by D. Gideon
“Johnson,” Todd turned to Josh, pulling keys out of his pocket. “There’s a big first aid kit in the lounge, in one of the locked cabinets. Grab that and get back here with it. There might be some flashlights in there, too. Vicente, go with him.”
Marco and Josh turned and hustled towards the student lounge for this half of the floor, keys jangling loudly.
“You’re giving that little kid staff keys?” Bill’s voice was incredulous. “You’re gonna get fired for that-”
Todd stopped him with a glare. “Have you checked the elevators on your side of the hall, Bill?”
“Not yet, I was trying to-”
“Have you taken a head count? Found out how many injured you have, how many rooms are damaged?”
“Well, no. I-”
“That kid is in the pre-med program. I suggest you find someone on your end of the hall with medical training and start getting your people some first aid.”
Bill puffed up, jaw clenching. “You weren’t even here two minutes ago. Don’t act like you’re my boss. You can’t just go giving people staff keys,” he said, finger pointed in the direction Josh and Marco had taken. “Those keys are supposed to always be in your possession-”
I tugged on Corey’s sleeve and pulled him to the side as Bill and Todd kept arguing.
“Corey, what do you make of this? I mean… do you think this is local, statewide, or what?” I tried to keep my voice low.
Corey shook his head, making his broken glasses wobble. “I don’t know. I hope it’s local, but with the sky lit up like that…remember what we read about solar flares? When we were researching the EMP stuff for physics class?”
I tried to remember; the stress and adrenaline were making it hard. “I remember something about a big flare, where they saw the Northern Lights way down in, umm, Jamaica? Cuba? Something like that.”
He nodded. “The Carrington Event. Burned up telegraph lines all over the world.”
I blinked. “You think this is that big?”
“It might be,” Corey said. “We shouldn’t be seeing the Lights this far south. But either way, with all those explosions in the city? I think the longer the lights stay off, the more people are going to be panicking.”
I barked a nervous laugh and motioned around us. “Yeah, we can see that. I’m trying real hard not to panic, myself.”
Corey put his hands on my shoulders and squeezed. I reached up and rubbed one of his hands and let out a deep, shaky breath.
“I think we should probably kick the plan into action,” I said. “Just in case. Start getting water, raid the snack machines…”
“Agreed,” Corey said. “But the snack machines run on power, so those are out. You still have food in your go-bag?”
“Yeah, haven’t touched it.” The thought of food made me think of Melanie.
“Oh my god. Corey, Mel’s out there,” I said, grabbing his shirt. The blood on it was still sticky, even though Corey’s nosebleed had stopped before we left the roof. “Mel’s in the city!”
“Shit,” Corey said, looking up at the ceiling and then back at me. “All right, look. We can’t go out there looking for her; I wouldn’t even know where to start. She’ll make it back. She’s not alone; you said she’s with a group of girls, right? So they’ve probably got a car. They’re probably headed back to campus right now.”
“But what if-”
Corey’s finger over my lips silenced me.
“Go with what you know,” he quoted. “We know the power’s out. We know there are a lot of fires, and that people here on campus, at least, are panicked. That’s it. We need more info-”
I finished for him. “But in the meantime, go with what you know. Okay. Water. We need to get as much water as we can, in case this is going to be longer than a few hours.” I pointed at his face. “And you need to get your backup pair of glasses.”
Corey grimaced. “This is my backup pair. My other ones fell off when I was on a roof in Philly. I was going to borrow Marco’s laptop and order another couple of $15 pairs from Zenni this weekend. My only other pair is at home.”
“Crap,” I said. “If we’re still here in the morning, we can go back up and try to find the broken parts. If nothing else, we can duct tape them.”
Corey smiled. “And won’t that make me sexy?”
“No complaining,” I said. “It’ll boost your nerd cred.”
Bill went stomping by, muttering under his breath. Todd stepped up to us, shaking his head.
