The Pulse Effex Series: Box Set

by L. R. Burkard

  Richard came in and said, “Why don’t you do something useful instead of wasting time on your nails?”

  I stared at him for a second. He is such a pain. “Like what?”

  “Like go to the pantry and get out the flour and sugar and other things and bake something. Right now the stove still lights. The oven turns on. Use them!” I looked at Mom. I hoped she would take my side but she was busy with Jesse and acted like she hadn’t heard anything.

  I looked at my hands. “My nails are wet. And besides, I only know how to bake cookies.”

  “Even cookies are better than a bag of flour,” Richard said. “Use what we have and make something!” I was surprised by his insistence.

  “Why don’t YOU make something?” He stared at me for a moment.

  “Maybe I will. But you’re a girl, Sarah. You’re supposed to know how to cook.”

  Typical male attitude!

  I do heat water for instant coffee for me and Mom, so it’s not like I don’t do anything.

  Richard started baking some kind of quick bread, but in between tasks he came in and talked about lots of horrible scenarios that are going to happen. He said there’ll be a run at the banks and all the supermarkets will be sold out like our little grocery was, and then people will panic and get violent.

  “I wish you would just shut up!” I finally yelled at him. “Why are you trying to scare us? You don’t KNOW if these things will happen! You don’t KNOW that the power won’t come back!”

  He shook his head at me.

  “Time to grow up, little sister,” he said. He looked at Mom, who was giving Jesse a bottle. At almost three, my little cousin is too big for a bottle, but he refuses to give it up and Mom refuses to make him. She LOVES having a little one at home again. And Jesse, I have to admit, loves being babied. Anyway, Mom was giving Richard a sad look.

  “Mom doesn’t want to hear it, either,” I said. I almost ran for my iPod, wanting to drown him out with music, only I remembered it’s useless.

  I lit a candle beside the sofa and stared at the wavering flame. It no longer reminded me of a romanticized past, like in Jane Austen’s time. I can’t pretend this is fun. Poor little Jesse cries every time he’s undressed for a change because of the cold.

  I pulled out my cell phone for like the seventh time to see if by some miracle it would work. I’m dying to know how my friends are. If I could just hear ONE person’s voice on the other end of a phone I’d feel infinitely better. When it wouldn’t work, I flung it down on the couch. Tears filled my eyes.

  I hate this! I want to take a shower like I do every night and I can’t. I want to get on Facebook and see the statuses of my friends. I want to text Lexie and Andrea, and my cousin in New York. I want to get on YouTube and watch something funny. Instead I can’t do anything, and I’m lonely and tired and on top of all that, COLD! This apartment feels like a tomb!

  It wouldn’t be so bad if I thought it might be over soon, but thanks to Richard I can’t even lie to myself that it will be.

  And I miss my dad. My mother has never been the talkative type, but she is so quiet it scares me. I know it means she’s worrying. And the later it gets, the more we feel his absence.

  I’m having second thoughts about those people on that reality TV show. They had every right to complain.

  SARAH

  JANUARY 13

  DAY THREE

  This is the third—unbelievable—day without power. We’ve been hearing about disasters that happen when electronics fail. The Hughes from the next apartment stopped by and filled our ears with this wonderful stuff. (I wanted to leave the room but I felt embarrassed because nobody else seemed to be upset like me.) Mr. Hughes said anyone flying in an airplane would have died because planes fell out of the sky. I remembered that smoke I saw rising in the distance and it horrified me to think a downed plane could have caused it. I ran to the balcony. The smoke was still there, no less than yesterday. Whatever was burning was still burning.

  “Yup,” said Mr. Hughes, when I got back. “That’s a plane.”

  I didn’t want to think about it.

  They talked about buses and cars that died while on bridges or in tunnels that went dark. They said trains could be underground or anywhere, in the middle of nowhere when their engines failed. It’s really too horrible to think about.

  I’m miserable. We all are—because of the temperature as much as anything. Richard and I went down the hall today, asking everyone we know if they could lend us a kerosene heater or something like that. Some people didn’t answer our knock. The Schusters have a heater but can’t do without it. The Powells are bundled up like we are, but had made a fire in an empty terra cotta planter on their balcony to warm up with.

