Half Past Midnight (30 page)

“Okay,” he conceded. “Maybe they aren’t. But they’re hardly up to military training levels.”

“Neither are Larry’s men!”

That stopped him—for all of two seconds. “What about ammunition?”

Caught off guard, I responded in stellar fashion. “Huh?”

“Ammunition… bullets. Have you forgotten? We were running low before Larry ever got here! We’ve probably used more ammunition in the last twenty-four hours than we have in the last six months.” Actually, I had forgotten, which was pretty stupid of me, since my favorite tasks at the forge were coming into prominence because of that shortage.

Ken must have seen it in my face. “Don’t worry about it just now. It’s not like we’re going to run out tomorrow. But if we end up in a prolonged fight with these guys, say a couple of weeks or so,
then
we may have a problem.”

He turned his attention back to the mayor, who had kept quiet during the exchange. “Look, Jim, all I can tell you is that as long as we prepare in advance, we’ll get more people out than we’ll lose. Don’t ask me for any predictions beyond that.”

Jim sighed. “Shit.”

We were all silent for a moment, each of us trying to think of something to tip the scales in our favor.

Abruptly Jim snapped his fingers. “There is a little good news, anyway. Wayne Kelley told me to tell ya’ll that he found enough ingredients in the rail depot out back to make plenty of explosives. He’s settin’ things up now.”

“Good,” Ken said. “Maybe he’ll come up with something that will make a difference.”

The mayor nodded. “Let’s hope so. Meanwhile, you boys go get some rest. If you’re plannin’ to go back into town tomorrow, you’ll need all the rest you can get.”

Ken and I rose, nearly dead on our feet. “What about you?” I asked.

“I doubt I’ll get any sleep tonight,” Jim said. “Gotta get some people organized. You go on and don’t worry about it. I’ll sleep after you’re gone.”

Too tired to argue, we left without further comment.

***

Ken told me he needed to walk a little to clear his head before trying to rest. I was too exhausted to do anything but nod and wish him goodnight. Then I wandered through the complex searching for my family. It was harder than I had anticipated, as we had more than two thousand people trying to find someplace to sleep in a building never intended to hold more than a few hundred. And it was definitely not designed for sleeping. Refugees were scattered all over the place, sleeping on the floor, on storage racks; I even saw one man curled up on top of the protective cage on an old forklift. There was barely room to walk.

After asking around, I finally found where Debra and the kids were bedded down and joined them as quietly as possible. I carefully lay down, trying not to wake Debra, but I should have known better.

“I heard it was pretty bad,” she whispered.

“Yeah.” An image of Jenna’s lifeless form came to mind, the way her head lolled as we loaded her corpse into the truck on the way back, the smell of blood and death, the knowledge that it was no longer a person, just a sack of meat. “It was bad.” I shuddered and quickly suppressed the image, but my wife knew me well.

She snuggled up behind me as I lay on my side and slipped an arm over my shoulder to gently stroke my chest. She pressed her head up against my back and briefly kissed the back of my neck. “Would it help to talk about it?”

I shook my head. “Not now. Maybe later, but I can’t right now.” Fearing she might feel I was shutting her out, I added, “I’m sorry, babe, but I have to figure out how to deal with it on my own. It was a mess, and there’s probably going to be worse tomorrow.”

Her hand stopped. “What do you mean?”

I sighed. I hadn’t meant to get into it, but it wouldn’t be fair to keep her wondering now that I had mentioned it. “We found where they’ve got everyone, and Sarah got inside.”

“And?” Her tone told me she knew at least part of the rest.

“And we think she’s going to try to bust them out.”

“When?”

“Best guess is either tomorrow night or the next.”

She was silent for a few seconds. “You have to go back?”

“Yeah. They’ll never make it without help.”

“And it has to be you?” She started to sound upset. “It can’t be someone else, some other group? Haven’t you done enough?”

“Not this time. I know where she went in and what the situation is like there.”

“So write it down. I heard about some of what happened tonight. I don’t like the idea of you going out there again!”

I rolled over to face her and was surprised to see tears in her eyes. She sounded angry, but it was evident that the anger was simply a manifestation of her fear and concern. “I have to, Debra. I’m the only one that can this time.”

“Why! Why only you?”

