Quake (15 page)

Jasper Howard was about to ask Jeffries how he was supposed to get out of the containment structure when a new alarm made itself audible over the cacophony of existing ones. Jasper had no idea what it meant, but he saw the security man, Peterson, immediately look down into the spent fuel pool, now guarded by Alex White's dead body.

“Control to Response Team Three,” Jeffries's voice came over their helmet radios. “I need you to get down to the control rod station now, please. Take the first right on the walkway behind you.”

“What's that new alarm?” Jasper queried. Peterson was already moving behind him onto the walkway that led to the needed control station.

“Water level dropped below a critical warning level,” Jeffries said matter-of-factly.

“What's that mean?” Jasper asked.

“The water in the pool over the spent fuel rods is what keeps the radiation those rods still have from escaping into the air. The rods are so hot that without actively cooling the water—with chillers—the water heats to a boil. Because our cooling systems have been down since we lost power—and most backup power—in the quake, the water is heating to the point that it started evaporating off. I don't want to speculate, but it may be the temperature of the pool that killed Mr. White. Sensors tell me it's just below boiling.”

“What happens if all the water evaporates?” Jasper asked, even though he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer.

While Jeffries spoke, Jasper watched Peterson scout ahead down the walkway with his flashlight.

“If the spent fuel rod assemblies become exposed to air, they'll catch fire. In a worst case scenario the fire can spread from one assembly to another—each one of the three thousand-some-odd rectangular openings down there in the pool contains one rod assembly—and in turn each assembly contains about fifty rods of uranium and other radioactive materials.”

Jasper didn't bother trying to do the math. “That's a lot of rods.”

“Over 150,000. Anyway, it's called ‘propagating zirconium cladding,' where the fire spreads from one spent fuel assembly to the next.”

“And once they're all on fire?”

He heard Jeffries sigh, resigning himself to the fact that if he wanted to motivate Jasper, he would need to spell out for him the consequences of failing to act.

“This spent fuel pool stores about twenty times the amount of spent fuel as was contained by the Fukushima plant in the Japan quake of 2011. If the rods are allowed to burn directly into the atmosphere, they release that radioactivity into the air which, if the wind favors it, could blow right into the city. It would be like a Chernobyl on steroids—New York City could be rendered uninhabitable for decades,” he finished, leaving the communication channel eerily silent while Jasper processed the significance of what he had just heard.

Looking into the pool below, he could now discern that its surface was bubbling—not a roiling boil like a pot on a stove, but more like the soft, popping fizz of a hot tub. He wondered if Alex had been boiled alive. What if his suit radio had shorted out when he hit the water and he had been screaming while he boiled but they just hadn't heard it? This was all getting too much for him. He wanted to run. But to what? Even if he found a way out, he'd rather stay here and see for himself what was happening, know firsthand his own fate and that of millions of New Yorkers.

“Control station is this way, Mr. Howard.”

Peterson was about forty feet away from the edge of the pool, about to turn a corner. Jasper turned and followed. Jeffries spoke while they trotted through a maze of metal pipework past turbines, arrays of gauges, valve wheels, and instrument panels.

“Mr. Peterson is leading you to a stair ladder that leads down to the SFP operation deck. There's a control panel there that will hopefully allow us to lower the control rods. The rods were displaced in the quake and are situated higher in their columns than they should be.”

“But lowering the rods won't cool the water,” Jasper pointed out.

“Correct, Mr. Howard. But it'll buy us some time to work on the cooling problem, which has some real complexity.”

Jasper sighed and descended a metal stairway behind Peterson. They emerged on a concrete deck fronting the spent fuel pool six feet above the water level. Jasper found it disconcerting to be so close to the deadly water, remaining a good five feet back from the edge even though there was a stout safety railing. To their right he could see White's body rafting out toward the center of the pool.

Jasper was grateful when Jeffries's voice distracted him from the perturbing sight. “Now tell me, you should be able to see the control rod station, yes?”

Whatever instrument console it was that sat a few feet from him appeared totally foreign to Jasper. It occupied a small alcove that jutted out over the pool, the railing tracing its outline. Jasper stared dumbfounded at the machinery. It wasn't overly massive, consisting of a gray, L-shaped metal console about chest high and four feet wide. Its vertical face contained round buttons that were red, white, or green. A few switches. A couple of oddball components he didn't recognize at all. A nest of wires ran from the back of the machine over the railing and down into the pool. Jasper looked over at Peterson to see if maybe he could take the lead on this, but as usual the security man's attention was focused outwardly on their immediate surroundings. He played his flashlight beam around the walls of the containment structure, spotlighting a ladder here, or tracing the outline of some fallen equipment there. His right hand rested on his holstered pistol.

