Kill Zone

43

As she climbed higher into the shaft, air currents whistled around Adonia, whooshing up from below like a hurricane squeezed through a straw. Several rungs below her, Shawn encouraged Dr. Garibaldi to keep climbing.

Soon she reached a horizontal vent screen that covered another tunnel recessed into the granite, going sideways instead of up. She called down over the roaring flow of air. “Hold up! I think we’ve reached an access hatch to the upper-level ventilation ducts.”

Shawn called up to her, “Is it open? Can we get inside?”

Air blew in Adonia’s face as she tried to peer through the slats of the opening, but she saw only white pleated layers of fabric. “It’s covered with a filter.”

“No surprise, considering all the dust in here,” Garibaldi said.

Adonia pushed, then pounded against the screen, but it didn’t budge. Both the hatch and the inside frame were secured with numerous screws sunk deep into the granite. “We’re not getting in without a toolkit.”

Garibaldi looked past Adonia, straight up the shaft. “Then we keep going. Top of the Mountain, all the way up — and outside.”

“Could be five hundred more feet,” Adonia said, not looking forward to it herself. “Are you going to be able to make it?”

“Well, I’ll have to. Dying here at this point would be a waste of my efforts. I might have only two weeks left, but I intend to make good use of them. So much to do and so little time.” He paused. “Ah, that phrase never meant so much before.” He heaved a deep breath, then continued in an angrier voice. “If I’m going to die, I don’t want my death to help cover up the mess van Dyckman created by cutting corners.

“Why do you think I became an activist in the first place? I used to work for the DOE, really bought into the mission. I followed the procedures, believed that everything was safe at Oakridge. I had major responsibilities, a decent salary, great benefits, challenging work.”

A troubled look crossed his face. “Until a routine system failed in one of the Oakridge storage chambers, a power outage and a traditional lockdown. I… was inside one of the small vaults, just like Mrs. Garcia. The power went off, and I was trapped alone in the dark. But the worst part was the terror of the unknown, sure there was radiation all around me.”

He made a self-deprecating sound. “Oh, I’m a scientist and I know full well what you need to worry about and what you don’t — but that’s all on paper and computer simulation. It’s completely different when you’re cold, dark, and all alone. I tried to convince myself I had nothing to worry about. I was sealed inside a pitch-black chamber filled with radioactive casks. At least I had an intercom, and the team on the outside — led by Rob Harris himself, in fact — kept in contact, reassuring me throughout those terrifying hours until the lockdown was over, but they were just detached voices in the dark.

“Over the intercom, Harris walked me through calculations for those two hours, forcing me to go through what I already knew, but had forgotten in my panic. He helped me understand the exposure, convinced me that I wasn’t going to die. But during that long, dark limbo, your eyes play tricks on you and you begin to experience false light, hallucinations… spurious flashes that you think are radiation bursts. Oh, it’s so convincing! All the science in the world doesn’t make up for one unexplained bump in the night.”

Adonia was fascinated and horrified. This was the first time she’d seen the erudite Garibaldi open up about what had turned him so strongly against the nuclear industry.

“After I was rescued, a young public defender worked like hell to get me medical care, psychological counseling — it was the young attorney’s first job out of law school… but the DOE rolled over her. They showed her my dosimeter, told her that my exposure was ‘acceptable,’ although high enough that I had to stay away from radiation sources for quite some time. I was assigned to a desk job at DOE Headquarters, far from any active nuclear site. They even gave me a nice raise, but acted as if everything was fine. Nothing to worry about. They were so glib and dismissive.

“That experience changed my worldview. The fact that they said I would have no lasting consequences from my ‘unfortunate ordeal’ made me realize we weren’t speaking the same language. And I no longer believed we were on the same side.”

He was quiet for a moment as he hung there, resting. “I knew I had to leave the DOE. I had to fight for safe alternatives to nuclear power, for a sustainable energy grid that doesn’t endanger the environment just to power our hair dryers.” He chuckled. “Yes, that sounds like pie in the sky, but I refuse to believe that a goal can’t be achieved just because it’s ambitious. I had hoped to make more of myself, do something significant with my scientific career. Well, well, maybe this gives me the opportunity, even if it’s a shitty one, if you’ll pardon my language.”

“We’ll get you out of here, Simon,” Adonia said. Although she knew his dream was not realistic, she really meant it.

Shawn agreed. “That’s why we have to stick together. Valiant Locksmith may have been a viable solution for a long-standing problem, but a mismanaged mess like this won’t accomplish anything. It wasn’t what the President signed up for. I know — I was there when Dr. van Dyckman presented his idea for Hydra Mountain. We’ll get out, and then he won’t be able to keep us all quiet.”

Garibaldi summoned his energy. “Let’s get going. We’re wasting time.”

They climbed higher into the Mountain, far out of range of the loudspeakers, so they would not have been able to hear van Dyckman if he’d made more pronouncements. When the lockdown ended, the NEST teams and emergency responders would break through the sticky foam that blocked the guard portal and arrive in the lower level wearing full respirators and decontamination suits, but she didn’t think they expected to find anyone alive.

Adonia knew they had to get out of the Mountain.

As they climbed higher, she heard a muted roar far overhead. The air currents whistled past them, sucked up from below to be exhausted outside. Adonia occasionally caught a cloying whiff, and she knew that halothane was being drawn up the shaft in the turnover of the huge volume of air exchanged from the massive underground cavern. If enough knockout gas swirled up past them, rendering them unconscious, the three of them would slip from the rungs and fall all the way down.

No! They were going to make it.

Shawn brought up the rear. Adonia knew a five-hundred-foot climb would have been an exhilarating exercise for him, but she worried most about Garibaldi. He kept doggedly ascending, holding the rungs with his raw and blistered hands.

“We’ll be out of here in another fifteen, twenty minutes at the most,” she said. It was entirely a guess, and she didn’t know what they would find when they did reach the top of the shaft. Could they even get out? If air vented from the Mountain, there had to be some sort of opening up there for the flow to escape. But she wouldn’t be surprised if they encountered an impenetrable barricade of filters for scrubbing the air.

The roar above them increased, as did the wind streaming past them. She could feel the metal rungs vibrating in her hands. Considering the size of the huge mountain complex, all the air needed to recirculate, and such a significant volume had to exit somewhere.

She craned her neck upward to see how far they still had to go, then reeled in shock, letting her grip momentarily slip. Her other arm wrapped around the bar, catching her before she could fall.

A hundred feet above them was a giant, rotating fan, turning furiously to pull the air out. The blades extended across the shaft, blocking where they needed to go.