, try this: Go ahead and close your eyes. Are they closed? Okay, now focus on putting all your power, every single muscle in your body, focus it all through your thumbs and into that red button—and then push.”

He was trying. The firefighters could see he was trying so hard. They cheered him on, but it was clear he wasn’t getting it.

“It’s okay!” Dani said. “Bruce Wayne failed over and over and over again—but he kept trying over and over and over and over again too. Keep trying, Connor. You’ve got this.”

The little boy’s face scrunched up in effort. The firefighters cheered while they watched the boy—when his face suddenly lit up. The firefighters whistled and hooted as Connor slid out of the harness and climbed down out of the car seat.

The ticking clock on the wall in the control room was the only sound in the space. Everyone focused on the gauges, watching the numbers, not yet daring to come to a conclusion.

“Hydrogen accumulation is at three-point-three percent,” Maggie said.

That was lower than her callout thirty seconds earlier.

Another thirty seconds passed.

“Three-point-one percent.”

Tick… tick… tick… It felt like the clock was mocking them.

“Two-point-eight.”

Joss looked at Ethan. It’d been six minutes since they’d started the vent. They had enough data to call it. Wordlessly, they agreed.

Ethan put a hand on Vikram’s shoulder and squeezed. Dwight sat in a chair and finally let himself exhale. Joss ran a hand down her face with a sigh.

“Hydrogen accumulation one-point-four,” Maggie said.

Joss held down the trigger on the radio. “How are your numbers looking up there? We’re looking good down here.”

A voice came over the radio, just audible above the thwacking of the chopper’s rotor: “Radiation is increasing, but at a rate near what you anticipated.”

“Is it under EPA standard?”

“No. We’re well over EPA. The evacuation was necessary. We’ll expand our test radius and—left! Left!”

All focus in the room snapped to the radio in Joss’s hand.

“It’s… there! Left side. No, rise. Rise!”

The radio cut out and it was dead silent for a split second before the room sprang to life.

“Someone get the live security footage—”

“On it.”

“Maggie, monitor the—”

“You can’t do that!”

Joss was taken aback by the white-hot rage in the pilot’s voice. “I don’t—do what?” she stammered. “What’s happening?”

“You can’t put a surveillance drone in our airspace and not tell us.”

Joss looked at Ethan. He shook his head. “That’s not us,” Joss said.

“That thing in our propeller, we’re down—”

“It’s not us! We don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Matt couldn’t believe the footage he was getting. This was so cool: The firefighters running around. The burning plane parts. The white smoke. The helicopter—although that was bad. Way bad. He got too close there, he knew he did. But he pulled back! It was fine. Nothing happened.

But his hands were now shaking. He wondered what his mom would say if she knew what he was doing. His face flashed hot with shame. He knew what she would say. It’s what she’d say about a lot of the things he was doing now that she was gone.

Oh, Matty. I’m so disappointed in you .

Shame flashed over to anger.

Then she should have stayed.

Matt flinched, startled by a door bursting open as two men in hazmat suits ran out of a building. He froze, trying to make out what they were screaming at him. Seconds later, he was grabbed by the arms and hauled back to the building.

He didn’t fight them, but he didn’t exactly comply, and somewhere along the way, the remote was knocked out of his hand. Right as they got to the building, Matt looked over his shoulder to see the drone hit the ground.

Connor’s little face was pressed up against the minivan window. Even from a distance, his bright blue eyes shone. The Renaissance painters’ cherubic angel babies looked like variations of Connor.

Levon had the megaphone now. “All right, my man. Is there a button to make the door slide open?”

Connor looked down to the right, then nodded.

“Excellent. Here’s what you should do. I want you to push the button, then step back. Waaaay back. Okay? Push the button, step back, the door will slide open, and we can come get you. Okay?”

Connor nodded again and reached over for the button.

There was a click. Connor hurried back against the other side. The door popped out of its seal and slid open.

As air entered through the open door, it created a draft with the shattered front windshield. The whoosh of fresh air breathed new life into the flames.

The back draft that consumed the van was instantaneous.