The Summer the World Ended (34 page)

“Most survival guides advise at least two weeks or so after there’s no detectable radiation.” He gestured at the wall by the armored door. “About fourteen days after that red light goes off.”

“Oh.” Riley leveled her glare at the radiation monitor, trying to turn it off by sheer force of will.

The light flickered, but remained on. Riley sighed and frowned at the book. A few chapters later, her stomach growled. She set the book down, using the blanket to mark her place, and trudged to the storeroom, where she stood between shelves and shelves of MREs and canned pasta, broken up by a small collection of canned veggies and several boxes of store-brand granola bars.
Five years’ worth of food.
She reached under her shirt to scratch at her belly.
Dad said we should only eat twice a day.

“Since you’re in there.” Dad not-quite-yelling from the radio table made her jump. “Check the water light?”

Riley looked down at her dirty feet, flexed her toes, and sighed. “Why didn’t you put the light upstairs?” She plodded over to the hatch.

“I meant to… wasn’t expecting the world to blow itself up so soon. Thought I had time.”

She lowered herself into the crawlspace and scampered around the nearest water tank to the gap between them. Crawling around in the dirt was getting her filthy, but who cared anymore? Much to her relief, the radiation warning light remained off. Her eyebrows came together. She crawled back to the entrance and climbed out, swatting dirt off her hands and legs before closing the hatch and heading for the main room.

Dad muttered at the mic, repeating his usual survivor mantra. Riley paused by the vibrating support column, standing in the warm downdraft of air while staring at the radiation light on the wall.
That doesn’t make sense.

“Dad?” She crept over to the wall by the door, stopping when her toes hit a thin puddle. “The light is off downstairs. Why is this one on?”

“Sorry.” He took the headphones off and smiled at her. “What?”

She pointed at the dull red glow behind the plastic window. “The well light’s off. If there’s radiation, wouldn’t it be on too?”

“The well’s sensor is on the intake pipe at the bottom of the well. That detector is wired to sensor posts arranged around the hatch on the surface. It’s picking up fallout, which didn’t get into the well… remember, I have a covered well.”

“But if it’s radiation, wouldn’t it go through the cover?” She backed away from the slimy spot of floor, wiping her left foot dry on the concrete.

“Fallout is irradiated dust and soil, sucked into the air by the detonation and deposited over a wide area. It’s fine particles. The well is sealed, but there’s a layer of it on the ground over our heads.”

She trudged to the cot, eyes downcast. “Fallout lasts for years, doesn’t it? We’re gonna be in here a while.”

He grumbled. “Yeah, probably.”

Riley put her hand on the Beretta. Dad’s voice replayed in her head.
Could you kill a man to protect yourself?
She bit her lip, wondering how terrified she’d have to be to point that thing at a human being. Her hand trembled, not liking the answer her brain came up with.

“Dad?” she whispered.

“Yeah?” He didn’t turn around.

“Please don’t die.”

He looked back at her. “It’s not on my to-do list, hon.”

ay Eight.

A persistent smell saturated the air in the bunker, which Riley could only think of as ‘sweat sock.’ She stared over the top of
The Cardinal of the Kremlin
at her toes, and past them at Dad. He’d gone into a robotic recitation of the same transmission every fifteen minutes for the past two days. Between each two-hour period of survivor spam, he’d try to raise people with military sounding callsigns like ‘Foxtrot-Two-Two’ or ‘Baker-Four-Nine.’ None of them answered.

Her new world seemed on the low end of tolerable until Dad broke his rhythm, lowering his forehead to rest on his hand. Riley shivered, sniffling at the sight of her father looking so tired. He seemed about ready to give up on the world. She hunkered down, trying to focus on the story in her lap. Five minutes later, his voice startled her.

“Attention anyone who may be receiving this message. My name is Chris McCullough, and I am at a place of safety. If anyone is receiving this message, we are located approximately twenty miles due east of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.”

She dipped her gaze back to the page, and squirmed. “Dad, I’ve got an itch.”

“Scratch it.” He sat straighter. “Unless you mean like you want to touch yourself… which is perfectly natural.”

“Eww, Dad, really?” She rolled her eyes. “No, I mean like an
itch
itch. It kinda hurts.”

“Where?”

Her silence answered.

“Well, you have been wearing the same underwear for eight days.”

“Open the door. I wanna use the shower in the hall.”

He shook his head. “Not shielded out there.”

“What kind of idiot puts the shower outside the vault door?”

“The kind of idiot that doesn’t want to waste drinking water. Use the sink. That’s not a cleaning shower, Squirrel. It’s meant for coming in from the outside and getting rid of fallout particles.”

“The sink?” Blood rushed to her cheeks. “Are you nuts?”

“No. Wet a washcloth and hit the critical points. They call it a field shower.”

“Critical points…”

“Face, pits, crotch, and crack… hopefully in that order.”

Riley looked at the page; the words became meaningless squiggles for a second. She
wasn’t sure what bothered her more: that Dad suggested she wash herself in the bunker with him there, or that she didn’t die of embarrassment when she gave it serious consideration.

