First Days After

by Jay Vielle

  FIRST DAYS AFTER Book One in the Cataclysm Series

  By J.V. Lowe

  MARYLAND, WEST VIRGINIA, VIRGINIA

  PA

  Emmitsburg MD

  WV Washington DC DE

  Front Royal

  Lexington

  Blacksburg VA

  NC

  PROLOGUE

  It’s hard to remember before The Cataclysm. That’s what the media called it for the few, brief days they were still on the air as the bombing was going on. Catchy name. I can’t even remember which network coined it first. Funny, it really wasn’t that long ago. I mean, I remember stuff from my childhood, my college days, my first two years teaching, all of that stuff as clear as day. But the time leading up to it—The Cataclysm, I mean—that’s all blur now. Some of us talk about it when Jake isn’t around. We ask each other questions, like “do you remember what went first,” or “who teamed up with whom.”

  Seems nobody really has a good handle on it all. Those of us in our group, our band, our clan—whatever you want to call us—we’re a pretty educated bunch—so I trust us to have a pretty solid grip on the facts for the most part. Which is good, because this may be the only collected history for all I know. Who knows—maybe there are pockets of people out there that we’re gonna find and they’re doing the same thing. But for now, I’m it. I’m the historian. The record keeper. The rememberer. The Camayoc, as my Incan ancestors might have called me. At least that’s what my parents would have said.

  My name is Eduardo Reyes Rosado. I am a lifetime resident of Frederick County, Maryland. I attended Hunter’s Run High School, then went away to college, only to come back and return to my alma mater to teach. My parents are originally from Peru. They are naturalized citizens who moved to the U.S. in the 1960’s to become college professors. I am—I was -- a history teacher at Hunter’s Run High School in the northern hills of Maryland, just south of the Pennsylvania line. I say ‘was’ because all of that is over now. Everything is over. Life as we knew it is simply not there.

  All of that started—I guess--about two months ago when the international pissing contest took place. Our president taunted the North Korean guy. He taunted us back. At some point China threatened us if we used force that they would intervene. Then the Russians joined them, not wanting China to control another warm water port all by themselves, and suddenly they became our enemy too. Japan was with us, as was South Korea. That much of it was pretty clear in the days leading up to…It. The Cataclysm. The release of so many fucking nuclear bombs that the entire world as we know it will never, ever be the same.

  As far as we can tell, the fighting began conservatively and traditionally. Fighter planes, warships, and soldiers. Standard stuff. The talking heads all threatened with nukes, but nobody wanted to be the first to use nuclear weapons. So, the mobilization of troops went on for about a month or so, and countries began lining up and forming teams. I have a saying hanging up in my classroom. Or rather, I had a saying hanging up in my classroom: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” So true. Just like World War I, countries began making those entangling alliances we all used to read about in our history classes. Russia, Japan, South Korea and the United States all squared up against North Korea and China. The big superpowers would have been enough, but then the “fringe countries” started getting involved. Venezuela declared war on the U.S., still defensive from the rhetoric coming against them from the White House. Cuba jumped on board with them, and China and North Korea were very happy to have allies in the Americas. Europe joined in soon after, and Great Britain and Spain were our next allies. Libya and Syria joined in against Spain, and then when Pakistan and the Eastern portion of Afghanistan joined our enemies, India reacted quickly thereafter and joined our side.

  You see where this is going, don’t you? Malaysia sided with its Muslim allies. Australia sided with its English-speaking cousins. Followed by New Zealand. The Phillipines flip-flopped. South America took sides. The only place where you didn’t hear any involvement was sub-Saharan Africa. I imagine if there’s a place that goes on today like nothing ever happened, it’s there.

  But I would imagine that I’m not the only intelligent guy out there to figure that out. I’d bet my daily rations that those places are starting to get inundated with refugees about now, and that will only get worse when people start to take inventory on their resources and realize they can get there somehow. Taking notes is what I’ve been doing for almost two months now. Jake has me keeping track of things. He’s a good big picture guy. Actually, he’s a great big picture guy—which means he’s a little shaky on details, which is why he has me.

  Jake Fisher has become the go-to guy here at the school. He was a Social Studies teacher and the school’s wrestling coach before the Cataclysm. Very successful coach. Hall of Fame successful. Jake is 49 years old and bears the scars of a man who spent his life in the pugilistic arts. His hands are gnarled, calloused, and he’s obviously broken a few fingers somewhere down the line. His ears are slightly misshapen, showing a touch of cauliflowering like you see on wrestlers, boxers and MMA fighters. He walks with a slight but distinguishable limp, and according to him his left hip is artificial. He has a kind of rugged good looks you might have seen in the old Westerns, with perpetual five o’clock shadow, with temples graying just a tad. Not my type at all.

