But we’d used up just about the last of our food.
There had been riots at the emergency centers, and I didn’t want the girls going, even with us for protection. Even so, they were planning on going up to Penn and Javits with the kids the next day to wait in the food lines. We needed the food.
That was, unless I went out and retrieved the food we’d hidden.
We’d come up on the roof to take a look at the streets, to confirm that they were as dark as we imagined, and to see if there were any lights out there.
It was pitch black.
“You sure you don’t want Tony or me to come with you?”
“We’ve only got one set of night-vision goggles. Two people in the dark would be a liability if one of them can’t see. And I’m the only one available who actually buried them, so I’m the best one to figure out where they are.”
I paused.
“Anyway, with martial law, we should only risk one of us going out.”
Vince shrugged his okay. “So you won’t need to look at your phone at all. Just walk toward the red dots.”
In the pitch black of the streets, taking out my phone to look at it would have lit up my location like a beacon, attracting attention.
“When you get near a location, just tap the screen in your pocket and the AR glasses will cycle through the pictures you took when you buried the bags. If you pull the night-vision goggles over them, you should be able to overlay the images pretty well.”
Taking my phone from him, I tapped the screen, and a series of faint, overlaid images of street pictures I’d taken when burying the packages appeared.
“What you were talking about is interesting, but that’s the past,” said Vince.
I played with my new toy, zooming in on the images and cycling through them.
“But I’m more interested in the future, in being able to predict it.”
“You’re obsessed with the future, aren’t you?”
Vince sighed. “If I’d been able to see just a little more of it, I may have been able to save her.”
It was easy for me to forget what had just happened to him.
“I’m sorry, Vince. I didn’t mean to be, well—”
“Don’t be sorry. By the way, I have an idea of how we could get Chuck’s car down from that vertical parking garage.”
I was getting very cold already, and I realized I’d have to bundle up warmer if I was going to stay outside for a few hours on my scavenging trip.
I’d better get the .38 from Tony, just in case.
“Really? What’s the idea? In short form.”
In the light from my headlamp, Vince smiled.
“Where there’s a winch, there’s a way.”
§
Carefully, I picked each foot placement, moving slowly through the frozen landscape. It had taken me about half an hour to walk the two blocks to the nearest group of buried bags. At least with the extreme cold, the streets didn’t smell, and I wasn’t worried about falling in a pile of wet human feces if I slipped.
The night-vision goggles used a combination of low-light imaging with near-infrared illumination, so even in the pitch blackness I could see amazingly well. With the IR flashlight in my pocket I could even light up the world in a brilliant, sparkling green if needed.
The red dot indicating the nearest bag location had steadily grown in size as I’d approached, eventually expanding until it was a red circle about twenty feet across—the approximate error of the GPS reckoning.
Vince is a clever kid.
Standing in the middle of the circle, I kicked aside a garbage bag and tapped my phone’s screen in my pocket. The image associated with this spot popped up on the AR glasses. It closely matched the storefront and light pole I was seeing through the night-vision goggles in front of me. When I backed up a few paces and stepped to the left, the images lined up exactly. Perfect.
Dropping to my knees, I reached around and pulled off my backpack, taking the folding shovel out of it. With the butt of the shovel, I whacked the frozen surface a few times until it cracked, and then pulled the big, frozen chunks of surface ice and snow away. I began shoveling into the softer snow underneath, expanding the excavated area in a concentric spiral as I dug deeper.
It was heavy work, and by the time my shovel hit the first bag, my back was killing me. Dropping the shovel, I brushed away the snow with my gloved hands and then pulled two bags out. In the ghostly light of the night-vision goggles, I looked inside one of them.
“Doritos,” I snorted, shaking my head. “I love Doritos.”
Reaching down into the snow, I pulled out the other bags and began stuffing them into my backpack while I looked to the next glowing red circle about forty yards away. The steely pinpoints of the stars shone brightly between the dark mountains of buildings that towered above me—the cybersquirrel foraging in a black and frozen New York City.
Day 16 – January 7
ITCHING AND SQUIRMING, I tried to find a comfortable position. My dreams had been fitful, half-in and half-out of sleep. I’d lain down just before dawn. Exhausted, I scrunched up my pillow, trying yet another angle on the dirty sheets.
Someone or something was crying in my dream…
That’s not a dream.
Opening my eyes, I saw Lauren sitting on a chair next to the bed, wrapped up in a flower-patterned synthetic blanket she’d adopted. She had her legs crossed up under her, leaning on Luke’s crib where he was sleeping soundly. She was pulling strands of her hair in front of her face and inspecting them, one by one, in the thin, early-morning light.
She was the one who was crying, and she was rocking back and forth. Taking a deep breath, I tried to wash the fog of sleep from my brain.
“Baby, are you okay? Is Luke okay?”
Sweeping the strands of hair she was inspecting back onto her head, she wiped the tears from her eyes and sniffled. “We’re okay. I’m okay.”
“You sure? Come on, come to bed and talk to me.”
She looked down at the floor. I took another deep breath.
