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      Published: 2017-03-02 Updated: 2017-11-19 Chapters: 12/? Words: 29162
****** Nucleus ******
by Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary
     In a future America ruled by the iron fist of the Republican party,
     police brutality no longer makes the news, oil and coal resources
     have disappeared, and virtually all safety regulations have been
     removed. In their desperation for more money and a source of
     electrical power, the politicians in charge turn to the only answer:
     nuclear energy.
     Alex the EMT/firefighter is saddened by his job.
     Debby the surgical nurse is worried about her husband Mike and their
     transgender son, Kyle.
     Brendon the reactor operator is sick of his untrained and incompetent
     co-workers.
     Derek the soldier doesn't believe in his country, and only joined the
     military because of familial pressures.
     When one of the hastily-built nuclear plants is thrown into chaos by
     a natural disaster, their lives suddenly crash together as they fight
     to rescue the victims, control the damage, and finally cry out
     against the government's war on its citizens.
Notes
     Okay. I'm not a nuclear technician, I'm not a fireman, I'm not a
     surgical nurse and I'm not a soldier. The technical and scientific
     information in this narrative is as accurate as I can make it through
     intensive internet research, but all the political exposition is what
     my imagination considers to be the worst-case scenario. None of the
     crap the Republicans do in this story is stuff that's actually
     happened (except for cops murdering black people for no reason).
***** When they've cut so many corners that it becomes a circle. *****
 
The bill had passed, much to her dismay.
Deborah Blitt didn’t believe in god, but even she had hoped and prayed that it
wouldn’t. It hadn’t worked, of course, because the bill had been passed. She
wasn’t really sure how she could deal with it, either, because it was certain
to be signed into law, and then it would become effective immediately. Even
moving to another state wouldn’t fix the issue; it would be the same
everywhere. And she didn’t have nearly enough money to leave the country
permanently.
Turning away from the counter, Debby slid the Tupperware containers into the
middle shelf of the fridge without looking and saw her son Kyle sitting at the
table. He was staring into his cereal bowl, stirring the Captain Crunch
absently in the milk without taking bites. The hand holding the spoon was
shaking, and after a second she could see the silent tears rolling down his
face. He hadn’t cried since he was six, when he’d skinned both knees on his
bike.
“Kyle, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Usually she would chew him out for lying, because all fourteen-year-olds lied
to their parents but she would do her damnedest to make him grow out of that
habit. But even so, she knew what it was. Moving behind his chair, she rested
her hands on his shoulders and gently squeezed them. Kyle pushed his bowl aside
so that he could rest his face on the table, covering his head with his arms
and shaking.
“I know, honey,” Debby tried to comfort him. “I know it’s really scary, but
we’re going to do everything we can, okay?”
“I can’t go to school today!” he howled in response, muffled in the sleeves of
his shirt. “I can’t! They’ll know, they’ll all know!”
“No they won’t,” she countered, continuing to massage his shoulders. “And if
they do, dad will kick their butts.”
She meant it to be a joke, but immediately realized that it probably wasn’t
helpful. She could only imagine what Kyle was probably feeling.
“I CAN’T GO TO SCHOOL!” he screamed, briefly shifting upright to slam his fists
on the table for emphasis. “I don’t even care about their stupid shit anyway,
it’s not like school ever teaches anything you need to know! What does algebra
have to do with anything? It’s the most stupidest thing ever invented! Screw
them! I’m not going, and you can’t make me!”
Again, normally Debby would’ve bawled him out for swearing. But she knew Kyle
had somewhat of a point. School had taught useful things when she’d been his
age, but after a series of “religious freedom” laws (religious oppression was
more like it, she thought) they were forced to reject most of science and start
teaching so-called Christian ideals. School funding had also been castrated, so
they had very little resources left to teach kids anymore. She wouldn’t have
been surprised if it turned out the cafeteria actually did serve cold canned
dog food like Kyle often claimed.
So, she was shocked even to hear what she said next: “You’re right, Kyle. I
can’t make you go to school… and you know what, I’m not going to try either.
Besides, the cops are so busy shooting black people that they won’t have time
to go after a kid who doesn’t show up for class. So… how about this, you can
have summer vacation a little early and go visit Nana, Granddad and Aunt
Nichole in Vancouver?”
Kyle wiped his face on his sleeve: “Really?”
“Yeah. You can Skype us whenever you need to, and if we can, we’ll take time
off from work and visit you. Okay?”
He offered a wavering smile, relief bright in his eyes. “Thanks, mom. Do they…
you know, have T in Canada?”
“Yeah. They have better laws than us, too, so it’ll be a lot cheaper.” Her son
didn’t say anything else, and gave no protest when Debby pulled him into a hug.
“I’ll help you get your stuff ready once we’ve gotten plane tickets, even your
Xbox.”
“Okay. I just… I really don’t want to go back to being a girl.”
“I know, honey. You won’t have to, I promise.” She gave him a final squeeze and
let go. “Okay. I have to go to work in a few minutes, but your dad will be home
at the usual time. If he ends up pulling a long shift, though, he’ll call me
and I’ll order Domino’s for you. Just stay inside, okay? Don’t go to 7-11 for
soda or anything, we’ve got some in the fridge already.”
“Okay, mom. Thanks.”
As she heard the steps creak under his feet while he climbed the stairs, Debby
wondered how she’d afford a plane ticket for her son. She already pulled
twelve-hour shifts at the hospital most of the time, and when she wasn’t it was
because they were sixteen-hour shifts instead. She’d only had one day off in
the last month, and it took ridiculous amounts of cheap Italian-roast coffee to
keep her alive. Even ten years ago, which seemed like another lifetime now, her
job and her husband’s job had been more than enough to keep them afloat. But
the ridiculous inflation had changed all that, so in spite of being an OR nurse
and Mike being a security guard at the nuclear plant they were barely making
ends meet these days.
Sighing mentally, Debby came to the conclusion that they’d probably have to
give up their shitty cable and internet for at least a few months in order to
fly Kyle to Canada and still be able to buy food. But at least her son would be
safe.
As always these days, she silently cursed the government for their stupid laws,
because even though it was technically still legal, it would be so expensive
and difficult to continue Kyle’s gender-confirmation treatments that
maintaining everything and caring for his mental health was about to become
impossible. As she climbed into her car, she already knew the thoughts would
follow her until she fell asleep when she got home.
 
“How many today?” Jake asked when Alex climbed out of the ambulance.
“Seven,” he muttered grimly. “Fucking seven, man. Two of them were kids. All
the older guys who do this are so, I don’t know. Cold. They don’t fucking care
anymore, and you know what, when I started, I told myself I ain’t gonna be like
them. But you know what, it fucking sucks too much. Why is it like this, man? I
just give them an IV, take them to the ED and then hear in the news a week
later that they fucking died. We don’t even make a dent.”
“Hey, man, you can’t think like that,” his friend urged as they climbed the
stairs. “Remember that time you told me about last year, with the newborn? She
did okay, right? I heard the mom came by with cookies or something later.”
“But that was only one time,” Alex sighed. He couldn’t shake the depressing
pull inside his head. “And for every one time like that, there’s about a
hundred fucking others that don’t end well. I mean, fuck. Just… fuck. Fuck.”
Jake didn’t say anything for a long time, and they ended up sitting opposite
each other at a table in the kitchen. Xavier was cooking something, but Alex
didn’t really care at the moment. It wasn’t like they usually got a chance to
eat right away most of the time - too many shootings, stabbings and drug
overdoses and not enough medics. On top of this, there had been a dramatic gap
in the last few years between the need for emergency services and the number of
people who actually became first responders. Too much training to go through,
not enough pay, not really any good benefits.
Jake Durham and Alex Boyd were two of these personnel, mostly because there
hadn’t been any other jobs for them. He sometimes wondered how there was such
an urgent need for them, but even though there were no jobs anywhere else,
nobody wanted to be one. But another part of him understood. He didn’t want to
be one, either. Especially not now. Five of the shooting victims he’d seen
already today had been, of course, black people targeted by the cops. The other
two were Latino gang members.
In spite of everything, he’d rather be back in the situation they’d had a few
years ago. When the nuclear plant had been under construction, workers had been
injured by the truckload, overwhelming the EMTs so much that at least six
people had died waiting to be seen to. But those had been accidents, real
accidents, and not murders. He wasn’t sure how true they were, but there had
been rumors for a little while that work guidelines hadn’t been followed or
enforced and their tools were cheap. There hadn’t been anything in the news
about it, though, so Alex had no idea how much of those had been based on fact.
But of course, his thoughts were interrupted by the obnoxiously predictable
alarm. Alex couldn’t remember the last hot meal he’d had, and at this rate, he
didn’t think he’d ever enjoy one again, or at least not for a while. Groaning
and getting up, he started back to his ambulance.
 
“So like, somebody tell me this,” Rob Noah was saying. As always, he was
yelling, even though they were in a small break room. Brendon Stahl didn’t
glance up from his paperwork, knowing that Rob would keep talking whether
people were listening or not. “Didn’t we have a bunch of jackass billionaires
who had a hard-on for oil or coal or something? Nobody likes nuclear power,
it’s expensive and all that. Why are they building these plants now?”
“Do you even read the news?” Ty Simmons grunted, his tone irritated. “Even on
Yahoo or anything? They don’t give a shit about the stuff wrong with oil and
coal, but there’s barely any left by now. It costs more for that crap than it
does for uranium at this point, so now we’re back to uranium. And god forbid we
use something safe.”
“Nuclear is safe,” Patrick Finch objected, which drew a sarcastic laugh from
Ty.
“Yeah right. There’s been two level 7 accidents within thirty years of each
other, plus the one at Three Mile Island in the 70’s. And even without that, I
bet this place isn’t safe anyway. There was so many damn accidents when they
were building, and who’s ever heard of a nuclear plant being built in just two
years? It doesn’t happen that way. They cut corners for that, they must’ve.
Someday the roof will fall on us in the control room or something.”
“The roof?” Rob repeated, his loud voice anxious.
“Or the wall, whatever. Maybe the light fixtures will catch fire.”
“They will?!” Rob yelped, panic written on his face.
“Oh my god, dude, are you ever quiet?” Patrick butted in. “Seriously! We’re
right here, you don’t gotta be so loud all the time! Why do you even work here,
anyway? You should be in construction, you wouldn’t even need a megaphone to
yell all the orders, everyone can hear you all the way in India.”
“My IQ is 147,” Rob answered uncertainly, though thankfully he had lowered his
volume a little.
Brendon didn’t take part in the conversation at all, keeping his annoyance to
himself. Rob was obnoxious, but Patrick had been pretty rude himself. Something
was off about Rob, but it didn’t seem to be his fault and Brendon didn’t think
he even realized what he was doing most of the time. Besides, if anyone was
unqualified to work at Edmons-Drake (the plant had been named after two of the
guys in charge of the company that owned it), it was Patrick himself. He’d only
been hired a few months ago, and Brendon could almost swear he’d only been
trained for about a week. He’d chalked it up to budget cuts, but that didn’t
make it a good thing. He always found himself agreeing with Ty, but he was
afraid to admit it because he knew he couldn’t get away with it like the old
man could.
Unfortunately, Patrick seemed to sense when people were thinking about him,
because he started talking again, addressing Brendon now.
“Hey, how come you always spend your breaks doing paperwork? Don’t you ever
stop working?”
“I want to keep my job,” Brendon answered bluntly, still not looking up from
his nearly-overfilled plastic clipboard. Because if anything, you’re proof they
don’t care and they’ll replace me with anyone who reached a fourth-grade
reading level, he thought, but of course he didn’t say it. “It’s called work
ethic. Instead of picking fights with people, I do all the boring crap that I’m
supposed to.”
Just because he wasn’t political didn’t mean he wasn’t passive-aggressive. But
he usually got away with it because it was over Patrick’s head, and no
complaints meant he’d never been reprimanded about it. In the corner of his
eye, he saw that Ty was wearing a subtle smirk at his comment, which made him
feel a bit less cranky. Ty had been more or less his mentor when he’d started
at Edmons-Drake, and the old man had been working in the nuclear field for over
three decades. Brendon had a lot of respect for him, and it still felt good to
have his approval.
“Things were better back when I started,” Ty insisted, continuing his train of
thought from before Patrick’s interruption. “All the regulations. Reactors were
the safest places to work in the country. But it’s all gone to shit by now. It
was annoying, sure. But it kept us from having accidents. My old man told me
about Three Mile Island, because he lived nearby when it happened. Of course he
was just a kid then, but he read about it when he was a little older. And the
accident in Russia, has anyone told you about that? A ridiculous explosion. The
place is still dangerous, even though they built a new confinement over it.
They were cheap, they built four reactors in what was basically just a damn
warehouse. Four reactors! And we’ve got seven here. And then later there was a
tsunami in Japan, took out three reactors there. Now, that was an accident,
something they couldn’t do anything about. But even still. If those safety
measures hadn’t been in place, it would have killed people like the one in
Russia. But I bet we have, maybe, half as many here as we’re supposed to. And
I’ve seen filters for the respirators during drills that are out of date, but
when I brought it up, Watterson just shrugged at me and said he’d look into it.
Fifteen years ago, if I went to my boss with something like that, the whole
plant would have been shut down in an uproar and half the staff would’ve been
fired. I couldn’t believe him, he didn’t understand that it’s a big deal.
Ridiculous. That’s the only word there is for it.”
“You know, I bet the things don’t even expire,” Patrick argued. “They just say
they do, so they can make people buy more. I’ve heard that sometimes.”
“That’s not the point.” Ty shook his head. “If there’s even a chance they could
stop working, it puts people at risk. And the only reason the dosimeters got
calibrated on time is because me and Ted bitched about it enough until they did
it so we’d shut up. That’s not okay, you know? How did we get to this? Damn.”
 
After the Republican party gained complete control of the government, they
began cutting regulations for corporations across the board. While claiming
this would help “job creators” stimulate the economy, in reality this only
meant lower quality of services due to the lack of standards. The extra money
went to the corporate owners, while they still continued to pay their workers
less than what they needed to survive. Inflation skyrocketed, contributing to
the problem, and despite the expense to the average consumer the products
themselves were severely sub-par.
This was hidden from the general public as much as possible, while
fearmongering distracted them from real issues. The environment also began to
suffer enormously, causing “natural” disasters to occur with increasing
frequency to the point where they’re almost considered normal. Some rebuilding
efforts were attempted, but they were largely ineffectual due to lack of first
responders. Most government spending was allocated to military budgets, with
very little left for anything other than pointless warfare over inadequate and
disappearing resources.
The economy suffered and the nation became stagnant. Quality of life for the
majority of citizens nearly lowered to that of people living in “third world”
countries, while an undeserving few reaped the rewards and lived in their own
private paradises. With their enormous power and wealth, they were able to
oppress the country in whatever ways they pleased without resistance.
Because of the suffering industry and the almost complete exhaustion of fossil
fuels, energy production turned to nuclear power as a solution. But due to lack
of industry standards, reactors were built in a hurry with minimal planning and
the cheapest materials available. Emphasis was placed on speed of production,
not safety, and on every work site at least one death occurred each month along
with dozens of injuries in varying severity.
The safety measures applied to nuclear reactors during construction and for
operation once they’d been completed were severely outdated for budget reasons
and sometimes ignored altogether by supervisors. Within two years, ten new
sites for nuclear power stations were commissioned, each having at least two
reactors which were built simultaneously.
Ten workers died from falls when the safety measures were inadequate or absent.
Seventeen workers died due to poisoning when working with chemicals during
finishing work. Twenty-three were electrocuted by faulty equipment. Two burned
to death as a result of improperly stored chemicals during a welding operation.
Eight became trapped in various ways, either asphyxiating or becoming crushed.
One was impaled by a falling object and bled to death before the ambulance
arrived due to over-stressing of emergency services. Four workers were killed
on the same site when the cable of a crane snapped and a load of cinder-
blocks fell on them. This amounts to a total of 65 deaths, to name a few.
In two years, with a total 456 deaths and uncounted thousands of injuries,
twenty-nine nuclear reactors spread across ten sites were constructed. Poorly
constructed, with flawed designs and sub-standard materials, but constructed
nonetheless.
To say nothing of their operation following completion.
***** When the Geiger counters haven't been calibrated. *****
[hey where wer u 2day]
[mom let me stay home. stupid laws about 2 be real so im going 2 canada]
[lucky bastard]
[sorry man. ill txt u all th time]
[how long u b in canada]
[idk]
[when u leaving]
[idk soon]
Kyle stuffed his phone back into the pocket of his jeans and slumped in his
chair. He felt bad about leaving his best friend behind, the only other trans
kid he knew. Whenever they were hanging out, it was usually at Kyle’s house
because his mom was supportive, and also because Zach (Kaitlin) wasn’t out yet.
His parents were the stereotypical religious nut balls, so he wasn’t allowed to
transition. Kyle felt so bad about it that he always let Zach hang out with him
over the weekend and borrow his clothes.
Kyle had been put on puberty blocking medications at 11 and started
testosterone at 13, so he passed about 95% of the time, but Zach wasn’t on any
hormones and looked like a 4’9” 14-year-old girl. Kyle helped Zach duct tape
his chest tuck his hair under a baseball cap if they were going to 7-11 or
anywhere else outside the house, even though boys with long hair wasn’t that
uncommon. He just wanted to help his friend. At school Zach had always been
made fun of for being weird, so they’d come up with the idea to pretend Zach
was his girlfriend at school. It had immediately stopped after that, because
Kyle was a defenseman on the hockey team and they knew he could kick their ass
if he wanted to.
His phone buzzed again in his pocket.
[what am i going 2 do when ur gone]
 
“Hey Alex!”
“What?” he shouted from where he was squeezing a stress ball on his bunk.
“C’mere, shit just got real again!”
“Mother of god,” he muttered, standing up and moving into the common space
without much hurry. “What are they doing this time?”
“Just look,” Ben Jones pointed.
Alex turned to the TV, which was on one of the news channels and showing a
congressman. “...and at least one new reactor to be built at the existing
sites. This will mean more jobs and more electricity for everyone, without
resorting to unreliable energy sources like solar or wind. The five new plants
will be commissioned in New Mexico, Maine, Florida, Texas and New Hampshire.”
“Ah, shit,” Jake cursed from the beaten couch. “Now we’ll be swamped again
coming up with injuries, and Edwards just quit last week so we’re more short
than we were last time. Asshats and their stupid power plants. Don’t they ever
build anything else?”
“Prisons for people who aren’t white,” Ben pointed out dryly. “I bet there’s
twice as many prisons as there are cities and towns by now. You know, last year
before my grandpa died, he told me that we used to be the ones everyone ran to
if their countries were treating them like shit. I’ve never seen that, though.
Everyone runs from us now. But all the politicians and everyone, they keep
saying immigrants are a big problem and that’s why we’ve got no jobs. How does
that work? Nobody comes here anymore, and half the country is locked up. Why
are there still no jobs?”
Alex shrugged: “I mean, maybe there’s jobs in other places. Think it could be
just us?” Even as he said it, though, he knew it couldn’t be true.
“Nah, man. There’s something stupid about the way all this works. Maybe we
should all leave, too, you know? There’s gotta be someplace better. Where
there’s enough jobs and enough firemen and people who actually have health
insurance.”
Jake gave a sarcastic laugh.
“Yeah right. All my runs last year I think I saw twenty patients with health
insurance. Besides, where do we leave to go to? Any of the countries who don’t
seem to have their heads up their asses only take the ones who’re in trouble.
We’re healthy white men between twenty and thirty, they’d never let us in. Plus
my girlfriend looked into it, it’s fucking expensive anyway. How do you pay for
moving to Germany or Australia when you make fifteen bucks an hour and a gallon
of milk already costs ten?”
“Does anyone even drink milk anymore?” Alex wondered, frowning. He hadn’t had
any in several years now.
“Yeah, rich people,” Ben answered bitterly. He shook his head. “Man, if I
wasn’t a fireman, I wouldn’t even have a place to fucking live right now. I
could give a shit about being stuck here on my days off, but someday I want to
have a fucking shower without worrying about getting called on a run and still
covered in soap.”
“Don’t we all just live here, though? At least most of us do, right?”
“I live with my mom,” Jake shrugged. “And I think Xavier has an apartment, but
he has like six roommates. So it would basically be the same as living here
with us all the time.”
“Does she still wash your socks and cut the crusts off your sandwiches?” Ben
joked.
“They’re better that way,” Jake grinned, rolling with it.
Alex smirked, but he couldn’t find a laugh. He hadn’t found a laugh since he’d
first started here.
 
