CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Justin and I utilized flashlights to make our way to the walk-in cooler in the back corner of the kitchen. Even with the power off for several hours, the cooler was still very cold. It’s set at 38F and had only risen a few degrees since the power went out. We decided that if we removed all of the rolling racks there would be ample space to accommodate the four of us. We could even bring in some chairs from the bar to make our stay more comfortable.
We propped the door open and pulled the rolling racks out into the kitchen, struggling to get the heavily laden racks over the three inch lip of the door opening. It took both of us to lift one end of a rack over the lip, roll the rack forward, and then both lift the other end up and out. The racks are intended to move about inside the cooler, not to necessarily come out, especially not loaded. It occurred to me that I was obviously convinced that we were in a life and death situation, because I was essentially throwing away a couple thousand dollars of food stocks. Not the time to be frugal, Jack.
After we finished moving everything around, Justin suggested that I go upstairs and get some blankets or anything I could find that I thought would help ward off the cold until the walk-in warmed. As I climbed the stairs, I could hear the groaning of the roof structure as the howling wind again attempted to separate it from the building. It felt as if Hurricane Ella was pulling the top off of the box she had us trapped in, so that she could fulfill her desire to reach in and kill us. Though I was soaking wet with perspiration from the exertion and the humidity, a cold chill shook me to the bone.
It took me two trips upstairs to bring down all of the blankets and the two winter coats I still owned. I piled the blankets and coats on a counter in the kitchen and joined Justin, Julia, and Moe seated around a table in the bar. Moe didn’t look like he felt very well, but he was sitting upright and making sense. Justin had been explaining our assessment of the weather situation and our plan for shelter in the walk-in. Julia had a pained expression on her face as she asked, “Will we need to close the door? I really don’t like to be cooped up in small spaces.”
I asked, “Are you claustrophobic?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I got trapped in a root cellar at my grandparents farm once when I was a little kid. I went inside to explore and the wind blew the door closed. It jammed and I couldn’t push it open. It was a couple of hours before anyone missed me and came looking for me. I was terrified by the time they found me. I hate small spaces, I sometimes have to close my eyes to ride elevators.”
Justin and I looked at each other and then he said, “We won’t close the door until absolutely necessary. It may not even come to that. In fact, I think we should relocate to the small table in the kitchen. That way we’re only steps away from the walk-in. We won’t even go inside unless we need to. How does that sound?” Julia looked only slightly relieved.
Moe looked around with a somewhat confused look on his face and asked, “Where are those two guys, Mooch and Ty?” I gave him a quick rundown on their departure. He nodded and said, “Good riddance.”
As we proceeded to resettle around the small table that Juan uses in the kitchen, Justin went back out to the bar area. He returned carrying the assault rifle and my 9 mm. He took both into the cooler. We three looked at each other, but no one said anything to Justin. As he sat down, he said, “I unlocked the back door. I decided I was more interested in rescue workers being able to get in than I was afraid of armed marauders returning.”
Moe and I just nodded, but Julia said, “Justin, could we leave the guns out here in the kitchen? You can get to them if you need them, but I would just be more comfortable if they weren’t in there with us.”
Justin looked across the table at Julia and his face softened uncharacteristically. He nodded agreement and said, “Sure, Julia, if it would make you feel better, I’ll leave them out here.” With that he went into the cooler and retrieved the two guns. He stuck the 9 mm into a drawer in the steel counter and propped the assault rifle behind the gas range.
The clamor of the storm returned much faster than it had built during its original arrival hours ago. It occurred to me that the interlude had been provided by Ella for the purpose of enticing us to leave our shelter, precarious as it was, to make it easier for her to destroy us. Fortunately, only Ty and Mooch had taken the bait. Since we’d chosen to stay and fight, she would now unleash her full fury on Cap’s Place. Somehow this battle had become personal. It’s no longer about being caught in the storm, about being a victim, it’s now a battle: me against the storm. Maybe that’s the way it always is when one is fighting for their very life.