“Will you put like a bag over your head or something?”

Dad swiveled around in his chair, raising both eyebrows. “You could also go into the storeroom and close the door.”

Duh.

Riley dropped the book and leaned down to grab clean undies from the backpack. She bounced to her feet and snagged a cloth from the peg on the wall over the sink.

Dad pointed at the stack of five white pails behind the toilet. “Grab a bucket, take some water with you.”

Riley pulled the top one out, ran some water in it from the sink, and carried it to the storeroom. She wedged the door closed, peeled off her fetid clothes, and proceeded to run a bar of plain soap and the freezing washcloth around ‘the critical points.’

After a bit of bouncing around and hand waving to air dry, she pulled the clean set of undies on and covered her breasts with her arms, regretting her hasty search for cleanliness.
I am an idiot. I forgot a shirt.
She contemplated putting the one she’d been wearing back on, but one whiff of it made her gag. She cracked the door an inch, and peeked.

Dad had his back turned, still broadcasting for survivors.

“Dad, I forgot a clean shirt. Don’t look.”

“Okay.” He leaned back in the chair, eyes closed. “You know right after we got married, your mother used to walk around topless―”

“Dad!” she yelled.

He chuckled.

Riley scurried to the backpack and grabbed one of the white shirts. It wasn’t as long as the other one, and left her underwear exposed. She stared at herself, not caring if Dad saw her panties. Apathy faded after a moment, and she pulled on a set of the black fatigue pants. They were baggy enough to be comfortable, and a little long in the leg. Unless she jumped up and down in place, they’d stay on without a belt.

“Safe.”

Dad glanced back with a wink. “You almost look human again.”

“My hair stinks.” She paced around, feeling cooped up. Sitting on the bed was getting old, fast. After a few circles, she got up to a jog. Nylon ties at the bottom of the pants whipped about as she picked up speed. After ten laps, she stopped and ran in place for a minute before she dropped and did five pushups.

“Now what’s gotten into you?” Dad raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sick of sitting around doing nothing. The world’s gone to crap. I should be like training and stuff. Lisa did pull ups and stuff every morning.”

“Not too bad an idea.” He paused. “Who’s Lisa?”

“Character from a game.”

Riley did sit-ups until her gut ached. She’d spent so much time playing
Call of Duty
, now she was going to be living it. She thought about
The Last Outpost
, and wondered if she could talk Dad into heading east in search of Amber.
No. She’s dead. He said the whole East Coast got vaporized.

Discontentment at being locked up underground boiled over after another ten minutes. She stomped over to the radiation detector, her mortal enemy, and glared at it. The red light bulb inside the housing fluctuated in intensity, as if it got power from a hamster on a treadmill gaining and losing speed. This time she didn’t care about stepping in a puddle.

“I hate this thing.”

Dad looked over. “That thing saved our lives. I might’ve gone outside by now if we didn’t know it was fatal.”

She let off an exasperated noise halfway between growl and sigh, and bashed her fist down on top of it, hitting a patch of water.

The red light went out.

“Dad?”

“Hmm?”

“Dad!” She bounced on her toes.

“What?” He looked over.

“It’s out.” She shifted to raise her arm, showing him the bottom of her fist. “And it’s wet.”

He scrambled out of the chair and stumbled over. The copper fitting coming in from the well passed right over it. A fat droplet formed at the bottom of one of the silvery solder marks. All along the left side of the alarm housing, trails of water streaked through caked dust.

“You shouldn’t have hit it. Now we won’t know when it’s safe.”

Riley scrunched up her face, about to bawl like a five-year-old being yelled at. Her onrush of tears stalled on the way to her eyes. She balled her fists. “No. I didn’t hit it that hard. It’s wet. Maybe it shorted?”

“I doubt it. Might be a shift in the wind pushing the fallout around. Let’s keep an eye on it for a few days. If it stays out…”

“Do you have a manual for this thing?” She took a step toward the bookcase.

“Printout, bottom shelf, far right.”

Riley squatted, sifting through a bunch of stacks of copier paper held together by black metal clips. Eventually, she found one with a drawing of a familiar looking alarm box and a logo for a doomsday prepper website. “You bought plans for a radiation detection system on the Internet?”

“Yep. They’re all over the place.”

She flipped through it, lost by all the algebra and schematics. The drawings didn’t seem impressive. “Are you sure it works?”

“Yes, I tested it with some Uranium.”

Riley blinked at him. “Where the crap did you get Uranium?”

“EBay.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I mean, it was weak… but enough to test with.” He put the headset on. “Colonel Bering, this is Black Sheep, come back.”

Riley cast a dubious look at the plans and stuffed the home-printed manual back on the shelf. “If water got into that thing, could it make it light up?”

“The odds of that are incredibly remote… but, I suppose technically possible.” He jumped as if startled. “Yes, sir. Thank you. The perimeter rad sensor is now indicating a clear condition. About ten minutes. Riley hit it, and it went out. No, I don’t think so. She’s not that strong.”