Kevin Anderson - Ill Wind

The dim facility looked like a 1960s version of a “high tech” building, an eight-story-tall cube with dark windows and light cement. The aluminum mini blinds had been taken down to allow the maximum amount of light to pour through the windows. Inside, the petroplague had dissolved most of the carpets and linoleum, leaving only concrete and plywood base boards.

Henrietta Soo took Todd and Casey past empty offices and a conference room where a half a dozen people stood brainstorming, scribbling things on a pad of paper propped on an easel.

In a kitchen area, Henrietta twisted on a faucet. Water trickled out with low pressure, but it was enough for them to drink and wash. Droplets sprayed from side to side in the gasketless faucet nozzle. She disappeared, leaving them to take turns at the sink, splashing their faces and pulling brown paper towels to wipe themselves off.

“Boy, this feels good!” Todd said as water dripped from the stubble on his chin. Casey Jones doused his bald head, kneading his dark skin with his fingertips.

After the train wreck, they had hiked for two days northwest of Pasadena. They passed through the sprawling, confused metropolis of Burbank and Glendale, asking directions from people on the street. They must have painted an absurd picture: both of them streaked with grime, the back of Casey’s shirt stiffened with drying blood, asking for somebody to point the way to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

In Pasadena, the Rose Bowl sat empty, but a flea market had sprung up by itself, though the vendors sold a new selection of post-plague items. The lush and well-manicured country club golf course was ragged and overgrown.

By now Todd and Casey were hungry and exhausted, but they had reached their destination. The bright flowers and arching willows made JPL look like a campus, 175 acres jammed up against the sheer green-brown mountains. Once they passed into the JPL complex, they tracked down the headquarters of the satellite division. The Jet Propulsion Lab normally held over five thousand workers, but now the site was quiet and lethargic.

Henrietta Soo returned with a metal first-aid kit and opened it up, poking around to find cloth bandages. “Let me look at your back,” she said to Casey, and he dutifully removed his shirt. With a cotton swab, she dabbed and poked at the infected arrow wound. In her other hand she held a brown bottle. “I got a glass bottle of alcohol from one of the labs. All of our plastic tubes of first-aid cream are… no longer with us. I’ve got a few antibiotics, but we’re saving them.” She smiled apologetically, then said to Todd, “How about you?”

Todd flexed his hands; he was lucky they hadn’t formed any large blisters from the burn. “I’m okay.”

Casey Jones stared at the wall as she prodded crusted blood, cleaned the wound, and bandaged his shoulder. Finished, Henrietta clicked the first-aid kit shut and turned to face them.

“Now then. I’ve got some of Dr. Lockwood’s smallsats sealed up and ready for launch, but there’s no way you’ll be able to take all of them. When he asked for help getting them shipped to his railgun launching system, I never thought anyone would take the challenge. The satellites have been sitting in one of our clean rooms for months—but what I want to know is just how you two propose to get them to White Sands?”

She waited. Todd looked down at his dirty boots and shuffled his feet. Casey didn’t offer any ideas.

Todd refused to meet Henrietta Soo’s eyes. “Um, I was hoping you might have a suggestion, Ma’am.”

Todd sat in front of JPL’s short-wave radio, looking befuddled. He stared at the microphone. “Is everything ready?”

“Yes,” Henrietta said, leaning over his shoulder. “Go ahead.”

Todd touched the microphone again. “You’re sure it’s at the right frequency and everything?”

“Yes!” Henrietta said again, a bit more impatiently.

“And I just hold down the microphone button?”

Henrietta scowled. “You’re new at this aren’t you? We’re all connected to the Atlantis network. We’ve cleared our own node here and knocked off the Feds so we can get some decent radio time. FEMA is pissed off at us, but they’ll pick up the signal on this frequency and reroute it up to the Livermore receiving station. It’ll probably also be picked up by other substations and broadcast around the country.”

Todd felt a knot in his throat at the thought of thousands of people listening in on his personal message, but before he could lose his nerve he gripped the microphone.

“This is Todd Severyn calling for Moira Tibbett at the Sandia National Laboratory in Livermore, California.” He hoped Tibbett was there listening. From what he could tell, she never went home, she never left her map with its colored pushpins marking the growing number of stations on the emergency short-wave network.

“Sandia, can you read me?” he repeated. “This is Todd Severyn transmitting from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.”

Tibbett’s gruff voice came out of the shortwave speaker. “Todd, we read you! I take it you made it down to Los Angeles? Over.” A squeaky background hum accompanied her transmission.

“I arrived just fine. Our locomotive was destroyed by a gang down here, but Casey Jones and I are safe and unharmed.”

“That’s good news Todd,” Tibbett replied. “Over.”

“Could you…” Todd said, then paused. “Uh, could you make sure that message gets passed along to Iris Shikozu at the Altamont settlement?”

“We’ll send it with the next courier that comes down. Over.”

“And tell her…” The words clogged in Todd’s throat. He made a silent excuse to himself that he just had stage fright, but deep inside he knew that wasn’t really what stopped him. “Just tell her I’m OK. We’ll be taking the satellites and setting out for New Mexico. Wish us luck.”

“Good luck, Todd,” Tibbett answered. “We’ll all be keeping our fingers crossed for you. Over.”

“Over and out.” He signed off.

Henrietta Soo stood behind him with arms crossed over her chest like a stern grandmother. “Sounds like you should have rehearsed your words a bit, Mr. Severyn.” She smiled. “Come on. Let me show you the smallsats. Maybe that’ll give you an idea how to transport them, if your friend doesn’t find anything today.”

Casey Jones had gone out by himself that morning to see if he could find any solution to hauling the satellites. The wide-faced man had used the water trickle and a little bit of soap to shave his entire head so clean that it glistened even after he toweled it dry. Obsessed again, Casey set out to see what he could find in the chaos of Pasadena.

Todd could not talk openly with his partner, though they had come hundreds of miles together and narrowly escaped death. The man who called himself Casey Jones had some sort of parasite of guilt inside him, chewing away.

Casey had been all right when he was moving, bringing supplies down to Los Angeles, taking direct action to alleviate his conscience. The moment they stopped and ran up against a problem, though, he became restless as a lion in a cage. Todd guessed he would have done the same thing. In some ways, he and Casey were a lot alike.

Henrietta Soo led Todd deeper into the laboratory complex, away from the offices and conference rooms. The partially dissolved linoleum on the floor left hard cheese-like remains in strange patterns on top of the plywood underfloor.

At the end of the corridor an emergency exit sign marked a red-painted door. Banks of gun-metal gray lockers lined the left side of the hall, like a high-school corridor. On the other side, dark windows gazed in on a warehouse-sized clean room.