“All I could find was cooking string, but it worked just fine. I proceeded to tie one end to the end of the door handle and the other end in a loop that I could pull down on. Then I got back in my pushing position. As I pulled on the string and pushed with my legs, the door moved a couple of centimeters! However, my short little legs didn’t reach across the space in front of the door enough to let even a little light in. My tiny bit of progress was lost as I relaxed but I moved it! It was really heavy, and I couldn’t image what was holding it shut. I knew if I wasn’t so short I could have pushed it all the way open.”
“I remembered my son wanting to watch me in the kitchen. He always needed a stool to see over the counter. I thought about getting a chair to help me but then I figured, why not get the table? It was bigger, and I could push even harder using it.
“I was so excited I almost broke my ankle bounding down the stair to grab the table. I put my drinking glass and the candle that were on the table on the shelves by the purses, and lifted up the heavy square of oak. That thing was freaking heavy, but I was not going to be stuck in that cell anymore. I guess all the years of weight lifting and martial arts finally paid off because I hauled it up there. When I reached the top of the stairs, I laid the table on its side with its legs facing the concrete wall. It was bigger than I estimated and covered almost three quarters of the landing in front of the door. There was just enough room for me to slide down with my legs bent totally up to my chest in-between the door and the table.
“My heart pounded with excitement as I got into position. I pulled on the string and started pushing. It was working! I moved the door a couple of centimeters, then an inch, then two, then there was daylight and to my surprise water began flooding into the bomb shelter. The water’s coloration was a horrific blend of greens and browns. It was thick and slimy but flowed in faster than my mind could comprehend. Then I felt the pain. The water, rushing over my back, began to burn like I was on fire. Even with the pain, I hated to lose all the progress I had made, but there was no option. I quit pushing, jumped to my feet, and let the force of the water outside slam the door shut again.
Chapter 4
“The burning didn’t stop. The skin on my back, butt, and legs was being melted away! The stench the slime released stung my nose and eyes. I stood for a moment in awe of what my shelter became, but the pain didn’t stop. I needed to wash that toxic crap off.
“I remembered the tiny bottles of water we stored for picky customers. They were in the cupboards, but the stairs were coated with the toxic sludge that flooded the floor area below. I didn’t know if it would eat through my clothes and shoes as well as my skin. However, it didn’t appear that way. My feet weren’t too painful because they were protected by my shoes. Only the skin that had been exposed where my shirt met my pants and then ran down my body was inflamed. I cautiously descended the stairs. The slime made them slippery and I didn’t want to slide down into the flooded area below. The burning sensation got worse and worse as I reached for the tiny bottles. I ripped one open immediately and awkwardly tried to pour it on my back, but I almost lost my footing. I decided to take the flat up to the table. I stood the table up and climbed on top. I tore off my clothes and poured the water all over the back of myself as best I could. I threw my clothes into the watery abyss below in anger. There were more clothes in the cupboard and I wasn’t going to risk getting that slimy stuff on me again.
“The water seemed to cool my skin, but there was no way to tell how badly I was hurt. I coated some of the burns with Neosporin but some I couldn’t reach. I couldn’t stop wishing that Vince could be there to help me. Whenever I was badly sunburned, he always took such good care of me. The reality was, I was by myself and some of the burns would just have to heal on their own.
“Once I rinsed off and put some salve where I could reach, I went to grab more clothes. I had to stretch out over the sludge in order to reach them. As soon as I put them on, I knew I had a problem. The stiff canvas cotton hurt like you couldn’t believe. It was too cold to be naked. I ended up padding the area with gauze, but I didn’t have very much. I decided to supplement the gauze with cheesecloth. It created a cushion between my melted skin and the waist band.
“By the time I was done licking my wounds, my candle was burning low. I grabbed a new one quickly and decided to use a big one. My lighter was on the other side of the lagoon on the shelf. My situation had gone from bad to somehow even worse. As I stared at the water below, I was puzzled why the water was did not seem to drain from the lower floor, even though there was a drain. I knew the drain worked. The only thing I could figure is that the water was more like slime and it was so filled with debris that it clogged the drain instead of flowing through it.
