Los Alamos, NM
December 15
Artemisia went back to work. She didn't have the luxury of falling apart. The world, what was left of it, needed her. She couldn't grieve for the dead. She couldn't miss them. She couldn't worry about who was still alive and when she might see them again. She had to focus on the monumental task that had landed in her hands. Her hands, which shook uncharacteristically, reached again for the giant book on the desk.
Emergency Shut Down, US Nuclear Sites and Submarines.
Artie had been constructing a new energy amplifier when the flu had swept through the lab, a quiet rustling panic following in its wake. They had all felt pretty secure there at first. When the reports of a fast-spreading fatal flu first hit the news, they had gone on lock-down. No one in. No one out. But it hadn't mattered. They'd all succumbed. Artie had been locked in the building alone for the last few days, just hovering around the main workroom and break room, where she had raided the vending machines, disassembling the glass front so she could have whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it. Really, her life wasn't so different now. She ate out of those machines every day anyway.
The passcodes to unlock the building were lost when the site security manager died, but Artie knew she could get out when she was ready. She could build anything... she could take anything apart. She would find a way out of here when she was done. She just had to finish the work first. Work that would keep her and all the other survivors around the nation safe. She had to power down every nuclear energy plant and weapons facility in the country. No big deal.
She had been eating a Cup Noodle with chopsticks when the large screen in the main work room lit up a few days ago, a presidential seal emblazoned on the screen. Artie stopped and stared at the screen. They had all heard rumors of the president's demise the day before. Before the fall. It wasn't the president who appeared on the screen; it was a man dressed in full fancy military garb, dark blue or black with gold accents and many many medals or ribbons or pins. She didn't know what to call them. Artie had never paid much attention to the armed services, even though many of her colleagues there at Los Alamos had served, and the building, tucked away in the heavily forested hills above Santa Fe, was protected by a military detail.
"I am acting commander in chief, General Steven Spall. Please identify your name and rank," he commanded. He was perfect for the job, Artie thought sarcastically. But, Jesus, she realized that if a general she had never heard of was commander in chief, that meant nearly everyone--no absolutely everyone--elected into federal office had died.
"Uh," Artie shrugged. She gave her full first and last name, then said, "I don't have a rank."
"What is your title?" He coughed impatiently.
Shit. The acting commander in chief was sick too. Who the hell would be in charge when he kicked it? "I'm a nuclear engineer."
"Good. I've been trying to reach anyone I can at our nuclear sites. Can you--" he broke into a loud fit of coughs. "I need you to shut down all the nuclear facilities, ma'am. There is a passbook in the safe in the site security manager's office. The code is 7715020194. It will have--" he coughed violently again, "instructions for how to access each site."
Artie nodded wordlessly.
"Your country thanks you," he turned away, coughing as the screen cut out.
It had taken her almost 24 hours just to shut down the submarines, the eastern seaboard, and the Midwest, but there were a fraction as many sites here in the west, so she should be done by the end of the day. When the phone rang again this afternoon, she answered right away, expecting another government official. It wasn't. And she was irritated by the interruption. There was still so much to do. She didn't have time to chitchat.
General Spall was right to worry about shutting these places down. With no one to man the helm, already some of the facilities were overheating. But she kept her cool and worked as quickly as she could to blaze through the enormous list before there was a fucking nuclear meltdown. She flipped now to the next page and typed the site code for the San Onofre plant near San Diego into the computer. A face appeared on the large screen. The man looked like he was maybe forty, obviously sick, and completely shocked by Artie's intrusion of his computer.
"Hey there," she said. "I'm here at Los Alamos. Anyone else left there?"
He coughed and shook his head. "Just me," he wheezed, thick green gunk spewing out of his mouth and onto his reddish brown beard.
"I have to power you down," she said plainly. He nodded. "It will seal the doors."
He nodded again. "It's okay. I know."
"I can give you some time to get out..." Her voice trailed off as if she was uncertain. As if she was questioning what she had to do. But she wasn't.
And he wasn't either--he shook his head vehemently. "Just do it." He coughed. "I'm dead anyway."
