The Longest Night (39 page)

“Throat,” said the doc.

“Sorry?”

“Open up.” He showed a tongue depressor, waved it in front of Paul's lips. “Let's take a look-see.”

Paul opened his mouth, wondering what the doc could see in there that would possibly give him any information.

“Eyes.” The doc switched on a thin flashlight. Paul flinched at first, then concentrated on looking slackly ahead, resisting the urge to blink. The light roved over his corneas, then flicked away.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“More vomiting?”

“Not for a couple of hours.”

“Diarrhea?”

“No.”

“You took your iodine and kept it down?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“I should be able to go home soon, right?”

“Not until it's safe for others to be around you.”

Paul nodded. “But what about you? You're around all of us.” The health physicist knew as well as Paul that the white suit only did so much.

The doc paused. “This is my job,” he said. “And we're working half-hour shifts.” He asked Paul to hold his hands out flat and keep them still. After a moment he added, “They found the third man.”

“What?” Paul asked. His breath skipped.

“Not alive. Sorry.” He turned on the faucet and motioned to Paul to rinse. “He was standing on top of the shield plug when it blew.”

Paul flinched, picturing the long, thick metal plug, big as a pole.

“It went through his groin,” the doc said with a brisk frown. “Shot him up to the ceiling, skewered him through his body and came out his shoulder. Pegged him into the top of the reactor like a pin in a corkboard, terrible.”

“Which man was it?”

The doc squinted. “Polish name.”

“Sidorski,” said Paul, nauseous.

“That's him. Don't tell his wife,” the doc added.

“I don't talk to his wife,” Paul snapped. He took a breath to steady himself. The doc handed him a towel; he took it, roughed it over his raw, pink arms. Each hair felt like it hooked somewhere deep inside his muscles. He shuddered in segments, like a horse.

The doc bent for his detector, thumbed it on, swung it over Paul's limbs again. He clicked his tongue, stared into space as the detector roved. It was as if Paul had buried treasure beneath his skin, coy nuggets of gold, and they were waiting for the machine to suddenly tweet in discovery. Instead it just revved, a long
hush, hush
as though Paul disappointed it.

“We're supposed to be vague about the names,” the health physicist said. “About who was where. The man, he's still hanging up there. Can't go in to get him because of the radiation field. They're building some kind of crane to pull him down. So they don't want word to get out to the wife. Not now, anyway.”

“Right,” Paul said quietly, but his voice stuck, and he had to clear his throat.

That meant the man who'd been dead on the floor was Slocum, he thought. Now, at least, they had everyone accounted for.

The doc glanced at him. The monitor scolded Paul's arms, hands. “They can't even bury the men,” he said. “It's a real dilemma. They'll probably be buried out at the hot waste site, or parts of them anyway.”

Paul felt his lips curl in disgust, but he knew better than to say anything.

The doc tilted his monitor and shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. Then he motioned to the pacing ambulance driver. “You, next,” he called. To Paul he said, “Try to get some rest.”

Paul barely heard him as he shuffled back to his seat. He couldn't stop thinking that while he and the other men ran in and out of the reactor room—carrying Webb, feeling the motionless carotid in Slocum's neck—Sidorski had been right above them, dangling over their heads the entire time.

H
OURS LATER,
P
AUL WAS
still in a folding chair in the gas-cooled reactor building, and he could feel himself starting to lose it. It seemed he wasn't the only one: Esrom, for no reason Paul could understand, was staring directly at him. Each time Paul glanced up, he'd see Esrom jerk his gaze away, but a few moments later the young firefighter's eyes would wander back. It was starting to make Paul almost angry.

They were dressed identically now, Paul and Esrom, pink and scrubbed and waiting out their own bodies in opposite folding chairs. The nurse had been brought in from whatever place the health physicists found for her to shower; Paul wondered where, as none of these buildings had locker rooms for women. Maybe they had located some small chemical shower for her someplace, with a pull-chain, where she'd had to stand for hours all alone. He pitied her this, but it didn't seem appropriate to ask. The nervous ambulance driver was there, too, standing, sitting, muttering, and finally falling into a merciful and all-encompassing sleep, like a child.