“That guy’s going to be a problem,” he confided, voice low. “Ripley, you need to get back to your floor. Your R.A. is going to need an active head count.”
He raised his hand as I started to protest. “You can come back down, or the guys can go to your room; whatever—but whoever is manning your floor needs to know that you’re alive and okay. Make sense?”
“Yeah,” I said, knowing that I needed to be upstairs anyway, collecting water. I was just reluctant to leave Corey; we needed to figure out how far to go with our plan.
Marco and Josh came walking briskly back; Marco was carrying a large first-aid kit and Josh’s flashlight. Josh was adjusting a headlamp on his forehead.
“Was that in the lounge? Were there more?” Todd asked, pointing to the headlamp.
Josh shook his head out of habit, waving the beam of light back and forth. “This is mine; I stopped and got it out of our room,” he said. “There aren’t any flashlights in the lounge. Our windows are completely gone, by the way. Glass everywhere.”
“We checked all of the cabinets,” Marco added. “Nothing but some cleaning supplies, trash bags, and this.” He shook the first-aid kit.
“Great,” Todd muttered. “Okay. Johnson, you’re up. We’re going to do a head count, see who’s injured, and check for damage.” He motioned to Corey and Marco. “You two come with us; I might need you to carry someone out. Let me grab my roster.” He started to step past me, then stopped and raised his eyebrows.
“You still here?”
I pulled my flashlight out of his hand.
“Just waiting for this,” I said, and headed for the stairwell.
“No, really. None of the windows on this floor are broken. Checked them all myself. It’s just the dumb power—I knew I should have brought extra flashlights.”
Susan, my Resident Assistant, was a pretty, plump girl with blond hair pulled up into a bun and trendy, thick-framed glasses. When I had gotten back to my room, there had been a sticky note saying that she’d opened our door to check for damage, and to come see her in room 8112 immediately. Like Todd had warned, she’d already done a head count and wanted to keep her list straight.
“I don’t have a cellphone, and we don’t have a phone in our room yet,” I said, looking down at the big “MISSING” written next to Melanie’s name on Susan’s clipboard. “If I get you Mel’s cell number, could you call her? See if she’s okay?”
“Sorry chica, but no can do. My cellphone hasn’t worked since the booms. I mean, it’s working, technically, but I can’t send a call out. No signal.” She waved a hand at the landline phone hanging next to her closet. “Can’t get a call out from that one, either. There’s not even a dial tone so I can try to get an outside line.”
Like most campuses, ours had its own internal phone system. Pick up the phone, dial someone’s room number, and their phone would ring. To make a call to anyone outside of the campus, you had to dial “9” first.
I sighed, and with a kind smile, Susan reached up and patted me on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry. If she just went shopping, I’m sure she’ll be back soon. Hey, it could be worse. The three girls in the room next to yours all took off this morning to spend Labor Day weekend in Atlantic City. Imagine if she was that far away!”
I groaned. “Not helping.”
Susan giggled and went back to put her clipboard on her desk. She had a flashlight sitting there, pointed up at the ceiling to reflect the light around the room.
“Okay then,” I said. “If you hear anything, you’ll let us know?”
“Sure will,” she said. “And have your roommate come see me as soon as she gets back—no matter what time it is. Just tell her to knock loud, in case I’m asleep.”
“I’ll tell her,” I promised, and made my way back to my room.
Our floor was a marked difference from the scene down on sixth. Many of the dorm rooms stood open; the occupants trying to glean as much illumination from the emergency lights as they could. The girls in one room were using a bright laptop screen as a light. I wondered how long the battery would last.
It was surreal. Downstairs, there was blood, crying, and chaos. Up here it was like a dimly-lit study hall.
Taking a cue from the other girls, I kicked the rubber stopper under my open door with one foot. Turning off my flashlight, I saw that it wasn’t all that dark. Light was coming through the window, and as I walked towards it, I was startled to realize that I could see the buildings across campus.