“The 4:30 case was cancelled,” Penny DuQuest informed her.
Debby sighed with relief - both at the prospect of a break and that Penny had
told her this only two minutes after she’d started setting up OR 4.
“What happened?”
“Dr. Wolfe said there was an error made somewhere along the line. Turns out the
patient doesn’t have the right insurance after all.”
Immediately, her good feeling vanished.
“That woman has a tumor in her neck, how does this happen? I know there’s a lot
of people who don’t have it at all, but why is insurance offered when it just
refuses to help them anyway?”
Penny rolled her eyes and helped her remove the instrument packs from the OR.
“I don’t know anymore. Casey said there was a pregnant woman a few weeks ago
who delivered by C-section and was sent home two days later. The boyfriend
wanted to sue us for it until he found out it was the insurance company’s
fault, so now he’s going after them. I don’t think he’ll get anywhere, though.
Nobody ever does these days.”
“Healthcare is such a mess,” Debby complained as they left the sub-sterile hall
and went into the locker room, pulling the bouffant from her hair and feeling
her ponytail against her neck. “I went to nursing school because I wanted to
help people, but it just feels like most of the time I’m not allowed to because
the people who need it are too broke to pay the medical bills. How many people
die because they can’t pay for a trip to the ED? Even my husband, he’s been
having some erythema and his hair is thinning. I’m worried he could have cancer
or something, but all our money is tied up getting my son out of the country
and keeping our cars just barely functional. And he gets nuclear plant pay!
They give him forty-seven dollars an hour, but seventy-five just barely buys a
day’s worth of groceries. How is it that a hundred dollars isn’t a lot of money
anymore? When I was a nursing student, a hundred and twenty dollars would buy
me a month’s worth of cheap internet. Now our bill for the internet and Netflix
together is about five hundred a month.”
The two women slid the shoe covers from their clogs and threw them away as they
talked and checked the pockets of their scrub jackets for unused alcohol pads.
“The only reason Bill and I have a house at all is because it was my parents’
before they died and somehow they’d gotten it paid off. But his sister and her
kids live with us and ours because otherwise we couldn’t pay the utilities and
they can’t afford to live independently. How did we all live in our own houses
when I was a kid? Away from everyone else? I think if I had that much space
now, I’d go crazy because I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
“We have our own house, but Kyle’s bedroom is about the size of a shoebox and
it’s actually the attic with some crappy wallpaper. We have the real bedroom,
but other than that the kitchen and the living room are the same space.
Sometimes I feel bad, because I know Mike and I have more than most people do
because our jobs pay a little more. But we don’t have much at all, either. Kyle
has an Xbox because his grandparents gave him one for Christmas, but they live
in Vancouver and have money. They send us part of their retirement, too. That’s
really the only reason we’ve stayed afloat this long.” Debby sighed and rubbed
her eyes. “I’m going to try and steal a nap, but you can page me if you hear
anything, okay?”
Penny nodded. “The next case isn’t until six anyway. I’d have one too but it’s
my month to check the crash-carts.”
Of course she was paged and woken up from sleep, and even though it had been
half an hour it felt like she’d only gotten to lay down three minutes ago.
Wrenching herself out of bed, Debby slid her feet back into her clogs and half-
stumbled back to the OR hall. As she was about to reach the badge scanner to
open the doors, though, Penny burst out of them and all but sprinted to her.
“Deb, an ambulance just brought your husband in.”
 
“Wh… where’re you takin’ me?”
“You’re going to the hospital, sir. I’m Alex, I’m a paramedic for the fire
department. Your friends at the plant said you passed out after a safety drill.
They called us and your skin looks pretty red, so we’re just going to have the
doctors check you out, okay? Just try to stay calm, sir.”
“I can’t… our ’nsurance migh’ not pay.”
“Don’t worry about that, most insurance pays for emergencies,” Alex replied,
making a mental note of the slight confusion the patient seemed to be having.
Ben backed the ambulance into one of the empty bays and opened the doors. Alex
had the end of the stretcher at the man’s head and a doctor was, surprisingly,
waiting for them. Usually it was a nurse or even just a security guard because
the hospital, like their fire station, was severely understaffed.
“What have we got, boys?” the doctor asked as he stretched cheap exam gloves
over his hands.
“Forty-six-year-old male, brief loss of consciousness after strenuous activity.
Currently presenting mild delirium and erythema of the hands, neck and face.
Vitals are stable and well within acceptable limits. No fever.”
They pushed the man into an empty cubicle and Alex heard the doctor start
pulling the curtain as they transferred him to one of the hospital stretchers.
As the nurse was also entering the cubicle, Alex and Ben left the emergency
department so that they could get back to work. In the corner of his eye he
could see his partner tapping at his phone screen.
“What’s up?”
“Just looking up that guy’s symptoms… they seemed pretty random to me.”
“Yeah, I was surprised when I took his temp and it was normal,” Alex admitted
as he climbed into the back of the vehicle and started sorting things out so it
would be tidy for the next run. “He looked like he was in pretty good shape,
too, so I don’t know how he’d just pass out after a training exercise. I heard
those nuclear plant guards are practically marines.”
“Maybe he saw blood and fainted,” Ben joked as he pulled the driver door shut
and turned the engine.
“At least it was something other than a fucking gang stabbing victim,” Alex
grunted, feeling them pull away from the hospital as he made sure there was an
IV starter kit within easy reach. “Or some guy who got shot by the cops. It
seems like that’s all we ever get anymore.”
 
Once Brendon’s shift had ended, he turned in his dosimeter as per usual before
leaving the building and crossing the grounds to one of the administration
buildings. He wasn’t sure why so much office space had been built, because they
didn’t have as many pencil-pushers as Ty often said there should be. But this
was really a good thing, because enough of the staff (himself included)
couldn’t afford a place to live that they’d hit upon the idea to just sleep
there. They’d pried apart the desks and bookcases to build makeshift bunks, and
even though it wasn’t comfortable or remotely private it was still better than
sleeping in a cardboard box. They’d at least saved the chairs, so one of the
conference rooms was more or less a common area and even had a television that
someone had brought in.
Unfortunately, being one of the younger workers, Brendon had one of the higher
bunks that was annoying to climb into. It was a pain to haul himself up there
for sleep, but he was used to it by now. At first it had been excruciating to
sleep on a disassembled office desk with nothing but an old sleeping bag for
hiking, but by now he’d amassed enough blankets and other padding that it was
bearable.
Ugh, I’ll have to wash them all soon, Brendon thought to himself, wrinkling his
nose. His bedding was starting to smell gross again. He grabbed his sweatshirt
from where it was stuffed into the corner of his bunk and dropped back down to
the floor, changing into it and tossing his work shirt back up. Laundry was
another hassle, but there were enough janitor’s closets with basins in the
administration buildings that there usually wasn’t a problem with waiting.
Brendon smirked at a typical sight in their stolen sleeping quarters: “So, how
much are we glowing right now?”
Nick Phillips brushed off the joke, still checking the room around him with the
wand of the Geiger counter. For some reason, the guy was always worried about
leaks, so when his shift ended he would always poke around their living spaces
to make sure there wasn’t some kind of accident.
“The needle’s still at zero,” the short man replied flatly, his dark eyes glued
to the dial of the antique counter. The clunky thing had probably been around
since the 1950’s. “It’s just weird, really. The probability of something
happening before now was pretty good, if the construction accidents are
anything to go by.”
“Oh, god, have you been talking to Rob again?” Brendon groaned, rolling his
eyes and stuffing his hands into the front pouch of his sweatshirt. “That guy’s
so freaking weird, I don’t know why he works here. He always thinks the
reactors are about to bust open for no reason.”
“I had a friend like him growing up,” Nick replied slowly, only now glancing at
Brendon from the corner of his eye. “Twitchy, jumpy. He was loud, too, and
obsessed with building architecture. Andy was so smart, he always had better
grades than me even though he took about five minutes to complete an entire
standardized test. And he became a construction worker.”
“Um… well, good for him I guess. He found a job.”
“That’s not the point. Nuclear reactors are Rob’s obsession. He doesn’t know
he’s doing it, and he’s not annoying on purpose. We need to just let him do his
thing. It’s not like he’s a bad worker or anything, and he doesn’t spread
rumors about other people.”
Brendon paused for a second before his shoulders slumped in defeat. “I’m
sorry,” he muttered. “I just get kind of tired of hearing about how an accident
is just waiting to happen here. I know this place should’ve been built better,
Ty told me all about it. But c’mon, if there was gonna be a leak don’t you
think there would’ve been one by now? Besides, it’s not like we’re the ones
building the plants and a stack of bricks is going to fall on our heads.”
“It’s okay,” Nick acknowledged. “You know, it’s really exhausting to be afraid
of shit all the time. I’m kind of jealous of you sometimes. You don’t even
notice.”
Brendon smiled, but it was an expression of cynicism.
“With all the other crap I see and hear about, I could give a rat’s ass about a
leak. Besides, it’s not like they ever check our exposure anyway. Even if there
is one, we’d probably just keep working here like always. Nothing would
change.”
Nick snorted in agreement: “Yeah, I heard Ty and Ted bitching about the Geiger
counters not being calibrated. I bet it’s because Watterson’s so cheap, he
doesn’t care if we start growing extra fingers and eyes.”
“Does that actually happen if you take too many rems?”
“Hell if I know. I think it could be mostly kids, though. So just buy some lead
boxers.”
Brendon laughed, then slapped the other man’s shoulder before leaving the room
so he could watch a football game with the others.
 
Radiation is a danger that people can’t see, hear, feel or smell. The first
major studies of its effects on the human body was conducted in Japanese
hospitals following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Though this
provided a spectrum of information on radiation poisoning, the database is
still somewhat limited as the illness has only been encountered on rare
occasions. As nuclear weapons have not been used since then, the greatest
danger at the present time (especially considering hasty construction as
previously noted) is to workers who staff nuclear power stations. While not
reported by the government, which controls nearly all channels of media, there
have been minor accidents resulting in injury or death to at least one worker.
Kevin Bauer, 38, non-licensed operator: During the opening of a valve to
control water flow, a poorly-welded pipe joint cracked and sprayed the worker,
soaking his clothes before emergency repairs were made. He was exposed to 103
rem of radioactivity, but only changed his clothing and returned to work. He
was admitted to the hospital after his wife forced him the following day, and
while he recovered from the radiation sickness, he is still struggling to pay
the medical bills.
Adam Greenslit, 29, mechanical technician: While performing routine maintenance
in a turbine hall, faulty wiring caused an electrical fire only five days after
the reactor had begun operation. He suffered severe burns to his face and chest
when the fire caused some improperly-stored chemicals explode. (The chemicals
were unable to be identified.) He was rushed to the hospital by ambulance and
died from complications related to smoke inhalation two days later.
Chester Klock, 30, chemistry technician: Due to lack of safety procedures and
training, the worker was forced by his supervisor to aid in the transport of
spent fuel to a containment building (which is not a function he was
responsible for). A faulty container ruptured and contaminated him with more
than 450 rem of radioactivity. Within an hour he’d begun vomiting and certain
parts of his body became inflamed. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance
with acute radiation syndrome, and died nine days later as a result.
Michael Foster, 22, chemistry technician: In the same incident that killed
Klock, the worker was also exposed to radioactive particles. Although receiving
only 327 rem of radiation, a significant amount of the waste-isotope Strontium-
90 accumulated in his bones, destroying his red marrow. Despite numerous
transfusions he died after twenty-five days. A fetal liver cell transplant to
replace the marrow could have saved his life, but as abortions are a criminal
offense in the country, this procedure was impossible.
Again, to mention only a few.
***** When the engineer goes on break without asking. *****
Debby was surprised when Kyle picked up right away: “Hi, mom. Is dad getting
home late?”
“No, he um… he got taken to the hospital because he passed out at work. He’s
going to be okay, he just needs to stay home from work for a few weeks.”
“Why’d he pass out?”
“He just has some chronic exposure, that’s all. The doctor said he just needs
some rest and to drink plenty of water.”
“But I thought we can’t afford to go to the doctor, mom.”
“This is different, since it’s an emergency we only have to pay about a
thousand dollars instead of the whole bill. Besides, now you can play games on
the Xbox with dad before you fly to Vancouver.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, I have to go back to work now, honey.”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
“Yup.”
“Bye.”
“Bye, mom.”
Tapping the screen of her phone, Debby slid it into the pocket of her scrub
pants and sighed. She’d just finished washing up after helping scrub the
instruments and putting them into the rack that would send them down to central
sterile, but she knew there was another case coming once OR 7 had been set up.
She wouldn’t get the chance to run down and see her husband in-between.
Washing her hands again because she’d touched her phone, Debby forced gloves
over her damp skin with some effort and paced down the hall and into the room
the next case would be in. Penny and Alyssa were already there, beginning to
pull the instruments and supplies that Dr. Wolfe had ordered. They were setting
up for staging and debulking ovarian cancer, and Dr. Rheiner was assisting.
This fact wasn’t especially pleasing - she’d had to work with him only a few
times before, and while all surgeons tended to be callous and impersonal, Dr.
Rheiner was particularly cold.
“How’s Mike doing?” Alyssa queried as she brought in the linens for the
surgical tables.
“He’ll live. Apparently he’s been chronically exposed to low doses of gamma
radiation, so his supervisor made the call for him to have paid leave for a few
weeks. The ED doc said to make sure he stays hydrated.”
“That’s all?”
“Apparently. If I remember when I get home I’ll check to see if there’s any
food that’ll help him feel better. Maybe I’ll even be able to afford to buy
it.” Debby couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice as she hung a bag of
saline on the IV pole. “I’m leaning more and more towards just selling
everything and moving back to Vancouver. My sister already said she’d help me
out if it happens, it’s just such a hassle… but I don’t think I can let my
husband keep being poisoned at work.”
Alyssa offered a sympathetic expression, but didn’t reply, and they worked for
the next few minutes in silence. As Debby was retrieving several kidney basins
for specimen collection, she found her mind on her son. Once Kyle was eighteen,
he might get a similar surgery, to remove his “female” reproductive organs. It
was interesting that a procedure to save a patient’s life would also give her
son the life he wanted.
Assuming being transgender wasn’t made to be completely illegal in the next
four years.
 
“Hey, who else is off tomorrow?” Brendon asked, glancing around the room.
“There’s enough cash in the pool, I was planning on a food run.”
“I can help,” Nick offered. “I think Oskar and John are off, too.”
“Just make sure you leave early, before Watterson shows up,” a worker whose
name Brendon couldn’t remember warned. “I went out on the last one, and we left
too late so he saw us swiping the truck. We had to come up with all kinds of
bullshit reasons when we got back. I can’t believe he fell for it, though. We
weren’t even in work clothes.”
There was a collective snicker throughout the group, along with some mutters
about how thick the administrative supervisor was. Brendon shook his head,
grinning and waiting for them to quiet again.
“Any special requests along with the usual stuff? Last week we got donuts, so
something else.”
“Chocolate bars!”
“Skittles!”
Everyone started yelling at once, but it died down again after a moment.
“Hey, how about chips?” the last one called out, which was met with agreeable
murmuring.
“Okay then, chips. We’ll grab a couple different flavors and maybe dip if
there’s extra money. So it’ll be me, Oskar, John and Nick, right?”
“Yup,” John Varnham affirmed from the back of the room. “Hey, uh, we gotta be
careful, though. The news lady said the weather’s gonna be shit tomorrow.”
 