“Mr. Howard?” Jeffries prompted.

“Uh, yeah, I see a gray machine set out over the water. Is that it?”

“That's it. Okay, Jasper, have you seen those movies where something happened to the pilot of an airliner and someone from air traffic control has to talk to a passenger to tell them how to land the plane?”

Jasper couldn't help but wonder what Jeffries would say if he replied that no, he'd never seen one of those, but he bit his tongue. “Sure.”

“We're going to have to do something like that here. Please walk up to the control station, and don't touch anything until I tell you. Okay?”

Jasper walked up to the machine. “Okay, I'm in front of it.” There was no chair or stool, but Jasper found the controls to be at a comfortable height, designed to be operated while standing.

“I'm looking at a digital representation of the same control station on my computer. When you do something on the real machine, I'll be able to see in real time what it was and how it affected things in the pool.”

“Okay.”

“The control columns—the little squares at the bottom of the pool—are divided into four main quadrants based on how old the spent fuel rods are that they contain. The older they are, the safer they are. Quadrant One, far corner to your right, is the youngest—some of those spent rods came out of the reactor only last week. Quad Two, to the left, is next youngest, with the safest one being the one you're standing over, Quad Four. Some of those have been in there for years.”

“Well, that's a relief.”

Jeffries snorted into his mic but had no specific reply to this.

“What happens when you run out of room for more rods?”

“That's more of a long-term operational problem. Let's not go there, shall we? We've got enough on our plate at the moment.”

“Sorry.”

“So this machine you're in front of controls automated handling systems that can move the rods.”

“I was hoping for a giant claw grabber like those arcade games where you pick up a stuffed—”

Jeffries cut him off. “Some of the older systems are more like that, but this one is state of the art and all you have to do is press the right buttons and the rods will move on their own. Before the earthquake, anyway,” Jeffries qualified, before adding, “we'll start with Quadrant One. If you look on the instrument panel in front of you, you'll see that there are white lines dividing the panel into four sections. . . .”

Jeffries paused while he waited for Jasper to acknowledge this. “Okay, I see that. Lemme guess, one for each quadrant?”

“Good man. So right now we're only going to deal with the upper right one. Go ahead and press the red button in the upper right quadrant.”

Jasper followed the instruction.

“Now press the white button. . . .” After carrying out several control operations such as this, Jeffries gave an uncharacteristically long pause.

“What is it?” Jasper asked.

“It isn't working. Too many of these rods were broken or displaced in the quake. They can't be manipulated by the handling system the way they were intended to.”

Jasper lifted his hands from the controls to rub his temples through his suit.

“Let's move onto Quad Three.”

Again Jeffries told him which buttons to press and again the outcome was the same. “We're still unable to move the rods.” They tried the other two quadrants with the same lack of results.

“Now what?” Jasper asked. He stared over the edge of the now useless machine into the pool of bubbling water, watching it evaporate along with his hopes of survival.

Ray Knowles had fallen quiet.

Lauren Dykstra didn't know how much time had passed but it had to have been an hour now, at least.

“
Ray?
” she called out as she had several times before. But just as before there came no answer.

He's dead.

No. She couldn't think that way. He was in horrible pain; he'd broken his leg. He'd just passed out. He'd be fine once they were found.

If
they were ever found.

She thought her eyes would well with tears again, but she discovered she was all cried out. It had happened when she was a child, too. One day, a few months after her mother died, she went to her room and stared at a family photograph that usually set off the waterworks. But this time nothing happened. The strange thing was she had
wanted
to cry. She'd been crying for weeks and it never once failed to make her feel just a little better. But this time as she lay on her bed she felt entirely empty of emotion. She felt . . . dead.

She didn't feel empty for long. After a while she became mad at herself. Her mother had died just a few months ago, and here she was, unable to shed another single tear. What kind of a kid was she?

She'd put the picture away in her drawer and decided she'd try again after a nap.

She'd dreamed a completely meaningless thing—and this, too, bothered her; why wasn't she dreaming of her mother as she had in the days following her death?—then awoke and hurried to the dresser and removed the photo from the drawer again.

She stared at it and . . .

And nothing.