  The Powells are different than anyone else I know. They’re members of this little church on the outskirts of town—I know, because they’ve invited me to their service a few times. I’ve never gone. Richard calls them ‘holy rollers.’ I’m not sure what that means, but I will say this: Even though they had no heat in their apartment, just like us, and even though they’re facing the same realities we are (no power, no stores, no food) they seemed happy. They invited us out to the balcony to warm up, and Mrs. Powell put a big oatmeal raisin cookie in my hands. The little Powells were toasting marshmallows over the fire and behaving as if it were all a big adventure.

  Richard started giving his ultra-negative talk about how horrible things are to Mr. and Mrs. Powell. He figured they couldn’t possibly know how bad things really were or they wouldn’t be so jolly. But they wouldn’t have any of it!

  “God brought us to this,” Mr. Powell said, “and God will bring us through this.”

  Richard pointed out the plume of smoke, telling them how a plane had probably fallen from the sky. “Think of how many people died instantly,” he said, as if to prove his point that things are awful. (That IS pretty awful.)

  But Mr. Powell said, “Everyone has to die sometime, Richard. That’s a guarantee. Are you ready for that?”

  “What do you mean?” my brother asked.

  “Are you ready to face God?” He looked at me, too. I was very interested because I don’t think I am ready. I wanted to know what he thought could make me ready.

  “Oh, that,” Richard said, dismissively. “I’ll be curious to ask him why he let this happen.”

  Mrs. Powell smiled wryly. “I think He’ll be the One asking questions of you.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Like have you accepted his Son, Jesus Christ, into your heart?” she turned to me, her eyes shining warmly at me. Richard took my arm.

  “Hey, uh, sorry, but we gotta get back to our mom and Jesse.”

  “We’re praying for you,” Mr. Powell called, as we left. “We’re praying for everyone in this building.” I looked back, sorry to be leaving the cheery atmosphere. I was thinking of Lexie, because she was something like the Powells. She talked about God sometimes too. I wondered briefly how Lexie was doing right now and images of other friends crossed my mind. I missed them. It had only been a few days since we lost power, but it felt like a lifetime ago.

  Richard didn’t come back to our apartment. He wanted to copy the Powells’ idea of making a fire on the balcony, so he’s out on the street hunting for anything like wood or debris to burn so we can do the same thing.

  Everyone’s eyes looked different to me. Like shell-shock. (Except for the Powells, that is.) I saw dull, hollow pain. It’s hard to explain. Maybe it’s hopelessness. And I wonder, do my eyes look that way, too? This has just started and we’re already feeling this way? HOW WILL WE SURVIVE THIS WINTER? I try not to have that thought, but it comes at me whenever I find myself rubbing my hands together to make them warm; or when I need to use the restroom and don’t want to drop my pants because of the cold.

  I wonder if by next week even the Powells will feel this way.

  And I keep thinking about Dad. Despite everything, I do think he will make his way home. I know he wouldn�
�t just sit back and wait until the weather warms up. He’ll find a way. He has to. Sooner or later. Dads do that, right? As I was thinking this I went into the family room to lay down in my sleeping bag on the love seat. Even though it’s still early in the day, I’m bummed out and tired. I heard the door slam open and in a few seconds Richard came crashing into the room.

  “FIRE!” He cried. “C’mon, we have to get out, NOW!” He practically shoved me off the sofa, still in my sleeping bag.

  “Richard!”

  “Fire, Sarah! GET UP!”

  One glance at his face told me he wasn’t joking. I scrambled out of the sleeping bag, my heart pounding in my throat.

  “Where’s the fire?” I asked, hurrying behind him as he went to find Mom. “I don’t know, it’s downstairs, but the smoke’s coming up the stairwell and if we don’t move now we’re gonna get stranded up here!”

  Mom was on her feet, having heard all this, and already stuffing baby supplies and other things into a large diaper bag.

  “Grab whatever you can!” she said.

