Campbell didn’t like the idea that his internal circuitry might even now be mutating into something treacherous.
“Don’t go getting all negative on me,” Arnoff said, leaning his rifle on a stump. “Things are bad enough already. Let’s keep it on the sunny side.”
“Ironic, given the fact that the sun is the cause of our problems,” the professor said. He flicked his cigarette butt into the fire.
“So, you guys have been walking?” Pete asked, slurring his words a little.
“I had a horse I found in a stable,” Arnoff said. “It threw me when it stepped in a pothole and broke an ankle. About broke my neck, too.”
“Let me guess,” Pete said. “You had to shoot it, but you didn’t get too down about it.”
Arnoff glared at him, and Campbell made a surreptitious slashing motion across his throat to signal Pete to cool it. “Some things just need to be put down,” Arnoff said.
The professor made a show of looking at his wristwatch, a nerdy wind-up model that had outlasted the planet’s digital watches. “Donnie’s time is about up.”
Arnoff stood and collected his rifle, walking to the nearest tent and lifting the flap, revealing the mesh screen over the door. “Wake up, Pamela, it’s your turn.”
“So, what’s happening in the east?” the professor asked Campbell in a lower voice, to keep the conversation private.
Campbell shrugged. “A lot of dead people. A lot of Zapheads. Stalled cars. Nothing working right.”
“Any organization of emergency services?”
“Like, cops and stuff? No, they were as dead as everybody else. Once in a while, we saw people walking around off in the distance, but we were afraid to check them out. We didn’t know whether they were Zapheads or not.”
“Perhaps that was a good idea. I estimate the ratio of Zapheads to survivors is on the order of ten to one.”
“I just can’t believe it’s like this all over the goddamned world,” Pete said. “It’s like the zombie movie from hell.”
“It’s hopeless,” Campbell found himself saying. He had never given thought to the concept of “hope.” That was a word for a Hallmark card when a relative was undergoing chemotherapy, not a word that normal people worried about.
“We have food and supplies,” the professor said, keeping his voice at the same lecturing level as before. “If our bottled water runs out, we can filter water from this creek and boil it. This is our second day here, and we could easily last a week before making a foraging run into one of the nearby towns.”
“I don’t see no advantage in staying here,” Arnoff grumbled from his position by the tent. “How long before more of those Zapheads locate our camp?”
“That’s for the group to decide,” the professor answered.
Campbell had a feeling that opinions were divided and, for the first time, felt tension between the professor and Arnoff, whose eyes were like dark, wet beetles. And, Campbell wondered if he and Pete were now considered part of the group.
Safety in numbers, unless those numbers start shooting at each other.
Arnoff strode off into the trees at the dark perimeter of the camp. Campbell wasn’t sure whether the man was scouting or taking a leak.
“What about power?” Pete said. “These batteries won’t last forever.”
“Power might end up being the thing that kills us,” the professor said. “The sun is the biggest thermonuclear reactor in our corner of the universe.”
“All this talk about green energy, there have got to be some wind turbines and solar panels and stuff,” Campbell said. He’d known a guy named Terrence Flowers, a big energy hippie, who had always drawn up elaborate plans for off-the-grid sustainable systems. They could sure use Terrence now, unless he was a Zaphead.
“Most such devices have electronic components in their converting systems, so they are useless now. I suppose you could replace the damaged parts and they might work, but we can’t just order parts online and have FedEx deliver to our door, right? But the problem is even bigger than that. We could soon be looking at four hundred Chernobyls.”
“The hell?” Pete said, cracking another beer with an insolent hiss.
“There are more than four hundred nuclear power plants in the world. They use water circulated by electrical pumps to cool their reactor cores and spent fuel rods. Without electricity, it doesn’t take long for them to melt down.”
“Wait,” Pete said. “No damn way. The government wouldn’t allow that shit to happen.”
“Oh, the nuclear plants have back-up systems.” The flames tossed shadows across the professor’s impassive face, giving his words an even more sinister weight. “Diesel generators and other electricity-dependent systems. But if the geomagnetic storms wiped those out, too…”
“Like that Japanese plant in the tsunami,” Campbell said.
“Yeah.” The professor tossed his cigarette butt and it arced like a meteor into the heart of the fire. “The core overheated because the back-up systems failed. The plant was built to withstand a tsunami, and it did. The trouble was, the back-up systems weren’t build to withstand it.”
“Jesus Christ,” Pete said. “You mean we’re going to have to start worrying about giant mutant lizards, too? Like Zapheads aren’t bad enough?”
“Oh, no worries,” the professor said. “We’ll be dead long before anything has a chance to mutate due to radiation.”
“Scaring the children again, Professor?” came a woman’s voice from the opening of the tent. The flap peeled back and a wild mane of red hair spilled forth. The mane lifted and the tangles revealed a weathered but attractive face, a woman of late middle age without the benefit of makeup but with a fierce sparkle in her green eyes.
As Pamela stood up in a rumpled terrycloth robe, a blanket draped around her, Campbell was immediately captivated. She wasn’t beautiful, not by modern Photoshop standards, but she projected a vexing allure. She was a little younger than Campbell’s mother, slim but with a strong frame. Even Pete took notice of her, rousing from his drunken stupor to grin at her.
“I like to deal with facts, Pamela,” the professor said, lips pursing into a pout. “Eventually, we’re going to be living with four hundred Chernobyls. No one knows the effects of that kind of radiation exposure from multiple sources. You can’t really model that on a computer.”
“Sorry, I left my iPad in my other pants,” Pamela said, causing Pete to snort into his beer.
Campbell vaguely understood the danger of radiation, but it seemed as distant a threat as secondhand smoke or preservatives in Twinkies. Pamela was flaunting her charisma, which made the professor squirm a little on his fireside stump.
The professor fumbled for cigarette. “All I’m saying is—”
They were spared a lecture by the booming report of a gun somewhere off in the night. Pete flopped backward in surprise, dropping his beer, and the professor grabbed for the rifle leaning beside him.
“Donnie!” Pamela shouted, heading in the direction of the shot.
“Stay here,” the professor ordered, not that Campbell had any intention of wandering off into the dark, especially with Arnoff out there, armed and dangerous.
After the professor and Pamela had both disappeared in the shadows, Pete said, “Man, what if the Zapheads come while everybody’s gone?”
“Maybe we ought to split. We can get back to the road and find our bikes and be out of here before they get back.”
“And then what? These people might be our best bet. At least they got some weaponry.”
Campbell couldn’t offer a better alternative. Arnoff made him uneasy, but at least the group had established some basic order. And Campbell found that he missed order. He liked clocks and homework and responsibility and a schedule. Maybe such things were useless in the new world, but he could find substitutes by belonging to a group with a common purpose.