Apocalypse Machine (15 page)

It would appear that there are no atheists in foxholes, nor in the homes of those who have loved ones in foxholes.

“Jesus,” Bell says, closing her eyes. She has a very simple way of praying, like God is right here with us and has been all this time. “Please protect Abraham. Bring him home to his family. But also guide him. Make his mission a success. Reveal this...creature for what it is. Reveal its purpose. And give Abe the wisdom and discernment to understand your purpose in this mess. We give our fears to you. Our anxiety, too. Your will be done.”

There’s a gentle knock on the door.

“Amen,” Bell finishes.

When I open my eyes, I see tears in hers.

“I have to go,” I say.

She and I lean over Ishah to kiss.

When I roll the other way to kiss Mina, I’m once again taken aback by her emotion. Like Bell, she’s crying, but she’s really struggling to control herself. An invisible force clutches my throat, angrily choking me for leaving.

I kiss my wife, then the boys.

A second knock draws me from the bed.

Half way to the door, I stop and turn around. Both mothers are sitting up.

“Love you,” I say.

“Daddy?” Ike rises, rubbing his eyes. “You leaving?”

I head back to the bed, greeting him as he slips onto his bare feet. “For a little while, bud, yeah.”

He hugs me tight, and then Ishah is there, arms around us both.

Then Mina.

Then Bell.

When the door opens, filling the room with ambient light, we’re enfolded in a group hug that puts the corniest Hallmark card to shame. I turn toward the door and see Clark, who looks ashamed for having looked in. I say one more quick round of goodbyes, and then meet her in the hall, wiping away tears.

I close the door behind me, knowing that if I stop again, they’ll have to send Secret Service agents to drag me away.

“Sorry,” she says. “That was...touching.”

“Are they all set?” I ask.

She looks at the door and nods. “Where we go, they go. There were a few complaints, but Mrs. McKnight silenced them. They’ll be safe. You don’t need to worry about them.”

I turn and start walking down the hall, trying my best to feel confident and brave.

Clark clears her throat, turning me around. She points in other direction and offers a smile. “This way.”

I’m so screwed.

15

Emil

The house was quiet.

Emil Chovanec was accustomed to having the kitchen to himself at four in the morning. His wife, Hana, and their three children were sound sleepers. But their absence had left the house feeling empty.
Soulless,
Emil thought,
if such a thing is possible.
As a security specialist for the Dukovany Nuclear Power Station, Emil’s job was to secure and protect the four reactors and eight cooling towers—visible through his kitchen window—from all manner of threats. Terrorists and natural disasters were part of the job, but the most dangerous peril faced by the plant was human error.

He liked to say that Dukovany had the highest safety record of all nuclear power stations in the Czech Republic, which was true, but the country had only two such facilities. His other job, the one he took even more seriously, was to protect his family. So when it became clear that the ash cloud from Iceland would blanket the Czech Republic in a chilling, lung-choking darkness, he sent his family south, to Italy. Hana’s sister lived in Manfria, on the southern coast of Sicily, which was about as far south as you could travel in Europe without jumping the Mediterranean into Tunisia.

The crunch of his knife scraping honey across the slice of toasted rye made him flinch. Then he remembered that they were gone. There was no one to wake up.
Relax
, he told himself, conjuring a burp and letting it out.
It’s like a vacation.

But it wasn’t. He was here, instead of with his family, because it was his job to make sure the four nuclear reactors, still running despite his warnings, stayed functional. Information from neighboring countries to the north and west was scarce. Power was out. Communication came from those with radios, but most people transmitting were asking for information, not providing it. Germany had gone dark, first from the ash cloud that now covered most of Europe, and then from a lack of power. There had been news of a tsunami, caused by the eruption in Iceland, but then nothing else.

When Emil had gone to bed, just six hours ago, Prague had gone dark. Power was failing across Europe, and he couldn’t understand why. No one could. But it was their job to make sure that the millions of people depending on Dukovany for electricity wouldn’t go without. That was what he was told when he proposed they shut down the facility until they knew what was happening.

Sucking honey and rye crumbs from the knife, he checked his phone. No updates from the power plant, which was good. It meant that everything was operating normally, and maybe he was wrong to worry. He checked his texts. The newest was from Hana, and he’d read it before falling asleep. She and the kids had made it to Italy, and they had learned that the border was being closed. Even if he wanted to join them, he couldn’t. But they were safe. And not asleep upstairs.

He leaned back in his chair and pitched the knife into the metal sink, creating an explosion of noise so loud it seemed to rumble through him.
Early morning jitters,
he thought, and he looked down at his breakfast. Coffee, honeyed rye, slices of cheese and salami and two eggs, hard boiled the day before. As an early riser and late lunch eater, Emil always had large breakfasts.

He bit into the thick toast, the crunch vibrating through his body in a way that felt unnatural. He chewed once and paused, his senses telling him something was wrong. But what?
Is the bread spoiled?
He flipped the toast over, looking for mold. When he found none, he chewed again and felt nothing strange. The honey’s sweetness hit his tongue and relaxed him.

Drawn by the bitter smell of his black coffee, Emil picked up the mug, lifted it to his nose and breathed deeply. The scent alone was enough to lift away the lingering weight of sleep. He moved the mug to his mouth, the hot liquid stinging his lips, as he sipped. Then he froze. The liquid jittered, as though blown on. A vibration moved through his body, starting from his feet and butt. Then it faded.

He remained motionless, trying to decide if it was the world around him shaking, or his body.
Did I just have a seizure?
he wondered. When the coffee burned his lips, he pulled the mug away. Placed it on the table. Watched it.

