Book One: A Storm of Glass and Ashes

Chapter Nine:...in a handful of dust.

Hawk was followed.

It was expected, and more a part of whatever was going down with Larry Powers and the white suit brigade. They pulled the first car over within ten minutes of Hawk leaving Phoenix. The second, third, and fourth cars were more subtle about things. Hawk relayed three of their license plates to Larry, and added that there was a fourth, and she was going to let it follow her.

"Why?" he said.

"It's an Alex thing," she said. "I can't stop him from putting more cars on me, so having you get the state troopers on the other three will make them think they got away with something. Telling them we let them follow me will take some wind out of their sails."

Larry chuckled. "Where are you going, anyway?"

"I have a college who is the human version of a raccoon on crack. They've hoarded enough scientific equipment to tempt the ghost of Albert Einstein and the only time they talk about Willheim is with 'that fucker' attached. Why?"

"I'm thinking I'll head on over to check in on you later tonight." Larry said.

Translation: Larry was going to give Hawk's tail enough time to settle in for a nice distant surveillance, and then give a hired merc a heart attack. "They really pissed you off, didn't they?"

"Well...Hawk, did you know how many people died yesterday, that didn't have to? Eight people. Nine, if we count the old woman."

"Elizabeth Cummings." She paused. "Can you give me their names, too? The eight that died."

"I will. Even the baby had a name. Did I tell you that? They named him after me. I was the one who helped that woman deliver, and I stood there with this tiny little dying baby in my hands and listened as the doctors counseled the parents for palliative care. Because they weren't getting that baby to an ICU in time and every single person in that parking lot knew it except the parents." A pause. "And we still tried."

She tried to imagine it, a baby with unfinished skin in Larry's big hands. They weren't that big in any other context, but here they were enormous. Hams. Elephants. Skyscrapers towering over a person whose skin is barely paper-thin, whose bones are still more rubber than ivory, whose lungs can barely breathe. This was the world where they wrap babies in plastic because the softest fabric would sandpaper their skin away, and in this birthing-place there was only harsh sky and dull asphalt.

It's the part of a disaster people never see. The secondary deaths. These aren't the people at ground zero, trapped by dust and rubble, bleeding. These are the people who would be safe at  home, but for the heart attack, the car crash. Sudden labor. Anaphylaxis. Emergencies whose space is now filled by triage. They have to wait. And time is ticking down for them, too. Every bed filled by a survivor of an earthquake, or a tidal wave, or nuclear disaster, is one that cannot be filled by someone with a more mundane ailment. And mundane did not mean "non-lethal." You can die from a paper cut, if the infection goes untreated.

"We're gonna make this count for something, right, Hawk?" Larry said.

"We're going to try. And if all we accomplish is better transparency...that's still pretty good." Her voice broke a bit on the last.

"What's got you still upset, Hawk?" Larry said.

"I keep thinking of historical parallels. It took international pressure to get the USSR to evacuate Prypiat, days after Chernobyl blew up. And they didn't have a for-profit corporation running the thing."

"They also didn't have the internet and tik-tok. Listen to me, kid. This is fucking everywhere right now. Not the disaster, but the dead people at the hospital. We haven't heard jack shit about why, but it wouldn't take a lot to get the old woman's name to the press."