William Weber - Zero Day

Nate laughed. “I have that look, don’t I?”

“Yeah, a bit,” she said, sheepishly. “Well, maybe more than a bit. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“I used to be a cop,” he told her, as he rubbed at his throbbing knee.

“In Byron?”

“No, Chicago.”

“Ouch, how was that?”

“Ouch is a pretty good way to put it. Was a big reason why we settled here in Byron. You see, my wife grew up on a farm and isn’t a fan of big cities. She talked me into leaving, although it didn’t take all that much to persuade me.”

“You quit the force?”

Nate rubbed his gloved hands together, feeling the warmth slowly inching into the tips of his fingers. “I did.”

“This may seem indelicate, but you ever killed anyone?”

He grinned. “No one who didn’t deserve it.”

Jessie’s eyes flashed and Nate wasn’t sure if it was fear he was seeing or something else. Talk of snuffing out a human life was turning her on. Oh, boy.

“Yeah, that’s intense.”

“Taking a life only requires squeezing a trigger. Living with what you’ve done, that can take a lifetime.”

“No kidding. So you became a farmer, is that it?”

Jessie was a funny woman. “You ever think of becoming a reporter?”

She let out a bellowing laugh. “Way back in high school I had a nickname—Snoopy, you know, like the dog? But also because I like to ask a lot of questions. So, Mr. Ex-Cop, what do you do now? Or should I say, what did you do?”

“Worked security at the power plant for a while,” he began.

“The one that just blew up?”

“The very same. If my bosses had listened, there’s a chance, slim as it might be, that Byron wouldn’t be facing this mess. At least not on this scale.”

“So you know what happened?” she asked, her brow furrowing. “You’d think we’d lose power after it blew, not before. I find the whole thing rather confusing, to be honest.”

“We were hacked,” he said, deciding he would come right out and tell her. There was no point in keeping it a secret, even if knowing couldn’t change the danger they were facing. “My brother was an engineer there, one of the heroes who tried to keep the core from melting down. Whoever did this didn’t only want to cripple the country. They wanted to utterly destroy us.”

Marie—Jessie, her name was Jessie—stared at him, not saying a word. Then: “Well, they sure did a bang-up job.”

“I know, it’s pretty crazy,” he went on. “Nuclear power plants are among the most secure facilities in the world. In part because they’re completely cut off from the internet. Hackers have no way in. Well, that was what the people who ran the plant thought. They’re a publicly traded company, you know. Out to make a profit. So when I started pushing reforms, I think they worried any word of vulnerabilities would crater their stock price.”

“So they did nothing.”

Nate arched an eyebrow. “Not exactly nothing. They fired me and enforced a clause in my contract that prevented me from telling anyone what I knew. What happened was totally avoidable. But I’d be lying if I told you it hadn’t happened elsewhere.”

“Other plants have had meltdowns?” Her eyes were wide now.

“I’ve heard more than a few nuclear plants have suffered the same fate, but not all of them.”

“For some reason I’m not feeling very reassured by that.”

“This was a sophisticated attack, perhaps the most sophisticated in history. Power plants were not the only ones hit. If you caught the news the evening before the lights went out, personal bank and investment accounts were also wiped. We’re talking trillions of dollars. Assuming we manage to claw our way out of this mess, the economy may never recover.”

“I need a drink,” she said, her face ashen. He handed her the disposable water bottle and she shook her head. “Oh, no, not that kinda drink. You know that old saying about ignorance being bliss? Well, I think whoever came up with that little beauty sure nailed it.”

“What about you?” he asked, deciding a change of subject was in order. “You work somewhere in Byron?”

“Sure, I waitress part-time at the diner on 2nd and Maple.”

“I know the place,” Nate said. “Never been there though. Any good?”

“The food or the work?”

“Hmm, both.”

“I paid part of my way through college by working at a carwash in the summers” Nate told her. “You might not be running around like a server at a restaurant, but cleaning a car inside and out on a sweltering summer day can be brutal in its own way.” And for a moment, Nate caught the smell of asphalt growing soft in the sun’s searing rays. The sound of the radio by the register belting out songs over a warm current of air. These memories weren’t merely distant, they were from a world Nate was beginning to think he might never see again.

Nate’s eyes opened in a dark and unfamiliar place. For a moment, he wondered where he was. Back home in his bed, lying next to Amy? He reached over and felt someone next to him. But then the angles were all wrong, so were the smells. The odor of vodka wafted up at him. Finally, he reached a hand into his pocket, came out with his phone and switched on the flashlight.

The glow illuminated the interior of the Corolla. Snow covered the windshield, blotting the world outside from view. Jessie was there, fast asleep, her head resting on his shoulder. He went back to his phone. The time stamp at the top of the screen read eight o’clock. There were no messages nor any reception bars. His battery life was at fifty-one percent. As reality flooded back in, it left a searing pain in his chest, the same one he felt whenever he thought about memories of home, of the life he had built with Amy. An agony made worse whenever he skimmed through the many photos he kept on his phone. Those images were beckoning him. Encouraging him to put one foot in front of another.

Get up and keep moving, Nate.

It was that voice again. A firm reminder that he couldn’t sleep, not now, not here. He’d only stopped for a momentary rest from the cold and the wind and the way the impossibly deep snow made his knee ache.

He peeled open the door with a snap and a creak and saw that it was light outside. Not daytime light, but the kind that was common in winter when the streets seemed to take on a hazy glow.

Outside, the wind might have let up a little, but not the snow. That still fell in earnest, large flakes tumbling sideways across his field of view.

“What time is it?” Jessie asked, her voice sleepy.

“Eight,” he replied.

“In the morning?”

“No, at night. We fell asleep for about an hour or so.”

She sat up and rubbed at her eyes. “Got any more of that water?”

He handed her what was left in the disposable bottle. “All yours. Listen, I’m gonna head out. You’re welcome to join me. I know I don’t need to tell you it isn’t safe to stay here.”

“I don’t think I should leave,” she said, genuinely sad.

Nate watched her for a silent moment, wondering whether he should circle around, fling open her door and drag her out for her own good. Doogie wasn’t coming. Nate knew that. The woman was clinging to a fantasy.

Someone wiser than him once said, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it leave a radioactive exclusion zone.” He decided to ask her one final time.

“Thank you,” Jessie replied, her voice firm. “But I’m going to keep waiting. Maybe we’ll see you in Rockford. You can introduce me to your family.”

He told her that would be nice and to take care of herself. And with that Nate grabbed his things and stepped out into the stinging cold. In spite of the cramped confines of the sedan, his knee was already feeling much better. He was no more than a few yards out when he turned to see she was outside, clearing the snow off her windscreen. She stopped and waved one last time. Nate did the same, still uncertain whether she was being incredibly brave or downright foolish.