Fallout (2 page)

“The number three reactor in Bay City is compromised,” Kenneth said. “I need your robot and your genius with other people’s robots to work with a team to get it under control. The President called NASA specifically asking for our best robotics people.”

“There’s two feet of water in the streets around my house,” Derek said. “Trees down, houses collapsed. There’s no way I’m going anywhere, with or without Number Five.”

“If I get you there, will you help?” Kenneth demanded.

“If you can get me there,” Derek agreed, “but give me an hour before you pick me up, and send coffee. Elsa and I celebrated her arrival with tequila.”

“You spent the whole storm drunk, didn’t you?”

“How else would you ride out a hurricane?”

“Somewhere safe?” Kenneth retorted. “Be ready in an hour, Marshall. And be prepared to stay awhile.”

“What about Fido?” Derek asked.

“Fido?”

“My dog.”

“You don’t have a dog.”

“I do now,” Derek said. “He rode out the storm in the house down the street. The damn thing fell down around him. He’s mine now.”

“Fine. Someone will take care of the damn dog.”

“Fido,” Derek said. “His name is Fido.”

“Someone will take care of Fido.”

After setting down his phone, Derek contemplated what to pack. He tossed a few changes of clothes in a bag. He could wash them if he needed to at some point. Up in his workshop, he packed Number Five carefully in the custom-designed case he’d ordered once he’d determined the size he intended the robot to be. Then he considered the rest of his equipment and what little he knew of the situation. A compromised nuclear reactor meant radiation, and that meant degrading circuits. He grabbed a duffel and started filling it with the tools and replacement parts he had on hand to keep Number Five running and possibly to upgrade any other robots at his disposal. If he had to, he’d build another one or two. The cost of a few robots would be far less than the cost of cleaning up from a core breach and meltdown so close to Houston. He looked around one more time, but everything left was a duplicate of what he’d already packed. He hefted the duffel over his shoulder and carried Number Five down to the foyer of his house. His mother called it self-indulgent to have as much space as he had just for himself, but then his mother thought that about a lot of things in his life. He didn’t even want to think about what she’d say about the collection of gay porn on his laptop or the gay skin magazines by his bed. Speaking of which, he’d gotten a new one recently. He should take that with him. He could put the pinups in his room wherever he was staying to make it a little more pleasant. There probably wouldn’t be anything else to do with his downtime but whack off.

His phone rang again while he was adding the magazine to his laptop case. “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Derek said. “Number Five is packed along with as much of my equipment as I can carry. I’m a little more sober now. What’s going on?”

“I’ve already told you all I can,” Kenneth replied. “You’ll be briefed when you get there. They’re trying to avoid widespread panic and so are keeping information classified as much as possible.”

That didn’t sound promising. “There are escape protocols in place if this goes south on us?”

“It’s already gone south,” Kenneth said. “We’re trying to keep it from going nuclear.”

“Well, shit,” Derek said. “That’s not encouraging.”

“That’s why we need Number Five,” Kenneth said. “He can go where people can’t, and you’ve got him so fine-tuned he can do anything you could do with your hands and more.”

If Kenneth was complimenting Derek’s robot, it was beyond bad. “Have they shut down the core at least?” Derek didn’t know much about nuclear power, but he knew that much.

“I’ve told you all I know. The helicopter is leaving now. It’ll be there in fifteen minutes to pick you up. Good luck, Derek.”

From the sound of it, he’d need it.

“Come on, Fido.” He urged the golden brown mutt out of the laundry room, where it had taken shelter. “We’re going on a trip.”

In closer to ten minutes than the fifteen Kenneth had predicted, the
chop-chop
of a helicopter’s rotors shook the windows in the house. Derek dashed out beneath the spinning blades. “Turn it all the way off,” he shouted to the pilot. “I’ve got a petrified dog in the house and no crate because he’s a rescue. We can strap him in, but I don’t think he’ll come with the noise.”

“Mr. Marshall, we don’t have time for this.”

“Then find someone else with my skills who’s stupid enough to agree to this,” Derek said, turning away. “Fido and I will stay here where it’s safe.”

“I’d hardly call this safe. What if looters come through?”

Derek pulled back the edge of the jacket he was wearing. “They’d be in for a nasty surprise. Now, are you turning this thing off, or am I going back inside?”

