Fallout (18 page)

“What are you doing?” Mrs. Shaw gasps.

“I'll take my chances up there.”

“Dad!” Ronnie dashes after his father and wraps his arms around one of his legs.

Shock and alarm fill the shelter. For an instant, my dad looks dumbfounded. Then he hoists himself up and grabs Mr. Shaw's arm.

“Let go!” Mr. Shaw tries to yank free.

“You'll kill us all!” Dad warns.

“I can't stay in here anymore!”

“Dad, stop!” Ronnie cries as his father tries to drag him.

“You're scaring him, Steven!” Mrs. Shaw yells.

With Ronnie's arms wrapped around his thigh like a boa constrictor, Mr. Shaw tries to squirm out of Dad's grip in a strange slow-motion dance as if they don't have the strength to move faster. Dad hooks an arm around Mr. Shaw's neck, and they tumble to the shelter floor, a mass of squirming arms and legs.

“Let go!” On the floor, Mr. Shaw tries to wriggle and twist away, but Ronnie's still clamped to his leg, and Dad manages to pin his arms down. Ronnie's crying and Mrs. Shaw is yelling, “Stop it! Stop it!” Mr. Shaw twists his head back and forth and tries to kick with his free leg. “Let me go!”

But Dad has him pinned. “If you open that door now, the radioactive dust that falls in could kill us all.”

Her hair a wild mess, Mrs. Shaw kneels and takes her husband's head in her hands. “Stop,” she says gently but firmly. “Get ahold of yourself. I understand how you feel. I really do. But you have to think about the rest of us. Ronnie needs you. I need you.”

Her words get through. Mr. Shaw goes limp. The back of his head rests on the floor, and he bursts into tears, hiccupping and snorting, his chest heaving.

I've never seen a grown man cry so publically before, and it feels strange and upsetting. Sparky's whimpering. Janet strokes his head reassuringly. Paula's eyes are wide as she clings to her father. We're all so close together; there's nowhere to hide. Ronnie lets go of his father's leg and sits on the floor, wiping his eyes, his face smudged with tears and dirt.

Mrs. Shaw helps her husband to one of the bunks and lies down with him. She kisses his face and whispers in his ear. He slides his arms around her and pulls her close. I feel bad that they can't be alone.

Dad watches Mrs. Shaw caress and soothe her husband. He turns his gaze to Janet hugging Sparky. Then he looks at Mom, lying on her bunk with that blank expression, not the slightest bit aware of what just happened.

Dad doesn't check the radio anymore. But whenever he wakes up from a nap, he goes around the shield wall and tests the radiation levels under the trapdoor.

“A hundred and twenty-seven,” he reports.

It's dropped again, but is still high above the safe level. Meanwhile, we're slowly starving to death.

On the TV, President Kennedy wore a dark jacket, white shirt, and thin black tie. He sat at a desk with a dark curtain and an American flag behind him.

The president had a funny way of speaking that had something to do with being from an important Massachusetts family. He said that the Soviets had given false statements about their weapons. The Soviets was another name for the Russians, who were also called Commies, Ruskies, and Reds. The president said that the Soviets were putting two types of weapons on Cuba — medium-range ballistic missiles that could reach Washington and intermediate-range missiles that were capable of reaching Hudson Bay in Canada. Sparky glanced at me with a scowl. Our parents had once gone to Canada for a vacation and came back with Hudson Bay blankets, and I bet he was wondering why the Soviets would want to shoot a missile all the way up there . . . unless they had something against blankets.

The president said the missiles were weapons of mass destruction and that the Soviets were lying about why they were putting them on Cuba. He used a lot of big words, and when he said a quarantine of Cuba was going to be initiated, I wanted to ask Dad what that meant, but I knew he'd tell me to wait until the speech was over.

When the president began talking about the organ of consultation and the Rio Treaty, Sparky started playing with a Slinky. I was tempted to play with my army men, but I watched mostly to see if the president would explain what the Commies had against Hudson Bay and what a quarantine was.

Then Mom came in. I had a feeling that she'd stayed out of the den on purpose to let Dad know that she was against Sparky and me watching the speech, but now she finally gave in to curiosity. She stood with her arms crossed while President Kennedy said that many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lay ahead, and that the cost of freedom was always high and one thing we would never do is surrender. Then he said, “Thank you and good night,” and the speech was over.

I looked at Dad. “When he talked about the cost of freedom, he wasn't talking about money, was he?”

Dad sighed and shook his head.

“Maybe we shouldn't go to school tomorrow,” I whispered to Dad at bedtime that night. Sparky was already asleep in the other bed.

Dad's forehead wrinkled. “Why?”

“If the Russians attack, we may not have time to get home.”

Dad leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “Go to school and don't worry so much.”

But it was impossible not to.

Everyone's sick. The air smells tart and pungent, and there's hardly a moment when someone isn't sitting on the toilet bucket. I feel dizzy and hot with a cramped stomach that's different from the cramps that come from hunger. For the first time in days, I don't think about food or even getting out of the shelter. I just want to stop feeling sick.

