Where the hell are they?! he yelled in his mind as he turned and hustled out.
“They’re not here, Kate,” he said hoarsely, checking out the kitchen and the pantry as rapidly as possible.
“What?” Rising panic colored his wife’s voice. “That’s it, I’m calling Sarah.”
Pete felt as though the floor was tilting back and forth beneath his feet.
What the heck?
“Yeah, that’s fine,” he replied. “I guess there’s nothing else to—”
He was cut off by a thick, single-note beep of obnoxious timbre, and it took a moment for his dazed mind to associate it as the incoming-call signal.
He removed the phone from its holster with the speed of a gunslinger and looked at the screen with the zealous anticipation of one waiting for the night’s lottery numbers to be announced.
“My God, it’s Mark! He’s on the other line!”
“Answer it! Answer it!”
Pete switched the call.
“Mark? Hello?”
There was nothing.
“MARK?”
22
General Conover in the flesh was fairly tall, his height accentuated by a frame so thin it appeared almost malnourished. His features were what Sarah thought of as severe, including razor-edged cheekbones; a well-defined mouth that seemed perpetually ready to spit out orders; and eyes that looked too large for his head. The latter held the deepest and most hypnotic shade of green she had ever encountered. When Conover removed his canvas field hat, Sarah saw that his hair was just as she imagined — bristly white and cut so short it looked like nothing more than a hazy shadow. His gaze was alert and bright with intelligence.
Setting down the phone — she’d been getting an update from the Corwin plant — Sarah met that gaze without flinching, essentially ignoring the other three people in the room — the increasingly nervous Barbara Magnus and Lorraine Harris, and Conover’s aide, Captain Budrow, who was standing by the windows. The latter, whom Sarah estimated to be in his early thirties, had not spoken since he and his military colleagues had arrived. In fact, after taking up his current position, he had not so much as twitched a muscle while awaiting the general’s next command.
Sarah felt a rush of emotion and forced it down; there was no time for feelings right now. This process had become considerably easier over the course of the day. Was it a sign that the first little pieces of her humanity were beginning to break away? Is that the price we pay for the privilege of leadership?
No time to ruminate on it now, she told herself.
“Corwin says they still don’t have it contained.”
“Okay then,” Conover said, “we have to get this moving, now.”
Sarah joined him at the large table that had been placed in the center of the room, which was covered by a street-by-street map of the town. Pencil lines had been drawn down various roadways — some were dark, some faint from being at least partially erased.
They had spent — wasted, perhaps — almost a half hour arguing over some of the fine details. Conover clearly wasn’t used to being questioned and vigorously challenged by any position that opposed his own. At first, Sarah took this as further vindication of her initial impression that he was little more than a pompous pain in the ass, but as the conversation continued, she began to understand that he wanted to make absolutely certain whatever strategy he followed was the best.
She had to admit he was brilliant, able to absorb and retain a constellation of details on the fly, which he could then pull together to form a cohesive, sensible plan. She found it easy to believe he had logged numerous successes during his career. With all that in mind, she now understood his habit of forcing others to qualify their positions differently — it was his way of quickly and efficiently sifting out critical details that he either hadn’t considered or, more likely, were previously unknown to him. While she wouldn’t call him truly flexible, she had discovered with relief that he was willing to change his mind when presented with solid facts.
One of those facts was that the number of cases of radiation poisoning was up to 312. In spite of the steadfast effort to complete what Sarah now thought of as the Residential Roll Call, hundreds of people in the Silver Lake area were unaccounted for. How many bodies will be found in the next few days, or weeks, or even months? Exposure cases were being reported from surrounding districts as well. The farthest was twenty-eight miles east, in Chester County.
That distance had sparked a media riot. Even the more respectable news agencies were pumping out unrestrained speculation as to how long it would be before citizens began dropping dead in Philadelphia, New York City, and even Washington, D.C. The Dow fell more than two thousand points and was expected to sink even further before trading wrapped up at four o’clock.
Bush-league terrorist groups seeking their breakout moment began claiming responsibility through hastily constructed Web sites, random blog postings, and mass Tweets, insisting that the story about a lightning strike had been fabricated by the American government to cover up their triumph. As ludicrous as this notion was in light of the numerous photos of the strike site that Marla Hollis shared with the world, conspiracy theories were flying.
“Are you ready to sign off?” Conover asked.
Instead of answering directly, Sarah said, “I never asked, General — how long should the evacuation take?”
“If everyone cooperates, just a few hours.”
“That quickly? We have more than eleven thousand residents.”
“Ma’am, the Japanese evacuated more than a hundred and thirty thousand from the Fukushima Daiichi area in one day.”
“That’s incredible.”
The general nodded. “We can handle your eleven thousand-plus with no problem — again, as long as everyone does as they’re told. The plan itself is relatively straightforward. The trucks and buses roll in and we go section by section, getting folks out.” Conover leaned in and indicated each sector by hovering his hand over it. “There will be soldiers on each vehicle to wipe people down immediately. Then they’ll be taken to the school for full decontamination.”
They had decided to use a decommissioned high school in the neighboring town of Hawthorne for the decontamination process. Six years earlier, due to Hawthorne’s aging population and the decrease in teen residents, civic leaders decided to transfer the entire student body to Silver Lake. Fortunately, the building was still in good shape — there was running water and, thanks to a stockpile of generators the Guard had supplied, working electricity.
“Each person will have to strip down,” the general continued, “submit to full cleansing, then dress in temporary attire we will provide.”
Sarah nodded, mentally running through a catalog of people who, she was quite certain, would not respond well to the concept of presenting their naked bodies for scrubbing and polishing to a pack of strangers in radiation suits.
“They’ll then be taken to one of four hospitals for evaluation and any necessary treatment,” Conover said. “Once they’re cleared medically, they are free to go wherever they wish. As I said before, the state will cover the cost of temporary housing up to a certain point. If residents have relatives who live beyond the zone of exclusion, we ask them to consider that option, to free up resources for those who aren’t so fortunate.”
There it is, Sarah thought, the first use of “zone of exclusion.” The operation felt so formal now, so coldly official. But then why wouldn’t it? Conover had no personal attachment to this place.