"Okay." He was right. "Well, uh, good luck?" She typed in the shut down sequence, and a few seconds later, the screen went black.
She sat back in her chair. All of California was down. All of the Pacific Northwest. She had done the Rockies and Arizona. All that was left was this lab. Right where she sat. But as she prepared to power down, she realized that she too would be sealed inside. Lockdown was one thing. Sealed was another. There had to be a way. A way to get outside before shutting down.
Remote access to the computer was supposed to be impossible. One of the many security features for their highly classified work. But she had just accessed four dozen computers that were unbreachable. Still, she didn't have time to figure out how to get into the intranet.
Artie paced the large room. Maybe she could build something to push the keys from outside. No. That would take too fucking long, and suddenly all she wanted was to be out of this place. With a frown, she wondered if her wireless keyboard would work. There was a large skylight above this room, break proof glass, but maybe the infrared light of her keyboard would reach. She ran to the stairwell. In the site security manager's safe, the one the general's code opened, she had found a list of passcodes that could be the lockdown release. She tried a few on the keypad by the door to the roof. No luck. Well, fuck, she thought. The outer doors will close with the lockdown. May as well take this shit off its hinges. It only took her ten minutes to pry away the hinges with the mini multi-tool she always carried in her pocket and to lift the heavy door away from its frame, granting her access to the snow covered roof. She hurried back down the stairs to her office to collect the wireless keyboard.
There in the hallway, sat Loki, Frank's dutiful work dog, a black and white Siberian husky with bright blue eyes. Frank was slumped in his wheelchair, dead. Loki whined as Artie approached, lifting his front paws each in turn, as if in anticipation.
"Hiya, Loki," she squatted and rubbed the thick fur between his ears. He let out his famous low howl. Arooroo. I love you. "I love you too, Loki." She had always been better with animals than people. He barked and wagged his tail. "Good boy. You're a good boy," and for the first time in the midst of this tragedy, she was sad, seeing how the dog stayed by his owner's side so faithfully. He didn't understand that Frank was gone. He didn't understand why no one had given him his dinner or water. Fuck. He needed water. She jogged down the hall to Frank's office, pushed the door open, and grabbed Loki's water and food dish. She threw a handful of cans into a canvas bag on the low leather chair in the corner and carried it all back to the hall. She poured some bottled water into the bowl and left it for Loki while she grabbed her keyboard from her office.
Loki was lapping at the water noisily. "Come on," she said. He looked up at her, then sat down and rested his head on Frank's knee. "Come on, Loki. We have to go." She couldn't leave the fucking dog behind. She couldn't fucking lock him in and leave him to die. He whined but didn't move. Artie dug around in the pouch behind Frank's seat and pulled out Loki's leash. She clipped it to his collar and tugged gently. "Come on." She picked up his water dish and walked down the hall. When the leash was taut, she tugged again. "Come, Loki," she said more forcefully. Finally, he did, loping over to her and licking her hand. "Good boy." He whined and looked back. "I know. Don't think about it. Just don't think about it."
Back in the main work room, she disconnected the other keyboard and attached hers, carefully positioning the sensor so that it pointed toward the skylight. Then she typed in the shutdown code. All that remained was to press enter. She threw her backpack over her shoulder and carried the keyboard carefully up and out onto the roof, Loki following on her heels. She swiped a coating of snow from the window and rested the keyboard on the glass.
ENTER.
Nothing.
She tilted the plastic and pressed again. ENTER.
Again, nothing.
"Fuck." She cursed the layer of ice on the window. It was probably refracting the light away from her sensor. She dug through her backpack for the little thermal cube she'd invented while at MIT. You just put it in your pocket and it warms your whole body. Her hands curled around it, and it immediately radiated heat. She rested it against the window and watched the ice melt away in wet sheets. She lifted the keyboard.
ENTER.
The sound of sliding metal confirmed her success. Loki barked and ran around on the snow in agitation. Artie shook her head in amusement and gathered up her bags.
"Okay, boy. Let's find a way down," Artie said as she stood, turning back to him. But he was gone.