Richards had been allowed to wander someplace else within the building. It was probably for the best, given Paul's state of mind. So the nurse leaned her head on a folded blanket against the wall, and the ambulance driver slept, and Esrom peeked weirdly at Paul as if hoping he might suddenly mutate or erupt, and they passed some time that way before Paul finally decided he was about to lose his mind.

“Enough,” he blurted, a rough edge rising within him. “I'm going outside.”

A health physicist materialized out of nowhere and twittered, “Mr. Collier, no, you need to stay in the building.”

Paul stared down the man's gray-faced disapproval as if he could capture and eat it. “I am stepping outside for a cigarette,” he said.

“You may smoke in here. By all means do. By all means—”

“By all means, shut up,” Paul blurted. “I am going to stand outside this building for ten minutes and smoke one goddamn cigarette. You are not to follow me. You are not to come anywhere near me until I return of my own volition. Do you understand?”

This was the secret side to Paul that usually got its way. Paul felt the nurse looking at him; he suspected she wanted a cigarette and would ask for one imminently. He was surrounded by goddamn zombies.

The health physicist nodded. “Ten minutes, Mr. Collier. Then you need to come right back in.”

Paul spun and stalked toward the exit, his hand shaking its way into his pocket. On the strength of one cigarette he would be able to get out of there. He'd grab his family and take them anywhere, take them north, for three days, a week, however long he goddamn felt like. The only thing was, he couldn't safely be anywhere near them.

Outside, the cold was blistering. Paul saw that it was morning, ten or so judging by the pale sun. The testing site stretched before him, flat, sparkling with patches of snow. Paul tapped out a cigarette with unspeakable relief. He patted his left pocket for his Zippo. Goddamnit. The Zippo! They'd taken it from him. They had taken his Zippo! Of course it was radioactive, but this decision seemed, suddenly, a breach of protocol so galling that Paul's brain shot lightning. You did not take a soldier's Zippo. You simply did not. If a man was dying, if his leg was blown off and he was stranded on some icy hill in Korea, he could grope into his pocket and have one last cigarette. It was the one thing everyone agreed he deserved.

He turned back to the building and was about to push the door open when his brain shadow, Esrom, stepped out.

“Christ,” Paul blurted, startled. “What are you doing?”

Esrom pulled a cigarette from his own pocket. “Getting a ride home. I don't usually smoke,” he seemed to feel the need to say, “but,” and he mumbled something that Paul could not have cared about in the least. He might have whispered a recipe or recited a prayer; the words looped together and slid away. Paul's eye latched on to the book of matches Esrom removed from his pocket. Now it was his turn to stare so blatantly that there was no question what he needed.

“Of course,” Esrom said, extending the match to Paul. In the cold wind they hunched over it as if it were an impossibly delicate thing, a baby hummingbird. The flame flickered, ducked, then snapped up just enough to get Paul's cigarette going. Paul placed it between his lips and inhaled, and it was like someone had reached inside his head and petted his brain.

Esrom coughed twice, bumped a fist against his chest. “Hey, there's a plane,” he said.

Paul squinted. Esrom was right. In the distance, a small prop plane circled tightly. They couldn't hear it.

“What's it doing?” Esrom wondered. He screwed up his face, and Paul glimpsed crooked incisors, backward-leaning.

“Testing the air,” Paul realized. He scooted away from Esrom. “I forgot. I shouldn't be near anybody.”

“Doesn't matter much,” Esrom said, forcing half a smile. He took a drag on his cigarette, watching the plane.

“You saw it,” Paul blurted, and Esrom looked at him. “You saw it, the top of that reactor core. There was no containment. You saw the steam pumping out.”

Esrom cleared his throat. “Yeah.” He paused. “I'm no scientist, though.”

“He didn't call, that bastard,” Paul said.

“Sorry?”