The pilot looked like he wanted to argue more, so Derek turned around and sloshed back toward the house, grateful once again that he’d bought the house on the hill, such as it was.

“Mr. Marshall, wait! It’ll take a minute for the rotors to stop.”

Derek waved to show he’d heard the man. “I’ll bring my equipment in the meantime.”

He went back inside and petted the dog reassuringly. “We’re just going to take a ride somewhere safe and warm, okay, Fido? Let me put my bags in the chopper and I’ll come back for you.”

Fido had other plans, following Derek out into the drizzle. When he put his bags in the helicopter, the dog whined pitifully. “We’re just going to lock the doors, and then we can go,” Derek promised. “I won’t leave you behind.”

The dog stayed right at Derek’s heels as he locked the door and hoped he’d have a house to come back to when he finished this project for Kenneth. “Come on, Fido.”

They slogged back to the helicopter. Derek helped Fido jump in and climbed in after him. He strapped the dog to one of the seats and then fastened his own seatbelt. Taking the headset the pilot offered him, he waited for the helicopter to take off before asking, “Where are we going?”

“South Texas station, unit three,” the pilot answered. “There’s a team waiting for you.”

“And the dog?”

“I guess you’ll have to take him with you.”

That wasn’t what Derek had had in mind when he’d told Kenneth he expected someone to take care of his dog, but it would have to do until he could get Kenneth on the phone again.

They spent the next hour in relative silence. Derek looked down at the devastation from the hurricane, the sight killing what remained of the tequila buzz. Where once there had been a thriving city and port, industry and commerce, now there were floodwaters and rubble, only the occasional building still standing. It made him realize how lucky he was to still be alive. He peered toward downtown Houston and the Texas Medical Center, but the lingering clouds and rain blocked his view. He hoped that was the reason, that they still stood, hidden by the weather rather than flattened by the storm.

“How bad is it?” he asked eventually.

“It makes Katrina look like a cakewalk,” the pilot said. “Maybe one in five buildings is still standing, and even most of those are damaged. I’ve never seen anything like it. And if you can’t stop the problems at unit three, there won’t be any coming back because it won’t be safe.”

“Let’s not borrow trouble, okay?” Derek said. “We’ve got enough real trouble as it is.”

“You don’t think damage to a nuclear reactor is real trouble?”

“I didn’t say that, but it isn’t Chernobyl yet or they wouldn’t be sending us in to work on it. If we can get it back online, at least we’ll have power to begin rebuilding.”

The sound the pilot made was doubtful, but Derek let it go. He didn’t need to convince the pilot. If the rest of the team was as negative, that would be a different matter.

The power plant came into view, the three units easily visible. The first two stood silent and still without the usual white smoke from the water vapor. Shutting down those two plants had clearly gone according to plan, just as Kenneth had said. The third unit, though, belched dark gray smoke constantly. The pilot put the copter down near the troubled unit.

“Turn the engine off.”

“Look, Mr.—”

“Turn the fucking engine off,” Derek shouted through the headset. “You want to get out of here, so turn it off, let me get my supplies unloaded, and then you can get the hell out of Dodge.”

Derek took the headset off rather than listen to the pilot’s vitriol. After a moment, the engine noise faded, leaving only the sound of the rain on the metal frame. Derek hopped out and unfastened Fido. Then he hoisted his gear. “Come on, Fido,” he said, walking toward the power plant as fast as he could under the weight of his equipment.

He was halfway to the only entrance he could see when the door opened and a man stepped outside. From what he could tell through the gray drizzle, the man was, like himself, in his mid-thirties, although the dress shirt buttoned all the way to the top was something Derek wouldn’t be caught dead wearing outside a business meeting with the NASA directors, and even then he usually lost the tie and opened the top button when they got down to serious business. “Here, take this.” Derek passed the bag with his clothes to the other man. “I’m soaked through, and some of this equipment is moisture sensitive.”

The man, Indian or Pakistani to judge by his coloring, scowled but took the bag. “The dog can’t come inside.”

“Then I’ll take my bag and head home. I already told my boss I wasn’t abandoning him after his previous owners left him alone in the storm.”

“Fine,” the man said with a huff, “but keep him out of my way.”