“I was so tired of eating nuts. I had found some oats and dehydrated milk, so I mixed them together and added water. I devised a way to heat it in a pot over the candle and ate a dinner of warm oatmeal with my last tangerine. It was bland, and the tangerine was almost too rotten to eat but at least it added flavor. I ate standing. My blistered skin was a constant reminder of just how dangerous the water that rushed in was. Needing a rest desperately, I flopped down on the table on my belly. It wasn’t until then that I realized, there was daylight when I opened the door. The restaurant was gone. I could only assume it was the dam that broke. There was no other way that much water could be present.
“I knew the implications of the dam breaking from a project I did in college. I found out that once the reservoir behind the dam was filled, if anything should ever happen to the fragile structure, a one-hundred-foot wave would descend upon the Capitol building in Sacramento within an hour. The water would mix with the chemicals stored in the city and leave a disaster area resembling a nuclear catastrophe. Even after the water cleared the ground would not be fertile for decades. The builders even knew they were building it close to a fault line, but the dam was built anyway,” Erika said, catching her breath.
Henry and Carol nodded in agreement, but sat anticipating the rest of the story.
“Needless to say, another tantrum ensued. I was coming absolutely unglued. With no idea of what to do next, it became extremely clear that no one was ever coming to rescue me. There was no way anyone would have known I was alive under there. I was half burned by that shit. I knew I wouldn’t be able to swim through it. I figured I was going to die down there. I let myself believe that Vince was dead and there was no reason to even try to get home. I wished for a gun at that point, but I couldn’t imagine slicing myself with a knife. I cried and cried, lying on my stomach on the table looking at the water. The candle that I left down there began to flicker as the wax built up around the wick. One of the empty plastic jugs that was piled in the corner went floating by. Its movements were accentuated by the strobed lighting. As I stared at it an idea came to me.
“If only I could float on top of that water jug, I could float out of this sludge. Then I realized maybe I really could do that. Scanning around in the bouncing light, I counted ten empty bottles floating in the water, but I didn’t know how I would I sit on them without getting wet. I needed something to hook them to.
“As I laid my head back down on the table, it all clicked. The table could be my raft’s base. I put the table on its side and kicked the legs off it. With the legs removed, I had a platform, but I needed to figure out how I could get the jugs out of the water. I needed a very long pole, but I was trapped on the stairs. I looked through the cupboards. There wasn’t anything I could use as a fishing pole, but I gathered up items like the cooking string and a box of duct tape. I thought they would come in handy once I gathered the essential materials to make it float.
“I began racking my brain, thinking of the daily operations of the restaurant and what we would have used that would work as a fishing rod. Thinking of the lavishly painted vaulted ceiling and the giant chandeliers hanging from it, I remembered the giant duster we used to reach the top. We stored the long pole in a piece of plastic PVC pipin
g that had been cut in half and hooked with “U” bolts to the ceiling of the shelter over the stairs.
“Slowly, I looked up and wanted to slap myself for not thinking of it sooner. Standing on my tippy toes I could just barely reach the pole. As I pulled it out, I was already thinking about what I could use as a hook at the bottom. I finally decided upon the two-pronged fork we used for stabbing meat off the barbeque. I took the fork and pressed it against the concrete until the tongs rounded up toward my hands and made a hook. Then I removed the duster and attached my hook with the duct tape. Now I was ready to start fishing.
“It was so exciting to have a purpose and I hardly even remembered all my burns. I lit some extra candles so that I did not risk losing my flame. I don’t know if I would have survived there in the dark very long.
