“I don’t really know if they—” Sharon tried again, then paused to hack into a clenched fist, the other hand set primly on the shelf of her chest. “If they could… if they… oh, shit, I don’t feel right.”
When Mark looked at her, a bolt of white fear shot through him. The hand that was pressed against her chest had begun to swell. It wasn’t quite as puffy as Mickey Mouse’s white-gloved paw, but inflated enough to be noticeable. And a rash, raw and pinkish with little red specks, now ran around her neck and into her shirt like a paint splash.
“Oh, my God,” he said dully, the words slipping out before he could stop them.
“What? What’s the matter?”
Nausea overwhelmed Mark with such fury that he was unable to resist it. He scrambled away on all fours, ducking behind a tree in an attempt to retain at least a fraction of dignity. His stomach heaved and a wretched scent flowed up from his guts and out his nostrils. Then came the evenly measured pre-ejection grunts; the ones that sounded like a pig doing push-ups.
But they weren’t coming from him.
He looked over and saw Sharon on her knees and one hand — the other was clutched at her throat. She bared her teeth in a horrific expression of agony, first very slowly, then with a snap. A string of blood descended gracefully, like a ruby-colored thread of spider silk. When she spit it out and saw what it was, her eyes widened like balloons.
“Shar, we have to get out of here now. I’ll carry you if I have to, but—”
She collapsed.
“Shar…?”
No movement.
“Sharon!!!”
16
Marla Hollis’s blog was now being featured on the front page of the newspaper’s Web site. The blog’s own home page was arranged in three vertical columns, with an archive index on the left, ads on the right, and Marla’s live entries filling the widest, middle column. She’d been posting regularly since “the incident.”
Her latest entry featured a photo taken through a rain-spattered, fourth-story window of the nuclear plant. The compound below was a study in chaos. People in hazmat suits were moving in all directions. Multiple pickup trucks were driving through or parked at haphazard angles, all with the Corwin Energies logo on the door and a single orange light swirling on the roof. A little farther on, sparks and fire illuminated the cloud of gray smoke that continued to pour from the imploded vessel.
Below the photo was Marla’s commentary:
Two hours and ten minutes have passed since the explosion, and they’re trying with little success to find a solution. Helicopters have come by dumping sand from bags that look like giant teardrops. The plant manager, Gary Mason, told me they have already dropped more than 3,000 metric tons, but radiation is still leaking out from the wounded core, so they’re going to add clay into the mix. When I asked him what he would do if that didn’t work, he said he would try dumping quantities of the chemical element boron, which, I have learned through my own research, will absorb neutrons. Boron is sometimes added to the coolant in the pressure reactors in order to keep fuel reactivity under control, particularly when fresh fuel rods are used. This facility does have some boron on hand, but not enough. So Mason said they’re contacting a plant twenty miles north of here that has larger quantities because they need it to manufacture semiconductors. However, in my judgment, he did not seem particularly hopeful about this approach.
The storm shows no sign of slowing down. Twenty-six workers are suffering from advanced radiation poisoning. The victims’ names won’t be released until the administrators have contacted their families. Andrew Corwin has been calling me regularly, but I have not actually seen him in a while. He’s told me that he’s already spoken with both the Secretary of Energy and the president’s Chief of Staff, but wouldn’t reveal the substance of those conversations.
I’m not yet exhibiting any signs of illness, maybe because I’m protected by all the steel and concrete surrounding these fire stairs. I hope to God that’s the case.
She ran up three more floors, wondering if the higher view would show her something different. Just before she reached the last step, her iPhone chimed. She pulled it from its holster and found a text from Darren Marcus, her editor — his fifth in the last hour.
Keep ’em coming, Marla. You’ve got about half a million following you now, and that number keeps rising. You’re being picked up by CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and the Associated Press. Congratulations — you’re officially a star.
She didn’t reply. She’d been working under Marcus for five years and had managed to convince the idiot that she genuinely liked him. It was a matter of self-preservation — Marcus had a petty, spiteful side that he unleashed on people who rubbed him the wrong way. A random compliment here, a disregarded glance of her curvature there, and she had him under control.
Her best tactic, though, came into play when his foggy, fame-drunk brain came up with some unfathomably stupid idea. Some of the paper’s other writers fought him from the start, which was the perfect way to get on his hit list. Marla would let those fools soften him up, put a few dents into his self-esteem and let the doubt start tunneling its way in. Then, inevitably, Marcus would come to her in private and ask for what he called her “most honest opinion.”
She would diplomatically point out all the strengths of his idea first. Even if there weren’t any — which was the case with disheartening frequency — she could at least make it sound like there were a few. Then she’d gently suggest changes to the weaker points. By the time he was ready to burden the staff with his moronic plan, it would have been modified in a way that Marla could at least tolerate. But regardless of her mastery of the man, she couldn’t stand the sight or the sound of him and had as little to do with him as was possible, given the confines of her job.
From the seventh-floor window, she spotted something previously obscured by the roof of an adjacent building — a hunk of graphite that had blown off the containment structure. Roughly dome-shaped and about the size of a small car, it lay smoking like a charcoal briquette on one of the access roads. A small cadre of hazmat-suited people stood about fifty yards away; their gestures seemed to indicate that they were discussing it.
Marla launched the phone’s camera app and spread two fingers on the screen to bring the image closer. After she took three shots, a voice behind her said firmly, “Ma’am, you’re not allowed to do that.”
Spinning around, she confronted a man in a white lab coat with the company logo above the breast pocket. His yellow hardhat covered most of his hair, but his brushy, salt-and-pepper mustache hinted at what was underneath. He looked to be in his midforties.
“Yes, I am,” she replied.
The man reached for Marla’s phone so abruptly that her reflexes took over before her mind kicked in. She pulled it away with about a nanosecond to spare.
“Piss off,” she said, pivoting to keep some distance between them. He moved right along with her, as if they were partners in some kind of bizarre dance.
“Ma’am!” he said angrily, his mouth twisting into a snarl, “please give me th—”
“I have a note from Andrew Corwin, pal!”
He took on a look of flinty suspicion, but stopped moving toward her. “You what?”
She produced a folded sheet of paper from one pants pocket. He tried reaching for that as well, but she yanked it back, then opened the note and held it up for him.
“No, no,” she said, “just read.”
To All Employees—
This is Marla Hollis, reporter for our local paper. She has my permission to chronicle today’s tragic events in whatever manner she sees fit and is to be given full access to all areas of our facility. She is not to be restrained in any way and anyone who attempts to do so will be subject to disciplinary action.