“THE ROAD’S CLOSED. YOU’VE GOT TO TURN around.”
The speaker wore a white environmental-hazard suit and a hooded facemask. He was with three other men, similarly dressed.
“I’ve got to get to Heath,” Lauren said. “My parents live there.”
“There’s been an accident at the uranium plant,” the man said. “Some gas leaked out. We’re trying to get people evacuated to the west.”
“What kind of gas?” Lauren asked. She knew the Department of Energy operated a huge plant near Heath but had only a vague knowledge of what was done there.
Another man approached. He held a radio in his right hand. Lauren noticed that they were all wearing sidearms.
“Just turn around and get the hell out of here,” he said angrily.
Lauren looked up the road that led toward town. It was wide open.
She nodded to the man.
“Bobby, get down,” she whispered to her grandson. Then she punched the accelerator and swerved around the barricade. The big 327-cubic-inch V-8 roared as she cut back onto the highway. She glanced in the rearview mirror. No one was chasing them. Good.
She drove another half mile and made a turn. She planned to enter Heath from the back in case the main road was blocked. It was a small community. Only a couple hundred people. Her parents’ home was on the eastern end, a split-level ranch. Happy to be off the farm near Mayfield, her mother had fallen in love with the place.
Lauren was puzzled by the evacuation. She didn’t see any cars on the road. Maybe everyone had already left, she thought.
There was a sudden bright flash in the early morning sky. It was off to the right, a couple miles east. “What was that?” said Bobby, who’d also noticed the burst of light. It looked like a Fourth of July rocket, a long tail of white smoke, then a brilliant red flash.
Later, she would learn there’d been an explosion at the uranium enrichment plant. The massive pipes that carried uranium hexofluoride gas under pressure had cracked open during the earthquake. Pieces of an electrical generator had ignited and gone off like rockets.
“Listen to that,” Lauren said. She heard a rapid series of distant explosions.
Bobby pointed toward the east. A helicopter was bearing down low over the treetops headed in their direction. It slowed and hovered directly over their car. It was about twenty feet above them. Painted in white letters across the drab olive fuselage were the words DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY.
A spotlight blinked on beneath the chopper, blinding them.
“You’re in extreme danger,” an amplified voice boomed out. “Poison gas is drifting in this direction. Turn around at once.”
The message was quickly repeated, then the helicopter moved off, climbing rapidly. It was headed due east, toward the uranium processing plant.
“There it is!” Bobby yelled. They were on a slight rise. A chalky cloud, so faint as to be almost indistinguishable in the predawn gray, was drifting toward them. Still several miles away, it seemed to spread out as it rose higher in the sky.
Lauren already had the Chevrolet turned around. At the first fork in the road, she headed south. The two-lane blacktop was torn to hell and the car’s chassis and springs took a beating, but she kept the speed at fifty miles an hour.
She glanced at the fuel gauge, the first time she’d remembered to do so.
The red needle was nudging toward empty.
She knew there was a small town up ahead. Hammonds. It had a gas station.
When she arrived, ten or twelve cars and trucks were pulled in close to the station’s single tank. The owner was operating a cash and carry business. His brick filling station was in shambles, but the lone pump was still working. He carried a rifle in the crook of his arm.
Lauren figured she’d driven about thirty-live miles since the helicopter had warned them. Surely they were out of danger, but she kept nervously watching the sky for a yellow cloud.
When it was her turn at the pump, the owner asked for cash in advance. Twenty dollars a gallon. Dressed in a soiled hunting jacket, he had a full black beard and was chewing a plug of tobacco.
“Dammit, Tom. This ain’t right and you know it. You’re robbing folks.”
The man who was waiting in line behind Lauren had gotten out of a battered red pickup. His voice was laced with anger.
Lauren had fifteen dollars. She handed it to the man with the rifle.
“Please,” she said. “Just let me have two gallons.” That would be enough to get home.
“You heard the price. That’ll buy you three-quarters of a gallon.” He pumped it out to the nickel.
“Tom, some people are going to die if they can’t drive,” the man behind her said. His words were cold, hard. He was bareheaded, maybe sixty years old, and had a leathery face.
“Mind your own business, Harris,” the man said. “I’ll run my business how I see fit.”
More angry words were exchanged. The bareheaded man took a few steps closer to the station owner, pulled a short-barreled pistol from the pocket of his jacket, and held it to the man’s head. The owner’s eyes bulged. He dropped his rifle.
“Take five gallons, lady,” the man said. “Then you and the boy get the hell out of here.”