  My type. I wonder if there even is a type anymore. It probably should be noted that I’m gay. Not that it matters, really. I didn’t really advertise it that before the Cataclysm. New teachers have enough trouble being accepted. That said, I didn’t hide it either. Hunter’s Run is in a part of a blue state that votes red all the time. They don’t particularly care for my views in our neighborhood. Never did. I didn’t come out in high school because I knew it would be weird for me and really hard on my friends. Once I returned as a teacher, I had lived a little and had more confidence. I felt more comfortable explaining to conservatives why they didn’t have to like my point of view, but they had to tolerate it in America. Not sure that matters one bit anymore. Everything has changed. Everything. Now there are only two kinds of people left in the world. Dead, and survivors. Well, turns out there’s something else. But I’ll get to that later.

  I’m a survivor. Always have been. I have also always been a sci-fi geek. I’ve seen every post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian movie ever created. And as far as I can tell, in most of those movies the viewers had a pretty good idea of what they were dealing with. No power. No law. No order. Zombies. Whatever. But we had the misfortune of NOT knowing. Sometimes the power worked, sometimes it didn’t. Some places got demolished in the bombings and had nothing. Others operated as if nothing had every happened. But it was the not knowing—from town to town, from day to day—what was going on…that’s what was so hard. Hindsight is 20-20. But we acted almost as if we had blinders on.

  Every day the blinders would peel back just a tad to reveal new things to us, but in those blind moments, we had nothing but instinct to operate with. That’s why telling this story is important. People will look back at us and what we did and wonder how stupid we must have been. But we weren’t stupid. We were doing the best we could with the information we had in a landscape that was changing daily. So, let me tell you about what it was like at school on the day the shitstorm started.

  CHAPTER 1

  Jake kind of took control once “the event” happened. It was total terror here at first. I’m told it was a lot like 9/11/2001, but I was too young to experience any of that, and can only remember my parents’ fear when they watched reruns of when the planes hit the Trade Centers. I remember how all of their colleagues acted at the college. The general feeling of everyone was a lot like that this time too. People were freaking out when the
first big bomb hit Hawaii. When the second one hit Los Angeles, they were panicking wildly. That’s when some of the news shows were still on, and we could get information. It was about then that we began to hear which countries were allying with others. The school went into a lockdown. Nobody in, nobody out. That didn’t last too long.

  Parents began rolling up to the school to get their kids. Nobody was going to deny them that in a crisis, of course, so the normal rules of lockdown loosened a bit. At first, they weren’t letting parents in the building, checking them at the door. Then when they started demanding their kids, it started a bottleneck, so they let them in with I.D. and had them waiting in the school lobby until their kids came out. Both Jake and I had our planning periods when the news started coming in, so we were out of class and running off copies of papers in the library. I remember seeing the parents in the lobby, many of them barely hanging onto their composure. Jake came out and talked to lots of them. He was a kind of fixture around the school, having been here since the place opened two decades ago. He had a gentle, calming effect on them. He’d speak in vague generalities, shake hands, pat folks on the shoulder, and return offers from hugs from the ones who were leaving. Mostly girls. Guys don’t hug it up when they’re scared. At least straight guys don’t. Too much of the machismo thing, I guess. Can’t show feelings or emotions in times of crisis. Jake was like that too. Nothing fazed him. He was always smiling back then.

  Always smiling. He used to be the biggest prankster in the building. Always joking around, being a smart ass. It was occasionally annoying, but most of the time people really enjoyed his humor, and they congenially put up with him even when he’d go over the top. All that changed with the East Coast bombing. Jake was on the phone with his wife at the time. The school went into lockout first. That’s the “nobody in” protocol. It pretty much assured us that it would likely be the last period of the day for everyone, and with Jake and me having planning that period, it freed us up in ways that other teachers would not yet be. Jake called his wife to see how she was doing and what she’d heard. Jake’s wife was a salesperson of medical supplies. Her region included DC, Baltimore and areas to the north, so she was on the road several days a week. She’d taken that job when her kids graduated from Hunter’s Run. Jake’s marriage had gotten a little rocky back then, and she responded by getting herself out of the house for a while, hoping that the occasional distance might make them appreciate each other more.

  When Jake called, I was right next to him. I wasn’t trying to listen in, but it didn’t take much to hear everything in the library. They were talking about what they’d heard regarding the West Coast bombings. Laura—Jake’s wife—was always listening to the radio when she was driving, so she had more notes to compare than Jake did. Then suddenly, Jake’s face froze. He said “Laura?” into the phone about six times. His face turned into stone, and he put his phone in his pocket. He turned to me with a look I’ve only seen him use before wrestling matches, and said, “we got cut off.” Then he turned around and walked out of the library toward his classroom. That was the last day I saw him smile on any consistent basis. Now those smiles come and go like the wind.

  Nobody really knew where the bombs came from, or why we were unable to defend against them. That’s just when everything stopped for good—at least around here. Radio went out. TV went out. Internet. Everything. We’d get occasional calls from people in isolated areas who had heard things, but none of them verified. One of the first of those calls came to Jake himself. Jake had a brother-in-law in Wyoming--Marty--who tried to give him information for a while, but we couldn’t be sure what he said was accurate. The brother-in-law said that there were reports of bombs hitting New York, Boston, Washington DC, Norfolk, Virginia, and several spots in Florida. All of those spots were big ports with military vessels there, so that news at least made sense. Jake told us what he’d said, but despite getting called back several times, Jake had trouble talking to him. He never told Marty that his sister might be dead, just that he’d had to hang up when they were speaking and that he’d update him when he knew more.