After he’d got off the phone, Kyle flopped down onto his bed. It was just a
twin-size mattress in the corner on the floor, but it was comfortable enough.
Pushing his face into his pillow, he let himself start worrying again; about
Zach, about his dad. About flying to Canada by himself and trying not to get
lost in the airport terminal while he looked for his aunt.
Kyle didn’t know much about politics, only what his parents always bitched
about to each other when they got home from work. Health insurance and budget
cuts and gang violence and evil police officers. Or, when they thought he
wasn’t listening, how the government was stomping out the last rights that
trans people had.
Screw you, government, he thought, feeling bitter.
He didn’t know why the government hated him so much. Or anyone else, for that
matter. Sometimes Kyle felt like the entire world was trying to crush him, to
force him away from himself. Everything around him was getting stupider and
stupider, but he always had at least fourteen hours’ worth of homework every
night even though he had a hard time sleeping. His teachers always told him he
was supposed to want something “realistic” for his life, even though he
couldn’t imagine himself as anything but a professional hockey player. The
government was trying to make him turn back into a girl, even though he’d known
he was a boy since he was six years old and he couldn’t possibly go back now.
Rolling off his bed, Kyle pulled a mostly-full blue spiral notebook out of his
backpack and flipped to the first empty page. It was supposed to be for school,
but he would be in Canada soon and he knew his grandparents would buy him new
notebooks for the next school year. Pulling a pen out with it, he sat cross-
legged on the floor in a pile of dirty clothes as he scrawled the same sentence
on every line:
I am a hockey player.
Except for the last line of the last page.
I am a boy.
 
No matter how much Alex tossed and turned, he just couldn’t fall asleep that
night. He was exhausted and kept yawning silently in the dark, but his eyes
didn’t want to stay closed and his brain wouldn’t settle. Somehow restlessness
had settled into him a few hours ago, the same feeling he sometimes got before
an especially gruesome car accident or gang shooting, and he found himself
worrying that soon he’d be out on runs all night and then again tomorrow until
he just collapsed from exhaustion.
Alex rolled onto his stomach, pulling the thin pillow over his head and sighing
into the mattress. He tried to bore himself to sleep by remembering - his
bunker gear was next to Engine 2, they’d filled all the SCBA tanks, they’d
recently gotten in some more jugs of Class A foam. Ambulance 1 had a mostly-
empty box of size medium gloves and an unopened one, and he’d packed together a
few extra IV starter-kits because they used so many during a shift. Engine 4
was scheduled for maintenance soon.
Why wasn’t it working? Why couldn’t he sleep?
 
When the explosion occurred, none of them knew it.
Kyle was sleeping late.
Debby was in surgery.
Alex was on a call for an attempted suicide.
Brendon was paying for groceries with money pooled by the entire staff.
The rain was pouring buckets that morning; there was a hurricane nearby, close
enough to make bad weather for them, but far enough not to put them in danger.
Or so they thought.
The edge of the storm system moved close enough to Edmons-Drake that the wind
had begun to pick up, which wouldn’t have been a problem if the roof over the
turbine hall for reactor 2 hadn’t been leaking. This itself wouldn’t have been
enough to cause damage if the engineer hadn’t decided to take an unscheduled
break in order to call his girlfriend. The water pooled in a corner of the
floor by the turbine, eventually penetrating into a cluster of electrical
wires. A line of ordinary 12-gage solid copper had been fastened to one of the
wood beams with a staple, and the electrician who’d installed it had pounded
the staple down enough to cut into the rubber sheath and touch the black feed.
The leak hit the wire and it began sparking, eventually catching fire inside
the wall that separated the turbine hall from the reactor housing. Time
constraints and material cost had kept the owners of the plant from adding a
containment dome to the blueprints prior to construction, so the reactor
housing was separated from the outside world by only a series of exterior
walls.
The fire spread through the space between the interior wall and the exterior
wall, eventually creating a weak point in the structure. When the winds, by
that point having reached significant speed, tore down a pylon, it was pitched
into the exterior wall over the reactor housing on exactly the section that had
been weakened by the electrical fire. Damaged by the heat, the impact of the
pylon and the force of the rain, the shell of the reactor cracked.
***** When they lose consciousness. *****
“Weren’t we just there yesterday?” Ben grumbled from the driver’s seat as the
ambulance hurtled up the road at full pelt, sirens howling.
“Yeah, for the guard who passed out,” Alex nodded. He was gripping the handle
of the door so hard his knuckles were white - the rain was coming down in
sheets and the wind nearly pushing the vehicle off the side of the highway into
a ditch. “They called for all the departments in the state, though. Have you
ever heard that?”
“Uh… no. Just the county, once, when that high school burned down. But never
the whole state. Probably some power lines got knocked down or something.”
Alex frowned to himself but didn’t say anything. A few downed power lines
wasn’t enough to mobilize thousands of firemen to a single location. He was too
tired to really care, though. He hadn’t slept at all last night, even though
there hadn’t been any calls until the morning when a teenager had tried to
poison herself with Tylenol. Yawning widely, he slid his phone out of his
pocket.
“What’s up?” Jake’s voice answered from the other end after a couple of rings.
“Hey, we’re on our way over right now. Did you grab my bunker gear? If there’s
only a few patients I’ll still be able to help whatever it is that’s going on
over there.”
“Yeah, we tossed your stuff into the empty seat, so when you’re done running
back and forth in the rig you can join up with us. Hey, uh, did you hear that
radio call too, or am I just losing my shit? I swear they called for everyone
across the board.”
“No, that was real, man. Do we know what it is yet?”
“Nah, I haven’t heard shit about it yet. You’ll probably get there before us,
right? So gimme a shout when you get there and it ends up not being a big
deal.”
Alex snorted: “Yeah, okay. See you there.”
“Yup.”
“Hey, do you taste that?” Ben asked once he’d hung up.
“Taste what?”
“On the end of your tongue, like aluminum foil. Or if you licked a metal bar.”
“When did you lick a metal bar?” Alex smirked before realizing that yes, he
could taste it. “Shit. It’s in my mouth, what is that?”
“I don’t know,” Ben shook his head. He slowed down as they were pulling up to
the station. “And actually I’ve never licked a metal pole, but I think this is
what it would taste like.”
Turning at a corner of one of the plant buildings, Alex’s eyes flew open and he
instantly forgot his exhaustion when he saw the inferno eating at the roof of a
different structure. The block beside it had an entire wall caved in with part
of a power stack melted into it, and the intense light made his eyes hurt
enough to look away. A group of at least ten plant workers were scrambling
across the parking lot towards one of the main buildings, their faces obscured
by respirators and some kind of instruments in hand.
“Fuck,” Alex breathed, barely able to comprehend the sight. “What’s that
burning? I’ve never seen a fire like this.”
Before Ben could answer, a plant worker sprinted over to the ambulance,
flapping his arms over his head for them to stop. The ambulance jerked to a
halt and Alex jumped out to talk to the frantic man.
“Hey! Get back in the ambulance, you’ll get sick!”
“What!?!” Alex screamed - he only caught half the words over the raging storm
and the howling sirens.
“Get back in the ambulance!” the worker repeated, stepping closer and bellowing
through his gas mask. “Put something over your face! You’ll breathe in the
radiation!”
Alex nodded, but only had a vague idea what the worker meant. He thought
radiation only happened when a nuclear bomb went off. Even so, he climbed back
into the ambulance and slammed the door, wiping rain from his hair and face.
Even in those few seconds his clothes had become drenched.
“What’d he want?”
“He said to wear something on our faces, because of radiation.”
“Yeah, right,” Ben scoffed as he began driving again, taking them the last few
yards to the entrance of the crumbling block. Several injured people were being
gathered there. “In this shit-show? All we have are procedure masks, they’ll
just be soaked and won’t help anyway.”
Climbing into the back, they stretched gloves over their hands and slipped the
stretcher down to the pavement. Every step across the parking lot was a fight
to keep their balance against the torrents, even though it was barely ten feet
in total. Three other ambulance crews were already there, placing IVs and
sorting out the worst injured. But it seemed like a dozen new casualties were
arriving every second, carried by their compatriots.
“Hey!” Alex yelled, slapping another medic’s shoulder. “Who’s the most hurt?”
“Take him!”
The man jabbed a finger at a plant worker in a burnt uniform. Alex noticed that
the paramedic’s glove had been torn open at the palm, but he didn’t say
anything and went over to the plant worker.
The man’s wounds were horrific - his face and hands were cracked and bleeding,
and where his clothes hadn’t been burned to his skin they were coated in vomit.
He coughed roughly and looked at them as they were lifting him onto the
stretcher, but even once they’d gotten him to the ambulance he’d completely
lost consciousness.
“Christ on a crutch,” Alex muttered, locking the stretcher in place and pulling
the back doors shut. “Ben, you gotta floor it, we’re already losing this guy.”
“I’ll try, but the storm’s still bad,” his partner called back.
As he cut away the uniform with scissors, Alex made a face as skin was pulled
away with it and discolored blood began spattering the metal floor and his
gloves. He’d been a firefighter since he’d gotten out of school, and a medic
almost as long, but he’d never seen injuries this bad before. As he slipped an
O2 mask onto the victim’s face he shook clumps of bloody hair from his fingers,
and then discovered that there was nowhere to place an IV; the man’s skin was
either charred or had been peeled off with his clothes. It was grotesque.
“Shit,” Alex hissed under his breath, struggling to find a vein in the plant
worker’s thigh. Only once he’d accomplished this did he start attaching the EKG
leads and the pulse oximeter. Tiny pieces of flesh stuck to his hands and he
was forced to change them in the middle of stabilizing the man - they’d become
too sticky to work otherwise.
Alex would never know it, but the simple act of removing the contaminated
gloves probably helped save his life.
 
“What the hell is this?” John wondered from the passenger seat of the truck.
Brendon’s eyebrows scrunched together on his face, and all he could do was
shake his head. Every two seconds they had to pull to the side to let a
ridiculously long column of fire trucks and ambulances race by them, flashing
lights reflecting off the slick surface of the highway and sirens incessantly
whining. They would get back on the road again, only to get out of the way
before they even hit the speed limit.
“It’s going to take us two fucking hours to get back if this keeps up,” Oskar
spat impatiently.
“Knock it off,” Nick immediately rebuked the other man. “Bitching and moaning
won’t help and we don’t want to hear it.”
Brendon couldn’t blame them for being cranky - if they took too long bringing
back the groceries, the guys who came back on lunch break would give them a
bunch of crap for it. Actually, he was feeling it a little, too.
“Hey, can you toss me something from back there?”
“Like food?”
He rolled his eyes: “No, a fucking football. Yes, food! Gimme one of those bags
of chips or something.”
A green bag of sour cream and onion chips was dropped into his lap with a
slight crunch. When he was forced to pull over for the two hundredth time he
busied his hands opening it while another line of fire trucks screamed past,
throwing water over the windshield. After a couple of minutes and several
handfuls of chips, he was able to start driving again.
“How many of those damn trucks have gone by us so far?” John grumbled. “I feel
like they should’ve run out by now.”
“Right? It looks like every fireman in the country is going that way,” Nick
agreed.
“Do firemen eat donuts? If they were cops, I could understand this, because
then we’d just know there’s a sale at Walmart where a twenty-four pack of
powder sugars are on sale for twelve bucks,” Brendon sneered cynically.
“No, I don’t think they do,” Nick answered. “I’m pretty sure it’s just cops who
eat donuts. Free dalmatian puppies?”
Brendon snorted; “Yeah, that could be it.”
He stopped in the shoulder again, reaching into the bag. As soon as they hit
his tongue, though, he made a face and reflexively spat the chips out onto his
pants before he’d even started chewing.
“Gross, man! Couldn’t you spit out the window or something?” John shouted.
“Fuck you, man! They taste like lead!”
“What now?” Oskar inquired, unstrapping himself so he could lean his head into
the front of the cab.
“Taste this!” Brendon pointed the open end of the bag to him. “They were fine a
few minutes ago, I don’t know what happened.”
The other three exchanged confused looks for a hesitant moment before reaching
in for the chips. Unsurprisingly, they all had the same reaction.
“What the hell? This tastes like when I used to eat pennies as a kid,” Nick
grimaced.
“Well that explains a lot,” John snickered, which he got punched in the arm
for.
“I guess the bag must’ve got contaminated somehow,” Oskar shrugged.
“But they tasted like food before now,” Brendon insisted even as he turned back
to the road and shifted the truck into drive. He shook his head. “Whatever.
Just throw the fucking things away, and if someone doesn’t get any chips this
week just tell them the store didn’t have enough.”
“The taste is still in my mouth, too,” Oskar complained as he threw the bag out
the window, letting wind blast into the vehicle for a second before it closed.
Brendon was about to answer, but Nick spoke up first - “Hey, is it just me, or
are all those trucks headed for the plant?”
“It kinda looks that way, doesn’t it?” John muttered.
There was a surprisingly long lull in the parade of emergency vehicles after
that, and they arrived back at the power station about ten minutes later. Sure
enough, the campus of Edmons-Drake was so clogged that they had to park before
they even reached the first building, which would be a bitch when it came to
carrying the food over, especially with the weather like this.
“We didn’t get anything that spoils, right?” Brendon asked, clipping the truck
keys to his belt loop and releasing his seat belt.
“No, that was last week, the guys brought back eggs because Brad got an
overtime bonus.”
He didn’t bother to pull up the hood of his rain jacket before getting out of
the truck - it was made of cheap plastic and was ripped in several places
anyway. The wind almost knocked him backwards and he was almost instantly
soaked, but he managed to get across the parking lot to one of the firemen who
was shouting into a radio.
“Hey! What’s going on!?!” he screamed.
“A fire!”
“No shit! Where is it, do you know!?!”
“On the roof! Get out of the way, we have more guys coming!”
Brendon growled to himself, jogging between the fire trucks towards the plant
and wiping rain out of his eyes every few steps. Despite the sheets of water
hammering down, he could smell something that he couldn’t identify - smoke,
metal, ozone. The taste of lead in his mouth was only getting more unbearable
with every step, and spitting wouldn’t clear it. But he completely forgot about
it, if only for a minute, when he rounded the corner of the building. Several
of his co-workers were rushing around in full-face respirators and rubber
gloves, carrying more of the plant employees into the parking lot who wore
burned clothes and were covered in injuries. Weaving around them, dozens of
firefighters were rushing in to the building with air tanks on their backs and
long hoses in their hands.
Brendon didn’t even think about it - he ran inside too, finding the closest
emergency locker. It took a few seconds to strip off his soaked clothing before
he zipped himself into a light gray Tyvek suit in just his boxers and
undershirt. As he yanked the straps of the respirator tight to his head he
stuffed his feet into the black rubber boots, then pulled on the blue gloves
and began running up the hall again.
He had to stop briefly to throw up - those chips must have been part of a
really bad batch - but then pulled the respirator back on and kept moving. The
stream of firemen was pouring into the turbine hall of reactor 2, so he just
followed them, figuring he’d find out what was going on if he did.
Actually, just the opposite happened: the end of the turbine hall was engulfed
in flames, and Brendon could only speculate what had actually caused this. It
also seemed there was nothing he could do to help here, so he moved to the
control room to find that the senior operator was unconscious at his work
station. How this had happened, he couldn’t imagine, because nothing had fallen
on the man.
It didn’t matter, though. Brendon carefully hoisted the other worker’s dead
weight across his shoulders, holding an arm and a leg while struggling to stand
upright. Once he had adjusted, he staggered out of the control room with his
unconscious co-worker and began making his way out to where the EMTs were
running back and forth with patients to the hospital.
Brendon found himself sniffing and snorting as his nose began running inside
his mask, but it did no good. He could feel it running down his face and pursed
his jaw. When it reached his chin and he breathed out, tiny droplets of
something dark flew from the exhalation valve at the bottom of the respirator.
He was so surprised to see this that he forgot to keep his lips closed. When it
ran into his mouth, he realized that under his mask, his nose had started
gushing with blood.
 
In the context of a nuclear explosion, be it from a weapon or a scientific
process gone awry, there are three main types of radioactivity that people
concern themselves with.
Alpha radiation consists of an alpha particle and a ray. This is the heaviest
and largest radioactive particle, and can be stopped by almost any material.
However, if ingested or inhaled, it is incredibly dangerous even in small
doses. Alpha particles are an atom consisting of one proton and one neutron,
and upon release help radioactive elements decay into a more stable element. As
they are ionically positive, once inside the body of an organism, they steal
electrons from it - this changes DNA and causes cell mutation. In humans, this
almost always results in cancer.
Beta radiation is also composed of a particle and a ray, though in this case
the particle is a high-speed electron. While smaller than an alpha particle,
lead and some other materials are dense enough to stop beta radiation, as well
as air respirator filters designed for CBRNE response. If a human is exposed to
moderate or high levels of beta radiation, the particles will burrow to a
certain depth in the skin, causing lesions that appear hours or days later. In
severe cases, whole patches of skin will simply peel away.
Gamma radiation is only a ray of energy, which in the immediate is the most
dangerous form, especially in high doses. In the context of other forms of
radioactivity, it takes 37 inches (~94 centimeters) to stop 95% of gamma rays.
In sufficient doses, gamma radiation destroys human chromosomes and bone
marrow. They become unable to physically heal from the damage and usually die
painfully within a month of acute exposure.
Approximately 400 rem (4 Sieverts) is accepted as the lethal dose of radiation
exposure in humans. When this and similar doses are absorbed within a short
time frame, the ensuing symptoms are classified under the medical term “acute
radiation exposure” or “radiation toxicity.” The immediate symptoms that often
occur are nausea, vomiting, dizziness, headache, abdominal pain and sudden
nosebleeds. Often this is followed by a brief latency period, and the affected
person will believe they are recovering even though the opposite will soon
prove to be the case. Later the victim will suffer - among other symptoms -
blood disorders (anemia, decreased white cell count, etc.), skin burns,
impaired levels of consciousness/lucidity, infections, organ failure, and
eventually death.
In rare cases, the exposure may be so high that the victim quickly loses
consciousness. In such instances the person usually goes into cardiac/
respiratory arrest and dies without ever waking up.
***** When they run out of garbage bags. *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Corporal Derek Bohr. Corporal. He’d been promoted last week, and was still
smiling about it.
Well, except for right now. There wasn’t much to grin about when an every
national guard unit in five states was receiving emergency CBRN training. It
had been made very clear at the beginning that most of them would be in Tyvek
suits and PAPRs evacuating people and decontaminating towns, but four platoons
were being sent to an exploded nuclear reactor to smother it with dirt and dig
up all the ground around the plant. And of course, the hurricane was still
going on in that area. Perfect.
“We’re going to set up a cordon for ten miles around Edmons-Drake,” the officer
briefing them was saying, pointing to a tactical map on the smart-screen.
“Every road in the area will be blocked, to prevent civilians from entering the
contaminated area. Once the evacuation is complete, we’ll begin decontamination
procedures.” The officer flicked his finger and the screen pulled up an image
of the main entrance to a somewhat old-looking institutional building.
“Additionally, because the number of radiation injuries has been so high, St
Thomas High School will be used as a temporary treatment facility to relieve
the pressure from local hospitals. Hospital staff will not be evacuated.”
 
