Chuck Logan - After the Rain

Broker and Holly turned their backs on the confused manager. “So let’s move this thing,” Broker said.

“What if it’s booby-trapped to blow if it’s tampered with?” Holly gritted his teeth.

“We got no choice,” Broker said.

“Agreed. Clear everybody out,” Holly said.

Then the siren started. The high-pitched wail galvanized the numb gawkers still standing around the machine. Instinctively, they started to move away.

“Everybody get back,” Fuller yelled. His knees had begun to shake and he started to fade away. The plant manger was crawling on all fours. One of the guards helped him to his feet and he joined the exodus, breaking into a jerky run. All over the plant grounds people were starting to walk rapidly toward the gate. The beginnings of an orderly evacuation.

A drill.

Then one of them started to run.

And they all began to run.

“IT’S A BOMB! IT’S A BOMB!” the running workers carried the cry into the parking lot.

Broker took a breath. The air had turned to mush; the old hot and cold fight-or-flight willies ran up and down his spine. It was a strange moment. Broker, Holly, and Yeager were caught up in the momentum and they, too, stepped back, as if swept up in a powerful undertow that sucked them toward the warmth and comfort of the other fleeing bodies.

Hundreds of people in motion now. They watched a guard drop his rifle and run. Not a good omen.

Broker located Fuller a hundred yards away at the edge of the fenced area. Fuller had his hand to his forehead, stooped over like he had a lot of weight on his back. He was talking to three, four of his crew, men in hard hats. They were straining in the bad body language of men caught in a riptide.

Further out, it looked like a big neon sign had crashed down on the parking lot. Horns blared and brake lights sputtered in a snarl of traffic, a building wail of approaching sirens and flashers added to the melee, coming off the highway.

“Yeager, get Fuller over here. We need some of his crew to help us. Gotta rig some chains, fire up those machines, something .” Broker flung his arm at the line of tractors and bulldozers.

Holly was dancing back and forth, looking over the area. “Where do we put it?”

“We need Fuller,” Broker yelled.

So they watched as Yeager sprinted across the wide lot and started an animated discussion with Fuller and his men. After precious seconds of arm waving, Fuller and the other men retreated. One man joined Yeager in a dash back toward the machine. They made a lonely sight, just the two of them doubling back while hundreds ran the other way.

“Jesus,” Holly said when he saw their grim faces as they approached. “Hope we don’t look that bad.”

“Not us,” Broker said. He skipped trying to grin. His lips were shaking too bad.

“What exactly is it you want to do?” the big guy with Yeager shouted over the bedlam of honking horns and the siren. A long blond ponytail stuck out the back of his hard hat. He had fatalistic Nordic blue eyes, a square jaw, and the stubble of yellow beard.

“The counterweight and wheels are full of explosives. It’s designed to blow out the back,” Broker yelled. “We gotta redirect the blast away from the pool and the reactors. Drag the fucker away.”

Panting, eyes wide, gushing sweat, the chunky hard hat wore dirty Levis, and a torn T-shirt pushed out in a beer belly; his forearms were the size of Broker’s thighs. A faded Marine Corps insignia was tattooed on the left one. Hadda be Norwegian, Broker thought. The guy fixed his eyes on the parked machines, pointed to one. “That D-8 dozer should do ’er,” he said in a trembling voice.

“Can we drag it to the river?” Holly asked.

“Too much in the way. How about the ditch by the fence, behind that pile of dirt? Dump it in.” The hard hat pointed again, this time at the earth bulwark that had been started about a hundred yards away.

“That’s it. Let’s go,” Broker yelled.

Without pause, the hard hat ran toward the huge bulldozer. Broker, Yeager, and Holly chased after him. The guy jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. “The Deere 644 goes around fifteen ton. This big Cat dozer here goes around forty. Piece of cake.”

He vaulted up into the seat and in a moment the dozer belched black smoke and its wide treads executed a mechanical pirouette, facing it in the direction of the Deere. He motioned Holly and Broker out of the way. Yeager ran in front of the dozer, stabbing his finger at something, then making a looping gesture. The driver vigorously nodded his head.

Broker and Holly joined Yeager, who yelled, “I spent some time around this shit. Best thing is to use the choker cable on the front.” He pointed to a reel of steel cable with a pin clasp on the end. They danced aside while the driver lined up his dozer in front of the Deere, blade to bucket.

Broker heard a second siren. A Red Wing police cruiser skidded through the gate, then fishtailed, knocking down a section of fence. The cruiser slid to a stop, and a young copper jumped out, eyes like shiny ball bearings staring out of his haunted face.

He knew.

Without a word, he jumped forward to help Broker and Yeager thread the thick cable around the bucket arm of the 644. Yeager showed them how to set the pin. Staining shoulder to shoulder they wrestled the cable. Close in. Faces in hell-a local cop, Yeager, the guy with the beer gut and the big arms and the faded Corps tat. He hadn’t bothered to give a name. He just started driving the dozer.

Where the hell was Holly? Then Broker spotted him running back from the dirt pile.

The driver pulled back on his controls, stood up in his seat, and inspected the cable rigged to the Deere bucket. He nodded his approval, sat back down, reeled in his cable, and then raised the blade on the dozer. Everyone on the ground stepped back as the driver hoisted the bucket until the cable was taut. Hydraulics screamed, black smoke spewed, and he raised the blade some more until the front wheels of the Deere 644 came off the ground.

They all braced. Nothing happened.

Holly reappeared, climbed up, and had a shouted back-and-forth with the driver. Then he leaped down, briefly took Yeager aside, and then came up to Broker and the cop.

“Me and the driver got it. Everybody else get outta here,” Holly ordered as he reached in his jeans pocket.

Broker stared at him. “What do you mean, out of here? Where we gonna go? What the fuck is danger-close on a nuclear meltdown?”

Holly pulled a bundle of tiny chain from his pocket, clapped it in Broker’s hand. Closed his hand over it.

“What this?” Broker said.

“Nina’s dog tags. Hang on to them.”

Broker stared at the silver wafer of metal on the beaded chain, shook his head.

Holly narrowed his pale eyes to slits in a mask. Doing one of those fucking warrior-statue numbers. “Listen, asshole,” he yelled. “Kit may be down to one parent. I ain’t gonna leave her with none. Now move out.” A plume of dark smoke framed Holly as the bulldozer trundled on, dragging the dangling loader on its back wheels toward the ditch.

Broker stuck the tag and chain in his pocket. “You need a ground guide,” he shouted.

“I’m guide,” Holly shouted back. He motioned, signaling to someone. Stabbing his finger.

Broker moved to protest, then the back of his head exploded-star-bursts fading to black. Going down, he tried to call their names: Nina, Kit. But no sound came.

First Dale took the 500 mg of Prussian blue. Then he took the potassium iodide. Just in case the wind changed on him. But he didn’t think it would, because it had been holding steady all day.