shut by a coating of concrete dust. When she was able to get them open and focus, she could see that the whole industrial area had been wrecked, with great mounds of concrete rubble piled everywhere—in the street, between the shattered buildings, even on top of the buildings that were still standing. The last two buildings in the row had been partially knocked down, and where the power plant had been, there was only the stump of the main smokestack presiding over two piles of twisted metal that must have been the boilers. She saw Ransom come staggering out into the street from somewhere, his clothes
torn to ribbons, bleeding from the head, eyes, ears, and mouth. He tripped over a mound of rubble and went down like a sack of flour, lying motionless in the street. She was horrified to see a rod of metal sticking out of his head like a feather less arrow. A great cloud of dust hung over the entire area, thick enough to turn the daylight yellowish brown.
She looked around for Whittaker, but he was nowhere in sight. Her knees felt like they were on fire, and she looked down and saw that she had skinned the knees of her pants down to two bloody patches of road rash.
She tried to get up, but there was a large piece of concrete with its re bar still embedded lying on her right leg, and her right hand didn’t seem to be working. She tried calling out for help, but all she managed was a whimper, and that turned into a coughing fit, which hurt her lungs.
Then someone was there, levering the big chunk of concrete off her leg. It was one of the surveillance squad agents—Harris, she thought his name was, pretty sure that’s what it was—and he was saying something to her. She absolutely couldn’t hear him. She pointed to her ears and shook her head, which turned out to be a big mistake. She experienced a major lance of pain, followed by a cool rose haze that enveloped her consciousness, and then, blessedly, it all went away.
When she regained consciousness the next time, she found herself inside an ambulance, but the vehicle was not moving. Her whole body felt awash in some soothing balm, and she was hooked up to IVs in both arms.
A young paramedic was talking urgently on a telephone down near her feet, and she could see out the back doors of the ambulance that it was parked on the main street of the industrial area, looking down toward what had been the power plant. She was shocked by what she saw: The power plant was essentially gone, with nothing remaining but the wrecked boilers on the wide concrete expanse of what had been the floor.
The two large buildings at the far end of the street nearest the power plant had been mostly destroyed, with only their uphill side walls still intact. The streets were littered with pieces of concrete, big and small, and there were two body sheets lying out on the street between her and the open space in front of what had been the power plant. The medic turned around and saw that she was conscious. He said something into the phone, which she could not hear, and then hung up. Then he was talking to her, but she could barely hear him. She shook her head, much more carefully, but couldn’t move her arms. She was able to read his lips.
“Can you hear me?” he was asking.
She winced and mouthed the word no. Her lips felt twice their normal size.
“Can you breathe all right?”
She tried out her lungs. It hurt to inhale, and her ribs were throbbing under the warmth of the painkiller, but she nodded.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” he asked. Three she mouthed, and then she said it out loud: “Three.”
“Okay, good.” She realized she could hear him now, although his voice was still distant. He saw that she could understand him.
“Your vitals are okay,” he said.
“Your pupils are a little bit dilated, and I think you’ve cracked a couple of ribs and maybe your right wrist. I’m guessing a mild concussion, but otherwise, I don’t see anything major, okay? The IVs are for pain and shock, and we’ve got you on a monitor. Just relax. We’re gonna transport in just a few minutes.”
“What happened?” she croaked.
“Looks like an A-bomb to me, lady. There’re a million cops out there right now.”
“What about… them?” she asked, pointing with her eyes to the body sheets down the street.
“Don’t know, ma’am. I mean who they are. The cops in suits are pretty pissed off, though.”
At that moment, Farnsworth’s head appeared over the medic’s shoulder.
His face was a mask of shock and concern. He saw Janet looking at him and tried for a smile. It was ghastly, Janet thought.
“Hey, boss,” she said weakly.
“Thank God,” he said.
“Can she talk to me?” he asked the medic.
“Yeah, but she can’t hear so good,” the man said, and then crawled out of the way so that Farnsworth could climb partially into the ambulance.
“Janet, can you tell me what happened?” he asked, and then swore.
“Listen to me: Are you okay? Are you hurt badly?”
“I took a flying lesson,” she said, trying for a little wisecrack to get that mortal look off his face.
“We were standing next to some building, down there, called Nitro Fixing. Then the world ended. I don’t know what happened.”
“The surviving team members said the power plant blew up,” he said.
“One of them was in the doorway of a building when it went up. Said the whole fucking thing literally disintegrated in a fireball. No warning.”
“Who—” she began, looking past him into the street.
“Ken Whittaker is dead, and definitely one of the rent-a-cops, if not both of them. They were out in the street, we think.”
Janet felt her stomach go cold. But Farnsworth wasn’t finished.
“Ransom is … well, it’s gonna be touch-and-go, I’m afraid. He had a bastard of a head injury. They’ve heloed him out already. Our guys who were up the street inside buildings are pretty much okay. But, listen, we have a development.”
“What?” Despite the pain medication, her side was beginning to really hurt, and it was getting harder to breathe. She tried not to panic. Development?
“The state police pulled Lynn Kreiss out of that last building down there. She’s injured but alive, Janet. She was able to tell us that two guys have been holding her here since those kids disappeared, but then she became incoherent. Started babbling about Washington and a hydrogen bomb. Then she passed out. This is all secondhand—I wasn’t here yet.
But now we have to find out what the hell happened here.”
“Is aTF taking over?”
“Oh, hell yes, they’ve taken over. In force. They’re de laminating about Whittaker. Their lead guy is foaming at the mouth about why Washington never told them they suspected this place of being a bomb factory.”
“Brilliant,” Janet muttered.
“This whole place was a bomb factory.”
“Sir?” the medic said, looking at his monitors.
“I think you’re all done here, okay? We gotta transport now.”
Farnsworth nodded and withdrew.
“Get well quick, Janet,” he called as the attendant began shutting the doors.
“Fucking Kreiss—he was right!”
he added.
And Kreiss had known a lot more than he had been letting on, she thought as the attendant slid forward and rapped on the window to the driver. She wondered if Kreiss was out there among all the rubble, or still in pursuit of these people who had been building—what out here, a hydrogen bomb She was no explosives expert, but she knew that wasn’t possible.
No way. But assuming Kreiss was alive, somebody did need to tell him that they’d found his daughter. That he could stop chasing the phantoms of the arsenal and come in and talk to them. The ambulance was rolling and the attendant was doing something with one of her IVs. She suddenly felt very sleepy. Have to remember that, she