Pressing as close as I could to the window, I looked up at the sky. The Northern Lights were still brilliant; actually they seemed brighter. It was this that was creating the pre-dawn glow over the campus.
“Not good,” I muttered. Turning and reaching under my bed, I pulled out my Get-Home-Bag. I stuffed my arm in to my bicep, feeling for the collapsible camp bucket. Finding it, I wrestled with the big pack until I was victorious in wriggling it out.
Setting it on my desk, I turned and picked up Mel’s trash can. It was full of price tags and plastic hangers. A quick grope in her bottom desk drawer rewarded me with her box of trash bags, and I replaced the can’s liner with two fresh ones.
“Okay,” I said out loud. If Mel were here, she’d have teased me for talking to myself. The thought of Mel being out there and possibly hurt made tears spring to my eyes. I forced myself to take a deep, calm breath and tried to ignore how I could hear it shaking as I exhaled.
“It’s just like a hurricane, Rip. Hurricanes blow out windows and knock out power. You’ve been dealing with this all your life. Get it together.”
I took another breath; less shaky this time.
“First order of business: water,” I said, and headed off to the communal bathroom.
CHAPTER 4
F riday, August 31st
College Park, Maryland
An hour later, I was sitting in my windowsill trying to read by the light from the sky. My desk was covered in containers of water: my camp bucket, Mel’s trash can, and two square five-gallon buckets. When I was moving back and forth from campus, the square buckets served as suitcases. Once my clothes were in the dresser that the school provided, I simply put one bucket inside the other and set them by my bed as a trash can, slipping the lids into my bottom drawer. They’d also served us well last year as makeshift stools whenever the guys stopped by and we needed extra seating.
Mel had given me hell for them, saying they clashed with her decorating; but I was sure glad to have them now. Corey had two identical buckets in his room along with a collapsible camp bucket in his pack; I hoped he’d had a chance to fill them.
All in all I had about twenty gallons of water. That would last Mel and I over a week. I had even eyed the industrial-size trash can in the bathroom and had considered taking it, but without a clean liner to put in it, it wasn’t worth the trouble. When I had finished filling the buckets, the water pressure had been weak. I wondered what would happen in the morning, when everyone in the building started taking their showers.
In my lap was my ICOE booklet: In Case of Emergency. Corey and I had put this together years ago, and added pages when we first came to the campus last year. Each page was in its own protective sleeve, and the sleeves were all bound together with loose leaf rings. Not putting it in a binder allowed me to roll it up and stuff it into the side of my Get Home Bag; the flexible sleeves protected the pages from both damage and water.
Though the light from the sky still cast everything in a pre-dawn glow, it wasn’t bright enough for me to see the route lines on the map. I pulled out my little flashlight and lit up the page. Various colored boxes encircled numerous buildings. These markings were on every page of the map showing our route home; it was our scavenging notes.
Grams had thought it scandalous when we’d given her a copy. Looking over the map of our little town of Snow Hill, she’d clucked her tongue at all of the markings and told us she hadn’t raised a couple of hoodlums. It had taken us nearly an hour to convince her that we didn’t plan on looting any of the businesses we’d highlighted; the boxes made it easy to remind us of where we could go to buy needed supplies in an emergency, or unusual places where we could get water or food.
That was half of it, anyway. Corey and I both carried enough food—if Datrex bars count as “food”—in our packs to get us through the nearly two weeks that it would take to walk home; but no plan ever survives first contact. If absolutely necessary, the map showed us where we could find supplies—even if we had to scavenge.
Using Google maps, we’d zoomed in on our town, the campus, and the route in between. We had done this in multiple visits to the library, so that printing out so many maps wouldn’t attract attention. Each map was blank on the back; we used that space to write out notes and reminders about the marks we’d placed on the opposite side.
