high barricade fence that prevented entry to the contamination zone.
At Jean, the last inhabitable town before the zone, they had turned off the highway and continued north toward Vegas on the old Boulevard until they had reached the fence.
“You scared of a little fallout?” Sam asked, keeping his voice deliberately light. In truth, he, too, was starting to wonder if this was a good idea after all.
“It’s a radioactive wasteland,” Tyler said. “A couple of hours in there and you’ll start glowing in the dark.”
“Just put your suit on,” Sam said.
“No way,” Tyler said.
“Okay.” Sam smiled at him. “If you want to go into the zone without a hazmat suit, that’s up to you.”
Tyler stared at him for a moment before taking the proffered suit and mask.
“Masks too?” Vienna asked.
“I think we’re okay for now,” Sam said. “As long as all the vents are shut.”
He got out and walked to the back of the pickup truck, unhooking the tarpaulin that covered the bed, reaching inside and pulling out the electronic sensor device in the leather carrying case.
“A Geiger counter,” he said to their raised eyebrows. “We’ll monitor the radiation levels and avoid any areas that seem unsafe.” He turned the device on, which made an occasional clicking sound, and handed it to Dodge. “There’s a manual in the side pocket.”
“Who needs manuals?” Dodge replied with a grin.
“Just read it,” Sam said.
They got past the barrier simply by outflanking it. The fence extended into the distance in both directions, but Sam knew the authorities couldn’t cordon off the entire desert, and the pickup’s large tires had rolled effortlessly over the scrubland eastward.
Signs along the fence, every hundred yards, told of the contamination that lay beyond. They eventually reached the end of the fence and turned north until they connected up again with the old Boulevard.
The Mojave Desert surrounded them with nature’s own desolation: brown, hard-packed sand, corrugated with twisted patterns and decorated with nothing but the occasional clump of brown tussock. In the distance, dark mountains brooded in the early glow of the morning.
A sense of foreboding grew as they drew closer to the scene of the worst disaster in American history.
“Are you absolutely sure this is safe?” Vienna asked nervously at one point. Out of the window to their left, they could see a freight train lying on its side in a tangle of carriages.
“The biggest problem here is the dust,” Sam replied. “The fallout from the explosion dropped thousands of tons of radioactive dust over the city. You don’t want that in your lungs or on your skin, but we should be safe in the truck with the vents shut. When we leave the truck, we can use the masks and respirators. The hazmat suits will keep the dust off our skin.”
“Are you sure that Ursula won’t be able to find us here?” Dodge asked.
“I am,” Sam said. “I did a school project on Las Vegas last year. The EMP—electromagnetic pulse—of the blast destroyed all electronic equipment. There are no computers, no cameras, no radios, nothing. In here, Ursula is blind.”
“What about satellites?” Vienna asked.
“Look up.”
The dirty haze above the desert was intensifying even further as they neared the city.
“Oil fires and underground garbage dumps have been burning for years. Las Vegas is in the middle of a big desert bowl, surrounded by mountains. That keeps the smog in one place. Depending on the wind direction, most days there is no satellite coverage at all. We’re in a big electronic, digital hole here, and Ursula won’t be able to find us.”
Ahead of them, Sam could already see the ravaged buildings of southern Las Vegas. The Geiger counter seemed to be clicking a little faster, or was that just his imagination? A shudder ran up his spine, prickling the hair on the back of his neck.
“This is mad,” Tyler said. “You’re risking all our lives.”
Nobody listened.
The freeway and the Boulevard ran adjacent to one another as they approached Las Vegas, and at some point Vienna just let the wheels wander across the intervening scrubland to the smoother, faster surface of the freeway.
“Head north,” Sam said as they entered the outskirts of the city.
“Why north?” Vienna asked.
“The fallout from the explosion was blown southward. On the northern side of the city, we might find something.”
“Find what?” Dodge asked.
“Somewhere safe to stay,” Sam replied.
They passed communities of houses, expensive brick dwellings, abandoned and grimy with the dust of the desert. Few windows, if any, had survived.
Cars were scattered like toys across the freeway, on their sides, on their roofs, many burned out and blackened. A construction crane had toppled over, the crisscrossed metal tower crumpled across the freeway, completely blocking all the lanes. Vehicles were piled up against it in a mound of vehicular garbage. They had to reverse back down the freeway and cross over to the other side to continue.
A huge hotel-casino loomed up to their right, showing no evidence of damage. Strange, Sam thought, for such a large building to have survived the conflagration unscathed.
As they passed it, Vienna looked back and gasped.
Sam turned as well. The southern facade might have been intact, but the northern side was a bomb site, a blackened mess of broken glass and shattered concrete. Torn fabric, perhaps curtains or bedsheets, hung raggedly from the devastated rooms. Smashed and charred furniture littered the ground around the hotel.
The tenements and houses north of the hotel were still standing, but only just. Brickwork was cracked and roofs were birds’ nests of twisted timber.
A few blocks farther north, the devastation was much worse. The houses were completely gone, flattened into a pulp of crushed wood and crumbled bricks. The freeway was clear of cars here, wiped clean by the blast, but the tarmac was red with the dust of bricks from the demolished houses.
The occasional clicking of the Geiger counter had become a steady rhythm.
“Still okay,” Dodge said, although no one had asked. “Well within safe limits. Inside the pickup, at least. We’re fine. No problems.”
As they neared the freeway interchange, it became clear that they would have to find another route. The cloverleaf junction of ramps and bridges had collapsed into a pile of contorted girders and concrete chunks, charred beyond recognition as a roadway.
“The blast was centered at the airport,” Sam said as Vienna maneuvered the big truck off the freeway and onto a side road. “Completely leveled the Strip. We’ll have to skirt around it.”
They wound their way through rubble-filled streets, heading west and then north, avoiding the center of town. The hypocenter of the blast.
No one spoke as they traveled through the ruined city. There was nothing to say. No words that could adequately express the horror they felt.
Even Tyler just watched mutely, unable to draw his eyes away from the wreckage outside the windows of the truck.
The radiation levels were rising steadily, and Dodge caught Sam’s eye, giving him a worried look but saying nothing out loud.
• • •
They found the house almost by accident, or perhaps by some kind of intuition from Vienna.
In the north of Vegas, the devastation of the blast seemed random. Buildings with scarcely a mark on them stood next to rubble. An RV park was a jumble of vehicles in the far corner of the lot, as if a child’s toy box had been emptied in a pile.
