Free Into the Forbidden Zone by William T. Vollmann

anxiously started his engine. Should I have insisted that he continue into the involuntary evacuation zone? My dosimeter had not registered any recent increase; regarding gamma rays the situation seemed safe enough, and perhaps this story would have been more dramatic had I been pushier, but then again perhaps not, for what would we have seen but more empty houses, and then quake and tsunami damage, and then the reactor, which drone photographs in the newspaper made clear resembled any number of muddy construction sites? I think the driver would have done it if I had asked; as for my loyal, courageous interpreter, she said simply, “I will follow you.” Perhaps she and I should have suited up with respirators, yellow kitchen gloves, and all the rest of it, and then walked toward Plant Number One. Honestly, I lacked the ruthlessness to ask it of her. Or I could have set out by myself, leaving the two of them to wait for me there. Why didn’t I do that? Perhaps I was afraid and didn’t admit it to myself; but I believe I simply couldn’t see the point.
    The birds were singing, the plants were growing, and the trees were coming into flower. It was very warm now. Moss grew on a wall, and in the deserted houses the curtains were all drawn. If you can, try to see those curtained houses and the shadows on their silver-ringed roof tiles, the blue flowers in someone’s backyard, which like the other lawns there still appeared decently trimmed, probably due to the coolness of the season. At the side of another house, a few potted houseplants had begun to wither, but the others still looked perfect. Perhaps more people had returned home from Big Palette than was generally imagined.
    Behind an outer door, an inner sliding partition was wide open. We called and called, but no one answered. I informed the checkpoint police, since last night’s taxi driver had remarked that burglars had begun to take advantage of the evacuation.
    In the shade of an old wooden house, several bicycles leaned neatly beside clean shovels. A line of sandbags, perhaps tsunami protection, followed the house around the corner.
    What is there to say about this place, morning-shadowed and birdsonged, the meter at 2.7 millirems, the shadows of power wires gently dancing across the ribbed concrete facade of a workshop, a small black beetle crawling on a sandbag?
    From the main checkpoint a bus emerged, then a truck, then three cars, the police waving them all through with their white-gloved hands before they reclosed the barrier and these vehicles all headed back in the direction of Koriyama. Then a man on a motorcycle approached them from our side.
    “Unless your purpose is very strong I cannot allow you,” a policeman told him.
    “But I have a brother inside. Can I go another way?”
    “You may be able to advance and go a little farther,” said the policeman.
    So the motorcyclist proceeded to the unmanned checkpoint that the interpreter and I had breached. Later the taxi driver, who had spoken with him, remarked that this fellow had complained of a burning, tingling sensation, which of course is one of the first symptoms of massive radiation exposure. Perhaps it was psychosomatic, or he had some sort of allergic reaction; nobody we asked in Koriyama, even at Big Palette, had heard of anybody getting radiation sickness.
    Then the driver summoned us. He had discovered an actual inhabitant: bearded and graying, with a very red workingman’s face, in a blue slicker and cap; he must have been about fifty. He wore green gloves and a mask and green boots. The metal grating of the Showa Shell service station was only half raised. He stooped just outside, hosing down a patch of pavement. He worked unceasingly while he spoke with us. He would not allow us into his house next door, in whose second-story window the drapes parted for an instant and a lovely feminine hand flickered, folding a towel over the curtain rod; this wife or daughter must have been doing