“Look, bud—”

“Sambit,” the man interrupted. “My name is Sambit Patel.”

“Look, Sam,” Derek said, not even trying to pronounce the foreign name, “I’m here with my robot out of the goodness of my own heart, so get rid of whatever bug crawled up your ass and died and tell me what needs to be done. Fido and I would like to go home.”

“First, my name is Sambit, not Sam. Second, Mr. Marshall, I suggest you leave your attitude at the door. I’m here out of the same goodness of heart, as you call it, as you are. The employees of the plant who were on duty are either dead or in the hospital with injuries from the tornado that struck along with the hurricane and flooding. The off-shift workers were evacuated along with the rest of Bay City, and no one knows where they are at the moment.” Sambit must have gotten a more thorough briefing than Derek had if he knew Derek’s name. Derek wondered what else he knew that Derek didn’t.

“So if I’m the robot guy, then who are you?”

“The nuclear engineer,” Sambit replied. “I teach in the nuclear engineering department at Texas A&M.”

“So you don’t know any more about this plant than I do.”

“I know quite a lot about nuclear power plants.” Sambit crossed his arms over his chest, the posture so defensive Derek nearly laughed in desperation. They were so screwed.

“So what’s the status of the core?”

“It is compromised,” Sambit said. “Beyond that, I don’t know. The power went out ten minutes ago.”

“There has to be a backup. A system this critical would have a UPS backup system—uninterruptible power source,” he added for Sambit’s benefit. “Plus separate backup generators in case the UPS fails.”

“I know what a UPS backup system is,” Sambit snapped. “I may deal with theory more than practice these days, but my students have to be prepared to work in plants just like this one.”

Derek resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and set down his gear. “Come here, Fido.” He ignored Sambit while he petted the dog’s head a few times, settling it in yet another new location in a matter of hours. “Stay here, okay? Sam and I are going to find the light switch, and then we’ll come back for you.”

The dog circled twice and curled up in the corner of what was clearly the break room. “Do you at least have the passwords for the computers once we find the backup power?”

“What passwords?”

“You don’t seriously think a system like this one is going to operate without password protection to keep terrorists from hacking into the system and causing a meltdown, do you?” Derek rolled his eyes at the other man’s ignorance. “Once we get the power back on, we’ll call the plant managers and see if we can get the log-on information. You’re the nuclear engineer. How long do we have before it gets critical?”

“It depends on how badly the core has overheated,” Sambit replied. “Without the computers, I can’t tell for sure.”

“Well, fuck,” Derek muttered. “Is there anything you do know?”

“I know you have a bad attitude and a foul mouth.”

“Like that’s news. Is there anything you do know about the status of the plant?”

“Not much, but hopefully we will get the computer system online soon.”

Derek cursed again and dug in his bag for a flashlight. “Do we need to worry about radiation?”

Sambit handed Derek a dosimeter. “The levels are safe here. Whether they are safe elsewhere….” He shrugged as he trailed off.

Derek clipped the device to his belt. “If I were a backup generator, where would I be?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“I’m not,” Derek said. “I’m thinking out loud. Stop distracting me.”

He walked out of the staff room and searched for a stairwell. Once he found one, he headed down. “That explains the backup power being off,” he muttered when, after four steps, he hit water. “Who puts a basement in a building a few miles from the coast? If the generators are down there, we’re fucked. Where the hell are the schematics for this place? The backup generators should be in another building entirely, but I’d expect there to be controls around here somewhere.”

“I don’t have them,” Sambit said. “I already told you that.”

“It was a rhetorical question,” Derek snapped back. “Look, why don’t you go hang out in the staff room? When I get the power on, we can figure out the rest.”

“It’s not safe to be here by yourself,” Sambit insisted. “What if you get hurt? I won’t even know where you are.”

“Fine, but shut up so I can concentrate.”

They headed back into the corridor and worked their way through the rooms in the control section of the power plant. Not finding anything, Derek headed to the outlying buildings, searching each one until they found the backup generators. Derek studied them carefully, resisting the urge to look at his dosimeter every few seconds to see if the numbers had changed. Based on the systems at NASA, he would have expected them to turn on automatically when the battery system failed, but this wasn’t NASA so maybe the protocols were different. Or maybe the generator was faulty and they were totally screwed. There was only one way to find out.