Chapter 156: Chapter 156 - Nuclear Plant
The Land Rover moved steady down the highway.
Malcolm didn’t slow when walkers drifted into the road. The reinforced metal at the front caught them and threw them aside. Bodies rolled off the hood. Limbs snapped under the tires. The vehicle barely jolted.
Twitchers darted from the shoulder once or twice, fast and erratic, but the weight of the car made short work of them. The steel grills over the windows rattled when something hit, then settled again.
Inside, it felt solid.
Protected.
They hadn’t seen a hunter yet.
The highway was mostly clear. Old traffic jams had been pushed aside, cars bulldozed into crooked lines along the shoulders. Burned shells. Open doors. Nothing moved between them.
Iyisha glanced at the dashboard clock.
Four in the afternoon.
Still hours before dark.
A twitcher broke from the ditch and sprinted straight at them.
"God. Why are there more twitchers here?" Iyisha said.
Malcolm kept his eyes on the road.
The undead hit the grille and folded over the hood before dropping under the tires. The Land Rover jolted once. Bone cracked beneath the weight. Iyisha grabbed the handle above the door and braced.
That made ten.
More than they saw the entire stretch before crossing into Ohio.
She looked back.
Marybeth sat by the window, gaze fixed outside. She didn’t react to the hit. Didn’t blink. Just watched the trees pass.
"We need to find a place to stay," Malcolm said.
Iyisha looked ahead.
Davis Besse rose in the distance, massive and still. Two cooling towers dominated the skyline, concrete flared at the top, stained and weathered.
The reactor building sat low and square beneath them with thick walls, narrow windows, and heavy industrial lines. The outer fence stretched wide around the property, sections bent, wire sagging. Parking lots lay open and exposed, cars scattered in uneven rows like they were abandoned mid shift.
The place looked shut down. Dead.
"I thought it was safer at the nuclear plant," she said. "The twitchers are dangerous."
Even if they found a building, it would be dangerous with the twitchers around.
If three attacked at once, a house wouldn’t hold.
Malcolm nodded once and accelerated.
As they approached, the scale became clear. Long service roads. Concrete barriers. A security booth near the entrance with shattered glass and a rusted metal arm hanging uselessly to one side. The buildings sat far apart from each other, wide open space between them.
There were undead inside the perimeter.
But fewer.
Walkers stood scattered near the fence line, swaying. A twitcher jerked near an abandoned pickup but didn’t charge them. Several bodies lay motionless on the pavement. Some were already bloated, a lot different from the skinny undead she was used to seeing.
Malcolm slowed as they turned into the access road.
The plant loomed over them, silent and enormous.
The Land Rover rolled onto the wide concrete driveway leading into the plant grounds.
A walker stood near the edge of the pavement. The bumper clipped its shoulder and spun it aside. Another body lay half on the road. The tires rolled over it.
It barely reacted.
Several undead scattered across the lot moved sluggishly, arms lifting a second too late, heads turning without urgency. A few didn’t move at all. They sat or knelt where they were, bloated and swollen, skin stretched tight and discolored, flies thick around them.
They looked glued in place.
Malcolm didn’t head straight for the first entrance he saw. He drove past it.
He made a slow loop around the perimeter road instead.
The Land Rover hummed steadily over cracked pavement. Wind pushed loose paper and debris across the open lots. A chain link fence rattled lightly somewhere in the distance.
They passed loading docks with rusted roll up doors. Stacks of old barrels near a service building. A row of parked maintenance trucks with doors hanging open. The cooling towers loomed overhead, silent and hollow, casting long shadows across the concrete.
The stillness pressed in.
Even the twitchers there moved differently. Slower. Unfocused. One jerked near a stairwell but didn’t chase when the vehicle passed.
Iyisha scanned the rooftops. The corners. The spaces between buildings.
"Is there radiation?" she asked quietly.
Malcolm kept driving.
"The plant is shut down," he said. "If there is a meltdown, we’d see more than this."
She looked at the towers again. At the reactor building. Nothing that she could see.
"But what if something is still leaking?" she pressed.
He slowed at an intersection inside the complex, checking both directions before continuing.
"We won’t stay long," he said. "Just overnight."
She nodded slowly, though her eyes stayed on the structures around them.
The Land Rover completed the loop.
Malcolm turned back toward the entrance he noticed earlier, choosing a building with limited windows and a single visible access point.
The engine idled low as he approached.
The silence there felt heavier.
But controlled.
Her heart pounded as she stared at the entrance.
