Эбби Луби - Nuclear Romance

Their afterglow was luxurious. They folded into each other, cuddled, dozed, he rolled over, kissing her ears before tumbling back into a light sleep. He awoke again to feel her touch him lightly, building to arousal. They made love again, just as the sun was rising.

“You are wonderful,” he said dreamily.

“As are you, Mr. Padera. I think I lost a few inhibitions since dinner. Do you have this affect on all of your women?”

“Oh yeah, all of my women. They’re standing in line….”

She lay on her stomach, languid. His fingers traced down her spine to her soft, full buttocks.

“Diana?”

“Yes?”

“Ever do a threesome?”

“A what? Oh—you mean with a guy and another woman?”

“Yeah. Or two guys. You know. A group sex thing—a ménage à trois .”

“Uh-uh. No. I’ve never done that. Why? Is that something you like?”

“I think I’d like it. Yes.”

She turned over on her back. “But have you actually done it? With two women? Or…”

“No. I haven’t, but—look, I’m just mentioning it. You never know what turns people on.”

“Does group sex turn you on?”

“The idea does. Sure. Why not?”

She sat up and pulled the sheet up around her.

“Every man’s dream—to have two women at his beck and call.”

The afterglow bubble had burst, and she wasn’t ready to hear his fantasies. She needed to know what was going on.

“Tell me now if I’m not enough for you sexually, if this was a one-night stand.”

He sat up, moved behind her, and cradled her between his legs. He whispered to her, his breath warm on the back of her neck.

“You are very special to me, Diana. You truly are. I would never force you to do something you’re not comfortable with. Now and then I think about having some different and fun sexual encounters, that’s all.”

“Sexual encounters? I’m not sure I want to hear this.”

“Okay. I won’t talk about it. Right now, you’re plenty of woman for me, and you’re all I want. That’s the truth.”

Right now?

She felt his warm body line her back. Slowly she tried to relax into him. She would want more of his passionate lovemaking, and he certainly knew how to please her. And if he turned out to be kinky? She’d take the good with the bad. For now.

It always starts the same way: clear sky, a crisp breeze, children playing on the school playground. Suddenly Jen hears a deafening siren, cars screech into the parking lot, people are screaming, children crying. Jen runs into the two-story school building to find Ricky, but all the classrooms are empty. Panicked mothers are stampeding down halls, into the gym, the cafeteria—shoving, pushing—desperate to find their kids.

Where is he?

A gush of wind moves the empty swings in the playground. A distorted voice, like a muffled trombone blasts out over the loudspeaker. She can’t quite understand the words, but somehow she knows what the voice is saying.

The kids are someplace else. Some kind of center. Suddenly Jen is in her car, but traffic is at a complete standstill. Some drivers honk while others have abandoned their cars altogether. Jen is trapped. She turns off the car. Her cell phone doesn’t work, and even if it did, who would she call?

Then she sees Ricky far away, sitting on the floor of a long hallway crowded with children. He looks terrified. At the end of the hall there is a piercing sound of hissing steam coming from an ice-blue room of high-pressure showers. The room where Ricky is being led. Jen can see faceless workers dressed in white Hazmat suits, breathing through respirators, quickly undressing the children. Clothes are yanked off and flung into large metal containers. To be sterilized, then burned?

It’s Ricky’s turn, and he struggles to stay dressed. Jen can’t get to him and yells, “Don’t let them do it! I’ll be right there!” He doesn’t hear her as she wades waist deep through children to get to him. She passes a little girl crushed near the wall, burying her head. Oh my God—it’s Kaylee! She tries to call to the girl, hoping she will raise her head and recognize her mommy. “Kaylee? It’s me, Sweetie. Look up, its Mommy!” But the girl doesn’t hear her. She keeps trying to get Kaylee’s attention, but she knows at the same time Ricky is now naked from the waist up. He is losing his battle to the ghostly Hazmat people. I have to get to him… why the hell am I so far away?

And then it comes, the creeping, dull awareness. A small voice, her own voice, straining to tell her it’s a bad dream. She should wake up. Now .

She tries to jump out of her skin, to break free of the nightmare, but it’s like pushing against a tsunami. Losing, always losing. She tries to pinch her limbs out of numbness.

She jerks awake, gasping, her pajamas soaked. She tumbles out of bed and quickly patters across the hall into Ricky’s bedroom. His thin frame is haphazard across the bed, his breathing light but steady. Jen collapses on the floor and cries softly.

As soon as he punched his time card, Larry Hines knew something was wrong. He had some sort of paranormal radar for trouble that came in loud and clear.

Larry was working the late shift until midnight. He made a beeline to the control room, and through the glass window he could see large red electronic letters flashing CODE RED. He poked his head in.

“What’s going on? Why Code Red?”

All five men kept their eyes glued to the monitors.

“Leak. Bad one this time,” one man rasped out. “A pipe in the containment dome ruptured. It’s a mess. We’re trying to head off a massive radioactive plume from getting airborne.”

For the first time in a year, Larry entered the control room. The men knew what he was thinking: Lucky this didn’t happen on my watch.

Larry, on the other hand, knew an accident of this magnitude would never have happened on his watch.

On the video screen it looked like a full-blown hurricane inside the containment dome. Water jettisoned out of the split pipe like a high velocity fire hose gone wild. Paint and insulation from the dome’s interior was peeling off and plummeting down in large clumps near the reactor; the debris was clogging the pumps that supply coolant water to the overheated reactor core.

Meltdown. It was the first thing on everyone’s mind. Just as dangerous was the radioactive steam that was about to be released outside to the lower Hudson Valley. Fixing the leak meant shutting down the reactor. Soon.

“Oh my God,” Larry uttered. “What about the backup pumps?”

“No good. Clogged with too much debris.”

Great , Larry thought. The expert critics warned us of this. Now all hell will break lose.

The men stared at the monitors. Someone said, “They want a team inside the dome, but we have to wait to shut down the reactor, and that takes a few hours. Until then, we can only standby.”

Larry swallowed dry and loosened his damp collar. He watched the jagged clumps tear off like shavings of molten lead peeling off a bombed-out building. He started to panic. What about the radiation?

“Weather report?” he asked one of the engineers.

“Winds are about ten miles an hour still out of the west. Enough to carry the plume over Westchester. If it shifts south it could hit the city, but that’s the worst case scenario.”

They’re doing what they’ve been taught: to think defensively, as if they are in control. Larry knew the psychological drill all too well, how the plant culture inexplicably adopts a false sense of security because of the sheer, physical enormity of the reactor. With a structure this immense, how could anything go wrong?