“Are you mad that I went out last night?”
She shook her head.
“I was going to tell you, but—”
“I knew you were planning on going out last night.”
“So you’re not upset about that?”
She shook her head again.
“Are you hurt, not feeling well?”
She shrugged.
“Lauren, what is it, talk to me—”
“I don’t feel well, and my teeth hurt.”
“Is it the pregnancy?”
Looking up at the ceiling, she nodded and began sobbing again. “And I have lice. They’re everywhere.”
All the itching of the past week abruptly took on a new dimension. My hand shot up to scratch the back of my head, and my entire body suddenly felt like it was crawling with foreign invaders.
Sitting up in bed, I shivered awake.
“Luke’s covered in them too,” she said, crying. “My baby.”
I got up and sat next to her on the chair, holding her and looking down at Luke. At least he looked peaceful. After a few deep breaths she quieted down and straightened up.
“I know it’s just lice,” she sighed, “not the end of the world, and I’m just being a silly girl—”
“You’re not being silly.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever even gone a day without having a shower before, not for as long as I can remember.”
“Me either.”
I kissed her.
“And Luke and Ellarose have terrible rashes.”
We both sat silently and watched Luke for a few seconds.
I turned and looked directly into her eyes.
“You know what today’s project is?”
She sighed. “A new pulley system for bringing water up? I heard Vince talking about it yesterday—”
“No,” I laughed, “today’s project is a nice, hot bath for my wife.”
She bowed he
r head. “We have much more important things.”
“Nothing is more important than you.”
I nuzzled her. She laughed.
“I’m serious. Give me an hour or two and I’ll have a steaming-hot bath ready.”
“Really?”
She started crying again, but this time they were happy tears.
“Really. You can soak as long as you want, relax, and give Ellarose a proper cleaning, bring Luke in with his rubber ducky. When you’re done we’ll use the water to wash some clothes. It’ll be great.”
I hugged her, and she squeezed me back, the happy tears still streaming down her face.
“Why don’t you relax. I’m going to talk to Vince and see how everyone is doing.”
While she lay down on the bed, curling into the blankets, I opened the door to our room and went out, closing the door softly behind me.
In the main room between Chuck’s bedroom and ours, Tony was snoring loudly on the couch, covered in a deep pile of blankets. He regularly took night watch duty and had been at the door when I’d returned just before dawn. The shades were drawn, keeping the room dark, and I didn’t wake him.
Out in the hallway, nearly everyone was already gone, off on their daily treks to the relief stations to line up for food and water. It was quiet.
Rory was reaching into one of the water barrels at the corner of the elevator hallway, refilling a water bottle. I nodded to him, and he stared at me for a moment but then nodded back and whispered good morning before he left to go down the exit stairwell. Two people were still asleep under a bundle of blankets at the other end of the hallway.
Behind the barricade of boxes that demarcated our end of the hallway, Vince was soundly asleep, so I quietly crossed over and rapped on the Borodins’ door to check on them.
Within seconds Irena opened the door. Aleksandr was asleep on his chair, and Irena was just preparing a hot pot of tea. She asked me if I needed anything, telling me they were fine, and then she asked how Lauren was feeling. I mentioned the lice, and she nodded, saying she would prepare an ointment for Lauren and that it was easiest if the men shaved their heads.
It was interesting that nobody begged from the Borodins. They had a seemingly endless supply of tea and hard biscuits, but they made it clear that they wouldn’t bother anyone, and even more clear that they didn’t want anyone bothering them. Despite that, I would often catch Irena sneaking a biscuit to one of the children in the hallway, or to Luke, who was smart enough to keep it a secret even from me. After ten minutes and nearly as many biscuits, I refilled my cup of tea and went back into the hallway.
Vince was awake but looking dazed.
“You okay?” I asked.
“No,” he replied groggily. “I’ve got a pounding headache, aching joints…I feel ill.”
I took an involuntary step back.
Bird flu? Maybe we’d been wrong.
Vince laughed.
“I don’t blame you. Go get the masks. Even if it’s just a regular cold, this isn’t the time to take chances.”
Looking up at me blearily, he began scratching his head.
Maybe I should mention the lice?
“Want me to get you some water, maybe find some aspirin?”
He nodded and collapsed back into the couch, still scratching.
“And some bacon and eggs?” I joked.
“Maybe tomorrow,” he laughed weakly from beneath his covers.
Going back into Chuck’s apartment, I crossed over to where Tony was still snoring and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Vince isn’t feeling well, and neither is Lauren,” I whispered urgently as Tony shook himself awake, looking at me. “Keep the door to this place closed, and wear a mask if you go out.”
Rubbing his eyes, he nodded. Going into the bathroom, I retrieved some masks and aspirin and a bottle of water from our stash, and then went and whispered the same warning to Susie, asleep with Chuck.
Vince was at his computer by the time I made it back out, my mask already on. I poured some water into a cup next to the laptop, and he took the aspirin from me, washing them down with the water. He put the mask on.
“The bad guys staying away?” I asked.