“Because I know exactly where she went in, and I know where Larry’s men are positioned in the area. I’m the one that talked Wayne Kelley into risking his life to mix up any explosives I could find a recipe for, and I’m the one who knows how to use them.” That was not strictly true, as I had only read military reports and directions, but that was more than anyone else had done.

She gripped my shirt in her fist and tugged. “So what? Tell them what to do and let someone else—”

Pulling her close, I wrapped my arms around her and just held her tight, as she buried her face in my chest and sobbed herself silently to sleep. Minutes later, I followed her into an uneasy slumber.

***

“Leeland?”

I awoke instantly, not that I had slept well. Jenna’s face had kept popping up in my dreams, her dead eyes accusing, haunting.

“Leeland?” Wayne’s voice again. I also noticed the strong smell of… chlorine?

“Jeez, Wayne! What’s that smell?” I whispered to keep from waking Debra.

“How can you smell anything over your own stench?” she murmured, obviously no longer asleep. Having slept with her head in the crook of my arm, she was intimately acquainted with my stench.

Wayne’s voice answered from the darkness. “Your recipes seem to leave some interesting by-product while they’re being mixed.”

I perked up. “You did it?”

“It’s in one of the jeeps. Ready to go.”

I rubbed my eyes and sat up, noticing how little activity there was. “What time is it?”

“It’s about five thirty in the morning,” he answered. “Jim and Ken are waiting on you in the office.”

Debra sat up beside me and sighed. “You’re going, aren’t you?”

“I have to.”

The expression on her face must have told Wayne that this was an awkward moment. He cleared his throat. “Uh, I’d better get back. I’ll see you there.” He left in an obvious hurry to distance himself from us.

I turned back to Debra and sat up to face her, working through the aches and pains shooting up my spine. “You know I have to.”

She lowered her eyes. “I don’t have to like it, though.”

“Yeah. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t exactly look forward to it, either. Truth of the matter is, the idea scares the hell out of me.”

“Good! Maybe you’ll be careful enough to get back, then.”

“I’ll be back.” I reached out and wistfully touched her cheek. “You think you can get rid of me that easily?”

I was taken aback when she slapped my hand away. “Don’t joke!” she hissed angrily. The kids slept a few feet away, oblivious. We both wanted to keep it that way. “You always joke this stuff off, and it isn’t funny, damn it! It isn’t funny!” She stood and stepped away from me, glaring through tear-filled eyes.

I dropped my hand and swallowed. “I know. It’s just me.” I didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry.”

She nodded acceptance, but there was no way she would ever be happy about the situation. “Just go.”

I didn’t want to leave like that, but if Ken and Jim were waiting on me, things must have been about ready for the mission.

Some corner of my mind noted how funny it was that I had started thinking in military terms. Just like Jim said, “A grown man dressed up like GI Joe, playing at war.” The rest of my mind was on my wife. She stood just out of my reach, her anger flaring once more. I couldn’t leave like this. “Debra?”

She must have seen the question in my eyes, for her expression softened. “Go ahead, Lee. I’ll be okay.”

I dropped my gaze, understanding that this was all she could give me for now.

As I started to stand, my aches and pains became almost crippling. The simple act of getting to my feet abruptly became a painful process. Besides aching as I did from the previous day’s activities, I was stiff from getting too little sleep afterward on a cold concrete floor. Suddenly, I felt Debra at my side holding my arm, helping me stumble to my feet. She took mercy on me and hugged me. Then, she pushed me back. “Just make sure you come back in one piece.”

A lump in my throat choked off my answer, so I just nodded, turned, and headed back to Jim’s office.

***

I walked through the office door to find Wayne asleep on an ancient sofa that someone had dragged in. Ken stood in a corner on the other side of the room. He turned when he saw me, nodded, and went back to what he was doing. A few seconds later, he walked over and handed me a hot cup of something that smelled like coffee. Better yet, it actually tasted like coffee. I sighed contentedly. “Pure, unadulterated heaven!”

I saw how bloodshot his eyes were as he shook his head. “Nope. Just Colombian roast. Jim found some in a cabinet. Thought we might need some to help get us going.”

“Going?”

