The Longest Night (37 page)

The steam fogged Paul's respirator instantly. He was running blind. Without time to think, he lifted the respirator, tried clumsily to wipe it but gave up, and jogged to the side of the man he had seen move. He and Sechrist set down the stretcher alongside. The man was still now, lying facedown, his arm extended on the ground in front of him. He was such a long and slender person that Paul knew, with instant desperation, that this was Webb.

Paul looked to Sechrist, whom he could see blurrily through the face mask. The chief made a flipping motion with his hands. Paul nodded, his lungs straining. He had just run up several flights of stairs with a stretcher and it was difficult to hold his breath. He slipped his hands beneath Webb's legs.

The chief slapped the ground, and they turned Webb over. He was so badly hurt that for a moment Paul feared he might come apart in his hands. But his body was heavy, and its very human components—muscle, fat, tissue—held together in one piece. They got Webb onto his back. With one heave, they lifted him onto the stretcher. Paul fumbled for the handles, pushed to his feet, and they ran for the door.

His lungs were bursting as if underwater. He tried to hold out for the door, knowing that the air around him was a toxic soup, thick with radiation. There was no shielding. The heavy elements from the core had melded instantly with the air in the room, and every molecule a person inhaled would be laced with them, but he just couldn't make it. Jogging with the heavy stretcher in his hands, he was forced to exhale: a gagging, star-seeing loss of breath. He tried to run several steps on this exhalation, but just before the door he inhaled again. He staggered and dipped, nearly dropping the stretcher, righted himself.

Vogel had been kneeling by the other downed man; when they'd passed him he'd shaken his head
no
. So they bolted down the stairs, Chief Sechrist at the front of the stretcher, Paul at the back, Esrom behind him, and Vogel taking up the rear. Paul took deep breaths in the stairwell, stars dancing behind his eyes. When his vision cleared he thought Master Sergeant Richards, holding the door at the bottom, was a hallucination. Then he heard Richards's voice: “What the hell is Collier doing here?”

Paul elbowed past him. He and the chief rushed the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, where the nurse knelt, unwinding the lines to an oxygen mask. When she saw Webb's face, her eyes grew huge.

“His name's Webb,” Paul blurted.

“Christ,” Richards said behind him.

“This body, this man is highly radioactive,” Vogel was telling the nurse. “Do you understand?” She didn't seem to be paying attention; she was trying to hold the oxygen mask in a way that would cover Webb's mouth and nose at the same time.

“I need to ride with him,” Paul said.

“That's not a good idea,” said Vogel, diplomatic even in urgency. “Do you understand how much radiation you've already absorbed?”

“He should have someone who knows him!”

“Don't be a fool, Collier,” Richards said. “Don't die for a dead man.” He was backing away, doing the smart thing: putting distance between himself and the radiation.

“Shame on you, Richards,” said Paul. He climbed up into the ambulance and squeezed himself between the stretcher and the wall, which required him to kneel and hunch, his face just above Webb's. The nurse pressed herself against her own wall to make room.

“I can't let you do this,” Vogel said. “Not in good conscience.” But Paul, glancing back, could see in the physicist's eyes that this protestation was a formality. He was an understanding man. Chief Sechrist shut the hatchback door and the ambulance peeled out of the parking lot, spitting gravel. Paul and the nurse were left on either side of Webb's body, rocking with the car's motion.

“Webb,” Paul said, forcing himself to lean over his friend's face. It made him want to cry. He tried to think of something that might snap Webb to consciousness, grow strength within him, some thought or notion that could bring him back. “Webbsy, we're taking you to the hospital now. We'll call your mom. Think how happy she'll be to see you when you get back to Michigan. And your dog”—what the hell was the dog's name? Webb had a photo of his childhood dog in his locker, next to Paul's, he must have loved that creature, which now resided with Webb's mom back in Michigan—“your little brown dog, the dog.” He was repeating himself idiotically, the dog, the dog, hating himself for not recalling its name as if this mattered, as if this were the magical ticket that could save Webb's life. “Freddie!” he said finally. “Freddie will be so happy to see you.”

