'No, not crying. Just burying your heads.' He pointed at the door. 'Why do you think the sky's always that orange-yellow color during the day, and that dim gray-pink at night?'
'We know all about the Long Beach Halo, Eric,' Toni Tyler said, tapping her pencil on the table. 'But according to these government flyers, it's probably just a temporary situation.'
'Depends on your definition of temporary. They explain it very clearly, don't they? An inversion layer, a dome of chemical gases formed when the quakes damaged the containers of chemical weapons we had stored at Long Beach harbor. Somehow the weather conditions caused by the quake combined with the escaping chemical gases and formed this damn umbrella sealing the whole damned island in, from San Francisco to the tip of Baja. A super acid fog. We can't get out, the outside world can't get in. In fact, we're warned right here in this flyer-notice the big red print-not to attempt to leave the island by boat. It seems that those who tried and passed through the Halo became diseased and contagious. Suggest anything to you?'
Dr. Dreiser sighed. 'Biological weapons.'
'Bullseye, Doc. It wasn't just chemical weapons that were stored in Long Beach, but biological ones too. And now they're mixed into that lovely little cloud.'
'Impossible!' Dr. Epson shouted. 'They would have told us.'
'Really?' Eric said, flinging the flyer back onto the table. 'Not when our government has proclaimed to the world we'd gotten rid of them years ago. How do you think the rest of the country, never mind the world, will react when they realize there are probably other storehouses just like Long Beach's? Nope. They'll stick to their story. Only problem is, they can't get in here without being contaminated, and we can't get out. How do they word it? 'Anybody attempting to pass through the phenomenon risks contaminating the outside world and will be dealt with severely.' For those who can't interpret military jargon, that means-'
'Kill on sight,' Durham said quietly.
'Exactly.'
Toni Tyler tapped her pencil nervously. 'But they also say it's just a temporary phenomenon. That it'll probably dissipate on its own.'
'Possibly. But it's been intact for three months without any signs of dissipating. We can't count on that happening, at least not in the near future. We have to start thinking about here and now. Thinking like survivors.'
Dr, Epson jumped to his feet. 'Submarines! They could dive under the water, avoid the Halo altogether.'
'Yeah,' Durham said. 'What about that? Subs.'
'Maybe,' Eric said. But their estimates put the dead here at between ten and fifteen million, which leaves about five to ten million people to track down, transport across land, then ship to the mainland. How many subs do you think it would take to transport five million people?'
'It would take ten years,' Trevor said. 'And that assumes they want to bring us back.'
'What do you mean?' Toni asked.
'Well, if Eric is correct in his evaluation of the situation, and I think we can agree that he probably is, then they're not going to be anxious to take the chance of bringing us back.'
Toni shook her head. 'Why?'
'Because,' Durham said, 'they can't be sure whether or not we're already contaminated, just from living under that fucking-excuse me, ladies-Long Beach Halo.'
'But we aren't sick or anything,' Dr. Epson said. 'I feel exceptionally robust. Doctor?'
Dr. Dreiser lifted her swollen ankle back onto the chair. 'It's possible we've absorbed whatever's up there at such a moderate rate that our bodies have built up an immunity. But we could still be carriers to those outside. Like anthropologists who would discover some lost tribe and end up wiping them out simply by passing along a cold germ. The anthropologists, like most of civilization, had developed immunities. But the tribe, never before exposed, found the germ fatal. It's possible.'
Eric watched as each fell into a long, profound silence, staring at their hands, the wall, thinking. He hadn't wanted to shatter what little hope of rescue they'd been clinging to all these months, but it was time for them to take their present situation seriously. To start thinking of it as permanent, which it probably was. He didn't like it any better than they did, though he'd had longer to get used to the idea. Every once in a while the sense of loss was overpowering, and some past image would rush into his mind, dance tantalizingly out of reach, and make him sad. Last week it had been an image of Time magazine, which he used to like to lie in the bathtub and read. No more Time. Yesterday he'd thought about Raiders of the Lost Ark and felt sad because he'd been looking forward to taking the kids to the sequel. Now there wouldn't be a sequel. At least for them. Right now he thought about his old neighbor, Gary Thompson, the dentist who begged to cut Eric's lawn. They rarely spoke, except about the lawn, the weather, the Lakers. Now Eric missed him.
'Okay, back to the matter at hand,' Eric said brusquely.
Everyone looked at him with a slightly dazed expression.
'The generator parts. El Dorado Center's offer.'
Toni Tyler shifted her hefty bulk in the chair. 'It seems to me that if we accept your evaluation, Eric, we are even more in need of those parts. Our generators will be crucial to our survival.'
'She's right,' Durham said grudgingly, not liking to agree with a woman, even a fellow Republican. 'We'll have to deal with them.'
Eric sat down again. 'Maybe. But let's examine the facts a little first.'
This time no one argued.
'How did their offer arrive?'
'Tossed over the fence an hour ago,' Dr. Epson said, pushing a wrinkled piece of paper across the table with the head of his mallet. 'It was tied to a rock. A couple of kids were smooching near the south perimeter behind the cafeteria. They found it.'
Eric read the brief note quickly. 'I see they mention generator parts specifically.'
'So?' Durham asked.
'How did they know we needed generator parts?'
Durham shrugged. 'Maybe because we haven't used any electricity since we've been here. If we had working generators we'd have used them, right?'
'Sounds reasonable.'
'But?'
'But there's another possibility.'
'Like what?'
Eric's reddish-brown eyes flashed. 'They were told.'
'By whom?' Dr. Epson asked.
'Matt Southern. One of the others with him.'
'For God''s sake,' Durham said. 'Why would they?'
'Because they were forced to. Tortured, maybe. Knowing your enemies' weaknesses is the first step in defeating them.'
'There he goes again!' Dr. Epson said. 'He thinks everyone out there is out to get us.'
'It's a safe assumption,' Eric said.
'But it's so cold and inhuman, Eric,' Dr. Dreiser said. 'Maybe they're just a group of people like us, trying to make contact, trying to survive. They're probably as afraid as we are. But they took the first step. Don't we owe it to them-to ourselves-to follow up?'
'Not to the mention the generator parts,' Durham reminded everybody.
'It's a big risk,' Eric said. 'It could be a trick.'
'What's the big risk?' Dr. Epson asked. 'A few boxes of library books, that's all.'
'Not to mention my life and the people I'm taking with me out there.'
Dr. Epson looked down. 'Well, I didn't mean…' His voice trailed off.
'We understand the risks, Eric,' Toni Tyler said.
'Do you? Did you read this note? They want us to meet them at the Bank of America building down the street at midnight. Midnight, for Chrissakes. They must be watching old Thin Man movies in that video shop. Why not do it in the daytime? It's not like we're breaking any laws.'
'They mention that in the note,' Dr. Epson said.
