The Nuclear Catastrophe (a fiction novel of survival) by Barbara C. Griffin Billig, Bett Pohnka Read Free Book Online Page B

Me neither, ” agreed the other as they walked slowly toward their automobiles.
    Screeching tires and the mad rushing of employees quickly became contagious to many of the skeptics—and there were many. Seeing their fellow workers dashing away set them to thinking, and before many more steps, they, too, began breaking into a run. Their private thoughts failed to assure them that this was some sort of monstrous lie, that nobody would have let anything that dangerous be put up on the edge of a megalopolis that contained nearly eleven million people.
    Because metropolitan Los Angeles and its neighboring Orange County were crisscrossed with a massive, arterial system of freeways, a public transportation system of buses or trains was virtually nonexistent. So, as the Calmar workers piled into their automobiles, they wheeled either north or south to get to minor routes near their homes. All southbound traffic passed within a few hundred yards of the White Water site. With car windows securely rolled up, most felt that even if those strange foreign things were really in the air, then they certainly wouldn ’ t get inside a car with its windows closed.
    While others, in the offices, frantically snatched their belongings from desk drawers and files and exited in a headlong rush, Cecil Yeager methodically pondered on those few articles which he thought might be useful in the days to come. Company records that he had been personally responsible for were not among his list of considerations. The computers had automatic back up systems.  Anything that wasn't backed up now, it was too late.  His employer had been too cheap to put in emergency power generators.  But no one was going to stick around to do any work, anyway.
    He leaned against the edge of his desk, his head lowered in concentration, when the last employee raced through the clutter, en route to the parking lot.
    Frank Waring, a junior accountant at Calmar, paused only long enough to ask, “ Hey, Yeager! What are you doing standing there? I had you figured to be the first one out! ”
    “ I....I ’ m just trying to decide on what to take, ” Cecil explained. “ I expected you to be long gone, ” the man said, dashing out. This comment from his fellow worker was the kind of stinging, acid barb that people often threw at him. For some reason, unexplained to him, others seemed to picture him as the first one out, the one least likely to cope, the one who was always intimidated and easily frightened. That image was inconsistent with his picture of himself. He knew he was probably one of the best-read and most knowledgeable men in the chemical company. His lack of aggressive behavior was simply due to a deeply ingrained timidness in his relations with other people.
    An unmarried, lonely man, and without kin, Cecil sought refuge from his loneliness by embedding himself in piles of books, journals, and papers. Naturally scholarly in his early life, he had read to learn, but as the years began quickly ebbing away, he continued to read, not only to learn, but also to fill the vacuum that was the solitude of his evenings, his weekends, even his vacations. A promotion to public relations would have plugged the hole in his life, would have made him become more outgoing. But it wasn ’ t to be, now.
    In his assessment of the situation, he concluded that the dangers of the radiation hung like a giant lethal cloud above his head—nothing short of a rapid evacuation from the region could save him from its horrors. In the brief span of a few moments, he could not determine the course to follow, the direction to take. Whatever seemed the easiest, and the most expedient, that ’ s what he ’ d do. Meanwhile, he must prepare for the eventuality that he may never see Calmar Chemical again, nor perhaps, even this once beautiful countryside.
    From the corners of his memory came the knowledge that metals absorb large amounts or radiation, and if worn close to the body, served as pools