  “No, Mom, we have to go NOW,” Richard said. He grabbed my blanket off the love seat and disappeared down the hallway. When he came back it was dripping wet, and I realized he’d dunked it in the tub, which still has water. He handed it to me.

  “Keep this over your head as you go down.”

  He grabbed another blanket and went to dip it in the tub like the first one. Since we all sleep fully dressed and in our coats anyway, all we had to do was grab anything else we could reach as we hurried out. Somehow I managed to stuff my journal into my handbag, as well as a protein bar and a pack of gum. I wanted to get some things from my room, but Richard cut me off in the hallway, the other sopping blanket in his arms.

  “Forget everything!” he yelled. “Get out, NOW.”

  “What about you?” I said. “I don’t see you leaving.” Richard definitely brings out the brat in me.

  “I’m getting Mom and Jesse—we’ll be right behind you.” He pushed me towards the door. “Go on, get out.”

  But I stopped. Mom was in the kitchen grabbing things from cabinets.

  “Move, Sarah!” Richard shouted.

  “I don’t want to leave without you and Mom!” Actually, I was afraid to. I was afraid I’d start to panic as soon as I closed the door to the apartment. Or else I’d panic on the stairs going down and what if I was all alone? What if that awful man was around? What if I couldn’t breathe and fainted? What if the smoke gave me a heart attack? I’ve always been really good at finding things to worry about.

  Mom had Jesse hoisted on one hip and was using her other hand to stuff things into a tote bag. She saw us arguing and suddenly made a beeline towards me. Prying Jesse off of her, she practically threw him at me. He started wailing.

  “Take your cousin and go!” she ordered. Richard tried to give her the second blanket.

  “We have to leave now, Mom,” he said. But she turned and kept filling that tote bag, stuffing any and everything into it she could grab.

  “There’s no time, Mom!” Richard cried, trying to force her to stop scavenging our shelves. Mom started crying.

  “You go!” she cried. “I’ll be right there!” Richard glanced at me.

  “WHAT are you still doing here? Can’t you ever listen?” He yelled.

  “You’re not my father!”

  “Don’t be STUPID, Sarah! Get out of here!” He came at me but I stood my ground. I wanted to wait for my mother. Then my mom stopped and looked towards me. Something in her eyes was frightening.

  “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? GO NOW, SARAH! NOW!” I can’t remember my mom ever screaming at me and the shock hit me with such force that I turned and fled, forgetting my fear of the fire and of being alone in the stairwell.

  When I opened the door to the stairs, the darkness and smoke hit me like a wall. I had thought Richard was exaggerating our danger but I saw he had reason to be so concerned. I could hear other people lower down who were coughing and crying and I started to cough too, as soon as I hit the steps.

  I pulled the wet blanket over us like a poncho, but I was afraid to cover my eyes completely in case we might encounter actual flames that I’d need to go around. But I was blinking from the stinging smoke by the time I turned the first bend. I still had nine and a half flights to get down and I felt suddenly like Jesse and I were both going to die.

  Jesse had actually stopped crying from the shock of the smoke, but after that first turn in the stairwell, perhaps from hearing other people below us, he resumed at full pitch, stopping only to cough and catch what breath he could.

  He began kicking at me and trying to squirm out of my arms.

  “Stop it!’

  He ignored me, wailing even louder.

  “Stop it, you’re making it worse!”

  He fought to get free, and I struggled to keep my grip on him. Toddlers can be amazingly slippery if they have a mind to be.

  I changed tactics, trying to reassure him. I crooned, “It’s okay, baby boy, we’ll be fine.” Then I had to cough and his sobs grew louder, accented with terrible sounding coughs. All the while I was descending as fast as I could, counting the steps at each turn so I wouldn’t plummet us into a wall in the dark.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, TURN. And again and again.

  I guess the smoke was getting thicker because Jesse’s sobs turned to hoarse screams in my ear. I covered his head completely with the blanket. He was already fighting so much that his indignation at this barely mattered.

  Every cell in my body wanted to turn back but I knew they were traitorous cells, that they’d only seal our doom if I listened to them. We’d had it drilled into our head by Dad since we got to the apartment that the only way to survive a fire was to get out—or be rescued from the balcony. But no fire trucks were on their way. Going down was our only option.