Julia abruptly said, “I’ve got to use the bathroom.” She stood and picked up one of the two lanterns we had on the table and added, “If it’s okay, I’ll take this. I’ll be right back.” With that she turned and headed back into the bar.
Moe said, “Boss, are there any aspirin in that first-aid kit? My head’s killing me.”
I checked the first-aid kit that was on the counter, but found none. “No, none here. I’ll go upstairs and get some from my bathroom. Be right back.” As I crossed the bar with my flashlight, I could see the lantern light shining out from the open door to the ladies’ restroom.
Upstairs the storm was almost deafening. The wind seemed much more intense than it had during our first encounter with Ella. The cries of stress and strain from the roof structure gave the impression that it would let loose at any second. As I was moving cautiously toward my bedroom, I was startled by a loud crashing sound coming from the guest bedroom in the front of the apartment. I shined my light through the open doorway and saw that the drywall ceiling had collapsed in the front corner of the room and that a small but steady waterfall was coming from above. It wouldn’t be long before the same process would be repeated by the ceiling in the bar below. I hurried into the bathroom, found the aspirin, and headed back downstairs.
As I retraced my earlier route across the main room of the bar, I noticed that the light was gone from the area of the ladies’ restroom. As I was flashing my light around the room to see if water had reached this floor yet, I noticed a lantern sitting on the end of the bar near the back door. It wasn’t on, just sitting there. That made no sense. We only had two of the battery-powered lanterns and they both should be in the kitchen. Training my light on the lantern, I noticed movement at the back door. It took me a couple of seconds to realize what I was seeing in the dim light of the flashlight. It was Julia pushing against the back door, attempting to open it. What the hell is she doing?
I hurried across the bar, twice stumbling against chairs, and came up behind her. I had to yell to be heard over the roaring storm. “Julia, what are you doing? Don’t open that door. Where in the world are you going? It’s suicide to go out there.”
She turned and looked up at me. Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she wailed, “I know that. I know that. I just want to be with Owen. Please help me. Please help me open this door.” Just then the steel door shuttered as a heavy piece of flying debris slammed against it. It seemed like Ella was banging on the door telling me to release Julia to her clutches.
I wrapped my arms around Julia and pulled her against me. She was shaking and sobbing uncontrollably. I didn’t say anything to her, I just held her against me while the storm roared and cursed me from the other side of the door. Finally, I leaned close to her head, so that she could hear me without my needing to yell. I said, “I know you feel like you can’t go on, Julia, but that’s not what Owen would want. Owen would want you to go on to live your life. If you’re not here, who will remember the loving person that Owen was. The love he had for you. You need to live on for Owen, if for no other reason. That’s what he would want.” I used my thumb to gently wipe the tears from her upturned cheeks as I gazed into red eyes set in a heartbroken face. I pulled her tight against my chest again and after a few more seconds began to gently guide her back toward the kitchen.
Once we got back into t
he kitchen, I got Julia reseated at the small table with Moe. Justin was rummaging around in the back corner of the kitchen. Julia rested her head on her crossed arms on the table and sobbed. Moe looked up at me and mouthed the words, “What’s going on?”
I mouthed in return, “Owen.” Moe nodded and gently laid his hand on the corner of her elbow. Just enough to provide the touch of another human.
Realizing that the second lantern was still on the bar, I returned to retrieve it. The intensity of the storm had again built to a point where it felt like the walls were flexing in and out like a living organism. It seemed like Ella was giving the building life so she could snuff it out. I grabbed the lantern and turned to start back toward the kitchen just as something again banged into the door with such force that it seemed as if it might actually bash the door, frame and all, right out of the wall. Another cold chill ran up my spine as the storm growled that it was coming to get us.
When I got back to the kitchen, I found Julia and Moe as I had left them, although Julia’s sobs had slowed considerably. She was probably nearing the point of being cried out. At least until the next wave of loss swept through her. I found Justin inside the open cooler. He asked what was going on with Julia and I told him.