“Hey, so, we have work to do,” Casey Simmons shouted from the back of the room,
his face written with impatience. “Can you get on with it?”
Dr. Wolfe scowled. He’d called all the OR staff into the outer hall by their
break room and the staff locker rooms, except for Dr. Callahan and the three
people assisting him. The only reason Dr. Wolfe could get away with this in the
middle of a workday was because he was the director of the surgical department,
and Debby had a strong feeling he wouldn’t have pulled them out here without a
good reason.
“Guys, please, quiet down,” Dr. Wolfe insisted. “Okay, so look, I got called by
one of the hospital admins, and apparently the national guard is deploying
because of the hurricane a few miles over. It’s not close enough to seriously
affect us, but they’re evacuating pretty much everyone who doesn’t work here at
the hospital. The other thing is they’re setting up in the high school because
there was some kind of accident and there’s too many patients for us to handle
and the next nearest hospitals are already full. We’re supposed to all take
showers as soon as we can and put on clean scrubs, and even if you’re not on
the sterile field you need to wear a procedure mask and two pairs of exam
gloves at all times. Even if you have no patient contact, change your PPE every
hour and wash your hands thoroughly.”
“Why? What’s going on?” several people started demanding, but were quieted
again fairly quickly.
“Look, that’s all I was told,” Dr. Wolfe shouted in a frustrated tone. He was
clearly losing his patience with them, but using it to bury his own growing
panic. “There was an accident somewhere because of the storm, and the rain is
sticking some kind of contamination down on us. Just wear the PPE, and don’t go
outside. All the scheduled procedures have been cancelled until further notice
because those patients will be evacuated, so the only surgeries will be on an
emergency basis, and if you’re needed for one you’ll get paged by me or Dr.
Rheiner. Otherwise, most of us are going to the ED or the ICU to help with the
patient overload. Try to keep patients in their rooms and away from windows,
and if you have to actually touch them, use sterile gloves and wear an
isolation gown. Deb, Casey, Alyssa, I need you three to go see the hazmat guy,
he needs nurses to help him with something.”
Dr. Wolfe let them go after that, and Debby obediently gathered her PPE. With a
procedure mask tied to her face and two neoprene gloves on each hand, she and
her compatriots left the surgical wing and rode the elevator down to the
basement where the building services office was located. The hazmat guy
actually did have his own office - everyone called him Matt, but she didn’t
know him or his last name - and when they found it, he was frantically throwing
random objects around in it, creating a pile behind his desk. Casey uncertainly
knocked on the side of the open door and Matt looked up at them; he was already
wearing some kind of gas mask with a pair of old, dirty goggles.
“You guys are from nursing? Great. Just gimme a second, I need to find…” He
didn’t let them talk or even finish his sentence, still digging through his
things until he came up with an energy drink. Debby had heard that this man was
weird and eccentric, but she’d had no idea how much until this moment as she
watched him rip off his gas mask, chug the entire Red Bull without taking a
breath, and then pull it back up over his chin. “We have to take radiation
measurements on patients and collect samples on the ones who are contaminated.
I’m going to put you each in a hazmat suit with a PAPR, and we’re going to go
around and check everything. The whole hospital is probably contaminated with
radiation by now, so while you’re checking the patients, I’ll be checking the
rooms. Try not to touch anything unless you’re taking a sample, otherwise your
gloves could throw the meter off. Each patient needs a skin swab and a vial of
blood taken if they make the Geiger counter go off, otherwise their name gets
put into the computer to be evacuated.”
This amounted to Matt dressing them in yellow plastic coveralls with a clear
visor over their faces. A hose attached to it and ran down to a battery-powered
air purifier in the small of their backs, while tall booties and thick green
rubber gloves were duct taped to the suits. Each of them was handed a clunky
Geiger counter that had probably been built in the 1970s.
“Okay, here’s what needs to happen. I’m going to take the room measurement
first. If the room is too radioactive, the patients are automatically
contaminated. If the room is more or less clean, you’ll measure the patients.
If the needle hits the number five on the gauge, or goes over it, the patient
is contaminated. Set the little black dial to where it says 1x.”
With four clicks, all the instruments were turned on - and immediately started
screaming. Behind his visor, Matt made a confused expression, turning his
Geiger counter off and then back on. He twisted the dial again, but the thing
still sounded like a machine gun. On the third twist it calmed down, but only a
little.
“What’s going on?” Debby couldn’t help but ask.
“Everyone needs to get out of this hospital, because without hazmat suits like
we’re wearing, they’ll be exposed to a lethal dose in less than five hours.”
 
Alex had been dead on his feet all day until now, but by the 30th straight hour
he’d been awake, he was starting to wish he was actually dead.
The merciful thing was that the army had finally showed up and were burying the
reactor themselves to suffocate the fire, which meant the emergency responders
could leave. The downside came, though, when the majority of the firemen and
medics had started puking, their skin turning red, their noses bleeding. So the
EMTs, many of them also suffering these symptoms, were now forced to drive
their colleagues to the hospital, which was already overfilled with patients.
They’d been told to wear their SCBAs to handle these patients, they were
radioactive, but half of them didn’t have one to begin with and by now there
was nobody left to refill the tanks with compressed air.
Alex and Ben had been able to get through to one of the military officers: “All
you guys have your rubber suits, but we’re hauling our asses back and forth
with dust masks.” “I’m not authorized to issue military equipment to
civilians.” “So we’re supposed to just die because you don’t have the right
paperwork?” He was a soldier, but he was also still a human being, so he’d very
quietly passed along two spare masks with filters for them to use that he could
conveniently “lose track of.”
That was several hours ago. For every second of those several hours, Alex had
been dragging other firemen to the hospital’s emergency department, even though
all the cubicles were full and the patients were just being put out in the back
hall at this point, some on beds that hadn’t been properly cleaned or were
broken because they had no other choice. And it wasn’t helping at all that his
face seemed to be stretching in every direction at once by the rubber and the
straps were cutting into his scalp.
“Are your hands cracking?” Ben asked. They were driving back to Edmons-Drake
again, to collect the last victims. “My palms are finally scabbing over, but
they were bleeding a few minutes ago.”
“No, but I have blisters on my fingers. I’ve never had any this bad, even back
when I could afford to buy new boots and break them in for a few weeks.”
“Does radiation do this?” his partner wondered, the slightest note of worry in
his tone.
Alex just shrugged without answering. He didn’t know anything about radiation
except what he’d learned in school about Hiroshima, and even that he barely
remembered. But given the patients they’d been bussing so far, if that was
caused by radiation, he didn’t want to think about it. Of course, he and Ben
had never entered the plant, so maybe they hadn’t caught any rays. Besides, he
was wearing a gas mask, and before the mask he’d worn his SCBA for a couple of
hours. So he was probably fine. He probably just got blisters from wearing
gloves too long and having sweaty hands.
Probably. He would probably be okay.
 
Derek snapped to attention and saluted mid-scrub when Lieutenant Croyle paced
over to his corner of the high school gym.
“At ease, corporal. What’s your current reading?”
“We’ve managed to reduce contamination levels by sixty percent, sir, but for
the last thirty minutes the meters have been holding at twenty-three rads per
hour. Other rooms have lower levels of contamination, and those in the center
of the building on the second floor have been brought down to roughly
acceptable levels. But the entire third floor is so contaminated that we’d take
the maximum allowed dosage in less than an hour.”
They had to scream through their hoods to hear each other - their personal
radios had suddenly stopped working shortly after they’d arrived, so until
replacements were issued they’d have to deal with the noise of their PAPRs as
best they could. Even at the very top of their lungs, they could only just
barely understand each other.
“Unfortunately that’s not surprising,” Croyle admitted. “The brass warned us
that significant fallout could be coming down with the rain. When you’re
finished with this round of decon, seal off the third floor by closing the fire
doors in the stairwells and then cover them in plastic sheeting. Report once
it’s done.”
“Yes, sir.”
Derek went back to where he’d been rinsing the wall with a flat-headed mop. All
of their decon gel had been sent straight to the troops working on the reactor
site, so until the next shipment arrived they had to clean everything the old-
fashioned (and often ineffective) way. Soap could only do so much against
nuclear waste.
And of course it was wasteful too; every few hours each soldier and his gear
was measured, and half the time they had to strip naked, throw everything away,
shower and then get replacements. They were burning through Tyvek suits and
tactical uniforms like crazy, and had made him throw away the wristwatch his
dad had given him when he’d graduated from AIT. It was starting to happen less
often, though. None of them had gone outside and they’d made significant
progress to scrub the interior of the school; in some places the paint had been
totally dissolved from the walls and there were pot holes in the floor wax.
Derek held out the wand of his Geiger counter to check the wall - 20 rads per
hour. The floor - 21 rads per hour. Clearly they weren’t going to get it any
cleaner, so his squad started unrolling plastic sheeting across the gym floor
and securing it every foot or so with duct tape. After three hours and two
layers, he measured again, and the exposure rate had been cut in half at the
floor level. They had to cover the walls too, but only managed to tape up the
first layer on two and a half of them before running out of plastic, so that
was added to the ever-growing list of things they were waiting for now.
“Fuck me,” Private Collins was muttering to someone else. “How much more
radiation can there be? We’ve washed this place like twenty times or
something.”
“Watch your language, soldier,” First Sergeant Kidd barked.
Derek snorted quietly but didn’t say anything. Really, he was just happy he
could hear normally again; once they’d put down the sheeting across the floor
and the meter had dropped below 20, they’d figured it was safe enough and had
stopped wearing their PAPRs. He and a few others had even unzipped their suits
and tied the sleeves around their waists because it was more comfortable. It
had gotten dark several hours ago and it was still pouring buckets outside, but
somehow the inside of the building managed to be like an oven. Even Lieutenant
Croyle had stopped chewing them about uniform standards pretty quickly.
The medics were already setting up a makeshift triage in the corner that was
furthest back, where the walls and floor were adequately covered in plastic.
Cots and IV poles were floating around randomly in the space, with trash bags
and disposable sheets covering everything to protect it from contamination. In
the absence of privacy screens, tarpaulins were being hung with nylon ropes to
make individual cubicles for patients.
The medics were all scurrying between the tarps arranging their things. Many of
them were already wearing booties, isolation gowns and surgical masks, even
though there wasn’t a single patient yet. Some had even put on sterile gloves
with an additional pair of exam gloves over them, taped shut at the cuffs, or
chemical splash goggles and paper N95 respirators. Derek didn’t really
understand why they were so worked up. Most of the radiation had been washed
away, and the way he understood radiation was that it was really only dangerous
if you breathed in the dust or it got into your food. They’d put down an absurd
amount of plastic sheets and there was no food here, so there shouldn’t be a
problem.
He didn’t like standing still, though, so even though he was tired and there
would be a good hour until the supplies got in, he jogged across the floor.
“Hey, you guys need help?”
“Sure, every six feet set up a cot and an IV pole. Make sure they’re covered,
though. What’s your name?”
“Derek Bohr, corporal, 2nd squad 3rd platoon.”
“Ditch that suit, corporal. See how we’re dressed, in precaution gear? It’s all
clean stuff from sealed boxes, but you’ve been working in that, right? We need
everything clean. Wipe the soles of your boots, too. We have Dispatch wipes in
cans over on that desk.”
“Yes, sergeant.”
Derek tossed his Tyvek suit next to the wall almost where the plastic ended,
knowing it wasn’t dirty enough to throw out and that they’d make him wear it
again once the rolls of plastic arrived. Dumping his cumbersome PAPR on top of
it, he briefly ran a cleansing wipe over his combat boots as he’d been
instructed before pulling the covers over them. They made him wear the thin
disposable smock and two pairs of gloves, but at least he only had to wear a
procedure mask and they didn’t have any goggles for him.
While Derek was tediously placing the cots and taping garbage bags over them,
the tarpaulins were steadily being hung around them. Briefly the makeshift
coverings would get lifted from the IV poles so that saline bags could get hung
on them, and they had more than plenty of those to go around, but there were
only enough blood pressure cuffs for every third cubicle. There didn’t seem to
be very many oxygen tanks either, but he didn’t think they’d need those as
much.
Once all the cots had been set up, he had to tape one of the flimsy plastic
masks and a coil of thin tubing (still in the bags, of course) to each tank and
then put it into a garbage bag, tying off the top… until they ran out of
garbage bags.
Really?

The United States’ armed forces have not been prepared for CBRN events on a
large scale since the Cold War. Despite massively inflated military spending
from the government, which has been increased every year, most of their
equipment and information is outdated. A significant portion of the money is
actually funneled into contractors, and the individual equipment for soldiers
has essentially stagnated. Most of the decon equipment in National Guard
warehouses is five years out of date on average, and has not been inspected.
There is no guarantee that any of it is still viable.
Chapter End Notes
     The hazmat guy, Matt, is actually a "cameo" made by my boyfriend, who
     is named Matt and is the hazmat guy at the hospital. And he really is
     that weird :)
     Decon gel, Tyvek and Dispatch are real, trademarked products and are
     not my creations. Please don't sue me.
***** When they need water. *****
“Why isn’t mom coming with us?” Kyle asked as he and his dad were climbing into
the pickup truck.
“She has to stay at work,” Mike answered vaguely.
Kyle made a face, but figured something was going on. More fire trucks than
he’d ever seen before in his life had been speeding down the highway by their
house yesterday, and today it was the army. At least the airport was in the
other direction, his dad had said while they were packing, so they wouldn’t get
stuck behind all those Hummers. Even weirder, though, flocks of helicopters
were going the same way, buzzing through the sky constantly like a never-ending
hive of angry wasps.
They tossed their things into the back seat of the cab and then Mike started
driving. Kyle only had two bags, and his dad only had one. Their passports were
in their pockets and he’d seen his dad stuffing all the cash they had into his
wallet. He didn’t know why, but instead of anything else about today, that was
the thing that had scared him. His parents were really careful with money, only
buying him new clothes if he’d really outgrown them and maybe two presents for
his birthday (none at any other time). But now his dad was taking all of it.
Wouldn’t his mom need some of it, too?
For some reason, too, Mike hadn’t let him pack any clothes. So his two old
backpacks were stuffed with his Xbox, both the controllers and all the cables
for it, all the games he had, his laptop and copies of his prescriptions -
Paxil for anxiety, and his testosterone. The only piece of clothing he’d taken
was his Canucks jersey, which his grandparents had gotten for him the last time
he’d been with them. They’d bought it in an adult medium size so that he
couldn’t outgrow it, and he proudly wore it at every opportunity.
Kyle would normally listen to his iPod during the hour-long drive to the
airport, but today he didn’t because it might stop him from figuring out what
was happening. His dad was quiet, and his expression was eerie and unreadable.
“Why can’t we bring clothes?”
“We just can’t. When we get to your aunt’s house, you have to throw away your
shoes, too.”
“But they still fit.
“I know. But we have to throw them away.”
There was silence again after that, and the next clue didn’t come until twenty
minutes later when they were forced to stop at a military roadblock that hadn’t
been there before. Mike climbed out, and Kyle watched from the cab. The soldier
was wearing a gas mask, and he couldn’t hear what they were saying to each
other, but it felt like it was taking forever. Eventually the army man shook
his head, and then Kyle’s dad pulled out a fistful of cash. The trooper glanced
around, then took it in a hurry and nodded. Mike got back into the truck
without a word, and they were allowed to drive through.
“What was that?” Kyle asked once they were far away from the checkpoint.
“Nothing, don’t worry about it. I’ll tell you about it later.”
This only worried him more. Normally his parents were pretty honest with him,
but now they wouldn’t say anything. He wouldn’t see it until later, but there
was nobody saying anything about it. Nobody in the outside world knew what was
going on, either, and that was the most terrifying thing of all.
 
The saddest thing Debby saw that morning was the paramedics.
She and several other staff members were working in hazmat suits and the loud
air filters on their backs, but there weren’t enough of them, so everyone else
was wrapped up in the heaviest surgical gowns, with gloves and the “duck-
billed” N95 masks that were often used for Tuberculosis cases.
But the EMTs were in their normal uniforms and boots, with exam gloves and
procedure masks. A few of them wore nothing over their faces at all, or had
wrapped gauze bandages over their noses and mouths in desperation. The two who
were best off had military gas masks, but they were the only ones.
And it showed. More than half of them were visibly sick with more “mild”
versions of the symptoms their patients were suffering from. Often it was
lesions and boils on their arms and hands, or their noses and gums were
bleeding uncontrollably. She’d seen two or three of them come in, vomit into
the nearest trash can or hazmat bin, and then put their mask back on before
returning to work. One of them had swapped out the cotton balls in his ears,
which he’d stuffed in after they, too, had started bleeding. That particular
man had been stopped by one of the doctors and put out in the back hall with a
saline drip, but they’d run out of stretchers and beds last night, so he’d been
forced to lay down on the floor with just a sheet under him.
By 7:00, the medics had stopped bringing in injured firemen and had all been
ordered into the hospital themselves, and at precisely 7:30 national guard
soldiers cocooned in heavy suits with air tanks began evacuating patients.
Behind the nurses’ station Debby had glanced at one of the computer screens
showing the security cameras, and she saw the troops washing down their trucks
with some kind of white foam.
“Someone made fresh coffee,” one of the ED nurses told her in a low voice. “You
look tired, have you been up all night?”
“Since yesterday morning,” Debby nodded. “Thanks.”
The soldiers had ordered them on no uncertain terms not to eat or drink
anything because of the radiation, but that was impossible. Nurses without
coffee were about as useful as a ski slope made out of gravel. After checking
to make sure none of the troopers were looking as they bustled in and out with
patients on military stretchers, Debby went to the break room to hopefully gulp
down a cup of coffee without everything going to hell.
 
