Faulted

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Faulted Page 16

by Jacqueline Druga


  His mind wandered a lot sitting out there. Starting the truck every once and a while to listen to the radio. Mindy wasn’t much company, she fell asleep shortly after getting in the fuel truck.

  They talked about Rose and Marty, envisioning them as a young couple, what they could have been like.

  CJ wished he would have asked them more about their lives, their families, he didn’t. He left bad about that.

  The disaster was rough on him physically and every time he stopped, his body felt it. Emotionally, since he found Carter, CJ was okay. He didn’t think about the world that was gone, he thought about the world he had to live in.

  Finally, he fell asleep. The first restful sleep he had in days. Seat reclined back, head tilted to his left, he slept dreamless and hard until a bright light and blast of cold hair stirred him away.

  He jolted, fearful something was wrong. The light was the interior light of the cab and the air came from the passenger door that had not closed all the way.

  She obviously slipped out in a rush. He grabbed his flashlight, wanting to find her. He thought maybe she had to go really bad until he heard what sounded like choking.

  Hurriedly, he crawled across to the passenger door, turned on the flashlight, ready to use it as a guide when he stepped out. When he pushed up the passenger’s door, He saw Mindy. Lit some by the interior light, she was standing, hunched over, her back to him. With coughing and choking sounds her back moved up and down.

  “Mindy?” He called her.

  “Oh, God, CJ, I feel so sick.”

  “Are you throwing up?” he asked.

  She slowly turned around, nodding. When she did he lifted the beam of the flashlight to her.

  Mindy brought the back of her hand across her mouth and then lowered it, exposing what looked like blood on her mouth and chin.

  “Jesus, Mindy.” CJ jumped out of the fuel truck.

  “What? What is it?”

  His landing feet caused a huge cloud of ash and he raced the few feet to her

  “I’m okay now, it didn’t feel like much.”

  CJ shone the light. Her regurgitation formed a small indentation in the deep ash. CJ wanted to cry when he saw it. It wasn’t that Mindy had vomited, it was the fact that Mindy had vomited blood.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  More than anything CJ wanted to leave immediately, but he knew that wasn’t possible. He felt helpless and wanted to do something for Mindy. She couldn’t even hold down water.

  When she seemed to finally fall asleep, CJ slipped from the fuel truck and hurried to the tractor trailer where he woke Ruben.

  “She’s bad. Really bad Ruben.”

  Perhaps that wasn’t the best way to wake him up, but he snapped to attention.

  “What’s going on?” Ruben asked.

  “She’s throwing up blood.”

  “Oh my God.” Ruben immediately jumped from the truck.

  “I want to leave as soon as humanly possible,” CJ said.

  “Absolutely.”

  They had driven to that point at a snail’s pace. Had it been before the events, they would have already been in Tucson, but a simple six hour trip was complicated by the hard falling ash and the fact they were told to avoid Phoenix.

  Finally, they caught a break. The sky lightened enough for them to roll out. The ash was bad, deep and slippery, but they had hit the plateau with it. Soon, the ash lessened the farther south they went. And while the skies continued to be gray and dismal, it wasn’t as dark and ominous. The lightning and falling ash were replaced with severe winds and pounding rain.

  They were moving. The roads seemed like they were cleared for an exodus, when it fact it was just barren. No one traveled the road, almost as if no one was left. They were still rolling through earthquake land. That was evident by the toppled roadside buildings and buckling of the highway.

  They stopped twice before Tucson. Once for a bathroom break and the second at a roadblock fifteen miles from the refugee relief station.

  “Where are you headed?” the soldier at the roadblock asked CJ.

  “We’re headed to the refugee relief station.”

  “Well, you’ll have to turn around, back track six miles and hit I-10 again, head east to Las Cruces.”

  “Why?”

  “The Tucson RRS is closed.”

  “Closed? How can that be?”

  “It’s to capacity. Not taking any more. Seems a lot of folks fleeing Phoenix arrived. Sorry.”

