He cruised down Piedmont Boulevard, tapping the brakes through the particularly steep segments, then eased left onto Culworth. His gaze wandered from the road to Stockbridge Elementary, which stood at the far end of two fields — one soccer and one baseball — to his right. The main building was a plain brick structure, built in the late 1960s with help from Lyndon Johnson’s administration; additions had been put on in 1977, 1993, and 2009. There were vehicles parked all along the wide road that led up to the building — unsurprising, since the school was the third refugee center. What was surprising — was shocking as hell, in fact — was the succession of open windows on the roof, all tipped up at a forty-five-degree angle.
“Oh, shit,” he said, almost unable to believe what he was seeing. “There must be a hundred kids in the building!”
He knew immediately where the windows were located — the original boiler room, set in the westernmost corner of the original building. They were used to vent heat from the three hulking vessels inside.
He turned onto Stockbridge Avenue and stomped the accelerator. If he went in the main entrance to check in with whoever was running things and announced the reason for his visit, he’d carry contamination into the school and perhaps cause even greater panic. It was possible that no one even realized the windows were open in the first place. Surely if someone had, they would’ve contacted the authorities.
The simplest and most immediate solution, he decided then, is to take care of the problem myself.
He drove down the narrow service road that ran off the southwest side of the cul-de-sac, passing a little sign that read FOR MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL ONLY. Edging between two minivans, he headed along the backside of the property, where he spotted a caged power transformer, a pair of aluminum storage sheds, and a Y-head fire hydrant built into the wall. The third door along the rear wall was marked “Boiler Room” in blocky, spray-painted letters.
Stopping under a leafy oak tree, Emilio killed the engine. Then he jumped out and ran to the boiler-room door, praying it would be unlocked. When he’d attended school here, the janitor had been a portly, waddling man with the patience of an angel who never bothered locking it. In fact, he usually left it wide-open so the kids could visit. But he’d since retired, then passed away many years later, and Emilio knew nothing about the person who’d replaced him.
With the sound of the rain pattering against the outside of his hazmat suit like a million tiny pebbles, Emilio wrapped his hands around the steel handle and pulled. It held as firm as if it were riveted onto a boulder. Then he noticed the beak-shaped release lever; when he pressed down on it with his thumb, the lock gave way with a decisive click and he pulled the door open.
It was something of a surprise to see that the room was essentially unchanged since the last time he’d been in it. The janitor, whose name was Tom Tilton but was more commonly known as “TT” by the many students who’d befriended him, had warmly welcomed many visitors. This was back in the day when no one thought twice about leaving a grown man alone with an adolescent. And they had no reason to worry in TT’s case; he never did anything more than give the boys advice about life and, if they were interested, show off the school’s machinery.
Stepping in, Emilio saw the familiar sight of the three boilers, each a massive steel can set on its side, with the ignition modules jutting out of one end like pig snouts. Opposite these vessels was a long, rough-hewn table mottled by years of use. Mounted on the pegboard above was an array of rulers, squares, and levels, as well as a small corkboard with various work orders pinned to it.
To the right of the table stood a two-tiered tool chest with rollout drawers, and to the left was a set of tall utility shelves stacked with cardboard boxes. Wedged between the last shelf and the filthy cinder block wall was a standard stepladder that appeared to be relatively new. The shiny aluminum, some of its parts rubber-coated in bright yellow, stood out brightly in the otherwise somber and sooty environment.
Several puddles had accumulated on the floor between the boilers and the work area, little plashets of radioactive miasma waiting to ensnare a victim. When Emilio looked up, he saw that there were eight windows open out of twenty-four. Not surprisingly, they were the eight closest to the boilers. It occurred to him that they had probably always been open — browsing through the mental images of his childhood, he consistently saw the school with those windows sticking up like a bank of solar panels. During his visits, he remembered, breezes and other distant sounds from outside were a normal part of the tableau. You just don’t notice after a while, he thought. Like the scratch on your refrigerator or the chip in the brickwork on your front steps — these things stand out to people visiting for the first time, but your own eyes slide right over them.
Rain blew into the room in spasmodic sprays, as if being blown out of someone’s mouth while they were having a coughing fit. Emilio didn’t know if the amount of radioactive material in the room was enough to affect the people who had taken refuge in the gymnasium, but he wasn’t going to take a chance. After he closed the windows, he’d call Sarah and let her know. Maybe it’ll make a difference in the evac plan. Maybe they’ll come here first.
He dragged the ladder directly beneath the windows and unfolded it into a giant capital A. He positioned it so that it was braced against the middle boiler for extra support, then gave it a little shake to see if it was secure. Emilio had never cared much for heights, but this fear was something he disliked about himself, so anytime he had to scale a ladder he took a deep breath, summoned his courage, and dealt with it.
The dizziness he’d felt when setting out from the hospital returned when he was halfway up, but he discounted it as mild vertigo. He was rationalizing a parade of other symptoms, too: the headache was simple hunger, the low fever was a by-product of being inside the plastic suit for so long, and the extreme fatigue merely meant he needed to rest — which he would, the moment he was done here, as he’d promised his boss. Perhaps somewhere in the back of his brain, where his years of training and experience were stored, his symptoms were being recognized as the standard early signs of exposure to ionizing radiation. But he was too focused on the task at hand to acknowledge any of that.
He managed to close three of the eight windows before the dizziness climaxed in a swirl of disorientation that made him feel like he was tumbling through space. As the mushy gray of unconsciousness consumed him, the ladder teetered left and then right before finally tipping away from the boiler. Emilio’s limp form slammed to the floor with a grotesque thud. As he was already unconscious, he was unaware that the fall cost him three broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a hairline fracture at the point of greatest impact — the left side of his skull. The angle at which he landed also forced the mask of his breathing apparatus well away from his nose and mouth.
Rain continued to fall through the still-open windows, and soon Emilio’s motionless figure was as soaked as the filthy concrete around him.
21
“So far, so good,” Pete said into the headset as he drove down Breckenridge Boulevard. Breckenridge, no longer than a football field, was a decorative crossbar between two of the town’s main arteries, with its picturesque lanes separated by a nicely manicured divider and faux-antique street lamps.
“How does it look out there?” Kate asked, disapproval plain in her voice. The subtext clearly was, Look, in fact, at how bad it is out there. Come to your senses and turn around.