Ruins - Dan Wells

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got a whole army of guerrillas, and most of my unit joined them.” He shook his head. Haru was the youngest of the four men, barely twenty-three years old, and he felt more like a child now than he had in years—than he had since the Break, really. The doom and the chaos were terrible enough, but it was the familiarity that really got to him—the sense that the doom and the chaos had all happened before, twelve years ago when the world ended, and now it was ending again. He had been a child then, and suddenly he was a child again, lost and confused and desperate for someone, for anyone, to step in and make it all better. He didn’t like that feeling at all, and he hated himself for allowing it to enter his mind. He was a father now, the first father in twelve years to have a living, breathing, healthy child, and she and her mother were trapped somewhere in the middle of this mess. He had to pull himself together, for them.

      “I liked Delarosa better when she was in jail,” said Hobb. “This is what we get for trusting a terrorist.” He shot a glance at Tovar. “Present company excepted, of course.”

      “No, you’re right,” said Tovar. “We’ve made a habit of trusting fanatics, and it’s rarely turned out well for us. I was a pretty savvy terrorist—savvy enough to get my label switched to ‘freedom fighter’ and wind up in charge—but I’m a terrible senator. We like people who stand up and fight, especially when we agree with them, but it’s the next step that really matters. The part after the fighting.” He smiled sadly. “I’ve let everybody down.”

      “The Partial invasion was not your fault,” said Mkele.

      “The final remnants of the human race will be glad to hear it,” said Tovar. “Unless the Partial invasion’s a big hit, in which case I’ll totally claim the credit.”

      “Only if Hobb doesn’t beat you to it,” said Haru.

      Senator Hobb spluttered an awkward defense, but Mkele merely glanced at Haru disapprovingly. “We have more important things to do than trade insults.”

      “Even true ones,” said Tovar. Mkele and Hobb both glared at him, but he only shrugged. “What, am I the only one admitting my personal failings?”

      “There’s a convicted war criminal with a nuclear weapon loose on our island,” said Hobb, “not to mention the army of super-soldiers murdering us like cattle. Can we maybe focus on that instead of personal attacks?”

      “She’s not going to use it on the island,” said Haru. “Not even Delarosa’s that bloodthirsty. She’s not out to kill Partials, she’s out to save humans—she’s still going to kill the Partials, obviously, but not at the expense of the few of us who are left.”

      “That’s a nice sentiment,” said Mkele, “but a nuclear warhead is a very imprecise weapon. How do we know she’ll use it wisely? Best-case scenario, she takes it to the mainland, blows it somewhere north of the Partials, and lets the fallout radiation finish them off; more likely, she takes it to their home base in White Plains and blows it there, killing all of us in the fallout instead.”

      “Which might be the only plan that works,” said Hobb. “For all we know, they’re not even susceptible to radiation poisoning.”

      “How close is White Plains?” asked Tovar. “Anybody have a map?”

      “Always,” said Mkele, and set his briefcase on the table, undoing the locks with a pair of soft clicks. “Traveling from here to White Plains would take days, because you’d have to go around the Long Island Sound.” He unfolded a paper map and spread it flat on the table before them. “Even if she crosses the sound by boat, which is the route most likely to get her caught, it will take her a couple of days to get there, at minimum. Months, maybe, if she travels carefully enough to stay hidden. As the crow flies, though, it’s not that far. White Plains to East Meadow is …” He studied the map, pointing out the two cities and measuring their distance with a well-worn plastic ruler. “Forty miles, give or take.” He looked up. “Do we know what kind of nuke she has? What kind of payload?”

      “She said she pulled it from a ship called The Sullivans,” said Haru. “Plural like that, I don’t know why.”

      “That’s a destroyer,” said Tovar, “Arleigh Burke class—an older ship, even twelve years ago, but very dependable; the navy used them for years. The Sullivans was named after five brothers who all died in the same battle in World War II.”

      “I thought you didn’t know about the nuke,” said Hobb.

      “I didn’t,” said Tovar, “but you’re talking to an ex-marine. Try to name a navy ship I don’t know the specs of.”

      “Then tell us the specs of this one,” said Mkele. “Would that class of destroyer be armed with nuclear missiles, or would they have just put one in the cargo hold for onboard detonation, like a suicide bomber?”

      “Arleigh Burke destroyers would be outfitted with Tomahawks,” said Tovar. “That’s a nuclear cruise missile with a two-, maybe three-hundred-kiloton payload. Those are designed for long-range attacks, but the Partials had enough antimissile defense to shoot one down before it hit home. The reason it’s sitting right off the coast of Long Island, I assume, is that they brought it close to detonate on site; it would have sacrificed the fleet, and most of New York and New Jersey and Connecticut, but it would have destroyed the Partials pretty decisively.”

      Haru grimaced, marveling again at how desperate the old government must have been to consider such a thing—though he supposed it was no more desperate than their situation now. Before the world ended, and knowing that it was about to, a nuke would have been a small price to pay: You’d kill everyone in range, and destroy the area for decades to come, but the Partials would have been gone. It might have actually been worth it. Now, though, with the last of the human race sitting just forty miles away …

      “What’s the radius of destruction?” asked Haru. “Is the entire island dead?”

      “Not necessarily,” said Tovar, “but we don’t want to be here if we can help it. At that payload the initial fireball’s going to be about a mile and a half wide—that’s the part that’s two hundred million degrees—and the physical shock wave will destroy everything within five or six miles. Everything in that zone is going to go up in flames, instantly, and that much fire starting that abruptly will suck in enough air to jump-start a raging hurricane with air temperatures hot enough to boil water. Every living thing within … ten miles of ground zero would be dead in minutes, and five or ten miles farther out you’d still kill enough of everything not to know the difference. Here on the island we won’t have any of those primary effects—we might feel a thump, and anyone looking right at the detonation will be blinded, but that should be the worst of it. Should be. Until the radioactive ash cloud gives us all leukemia and we die in slow, crippling agony.”

      “And how big is the ash cloud?” asked Haru.

      “A nuclear ash cloud doesn’t radiate out like a shock wave,” said Mkele. “It’s a distribution of physical material, so the exact pattern will depend on the weather. The major winds in this region tend to blow northeast, so most of the ash cloud will drift that way, but we’re still going to get some peripheral fallout—flurries around the edges, and castoffs from the winds in the firestorm.”

      “Anyone less than ninety miles downwind will be dead within two weeks,” said Tovar. “We just have to hope the winds don’t change.”

      “So the Partials would be effectively destroyed,” said Hobb.

      “Everyone on the mainland, yes,” said Mkele, “but this close to the blast zone we’re going to lose a lot of humans as well, even under ideal conditions.”

      “Yes, but the Partials will be gone,” Hobb repeated. “Delarosa’s plan will work.”

      “I don’t think you’re grasping the ramifications here—” said Haru, but Hobb cut him off.

      “I don’t think you are either,” Hobb snapped. “What are our options, honestly? Do you think we can

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