Apparently the floodgates had opened sometime after his platoon’s shift had
ended, because when Derek and his compatriots returned to St Thomas the next
afternoon both of the floors they’d decontaminated were packed with hospital
patients waiting to be evacuated. Many of them were the critical-care cases
who’d been in the local hospitals before the accident and hadn’t been
contaminated, and they were on the second floor because it was still less
radioactive than the first floor. The first floor was occupied by the staff
from the power plant, and not all of them had arrived yet because they’d run
out of space in the school. The patients who were the worst off were put in
classrooms, while the ones who weren’t as sick were kept in the gym. But this
was only relative - very few of these patients could even sit up on their own,
and at least three had died in transit that he knew of.
Derek only had the rudimentary skills he’d picked up in basic training and
wasn’t a field medic, but he was still involved in the care process. He and
each of his squad-mates had been assigned a section to patrol, so until he was
relieved tomorrow morning he would be endlessly pacing through two columns of
makeshift cubicles in the gym. That way if a patient needed something or had a
question he might be able to help, and if it was beyond his scope he could call
over one of the medics. But it also felt absurd to him. He was wrapped up in a
thick plastic coverall with just his underwear beneath it, and then everything
doctors wore during a major surgery over it. This was severely mismatched with
his military full-face respirator and the tactical M4 assault rifle slung
across his back.
At least he wasn’t part of 1st squad, though. They were ordered to march in a
constant loop around the outside of the building and clean it with decon gel.
They’d coat an exterior wall with the stuff, peel it off, and move to the next
one to repeat the process.
Derek’s feet made the plastic crinkle every time he took a step, and as he
glanced into each cubicle in his slow pace he made a mental note of which ones
were awake, which ones were sleeping; thankfully most of them weren’t conscious
right now, because that meant less of them would be asking him stupid
questions. This hope was dashed when he passed the next cot, though, and the
patient raised his head and one arm. He was covered in discolored gauze
bandages, some encrusted in dried pus, and when he started yelling through his
oxygen mask blood dribbled into the bag at its bottom.
“Hey, hey! Hey doc, can you come talk to me a little?”
“I’m not a medic, I’m a corporal. I have to patrol,” Derek argued, not wanting
to get close to the man.
“I just want to know what’s going on, they’re keeping me away from everyone.
Nobody ever comes in but I need water, I just want to get the taste out of my
mouth.”
“We’re not allowed to go near you,” he lied. This wasn’t strictly true, but it
certainly wasn’t encouraged for obvious reasons, and this patient’s bed had
clear plastic curtains around it even within the cubicle. There was even a
barrier sheet over top of it as well, and the floor around the bed had basins
and absorbent microfiber squares to keep body fluids from pooling up and
spreading contamination. “I’m not supposed to go in, you’re dangerously
radioactive.”
“Please,” the man begged.
Derek sighed through his mask: “I’ll ask the medics, they’ll bring you some
water.”
Without waiting for an answer, he walked away from the cubicle and completed
his current patrol before heading for the corner where the medics’ tables were
located. Predictably, none of them were there, likely off resuscitating one of
their problem patients for the hundredth time. Derek knew he could probably
just blow the man off and get back to work, but the guy was probably about to
die anyway, and all he wanted was water. It shouldn’t be a big deal, really. In
spite of his reluctance to do so, he dug around in the crates until he found
some. It was marked as sterile purified water for surgical irrigation, but if
it was purified and sterile it would probably be fine to drink even for a sick
patient.
He hesitated for a moment before pushing the thick curtain aside and going in,
forcing himself to swallow his nervousness. He was in a suit, he had a mask.
The radiation couldn’t hurt him through military-grade CBRN filters. There was
nothing to use as a container, so he just entered the clear containment screen
and started unscrewing the cap.
“I know I’m a hazard for others,” the man admitted. His voice was a pained
wheeze. “You don’t run around an exploded reactor for two hours and be fine
after. They put me in the hospital when my nose and mouth wouldn’t stop
bleeding… and then my ears, too…”
“Just rest,” Derek choked out, feeling nauseous when the patient pulled down
his oxygen mask and shreds of his face came off with it. “We’re going to get
you out of the radiation zone, to a clean hospital. They’ll help you.”
As the bottle was accepted from his hands, the response was a bitter chuckle.
“I know everything about this.” A brief pause for a sip of water. “But that
won’t save me. The important thing to know… being smart makes no difference,
we’ll die the same way, whether it’s me with such a high IQ or some idiot who
turned valves in the turbine hall for a living. They just won’t know what’s
happening. They’ll think they can get better for a while…”
Even though the patient clearly didn’t care about his fate and had accepted it,
the statement was terrifying to the young soldier.
“What’s your name?” he asked, wanting to switch away from this topic.
“Rob,” the man answered, handing back the bottle of water. It was smeared with
blood from his hands. “Robert Noah.”
“I’m Derek Bohr,” he returned, carefully sliding the oxygen mask back up.
“Thank you, Derek Bohr.”
“It’s just water.”
Rob offered a weak smile: “You said you’re not a doctor, just a corporal… but
you’ve already shown me more kindness than any of the doctors have since the
accident. So… thank you… for treating me like a human being.”
And an instant later, Derek burst out of the cubicle, almost ripping down the
curtain and taking off his mask so he could scream louder: “MEDIC! MEDIC! WE
HAVE A CODE OVER HERE!”
 
Brendon could hear the shouting and running around nearby, but he didn’t care.
His brain was consumed with the fact that the only reason he’d stopped puking
all over himself is because there wasn’t a drop of moisture left in his body.
He’d had painful diarrhea earlier too, right around when the vomiting started,
but that had stopped by now as well. Once the army doctors had situated him in
the temporary holding at the school, he’d pulled out his IV on purpose because
he didn’t want it to start again.
Every so often a soldier would pass by, but nobody had actually checked on him
since he’d gotten here. He was exhausted and had a pounding headache, but was
too uncomfortable to sleep. If anyone ever came to look him over, he’d ask for
more painkillers and something to wipe his nose with. It would gush with blood
every few minutes, then stop on its own, only to start again. He’d tried wiping
it away with his hand until the skin on his fingers had peeled off, and his
hand had been sticky with dried blood ever since then.
The noise in one of the nearby cubicles died out as suddenly as it had started,
and shortly following two soldiers passed by carrying a body bag. Neither of
them spared him a glance; they were perfectly indifferent to his suffering.
Yeah, fuck you too, Brendon thought to himself. He was almost disgusted with
them, actually. Even knowing they had orders not to come near the patients
because of the contamination, if he saw them bleeding from random places and in
pain, he would probably stop and help them.
Brendon felt like he was about to throw up again, so he rolled onto his side
with an agonized groan and tried to aim for the bucket on the floor. He didn’t
puke, but instead lost his balance and went crashing down onto the plastic
floor covers. After landing on his skinless hand and feeling blood leaking out
of his gums, he couldn’t help but yell in surprise and pain. Maybe that
should’ve sent someone running to investigate, but it seemed like a lifetime
before one of the soldiers arrived.
“You can’t get up from the cot, you’re too weak,” the army doctor scolded him
in a condescending tone even while helping him up.
“It was an accident,” Brendon protested after swallowing a mouthful of coppery
blood. “I fell.” He was set back onto the uncomfortable bed. “I need
painkillers. I have a headache.”
“You can’t have anymore,” the doctor replied. His voice was completely
dismissive of the idea. “There’s painkillers in your fluid line.”
The IV needle was stabbed back into his wrist and the soldier left without
another word.
 
Though there have been relatively few radiological accidents since the
technology was discovered and refined, when they did happen they were usually
well-documented. Some, like the Three Mile Island incident in Pennsylvania and
the Fukushima-Daiichi accident in Japan, resulted in very few (if any)
casualties and manageable contamination. Others, such as the Idaho Falls
disaster in the US, as well as the Kyshtym and Chernobyl catastrophes in the
former USSR, released dangerous levels of radioactive materials into the
environment and caused significant loss of resources and human lives.
In the case of the explosion at the V. I. Lenin atomic power station in the
Chernobyl region, many of the worst instances of acute radiation poisoning in
history were recorded. Nearly all of the staff operating the number 4 reactor,
as well as the entire fire brigade from the nearby town of Pripyat, died almost
immediately after exposure in painful and horrifying ways.
Aleksandr Akimov, the shift operator at the time, died two weeks afterwards in
a hospital in Moscow. The doctors could only find a single spot on his back
that wasn’t radioactive, and were reported to have said, “In order to fix him,
we’d need a whole other body.”
Vasily Ignatenko, a senior sergeant in Pripyat’s fire brigade, died eighteen
days after being admitted to the hospital in Moscow. In the last two days of
his life, pieces of his internal organs began rising into his throat and
choking him.
Vladimir Pravik, a lieutenant in Pripyat’s fire brigade, died two weeks after
the accident in the Moscow hospital. It is said that he received so much
radiation that his eyes, formerly brown, turned blue.
***** When there is no safety. *****
Chapter Notes
     TRIGGER WARNING! References to sexual assault and suicide at the end
     of the chapter.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
“So what’s on?” Kyle asked, plunking down on the couch next to his cousin
Jared.
“Godzilla versus Sharknado four.”
“Anything else?”
Jared shook his head: “Nah, there’s nothing good on Netflix this month.” Then
his cousin gave him a nervous glance. “Hey, um, it’s safe for me to sit near
you, right?”
Kyle made a face and shoved him, only half-friendly about it. “Come on, dude, I
showered like three times and my dad made me throw away all my clothes.”
“Okay, if you’re sure. There was all kinds of crap on Twitter talking about a
huge spike in radiation that came from America. Isn’t that why you came to be
with us anyway?”
“I was already going to, they’re making it illegal to be trans. Nobody was even
talking about radiation until we landed here. My dad said they’ll never admit
it or tell us anything, but mom’s still there working.”
“They really don’t say anything? Radiation is dangerous, dude. They have to say
something about it.”
“Remember when I was ten and you were twelve, and you guys came to visit us
during the summer that time?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, remember how you were kept up all night because you could hear all the
guns going off?”
“Uh… yeah. So?” Jared repeated, but he sounded a little less stubborn.
“Dude, that’s normal for us. There’s a Kevlar plate in my school backpack. The
government never does anything for us over there.”
“That sucks. So you’re just scared all the time?”
“Not really,” Kyle answered, and was surprised because he meant it. “After a
while you stop thinking about it, I guess.”
“Well, um, I have a lacrosse game tomorrow. You don’t have to wear armor to go
to it if you want to come watch.”
Kyle nodded, looking back at the stupid movie that was playing. He probably
would go to his cousin’s game, actually. Maybe it would help him feel normal
again.
 
Derek’s stomach clenched as he walked over to the medics’ makeshift station,
but he knew if he put this off he’d probably regret it more. But when he
arrived at the series of folding tables with a final rustling crunch on the
plastic floor and the two other soldiers looked up at him, he still couldn’t
swallow his guilt.
They were in heavy surgical gowns over their thick plastic coveralls, but
they’d messily scrawled their ranks and last names across their chests in
Sharpie: “Corporal Yates.”
Yates looked up through the visor of his SCBA mask at the sound of his name.
“Corporal Bohr. Do you need something? I thought your squad is on fire watch.”
Derek ignored the medic’s sarcasm.
“I just need a second. I wanted to ask about… the patient who coded yesterday
night at 18:53. He was way in the back, one of the guys from the plant.”
“Oh, yeah. Robert…” Yates flipped through one of the scattered notebooks
briefly. “Noah. What about him? I thought you’re the one who called the code on
him.”
“Well, see, here’s the thing,” Derek admitted. “I was on patrol and he asked me
for water. I came here to talk to you guys about it, but there was nobody. So I
brought him some, it was in a bottle that said it was sterile… but he coded
right after he drank it. Did I… did I kill him? He just wanted some water.”
The medic snorted through his mask.
“You’re kidding, right? The guy took almost two thousand rems, it would’ve been
better if he just died on the spot at the plant. If the water really was
sterile, it wouldn’t have done anything to him. Hell, it probably wouldn’t have
made a difference even if the shit was full of anthrax, he was already dead.
You were just unlucky that you’re the one who saw him code.”
“Okay then.” Somehow, though, he still felt like he’d failed that patient. Then
he remembered he wasn’t the one who’d failed, and couldn’t keep an angry
expression from poisoning his features. “So why wasn’t anyone here? He said
nobody would bring him water, and he was just left alone to rot in that plastic
box.”
“Feel free to get back to work, Bohr. I know you have better things to do right
now, otherwise I’ll report your ass to the lieutenant.”
Derek almost took a step back, feeling like he’d been suddenly punched in the
face. Sure, he hadn’t really given a shit yesterday, and before he’d just been
annoyed at the strain of such a massive flood of radiation victims. But that
patient couldn’t have been much older than Derek, and the fact that nobody
would even stop to give him something to drink when he was literally on the
edge of death was disgusting.
But picking fights with a stubborn medic wouldn’t change it, so through his
crushing sense of injustice he had enough self-control to walk away and go back
to his patrol route. Rob’s last words kept echoing inside his head with every
step he took.
“Thank you for treating me like a human being.”
So this time, he pulled down his hood and let his respirator dangle from his
neck by the strap. He wasn’t afraid of them anymore, he realized, and on his
first patrol he went into every single cubicle, and then the inner plastic
curtains, too.
“Hi, I’m Corporal Bohr, I patrol this area. I’ll be here all night every night
until you leave. If you need anything, just ask me, and I’ll help you.”
 
Brendon just stared at the soldier for a second, eyebrows raised. But even
radiation poisoning couldn’t keep him from sarcasm.
“Yeah, I’d like some filet mignon and your best wine. Just leave the bottle, I
could sure fucking use it…”
Corporal Bohr snorted, giving a slight grin and shaking his head.
“Our CBRN instructor told us there was a long-running myth that alcohol gets
radioactive shit out of your body, but it actually makes you feel worse. You
just end up puking more.”
“Man, I’ve been doing too much of that already. Don’t you guys have any
Dramamine? I could use a nap, too. God damn, I haven’t slept in forever…”
Brendon interrupted himself with a rough cough, and spat a mouthful of blood
into the bucket on the floor. It hadn’t come from his lungs; his mouth was just
always bleeding now, as was his nose. A few hours ago he’d been given a
transfusion, but it didn’t seem like it helped any.
“So what’s it like over there?” the corporal asked casually, sitting on the
foot of his cot.
“Um… well, I was on a grocery run when it happened. But when we got there it
was already burning to the fucking ground. I ran in to help, and one of the
guys was still in the control room and he just passed out. I heard he died a
few hours after, too. But… it’s a lot of heat, at least inside the building.
Maybe that’s radiation, but it was probably the fire. And I still can’t get the
metal taste out of my mouth. It just sort of happened while I was eating chips
on the drive back, and I thought the chips were bad, but then I saw Rob in the
hospital after and he said that’s what happens when you take too many rem. So I
guess I’ll grow a tail or something now.”
Bohr suddenly looked like he’d been choked, and all the humor drained from his
face.
“Rob… Noah?”
“Yeah, how’d you guess? Did you know him before this?”
“I… no. He died yesterday night. I had to call the code on him,” the soldier
half-whispered. “I just… you know what, it’s not important. But I wouldn’t hold
my breath waiting on a tail if I was you.” Bohr shook himself and forced a
smile. “Anyway, like I said, you need anything just yell.”
 
Kyle was gone.
Zach had gotten the text from his friend that afternoon, saying his friend had
landed safely in Canada and was with his family. He didn’t know when he’d come
back to the US, if he ever did.
Part of him was happy. He wanted Kyle to be somewhere safe, not like him. He
was still at his house, his mom at work and his dad downstairs. Some army guy
had showed up about an hour ago to tell them they’d be evacuated soon, probably
for a couple weeks. But Zach didn’t care. Nothing in the world mattered,
because with Kyle gone he’d taken a chance.
It had gone horribly wrong.
Dad, I need to tell you something.
Sure, Kait. What’s up?
A deep breath: Dad, I wanted to tell you about this for a long time, but I was
scared to. I always felt like… like I’m supposed to be a boy, and that I’m
supposed to date girls. Please don’t be made at me.
Silence.
Dad? Say something.
Silence.
Dad…
ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?!
Staggering backwards and crying. Dad I’m so sorry, please don’t be mad at me!
The army fucking shows up saying that they’re going to haul us off someplace,
and now you come down to tell me you’re a fucking dyke?! C’mere, C’MERE YOU
LITTLE SHIT! Now understand this!
He’s grabbed, his pants yanked down, and he screams at the fingers… they hurt
so much, but it’s also the shame that makes him start crying even harder.
There! You FUCKING feel that?! That means you’re a girl! You’re a fucking girl
and you’re supposed to date fucking boys! Get it through your thick fucking
skull!
Now, Zach was curled up in the corner of his bedroom, knees under his chin with
the lights off. It still hurts down there, and he’s still crying, because he
can never undo what his dad has done to him. Snorting hard and then swallowing
a huge ball of snot that formed in his throat, he pulled his phone out of his
pocket and started typing with shaking hands. When the message was sent, he
turned on his light long enough to scrawl across a sheet of notebook paper and
tapes it to the outside of his bedroom door. The apartment building was high
enough.
Zach climbed out his window and onto the rusty fire escape. All he needed to do
was get to the roof, because the roof was high enough, and he knew it.