It was wide. Industrial. A heavy roll up door like a garage, half rusted but intact. The opening was tall enough to fit trucks.
Malcolm positioned himself to the side and gestured.
She stepped with him.
Gun raised.
They moved in.
The space inside opened into a large square room. Concrete walls. High ceiling. No machinery. No movement.
The roll up door was already closed from the inside, secured with thick chains and metal bars wedged through the handles. Wooden pallets and broken furniture were stacked against it, blocking it from being forced open.
Someone had stayed there.
Ash spread across part of the floor in a rough circle. Burn marks. The remains of a fire pit made from scrap metal.
"Clear," Malcolm said after a slow sweep, lowering his rifle slightly.
Iyisha moved toward a narrow window cut high into the wall. Malcolm reached it first, checking the outside angles before stepping back.
She looked out.
Empty lot. A few walkers in the distance. No twitchers close.
"There’s another door," she said quietly.
Malcolm crossed the room and checked it. Heavy steel. Still locked. No scrape marks on the inside. No signs of forced entry.
He returned to her.
"Stay," he said.
She nodded.
He moved back outside, quick and controlled, and a moment later the engine started.
The Land Rover rolled forward and entered the building slowly. The sound echoed off the concrete walls as he guided it in.
When it was fully inside, he killed the engine.
The silence settled over them again.
Malcolm stepped back outside with a small pouch in hand.
Iyisha watched from inside as he moved along the exterior wall, crouching at intervals to place the motion sensors Waldo gave them. One near the main door. Another along the side wall. A third angled toward the open lot.
He worked quickly.
When he was done, he returned and pulled the roll up door down the rest of the way. Metal ground against metal. The sound echoed in the hollow space before the door thudded shut. He slid the inner bars back into place and wedged the pallets tight again.
They were sealed in.
Iyisha turned.
Marybeth had gotten out of the Land Rover and sat near the old fire pit, on a makeshift chair built from stacked crates and a metal frame. She stared at her hands.
Iyisha walked over and crouched beside her.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
Across the room, Malcolm moved along the walls, checking corners, scanning the ceiling line, testing the second door.
Marybeth kept looking at her nails. There was dirt under them. Dried blood.
"Uuugh," she muttered, scraping at one nail with the edge of another.
A long pause.
"I buried her," she said finally.
Her voice was flat.
Iyisha nodded slowly.
"I think that matters to me," Marybeth added. "More than not ever finding her."
Iyisha lowered herself onto a crate beside her.
She thought of Cena.
Missing.
Sometimes she wondered which was worse. Seeing her dead with her own eyes. Knowing. Or living with the thin thread of hope that maybe she was still out there somewhere.
Marybeth exhaled and kept cleaning her nails.
Iyisha sat quietly beside her, listening to the faint sounds of Malcolm moving across the room.
"We’re heading to New York," Iyisha said.
Her voice stayed steady. "I don’t know if it’s worse there. The roads don’t look promising."
She gave a small smile.
Marybeth nodded slowly.
"If you let me," she said after a moment, "I’d like to travel with the two of you. As far as you can take me."
Iyisha didn’t hesitate.
"Of course," she said, smiling back.
Marybeth’s lips lifted faintly in return. Then her gaze drifted away again, settling somewhere across the concrete floor.
The vacant look returned to her eyes.
Iyisha watched it happen.
Across the room, Malcolm finished checking the last corner and straightened.
Malcolm looked from Iyisha to Marybeth.
"I’ll heat the food," Iyisha said quickly, moving toward the supply bag near the wall of the car.
She knelt and pulled out a can of soup and a small portable burner. Metal clinked softly against metal.
Footsteps approached.
"How is she?" Malcolm asked.
Iyisha paused with the can in her hand.
She blinked, turning it over once as if reading the label, though she wasn’t. She looked up at him, trying to read why he was asking.
It surprised her.
He stood close behind her, leaning slightly because of the angle from the car parked inside. Close enough that she could see the faint cut on his lower lip from earlier.
He looked good.
The thought slipped in before she could stop it.
She rose and turned fully toward him.
Without thinking, she reached up and pressed a quick kiss to his mouth.
Soft. Fast.
He stepped back half a pace, more from surprise than rejection.
She laughed lightly.
"She’s better," she said.
Then she turned and walked toward Marybeth with the burner in her hands.
Her eyes widened as the moment caught up with her.
She did that without thinking.
Heat flooded her face. Shame and something else mixed together in her chest. She glanced back once.
He wasn’t frowning.
He looked... curious.
That made her stomach flip even more.
