Fallout (6 page)

“And make sure there’s someone else who can operate it,” Sambit added. “I’ve watched him with those controls. It’s not just something you pick up and can immediately do. They brought Derek here for more reasons than one.”

The comment surprised Derek. He hadn’t realized Sambit thought so highly of him. Derek certainly hadn’t given him any reason to. Silently he resolved to be nicer to the other man. He’d need an ally against Tucker if he had any hope of saving his sanity. “I brought some parts with me, more as replacement parts for Number Five than to build a second robot, but it’s a start, although the time I take to construct a second robot is time I’m not operating the first one. Once the second one is built, I can teach someone how to operate it even if they can’t maintain it,” Derek said. “It takes practice, like anything else, but it’s a lot like playing video games. Once you get the hang of it, it’s not so hard.”

“Tell that to someone who’s good at video games,” Sambit said with a short laugh. “I’ll leave the operating to you and concentrate on figuring out what needs to be done.”

Chapter 4

I
T
TOOK
another hour to transfer enough boron into the coolant to satisfy Lyrica and Sambit, and by then, Derek’s stomach was demanding food.

“Break time,” he declared when they didn’t immediately assign him another task. “I fed Fido, but I haven’t eaten since this morning.”

“Fido?” Lyrica asked.

“His dog,” Sambit explained, standing and stretching, the arch of his back drawing Derek’s attention to his body. Derek swallowed hard.
Not my type
, he told himself firmly.
So not my type.
That didn’t stop his eyes from lingering as Sambit bent forward, touching his toes and highlighting his ass.

“I rescued him from the house down the street,” Derek said, forcing his eyes away from Sambit and toward Lyrica. “I couldn’t turn around and leave him again, and there wasn’t exactly time to find a place for him.”

“So you brought him with you?” Lyrica asked, her eyes bright with amusement. “Oh, that’ll make Tucker’s day. Well done, Derek.”

Derek and Sambit both chuckled.

“Wait until Tucker sees Derek’s other additions to the break room,” Sambit added. “He’ll never recover.”

“Oh?” Lyrica said. “Do tell.”

Derek shrugged. “I just hung a couple of pictures on the wall. We’re going to be living here so I wanted to make it feel a little more like home.”

Sambit snorted. “So your room at home is decorated with pinups too?”

Lyrica rolled her eyes. “What is it with men and their fascination with tits?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Sambit replied primly, making Derek do a double take as he wondered exactly how to interpret that, “and neither would Derek.” He grabbed Derek’s arm and pulled his sleeve back to reveal the rainbow bracelet.

Lyrica’s face brightened. “Now that’s the kind of pinup I can appreciate!”

“I’m sure Tucker won’t,” Sambit said.

“Tucker can go stuff himself,” Lyrica said, looping one arm through Derek’s and the other through Sambit’s. “In the absence of the regular plant manager, I’m the senior employee here. He can write all the reports he wants. We’re the ones running this show.”

They walked back into the break room. Three other people, two men and another woman, milled about, unpacking supplies, spreading out army issue cots and blankets, and generally making far more noise than necessary as far as Derek was concerned.

“Come here, Fido,” he called, seeing the dog cowering in the corner. Immediately the dog bounded over to him. “Do you want to go outside, boy?”

“Don’t go out without a Geiger counter and dosimeter,” Sambit said immediately. “The control area is shielded so we shouldn’t get high levels of radiation here unless that’s damaged, but we have no idea what the conditions outside are.”

“I get that, but the dog has to have a break, and I don’t figure people want him shitting in the corner,” Derek said. “So unless you have a better suggestion, we’re going outside.”

“Stay as close to the building as possible,” Lyrica said. “It should provide some protection from radiation even outside, and come back inside as soon as he’s done. If he needs exercise, we’ll have to make sure he gets it inside until we’re sure we don’t have a radiation leak outside. We’ll see about some dinner while you’re taking care of your dog. Is there anything you don’t eat?”