Due to the oppressive nature of the United States government, the average
suicide rate in the LGBT+ community is around 56.2% nationally at the time of
the most recent survey. Between subgroups of this community, they can range as
low as 20.7% to as high as 61.8% (the transgender subgroup). Reasons for
suicide vary, though the most common reasons are fear, discrimination, verbal/
emotional/physical/sexual abuse, and mental illness. The majority of these
suicides occur in transgender youth under the age of 18, and on average only
18.2% survive to adulthood. The remaining 20% are usually outright murdered by
family members or peers.
Chapter End Notes
     These statistics are totally made up, but LGBT+ people being abused/
     raped/murdered by people they know isn't. It's a hideous occurrence
     that sadly happens much more often than in any other "group" in the
     United States. As of 2015, the combined rate of attempted/completed
     suicides in the transgender community was marked at 41%, almost ten
     times that of the general population.
***** When everything peels away. *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
“Oh my God,” Debby groaned, rubbing her face.
“I don’t think God had anything to do with this,” Alyssa grumbled as a soldier
waved his metal stick at their shoes.
“What the hell is this? You’re way over the limit,” the army man complained,
his voice sounding almost robotic through his gas mask.
“What do you want us to do? I already threw away the shoes that live here at
the hospital, if I toss these I won’t have anything to wear,” Debby snapped at
him, indignantly pulling the plastic covers over her sneakers. “I’m sure my
feet won’t fall off if I keep wearing my shoes.”
“Alright, lady, but when you can’t walk later…”
Yeah, yeah, Debby thought to herself as she tied the surgical gown behind her
back. The air filter she’d been given by Matt the hazmat guy had run out of
filters yesterday, and this morning the soldiers with detectors had declared
her protective suit to be too contaminated, so now she was stuck wearing the
same PPE as the rest of the staff. It wasn’t much different from covering their
bodies before a case, except that there were lines around her eyes from wearing
chemical splash goggles all night.
“You’re not supposed to-” the soldier started to say, but she cut him off.
“I’ve been working for three days straight.”
She poured the coffee into a mug and drank it immediately. They’d run out of
creamer and sugar packets, and the taste and temperature told her the pot had
been sitting there for more than two hours. But she needed the caffeine and
didn’t care. After downing it and making a face, Debby put on a clean procedure
mask, a hood and her recently-washed goggles before leaving the break room and
heading upstairs. Some of the rooms on 2-North had been taped off because they
were too radioactive, so even though the military had evacuated a significant
number of patients they were still over their capacity.
That didn’t bother her as much as the noise. It wasn’t from the staff, but
rather the victims, who were constantly groaning and howling in agony. The
firemen and plant workers who hadn’t already gotten evacuated had been given
the maximum allowable doses of Oxycontin for their wounds, but it didn’t help.
She’d never seen burns like theirs before. Some were all the way down to the
bone, making the skin peel off in layers and leaking discolored blood and pus.
Even trying to dress those injuries in sterile gauze bandages (which they’d run
out of a few hours ago, and were now using regular gauze) made it worse.
Debby took a deep breath before entering the first room. It was a four-cubicle
patient room, but the curtain dividers were pulled back and six people were
resting inside. Two didn’t even have beds, but rather the ED stretchers they’d
been brought up on. A doctor she didn’t know was intubating one of them, and
every time his protective gown brushed the patient’s arm it drew more blood.
“Are you on this floor today?” the doctor asked, not looking up.
“I’ve been on this floor since yesterday morning,” Debby nodded.
“Half my patients can’t even talk anymore, and whoever brought them in didn’t
chart them properly. Can you give me a hand?”
“I can try… why weren’t they charted?”
“I don’t know, I guess the other nurses didn’t feel as helpful as you,” the
doctor muttered bitterly.
She scowled behind her procedure mask, but didn’t say what she was thinking.
“This is Jacob Durham.” She pointed to the first patient, the one closest to
her on the left. “He’s a firefighter who came to us after the roof in the
turbine hall collapsed. He has a concussion and thermal burns on his face and
neck, and his left hand sustained a crush fracture.”
“What’s his contamination reading?”
“Um…” She scooped up the piece of paper from the counter that Matt had
scribbled the radiation levels of the patients on and squinted; the handwriting
was a jumbled mess. “We read thirteen rem, but that’s what the detector picked
up from his skin. There’s no way to know the dose he took when he was there.”
“Has he regained consciousness?”
“Yesterday,” she nodded. “But he complained about a headache and lost
consciousness after three hours. Dr. Oswald’s assessment was a subdural
hematoma caused by the TBI, but he’s been showing some symptoms of severe
radiation exposure. His blood vessels are so fragile that it was difficult to
start a fluid line, and the soldiers told us we have to limit our exposure to
their bodily fluids and won’t allow us to operate on anyone who’s been to the
accident site.”
Now, the doctor looked up at her, frozen in place otherwise. “You’re shitting
me right now.”
“I wish I was,” Debby shook her head, feeling her eyes start to sting. “They
said their orders are to keep us from risking ourselves over victims who… who
will just… just die anyway.”
Normally she would never say things like this in front of patients, but she was
exhausted and none of them were conscious at the moment anyway. It was a
struggle not to let the tears fall behind her goggles.
“This is disgusting,” the doctor hissed, hanging his head for a second before
banging a hand on the rail of the stretcher. “If we’re not allowed to help the
people who got hurt, then why are they keeping us here at all?”
 
But he’d been wearing gloves… so why was this happening?
It was all Alex could think about as he sat on the stretcher, staring at where
fluid was leaking out from under the bandages. It wasn’t blood… maybe lymph? He
didn’t know. His hands were wrapped in several layers of gauze and tape after
the skin on his fingers and palms had suddenly fallen off when he’d been
helping to transfer a patient, so now he was the patient, waiting to be
evacuated.
At some point a couple of days ago a guy in a yellow plastic coverall had
measured him, and less than two minutes later a nurse and an orderly had been
sent over to take his clothes. He’d been on the stretcher in the hall since
then, wearing nothing but a hospital gown and a blanket, until yesterday night
when he’d been put into a cubicle with two other people. They were worse off
than him; one was constantly bleeding from every orifice and crevasse in his
head (even his eyes), and the other was so badly burned that he’d been wrapped
up in dressings like an Egyptian mummy. Like Alex’s hands, that person was
dripping with pus from several places on his body.
When he’d been forced to stop working by his injury, one of the nurses had
given Alex a shot of some narcotic, but it had worn off after a few hours and
he hadn’t gotten another one since. He’d been burned on his mother’s iron once
when he was six years old, and the pain sort of reminded him of that, only much
worse. It wasn’t exactly the same, though. If he didn’t know better he could
almost swear he felt the remaining flesh and shreds of skin breaking down even
more under the bandages.
The steady bleeping of the EKG attached to the burned man suddenly changed to
an unbroken, high-pitched whine. Alex’s head whipped around to look; he knew
that sound all-too well. Without a second’s hesitation, he jumped out of bed to
help, but when he reached out he saw his hands and remembered. So he threw the
curtain aside and stood in the doorway: “Hey! We need help in here! There’s a
guy coding!”
Two people covered in surgical attire stomped into the cubicle, shouting back
and forth through their dust masks once they reached the guy who’d gone into
arrest. One of them started on the airway while the second snatched up a pair
of scissors to cut away the bandages, and even though Alex couldn’t really see
what was going on otherwise, he definitely caught the wash of old blood and
lymph that splashed to the floor around the healthcare worker’s boots when the
gauze was removed. They fussed around for a couple of minutes, but ultimately
switched off the EKG and unlocked the stretcher to remove the body from the
cubicle. As they went by, Alex could only stare - where the dressings had been
cut away from the man’s chest, it just looked like one massive wound. Even
after they were gone a few seconds later, the images of bleeding all over
himself when his skin peeled from his hands wouldn’t stop jumping into his
head.
 
Brendon was pulling his hair out when the medic came in.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer, but instead asked his own question. “Why is this happening? I
woke up and huge clumps of my hair got left on the pillow. I can just pull it
right out like this, what the fuck is going on?”
“Calm down,” the soldier insisted, slowly moving over to the box around him
made from clear plastic curtains. “How do you feel?”
“Mostly just pissed off,” Brendon snarked. “I feel better, can’t you let me out
of this hell-hole now?”
“We can’t do that, it’s against protocol.”
“I don’t give a shit about your protocol,” he snapped. “I was sick for a couple
days, yeah, but I’m fine now, so you should let me go. I don’t want to hang
around here any longer than I have to.”
“You can’t leave,” the army doctor shook his head, reaching out even though he
was a couple feel away. “You’re highly contaminated, we need to contain you
until it’s safe to evacuate.”
“I don’t want to be fucking contained!” Brendon screamed, balling his hands
into fists and standing up out of bed. “You just fucking stick me in here, all
by myself with nothing to do all day, and don’t even fucking check on me. But
oh, now that I’m not in pain anymore, you’re all fucking concerned now! What
the hell is wrong with you people? No, you know what, don’t even fucking answer
that! You’re not here to help me, so get out!” He jabbed a scabbed finger at
the opening between the tarpaulins.
“I can’t do that.” Somehow, the medic was still infuriatingly calm. “Please get
back onto your bed, sir. You’re very radioactive, and your immune system is
down. If you come outside of the plastic, you’re putting everyone in danger,
even yourself. If you don’t lie down I’ll have to call in some of my friends to
hold you while I give you your exam.”
Brendon continued to glare angrily for a moment, but eventually came to his
senses and decided that no, he didn’t want to get tackled to the floor by five
soldiers. Still fuming, he sat back down on the edge of the cot, making the
plastic under the sheet rustle.
The medic slowly entered the inner cubicle and began feeling under his chin and
arms, listening to his breathing, looking down his throat and eyes. Adhesive
bandages on the backs of his shoulders were changed and some kind of cream
smeared across the broken skin, which actually only made it hurt worse. A fresh
bag of saline was put into his IV line. And then, as always, the series of
samples. His skin was swabbed. The wounds in his back were swabbed. Inside his
ears and nose - more swabs. A blood sample and a urine sample.
About an hour later Brendon was given another in a series of transfusions, and
after that he was alone again.
 
In cases of critical levels of radiation exposure, even many where the victim
absorbs lethal doses, the initial symptoms are often followed by a brief period
of latency. For the medical staff in charge of these patients, it is often
commented that this is the worst part. The victim begins to feel better for a
day or two and believes they’re recovering, only for the illness to return in
even greater severity.
The patient will begin to suffer emerging burns and wounds in their skin from
the beta radiation, while their white cell count becomes virtually nonexistent
and makes them prone to infection. This commonly results in blackening of the
skin around orifices and wounds, as well as bleeding and candida in the mouth
and nose. If the red marrow has been damaged enough or destroyed altogether,
their blood dies as well, which often causes bruising and hemorrhages. Without
a transplant it will inevitably result in organ failure and death.
Blood transfusions and skin grafts can help in some cases, provided the patient
in question has taken less than 300 rem. However they have only a limited
effectiveness. Beyond 250-300 rem of exposure, blood transfusions provide only
a certain amount of relief, and beyond 300 marrow transplants become necessary.
Skin grafts, similarly, are useful within a specific range. If too much of the
victim’s skin is damaged by beta radiation, infection is more or less
inevitable, and with a compromised immune system the patient often dies even
below the median lethal dose of ~400 rem.
Chapter End Notes
     Nurses almost never get the respect they deserve at their jobs,
     whether from the doctors, family members, or the patients themselves.
     TBI stands for traumatic brain injury. A subdural hematoma is a pool
     of blood between the brain and its outermost covering within the
     skull.
     Doctors and nurses would *never* talk to each other like this, or
     about this subject matter, in front of patients whether they were
     awake or not. But after being awake for days on end they're slipping.
***** When it's not a lethal dose. *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Most of the patients had been evacuated, finally, but the ones who’d already
died would be left in the morgue until the army’s decon unit came through the
scrub the hospital. Really, though, Debby just couldn’t bring herself to care
about that right now. She’d gotten maybe five hours of sleep total since the
incident, and she still wasn’t even sure what said incident actually was.
Nobody was telling them anything.
But at least she had time to call her son, now.
Crackle. “Mom?”
“Kyle, how are you doing? Where are you?”
Debby felt shock jolt through her when her son suddenly burst into tears.
“Mom, Zach offed himself!” Kyle bawled on the other end of the phone. “He
didn’t say why he did it! I think it’s because I left and he was still there!”
“Shhh, calm down, honey,” Debby interrupted, trying in vain to soothe him.
“It’s not your fault. Where are you?”
“We-” Sniff. “We’re in Canada. There’s all kinds’a stuff on the news over here
right now that a bomb or something went off right where we live! You should
come to where we are!”
“Hey, hey, Kyle. Honey, take some deep breaths,” Debby urged. “I’m almost
positive there wasn’t a bomb. As soon as I can leave the hospital, I’ll come
right over to you and dad, I promise. It’ll probably only be a couple more
days, okay?”
“Dad made me throw away my shoes and clothes when we got here, but he wouldn’t
tell me why. He just said they were dirty, but I swear I put on clean clothes
before we left.”
Debby thought hard, trying to come up with an explanation that wouldn’t scare
Kyle even more that wasn’t a lie.
“Well, there was just something dangerous in the rain, that’s all. But you
threw everything away, so you won’t get sick from it. Did you take a shower
when you got there, too?”
“Yeah, dad made me stay in there for, like, an hour just scrubbing myself the
whole time.”
“Good. Like I said, you probably won’t get sick, you weren’t around it for very
long.”
“Why did they make you stay at the hospital?” Kyle wondered. “It it’s poisonous
shouldn’t they make everyone leave?”
“They are making everyone leave, they just couldn’t do it very fast and we all
had to stay and take care of some patients. Most of the patients are gone now,
though, so I’ll get to leave soon.”
“Are you sure we won’t get sick? There was a thing on TV from the government
telling everyone to stay inside all the time and to only eat canned food. We’re
not supposed to drink milk, either.”
“You won’t get sick, honey, just do what they say on TV.” The door suddenly
swung open and a soldier in a rubber suit with an air tank motioned for her to
come with him. “Okay, I have to go, now. Just do what they on TV and I’ll be
with you and dad in a couple days.”
“Okay, Mom…”
“Okay. I love you, Kyle.”
“Love you too.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Debby slipped her phone into her pocket under the plastic isolation gown and
followed the army man out into the ED. They’d gathered the staff near the
entrance through the ambulance bays and were measuring everything with their
long metal sticks. The rattling from their detectors was deafening.
 
