“We had three people hurt bad. Jameel and some people just carried them to the infirmary.”
“We’re not going back in there, Mr. Hallock,” someone said. “Just look at what happened to the tower!”
Larry’s eyes followed the man’s pointing finger, and his mouth dropped open in wonder. Little trailers of steam still rose above the cooling tower— what remained of it— but the elegant double hyperboloid curves were gone. It was as if the concrete skin of the upper tower had peeled away, like the rind of a fruit, in long diagonal sections, leaving behind only a skeleton of twisted rebar.
First things first! he reminded himself.
“Look,” he said, “I’ve got to check the backup diesel. Meg, can you and a couple others help me with that?”
Meg nodded.
Larry pointed around the corner, toward where the lone survivor knelt in the flood. “There’s a man back there, been badly burned. Can someone help him to the infirmary, or wherever it is that Jameel took those other people?”
Meg, who knew her people better than Larry did, made the assignments. The others following, Larry sloshed toward the backup diesel. Their route took them around a collapsed workshop and through a parking lot— water was up to the axles of the cars, and a geyser had coughed up a cone of white sand in the center of the parking lot. The cars were no longer parked in orderly rows: the moving earth had shuffled them like dominoes.
Well before Larry reached the diesel building he could see that there was going to be trouble. The walls and roof had fallen, and the only thing that kept them propped up was the steel mass of the diesel itself.
If the diesel were operating, Larry should hear it. It sounded like a locomotive.
The surface of the water trembled as an aftershock rolled beneath the land. The aluminum and steel walls and roof of the diesel building rattled and creaked as the earth shivered. Larry stopped moving, arms held out for balance. Fear jangled through his nerves. He could hear the workers muttering behind him, and a splash as one of them fell.
The earth fell silent. Larry slogged forward.
He approached the diesel building, his pulse crashing in his ears. The steel door was crumpled on its foundation, clearly unusable, but there were wide gaps in the walls, and Larry stepped through one of these.
“Sir?” someone said behind him. “You maybe want a hard hat for that?”
Larry stepped into the broken building. His nerves gave a leap as the broken roof gave an ominous creak. The silent diesel loomed above him, tall as a house and 150 feet long if you counted the generator stuck on the end. Its mass propped up fallen roof beams.
Oily water shimmered around Larry’s boots. There was a horrible chemical smell that didn’t seem to belong in this scenario. He gave a sudden cough as something stung his throat. He tried to remember all the backup procedures he’d once memorized, the schematics of the diesel’s systems. He hadn’t dealt with any of this in years.
The roof gave another groan. Larry’s eyes watered. “Mr. Hallock?” Meg called.
Larry backed out. “Batteries have spilled,” he said.
The batteries were used to power the diesel’s control systems once the big engine started. But the diesel hadn’t started at all, which meant that the mechanical system running on compressed air had somehow failed. So why hadn’t that worked?
He turned as he heard someone splashing up through the parking lot. It was Wilbur.
“Number three diesel’s kaput,” he said. “Fuel spilled, and it’s on fire.”
So that was the pillar of smoke behind the turbine house.
“Okay,” Larry said.
“And the administration building’s gone,” Wilbur said. His staring eyes gazed out from the blood that streaked his face. “Just gone. Nothing but wreckage.”
“Jesus,” said Meg.
“It was the turbine shaft.” There was awe in Wilbur’s voice. “It must have tumbled through the air and ... there’s nothing left.”
Larry put a hand on Wilbur’s shoulder. Thought about the reactor core simmering in its boric acid solution, heat and pressure building. The possibility of leaks, jammed valves, heat building in the core.
The core turning to slag. Steam exploding out into the containment building. And who could tell, the way things were going, if the containment building was able to contain much of anything?
“Waaal,” he said, “best get this ol’ boy started, then.”
He and Wilbur slipped into the diesel building again to check the compressed air cylinders. They were in a separate room, but were easy enough to find because the wall that separated the rooms had fallen to bits. In agreement with the massive redundancy that characterized the plant’s design, there were three cylinders, each big as a house. The pressure gauges showed that two had discharged at some point in the quake. The third still held its charge, but the valve atop the cylinder was in the open position, showing that it had tripped and tried, but failed, to discharge. With eyes that stung from spilled battery acid, Larry peered through the darkened, ruined building and traced the couplings that connected the diesel to the third cylinder. The couplings ran overhead, in plain sight, and Larry traced them into the diesel room, past another valve . .. there.
When the roof had caved in, one of the roof beams had fallen across the valve. The weight had probably distorted the valve to the point where it wouldn’t operate properly.
Everything in order, Larry thought. He had traced the compressed air system, and now he traced the roof beam. His eyes were streaming. Okay, he thought, the beam connects there, and . ..
A sudden shock threw them both against the air cylinder. Pain jolted along Larry’s injured shoulder. He ducked and covered his head as, with a long metallic groan, more of the roof came down, metal panels falling like the blades of guillotines.
There was sudden silence as they waited for another shock. Larry’s heart throbbed in his chest. The silence was broken by Wilbur’s cough.
“Jesus,” he said, “my lungs are burning.”
“I got what we came for,” Larry said. “Let’s get out of here.”
They sloshed out of the diesel building. Larry’s stinging eyes blinked in the bright sunlight. “We need to move a roof beam,” he said. “Can we get something from the machine shop?”
“I’d hate to dig through there,” Meg said. “Can you show me what needs doing?”
Larry took a few breaths of clear air, then led Meg back into the crumpled building. He pointed out the beam, and Meg gave a laugh.
“My pickup’s in the lot just outside,” she said, “and I’ve got tow chains.”
Meg splashed off to her truck. Larry stood for a while outside, breathed clean air into his aching lungs while he wondered whether it would be safe to wash his eyes in this water. There was more splashing as someone ran up, and Larry saw one of his control room crew.
“I’ve been to the secondary shutdown room,” he said, “and it’s flooded.”
“Flooded?” Larry echoed, then looked at the water that was rising above his boots. Where was it coming from?
There was a roar and a splash as Meg drove up in her white Dodge Ram. Her crew helped as she shackled the beam to her truck, and then she shifted the Dodge into low gear and gave it the gas. Everyone stood back as the chains straightened and took the weight. The Dodge growled, its exhaust pipe almost under water. There was a long cry of metal as the beam began to move, as pieces of the roof spilled free with a cacophonous jangled sound. Larry held his breath. There was a clang as the roof beam pulled free of the structure, and Meg’s Dodge leaped free, water surging around its thick tires, the roof beam dragging behind.
Then there was a compressed air hiss, so painfully loud that Larry held his palms over his ears, and a throaty, hesitant rumble from the diesel. Larry held his breath. The diesel coughed, spat, coughed again.
Then caught. The fallen roof rattled and shivered as the diesel began a businesslike throb. Fumes gushed up from a broken exhaust pipe.
Larry found himself in a cheering knot of workers. Meg spun the truck around, returned to the others with the beam dragging behind. A big grin was spread across her face. “Yes!” Wilbur yelled, splashing as he jumped up and down in the water. “Yes!”
Well, Larry thought. He had done it, by God.
But that only meant, when you got down to it, that he needed to get busy and do something else.
He looked down at the water, nearing the tops of his boots.
He wished he knew where it was coming from.