“Nope, omnivore here,” Derek said. “Okay, Fido, let’s go outside, but stay close to me, all right? I don’t have a leash for you, and I don’t want you running off and getting lost or hurt.”

He had no idea if the dog could understand him, but it trotted along next to him as he walked toward the exit. He stayed in the doorway while Fido sniffed around a little, picking his way over the flooded grass. He stopped and did his business before running back to Derek’s side. “Good boy. Let’s go back inside.”

When they’d returned to the break room, Fido curled up in his corner again. Derek took one of the cots and moved it over to the same corner, giving Fido somewhere to hide if he wanted.

“There you go,” Derek said, bending down and patting Fido’s head. “You can keep an eye on my bag and my boys. How does that sound?”

Fido closed his eyes and leaned into Derek’s hand. Derek smiled. He’d never wanted a dog, but now that he had one, he wondered why he’d resisted. He could get used to true unconditional affection.

“Are you the one who hung those up?” one of the other men whom Derek had not yet met asked.

“Yes,” Derek said. “What of it? There’s nothing wrong with a bare chest.”

The man’s lips curled, but before he could say anything, Lyrica was at Derek’s side. “Nothing wrong at all,” she agreed, “although I wouldn’t complain if the jeans on that one cowboy slid a little lower down. He’s something else.”

“He is,” Derek agreed. “That’s William Jones. He’s a favorite of mine.”

The man who’d asked about the pictures made a sound of disgust and walked away. “Don’t mind Jeremiah,” she said softly. “He’s a born-again Christian who thinks he has the market cornered on righteousness. He’s a pain, but he’s a hard worker and he knows his way around the systems here.”

“Great,” Derek said, “a Bible thumper. Just what I need.”

“Sarcasm becomes you,” Lyrica teased. “You, Sambit, and I will be one team. We’ll put him on the other team so you don’t have to deal with him.”

“So who are the other two?” Derek asked.

“Melanie Bowman and Thomas Dougherty, two other plant employees,” Lyrica replied. “They may not have your skills with a robot, but they can at least monitor systems during our off shift, even if they can’t do as much to fix problems as we can.”

“If one of them is willing to learn from a fag, I can show them how to use the robot,” Derek said, unable to stop the bitterness in his voice.

“Don’t judge us all by Jeremiah,” Lyrica said. “Bay City might not be Houston, but that doesn’t mean we’re all redneck hicks with nothing better to do than bash the gay guy.”

“Sorry,” Derek said. He was even mostly sincere. Lyrica had been nothing but kind to him since she’d arrived, and he had no real reason to assume Melanie and Thomas would be any different. One bad apple didn’t ruin the whole bag, as his mother was fond of saying.

“Soup’s ready,” Sambit said, handing Derek a bowl. “It’s nothing fancy, but they didn’t bring us anything fancy. Still, it’s hot, and hopefully it’ll be filling.”

Derek looked down at the beef and vegetable soup. Definitely not fancy. “We did survive a hurricane,” he said, trying to lighten the suddenly heavy mood. “I suppose we should be thankful for hurricane rations. It’s not like we have a gourmet kitchen at our disposal anyway, right?”

“No, just a microwave and a coffee maker,” Lyrica said. “We’ll make do with that until we can get something better or until we can get out of here.”

“So how long are we likely to be stuck here?” Derek asked, taking a sip of the soup. “Best and worst case scenarios.”

“Worst case scenario is something like Chernobyl or Fukushima,” Sambit said, “where repairs really aren’t an option, and we have to seal the plant and abandon it permanently. That’s the last resort, especially here because of the other two reactors. Unless Tucker finds something, there’s no reason they couldn’t be reactivated as soon as there’s a crew to monitor them.”

“Best case scenario, a couple of days,” Lyrica continued. “We cool the core down, check all the containment systems, and leave it to restart once it’s declared safe to be back in the area post-hurricane.”

“And likeliest scenario?” Derek asked.