Alex didn’t know what was happening anymore - last night he’d left the
hospital, herded into the back of a truck by soldiers in bulky hazmat suits,
and then put into what he thought was a school. Everything was covered in
plastic, even the walls, and they put him into a cubicle of tarps. Thick
camouflage tarps, with an inner box around a stretcher of clear plastic sheets.
There was an IV pole, absorbent material on the ground around the stretcher,
and a bucket. Nothing else.
Alex struggled to lay down and get comfortable without using his hands, but it
seemed like nothing worked. His feet ached, his skin burned. His left ear
dripped blood every so often. The inside of his mouth, especially his tongue,
was so swollen that he couldn’t drink water, he could barely talk, and it felt
like his face had swelled up, too.
A medic finally came to check him after what felt like a year of painful
tossing and trying to take a nap.
“Boyd?” Alex nodded. The medic pushed aside the clear plastic sheet and entered
the inner box. “How old are you?”
Alex shook his head, gesturing to his mouth with his left hand because that one
hurt less. The thin disposable pillow felt like somebody had taken a sander to
his scalp.
“Your mouth?” Nod. “Okay. Sit up.” Alex struggled to do it on his own, annoyed
that the medic made no move to help him. “Open your mouth?”
A flashlight was shone in, and behind the green chemical splash goggles Alex
saw the other man’s eyes get as big as dinner plates.
“Okay… uh, well, good news, your gross exposure looks like it was less than 200
rem. The lethal dose is 400, and if you got that you’d be way worse off right
now. You’ll probably just need skin grafts and some hospital time, maybe a few
transfusions. Makes you a higher priority, too, since you’ll probably make it,
so you’ll get outta here sooner. Um. I’m gonna check the rest of you now, okay?
I’ll do your hands last. I just need to grab someone else for assistance.”
The medic disappeared and Alex slowly rested his hands on the edge of the cot
at his sides. He’d never had any major injuries as a kid, so after seven years
as an emergency responder it was really odd and frightening to see things from
the other perspective. The uncertainty, not knowing what was wrong with him
exactly, or how it would go once he found out. And the helplessness. He hated
not being able to take care of himself.
Alex wasn’t exactly sure, but he guessed it took about forty-five minutes for
them to finally appear in his cubicle. One was stretching exam gloves over the
long surgical mitts that covered the plastic sleeves of his smock, while the
other was pushing a rattly cart with a clear trash bag over it - Alex could see
various basic medical supplies on it and a fresh bag of saline for his fluid
line.
“Sorry for leaving you hanging, there was an emergency,” the first medic
apologized. “Last name again?”
“Boyd… what happened?” Ugh. He shouldn’t have tried to talk, now his gums were
bleeding.
They exchanged a glance; one was taller than the other and had goggles, but
other than that he couldn’t tell the difference between the pair.
“Hazmat spill,” Shorty answered after a second. He pulled out a tube of
antibiotic gel, which Alex thought was a waste of time. It he ended up getting
MRSA or VRE, he’d already probably been infected. “We’re gonna do your hands
last since they’re the worst… why are you wearing boots?”
“Um,” Alex mumbled, swallowing another mouthful of blood, “should I not be?”
“The nurses gave you back your clothes, didn’t they?” Goggles demanded,
suddenly sounding pissed. “I thought they were instructed to discard all the
personal items!”
“Who knows,” Shorty shrugged. “They’re civilians, too, not really best known
for following orders.”
The army medics didn’t say anything else, but immediately picked up scissors
and one of their annoying detector machines with the metal wand. His boots were
too thick to cut and he’d gotten a nurse to tie them for him, so the laces were
snipped to get them off. Shorty measured his whole body quickly, then scooped
up a second pair of scissors.
“Everything has to go, the hospital gown they gave him has three millisieverts
and that’s the cleanest thing on him.”
The faded cloth was easily removed, though Shorty cut through the string at the
back rather than untie it. Goggles opened his socks at the sides, and Alex
frowned - sure, they hadn’t been white since he’d bought them God knew when,
but he didn’t remember them being that discolored…
The socks were slowly peeled away and tossed into the metal bucket on the
floor, and Goggles immediately stripped off his outer gloves. As the medic
pulled on a fresh pair Alex raised his feet enough to see that they were
blistered, especially his toes, while the bottoms and sides had so many bruises
he could barely tell where one ended and another began. The skin on his lower
legs, about a third of the way up his calves where the boots had been touching,
were red and cracking.
“Are you an emergency worker? How much time were you outside in the rain?”
Goggles queried.
“Don’t know. Took back most of our own guys, then my hands…”
“Damn. Okay.”
“Doesn’t look much better over here,” Shorty offered. “His back and shoulders
are showing some burns already. Do we know what his gross exposure was?”
“My guess is about 200 rem, but according to the hospital staff he was one of
the ones who worked the longest. I’m surprised he didn’t take more.”
“You know what happened to Ben? He’s my partner, know if he’s okay?”
“If he’s here, he’s not in our section,” Goggles shook his head as he cut up
the outer seam of Alex’s pant leg. “Or at least not that I saw. Bohr?”
Shorty - Bohr - shrugged. “Um… not unless Ben is short for Brendon, we have a
Brendon.”
“No, Benjamin, Ben Jones.”
“Nope. No Jones. If I see him, I can tell him you asked,” Bohr offered. “It
won’t be until tonight, though. My shift ends in half an hour.”
Stripped to his stretched-out gray boxer briefs, Alex took a good look at
himself and was horrified. Large patches of skin were breaking into lesions and
blisters, especially around his knees and shoulders where his clothes had been
the most wet, though there were also noticeable red splotches in seemingly
random places along his arms and chest. Partly obscured by the elastic
waistband of his underwear was a ring of purple-black bruises where his thick
nylon belt had been.
“Do we have a full box or a partial box of tegaderm?” Goggles asked.
“Full.”
“Good, iodine swabs?”
“I think we took two out of the box so far, we should have enough.”
“Okay. Go find another bucket, I can’t believe they only left one in here, and
see if Jackson’s free to come take labs. By the time Boyd was admitted they
were too backed up to check him.”
Bohr disappeared around the tarpaulins while Goggles practically painted every
inch of Alex’s body with iodine. The parts with lesions were then re-wiped with
alcohol (that wasn’t painful at all...) and covered with hemostatic sponges,
then a larger gauze pad that was secured with sterile bandages. The red spots
were also wiped with alcohol, then dressed in more gauze pads and tegaderm
film. He didn’t get why, though; they were just red spots, not wounds.
Alex’s feet were put into hard plastic splints after that to keep him from
trying to walk, because apparently any movement would rip his skin under the
bandages. Not that he really wanted to go running around anyway. He was in too
much pain for that. Once Goggles had finished plastering most of his body with
gauze and tegaderm, he gave Alex a new patient gown and changed his outer
gloves.
“Okay, your hands are next, but we’ll have to… oh, never mind. Perfect timing,
Bohr.”
“Yup,” Bohr grunted setting down the bucket on the floor. “Jackson’s busy,
apparently six patients basically all coded at once so now he has to take care
of it.”
“Damn… which ones?”
“Five were nuke victims, the other one was in critical care anyway and kicked
the bucket by coincidence. Nobody from our section today.” Bohr stripped off
his exam gloves, then his surgical mitts, and stepped out of the clear
enclosure. Everything else came off after that until he was just in his plastic
suit and boots; the exterior PPE was simply left in a heap on the floor. “I’m
off in fifteen minutes, I’ll go tag Peters in for you and keep an eye for
Jackson on my way out.”
“Understood.”
Goggles slowly began unwrapping the first bandage, cutting it when he came to a
sticky spot. It was separated with more alcohol, though once the second roll
started coming off Alex was unnerved as pus and discolored blood began coming
out from underneath in long, sticky strings to bead up on the floor.
“Infected?” Alex croaked out, his gums still dribbling blood as well.
“I don’t know.” The medic shook his head and started on the third layer. His
blue exam gloves were smeared with fluid. “Looks to me like… oh. Um. Wow.”
“What?” Alex was afraid to look and kept his eyes on Goggles’ goggles.
“I hope you’re left-handed.”
“Why?”
“It’s in a late stage of necrosis. The good news is I don’t think you have a
secondary infection. I’m going to administer a local anesthetic and re-wrap
it.”
Alex sat still and was quiet while the army medic did exactly that, then
checked the condition of his left hand. Since he was right arm-dominant this
one wasn’t nearly as bad off, though what little skin remained was practically
swiss cheese from the cracks and lesions. Goggles smeared the limb up to his
elbow in antibiotic gel before dressing it in an insane layer of sterile
bandages, eventually looking like a huge white mitten. Then the medic scooped
up a CB off the belt of his plastic suit; even the radio was wound in Seran
wrap.
“Corporal Ratner to Sergeant Jackson. Jackson, do you have a copy? Over.”
“This is Jackson, go ahead, corporal. Over.”
“I’m currently attending a moderately contaminated patient in Delta-12,
presenting late-stage radiological necrosis in the right hand. All five digits
and all metacarpals are affected, requesting assessment for emergency field
amputation. Over.”
 
Necrosis (the death of cells or tissue) is a medical condition most often
caused by external factors, the most common trauma and infections. If caught
early, the damaged tissues can often be removed to prevent further injury to
the patient. However, if the condition is left untreated for too long, it may
become severe enough for extreme measures. If the injury has taken place in a
limb or digit, amputation may be deemed necessary if the affected area is large
enough, appears to be spreading, or is host to a secondary infection
(particularly MDROs).
A rare but extremely destructive form of this affliction is radiological
necrosis. This injury was not documented until the 20th century following the
advent of nuclear technology, but is often more difficult to treat than more
common varieties. Acute exposure to high doses of radiation damage cell
structure, and may even completely destroy chromosomes and DNA. This in turn
makes it impossible for the irradiated tissue to produce new cells that would
otherwise take the place of the damaged ones.
Subdermal “burns” caused by Beta particles present a greater risk of developing
into radiological necrosis for this reason. Thermal or chemical burns (1st
degree and 2nd degree only) eventually heal, though they may scar, and by
themselves will not injure surrounding tissue. Subdermal Beta burns,
potentially, may be contaminated as well. This contamination will not only
worsen the initial wound but also cause it to spread deeper, as well as
drastically increase the risk of infection by directly interfering with the
body’s autoimmune response to environmental pathogens.
In cases of radiological necrosis, which does not occur except following severe
exposure, even in the earliest stage of cell death the affected tissues almost
always require surgical intervention.
Chapter End Notes
     "Radiological necrosis" is actually a made-up term. It's so rare
     (basically there are no documented cases except the victims of
     Chernobyl) that I couldn't find any medical pages describing it, but
     even if there isn't a specific name for it it's still a real
     condition. Pretty much it's when part (or all) of your body takes too
     much radiation at once, so all your cells die and you basically get
     to watch yourself come apart at the seams. It's even more horrific
     than it sounds.
***** When the shift finally ends. *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Derek groaned inwardly as he sat on the side of his cot. He’d just gotten out
of his plastic suit and into his combat uniform, and now it was time for the
worst part of the month: when he made the obligatory call to check in with his
father. It almost made him glad his mother was in prison, because he’d never
liked her either and that gave him a very good excuse to never contact her
again. But he still had to call his other parent, who still clung to
unrealistic expectations of his character.
Two rings.
“Hello?”
“Hey, dad, it’s me.”
“Derek! Ah, I was waiting to hear from you. How’ve you been, son?”
“Alright. We’re responding to a crisis but that’s all I can tell you, it’s
being kept under wraps for now.”
“Ah, I see… well, you should still be proud. You’re doing good and serving your
country.”
“Yup,” Derek muttered, rolling his eyes. Serving his country… yeah, right. More
like serving Haliburton most of the time. His father, grandfather, great-
grandfather, and so-on had all been soldiers, so it wasn’t like he’d had much
choice. Plus there were literally no other jobs at the time he’d enlisted. “How
about you? How’s Jimmy?”
“He’s down at Fort Myers Beach visiting his mother, but he’ll be back next
week.”
“They, um, your neighbors haven’t found you out yet, right?” Derek replied,
lowering his voice. He was more or less by himself right now, though, which was
good. If the guys found out his dad was gay, a blanket party every night for
the rest of his service would probably be the merciful option. “’Cause, um,
since I’m out on disaster relief right now I won’t be able to just drop
everything and help you move again.”
“No, no, everything’s fine,” his father assured him. “Hey, you found a girl for
yourself yet? I’m still waiting on those grandkids, y’know.”
“Yeah right,” Derek scoffed. “I’m still 5’4” and fuck-ugly, dad. Girls run when
they see me. The only one who’s seeing less action than me is Croyle, and
that’s just because he’s still pretty much a dorky college kid. That’s really
stupid, y’know? Why don’t officers go to basic? They just do some ROTC at West
Point and then they get to come boss my ass around? The post-it notes on his
desk have been in the army longer than him.”
“I know what you mean, son,” his father chuckled. “I never saw one that knew
his ass from his elbow until he made Major.”
A palm landed heavily on his shoulder, startling him slightly, and he saw
Private Collins jerk a thumb towards the door. The units stationed here had
appropriated the post office and public safety buildings to bunk in; ordinarily
they’d be in tents, but the rain was still dumping fallout heavily onto the
area. Derek’s platoon was in the fire station, and he still thought it was kind
of weird that none of the vehicles were in the bays. They’d probably just been
left at the plant or something.
“Shit, dad, I gotta go, something’s come up,” Derek admitted, getting to his
achy feet. “I’ll call again next month.”
“Alright. You’re doing good work, son. We’re proud of you.”
“Uh-huh. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Derek shoved his phone into his pocket and then got into formation with his
platoon. The lieutenant put them at ease.
“As of 0900, the last victims have been evacuated from the hospitals. The staff
are being brought here now for decon and triage. Don your Level A suits and
breathing apparatuses, report to the decon tent on the east entrance at 0945.
Platoon! AttenTION! Fall out!”
God dammit, his shift had ended less than half an hour ago and now he had to do
more work? Yeah, the units that were supposed to arrive yesterday for relief
had been redirected due to some kind of fuck-up or other, so they were short
handed. But if Derek and his guys collapsed with exhaustion and couldn’t work
anymore, what then?
They collectively stripped off their fatigues and slipped into disposable paper
scrubs. There was a specific protocol - disposable clothing and socks, no
underwear, a cooling vest. Over that cooling vest was the SCBA platform. Rubber
boots and polyisoprene gloves for doffing later. And then the Tyvek suit -
these ones were yellow, manufactured by Dupont. They were rear-entry, so that
they could decon and more easily change air cylinders. The suit was sealed and
pressurized to prevent exposure in the event of puncture. Then, the heavy
chemical-resistant booties and gloves were duct taped to the suit itself.
Fully separated from the world around him, Derek was already sick of his mask
hissing every time he breathed in, but at least they had throat mics this time.
When they’d first arrived, they’d discovered their radios had stopped working
because of the intense radiation, but now they had better insulated
communication equipment.
After further instructions, they broke up and went to their assigned positions.
At least his assigned sector was already full, Derek realized, so when it was
time for his next shift he wouldn’t be dealing with any surprises. And he had
one of the easiest jobs - measure the hospital workers post-decon, give them
disposable scrubs like he had on under his suit, and send them on to the next
station so the medics could check them out more thoroughly (or back to the
beginning hose-down if they weren’t clean enough). Once all that was over and
done with, he’d collect the personal dosimeters from the guys, check them, and
report the data to the medics.
And the giant conveyor began. One by one they were shunted through the process
- Derek wasn’t sure if they were victims or patients, given that these people
had been at work less than an hour ago - and he checked each one. They each
arrived to him looking the same: still damp because there hadn’t been time to
dry them off all the way, slightly humiliated after their clothes had probably
been cut from them, red lines around their eyes and faces from wearing goggles
for days on end.
Every so often one would turn up with his or her head shaved, since
contamination could be extremely difficult to remove from human hair. They all
looked like they’d been punched in both eyes, so dark were the circles that
showed exhaustion. And of course, as First Sergeant Kidd pushed the next one
along, he wasn’t mean to them but he sure wasn’t nice to them, either. He had a
job to do and didn’t care.
It was the dying patient who needed water all over again, and since nobody else
would do it, then Derek decided it was his job to care. So after making sure
they were clean (enough), he got one of the disposable towels and rubbed them
dry as gently as he could given the restrictions of his PPE. They were
sometimes too tired to lift their arms anymore, so he helped them slide on the
paper scrubs and then guided them to the medics with a hand on their shoulder.
They almost always thanked him, too, but with his mask and the clear visor
there was no way for him to reply, so he could only nod inside his hood.
By the end of everything, Derek could barely stay upright. All the discarded
clothes, towels, sponges… everything was simply dumped out the entrance of the
decon tent with plastic snow shovels to be gathered up by the squad assigned to
it. The inside of the tent was hosed down, scrubbed, rinsed a second time and
then covered in Decon Gel to get up whatever the soap hadn’t touched. They
wiped off their suits and helped each other get clean after, and their personal
dosimeters were all under the acceptable exposure limit when Derek checked
them.
Back on his cot in the fire station, he’d had every intention of eating
something so he wouldn’t be totally drained when he got up again for his shift,
but had fallen onto his back without even untying his boots. He was out like a
light.
 
He knew it had been so recent, but Brendon couldn’t remember feeling healthy.
The other day he’d been pitching bitch-fits at the army doctors for neglecting
him, but now if he sat up the whole world spun around him. He was puking and
shitting pretty often, uncontrollably so, even though all he’d been given
besides whatever fluids in the IV bags was chicken broth. Every now and then
blood came up with everything else, and that should’ve scared him, but he was
feeling too sick to care right now. Sometimes he broke out in sweat, but then
started shivering, so he knew he had a fever.
There were all kinds of terms being tossed around him by the medics.
Hypotension, probable leukopenia, electrolyte deficiency, aplastic anemia. He
didn’t have the slightest idea what most of that even meant.
Right now, they were peeling the things from him, taking sloughs of his skin
and huge black scabs away on the gauze. Once in awhile they’d mop off his body,
and he wasn’t sure if it was sweat or blood. Maybe both. They’d smear some kind
of sticky gel all over him and then wrap him in bandages and tape again.
When a handheld detection unit was waved over his wounds, the thing positively
screamed. Even without seeing the display, Brendon knew the contamination level
was something ridiculous. Surprisingly, that was actually sort of funny; Ty had
always bitched about calibrating their Geiger counters, so who knows what he’d
have said about this kind of dose rate?
When he’d asked about it, only one medic had answered him - their closest guess
was that he’d absorbed around 750 or 800 rem. Pity he didn’t remember what that
meant, or what the lethal dose was supposed to be.
 
Different levels of acute radiation exposure produce varying symptoms and have
understandably varying survival rates as well. It also depends largely if the
entire organism is exposed, and which type(s) of radiation were absorbed. For
the first example, it is assumed that the victim is an adult human male of
average height and weight, and between 20-30 years old. The assumed type of
radiation is the gamma ray, at a dose of 600-800 Roentgen Equivalent Man (rem).
Following the onset of the prodrome (nausea/vomiting, heavy diarrhea, headache,
fever, and possible cognitive impairment) within 10-60 minutes and lasting not
more than 48 hours (24 for cognitive impairment), the latency period will not
last for more than 7 days. Under these criteria for the prodrome and latency
period, even without available measurement at the time of exposure, this dose
can be safely assumed by the medical practitioner.
After the latency period, the victim will begin to experience a battery of
unpleasant symptoms. As with a lower acute dose, the vomiting, nausea and
headache will return, as will the hemophilia and increased risk of infection.
However, it is also categorized as presenting with dangerous leukopenia and
hypotension, and the fever will be increased from its previous onset.
Supportive therapy includes antibiotics, supplemental vitamins/electrolytes,
and blood transfusions. Transplants of bone marrow or fetal liver cells are
likely needed to combat the leukopenia.
[PLEASE NOTE: This example has been simplified for the purposes of the lesson.
It does not take into account other factors, such as concurrent injury/illness,
genetics, and exposure to other types of radiological elements. The dosage here
is also an extreme case with a relatively low survival rate; virtually all
patients die without medical care at this level. With advanced treatment, 50-
95% of patients who suffered this dose will die.]
Chapter End Notes
     Medical Terminology
     Hypotension = Low blood pressure
     Leukopenia = Insufficient production of red blood cells, white blood
     cells, platelets
     Aplastic anemia = Damage to the bone marrow
     Prodrome = Symptoms that may appear before the full onset of the
     disease, but which may be difficult to properly identify
     Hemophilia = The inability for blood to form clots, which can lead to
     dangerous blood loss
***** Intermission - The classified reports. *****
Chapter Notes
     This is par for the course in my narratives, especially this one, but
     consider yourself warned that there is some very ugly shit in this
     chapter. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.
     Also this chapter is a little shorter than usual because it got so
     depressing I couldn't put any more into it... that should tell you
     something.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
During_The_Explosion
Terry Flynn stayed at his post in the control room even when the alarms were
screaming and everyone else ran to either help or escape. In his mind, he still
needed to keep an eye on his instrument panel, because that was his job. The
wave of gamma radiation rendered him unconscious, and he was carried from the
building by Brendon Stahl. He went into arrest without regaining consciousness
and was pronounced dead on arrival to the emergency department.
Ty Simmons immediately understood the danger, and ran through the halls yelling
at everyone he saw to put on their PPE, grab a detection instrument, and start
trying to put out the fire. He was entering the turbine hall for unit 2 when
the ceiling began to cave, which buried Ted Connors, who’d been trying to
smother the flames. His friend was killed instantly, and ultimately the body
would never be recovered. Simmons himself was later removed as a casualty and
admitted to a hospital like the majority of his colleagues.
Patrick Finch had run forward with an extinguisher when he noticed the flames
in the turbine hall. Unaware of the faulty electrical wires which had caused
the blaze, he stepped right into the pool of water and was electrocuted. Even
long after he’d died, the danger was still present, making it difficult for the
firemen to move his body.
Fred Pierce was the worker who called 9-1-1, after his instrument panel in the
control room had gone berserk. He ran out of the building afterwards to look
for external damage. After not only getting too close to the ruptured nuclear
core but also drenched in rain that was carrying the fallout back down to
earth, he received a massive 1097 rem of radiation and would die eighteen days
later from multiple organ failure and concurrent infection.
Carl Rein had checked the area with a radiation meter after the emergency was
made known to the plant staff. He wrongly informed his colleagues that there
hadn’t been a significant leak of radioactive material because the meter hadn’t
been properly calibrated and was showing normal readings when in fact the level
of contamination was so high that, in some areas, an unprotected man would
receive a fatal dose in less than 20 minutes. This misinformation, though not
his fault, would see the deaths of many workers, including him.
 