  At that moment CJ could have pleaded for Mindy’s life. He could have. He didn’t. He opted for lying.

  “Well, we’re not staying,” CJ said. “This is a fuel tank. We’re dropping it off and that truck has supplies.”

  The fuel truck was easy to get away with. A tractor trailer with supplies... not so much. CJ’s heart pounded, expecting the soldier to inspect the truck. Instead, he let them through. Probably because he didn’t want to be out in the hard rain any longer than he had to.

  The refugee camp was set up south of Tucson and with the flat terrain, CJ could see how massive it was. The amount of cars left on the side of the road, also told him that.

  Just after the sign that stated ‘no vehicles beyond this point’, CJ stopped the fuel truck on the already crowded road. He walked alone to the soldier post.

  “I don’t know how you got through or why they let you through,” the soldier said. “We aren’t taking anyone. As much as we’d like to we are beyond capacity.”

  “What are we supposed to do?” CJ asked with desperation. “I have a very sick woman. She was injured and it’s bad.”

  “How bad?”

  “It’s internal bleeding.”

  The soldier looked back at the tractor. “Listen I can let her through and one of you to help. The rest have to stay…”

  “Thank you, thank you so much.”

  “But I want to show you something.” He inched CJ up the road and pointed. “See that man in the red jacket?”

  CJ looked. He did see a man with a red jacket, standing close to the entrance area of the camp. “Yes. What about him.”

  “He’s the end of the line. That line wraps all the way back and around. That’s the line to see the two doctors we have here. The wait is over four hours.”

  “But she has life threatening injuries.”

  “Many of those people can’t even walk.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “I do have a suggestion. You can wait in that line or … unlike others that walked, you have an option.”

  CJ gave the soldier his attention.

  Ruben had climbed into the refueler to keep Mindy company.

  “Oh, this is cozy,” he said. “Roomy too. Not as roomy as the one I drove for my license.

  Mindy’s head tilted to the left and she lifted her eyes at Ruben.

  “We’ll get you better.” He grabbed her hand.

  The door to the fuel truck can opened and it was Guy. “How you hanging in there, kid?’

  “I’m hanging in there.”

  “Good. Because it looks like my son is making progress. He’s coming back now.”

  “Where’s Carter?” Mindy asked.

  “He’s in the other truck. He’s fine.”

  CJ approached. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Ruben said. “What’s going on?”

  “We have a choice. We can stay, they’ll let Mindy in but there is a four hour wait to see a doctor.”

  “Four hours?” Guy barked. “We can be in Las Cruces by then.”

  Ruben added. “And risk waiting another four hours.”

  “Or …” CJ said. “The soldier said we could head to Mexico. We can be in Nogales in an hour. They opened the border.”

  “I don’t think we have a choice here,” said Guy. “We go to Mexico.”

  “No,” Mindy said weakly. “No we don’t. You don’t CJ, you can’t leave the country. You can’t take Carter to Mexico. What if she’s looking for him?”

  “Who?” Guy asked.

&
nbsp; “Carter’s mom,” Mindy answered. “She’s his mother. She loved him. What if she’s out there searching? She’ll never find him. Ever...”

  “Mindy.” CJ said. “You need help. I can come back.”

  “What if you can’t?” she asked. “No. I’m dying, CJ, I know it. I’m dying. Please. Let’s just go to Las Cruces.”

  CJ lowered his head.

  “I can take you to Mexico,” Guy said. “I’ll drive you and anyone else that wants to go.”

  Mindy whimpered. “Then another child is without a parent.”

  “What about me?” Ruben asked. “I can take you to Mexico.”

  Mindy shook her head. “You are headed to Texas to find your son. You can’t stop that mission.”

  “Well,” Guy sighed out. “We’re headed to Las Cruces, then. But … Mexico is on the table. It wasn’t when we took off. We should give the others the option. It’s closer, it’s refuge.”