Lauren had felt that she had to keep this senseless lack of feeling a secret. She'd been seeing a therapist ever since mid-September, and the therapist had assured her time and time again that it was
perfectly normal
to cry. “I'd wonder what was wrong with you if you
didn't cry
,” her therapist had said.

And now she couldn't. There
was
something wrong with her after all.

Under the bookcase Lauren opened her eyes wide. She needed to remain awake. If Ray woke up . . .

Not
if
, when.

. . . he'd call for her and if she didn't answer he'd get frightened, as frightened as she was right now.

So she
was
feeling something. She was scared. Fear had eaten away at her other feelings until there was nothing left but to be afraid.

She couldn't cry. Earlier, when she thought about all she would miss out on in life, she'd sobbed like she had when she was five.

I'll never . . .
she thought again.

I'll never graduate high school and go on to college.

I'll never fall in love.

I'll never have a career.

I'll never get married.

I'll never have children.

Sure, those were the biggies, but what had truly bothered her before were the small things.

I'll never vote.

I'll never drive.

I'll never order a drink at a bar.

I'll never sing along to my favorite song on the radio.

I'll never go on another date.

I'll never see another movie.

I'll never . . .

She would never see her father again.

She closed her eyes and pictured him in his suit and tie, delivering opening remarks to a jury. She pictured him asking her to dance at her wedding. She pictured him as he looked on the morning of September 11, on the day her mother died. Or at least as she remembered him looking. Those bright eyes, that wide smile.

She pictured him crying at her mother's funeral.

And that finally helped her to cry again.

“We should cut through here.”

The fear in his wife's eyes did not escape Frank Mendoza. Since leaving St. Luke's-Roosevelt Medical Center, Frank and Jana had picked their way through obstruction after obstruction, the going tortuously slow. Fallen buildings and downed power lines were everywhere. Roving bands of thugs had started to appear, too, the gangs realizing that those who were uninjured in the quake had an opportunity to make forays into enemy territory or to take their chances with looting and robbing. Anything goes. Even walking was not safe and Mendoza, whose ankle was hurting the hell out of him, was beginning to think that they might be better off back at the hospital. But stretched out before them now was an immense expanse of wide open space, seemingly free of toppled building materials. That potential freedom of movement came with a price, however, for the grassy, treed area was dark, shadowy, murky in the absence of all streetlights.

Central Park.

Nearly a thousand acres of Manhattan land initially set aside in the 1850s with the goal of providing much needed open space for the denizens of America's most populous city, the famed urban park stretched into the night before them.

“Through the park?” Jana asked, peering down the walkway that led into the sprawling garden setting.

“I think so. There might be some fallen trees and statues, crumbled little footbridges, maybe, but it sure beats the collapsed skyscraper obstacle course, right?”

Jana flicked on her flashlight and pointed the beam into the park. It illuminated the gravel path before them that led into a grassy area, but not much detail beyond that.

“I don't know, Frank. Central Park at night?”

Mendoza shrugged. “We've been here at night before.”

Mendoza saw Jana frown just before she lowered her light. “Being here at sunset for the summer concert series is not the same as being here late at night with all the lights out due to the power outage from a killer earthquake, Frank.”

He sighed heavily. “I still think it's better than trying to walk through what's out there,” he said, jerking a thumb behind them. “At least we'd be able to actually walk without having to climb over some pile of junk every few feet. And we know there are hooligans walking around out there,” he finished.

“I guess it would be faster going, and I do need to reach that hospital. If I'm gone too long, they'll start to think I just deserted them. But it scares me who might be in there.”

He wordlessly held up his Glock in response.

“Let's go.” Jana held her flashlight in one hand, aiming it ahead of them as they walked side by side into the park.

When they reached the grass, Mendoza covered her beam with a hand. “Let's turn it off for now. It'll attract attention if there is anyone in here. Our eyes will adjust if we give it a couple of minutes.” The couple stood there, listening while they waited for their night vision to acclimate. So far it was spookily quiet. “A normal night here is louder than this,” Jana said.

“I have a feeling it's going to be a while before we see another one of those. Let's go.”

They walked out onto the open grass.

“Which part of the park is this?” Jana asked. The park had numerous sections, some secluded and meditative, others open and geared toward large-scale entertainment. Both of them had been to Central Park many times but after entering through an unfamiliar walkway in the darkness, it took Mendoza a moment to get his bearings.