  But Jake never heard from Laura again, and given Marty’s reports and the silence in the surrounding area, we simply assumed the worst. The first hour or so after the East Coast bombs hit, the school hit mass hysteria. Kids were running out of the building by the hundreds. Teachers left too. I admit I was packing and getting ready to take off myself. It was Jake who stopped me.

  “Eddy,” he said. “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” I answered. “I don’t want to be here if the world is at war.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said. “This is exactly where you want to be.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Jake? I want to be with my family.”

  “Have you heard from them?” he asked.

  “No. They were in Washington, guest lecturing.”

  “And they haven’t called you?”

  “No.”

  “Where do they teach again?” Jake asked. “They’re not at Hollowel anymore, right?”

  “Yes and No. They both are doing guest stints at Georgetown this semester.”

  Jake looked at me seriously. His bottom lip stuck out a little, and he nodded ever so slightly.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Eddie, Georgetown’s right by DC,” he said.

  “So? We have no idea what has happened.”

  “Okay, okay. I know. I just want you prepared for every eventuality.”

  “They haven’t called yet,” I said again. “It’s been over an hour.” I checked my watch. It had been over three hours. “I’m thinking maybe I should drive home.” But I knew. I knew what the truth was. Anyone remotely close to Washington DC was gone.

  “Leaving here might not be your best bet,” he said. “Just think for a minute. If DC has been bombed, the radiation area is going to track very close to here. We’re an hour from Washington, less as the crow flies. If DC has been nuked, it’s gone already. The areas around it—outside the blast perimeter—they’re going to go within days. The crucial areas are going to be the ones right where we are. People way outside of bombing zones—they’re going to be OK. They might be without power, or satellite feed, but they won’t be in danger of radiation. We are. We’ve got to hunker down here for a while, let the dangerous radiation pass.”

  “Hunker down for a while? Define ‘a while’.”

  “Impossible to know for sure, but if I had to give an answer? A month or two.”

  “A month or two? Are you out of your fucking mind? Live here? For a month? Where are we gonna sleep? What are we gonna eat? There are over a thousand people here!”

  “Not anymore. Did you see that mass exodus of people over the last hour? Most of the people in this school took off. There is a decent chance that they signed their own death warrants by leaving. If the radiation trail makes it up this far, they are going to die a slow, horrible death out there over the course of the next couple of weeks. We are in a secure building. People can’t get in unless we let them in. The walls are solid. Even the glass is thick. There is no better place to ride this out—apart from an actual bomb shelter—than in a school. This is the safest, most secure place in the whole town. “

  I thought about that for a minute. He was right. Schools were built to last, and the most recent codes made everything super solid and secure.

  “What about food?” I asked.

  “The school cafeteria has enormous freezers. They’re stocked for nearly a month ahead of time, and that’s for over a thousand people. We can ration what we have.”

  “How about water?” I said.

  “We’re on town water, but you may remember that when they put this place in, we got our own reservoir to draw from first. We have our own water treatment plant just down the road. It may not be ideal, and in coming weeks it may be radioactive, but if we act fast, we can get some saved.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If they used the standard kind o
f nuclear bombs, radioactivity takes a little while to get here. If we can get something to put the water in--buckets, tubs, anything we can find—we can get safe water stored up for a while. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing, and better than out there.”

  “Shouldn’t we talk to the principal or something? I mean, he’s the boss,” I said. I thought about the question for a moment. It was sensible. It implied there was an order to things. Go through a chain of command. Except now, several hours after hysteria had hit Hunters Run High School, there was no chain. There were barely any links left here.

  “He was the boss. But he’s not here now. Most of the people that were here in this school have gone. Things have changed. Forever. There is no school system anymore, at least not right now. Survival takes precedence. Leaders lead,” said Jake.

  That was the Marine Corps talking. Jake had been a Marine officer before joining the teaching force. He had wrestled in college, then wanted to try and compete for an Olympic spot. He wasn’t that good--at least that’s what he always said--but good enough to get a shot at training for it. The Armed Forces had a World Class Athlete Program where soldiers essentially were professional athletes. They wore their uniforms, they lived on military bases, but they trained for their respective sports. The Marines had a particularly good wrestling team, and Jake managed to be on it for a while until he got hurt. Still, the whole Semper Fi thing is real. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Jake was oozing military just then.

  “Look Eddie, I’m not trying to be a dick here, but if I’m right, then this is now a survival situation. It’s not really time to think about asking permission or seeing who’s in charge. We have a short time to get our shit together. It’s your decision to stay or go, but at the risk of sounding harsh, everyone out there” he pointed to the window, “is as good as gone, assuming they’re not gone already. You’re a smart guy. I need smart guys right now.”