Fingers gripped the table sides, squeezing, waiting.

A rattling buzz filled the silent house. Emil reeled back from the table, nearly falling over. But it wasn’t the house shaking, or a seizure, it was his cell phone on the tabletop. Emil smiled at his paranoia, and leaned forward, expecting to see an update from Hana. But the message displayed on the screen wasn’t the white text on a green background he associated with a text message. It was black text on a white background.

Work.

The power plant.

He leaned forward, reading the brief message from his counterpart, Bohumil, whose shift ended in an hour, when Emil’s would begin.

1.2, 1.9, 2.5 richters. Escalating tremor sequence. Shutdown in progress. They should have listened to you.

Emil stood from the table and moved to the kitchen window. He could see the eight cooling towers, lit from below, and ringed with blinking red lights to keep wayward planes from crashing into them. Steam still billowed from the towers, but no klaxons had sounded. Tremors weren’t a problem.

Thumbs moving quickly, Emil tapped out a reply.

Need me there now?

He waited, watching the plant.

The phone buzzed.

Stay on schedule. Will be here for duration.

The plant’s on-duty security chief was required to stay on until a crisis was contained, even if his replacement reported for duty. It ensured that nothing was missed, that no detail was lost in the shuffle.

Will do,
Emil replied, and he put the phone on the counter. Leaning on the kitchen sink, he watched the plant.

Too little, too late
, he thought. It took days for reactors to fully shut down and cool off. They were not like light bulbs. You couldn’t just switch them off. The control rods might be able to absorb neutrons and stop the fission process, but the highly radioactive atoms already produced would still be present. Protons, electrons, neutrons, positrons, gamma rays, helium nuclei, burning with energy, would turn the water into a radioactive swill that would take years to break down. A nuclear power plant doesn’t need to fully melt down to be dangerous, and a serious earthquake could introduce radioactive liquid into the water table.

The coffee cup rattled and bumped across the counter as another quake struck. The mug slid off the counter and shattered on the floor, splashing Emil’s bare feet with steaming liquid.

He barely noticed.

He clutched the sink, keeping himself upright while dishes and pans clattered and fell around him. The shaking pulse of energy rose and fell, rolling beneath the house and dissipating in seconds. Fast, but powerful.

Phone in hand again, he accessed the plant’s emergency system, which monitored geological events throughout the region.

4.4 magnitude.

Nearly twice as strong as the last. The sequence was still escalating.

If it continues...

Emil closed the app and opened the text program. He tapped out a message to his wife.

Don’t come home. If I don’t make it to you, don’t look for me. Too dangerous. Love all of you.

His thumb hovered over the send button.

He waited.

Breathing.

Like a sprinter on the starting line, he focused, seeing the race before him, seeing each step, craving the finish line.

But he didn’t want to run this race.

Mostly because the gun firing at the race’s start was loaded with a radioactive cloud.

The phone buzzed.

It was Bohumil.

Trouble. Hurry.

Emil flicked the message away. His course had been reset. The car. The road. The highway. Austria. Italy. In the perpetual darkness provided by the ash cloud, he felt sure he could find a way through, a way south to his family, who was his primary concern. His job at the plant was serious. Crucial even. But there was nothing he could do against an earthquake, and if another came, stronger than the last, even running might not be enough.

I should go now,
he thought.
But if nothing happens, I’ll be fired. I’ll be jailed.

Wait,
he told himself.

His stomach seized as something moved in the sky. It was like the night itself had come to life, shifting darkness within darkness, hovering like a massive specter over the power plant.

What is
that
?
He leaned forward, trying to see through the black.

A klaxon sounded. He’d never heard it before, but he knew what it meant. The race had begun.

But he didn’t move.

He stood transfixed, as the sky itself seemed to descend on the plant.

Cooling towers crumbled, crushed from above.

The lights at the tower bases illuminated a rough textured, dark gray surface, like the moon itself had fallen from the sky. Then, all at once, they winked out. The entire facility was there once more, and then it was crushed beneath something massive.

Emil’s eyes widened.

He tapped the send button on his phone, then dove to the floor.

Scrambled under the kitchen table.

A pressure wave slammed into the side of the house, shattering the windows, blasting glass into the kitchen from where he stood just a moment ago. The kitchen cabinets disgorged their contents, shattering ceramic, glass and china on the floor, and on the tabletop protecting Emil. An earthquake far stronger than the last rolled beneath the house. Emil heard the foundation snap and crack. The house canted to the side.

“Do prdele!” Emil yelled, using language he’d removed from his vocabulary after having kids. He fought against the shaking and shifting floor, pulling himself out from under the table. Glass cut into his feet as he sprinted across the kitchen. Some pulled free when he reached the living room rug. The rest was pushed in deeper.

Running through the pain, he paused at the front door to snatch the car keys out of a bowl. Outside, the weather was warm and breezy, but there was a stench in the air, unlike anything he’d smelled before. Wincing as the firm paved driveway pushed the glass deeper into his feet, he hobbled toward the car. Yellow lights blinked as he unlocked the doors. But he didn’t climb inside. The view from the power plant, from where the power plant used to be, pulled his attention again.

The massive object lifted up and away, lit from below by orange light that plumed brighter as the flat, craggy surface rose. A series of dull
whumps
sounded from the flattened plant, and they were quickly followed by the sharp report of multiple explosions. Fire and smoke billowed from the power plant’s remains, like four volcanoes.

Or four melting down reactors.