The ambulance lurched onto the road, and the nurse and Paul reached out to steady the stretcher. Paul glanced back to see the reactor grow small through the tiny window, its chain-link fence swung open, rimmed with silently flashing vehicles. His eyes lit on the cloud of steam that puffed from its vent, flowering palely against the dark sky, spreading. A wind sock flapped from the top of a pole. Even when that cloud dispersed and became invisible it would swell, widen, and cover an area that didn't recognize the boundaries of the testing station, of Idaho. Paul thought of Nat and his girls fifty miles away in Idaho Falls, his newborn baby, her lungs the size of dried apricots.

“There's no pulse,” said the nurse, and Paul jerked back to her. “I'm starting compressions now.” She held herself over Webb's bloodied chest. It looked concave, his clothing so redly soaked that Paul could not see any specific injury. She pressed her hands to it and began pumping. The ambulance rattled and bucked, smacked her momentarily against the wall, but she regained her balance and continued, face steely. Bottles of fluid clinked above their heads but there had been no time to intubate, and the fact that no one had even suggested it made Paul feel that all was lost.

“We're almost there, Webb,” he lied. “We're almost at the hospital now.”

The nurse paused to reposition her slipping hands. “Come on, sweetheart,” she whispered. “Come on, Webb.”

Paul felt his eyes tear up gratefully, as if he and the nurse both loved this man. He tried to banish the thought that no one could survive those injuries and that time spent in a radioactive field of such proportions. Then he cursed himself, because even at this, the most critical of moments, he was incapable of having faith.

The nurse was counting to herself, quietly, her fingers on Webb's neck. She began compressions again, her arms locked, crimson. The ambulance made a sharp turn and she thudded against the wall, but didn't stop.

It seemed that she worked on Webb for several minutes. The oxygen mask kept sliding to the side of his crushed face, so Paul steadied it. He felt that he was holding it against some open hole, and that it wasn't doing any good, but it was the only thing he could think to do. The nurse sat back and took Webb's pulse again.

Her head jerked, and Paul's did, too, as Webb's chest gave a rattle and a rise. Paul allowed himself one split second of hope that the nurse had somehow restarted him and that he would begin to breathe on his own. “Come on, Webbsy,” he choked. But Webb's chest lifted only that once, higher than a normal breath would raise it, and he let out one low, ghastly moan. Paul waited, but there was nothing else.

“I'm sorry,” the nurse said. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She reached for the handheld radio and spoke to the driver up front. “The patient has expired,” she said.

“There's a checkpoint,” the driver replied. “They've set up a checkpoint. I'm stopping up here.”

The ambulance ground to a halt, and someone raised the back. The nurse climbed out. Paul took one last look at Webb, who stared at the ceiling. This was it for Webb at twenty; this was the story of his life, over and done.

“Get
out
of there,” shouted a voice, and Paul scooted to the back of the ambulance and dropped to the ground. The man who'd spoken must have been a doctor; he wore plain clothes but a stethoscope was looped around his neck. As Paul stepped away from the ambulance he saw that a few cars had met them at the checkpoint. The circle of light they made in that freezing, pitch-black desert was disorienting, and Paul moved to the edge of the group alongside the nurse.

The doctor took Paul's place in the back of the ambulance but emerged within seconds, slamming the door shut behind him. “Time of death, 11:14
P
.
M
.”

“Did you even have time to feel for a pulse?” Paul said.

The doctor paused and looked at him with a flicker of disdain, then glanced down the road. “Someone's coming,” he said.

They turned as a car approached. The ambulance driver let out a yell and bolted toward it, waving his arms over his head.

“Wait,” said the doctor, “you can't ride with a Good Samaritan. Your bodies are toxic.” This pulled the driver up short, and he slumped a little, still standing in the road.

Paul recognized the man behind the wheel. “It's Vogel,” he said. When the car pulled up to them and Paul saw Richards in the passenger seat, thorns bloomed in his chest.

The driver's side door flung wide as Vogel hurried toward them. “How is he, Doc?”

The doctor shook his head.