“I think this is the Sheep Meadow,” he said, looking around at several acres of lush grass with a perimeter of thick trees. So named for the flock of animals that had inhabited the meadow until the Depression era, the zone had been used off and on throughout the modern decades as a concert grounds, especially in the 1960s and '70s, and in recent times had become a popular place for picnic outings. Mendoza was pleased to note that it was the least changed area of the city he'd seen thus far, being just a flat expanse of grass. He knew that the iconic Tavern on the Green restaurant was nearby, and he mentally oriented himself based on that.

“I'm pretty sure if we go this way, we'll be heading north through the park the long ways. That way we can travel in here as long as possible before we're on the streets again.” He pointed across the flat meadow. Jana nodded her agreement and they set out at a brisk walk. They might have been power-walkers out for some exercise in the cool air if not for the surrounding devastation.

“I wonder what our place looks like,” Jana contemplated when they had reached the midpoint of the grassy field.

“Been trying not to think about that, but seriously, even if it's a total loss I'm happy.” He grabbed her and pulled her toward him.

“Me, too,” she said, and the two lovers kissed despite the exigency of their situation. “Let's go see if we can help some people,” Jana said, and they jogged the rest of the way across the Sheep Meadow. At its northern end, they emerged onto a footpath that wound through a lightly wooded area. They came to a small lake and were disheartened to see the wooden bridge that spanned it floating in the lake itself.

“Gotta go around,” Mendoza said, looking right, then left to try to guess which direction offered the most expedient route. “This way,” he said, opting for left, and they soon found themselves on another walking path devoid of people.

“Central Park all to ourselves—who would've thought?” Jana exclaimed. “Reminds me of our first date!” Mendoza flashed on the day years ago when he'd rowed her across the lake in one of the wooden rowboats for rent, a bottle of wine and some cheese and crackers in a basket. They'd paddled to a secluded cove shrouded in foliage, and despite the crowds in the park, for a brief moment they had felt as though the grounds belonged to them.

But now Jana was reaching for his right hand and he had to switch his Glock to the left in order to accommodate her. How long would it take for things to return to normal? Would they ever be able to return to normal? He forced himself to focus on the present as they came to a serene garden spot.

Wrought-iron benches were lined up along a manicured hedge row, a few of them overturned. They passed between rows of stalked flowers and saw flickering light ahead. The Mendozas ducked behind a topiary animal as they heard a human voice. Apparently, it was some kind of singing. They looked at one another in surprise as they recognized the words.

“‘Strawberry fields forever!'”

Horribly off key but still recognizable, the tune made instant sense to Mendoza. Strawberry Fields. Yes, it was the well-known song by the Beatles, but it was also the name of this area of the park, Mendoza realized, looking around at the carefully sculpted foliage and tranquil garden spaces. This was the place where John Lennon himself used to visit, and in fact he was gunned down at his residence not far from here. This section of the park had been named in his honor.

“‘Strawberry fields forever.'” Apparently that was the only part of the song the man knew, for he repeated it ad nauseam in what appeared to be a drunken stupor. They could also smell the man from a distance. As far as they could tell he was alone. He was caked in filth as though he had not bathed in months, his clothing almost indiscernible from the grime that covered it. He had rags of some sort tied around his head in a Rambo-style bandana. In one hand he twirled a lighted fire stick with a certain level of skill and dexterity that belied the man's overall condition, and Mendoza supposed he was, or at least had been at one time, a street performer. Jana started to retch from his potent reek and they increased their radius from him, backing up so as to be able to monitor him. Mendoza couldn't help but notice that the bottle of alcohol he held was not some cheap wino special, but a rather fresh looking bottle of Moët White Star.
Probably snagged it from Tavern on the Green somehow or maybe found it in a picnic basket abandoned when the quake hit.

The oblivious performer either didn't notice the Mendozas were there or didn't care, because they transited through the garden without any kind of interaction with him. Soon they were running across a tile mosaic featuring the word
IMAGINE
, and Mendoza tried to dream of a day when the City of New York would once more be returned to a state of normalcy.
Imagine there's no earthquake....

Finally, they reached the other side of the lake. They passed by another lawn area, this one occupied by a couple of knots of people conversing in muted tones. The Mendozas speed-walked by without stopping. Besides trading hearsay on what buildings were still standing and which areas were hit the hardest, what could anyone do for them and what could they do in return? Their objective to resupply Jana's hospital was a worthy enough goal and it gave them a sufficient sense of purpose to keep moving forward.

They had been trekking in silence for some time and were making their way around a large reservoir when they first heard the sound. A kind of howling.

“Drunks?” Jana wondered. They heard it again, more sustained this time, and more than one voice.

