Amy sipped her tea and looked up at the sky as the sun spread its morning power. “What are you going to do about Grace?” Amy asked.
After the events of yesterday and the day before, Leah had come clean with Amy. She told her about how she and Ian had been preppers for years, and how Grace was trained to handle situations. She showed her their stockpile of food, nonperishable supplies, equipment and weapons. It was a relief to share the secret with her friend; the openness had allowed Leah to relax a little as the other family spent the night.
Part of yesterday’s discussion with Amy was about what was happening to Grace. Leah had not heard from her daughter since their last radio conversation yesterday. Grace told her that she was safe, and Leah told her daughter that she was officially changing the plan and don’t come home.
That decision not to bring Grace home was slowly haunting her.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Leah said, answering her friend’s question.
Both women sipped their tea, letting the new world wake up around them.
“If you decide to go get her, I think I have an idea,” Amy offered.
“I’m open to anything,” Leah swung her legs off of her chair and pivoted towards Amy.
Amy did the opposite in her chair and faced Leah.
“Look, I can never thank you enough for what you did yesterday.”
“Amy, you don’t have to…”
“Please let me finish.”
Leah nodded and pursed her lips.
“You saved me. You saved my kids. God only knows what those creatures were going to do to us,” Amy said, growling the word creatures. “It’s because of your preparedness and your training with Ian and Grace that I’m alive. So, thank you again.”
Leah went to say something, but Amy put her hand up gently.
“Look, Grace needs you. She’s your daughter, and she might be in trouble. I know that the only reason you haven’t gone to get her is because of me.”
Leah thought about that. Most of what Amy was saying was true; Leah had just not accepted it yet.
“You’re staying here to protect my family, and probably Mr. Rivers as well, and God knows who else is left on our street. But, Leah, you need to let us take care of ourselves and go get Grace!”
Leah stood and put her hands on the wooden railing of her deck and leaned out. This was the talk she needed. If Ian were here, they would be having a similar conversation. It was good to actually talk through things with another person.
Amy got up and stood by her friend at the rail.
“Leave me with a gun, show me how to use it. Let’s organize with Mr. Rivers and who ever else. The only way we’re going to survive what ever this new world has become is by sticking together. That will allow you to go get Grace and not worry about everything else…you can just concentrate on your safety and her’s.”
Leah put an arm around Amy’s shoulder. “Thank you,” she said, feeling free to go save her daughter.
CHAPTER 11
“We’re not going to die,” Ian said. He reached up and locked the hatch and visually scanned the windows to make sure they were closed. “Pull everything tight on your pack, buckle everything. Put your headlight on and make sure the safety is engaged on your rifle.” He instructed while he moved swiftly.
“Okay,” Mary said, her voice cracking with emotion.
Ian found an orange outdoor extension cord and started wrapping it around the end of the countertop that jutted out from the kitchen.
Mary did as she was told as rapidly as possible. She was fighting panic.
The four explosions striking the dam echoed concussion waves back across the trailer. It sounded like thunder clapping over their heads and it rocked the trailer.
“Damn,” Ian whispered as he tied off the extension cord. He turned on his own LED headlight to match the white light of Mary’s. “Hold on like this,” he put his hands under the wrappings of cord and squatted on the balls of his feet. “Be flexible and watch out for shit flying around. Keep your head down for protection.”
Mary did exactly as he showed her. They could hear a gushing, roaring of water coming their way. The water was knocking down trees; it sounded like advancing artillery fire. If the apocalypse had a sound, it most likely sounded like what was coming their way.
“Do you believe in God?” she asked, waiting for the impact of the water.
“Yes.”
“Dear God, please protect us. Amen,” she said, keeping it short and to the point.
“Amen,” he said. “Here it comes! Hold on and be ready to get out when I say.”
She never got a chance to answer as the wave of water swept around the bend in the river and over the trailer.
The trailer flipped over immediately and the sound of water swatting at the aluminum siding ceased as quickly as it came. Everything in the trailer started flying around like they were towels on spin dry at the laundry. And then the rolling ceased and the trailer angled, trying to throw them to the back. Both Ian and Leah fought to hang from the makeshift extension cord anchor.
“We’re under water,” Ian said, dangling. “Com’on! Com’on!” Ian yelled at the trailer to hold together.
The trailer creaked and rolled one more time under the water. The trailer was holding together, for the moment. Ian could see water seeping through one of the windows, but it hadn’t burst through…yet.
“Please God, be with us. Please God, be with us,” Mary starting saying over and over as they swirled through the underwater currents of the flood.
The trailer impacted something hard, knocking them to one side. Ian could feel that the trailer was about to implode from the pressure and force of the water. It groaned more and more from the stress of physics at each passing second.
“Keep praying, Mary!” Ian yelled. “Come’on…surface…surface!”
“Please God, be with us. Please God, be with us!”
The trailer shot through the surface of the water and crashed back down on top of the flow of the massive river. The front part of the trailer was lodged on top of several logs and the back half was still in the water.