“Oh, no,” Vogel said. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and shook his head. “Goddamnit. Okay. Shit!” He looked to Paul and the nurse. “You all right?”

“Yes,” Paul said.

Richards hung back, standing beside the car. He didn't seem to know what to do, and he was clearly avoiding Paul.

Vogel strode back to his car and grabbed a radiation detector. When he returned and waved it alongside the ambulance, it whirred and clicked like a small airplane taking off. He held the instrument in the circle of headlights. “The ambulance alone is at four hundred roentgens from that body. Driver,” he said, pointing, “I need you to drive this thing off the road a ways. Park it and then run back as fast as you can.”

The ambulance driver stared at him with an expression of dread.

“You'll be all right,” Vogel said. “Just drive as fast as you can, and then run.”

The driver fumbled in his pocket for his keys, strode to the ambulance door, and climbed inside. At the last second Vogel called, “Wait,” removing a lead blanket from the back of the car. He ran it to the driver, who wrapped himself awkwardly under the armpits, like a lady in a ten-pound towel, and slammed the door. The ambulance started up with a roar, shifted gears, and lurched away from them, spitting gravel as it bounced off the road and into the brush. When it was far enough away that only its red brake lights could be seen, pinpoints in the dark, it slammed to a rough stop, the brake lights went out, and the driver was illuminated for one instant as he jumped down from the vehicle. He shut the door behind him, and he and the vehicle disappeared. Everyone standing by the side of the road waited. A couple of minutes later, Paul heard the faint slap of feet on the ground. The sound grew louder until the driver came into pale view, running as fast as he could, his arms pumping at his sides. He sprinted into the circle of headlights and collapsed, turning to sit with his knees up and his head between them, gasping for air.

“Well done,” Vogel said. “Collier, Nurse Brenner, you”—he motioned to the panting driver—“get in my car, and I'll take you to decontamination.”

“Where is decontamination?” the nurse asked in a small voice.

“I'm figuring that out,” Vogel said.

Paul's teeth were chattering by now—he'd given the nurse his jacket—and he turned toward Vogel's car, gesturing for her to come also. He opened the door for her and was about to climb in after her when he remembered Richards standing across the road, watching, talking to Vogel. “Excuse me,” Paul said, closing the door and ducking across the road.

“We need to get the body into a steel cask,” Vogel was saying, “fill it with alcohol and ice. It can't be buried and the family can't have it.” When he saw Paul approaching, he went silent.

“Master Sergeant,” Paul said.

“Collier,” said Richards, stepping back.

“Specialist Collier,” said Vogel, “we're going to have to ask you to stay ten feet away. I'm sorry.”

Paul froze, then nodded. “I understand,” he said. He'd had the most exposure of anyone; he would contaminate any person he was near. Now that things were less urgent, people could afford to stay away from him. He saw Richards scoot further from Vogel, too, as if suddenly recalling that the health physicist had also been in the reactor building. Richards was the cleanest of them, untainted. They formed an odd triangle in the middle of the highway.

“I'm concerned about our families,” Paul said. He had to raise his voice to be heard.

“Don't worry,” said Richards. “You won't be allowed to go home until you test clean.”

“Not just that. The cloud. The radiation. It's still pumping,” Paul said. “It'll be going for days until they get that thing cooled and covered.”

“We don't want to send everyone into a panic,” Richards began.

Vogel glanced at Richards. “I'm not sure what steps they'll take,” he said, meaning the site administrators. “If they think it's unsafe, they'll get the families out.”

“I think it's unsafe,” said Paul. “I think we should get the families out now. We should get everyone out.”

“Everyone in town? Can you imagine?” Richards guffawed. “People scrambling for their belongings, flooding the highways, screaming?”

“Fuck you,” said Paul. “They wouldn't be
screaming
.”

“Collier,” Vogel warned.

“I know you're upset about your friend,” Richards said, and Paul's whole body flinched with the effort not to lunge at him, “but we can't send everyone into a tizzy. We can't have everyone thinking that it's not safe to live here by the testing station. We know it's safe. It's perfectly safe—”