Her husband shrugged. “Maybe. Weird, though. Whatever it is, let's see if we can avoid it.” They picked up their pace on the walkway that skirted the reservoir. When they reached a tennis court, a lengthwise crack marring the clay, they heard the noises again, behind them. An ethereal moaning. They started around the court and then heard the same vocalization coming from somewhere ahead of them as well.

Jana clutched Mendoza's shoulder. “Frank, what
is
that! It can't be people, so many of them acting like that?”

Mendoza was about to try to cheer his wife up with some humor about the nightlife of Central Park when he saw eyes glowing ahead of them.

Animal eyes.

Jana shone her light on the glowing orbs and revealed the head of a dog, with three more close behind it. As they watched, two of them engaged in a game of tug-of-war with some sort of food product they'd scavenged off the ground, probably somebody's left-behind lunch.

“Look at all these dogs,” Mendoza said.

“More behind us,” Jana pointed out with her light.

“Let's keep walking, regular pace, not too fast. Just walk on by them; don't look them in the eyes.”

They edged past the rowdy dogs and hiked north through the park. Within a few minutes, however, it was clear that the animals seemed to be pacing them on the other side of the foliage that bordered the walkway they took—sniffing, rooting at the ground, yelping. What's more, their numbers increased as they went, with more dogs falling into the roughly organized line. Occasionally, one would dart across the pathway a few yards in front of them and disappear into the greenery.

No two of the dogs seemed to be alike, either. There were mongrels, poodles and terriers alongside Rottweilers, whippets and pit bulls. It was as if every dog in the city that had been displaced by the earthquake had joined forces and taken up residence in Central Park. As they crested a small footbridge, with Mendoza reminding his wife not to break into a run, Jana shone her light off to their right and gasped in disbelief. Her flashlight could reveal no end to the line of foraging canines. The ones closest to them seemed to casually pace the humans, while others wrestled with one another, and still more at the limit of Jana's light simply sat on their haunches, watching the lead dogs. Or watching them? A few of them wore collars, their ID tags glinting in the light beam, while others were obviously permanent strays. Many of them howled or barked.

A Labrador bolted out in front of them, nearly at the foot of the little bridge and spun in place, baring its teeth. Jana shrieked and Mendoza raised his arms and shouted at the beast. The challenge surprised the dog and it retreated to the company of its companions.

“Now. C'mon!” Mendoza took Jana by the hand and led her down off the bridge to the walkway leading north. Even though they kept their pace to a walk, the dogs seemed to increase their pace, with those in the lead passing them as more trotted up from behind. They randomly nipped at each other as they went, while a group of three engaged in a vicious fight maybe a hundred feet away.

And then a Doberman pinscher turned onto the path in front of them and charged in their direction.

“Frank!”

Mendoza raised his Glock. He pointed it at the approaching animal. “Stop! Hey!” he tried to shout the beast down to no avail. It kept coming. He fired twice, not confident he'd be able to hit the fast-moving, slender target in the darkness before it was upon them. His first shot did nothing, but the second struck the dog in the chest. It crumpled to the ground without so much as a yelp.

Four more dogs trotted onto the path and ran towards the couple in loose formation—two in front, two behind. “Frank, do something!” Jana shone her light at the approaching pack members. Mendoza raised his weapon again. He shot at the largest attacker, what he thought might be a mastiff. From the sudden lopsided gait the beast took on he knew he'd hit his mark. Its companions passed it by and flanked the Mendozas. Still other dogs ran behind them onto the same path. They were encircled.

“Frank!”

He could barely hear his wife over the barking marauders. Taking aim, he fired a round into the head of a pit bull, followed by two more in quick succession for a sizable mutt baring its teeth.

“Time to leave the park,” he shouted to his wife. Another dog lunged at his ankle and he kicked it in the head while shooting two rounds into a leaping Rottweiler. Jana picked up a rock and hurled it at another animal that went whining off into the night.

They had an opening in the pack in front of them. Through it Mendoza spied a break in the tree line, a building with a few lights on beyond.

“Street,” he pointed. “Run for it!”

Jana was breaking into a sprint before he even finished his sentence. At first, he backpedaled while firing off three more rounds. Then seeing at least ten more of the brutes running their way from deeper inside the park, he turned and broke into a panicky dash. He didn't have enough bullets for all of them. Jana reached the edge of the park first, where there stood an iron gate. She ran through it onto the buckled sidewalk. Mendoza heard barking close behind him. He turned and pulled the trigger twice, but the gun only discharged one time.