He keyed up some maps.
“So far.”
I paused, feeling sheepish about my next request.
“Do you feel well enough to help me with something?”
He stretched and sighed.
“Sure. What do you need?”
“A bath.”
§
“Can I come in?”
“Uh-huh,” came the muffled reply.
Opening the door to the bathroom, I smiled as I found my wife lounging under a mass of bubbles in a steaming bath.
Irena had given me an ointment and a fine-tooth comb, and instructed me on the best technique for brushing lice out of hair—making sure to go from the roots, and working quickly from front to back.
It had taken a lot longer than my promise of an hour or two to get the bath going.
To start with, the barrels of meltwater in the elevator hallway were nearly completely empty. I’d been annoyed, and Vince hadn’t said anything while I’d stormed downstairs and outside with him, ready to fill up more buckets of snow and haul them up.
Exiting the backdoor, I’d quickly understood why they were empty. The snow outside was filthy and encrusted with a thick layer of dirty ice. All of the snow near the front and back entrances had been dug out and hauled up, and trying to dig out new, clean snow was no easy task.
For my purposes, I didn’t need drinking water, just something to bathe in, so I began filling up some barrels while Vince hauled them inside.
With a little fresh air, Vince had begun to feel better, but laboring with the masks on was hard work.
Richard was standing guard duty in the lobby that morning, but I didn`t feel comfortable telling him that I was preparing a bath for Lauren. I just said we were refilling the water barrels upstairs and left it at that. He could see we were up to something, but he just watched us hauling one load after another without saying anything.
In making my promise, I hadn’t quite understood what would be involved.
Chuck’s bathtub was of medium size, but I quickly discovered it needed fifty gallons to fill it. Melting snow to water reduced it in volume by a factor of ten, so filling the bathtub required hauling up twelve loads of snow in the forty-two-gallon barrel we had hooked up to the pulley-and-winch system in the stairwell.
We only had two barrels to connect to the pulley system. After helping me with the first four loads, Vince had started jury-rigging one of the forty-gallon tin drums as a water heater over an open oil flame contraption he’d been working on in our old apartment, using oil from the main furnace in the basement. He left me to dig and haul up the rest of the snow.
After three hours of backbreaking work, I’d decided ten barrels of snow was enough for a decent bath. When all was said and done, it had taken us seven hours to haul up enough snow, melt it, and heat a tub full of water to piping hot, but seeing Lauren sitting there in the bubbles, with a smile across her face, made it all worthwhile.
“I’ll just be a minute more,” she said, seeing me enter the bathroom.
It was warm, and the mirrors were totally fogged with steam. The room was lit with candles.
What had started as an idea just for Lauren had morphed into a grand plan for all of our gang to have a good wash. We’d all been washing our hands and faces, doing sponge baths, but in the eleven days since the water had stopped, none of us had really, properly bathed.
“Take your time, baby.” I waved the comb and ointment Irena had given me. “And I’ve got a special treat for you.”
I didn’t need to mention that it was treatment for lice.
She smiled and slid forward in the tub to dunk her head and hair back into the water. As she did, her body broke the surface of the water, exposing her belly and a small but unmistakable baby bump. I remembered reading the
baby development books from when we’d had Luke.
Fourteen weeks, about the size of an orange, arms and legs and eyes and teeth, a complete tiny person, and one that is completely dependent on me.
Lauren pushed herself back upright in the tub and wiped water out of her eyes, smiling up at me. I hadn’t seen my wife naked in weeks, and despite thinking about the baby, seeing Lauren there, warm and wet, I felt something growl and stir inside of me.
“You going to give me that treat fully clothed?” she laughed, smiling seductively.
She leaned over to a shelf at the side of the tub and clicked on her phone. The jazzy chords of a Barry White song began to play.
“No, ma’am.”
I began quickly undoing the belt on my jeans, which was three notches tighter than when all this began. I slid my sweater and then my socks and jeans off, briefly holding them up to my nose before putting them on the counter.
Wow, my clothes stink. Standing half-naked in the steam of the bath, smelling the lavender of the bath soap and bubbles, I suddenly caught a whiff of myself. Actually, that’s me that stinks.
Reaching behind me, I locked the bathroom door, and then I pulled off the last of my clothes and slid in behind Lauren in the tub. The sensation of the hot water enveloping me, soaking into my skin and bones, was indescribable. I let out a low groan of pleasure just as Barry’s deep baritone began telling us about all the love he couldn’t get enough of.
“Nice, huh?” murmured Lauren, leaning back into me.
“Oh yeah.”
Reaching over, I picked up the ointment and comb. I began applying it to Lauren’s wet hair, and then slowly started combing her hair back, carefully watching for any little critters I might capture. Lauren held herself absolutely still while I worked.
I’d never imagined that searching for lice could be sexy. An image of monkeys in a forest somewhere, cleaning nits from the fur of a loved one, popped into my mind, and I chuckled, realizing that perhaps I was feeling what they felt.
“Why are you laughing?”
CyberStorm final Mar 13 2013 Page 20