“Richards. He didn't call. I could tell. I asked him to call my wife for me, tell her to take the kids out of town for a few days. He didn't do it. Nobody around here is letting me near a goddamn phone. They think I'm going to stir up trouble. They don't want people scared. Why the hell can't I just use a phone?”

Esrom seemed pained. “You really think it's not safe here?” he asked.

Paul made a disgusted sound. “People say the scientists, the operators, they're so highly trained. Do I know if it's safe for folks to be here right now? I don't. I don't know a goddamn thing. They have me helpless—” and here Paul's voice nearly broke with frustration. He was mortified. He glanced back, saw the health physicist's face worry past the tiny front window. “They have me helpless. Watching me. I can't even make a phone call.” He turned to Esrom and looked into his startled blue eyes. “Would you call my house for me? Would you call my wife? Tell her what I've just told you?”

Esrom paused. “You want me to tell her that?” he asked.

“Without scaring her.”

“Where would she go?”

“A hotel. Somewhere north. The wind is headed south now.”

“Okay.” Esrom nodded, thinking. “I'll call her for you.” They heard a car approach, and Esrom glanced up. “Here's my ride,” he said, starting toward the car. “You should go in. It's freezing out here.”

“I didn't give you my phone number,” Paul began. And that was when he looked up and saw the dark green Dodge Wayfarer coming toward them.

He froze, looking from Esrom to the car and back again. “Well,” Esrom said, “good luck to you.” He opened the passenger door and slid inside.

Seeing that car, something in Paul's head snapped. He marched to the driver's side door, grabbed the icy handle, and yanked it open. The driver was so unsuspecting that Paul reached in and hauled him out as if he were a child.

“What the—” the driver yipped.

“Who are you?” Paul shouted. “Why do you have this car?”

The man in his grasp was a greasy young thing, wearing unwashed work pants and a dingy collared shirt. He writhed under Paul's fists, terrified.

“What's your name?” Paul shouted.

The guy looked from Paul to Esrom, who had hopped back out the passenger door and jogged around to them. “Mine?” he whimpered. “I'm Russ. What do you want with me?”

“I want to know what kind of a person you are,” Paul began.

“What?”

“What kind of person you are moving in on a man's wife when he's out of town. Making all the neighbors talk.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Russ bleated. “Ez, get him off me!”

Paul slammed the thin man back against the car and heard the air go out of his captive in one wheeze. It felt both good and bad at the same time. His brain buzzed behind his ears, finally alive, finally able to take action. How could he stop now?

“Listen,
Russ,
” he snarled. “You made me look like a fool. Was it some kind of a game for you? Just an entertainment?”

“Collier, cut it out,” Esrom said.

“Did you feel like a big guy?” Paul shouted. “Bet you feel pretty good about yourself.”

“Please,” Russ squirmed, voice thick, “I don't have any idea what you're talking about.”

“It wasn't him,” Esrom shouted. “It was me.”

Paul turned. He stared at Esrom for so long that the man seemed to change shape before his very eyes. Then he looked back at the pantywaist sniveling in his hands and pushed him free.

“You?”
he said.

Esrom nodded. Paul took in with fresh bewilderment Esrom's hillbilly haircut, a farm-kid scar on his chin, deep; his teeth like things that had washed up where they were.

“You?” He pointed at Esrom and nearly laughed. “Neither of you”—and now he was chuckling, nauseous, feeling his stomach ball and twist like a sea creature bathed in acid—“neither of you is
remotely
the kind of person I pictured.”

“Let's get out of here,” Russ said, still flat against the car. “Ez, let's go.”

Esrom raised his hands, palms out. “It was in good faith. I helped your wife with some things while you were away. The gutters. I loaned her a car. There was absolutely nothing—”

“The gutters?” Paul sneered. “The car. The gutters. You spent a lot of time at my house. People talked. Do you know what that does? Do you know what that does to a marriage? People talking. Have you heard how people talk?”

It was almost funny. All this time, he'd imagined someone like Richards, someone with money, nice clothes. His replacement was a man who had even less than Paul did.

Esrom stood, not moving away, not shirking, palms up. Saying it was nothing. Paul's wife, and it was nothing.