Jim walked in from the back, his own steaming cup in hand. I noticed the area around his left eye was now a deep blue. I winced at the thought that I had done that to him. Jim didn’t seem to notice it, though, as he picked up on the conversation. “Yep, you’re leavin’. Y’all need to be in position before sunrise, else you’re gonna be too easy to spot goin’ in.”

My shoulders slumped at the thought. “Already? Damn, Jim, I’m so tired I can hardly see straight.”

Jim laughed. “Hell, Leeland, at least you got a couple of hours. Me and Wayne have been workin’ all night.”

“You didn’t sleep?”

“Didn’t have time. I found Wayne out back, and he looked like he could use some help.”

“What did you come up with?”

“Somethin’ called Astrobrite, I think…”

“Astrolite?” I perked up. “You made Astrolite?”

“Yeah,” he answered, “And let me tell you something. That is some nasty smellin’ stuff when you’re mixing!”

Jim peered at me over his coffee from behind his desk. “By the looks of that grin on your face, I take it Astrolite is good news?”

“Good news? It’s probably the most powerful explosive there is, short of a nuclear reaction.”

The mayor suddenly appeared somewhat less than pleased. “Nuclear reaction?”

I laughed. “Don’t worry, Jim. That just means it has a high detonation velocity. There’s no danger of any more radiation.”

“You sure? I mean, if it’s that powerful, mebbe we should think a bit more about this.”

“Look, I’d be lying if I said I really understood all of it. But from what I’ve read, the way an explosive does its damage is by the rapid transfer of energy through a chemical or nuclear reaction. Astrolite uses a chemical reaction, not nuclear, so there’s no danger of radiation.”

“You ain’t helpin’ me any, Lee. If it can do as much damage as a nuclear explosion without the radiation, why didn’t the government use it instead of nukes?”

“I never said it can do as much damage as a nuke. I said that it’s the most powerful
non
-
nuclear
explosive. It does its damage with its speed.”

He didn’t seem convinced.

I leaned over his desk, snatched a pencil and a notepad, and wrote down an old high school formula, e=1/2ms
²
. “Okay, ’e’ is the amount of energy released. ’m’ is the mass, and ’s’ is the speed. It’s the reason why people can break boards and bricks with their hands. It isn’t that their hands are harder than the bricks. It’s simple physics.”

I looked up to see Jim and Ken still appearing confused. “Look at it like this. A man hits a brick with a punch that has an equivalent mass of two hundred pounds.” I scribbled hastily. “And a velocity of fifty miles an hour. Plug the numbers in, and the energy released is,” more quick math scrawls, “two hundred fifty thousand… uh, joules or dynes, or whatever the measurement is.”

“Ergs,” Wayne piped up from the couch, “but only after you convert to metric equivalents in your formula.”

I look over at where he still lay with his eyes closed, apparently half asleep. “Wayne! You explain it to them. You’re the chemistry teacher!”

His hand waved me off, as if it had volition of its own. The rest of his body remained motionless until his lips moved. “You’re doing fine. I’ll chime in if I hear you screw anything up.” His eyelids never even twitched.

Scowling, I turned back to my scratch paper. “Okay. Now, let’s say he hits twice as hard. Four hundred pounds, still traveling at fifty miles an hour…” I scribbled through the math again, “gives us five hundred thousand ergs.”

Wayne’s voice corrected once more, “’s not ergs ’til you convert it to metric.”

“Whatever,” I said. “But see what happens when you double the speed instead of the mass. Back to the original two hundred pounds, but now traveling at one hundred miles an hour gives us…” More scribbling. “One million ergs!”

“Not un—”

“I know! Not until I convert to metric! But I’m no good with metric units. So pretend I already did it, okay? The important thing is that the higher the detonation velocity…”

Jim finished, “The bigger the boom, right?”

“And then some.” I sipped some more of the coffee. “So how much did you make?

“About three gallons.”

I nearly sprayed my coffee all over him. “Three gallons? Ken, just one gallon of this stuff can bring down a house! What are we gonna do with three?”

Ken appeared to think about that for a second, mulling it over as he finished a sip of coffee. Then, without the slightest hint of humor, he replied, “We’re going to kick Larry’s ass.”

***

Ken and Jim had worked out a plan that called for two groups of fifty people to trickle into town over the next few hours. The first team’s objective was the stadium. We were to take out the tank, if possible, and get our people out and to the stadium.