“I went down the stairs to the water’s edge and as I predicted, ten of the plastic jugs floated in the muck. Only half of them were in reach of my pole, but I put that problem out of my head and focused on the ones I could reach. I reached out with the pole and began to roll the jug around until the handle peeked out of the water. Then I hooked the bent fork through and pulled back. It worked! The jug was moving closer. Then I started thinking about how I was going to get the jug out of the water when it was coated in that crap. I was too excited to let this problem slow me down. Thinking fast, I stood up and grabbed a pair of rubber cleaning gloves from the pantry. With the gloves on, I snatched the jug out of the green water with no problems. I put the jug two stairs up from where I sat so it would not hinder the fishing process. I pulled the next three jugs out in the same fashion.
The rubber gloves worked perfectly at protecting me from the burning sludge. Except on the fourth jug, I put my hand into the water too far and a drop of water got inside my glove. It burned all the way down my arm as it ran along. I ripped the glove off and rinsed my arm as quick as I could. I thought of a solution, though. There were still a couple of the long-sleeved cook’s shirts in the cabinet, so I took one and held the cuff as I put on the rubber glove. Then I wrapped the area where the glove met the shirt in duct tape to seal it off.
“The delay that the burning drop caused was actually a blessing in disguise. All but two of the jugs had floated into the reach of the pole. Before long three of the last four stairs were stacked with the eight water jugs. I rinsed the jugs lightly with as little water as possible. I only had two flats of water left. With no idea of when I could find more I made every drop count. However, I didn’t want to get burned while I was constructing the craft.
“With everything collected, I needed to figure out how to attach the jugs to the table top. I was getting tired and hungry by this point, so I took a break and ate some nuts and oats. I was so sick of eating the same thing over and over, but I really didn’t have any other option and I was thankful that I still had food at all. I sat down on the top stair to eat and pondered how I was going to make the craft float. There was a full box of duct tape, but with no idea of how much it would take, I was fearful I might use it all up on just this one task. Duct tape is useful stuff in a pinch and I didn’t want to use it all.
“I was envisioning a craft like a makeshift pontoon boat. I thought the most resourceful way to put it together would be to attach a row of four jugs to one another with the duct tape to form one of the pontoons. I sealed the tops up tight with some of the rubber gloves and more duct tape. It wasn’t too tough to attach them together and soon there were two lines of four jugs all put together and securely fastened. I thought about using the duct tape to connect the pontoons to the tabletop but that would take a lot of tape and it took quite a few rolls of tape just to connect the jugs together. My supply was dwindling quickly, and I didn’t know if there was enough. I needed something that when wrapped around an object would cover space faster than duct tape, but was waterproof and sticky like the duct tape.
“I thought back to when Vince and I used to go skiing. We needed the truck’s four-wheel-drive to traverse the mountain roads but if it was snowing our gear would get all wet. To avoid this, we had wrapped our gear in plastic bags. I dismissed the idea because the plastic bags would only loosely wrap things. I needed to fasten the jugs to the table.
“Thinking about Vince made me feel good. I kept thinking about him and my dilemma. I remembered talking with him about what his boss did when he was driving his truck in the rain and needed to keep his tools dry. He had wrapped them in cellophane. The plastic wrap had formed to the tools and kept them dry. That was it! There was a whole box filled with individual rolls of cellophane in the cupboard.
“I grabbed the cellophane and laid out the pieces of the craft in the way they would be put together. I wrapped the jugs and the table in the plastic wrapping. I started wrapping the length of it first and then the width until the plastic wrap covered everything and was holding it together well. I used every roll except one to wrap the craft. I thought it was a good investment of resources, but I wasn’t sold on the idea that the cellophane alone would be enough. I ended up using more of the tape to reinforce the cellophane. When I was done, I had four rolls left.