Ian let go of the cord and scrambled up the cabinets to reach the window over the kitchen sink; it was pointing up, from what he could tell. He then slid open the kitchen window and stuck his head out to see.
Thankfully it was a full moon and the light from his headlight was bright; he had a pretty good view of the upcoming river. The trailer was trapped on an island of floating logs. The logs pinned the trailer in; their rolling mass, keeping the trailer from falling back into the water. He turned the other way to look down the river, he could see something else up ahead. Fire on a bridge.
“Well?” Mary yelled from below.
“We need to get out, right now!”
“Oh,” was her only response.
Ian was thinking as fast as he could. He had never ridden a 30-foot wall of water and he knew that if he lived, he would never want to do it again.
The trailer jumped up in the water, nearly tossing him over the side. The sides creaked with the impact and the pressure of the rushing water.
“What was that?”
Ian jumped down from the window. “I don’t know, but were leaving, there’s someone on a bridge up ahead and it might be our only chance.” He cut the orange extension cord with his knife, leaving them with about 40 feet of cable. He quickly made a loop, tied a knot, and placed the cable under Mary’s underarms.
She didn’t say anything as Ian turned and pushed up to open the front door of the trailer. It looked like he was opening a storm cellar door from the mid-west. He then scrambled up onto the side of the camper. Once there, he turned and reached down to pull Mary up.
“Take my hand!”
She reached for his hand but slipped and fell back against the opposite wall from the door. Ian looked down river; they only had a minute before they would pass under the bridge. He could see more fire…they were torches, and they were moving across th
e bridge.
“HELP!” he yelled towards the bridge, his headlamp giving away his position.
Mary climbed back up the inside of the camper to reach Ian’s hand, where he pulled her through the door. She looked around for the first time, her mind fighting to process what was happening.
Trees churned and tumbling along the edge of the flotilla of logs. The camper sat as a metal island on the precipice of crusting destruction. She then looked up and could also see the bridge that Ian was talking about; but it wasn’t a normal bridge that a car passes over. It was a suspension bridge made of wire and wood. It was about 10 feet above the water, and there were people, with torches on the bridge…they were yelling at them.
“You’ve got to hurry!” a voice yelled from the bridge.
Ian coiled the orange cable and yelled to the people on the bridge. “CATCH!”
They had about 25 yards.
“OK!” a response came back from the bridge.
They could see three or four people getting ready to catch the cord.
15 yards.
“What’s going to happen?” Mary asked. Fear gripped every fiber of her being as her headlight illuminated the fast approaching bridge.
“Just hang on and help as best as you can,” Ian demanded.
“What about you?” she pleaded.
10 yards.
Ian ignored her and stepped forward on the side of the trailer and swung his arm around like a softball pitcher and threw the coiled cable. The cord looked like an orange snake uncoiling as it sailed through the air and onto the suspension bridge.
5 yards.
Ian watched the people on the bridge catch the cord, wrap it around one of the boards and then rapidly tie it off to the bridge support. He then removed his belt as the logs and the camper and millions of gallons of water passed under the bridge.
Mary was yanked up and out over the logs and water. Her scream was one of pure panic and fear and it never let up. Ian saw her feet drag in the water for an instant as the people on the bridge adjusted to her weight and pull her up from the water. They had her. She would be rescued.
With that knowledge, Ian began to run along the back end of the trailer. The bridge passed overhead and he was flowing away at a rapid pace. He pumped his legs harder, running up the side of the trailer. The incline, created by the logs holding the trailer, grew steeper and arched the aluminum vessel into the air.
As he approached the end of the trailer at full run, he realized that the bridge was almost out of reach…he jumped, stretching his body out like a cat and slinging his belt out in front of him to catch a wire or wooden strut on the bridge.
Mary spilled onto the bridge and quickly lunged for the other side. She could see the trailer spin and twist as the logs churned and crushed it under the weight of the moving water. She could see the light of Ian’s headlamp being swallowed up by the logs and the river, and then it went out.
“Ian!” she yelled. “Ian!”
“Here!” came a voice from below the bridge.
“He’s here!” Mary said to the others, and then surprised herself by leaning out over the side.
Ian was hanging by both ends of his belt around a 2x6 strut on the bridge. Mary’s headlamp circled him like a Broadway actor.
“Give me your hand, she said, suddenly feeling several hands on her legs, holding her from falling.
Ian struggled with holding onto the belt, he just needed to swing his leg up on the strut and he could make it.
“Give me your hand, you crazy son-of-a-bitch!”
Ian looked at her for the first time.
“Let me save you this time!” she pleaded.
He put both of his hands together and combined the belt in his right hand, and then he lunged with every ounce of core strength he could muster and reached her hand. Once he had her support, he swung his leg up to the strut and pulled himself up and over the side of the bridge, where he collapsed on the wood next to Mary.
They lay there breathing in deep breaths for a second.
“Crazy son-of-a-bitch, huh?”