Bark bark! Loki's echoing voice floated up over the crisp winter air. Artie walked over to the edge of the roof. Loki barked at her from atop one of the dumpsters behind the building, a low one-story above ground. The rest of the lab was buried deep in the mountain. Just in case.
She tossed her backpack and the canvas bag of dog food down beside him and hopped down after. By the time she did, he had already made it down to the ground, his paws sinking lightly into the mound of snow heaped against the dumpster. She climbed down and patted her thigh. Loki trotted back to her. "Good boy," she murmured, scratching his head again. "Come on."
Artie tossed the bags into the backseat of her old Jeep Cherokee then patted the front seat for Loki, who jumped in with his tongue hanging out. They needed some supplies. Who knew how long they would be on the road? Food, water, and fuel for the car were the top priorities, but Artie could get them all at the same place. Costco. They wound down the curving mountain road, empty but for the coating of snow.
The streets were not so deserted in Santa Fe. In fact, Artie really had to be creative with her driving to get around some parts of town, and it took much longer than it should. That irritated her. She didn't like when things didn't go as they should. She especially didn't like when a drive took longer than it should. She often found herself calculating in her mind the time remaining on a trip. The road signs told her the distance left, and her speedometer told her the rate of travel. As if there was a chalkboard in her mind, the simple algebra solved itself behind her eyes. In a matter of seconds. But traffic. Ugh. This was why she had moved away from Boston after college. Why she turned down JPL. Why she rejected Livermore, even though it was so close to home. No. She liked the solitude and the silence up in the New Mexico hills. Her drive down that curving mountain road was always the same.
Today, though, it wasn't exactly traffic, she knew. She knew the cars weren't stopped and waiting. She knew. She just didn't want to think about it. Her usual coping mechanism. Just don't think about it. She had to tell herself that again as she and Loki pulled into the parking lot at Costco, and they passed a middle aged woman facedown on the pavement. She grabbed a pallet and pushed it through the store as quickly as she could, dodging more bodies as she went. At the dog food section, she opened bags of all the different brands and offered a little of each to Loki. He ate two different kinds readily and turned away at four others. She loaded three large bags of each of those he liked onto the pallet, then added a few cases of the canned food she already knew he ate. He pulled at a package of rawhide chew toys, gnawing on the plastic. She threw a few of those on the cart as well.
Most of Costco's water supply was gone. She shook her head in annoyance. All these people who died took the water and wouldn't even use it. Maybe she could just check the cars outside. She went down the food aisle. Most of the canned goods were gone too. She rolled her eyes as she grabbed the last case of chili. The cans were dented, so it had been rejected by everyone else. There was plenty of oil, though, she was glad to see, loading two dozen large plastic jugs of corn oil onto the cart. Loki followed her peacefully back to the car. She loaded their supplies into the cargo area of her jeep, making neat rows of oil at the back, dog food to one side. She opened the chew toys and threw one to Loki in the front seat. She closed up the car and wandered through the lot, peeking into the parked, stalled, and crashed vehicles.
Eureka! Pay-dirt! A huge suburban was loaded down with food, water, and...a dead family. Artie turned away, leaning her back to the front door. Just don't think about it. There was a part of her, a small part, that felt bad about what she was doing. But the larger, more practical side knew that they weren't going to use this stuff, they weren't going to eat these spaghettios, they weren't going to drink this water. She pulled open the back and piled the food and water onto her cart.
Back at her own car, she lined the jugs of water up neatly on one side and piled the cases of canned and dried food at the front. "One more stop," she said to Loki as she got into the driver's seat. She took the smaller, less crowded side streets across town to her little flat-roofed, pueblo style home. She collected her clothes, a spare set of boots, blankets, and her most useful tools and inventions, which she piled into an oversized plastic bucket and left by the door. She opened a can of food and set it on the red-tiled kitchen floor for Loki. Then she tried her gas stove. It still worked. She heated a can of ravioli for herself.
She wanted to head out today, get as far as she could tonight, but she was so tired, and really, what was the point? Driving at night would be infinitely more difficult. She may as well sleep in the comfort of her own bed one last time.
