The Dead Zone

  Radiation is a killer. And not the fast kind of death either. The last b*****d who got exposed to these levels vomited for seven months before he gave up and died.

    Time for Roll Call.

   Not me.

   Nick Lambas

   Not me.

   Corey Picone

   Not me.

   Jason Tyler.

   F**k. I had last week.

   It takes twenty minutes to reach the terminal by train, and another twenty minutes to walk the quarter mile into “the dead zone.” The last remnants of the world.

  Five Minutes.

  The sun begins to rise, and the world passes in a blur, leaving only the barren desert visible.

  Four Minutes.

  The suits weigh over fifty pounds, and God knows if they do any good. Two guards zip me up and lock my helmet.

  Go with God, soldier they say.

  I say nothing

  Three Minutes.

  The suit is your best friend. The suit is your worst enemy. The dead zone has a radiation level upwards of 400 SV. If my entire body became exposed to that level of radiation, I would be dead in under a minute. Yet, if only a small part of my body became exposed, say like from a tear in the suit, it would take weeks to die. Your Best friend. Your Worst Enemy.

  That’s what happened to the last sorry son of a b***h.

  Two Minutes

  Within twenty-four hours, he had a fever. And the doctors sent him home with an aspirin. When he came back the next day, the man looked like death, his skin blistered and pussing, his hair falling to the floor in clumps. He passed in and out of consciousness for the next three weeks, shitting everywhere, eating nothing. No one thought he’d make it three days. He made it seven months.

  One Minute.

   When they checked his suit, it had a hole in it about the size of a pen point. “What are you going to do, the relics are seventy-five years old,” the captain told us.

   We arrived at the terminal.

   The soldiers disembark. And the train hightails it in reverse. Command can sacrifice a few grunts and indentured servants, but there is no way they’ll lose a train. I’m not volunteered because I’m skilled, I’m volunteered because I’m useless.

  The soldiers jimmy our Oxygen tanks on and guide the solar-powered craft, as we make our way into the killing fields. If an ambush is going to happen, it will happen now. The killing fields are nothing but an endless desert spiked with a few remains and tainted water.

  Half of the local tribes are so starved they’d kill us to eat the flesh from our bones. The other half are so insane from exposure, they’d kill us for sport. The soldiers take us half-way and then set up a perimeter.  There’s no way they will go any further without a suit.

  A building collapses, and a pack of mad dogs sniff us out, but otherwise it’s quiet. Once we reach the dead zone, nothing, no matter how insane, will follow us. The trick is getting there.

  Our solar cart has everything needed to salvage. Torches. Welders. Minor Explosives. Shovels. But no weapons. Not that they’d help anyway. The gloves are too bulky a fire a gun. Leaving us sitting ducks, with seventy pounds of gear.

  No one says anything.

  If we’re quiet, maybe the marauders will miss the pack of astronauts strolling in their backyard.

  Our squad leader takes charge, and we reach a crossing in the road. Welcome to Los Angeles. We’re almost there now. In a few minutes, we’ll reach the fence. A couple of newbies lag behind. The first time I made this trek, I thought I’d die, too. We make our way through a gaping hole in a modest chain link fence. “Let’s make this quick,”  Ash, our squad leader, says, “And this is for you virgins, don’t get yourself killed.”

   Command never tells us what to look for. Only Ash knows, in case the Silverbacks capture us. But it’s no surprise. We’re looking for skinny tech.

   I’m told Los Angeles was a city once. Some hundreds of years ago. Every so often, you see a pile of rubble here. And a skeleton of building there. But mostly desert.  During the war, it served as the base of operations for the skinnies. Before we nuked it.

   We walk along a dirt road, through piles of rubble. Richardson and Lewis grab detectors from the cart and scan ahead.  Every so often the machine beeps. And the rest of us grab the pick axes and shovels. Just one strain too much on the suit; then death.

   Lewis finds something.  

  The dirt I fling from my shovel would be more than enough to poison a dozen people. At least that’s what I’m told. One of the newbies falls over. I did, too. Ash brings him to his feet and then tells him to get his a*s back to work. It’s easily over a hundred degrees in the suit. And we need to hurry because, by nightfall, it will drop to thirty below.

   Sweat begins to fall in my eyes, but I can’t wipe it. I feel my shovel clang on something hard. Something metallic. Across the pit, something glistens in the sunlight. We shovel faster. A large rectangular shape begins to take form. It’s like no skinny tech that I’ve ever seen before. We shovel deeper.

   A turn of the century bus. Vintage, rusted, radioactive.

   And two hours of daylight wasted.

   In the Dead Zone nothing is alive. Not a tree. Not an animal. Not even a cockroach. Even radio signals die half of the time. That’s why nomads attack scavenging crews on the outskirts of the city. Because no help is coming, even if the signal does make it out.

  Daylight is burning, and we don’t want to tell command we found nothing. So onward and outward. Ash orders Lewis and Richardson to separate. One to the left. The other to the right.

   I heard stories of silverbacks and skinnies, even other humans, scavenging the bones from Skinny tech in the wasteland. But I’ve never seen any. Rumors, people will believe anything if the story is good. Especially the civilians in the immigrant district of Colorado.

  That’s home. A city in the center of the Rocky Mountains, carved and built over hundreds of years. 

  After a few more false alarms, Ash calls it quits. We trudge to the checkpoint, and the soldiers escort us to the platform. But not before we’re decontaminated with foam. The train is late. And in the middle of the killing field we find a respite.

  How many savages are watching us now? Waiting to slit our throat with a razor.

 … The train is still late.

   Some people claim to have seen genetically mutated animals. Now that’s a story I could believe. Dogs with two heads or horses with three legs and antlers. Some even claim to have seen silverbacks as tall as Sasquatch and as bloodthirsty as Nero. But deformed and hunch-backed.

  …And the train is late.

   I am so exhausted; I no longer care if I have radiation sickness. We’ll get pills on the train.  But I take whatever water I have left.

  The guards and workers seemed to have begun a conversation about the train. Apparently it’s a skinny retrofitted super-train, capable of reaching six hundred miles an hour. I would be more impressed if it were early.

 …And the train never came.

  

  

Reviews

[Owenbevt3]

Though it seems similar scenarios are all pervasive at the moment this still feels fresh because of the different narrator, I have never before seen it from the level of a grunt worried about a pin-sized hole in his gear.

Perhaps the 'never' is a bit abrupt?

[Rob Jay]

Lol "never" is a bit abrupt. And I did struggle with that. I couldn't help but to feel the plot line had been done before. So I tried to come from a different angle.

[Rob Jay]

Something I may do more with in the future. Undecided.