She sat up to lean against part of the bridge. “You might want to watch your language; there are children present.”
Ian looked up at the ‘people’ that had rescued him and was met with the stair from five smooth faced Boy Scouts.
CHAPTER 12
Grace, Anna and the Tiller family spent the rest of the day and the night in the bunker. Mr. Tiller had heard the reports about the drone attacks from Dukes and had also heard ‘chatter’ about another nuke going off in the US somewhere. Out of a sense of protection against the unknown, he had shut his family and the girls in the bunker until he thought it was safe to surface.
Mrs. Tiller had a worried look about her the entire time. Joshua’s younger brother was out of town on a trip; they had not heard from him since everything went south. Once they shut the doors, there was a sense of finality about his whereabouts. Mrs. Tiller sobbed quietly for a few hours until it was time to check on Anna’s bandages. The task took her mind off of the potential loss of her son.
< >
“What’s his name?” Anna asked.
“Adam,” Violet responded. “He was named after my father.”
“How old is he?” Anna continued to ask questions in order to help distract the distraught mother.
“He turned sixteen on Halloween last year,” she said.
“I don’t know anyone with a birthday on Halloween,” Anna said. She was distracting herself from the loss of her parents as much as she was distracting Violet.
“Up stairs,” Violet started.
“Yes.”
“You said that your parents are both doctors?” She was careful not to ask the question in the past tense.
Anna nodded. “My Dad is a general surgeon and my Mom is a cardiologist.”
“Wow! And you’re the only child?”
“Yes ma’am,” Anna felt the emotion of loss pushing at the backs of her eyes.
“Do you have a knack for medicine?” Violet asked. “Like your parents?”
Anna thought about that for a minute.
Grace was listening quietly to the conversation. She had known Anna for along time, and she was always a better student at biology and science than Grace. Anna had been fighting against her parents to go into a pre-med major once she went to college next fall, but Grace knew that Anna was only pushing back the way teenagers do.
Anna looked at the lady; she had come to an important realization during the short conversation.
“Yes, ma’am, I do have a knack for medicine. I was thinking about becoming a pediatrician,” Anna surprised Grace by responding the way she did.
“I think that is a very noble profession…the care of our children,” Violet said, suddenly proud of the girl. “I used to work in an ER. I can teach you what I know, if you like?” Violet offered kindly.
< >
Now, 8 hours later, Graced flipped on the two-way radio again, but it was no use, the metal and concrete walls of the 1950’era bunker were too thick to penetrate, she was only wasting the batteries. She had thought through everything that she had ever learned from her parents, and ‘changing the plan’ wasn’t one of those things.
“What does that even mean…changing the plan?” She asked Anna. “I don’t know what to do.”
“What if it’s not safe at your house anymore,” Anna offered. She was sleeping on the bottom bunk of a pair of beds that the Tillers had put there for their boys and any ‘friends’ that might be here when they had to close the bunker door.
“Then I should go to her and help,” Grace shot back.
“She obviously doesn’t want that,” Joshua said, interjecting himself into the conversation. He was sitting on his own bunk, three feet away from the girls.
Grace was conflicted with Joshua. Under normal circumstances, she might have passed him off as a country redneck farmer. But there was something different about him. He was 19 years old, very well educated, smo
oth in the way he communicated and was kind of easy on the eyes. But, this was the end of the world, her mother was in life-threating danger and she had no idea if her father was even alive. Oh, and she had shot two people the other day. That little detail kept cropping up in her mind, never really leaving her alone.
“So, Joshua, how are you to know what my mother wants?” Grace retorted. That wasn’t the way I wanted that to come out.
Joshua nodded, kind of poking a lower lip out as his head bobbed. “Well…”
Oh my God, he’s actually going to answer that! Grace thought.
“…when a foal has a new colt, there’s nothing that can keep a mother from that baby. I mean, we have to take extreme measures if we ever separate a colt from the mother,” he paused to think through the rest. “But if she feels that the colt will be in more danger if it tries to come to her, she will stop trying.”
“Wow,” Anna said, drinking in what he was saying.
“But, it’s almost just as bad for the colt,” he continued. “If that colt even senses that its mother is within reach, it will do amazing things in order to reach her. So,” he looked at Grace, “I’m just speaking from that perspective.”
Anna looked away from Joshua and to a point on the wall above his head. She could almost sense what Grace was thinking. They had been friends for more than five years, and except for the end of the world prepping, Rambo shooting people thing with Grace, she felt she knew what the girl was thinking when it came to boys. She was falling for Joshua.
“So, when do you think your father’s going to let us out of here?” Grace totally changed the subject.
“I guess when he feels that it’s safe.”
“So, what is safe anymore?” Anna offered.
“We could ask him,” Joshua answered, hopping off of his bunk.
The three teens made their way to where Mr. Tiller was working the knobs on a short-wave radio.
“How come his radio works and yours doesn’t?” Anna whispered to Grace as they walked over to him.
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