We’d gotten the idea after stopping in to a Wal-Mart supercenter in our senior year of high school to look at the effects of a coming hurricane. The food side of the store was devastated. No milk, no bread, no water; the canned foods section was nearly stripped bare. Yet the rest of the store was untouched. In the sporting goods section, an entire display of Coleman and Mountain House freeze-dried meals hung waiting. Nutrition bars filled the boxes of two shelves. In the Baby section, jars upon jars of canned meats, fruits, and vegetables were readily available; along with hundreds of boxes of cereals. Over by the Pharmacy, entire aisles of nutritional supplements, energy bars, nutrition bars, cases of Ensure, and vitamins went unnoticed.
A woman with children was crying to a shift manager, asking him how she was going to feed herself and her children when there wasn’t food on the shelves. He was apologizing profusely, saying that the restocking trucks wouldn’t be coming for at least another 24 hours—yet there was all of that food, ready to eat, sitting untouched in the non-grocery sections of the store. Neither of them even considered it.
That changed our perspective, and we started looking around in stores to see what we could find; places that people wouldn’t even think of as having food if they were panicked.
We found multiple displays of backpacking food, beef jerky, and energy bars in Home Depot and Lowes. We found gallons upon gallons of water and some emergency rations in an auto parts store. A bicycle shop carried a large selection of lightweight backpacking meals, nutrition bars, and Gatorade powders. A sporting goods shop carried so many varieties of freeze-dried meals that it could have been considered a grocery store on its own. A national chain workout gym had a large display of nutrition bars and Gatorade pouches right by the check-in desk.
So much food, and no one even gave it a second thought. We knew this could work out to our benefit if we were ever caught in a bad situation…and so we made the map.
Green boxes denoted food was inside. Blue boxes and lines were water; either small waterways, buildings where we had seen a silcock on the outside, or stores that sold water. Purple was animals that could be used as livestock or emergency “live” food; such as pet stores that had rabbits, birds, or lizards. Farm stores that often had chicks and ducklings were another source. Brown was for tools and gardening supplies. Cyan was for transportation; stores that sold bicycles, gardening carts, backpacking travois and the like. Orange was places we might be able to find fuel, including Park-and-Rides or car dealerships. Red with a cross was first-aid, red with an exclamation point was danger. County jails, prisons, bad neighborhoods. Each box had a small number, and each number corresponded to an entry on the back o
f the sheet listing out notes and reminders. Stores that fit into multiple categories had a box colored for their most prominent feature, with colored dots inside the box to signify the other things available.
We went through a number of Sharpie multi-pack markers making these detailed maps; we never thought we’d actually need to use them. It was just something fun to do, it helped us practice our awareness; and when we first got to the campus, it really helped us learn our way around quickly.
“Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it,” we had told Grams. The lists of what to do if there was an emergency, what to make sure we had on hand; the articles about chicken raising, emergency first-aid, alternative ways to get power; the recipes of simple foods to make with a minimum of ingredients…these were finally what won her over, I think. Through the years I had come bounding in to her kitchen to find her studying the to-do lists and the recipes, but never once did I see her looking at the maps.
My Dad had been an easy sell. Proclaiming the binder to be “a fantastic resource” and crowing to my mother about how much work we had put into it, he had proudly put it on top of the living room bookcase, right next to his old Boy Scout awards.
While the binders at home were three inches thick, what sat in my lap now was a slimmed-down travel version. It only had the maps, and a list reminding us of things we should grab from our rooms if we had the chance and the space to bring it.
Space was something we didn’t have. My Volkswagen Bug was sitting in my driveway at home, waiting for Corey and I to replace the clutch. We might end up having to walk the 130 miles—if we decided we needed to leave.
We need to leave, my instinct was screaming. We should be headed home already.
I groaned and dropped my head back against the window frame, closing my eyes.
“Friggin’ Murphy’s Law,” I muttered. “We need the car, and the car’s not here.”
“Talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity,” a cultured voice said, and without opening my eyes, I gave a one-fingered salute to Marco as he stepped into the room.