Justin nodded and replied, “Can’t blame her. The poor woman’s been through more in the past eighteen hours than most people face in a lifetime. She’s tough, though. We saw that when she stood up to those two idiots, Ty and Mooch. We’ll get her through this storm and she’ll get her feet under her again.” There was an empathetic tone to Justin’s voice that surprised me. Surprised me coming from him. But, there seems to be no end of things about Justin that surprise me.
I asked Justin what he was doing in the cooler. His reply was, “Last minute preparations.” I saw that he had moved some of the supplies from the permanent shelves in the back of the cooler to a haphazard pile he had created in the kitchen. He said he thought that maybe a couple of us would be able to stretch out on the shelves and at least rest, if not sleep. He and I had earlier discussed the fact that we were soon approaching twenty-four hours since the start of this extraordinary day. He pointed to a five-gallon pail he’d placed on the floor in a front corner of the cooler near the door and said, “Julia’s need to utilize the restroom reminded me that we should make some type of accommodation available in our little bunker.”
“You don’t think we’ll be in here that long, do you?”
“I certainly hope not, Jack, but think about it. Some of the reports I saw said that hurricane force winds were extending over one-hundred miles from the eye of the storm. I have no idea if the storm has grown or shrunk, so that’s the only number I have to go with. A storm traveling fifteen miles per hour takes over six hours to cover one-hundred miles. If the building starts to come apart, we may be in this cooler for hours. That pail will be a welcome sight if you need a restroom.” It dawned on me how little attention I had paid to all of the reports that provided details about Hurricane Ella, before her arrival. I had obviously become complacent. Note to self, if you live through this hurricane, pay more attention to the available information regarding the next one.
I noticed Justin scanning the ceiling and walls of the cooler. I asked, “Looking for something?”
Justin replied, “There’s no ventilation in here, is there?”
“No. Not that I know of. That a problem?”
“It shouldn’t be, periodically we’ll just open the door a little. Get some fresh air in here. Besides, that’ll help Julia’s deal with the situation.”
By the time we rejoined Moe and Julia, she had seemed to regain her composure. Justin named off the supplies and preparations we had assembled in our bunker, as he had started calling the cooler. He asked if anyone had any ideas for additional items we should include. Julia suggested the first aid-kit and some bottled water. Both were items Justin had previously moved inside, but not listed. He acted like they were new ideas, and great ones at that. The compliment seemed to bring some additional life back to Julia. We also took inventory of our lights and extra batteries. We had enough extra flashlight batteries to change each flashlight once, but we didn’t have any extra lantern batteries. We decided to only use one lantern at a time to stretch the length of time we would still have one available.
Making decisions about our preparations seemed to raise everyone’s spirits. I guess it was giving us a feeling that we did have some control over our destiny. As if reading my mind, Ella suddenly reared up and smote us with a powerful blow. All four of us leaped to our feet at an ear-piercing screech followed by a loud crash, coming from the front of the building. Through the open kitchen door we could see tables and chairs in the bar dancing as if they were caught in a whirlwind. Justin yelled, “The building’s coming apart. Into the bunker, now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
We all scrambled around and moved our little table and four chairs into the cooler. Justin and I found the few remaining items on our list, things like an additional case of bottled water, and brought those inside. Julia was hovering just inside the door of the cooler. It was obvious that the close confines were going to be a problem for her. Justin said to her, “Julia, I’m going to close the door from the outside. I want you to open it from the inside to prove to yourself that it can be opened anytime you want to.”
“But you said we didn’t have to close it right away.” There was near panic in her voice.
“No. We’re not going to close it at this time, but if we need to some time in the future I want you to know that you can open it from the inside.” He started to swing the thick door closed as he said, “Now, after the door closes, you count to ten and then push the handle from inside. You’ll see how easy it opens.”