  “How are we going to do that?” CJ asked. “We have twenty-one people.”

  “We’ll steal a car if we have to,” Guy said. “Plenty left on the road. I’ll go speak to the others.”

  After Guy had left, CJ reached cross Ruben for Mindy. “You are dying. Please don’t give up. Not yet.”

  Mindy fought the tears, she didn’t reply, she just grasped tightly to CJ’s hand.

  <><><><>

  The boat drifted now. The gas for the motor long since ran out and it was a matter of going where the current led.

  There was no end in sight.

  Kylie learned a lot about the man that rescued her from the roof top. Other than his name was Tom, he was seventy-four years old, a retired mechanic, that never did ‘get’ the newfangled cars. He liked to fish and did that a lot, and he was traveling from his home in West Virginia to find his wife, daughter and granddaughter who were taking a tri-generation gambling junket to Vegas.

  He could have gone straight west, through Ohio and Indiana, but he was a man who listened to word of mouth. That ‘I heard this and that’ informed him that middle America was struck.

  He figured south.

  He hadn’t heard of the water problem, and didn’t know how and when the flooding started.

  Both of them had figured it was more than flooding. The water area was too vast.

  As much as he was a knowledgeable fisherman, boating man, dedicated husband and father, Tom was a movie trivia guru.

  “How long have we been drifting?” Kyle asked.

  Tom looked at his watch. “Going on six hours.”

  “How far do you think we went?”

  “Not far. Now you don’t worry about that. We’ll get somewhere soon.”

  “What if it rains?” Kylie asked.

  “I got a tarp. It might not be comfortable, we may have to hunch but we won’t take in water,” said Tom. “Now go on. It’s your turn. We can’t sit here saying ‘are we there yet’ we have to keep busy. Go.”

  “What’s the score?’

  “Twelve to three. Me.”

  Kylie exhaled heavily. “Okay. Ready. Water.”

  “Of course.”

  “Door.”

  “Titanic.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Kylie asked. “All I said door.”

  “Well, considering we’re only doing movies that deal with water and you said door, that was a big clue. Don’t give it away so fast.”

  “I had my own Titanic moment.”

  “You did?” Tom asked. “When?”

  “In D.C. The wave hit. I still don’t know how I survived. But I floated on a door.”

  “Could you fit another person on that door?”

  Kylie laughed. “I always thought that about that movie.”

  “Yeah, me, too. Then I heard the theory that Jack was in her imagination.”

  “I never heard that.”

  “You’re stalling,” Tom said. “Afraid of mine.”

  “Go on.”

  “Dry land is not a myth, I’ve seen it.”

  “I have too,” Kyle said.

  “No, it’s a hint a movie. Kevin Costner.” He watched he shake her head. “Gills? No. Waterworld. The movie.”

  “Never heard of it or Kevin whatever.”

  “Wow. I’m old.”

  “Tom,” Kylie said gently. “Thank you. I mean it. I would be a mess right now if it wasn’t for you. Your family is very lucky to have you.”

  “It goes both ways kid.” He winked. “Now. Your turn.”

  Kylie wasn’t as fast as Tom, she had to take some time to think about a movie. Thinking kept her mind occupied and she needed that instead of dwelling on the nearly impossible task she had a head of her.

  <><><><>

  Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

  The ash ended up being the least of the concerns, volunteer crews were dispatched every few hours to clear the heavy stuff and then through the quick thinking and mechanical skills of one of the survivors, they were able to use the technology from the blast valves by the doors to clear the ash that made its way into the ventilation system.

  Even Parker wasn’t aware of the blast valves. He was certain the colonel didn’t know either. It took a survival enthusiast to tell them about it, when plans were made to move people to the East slope tunnel entrance. It was an ingenious update done in the eighties. A way to keep contaminated air out of the bunker by blasting outward for twenty seconds.

  The bunker was operational.

