“Maybe twenty-five miles is enough. That’s a long way when you think about it, all the way to Angelica’s from Maple Street. Doesn’t seem like a bomb would carry that far.”
“We’re not far enough, are we?”
“The wind’s from the north. Maybe it would blow the stuff away from us.”
“And the blast? How about the blast? How far does that carry?”
“Hey, they’re movin,” said Nando with seven-year excitement.
“Yeah! Here we go.” Mike put the wagon in gear. “Must have gotten that wreck off the road.”
“It’s just the left lane,” said Janice. “Ours isn’t moving at all. Cut in there, Mike.”
“Shit! They won’t let me.”
“Just do it! What are they going to do, hit you?”
“Okay, hold on!” There was a screeching of brakes and a crash as a car slammed into their left front fender, locking with the bumper. “God damn it! Hey you bastard, what are you trying to do, kill us?”
“Keep going! Keep going! We can’t stop now!” Janice was bouncing in her seat. Mike wrestled the wheel and gave the station wagon gas. With a rasping metallic protest the cars parted. The battered wagon limped into lane one with a tinkling of glass from the shattered headlight.
“We made it!” Janice thumped the dash. “Keep going, the hell with the car!”
He turned the wheels from side to side. They moved freely, nothing pressing against them. As he floored the pedal to catch up with the cars ahead, another from his former lane pulled out in front of him. Unable to brake in time, the wagon plowed into the driver’s door of a 94 Mercury.
“Shit!” screamed father Guaranga. “What the Christ does that son-of-a-bitch think he’s doing! He cut right in front of me!”
The force of the crash moved the Mercury back into lane two, where the car trailing it hit its right rear fender. The car behind that one, trying to avoid the pileup, swung into lane one, where it was hit by a car trying to turn into lane two. These in turn were clobbered by those behind them...
The radio in the incapacitated Guaranga car had been damaged and its volume stuck at a loud blare: “This is Joe Harrison in the WEYE copter. We’re over Route 290, there’s a ten-car pileup in the southbound lane. One of the cars has been flipped on its side. This is going to take a while to sort out. Take Route 93 if you can; it’s started to open up. Traffic south is heavy but moving...”
Joel Albert’s feet were wet. Snow along the riverbank was over the top of his National Guard boots, and had worked its way down the inside to melt. The temperature hadn’t climbed out of the teens, and a piercing northwest wind made it feel colder. Had he his druthers he’d be nearly anyplace but on the banks of the Connecticut River slogging through deep snow looking for something that shouldn’t be there. But today was N Day; the day the Nutcracker will unleash his horror on New England, unless he, Joel, or others in the Guard get there first. They’d been told about the pods the afternoon before and what horror they could bring; horror he had already experienced in Stewart, without knowing the source, so he scarcely felt the wind and wet. Carol was depending on him, as she had in Stewart. They’d gotten out of that place. He’d moved the two of them up river, clear to Lebanon, New Hampshire. He hadn’t much cared where they went, as long as it was out of Stewart. But Carol had been brought up on the Connecticut, and, well, who would have suspected the river…
“Joel! Hey Joel, over here!” Bruce Jeaneau was digging snow. “Something’s moving the water.”
Joel unstrapped his own shovel and dug it in next to Bruce’s. Made for compactness, these implements were too small to be effective in snow.
“I’ll get help. Craig!”, he put force behind the yell to carry upwind. “Tell Stover we’ve got something here. Could use a snow shovel.”
With one good shovel and six others designed for foxholes, they’d soon cleared five-foot square down to frozen earth, right to the edge of the sluggishly moving Connecticut.
“Nothing here,” said Joel.
“No, but look at the river there. There’s something going on underneath the surface.”
As they watched, a bubble broke the gray surface.
The seven squad members pulled back. “Think that’s it?” said Willie Weiker in a hushed voice.
“If it was we wouldn’t still be talking,” said Joel.
“Why didn’t they issue us gas masks?” Bruce wanted to know.
“Didn’t have ’em, all got requisitioned.” Paul Quint’s brother was in supply.
“By who?”
“Who the hell knows, Army, FBI...”
“Let’s get upwind of it anyway,” said Joel. They scrambled around to the north of the effluvial belch and considered. There were few buildings on this stretch of river. One, a weather-beaten cape, sat on a small rise behind them. Smoke rose from the center chimney.
“Thought everybody’d been excavated,” said Willie.
“Evacuated. Yeah, they should have been.”
“Let’s take a look.” Sounding like a better idea than digging at the bank of the gassy river, they all plodded up. Joel banged on the door. No answer. He hit the door again.
“Yeah what?’ The gravely male voice was muffled and irritated.
“Open up, National Guard.”
“Come back later. I’m not up.”
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Pretend I’m not.”
“There’s something in the river we need to ask you about.”
Silence. Then footsteps, the door opened. An unshaven man in long underwear and his middle fifties yawned at them. A rifle dangled loosely from his right hand. “A body?”
At the sight of the weapon several in the squad put hands on their pieces.
“Easy,” said Joel to the other Guardsmen. “Why the gun?”
“Looters. That’s why I’m here.”
“Is this your property?”
“Damn right.”
“All the way to the river?”
“Yeah. So?”
“There’s something entering the river there, that’s what. You know anything about it?”
“Yeah!” Willie chimed in. “We’re looking for someone putting biological material in the river. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”
“Shut up, Willie,” said Bruce. “That’s classified stuff.”
“It’s the seventeenth, ain’t it? Where’s he going with it now? Answer the question, Bud.”
“Jesus! For that they’re callin out the National Guard?” The man rubbed his unshaven jaw in awe.
“It’s him!” yelled Willie pointing his rifle at the man’s middle. “Drop your rifle, Bud!” Others raised their pieces.
The man’s weapon thumped against the doorsill. “Okay! Okay! You got me. It was that Christly building inspector, wasn’t it? Damn geek has been out to get me since day one. But the National Guard!”
“We always get our man,” said Willie proudly, pulling a length of rope from his knapsack.
Joel looked at the man curiously. “Why didn’t you wait until noon?”
“And in the meantime pound sand up my ass?”
“Don’t get smart,” said Willie, wishing he could snap on a pair of handcuffs as he tied the man’s hands behind him.
“Innocent people will die.” Joel felt the wind harder on his cheek. Good. Blow the stuff away from their home
