Madness Rules - 04 (32 page)

Mason shook it. “If that doesn’t work out, you might try Ashland. I’ve seen folks out hunting for supplies over there.”

“Will do. Take care of yourself, Marshal.”

“And you.”

Replacing the M4 barrel required removing the handguard, sight riser gas block, and gas tube. Once those were disassembled, he loosened the barrel nut and pulled off the bent barrel. Fortunately, M4 assault rifles, like most military weapons were made with enough tolerance that parts were essentially interchangeable. He pressed on the new barrel, secured the barrel nut, and reassembled the front end. Once he had it all put back together, he test fired the weapon and double-checked the sight alignment. Everything functioned flawlessly.

Satisfied that he was back in business, Mason slung the weapon over his shoulder and stepped over to a nearby tree to relieve himself. He thought about what Schultz had told him about Lenny Bruce. It wasn’t surprising that Lenny was passing himself off as a religious man. Hucksters had been doing the same thing for centuries. Some claimed to be relaying the Lord’s message, while others went full tilt, asserting that they were God incarnate. Such delusions rarely ended well. More often than not, followers were found dead, their lips stained with poisoned Kool-Aid.

He looked down at Bowie, who was busy licking out the last remnants from one of the cans.

“What do you say we go talk to this prophet?”

Bowie turned toward him, and when he did, his snout became stuck in the can. His eyes crossed for a moment while he examined his plight.

Mason laughed, and Bowie stared up at him.

“Don’t look at me. You got yourself into it. You can get yourself out.”

Bowie pawed at the can, and when that failed, he shook his head until it finally flew off.

“Come on, Houdini, let’s—”

An incredible flash suddenly lit the western sky, followed almost immediately by a second intense pulse of light. Mason turned, his hand instinctively going to his Supergrade. It took him only an instant to realize what he was witnessing. He spun around, frantically searching for somewhere to hide. The truck? No, he thought, only the earth could protect him from what was coming. He rushed over to a small gulley and lay flat, pulling Bowie down with him and covering the dog’s eyes with his hand.

Mason waited, his heart pounding as he counted the seconds to what he knew would happen next. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty… the incredible blast hit them, and it was unlike anything Mason had ever experienced. The sound was like a rolling clap of thunder, and the shockwave smashed everything in its wake, toppling trees, breaking the windows in his truck, and kicking him in the back like an ornery mule. Wind as powerful as any hurricane came next, lashing him relentlessly, even as it threatened to lift both him and Bowie into the air.

Bowie whined and yelped, but Mason held him fast. He made no attempt to soothe the dog. Even if his voice could have been heard, there was nothing to say. What would be would be. Their only consolation was that they were going to suffer it together.

The winds finally subsided, but Mason continued to lie prone. Every infantry soldier knew that an atomic or nuclear detonation had a return wave that ultimately fed back into the distinctive mushroom cloud. Seconds later, a weaker wave came back from the opposite direction, whipping his clothes and slinging shards of broken glass down the road.

Mason rolled onto his back and used his hand as a filter to look in the direction of the blast. He had a distinctive white spot in the middle of his vision, the result of the initial flash. He turned his head and used his peripheral vision to watch an event that few had seen and lived to tell about.

The fireball was enormous, thousands of feet wide, as it slowly transformed from a ring into the classic mushroom shape. The bomb had been detonated a couple of thousand feet above Lexington, which meant there was very little dust or debris in the cloud. Instead, the air burst had sent a tremendous shockwave, as well as intense thermal radiation, toward the city. The attack had been designed to cause massive devastation with little, if any, long-term radioactive effects.

Mason noticed that Bowie had his nose pressed tightly against him. Smart, he thought. It surely helped to prevent thermal burns. He examined his own skin. The backs of his hands were tender and red, and the back of his neck stung. He blinked a few times, trying to clear the ghosting image of the flash from his vision. It didn’t help. About a third of his vision remained milky and blurred. He turned and quickly checked Bowie’s eyes. They were clear. The dog’s skin was a little red toward his haunches, but otherwise he seemed to be in good shape.

Mason closed his eyes and worked to calm himself. His whole body trembled as his heart frantically flooded him with adrenalin. Beat by beat, he forced it to slow to its natural rhythm. Now was not the time to panic.

Rain began to fall.

He scrambled to his feet and Bowie quickly followed. They raced to his truck and climbed in. The rain splashed against his splintered windshield, coming down in drops the size of marbles. He recalled that nuclear detonations could sometimes cause rain to fall. In the case of Hiroshima, the rain had been black because it had been laced with radioactive particulates. He stared out at the drops, holding his breath as he studied their color.

They seemed clear enough.

He stuck the key in the ignition, determined to get them out of harm’s way. The engine turned over, but it sounded like it wasn’t getting fuel. He pumped the pedal a few times and tried again. Still nothing.

Sensing his frustration, Bowie started to whine.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “We’re stuck for now. That’s all.” He pulled the dog close and lay back against the seat.

After a few seconds, Bowie relaxed and flopped down on his lap.

His mind finally clearing, Mason worked to piece together what he knew. He started by calculating the distance to the blast. It had taken twenty seconds by his count for the shockwave to reach them. If he assumed the wave traveled at six hundred and sixty miles an hour, the speed of sound, it meant he was nearly four miles from the blast. That was far enough that the shockwave and thermal effects were survivable by someone taking cover. The city of Lexington, however, would not have been so fortunate. Those who were lucky enough to have been underground or hiding in a bank vault might still be alive, but it was hard to imagine anyone else surviving the tremendous blast.