“Somewhere in between,” Sambit said. Lyrica nodded in agreement. “The systems are damaged enough that the computer readings aren’t accurate, which means we can’t just turn everything back on and assume the automated systems will work properly. Not that we’d ever do that with a nuclear power plant, but we already know the automated systems are compromised. We have to determine the extent of the damage to the core and containment vessels first, then to the monitoring systems, and get those repaired or new systems in place. Granted, not all of that has to happen immediately, and not all of that will require your assistance, especially if the radiation and heat are under control so that it’s safe for people to move about the complex, but this isn’t going to be over tomorrow.”

“Then I guess the next thing to do is to see what kind of damage there is outside,” Derek said.

“There are hazmat suits, although we’d have to see what sizes we can find,” Lyrica said. “They’re only good for about fifteen minutes because of the size of the breathing apparatus, but we could see quite a bit in fifteen minutes, and we can always come back inside and switch suits if we haven’t seen everything we need to see.”

“We can also send Number Five,” Derek suggested. “I’m happy to tramp around in a hazmat suit if that will be the most help, but the drizzle had stopped when Fido and I went outside. Number Five can deal with a certain amount of moisture in the air and on his track roller, and while radiation can eventually damage the circuits, it’s not as sensitive as we are.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Lyrica said, “but some things are just best seen in person, and I think this may be one of those times. I don’t know how else to explain it except to say that there’s a sense of a situation that goes along with being in the middle of it that nothing else can replace.”

Derek had spent his career thus far creating machines that provided that sense of situation across the gaps of outer space, but he didn’t argue. In this case, they could go out into the middle of the situation and have that personal touch, so he saw no reason to insist.

Fido whined when Derek got up and started out of the room again. “I know, boy,” he said, going back to reassure the dog. “You don’t know what’s going on, you’re in a strange place, and the one person you do know keeps disappearing on you. You’re doing great. It’ll be someone else’s shift soon, and then I can sit here and keep you company, okay?”

“I’ll watch him if it will help.”

Derek looked up to see the woman Lyrica had identified as Melanie. “I don’t know how he feels about strangers,” Derek began, only to realize how inane a statement that was when he had been a stranger to the dog only that morning. “But if you’re sure you don’t mind, I’d worry less knowing he wasn’t left alone again.”

“Again?” Melanie asked.

Derek explained quickly how he’d found Fido that morning.

“That’s horrible!”

Derek decided he liked her. “Stay with Melanie, Fido, okay? I’ll be back soon.” Fido wagged his tail and moved to Melanie’s side. “Good boy,” Derek praised before joining Lyrica and Sambit in the hallway. “Let’s get this done. It’s getting late. We don’t have a lot of daylight left.”

They sorted through the hazmat suits in storage until they found ones that would fit well enough to protect them. Lyrica helped them get the suits on and fitted correctly and showed them how to switch on the two-way radios that would let them communicate while they were outside.

“I may as well be wearing a spacesuit,” Derek said as they clunked toward the door, the steel-toed boots feeling awkwardly heavy compared to the weight of the light boots he’d had on earlier.

“Pretty much,” Lyrica agreed through the radio. “These suits are designed for situations where everything out there is presumed to be bad. The only thing it doesn’t have is temperature control.”

“So what are we looking for?” Sambit asked as they tramped across the flooded yard toward the side of the control building.

“Anything that isn’t as it should be,” Lyrica said.

“That might help Sam, but it doesn’t help me much,” Derek said, turning his head left and right as much as the hazmat suit would allow to try to get a feel for the area.

“So think of it as a chance to get the lay of the land for later, when you have to do this with Number Five,” Sambit suggested, “and some things will be obvious even to a layman’s eyes.”

Derek rounded a corner and caught sight of a body on the ground, the legs caught beneath fallen concrete. “Like that?” he said with a grimace.

“Oh, God,” Lyrica said, the words as much a prayer as a curse. She hurried to the body. Derek and Sambit followed, lifting the concrete slab and pulling the body free.