William Weber - Zero Day

“What’s that?”

She nudged her tiny chin in his direction. “That fork you’re using.”

Nate looked down at it and couldn’t help but laugh. Normally the thought might have turned his stomach, but hunger had a funny way of making the things that used to feel important suddenly insignificant and maybe even petty. That grounding thought drew his attention back to matters more serious.

“Where were you going when they grabbed you?” he asked.

“I was halfway from Leaf River,” she explained—a pinprick of a town a few miles west of Byron. “Heading to my uncle Roger’s place.”

Nate had mentioned her folks earlier and that hadn’t exactly elicited a positive response, but he felt it was important to find out where this girl belonged. “Why your uncle? Are your parents still around?” He really meant ‘alive,’ but wasn’t certain how to frame such a delicate question.

She shrugged. “I’m not sure where they are. My dad started a dog-walking business over the internet that blew up and made us rich. My mother was a real-estate agent, one of the best ones in the country.”

“So far that all sounds like good stuff to me.”

“Maybe on the surface it does. But both of them are about as self-absorbed as you can imagine. I used to live with them in a penthouse apartment in Chicago. We had drivers and servants. That is, until they sent me away to live with my uncle. And then when that didn’t work out they bought me an apartment in Leaf River.”

“Your own apartment at fifteen?” Nate asked, shocked. “Is that even legal?”

“It is when you have the right connections.”

“Must have been hard going from the big city to a place the size of Leaf River. It’s so tiny, it makes Byron feel like a thriving metropolis.”

Dakota sneered. “No kidding. They always liked to keep me at arm’s length. Far enough that I wouldn’t be seen, but close enough that they could whip me back if the Feds ever found out.”

“I’ve never heard anything like that,” Nate said, and he meant it. If that was truly the case then it made sense why she would be heading to find her uncle. “This uncle of yours, what’s his name?”

“Roger. But he usually calls himself something else. Ranger or something like that.”

“Ranger? Okay. Is he from Byron?”

Dakota shook her head. “Roger has two places. A house in Rockford and a cabin in the country, outside of town.”

Nate’s eyes lit up. “I’m heading to Rockford myself.”

“The evacuation collection point?” she asked.

He nodded. “An indoor soccer field they’ve turned into a shelter.”

“If your family is there now, why didn’t you go with them?”

The sigh that escaped his lips came out far more forcefully than he had intended. “Leave no man behind. Isn’t that what the marines say?”

She stared back at him. “Sounds about right.”

“My brother works at the power plant. I couldn’t leave without at least trying to bring him with us.”

“Why couldn’t he get out on his own?” A look of confusion clouded Dakota’s fine features.

“Probably because he’s just as stubborn and loyal as I am. If there was a way to save the plant from melting down he wouldn’t go until he’d tried it.”

“And after?”

“Once it was too late, well, things quickly shifted from prevention to how to avoid the absolute worst-case scenario.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You were worried he would think you had abandoned him.”

Nate rattled the fork in his now empty can of beans. “Maybe. But when I got there the guards played target practice with my truck. Once they were done trying to kill me, they said Evan had been taken to the hospital.”

“Did they say which one?”

“No. Said they didn’t know. And I can’t entirely blame them. The whole situation was pure chaos. My guess is the ambulance would have headed for a hospital outside the exclusion zone. The Javon Bea Hospital is the biggest in Rockford. As good a place to start as any, I suppose.” All this talk of hospitals and nuclear plants made him reach into his pocket and withdraw the Geiger counter.

“What’s that?”

He switched it on and held out the wand. “It measures the amount of radiation in the air.” The device clicked weakly.

“That’s bad, isn’t it?”

“It ain’t good,” he told her. “But it could be worse. The louder, more frantic the sound, the more radiation you’re getting.” He handed her a potassium iodide pill, then took one for himself.

“So we’re safe in here?”

“Not safe. Less exposed.”

“And out there?” she asked, pointing at the window and the blowing snow behind it.

Nate didn’t reply to that one. The deep grooves of tension furrowing along his brow ridge were answer enough.

No matter how you sliced it, there was no getting used to the sting on your cheeks when you first stepped out into the cold. Each time, it seemed to bite as painfully as it did the first.

Protected as best they could against the elements, Nate and Dakota made their way through the school’s inner courtyard, past the remains of Lauren’s pickup and out to the road.

Although she was at least a foot shorter than him, Dakota’s ability to keep up was impressive. For both of them, the procedure remained the same. Search the white space before you for a dip in the snow, lift one foot, swing it forward, drop it down and hope something stopped its descent before you were up to your crotch. No one on earth could look cool trudging along in this fashion, but appearing foolish was a trade Nate was more than willing to make if it kept them alive.

Dakota pointed ahead to a strip where the wind had piled the snow up into a high ledge, leaving the space below it relatively shallow.

They made their way over, Nate already sweating his bits and pieces off. Dressing to face both the numbing cold as well as a bout of intense physical activity was an art he definitely had not yet mastered. By comparison, the girl appeared far more comfortable, in spite of the fact that her jacket was much thinner and lighter than his own.

Not five minutes in, they arrived at a decisive point. Either continue following the side roads back to Blackhawk Drive or cut through an open field and save some time.

The first meant they could keep an eye out for any robust vehicles able to make the journey and willing to take on two extra passengers—slim chance as that was. Off-roading on foot produced its own hazards. Namely, they would be traveling over virgin accumulation. The wind could very well have pushed some parts to over six feet in depth. Not to mention unforeseen barriers. Nate knew of at least one chest-high fence that ran along sections of Highway 2 between Byron and Rockford.

“If only we could find a snowplow,” Dakota shouted in despair.

Nate tucked his head down, pulling at the end of a scarf to cover parts of his exposed face. All joking aside, her suggestion wasn’t half bad, except it would mean heading back into town. Back toward the radiation they were trying so desperately to escape. Serious or not, her comment had jogged something loose in Nate’s brain, a sight he remembered seeing a hundred times over the years as he’d driven between both towns.

“There’s a farm just north of here,” he indicated. “I suggest we head in that direction.”

Dakota cinched her hood tight over the red beanie she was wearing. “What for? More food?”

“Transportation,” he replied. There were horses there. He remembered seeing them from the highway this summer, grazing lazily in the sun, a sight so common in that old life it had faded into the low static of daily background noise.