By now, the men have torn their pajama tops into rags, but there's still not enough. Dad is the first one to take off his pajama bottoms. Only there isn't any material around for Janet to make him a loincloth the way she did for Sparky.

We nap, wake, sit on the toilet bucket, and lie around feeling too ill and weak to move or talk.

“I wish you'd never built this thing,” Mr. Shaw tells Dad.

Finally I wake up and the cramps are gone. Dad hands me a cup of water, and I gulp it down. Most of the others are awake. Somehow they don't look as sick as before.

“It's time,” says Mr. McGovern. His jaw is covered by a short, scruffy beard, and the skin that once stretched tightly over his round belly is loose and saggy.

“Let me check —” Dad begins to reach for the radiation kit.

“I don't care anymore,” Mr. McGovern says, cutting him short. “I'm going up.”

He doesn't sound crazy or desperate like Mr. Shaw did. Instead, he's calm and determined. When he starts to get up, I half expect Dad to try and stop him, but he doesn't. Paula watches without a word.

Mr. McGovern stands in the dim shadows, a grown, naked man with skinny legs and flat feet. “I'll need the light,” he says.

Dad picks up the flashlight.

“Can I come?” Sparky asks.

“No.”

“Please?”

“Make sure he stays there,” Dad tells Janet, and takes out two of the gas masks.

With the masks on, they look like naked men with horse heads. The shelter gets darker when Dad follows Mr. McGovern around the shield wall and into the narrow corridor. We listen to the muffled sounds of Mr. McGovern's grunts and heavy breaths as he starts to climb up the rungs. Then it gets quiet. Then more grunts and heavy breaths. Another quiet period follows.

Finally the bolt beneath the trapdoor slides open with a screech.

My heart speeds up.

Silence.

Then a grunt and a groan as if Mr. McGovern is struggling.

“It's heavy,” Dad says, his voice muffled by the mask.

A louder groan follows, along with the clank of metal.

Then more heavy breathing.

We all hear what Mr. McGovern says next: “There's something on the other side blocking it.”

A sense of alarm spreads. Mr. and Mrs. Shaw push themselves up and go see. The rest of us follow. Soon we've all squeezed into the narrow corridor watching while Mr. McGovern climbs down the rungs. Dad hands him the flashlight, then turns and looks at us through his mask. Is he going to tell us to go back into the shelter? No. He starts to climb.

Above him is the trapdoor. This is the first time I've seen it since the night we came down here, and back come all the awful memories of the struggle and the desperate cries of those above who didn't get in. Dad was right. Of all the things that have happened, those horrible sounds and haunting pleas are still what I remember most clearly. And somehow, even though I'm only eleven, I know they'll follow me forever.

Dad has to stop partway up the rungs to catch his breath.
Come on,
I think anxiously.
Hurry!

He starts to climb again, then places his hand against the trapdoor and pushes up. The door rises a fraction of an inch and then falls closed with a loud
clank!
He tries again, straining, and the door rises a tiny bit higher before falling. Dad lowers himself a rung and stares up, catching his breath. Even though he's been weakened by lack of food and exercise, he should have been able to push the trapdoor open.

Mrs. Shaw says what's on all our minds: “We're trapped.”

When Mr. Kasman asked if we'd watched the president on TV, Paula's hand shot up. “He ordered the navy to stop the Russians from giving missiles to Cuba.”

“And now what happens?”

I raised my hand. “We wait to see whether the Russian ships will turn back or keep going.”

“What will happen if they don't turn back?”

I raised my hand again. “It could be war.”

The class grew quiet. Was everyone thinking that the sirens might start at any moment? That right at this very second, Khrushchev could be ordering an attack? That Russian bombers might already be on their way and missiles could be blasting off?

Dickie Keller raised his hand. “My father says we should bomb them before they bomb us.”

“But what if they don't really intend to attack us?” asked Mr. Kasman.

Eric Flom raised his hand. “Then why are they putting missiles on Cuba?”

“Some people think it's because we have missiles in Turkey aimed at them.”

“We do?” Freak O' Nature asked in his normal voice, sounding surprised.

Mr. Kasman pulled down a map of Europe and eastern Asia and used a wooden pointer. “Turkey is almost the same distance to Moscow as Cuba is to Washington.”

Dickie Keller raised his hand. “Why did we put missiles there?”

“I'd guess for the same reason that the Russians are putting missiles on Cuba,” Mr. Kasman answered.

“To attack them?” Eric Flom asked, reflecting the confusion many of us felt. Could this really be true? On TV, President Kennedy had said we wanted peace, not war, and that we would never attack Russia unless they attacked us first.

“Does that change the way you think about the situation?” Mr. Kasman asked.

Maybe it was still too early in the morning. Or maybe this information was too confusing, but we sat there like bumps on a log. The room would have been completely silent were it not for a faint scratching sound. Mr. Kasman frowned, then stepped quietly toward the back. We all turned to watch.