  Dad had tried to give us basic safety instructions for apartment living when we moved to this building nine months ago. Don’t use the elevators if there’s a fire. Don’t use the elevators if the power goes out. Don’t open the door to the apartment without looking through the peek hole to identify the caller….that sort of stuff. But this was never supposed to be a permanent place for us to live. Dad planned on buying a property in the country, which Ohio has plenty of, but it still hadn’t happened. They were waiting for that perfect property that had everything they wanted, and so far it hadn’t materialized on the market—either that or they couldn’t afford it when it did.

  When I was as far down as the third floor—at least I was pretty sure it was the third floor, I might have lost count—I started feeling faint. I was light-headed, which of course fueled my panic, which in turn probably made the light-headedness worse.

  I was afraid I’d drop Jesse, who was still fighting me something awful. Suddenly I couldn’t take it. I was terrified and choking and in a panic and in a rage. I thought I might be dying. I actually stopped moving and re-tightened my arms about his little body and I shook him and then growled into his ear, “STOP MOVING, YOU STUPID BABY OR I’LL KILL YOU!”

  I felt terrible as soon as I said it. But amazingly, it worked! Jesse grew quiet and still. I guess he’d never heard me talk to him like that before and it gave him pause. But I’d forgotten which number step we were at, and so I had to grope to find the steel rail (which was hot, to my horror). I grabbed it anyway with one hand and hung on, feeling my way, until it stopped at the next turn in the landing.

  It was impossible to see. Maybe that alone was enough to feed my terror. Other people were occasionally stumbling out from the building into the stairwell and their panic also fed mine. I thought my heart would beat out of my body it was hammering so hard. But then there was a crowd to move along with and somehow that helped. I used the body in front of me to keep me on track. Jesse was quiet and the thought crossed my mind that maybe he couldn’t breathe beneath the blanket and I was suffocating him, so I pulled it off and spoke to him and he imme
diately began wailing again. I readjusted him, holding him tightly against me, and would have pulled the blanket further over both our heads, but someone behind me was using it and I couldn’t get any more of it.

  I heard encouraging shouts from below—we were almost down! People were telling us to hurry, to keep going, and it sped us on. My eyes were stinging and watering even keeping them closed, and as we neared the last set of steps, I remembered Mom and Richard were behind us. What if they didn’t make it down? Would I lose my whole family except Jesse? Would I end up having to raise a toddler all by myself?

  I must have been crying because I felt tears hitting my mouth. Just thinking of Mom and Richard possibly not making it down filled me with hopelessness. I wanted to collapse and give up. My lungs felt empty, airless, and my legs were seriously weak. Honestly, I don’t know how I kept moving. Then suddenly we were through the doorway to the vestibule and then a blast of cold, soothing air hit my face and body and someone grasped my arm, pulling me forward.

  “C’mon, honey,” a voice said, and then I was outside, and this woman, a black woman named Mrs. Murfrees from the ninth floor, patted my arm, saying, “You made it, honey, you made it.”

  Her little pat to my arm broke something inside me and I sobbed, a cracked, hoarse sob, probably because of the smoke I’d inhaled on the way down.

  “There, there,” she said, and without knowing I was going to do it, I flung myself at her and into her arms, still holding Jesse on my hip. I don’t know if she was shocked by it, but she put her big arms around me and patted my back, making soft sounds like a mother does.

  “My mom and brother are still in there!” I gasped.

  Her arms tightened somewhat about me. It felt so good.

  “They be out soon, you’ll see.”

  We stood there together watching people as they escaped from the building, most of them stumbling and weakened like me. I felt as though my heart would burst, and Jesse still whimpered in my arms, though he was no longer wailing. I spotted the Powells. They were all together, huddling. I wondered if one of them had gotten hurt. Then, somehow I realized they were praying! They seemed none the worse for wear, and I marveled at their calmness at a time like this. I was glad they were praying. I went over to them, and tugged on Mrs. Powell’s arm.