Gone

quickly, but the razor wire gave him pause. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around the most troublesome strand of wire. He carefully swung a leg over and yelped as the wire nicked his thigh. Then he was over. He dropped to the ground, leaving his shirt behind on the wire.
    He entered the guardhouse. The air-conditioning was on full blast, making him instantly regret the loss of his shirt.
    A bank of color monitors showed the road they had just come down, as well as a rotating array of outdoor scenes: ocean and rock and mountain. It also showed several passcard-protected doors to the plant.
    In the restroom he spotted an electronic passcard on a lanyard, hanging from a hook. Some guy had been using the can when he disappeared. Sam hung the lanyard around his neck.
    In a closet off the main room he found a gray-green military-style uniform shirt, many sizes too large. Against the wall was a locked rack of automatic weapons, machine pistols. The room smelled of oil and sulfur.
    He looked for a long time at the guns. Automatic weapons versus baseball bats.
    “Don’t go down that road,” Sam muttered.
    He left the gun closet and closed the door firmly. But his hand rested on the knob awhile. Then he shook his head. No. It had not gotten to that point.
    Not yet.
    The force of the temptation made him queasy. What was the matter with him that he had even considered it for a second?
    He pushed the button to open the gate.
    “What took you so long?” Quinn asked suspiciously.
    “I was looking around for a shirt.”
    The power plant stood in perfect isolation, a vast, imposing complex of warehouselike buildings dominated by two immense, concrete bell-jar domes.
    All his life Sam had heard about the power plant. It seemed like half the people in Perdido Beach worked here. Growing up he had heard the recited reassurances. And he wasn’t afraid of nuclear power, really. But now, seeing the actual plant—a bright, bristling beast crouched above the seaand beneath the mountains—it made him nervous.
    “You could pile every house in Perdido Beach into this place,” Sam said. “I’ve never seen it up close. It’s big.”
    “It kind of reminds me of when I was in Rome and saw Saint Peter’s, this really big cathedral,” Quinn said. “It’s, like, you know, you feel small looking at it. Like maybe you should kneel down, just to be on the safe side.”
    “Stupid question, right, but we aren’t going to get radioactive, are we?” Edilio asked.
    “This isn’t Chernobyl,” Astrid said tartly. “They didn’t even have containment towers there. That’s what the two big domes are. The actual reactors are under the containment domes so if anything does happen, the radioactive gas or steam is contained inside.”
    Quinn slapped Edilio on the back, fake friendly. “And that’s why there’s nothing to worry about. Except, huh, they call this area Fallout Alley. I wonder why? What with everything being totally safe and all.”
    Quinn and Sam knew the story, but for Edilio’s benefit, Astrid pointed at the more distant of the two domes. “See how the color is different, the one dome looks newer? The dome over there was hit by a meteorite. Almost fifteen years ago. But what are the odds of that ever happening again?”
    “What were the odds of it happening once?” Quinn muttered.
    “A meteorite?” Edilio echoed, and he glanced up at the sky. The sun was well past its high point and settling toward the water.
    “A small meteorite moving at high speed,” Astrid said. “It hit the containment vessel and blew it up. Vaporized it. It hit the reactor and just kept going. Actually, it was good it was moving so fast.”
    Sam saw the picture in his head. He could imagine the big space rock hurtling down at impossible speed, trailing fire, blowing the concrete dome apart.
    “Why is it good that it was so fast?” Sam asked.
    “Because it drilled into the earth and carried ninety percent of the uranium fuel down with it into the crater. It pushed it almost a hundred feet down. So they basically just filled in the hole, paved it over, and rebuilt the reactor.”
    “I heard a guy was killed,” Sam said.
    Astrid nodded. “One of the engineers. I guess he was working in the reactor area.”
    “You telling me there’s a bunch of uranium under the ground and no one is supposed to think that’s dangerous?” Edilio said skeptically.
    “A bunch of uranium and one dude’s bones,” Quinn said. “Welcome to Perdido