Her house, her whole neighborhood, was on a well system. With her natural gas still going, and the water still flowing, she could take a shower. Man, she needed to bathe. Los Alamos lab had a nice gym and locker room with showers, so she could have cleaned up, but she had been too caught up with avoiding nuclear meltdown to do so. She let Loki out to the backyard to take care of his business and took a quick shower. As she rinsed shampoo from her hair, Artie's life still felt no different than it usually did. Okay, there was a dog. And okay, she wasn't going back to Los Alamos tomorrow, or probably ever. But otherwise, nothing had changed for her.
She let Loki jump up onto her large bed, and he slept across her ankles. Artie dreamt of familiar homes she had never seen in real life, places that made her feel both nostalgic and anxious at once. As she pushed through the inner doors in her dream, her heart started to beat faster, harder. She became aware that she was asleep during the dream and could feel her clenching heart. Facedown on the floor in the dark bedroom lay a middle aged woman. Dead. Artie woke with a pit in her stomach, that nervous tightening she had struggled to dispel over the years. Twenty-five years. Her breathe caught in her throat. Just don't think about it.
To push unwelcome thoughts away, she busied herself packing her final supplies into the jeep. Loki was always to her left, waiting for instructions. "Let's go, Loki." He hopped up into the passenger seat. Artie connected her iPhone to her car's auxiliary jack and blasted Gary Clark Jr. as she wove down the cramped streets back to the highway. God, she hoped it was free of cars. It wasn't.
Just getting down out of the Sante Fe area to the northern suburbs of Albuquerque took her all day. The sun sank below the horizon in late afternoon, and snow began to swirl down from the sky, limiting her visibility further. Artie pulled the jeep in among the frozen traffic and stopped for the night right there on the highway on the outskirts of the city. She folded down the back seat into a little bed, layered it with her axifoam, so named because it had been an accident when she first made it, and curled up with Loki and the thermal cube.
The sound of a light motor woke her, the sun just peeking up behind them. Artie sat up and glanced around the car. Back down the road a ways she could just make out a narrow form moving toward her, weaving between the cars at a disturbingly fast pace. As the motorcycle dipped over to another lane, Artie scooted to the edge of the seat and pushed the car door open. Her movement must have pulled the driver's focus because his head turned toward her. He released his grip on the handlebar, lost his balance, and slid on his side down the road, pinned under the bike. He came to a slamming stop against the cement center divide.
Artie and Loki ran over to him. "You okay?" He released a quiet grumble. Artie leaned over and lifted the bike off his leg, then took his hand, which was shredded from the asphalt, and helped him stand. "You're bleeding," she stated matter of factly. Well, it was a matter of fact. He still didn't answer. "I have a first aid kit in my car. Come on," she tugged on his elbow.
She flipped down the gate of the jeep, and the motorcyclist sat down. Loki barked and pranced halfway between her car and the bike. "Okay, get it," she called, then she turned her attention back to the mangled skin of the guy's hands, arms, and leg. Artie poured a bit of her water over his hands, rinsing away debris. Loki returned with the man's backpack in his teeth. "Good boy," Artie praised. She evaluated the injuries to the man's leg and arms, tilting her head to one side. "I'm going to have to take this off," she started to lift his sweater. He raised his arms to make it easier. But the sweater caught on the helmet still covering his head. He removed it gingerly, the very tips of his fingers doing all the work.
Artie stared into his pale green eyes, not moving. Not even blinking.
Oh, how fast her life changed in that moment.
~~~~~
Thanks for reading! Please vote and comment and share. 😁 ILYGSM
I know Artie may seem like a bit of a heartless bitch, but I see her as science-y and practical, and not very good with social interaction. Maybe like a female Sheldon Cooper? 🔬👓 idk.
We only have two new POV to introduce, and the past characters are going to start overlapping in the next chapter. Which character are you most interested to revisit? I mean, I know where I'm going next anyway, but I'm curious whose story you want resolved...
Next chapter will be HARRY. 😁😍👅