I have to admit that when the door was closed, the cooler did seem confining. I could see Julia shutter as she counted aloud to ten. She threw herself against the inside door release. The counterbalanced door swung open so suddenly that Justin had to jump out of the way. He lost his balance and fell on his butt. Julia looked down at him on the floor and said, “You’re right, Justin, it does open easily.” The earlier panic had been transformed into a soft chuckle.
Several additional crashing sounds from the other room, it sounded like breaking glass to me, caused Justin to scramble to his feet. Noticing that we were starting to experience some wind blowing inside the kitchen, he pushed a case of canned goods against the open door to hold it from suddenly blowing closed. I thought that was a very good idea. I didn’t think Julia’s nerves could take having the door suddenly, and unexpectedly, slammed shut.
Even through the heavily insulated walls of the cooler I could hear what sounded like the steady destruction of everything that had been my physical world for the past few years. I had this image of a giant Pac-Man shape eating its way through everything around it. It was as if Ella was steadily munching her way through Cap’s Place. Destroying it bite by bite. The wind currents, now inside the building, had set the hanging pots and pans in the kitchen to banging together like a thousand wind chimes run amok. Some unseen object flew from the bar into the kitchen, crashing into the stainless steel counter with such force that it made me wonder if the hurricane was now inside the building. We all jumped. The constant din, punctuated by the increasingly frequent banging or crashing sounds, was wearing on everyone’s nerves.
I leaned down next to Julia, who had curled up on the blankets Justin had spread on one of the cleared shelves. She was balled up in a fetal position with her hands over her ears, but her eyes wide open. I said, “Can we close the door for a little while? It might not be nearly so noisy.”
She nodded her head, closed her eyes and said, “Yeah, go ahead, but just for a little while. Promise. Promise, just for a little while.”
“I promise, just for a little while.” I looked up at Justin, who was standing near the door watching us. He nodded back and stepped out to push the case of canned goods out from in front of the door. I could see by the light panning fr
om the flashlight in his hand that the kitchen floor was now covered with water. It was probably again being driven in under the rear kitchen door. Once the cooler door was closed, the noise melded into a dull, constant roar, but without the sudden dramatic overtones.
Justin and I settled into chairs at our small table. Moe had pushed his chair up against one of the sidewalls in order to stretch out his long legs. I asked him if he was okay and he said fine, but he didn’t look fine to me. I pushed a little further and he admitted that the four aspirin he had taken hadn’t touched his pounding headache. I was starting to worry that the blow to his head was more serious than we thought. We had thought that once he had completely regained consciousness, and seemed clearheaded again, that he was okay. Now, I wasn’t so certain.
It wasn’t as cold in the cooler as it had been earlier, but it was still very chilly. I busied myself by putting a blanket over Julia and giving Moe a blanket to wrap around himself. Justin and I took the two coats I’d found in the back of a closet upstairs. Moe tilted his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. I suddenly felt a wave of fatigue wash over me. I looked at Justin and he seemed to read my mind because he said, “Not a lot going on at the moment. Might as well catch a little rest.” With that he crossed his arms on the table and laid his head on them. I followed suit.
The combination of the temporary interruption of the flow of adrenalin, that had been coursing through my body for hours now, combined with my overwhelming physical fatigue, almost immediately lapsed me into a fitful sleep. Somehow my sub-conscious mind created a dream scenario that had me lost in an endless forest inhabited by an array of primeval creatures resembling gigantic lizards, or small dinosaurs, all of whom were intent on making me their next meal. A swirling wind was bringing down the towering trees in every direction as I fled. The crashing sound of the falling trees, coupled with the unworldly cries of the creatures pursuing me, combined to add yet another dimension of terror to my plight. In my frenzy to flee, I dove into the huge divot created under the rootball of an overturned tree. I huddled as far back into the hole as I could force my body. Several of the creatures stopped outside my den, pacing back and forth as if they knew I was close but couldn’t figure out where I had disappeared to. They were snarling and screaming their ear-piercing cries as they searched for me.
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