First_Response
Jacob Durham had been trying to recover the body of Patrick Finch when a second
structural collapse occurred in the turbine hall. It wasn’t as severe and he
wasn’t killed, though he did suffer a blow to his skull. This would prove to be
indirectly fatal, as it caused a subdural hematoma. When the doctors were
instructed not to operate, the pressure inside of his brain cavity caused
enough damage to make him lose consciousness and ultimately go into arrest.
However, this was a merciful end for him, since he’d taken 518 rem and would’ve
most likely died from acute radiation toxicity.
Xavier Harris and Adrian Lauzon departed the fire station first when the call
went out, but due to the weather became incapacitated during a collision with
an 18-wheeler. Harris suffered an open fracture in his left arm when the
ambulance had ended up in the ditch beside the highway. The airbag in the
passenger side malfunctioned and didn’t deploy, which concussed Lauzon and gave
him whiplash. However, given that they were inside of a vehicle until two of
their colleagues assisted them (prior to transporting any accident victims),
Harris and Lauzon only accumulated a mere 20 rem each and suffered no immediate
health effects from the contamination.
Four firefighters (Edward Kimm, Dylan Scholz, Charlie Redford and Guy Jameson)
stood directly in the path of the ruptured core trying desperately to control
the blaze with their high-pressure hoses. Not only did this fail to have the
desired effect, but the intense heat evaporated it almost instantly and caused
the steam to carry further radioactive fallout into the atmosphere. The four
men suffered such intense gamma radiation exposure that they’d begun collapsing
and vomiting within the hour. Not one of them could walk back to the ambulances
for treatment, and they were the first public safety workers to be hospitalized
for radiation sickness. They died horrible deaths within 12 days.
One young fireman, Ricky Dominguez, was the only one to notice the flames on
the roof spreading rapidly towards a neighboring energy block. He reported it
urgently and climbed on top of the structure with two others (Evan Spengler and
Troye Winters) to try and stop it from reaching further. Their proximity to the
ruptured reactor housing doused them in lethal gamma and x-ray radiation, but
the trio stayed until soldiers replaced them in the afternoon. Dominguez,
Spengler and Winters had to be carried down from the roof by the medics after
they’d been weakened by such severe exposure. They were so contaminated that
their turnout gear was removed on the spot before they were evacuated to one of
the hospitals. Dominguez and Winters died in agony from the radiation toxicity
after 18 and 21 days respectively. Spengler lost consciousness in the
ambulance, went into arrest, and was resuscitated four times before he was
admitted to an emergency department. The fifth time he coded, they were unable
to revive him. Without the steadfast efforts of those three men, the fire
could’ve damaged a second reactor and made the situation many times worse.
Their names, and the names of the other emergency responders, would not appear
in any official statistic until nineteen years later.
 
Triage
From the vehicles arriving at the hospital emergency departments repeatedly, to
say nothing of the EMTs and victims, contamination was transported directly
from the stricken reactor to the parking lots of these facilities. The result
were dangerous “hot spots” of radioactivity that would go undetected until they
were noticed by military personnel much later, which caused further harm to
first responders, patients, and hospital staff.
One of five hospitals that received victims of the accident became so
overwhelmed in the first hours of the catastrophe that paramedics were forced
to leave patients in ambulance bays and in front of nurses’ stations waiting
for treatment so that they could return and bus more casualties. Two patients
died waiting to be admitted due to life-threatening burns, and this went
unnoticed until the evening when an orderly realized those same two had been
there since she’d started her shift.
Despite their inadequate PPE, approximately 68% of hospital workers involved
surprisingly escaped acute lethal doses, due largely to the fact that the
military confined them inside their facilities. However, the psychological
damage to the medical staff was absurd. In one hospital, Dr. Miles Landis (an
emergency department attending physician) couldn’t take the stress or the sheer
human suffering. He committed suicide by stealing enough narcotics from a
medicine cart to overdose himself, and was discovered by one of the nursing
supervisors the next morning.
 
Deployment
When multiple units of National Guard reservists were dispatched, instead of
immediately assessing the damage at the plant, they hastily set up roadblocks
and checkpoints to keep civilians in the disaster zone to lock down the
incident. Protective equipment was in such short supply that adequate gear was
only provided to higher-ups and the troops on the site of the explosion.
Military CBRN equipment had not been modernized or even inspected recently
enough for their protective properties to be guaranteed. In one extreme case,
an entire crate of respirator filters was distributed that had expired six
years prior. This fact went conveniently unnoticed, and 18 soldiers would
suffer severe internal exposure as a result. Worst of all, the S-4 who
deliberately overlooked this shortcoming was never discovered and went
unpunished.
Following the situation assessment, the roof and structure fires had been
extinguished by dawn the following morning through the use of chemical foam.
However, the cracked unit wasn’t brought under control until four days after
the explosion. The zirconium cladding of the fuel rods, as well as the uranium
oxide fuel itself, had either burned up or melted within the reactor housing
and poured an updraft of radioactive gasses into the air. It was smothered
beneath tons upon tons of concrete, lead, and sand. Teams of soldiers on the
more stable areas of the roof as well as helicopter crews deposited the
material (more than 200 men in total), and within two years they would all have
died from the magnitude of radiation toxicity.
Throughout this first phase of damage control, in most cases the dosimetrists
were threatened with disciplinary action should they fail to keep their
readings secret. These exposure rates were only reported to the officers in
order to determine further logistics of the operations, and the vast majority
of soldiers carried out their orders with no knowledge of the doses they
received. Those working on-site are Edmons-Drake were allowed to take two or
even three times the official limit before being transferred out of the hot
zone.
 
Evacuation
Specialist Paul Ramirez, while checking apartment complexes for stragglers or
stubborn civilians who didn’t understand the danger, encountered the body of a
young woman in her bathroom. She was in her bathtub covered in blood, having
succumbed to hypovolemia after attempting to self-perform an abortion with a
bicycle spoke.
In one home he’d relayed orders to, PFC Darren Eliot noticed it was inhabited
by two men. Assuming they were homosexuals, he reported this quietly to the
platoon sergeant, and during the transport of evacuees the pair were sent to
different locations on purpose.
Private Cory Daniels was assigned to check a street of duplexes and apartments
for potential stragglers. In one of the duplexes, he discovered a small
bedroom. Inside was a fine layer of dust, and it seemed to belong to a young
boy - dark blue bedspread, a stack of X-Men comics. But obviously it hadn’t
been used for a while. This room was just like his sister’s room, left in
stasis, because Olivia had died of Hodgkin's and this little boy had obviously
died, too. He called his mother that night and they cried together.
PFC Alan Voracek discovered a meth lab in one building that he was closing up
after the evacuation. Not understanding what he was dealing with, he
accidentally started a fire and asphyxiated from the fumes. His squad-mates
were unable to rescue him in time and he was pronounced dead on the scene.
During the coordination to get evacuees onto the correct transports, Sergeant
William Dover Jr. watched them with the question in his mind: “Do they feel the
same way I did when my family moved after 4th grade?” It looked so similar to
him, leaving and knowing they’d never come back, with cranky children and
looking like they hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before. The only
difference, to him, was that they had a lot less stuff being brought along.
 
Chapter End Notes
     There are quite a few pieces of this inspired by the immediate
     response to Chernobyl.
     Valery Khodemchuk was standing so close to unit 4 that his body was
     simply incinerated, and his remains were never found. There is a
     memorial to him at the plant where people often leave flowers.
     The detection equipment at the plant maxed out at less than 4
     roentgen, so the true levels of contamination were not known until
     military dosimetrists arrived to make their assessment. When the
     number kept rising each time, they thought their equipment was faulty
     until they realized the nuclear core was still on fire.
     Vladimir Shashenok, an employee of a Chernobyl subcontractor, was
     discovered severely injured under a fallen beam and died in a
     hospital without regaining consciousness.
     The fire in the reactor core really did have this deadly effect from
     the firemen's hoses. The water simply turned to steam and carried
     radiation into the sky, leaving the flames untouched.
     The firemen on the scene absorbed such huge doses of radiation that
     it really was that quick for them to start showing symptoms. Some of
     them had to carry passed-out comrades to the medical station, while
     others stubbornly refused to climb down from the roof until the fire
     had been contained to the nuclear core. Many of those heroes are now
     tragically almost forgotten.
     People who had friends or family at the plant were crowding Pripyat's
     hospital that morning, trying to get to their loved ones, while
     militia held them back and tried to warn them about the radiation
     carried on ambulances.
     There was almost no adequate protection for the ~800000 liquidators
     who were deployed to deal with the catastrophe, and those who wore
     lead-plated suits were the ones in the most extreme locations. They
     suffered severe exposure in spite of their gear because the radiation
     was simply too high to be shielded at that point.
     It took 9 days to extinguish the fire in the destroyed unit. By that
     time it is estimated that 55% of the graphite had burned off,
     releasing untold amounts of fallout into the atmosphere. It was
     eventually smothered by flights of helicopters dropping sand and
     boric acid into the crater.
     The individual dose rates were virtually always kept secret, or
     simply not recorded at all and then guessed at after the fact. This
     cost a great many liquidators their health, their jobs, and their
     lives.
***** When you put lies on paper. *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Debby huddled tighter into the blanket they’d given her, curled into a ball on
the uncomfortable cot. It was hot out, now that the weather was back to normal,
which she knew from overhearing the soldiers complaining to each other, but she
felt cold and exhausted. That meant she had a fever, and she knew the medics
had administered some type of antibiotics into her fluid line. She wondered
what kind of infection she had.
Whatever it was, this wasn’t something she’d encountered before at work in any
case. Her hands and feet were swollen up like bags of popcorn and the skin
there had turned red, even blue and purple in some places. She’d started
vomiting at some point during the last couple of days before the hospital staff
had been evacuated, though that seemed to have stopped for the time being.
The strangest symptom, if that’s even what it was, had to be the little patches
of arm and leg hair that had mysteriously fallen out. She didn’t know if this
had already been happening to her legs (she hadn’t been shaving them, of
course, since she’d been at work for who knew how many days) since she hadn’t
taken off her scrubs long enough to see until the soldiers had been
decontaminating her, but for her arms, at least, this was new.
Generally, the troops seemed afraid to get near them, she noticed. There had
been several buildings in various locations that had been used as overflow
medical shelters by the national guard, and Debby’s hospital had mainly been
emptied into one that had been some city auditorium once the staff were finally
evacuated. There were tarps and thick plastic sheets hung up all over the
place, but they must not’ve had enough of them because she was in a tarpaulin
“room” with three other people - two orderlies from pediatrics and another
nurse who’d been in neurology.
“They just started shoving firemen in with us,” one orderly was recalling
through his chattering jaw. Debby could feel the heat radiating off the others
around her, so they must’ve had fevers, too. “The nursing supervisor tried
bitching out the doctors for it, but the doctors said there was nowhere else to
put them. We weren’t set up for it, though, our stuff is for kids so it’s all
the wrong sizes. I remember this one ambulance driver who coded and they didn’t
have an ambu-bag big enough for him. I had to bring the guy down to the morgue
because everyone else was busy, and then later when I brought the autopsy
report up the nurses were all talking about it. He died because inside his
lungs were all blistered. That was the day before we came here.”
“I was talking to my sister, she worked in the lab,” the other nurse offered.
Debby couldn’t remember their names, but she knew they’d told her. “After the
first night they couldn’t run labs anymore because all the machines got
contaminated somehow. They couldn’t figure out how it happened, though, because
all the samples had been properly tagged and sealed. But the whole lab became
radioactive. The hazmat guy came in the next morning, I think, and made them
toss all the machines. They had to use the older ones that were phased out, and
then the day after that those were all radiated, too. So then they had to stop
doing labs, because we didn’t have anything left.”
There was a soft rustling of plastic, interrupting their quiet recollections.
An army medic in a green suit and a gas mask came in, but through the clear
Plexiglas Debby could see that his eyes were smiling. “Good news, we’ve checked
all of your labs and none of you seem to have gotten a lethal acute dose.
You’ve been cleared for treatment and we’re going to have you moved to
facilities in the next state over as soon as the paperwork’s done.”
“We’re going to live?” the second orderly repeated back.
“Yes. They’ll take care of you there, and since you did so much work after the
accident until we could finish taking over you’ll get priority and the expenses
will be covered. Alright, I’m also here to do checks.”
“Are there any women?” Debby croaked out, her swollen mouth and throat
protesting each syllable. “When I got here there were… some of them weren’t
professional all the time…”
“Yes, I… heard about that. Um. No, we don’t, but I’m on duty right now and I
promise I won’t try anything. Any time I see any of the others doing anything
like that, I try to report it.”
This medic was efficient and friendly, which was soothing after the turmoil
Debby had endured since the beginning of the catastrophe. He did their basic
vital signs, helped them roll over so that he could put a new sheet under each
of them, and brought an extra blanket to those who requested one. They learned
he was Staff Sergeant Franklin Zusak, that he was always on first shift, and
that being on first shift meant it would almost always be him attending them.
It was a comforting thought - Zusak was gentle and professional with them, the
way Debby had always tried to be with her patients.
“Now,” Zusak offered as he stripped the polypropylene exam gloves off the heavy
chemical-resistant rubber ones that were undoubtedly part of his hazmat suit,
“of course you all know this, but even though you’re not feeling like eating
you should try to anyway. Radiation is extremely weakening to the body, but
really it’s almost like any other acquired sickness. Nutrients will help
counteract the effects. They won’t give you anything too heavy, of course,
probably tomato soup or chicken broth. Apple juice or orange juice are also
good. I’ll send one of my men through with your food and to check in on you in
about an hour or so, and if you start feeling worse tell him so that I can come
check you, too.”
“Can I call my son?” Debby asked before he could leave. “They took my phone.”
“We don’t have means for patients to make calls right now, but I can bring you
some paper for a letter and send it for you. Will that be okay?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
 
Alex couldn’t help but keep staring at it - he didn’t think he’d ever get used
to this.
They’d taken his right arm off at the elbow, so now there was just the upper
half with the end covered in bandages. When he woke up this morning he’d
reached up to scratch his face but the fingers just weren’t there, and he
didn’t think there was a more upsetting way his day could’ve started.
It had only gotten worse from there. Bohr, as promised, had found out about Ben
and come to tell him before his shift ended: his ambulance partner was in
critical condition. Well, if Ben was still his ambulance partner. How would
Alex do his job now? He’d been a fireman since he’d graduated school, he didn’t
know anything else but how to be an emergency responder. But firemen usually
had two arms, and a prosthetic probably just wouldn’t cut it (assuming he could
even afford one).
His feet were still in hard splints, keeping him confined to his cot. The
medics said he wasn’t getting any worse at this point, but Alex sure as hell
wasn’t getting any better, either. The cracks in his skin still oozed blood
every so often and his bruises, an entire rainbow of hideous colors over his
body, showed no signs of fading. They told him it was because his immune system
was weakened by the radiation, so he’d heal more slowly.
Care for patients in his situation was, dishearteningly, supportive. That was a
polite way of saying they had no substantial treatments so they just kept
giving you things to keep the damage from spreading as opposed to actually
halting or reversing it. So he’d get blood transfusions and IV drips with
painkillers, but he wished they’d put in something stronger because there
wasn’t a place on him that didn’t ache. Even his mouth hurt. They fed him on
soup broth and vitamins, but he could barely keep them down some days.
Some medic had at least explained things when he’d asked. Radiation killed
fast-growing cells in his body, which was why his finger and toe nails had
eventually all fallen out under the gauze dressings. The stomach and intestinal
linings were also rapidly produced, making digestion difficult. They’d shaved
his head, but the hair didn’t seem to be growing back. And if he was constantly
shedding skin cells, they must’ve been constantly growing in the first place,
but now they weren’t so his injuries couldn’t heal.
How long, though, would it stay like this? They told him he wasn’t terminal,
his dose was high but not deadly, so that implied he’d eventually get better.
But what was “eventually” for him? Weeks? Months? Years? Christ.
Alex didn’t know how he could deal with this. He was always by himself in this
tarpaulin cell, except right before a shift change when a medic rushed to check
him. He couldn’t read, even with his remaining hand, because it was still
wrapped and it hurt to touch things with it even through all the bandages and
tape. There was no TV. He was too ill and in too much pain to sleep more than a
few minutes, so he couldn’t pass time that way. It was making him crazy.
 
Dear Kyle,
I’m sorry for not calling the last few days. Our hospital was finally evacuated
and I’m with the army. They’re taking care of us here. I don’t have my phone
anymore, but they said I can write you letters the old-fashioned way. Hopefully
you’ll still know what to do with it even though it’s not an email!
The building I’m in right now is safe, and they just need to move me to one
more place after this. Then I’ll be able to come home. Hopefully it won’t take
too long. I don’t think it will, because I’m not very sick. I just have a
little bit of a temperature and a sore throat.
How are things at home? I miss you and Dad every day. Remember to eat
breakfast, it’s the most important meal of the day even when you’re out of
school for the summer. Don’t be afraid to ask Aunt Nichole to make you muffins,
I know you like her cooking. Remember to drink plenty of water if it gets hot
out and wear sunscreen when you go outside. Are you going fishing with Granddad
and Jared again this summer? The last time he took you, you said you had fun.
Try not to sit inside on the Xbox for weeks on end!
Love, Mom
 
Chapter End Notes
     Instead of a little blurb of exposition at the end of the chapter
     like I was doing before, I've decided (for now) to end them with
     letters back and forth between Deb and Kyle. The exposition was
     necessary up to this point because it contained information people
     don't usually just know off the tops of their heads, but there's only
     so many ways I can write about "the symptoms of radiation poisoning
     do this..." so I'm going to stop doing it.
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