“The craft was finished! I took it down to the water for a test float. I put it in the water and the jugs held the tabletop far away from the toxic sludge. I was triumphant but very hesitant about climbing aboard. I knew that when riding in a boat, especially a raft this size, a splash of water always managed to hit you. Usually, I wouldn’t have cared and would have welcomed it in the summer heat, but in this case, it would be very painful. I remembered my rubber gloves that I used to reach for the jugs, and looked at my craft. That was the solution. I decided to wrap myself in the same fashion as the boat. I needed a protective layer that would almost be waterproof. A coating of cellophane under a layer of duct tape worn over my clothes did the trick. I could still move around fairly easily but I was protected from the sludge. I left a gap at the waist line that could be unsealed and resealed easily, so I could still relieve myself.
“I felt like I was an alien all covered in gray duct tape with my yellow rubber hands. My head was the only thing unprotected. Finally feeling a little safer, I boarded the raft. I brought the pole that I used for fishing out the jugs, so I could direct myself around the watery space. It worked perfectly, and I moved the craft around with ease. I headed straight for the shelf that held the purses. I pulled all of them off the shelf and piled them in a heap on the raft. I grabbed someone’s green hooded sweatshirt as well. There was nothing else of use above the water, but I thought about the drinkable water and wine that lay below. I saw the gleam of the wine I stashed by the table before the water came in.
“I tried to hook the pole to the milk crate and pull it up. The weight of the crate caused the raft to bob, and a splash of toxic sludge flew into the air and hit me right on my neck. That’s when I decided that leaving my head unwrapped was not a good idea. Nothing was worth the risk of suffering more burns, so I left the bottles where they lay.
“I docked the raft at the stairs, and took my reclaimed goods to the top. The first thing I did was grab one of my few remaining cigarettes, lit it, and took a deep drag. I knew there was a lot to do if I was going to escape the shelter alive.
“Considering what I would need for the long voyage ahead, I thought of food first. There were lots of nuts and oats left. There were also raisins, dried apricots, and prunes. The most frustrating part was not knowing how long I had been down there, living on that diet, but I figured it must have been at least a couple of weeks. Regardless, I was starting to feel the effects of the lack of proper nutrition. My body craved protein and dreamt of juicy steaks.
“I needed bags to pack stuff in and thought the purses would work well. I laid the last tablecloth down in the landing. Emptying the contents of the purses brought tears to my eyes. I knew my co-workers must have been killed when the water came in. The first one I picked up was a black leather bag that had one large pocket for all its contents. First, I took out the wallet. Still feeling guilty about
going through somebody else’s things, I figured it probably didn’t matter now anyway. I opened the wallet and looked at the California Driver’s License inside. It had belonged to Kelly Burns, a sixteen-year-old girl who had just gotten a car and a job at the restaurant as a busser. She had a hundred dollars in her wallet and I took it. I also found a pack of rolling papers and I took those out too. I threw the wallet in the watery depths when it was empty. Even though Kelly was not legally old enough, she had developed a habit of smoking, and I scored a full pack of Marlboro Reds from her purse. The rest of the contents were of little value, so I threw them into the water.
“I continued emptying the contents of the purses in the same fashion: checking the ID, remembering the person it belonged to, looking for valuable items, then throwing the unneeded things into the water to meet the same fates as their owners. I cried for my friends, but I found five hundred dollars, five full packs of smokes and two half packs, six lighters, a knife, some mace, a pair of sunglasses, and four books of matches. The last purse was mine. I pulled out my wallet and rubbed it slowly like a genie lamp to relinquish all its memories. My mother-in-law bought it for me. My in-laws had been vacationing in Washington when the quake hit, and I wondered if they felt it at all. I opened my wallet and looked immediately at the picture of Vince. It was a picture from the year we were married. Vince stood regally in his black dress shirt. His loving eyes stared back into mine. It made me even more determined to make it home, but as I turned the page to reveal the picture of Dexter and my mom, I lost it. I cried and cried, telling myself that I could do this. I would make it home. I know they are praying for me still. I can feel them. I just know they are alive. I always told Vince if anything happened, I would survive,” Erika declared passionately, wiping away a tear.
The Changing Earth Series (Book 1): Day After Disaster Page 5