  There was enough water to last months, and the natural spring ensured it wouldn’t run out. Food wasn’t as plentiful, but with the proper rationing, they could spread it out.

  In its heyday over six hundred people worked at Cheyenne Mountain. There were sleeping facilities for hundreds of people.

  Instead of diverting attention to squeezing everyone into tunnels, Parker worked with the Colonel to get those who stayed behind situated.

  It was an almost party atmosphere.

  Once Parker saw Colonel Rush’s men were initiating things, he made his way back to the communication room to wait to hear from Charles. It had been since the night before, over fourteen hours and nothing. It wasn’t a communication breakdown either. They were in contact with Tucson. That camp was full and taking names. Registering them.

  Charles should have been at his destination.

  He feared the worst. Charles was the one to get things started outside, on the ground, where people needed it.

  Parker started rethinking the idea of staying behind. He was elected by the people, yet, he wasn’t with the people.

  He would do his part from inside the bunker. Do what he could. Along with Charles, though it didn’t seem possible, they could conceivably come up with a long range plan.

  While waiting to hear from him, Parker looked at the satellite images of Earth. A lot of the Eastern Hemisphere was shrouded in a black hovering cloud, one that grew each hour. The Yellowstone Caldera was still active and there was so much debris from the meteors that a haze glassed over the earth like a bad Photoshop filter.

  Water was in places it shouldn’t be,

  The world was a mess.

  Parker knew there was no cleaning it up, no quick fix to make it better for those who survived. They only thing they could do was make it livable, anyway, any how, they could.

  <><><><>

  If he had to make the choice, Guy would have chosen Mexico, as well. To him, there really wasn’t a reason not to head south and arrive in a safe location in an hour’s time. He couldn’t blame anyone who decided to take that route.

  In Tucson the group divided. It wasn’t a heartbreaking split, after all Guy didn’t know any of them. Most of the people that were with CJ were strangers walking together. That was why it came as no surprise when given the option, everyone chose Mexico.

  Abby didn’t. She decided to go with familiarity. Even though she didn’t know them long, she knew Guy, Ruben and Carter.

  The cab of the small capacity fuel truck wasn’t large. Two comfortable size front bucket seats and
a rest bed directly behind them. The six of them crammed in there for the journey. CJ drove, Guy shared a seat with Carter, Abby sat on the floor, while Mindy and Ruben sat on the rest bed.

  Mindy wasn’t well. Guy wasn’t a doctor, but common sense told him she was failing fast. Even though he was aware from talking to Ruben that Mindy previously had a substance abuse problem, he believed it was too late to worry about it and offered her some of his jackpot he lifted from TSA. Mindy finally opted for the cannabis drops. They helped some, relaxing and relieving her pain a little.

  Guy just hoped that got somewhere soon. The last thing he wanted for Mindy was to have her final moments crammed in the cab of a small field truck.

  Very little ash fell in the part of the country where they drove. It was such a fine amount, that CJ couldn’t tell at times if it was ash or dust from the desert like area.

  It didn’t need destruction, earthquakes, meteors or volcanos, to CJ, the route they drove was desolate. Like something out of a horror film where a family takes a road trip and gets stranded in the middle of nowhere.

  They passed two roadside shops and gas stations, both were closed and obviously ransacked, taken for everything that had.

  He wasn’t familiar with the area but he was certain there had to be more towns and places where they possibly could get some help.

  CJ wasn’t aware at first of the ‘every town for itself’ mentality that swept the nation in the wake of global disaster. The reality hit him in a big way.

  Whoever coined the idiom ‘All roads lead to Rome’ surely had no idea a thousand years later that phrase would fit a small New Mexico town with a population under three thousand.

  He quickly learned that all roads headed east across New Mexico had to go through Lordsburg, or at least it seemed that way.

  CJ couldn’t see anything that even remotely resembled a town, but a sign prior indicated it was ahead. He did see the turn off for the rest area, which was blocked off.

 

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