He knew from his military training in nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons that a nuclear explosion generated gamma rays. Those high-energy rays stripped electrons from air molecules, which then propagated to the ground as an intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP). The effects of the EMP would be felt far beyond the blast area. If he assumed that the detonation took place at two thousand feet above the ground, line of sight would be on the order of fifty miles in every direction. That meant that sensitive electronics were probably damaged for many miles all around him. With the electrical grid already down, the biggest impact would be damage to automobile electronics and other battery-operated devices, which explained why his truck wouldn’t start.

Mason stared out at the rain and blinked a few times. His vision was improving. He closed his eyes and offered a silent prayer, something he hadn’t done since being in a war zone. He knew that nuclear explosions caused two types of blindness, flash blindness and thermal blindness. Flash blindness was essentially the same as what people experience when a bright flashlight is shined in their eyes. That type of blindness was almost always gone within half an hour. Thermal blindness, however, was much more severe and could cause irreparable damage to the eye.

For ten long minutes, it rained like God had decided to once again flood the earth. And then, as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped. Hoping that it was a sign that things were returning to normal, Mason tried to start his truck again.

No luck.

An unpleasant realization came to him. All the food, ammunition, and supplies piled in the back of his truck were subject to being lost. There would likely be no traffic in or out of Lexington for quite some time, which meant that he would have to walk away from everything he couldn’t carry on his back. Mason took a moment to count his blessings.

“First and foremost, we’re alive. We can thank the ditch for that little miracle.”

Bowie pressed his wet nose against the back of Mason’s hand.

“Also, the burst was at a high altitude, which means there shouldn’t be any radioactive fallout. Even if there is a little, it should dissipate within hours.”

Interested in what his master was saying, Bowie sat up and looked at him.

He scratched the dog’s neck.

“And most important, my eyes appear to be healing. Other than a sunburn, I think we both came through it remarkably well. What do you think?”

Bowie leaned in and licked his face. Mason hugged him.

“Yeah, I’d say that pretty well sums it up.”

Mason opened the door and stepped out into a puddle of water. He stared off toward the huge cloud covering Lexington.

He could think of only three possible scenarios for the explosion. The first was that it had been an accident of some sort. But this wasn’t an accidental detonation at an underground silo. This was a nuclear warhead detonated high above a US city. The only way that could have happened was if it had been launched. Also, the missile appeared to have been detonated at an altitude designed to cause the maximum shockwave at the surface. That required planning and careful execution. No, he thought, this was no accident.

Another possibility was the strike had been the action of an enemy nation. But why would anyone choose to bomb Lexington? There were hundreds of targets with far greater strategic value. Besides, the city had already been decimated by the virus. No enemy in their right mind would waste a high-value weapon for such minimal return.

That left only one other scenario. The US military had intentionally conducted a nuclear attack on one of its own cities. But what threat could be so grave that the government would unleash a nuclear fireball to stop it? And then it hit him. He knew exactly why it had happened. The attack was designed to clean up a particularly dangerous loose end—Lenny Bruce.

How anyone could willingly vaporize an entire city to cover up their crimes was hard to fathom. Murder often led to more murder, but this was on an unprecedented scale. With Lenny Bruce likely dead, only Mason now knew the truth—or at least, part of it. The problem was that he had no way of proving anything.

He walked to the rear of the truck, lowered the tailgate, and flung the wet tarp aside.

Bowie looked out at him through the sliding rear window.

“We’re going on a trip.”

The dog whined.

“Yes, you’re coming too,” he said, digging out a large military backpack. “We’ll try to come back for the truck when we can, but I think we’re going to be on foot for a while.”

Bowie hopped down from the truck and came over to stand beside him.

“All right,” he said, talking more to himself than the dog, “survival starts with water.”

He slid out a case of the water and placed twelve bottles, as well as his portable water filter, into the bottom of the pack. He pulled out another bottle, twisted the cap off, and poured half of it into a bowl for Bowie. The dog looked at it for a second and then got busy drinking. Mason quickly finished off the rest of the bottle himself.

“Next comes something near and dear to your heart, food.”

Bowie stopped drinking for a moment and looked up at him. When he realized that he wasn’t about to get a treat, he went back to lapping up the water.

“If we had plenty of water, I’d take freeze dried pouches. But with water potentially at a premium, we’re better off with MREs. They’re packed with calories, have built-in heaters, and don’t require hydration.”

He pulled out a case of the rations and began loading several pouches into the pack. When he was finished, he opened a large can of potted meat and dumped it beside the water bowl. Bowie smelled it and then looked up at Mason with a confused look on his face.

“I know you’re not hungry, but that’s never stopped you before. Fill your belly while you have the chance.”

Bowie turned back to the food, and before long, he was consuming it like he hadn’t eaten in a week.

Mason checked the magazines on his belt and the one in the Supergrade. Each was loaded with eight rounds. He grabbed his newly repaired M4 and checked the thirty-round magazine. It too was full. He placed three additional loaded rifle magazines into his pack. One hundred and twenty rounds for the rifle wasn’t a lot, but ammunition was heavy, and much more than that would start to weigh him down. He also dropped in a box of .45 hollow-point ammunition for his Supergrade.

“We better take a few bandages as well,” he said, grabbing a handful of first-aid supplies and stuffing them into the pack’s side pouches. “We’ll also want some way of monitoring our radiation exposure.”

He searched through a small box of miscellaneous supplies and pulled out a gray pen-shaped dosimeter. Mason held it up to his eye like it was a child’s kaleidoscope. A thin measurement line showed that the current dose was at near zero millisieverts. Under normal conditions, a full year’s radiation might be along the order of a few millisieverts, but anything under a hundred millisieverts was unlikely to cause any serious health risks. He slid it into his front jacket pocket. He also grabbed a few disposable respirators, although he hoped that the rain would help to settle the dust from the explosion.