Endangered Species

Summer days up north are long; sunrise was at five-thirteen, and sunset wasn’t until two minutes after nine. I checked my watch; it was eight thirty-two. I’d gotten over seven hours of sleep before Mike woke me up.

My body hurt from sleeping on the rock rubble. Next time, we’d have to find something with more give to put our sleeping bags on. “What’s the reading?”

“Twenty-eight millirem per hour,” he replied as he took the meter out of the direct sunlight.

“Down quite a bit from the fifty-two at noon,” I replied. “There is still some ozone up there.”

“Not near enough.”

The dosimeter the Maine Leading ELT gave me would clip onto your uniform during work in a radiation area. It gave both cumulative radiation dose and dose rate information. Using it in the daylight hours was illuminating. The gamma radiation coming from the sun was killing people. Unlike the ultraviolet radiation causing blindness and sunburn, gamma radiation penetrates skin and muscles like an x-ray. You can’t sense gammas as it kills you. People hid from the sunlight, thinking they were safe, but their homes provided little protection from gamma radiation. Someone hiding in their bedroom would get between five and ten REM of gamma dose just today. That was more than the YEARLY dose radiation workers were allowed, but not a lethal dose. That was more like three to five hundred REM total.

The radiation must have been intense in the early days of the event. I hadn’t seen a living thing all morning.

You can’t stop gamma rays, but you can reduce their intensity by putting something between you and the source. Two inches of lead will reduce a gamma beam to one-tenth of its initial dose, but nobody has lead blankets in their home. It takes four inches of steel, eight inches of concrete/rock/dirt, or two feet of water to get the same reduction as the lead. In a submarine deep underwater, we’d never notice it.

Our notch in the cliff wall was good protection. A basement would work too, but they didn’t have those in this neighborhood.

By morning, I want to be underground at the submarine base, drinking coffee after completing my mission.

I moved along the cliff until I could find a spot to relieve myself, then rinsed my hands off with the remains of the water bottle. The ski goggles dimmed the sky as I looked out over the water. “Anything interesting while I was out?”

“Floating tombs and bodies,” he replied. “How bad do you want to try and find a boat with a working motor?”

“Where?”

“I was looking at the charts. There’s a marina in Port Townsend and a few farther south.”

“I’m not sure a motor is a good idea. With everything going to shit, silent paddling seems like a better play. We can’t afford to have someone take a shot at us on the way.”

“It would be faster, and we could stay offshore.”

“And navigating will be a bitch at night with a fast tide coming in,” I countered. We looked at the map. “We stay close enough to shore to see it, or at least hear the waves breaking to our right. We work our way into Port Townsend Bay and through the canal. Once we get down to the Hood Canal Bridge, we cross over to the east side and take that south until we reach Bangor.”

“Makes sense, Summers. When are we taking off?”

“Let’s go as soon as the sun is behind the mountains.” We rolled up the sleeping bags and put them in the waterproof storage of the kayak with our ski goggles. The Beretta M9 pistol I kept in a holster on my right hip, held by the nylon belt on my overalls. By the time everything was ready, it was time. We donned our life jackets and carried the kayak to the water. “You ever use one of these?”

“Single seaters, yeah.”

“I haven’t. Only canoes.”

He held it steady as I climbed in. “Don’t lose your paddle. Focus on keeping your weight centered and pulling evenly with each arm. You set the pace, and I’ll mirror your stroke to keep our paddles from hitting. I’ll handle the steering with the rudder and my paddles.”

“Got it.” He pushed off and sat down, and then we started to paddle in the dimming light. I quickly got used to the motion, and we made good time heading east to Port Townsend. “This beats walking,” I said.

“Damn right. It’s a beautiful night, the seas are calm, and I’ve got a hot babe out for a midnight ride on my boat,” Mike teased.

I shook my head. “Keep it up, and you may find out if the old ‘I wouldn’t kiss you if you were the last man in the world’ threat is true or not.”

“So you might kiss me?”

I just shook my head. As we came within sight of Port Angeles, our hearts sank. The fire last night had leveled the city. A few small fires still burned, but the flames only stopped at the water’s edge. We paddled in silence past the Point Wilson Lighthouse, turning south. The tidal current was strong, sweeping us towards Seattle. We had to paddle hard to stay within sight of the town. “So much for the marina,” I said after we rounded the turn at the southeast corner. The sailboats and yachts were gone, burned to the waterlines.

Smoke from the fires was getting annoying, so we decided to head due south by compass. Now that we were inside the bay, the only way out was the channel at the south end. It was a good call; the fires had pushed south, destroying everything to Port Hadlock. We practically flew through the narrow channel and continued down towards the bridge.

The fires hadn’t pushed south into Oak Bay. We were making good time, and then we heard the yell. “HEY! HELP! HELP!!”

We stopped paddling. Illuminated by the moonlight and the Northern Lights display, a man waved frantically from the shore. “WHAT DO YOU NEED,” Mike yelled back.

“MY WIFE IS SICK! SHE NEEDS A DOCTOR.”

I looked back at Mike, who was starting to steer his way. “We can’t help,” I told him.

“We don’t know how bad she is.”

“It doesn’t matter. Do you see a hospital open? Where would we put her? Are you giving up your seat?” He looked at him, then back. “We have a mission.”

“We have to do something.”

“We have to get to Bangor before sunrise, Mike. Get back on course. That’s an order.”

He looked at the man. “NO HELP TO THE NORTH. GOOD LUCK.” We listened to the man beg for help as we paddled south.

He didn’t talk much after that. By two-forty, we had made it to the Hood Canal Floating Bridge. We passed under the transition section on the west end, then turned to parallel the bridge. The current kept pushing us farther down the bay; instead of fighting it, we kept paddling east by compass until we reached the other side. “Not much farther now,” I said.

“Do you think they are still alive?”

“If anyone is, they will be. Even being onboard one of the subs would give them protection.”

“Not for their families.” Nobody wanted to talk about that, but I’d been passed notes from worried crewmembers asking me to check up on their families. I had a list of names and addresses written down on the notebook in my breast pocket. I dreaded the answer, but I’d promised to find out.

It was just after four when we reached our objective. We stopped at the buoys and floating barriers marking the Bangor Submarine Base waters. “Don’t make any sudden moves. The Marine guards will be on edge, and I don’t feel like getting shot. Follow my lead and keep your hands in view.”

I hailed the guards, giving my name and rank. No one answered. We yelled and waved our paddles over our heads. After five minutes, we still had no response. “What should we do?”

Two submarines were still tied up at the pier when we left port a week ago. “I don’t see any submarines or sentries. Maybe they all went to sea?”

“It doesn’t seem right.”

“We need to find the Base Commander. Let’s go in.” We lifted the line over our heads and entered the restricted waters. We paddled past the triangular docks, sitting silent and empty, and beached our kayak on the rocky shore. “Leave the packs for now. Let’s see who’s home.”

We scrambled up the broken riprap to the fence and followed it to the road leading to the docks. That’s where we found the first body, a Marine face-down in full combat gear. I checked him with my flashlight. “Where’s his rifle?”

“Under him?” I rolled him over, finding no weapons.

Only a bullet hole in his forehead.