Under the Gray Skies

by Jacqueline Druga

  Surprisingly, I felt safe, I really did, and comfortable. It was a long time since I had felt comfortable.

  My back and legs still hurt and curling up helped. I made a pseudo bed in the last row of the plane, a couple small pillows behind my head and a blanket over me. I lay there in the dark thinking of my family, praying that they were okay and maybe they knew I was as well.

  It wouldn’t be long until we were all together and I was home safe.

  It would happen.

  I just had to get to them. I vowed, then and there, nothing would stop me until I did.

  NOTEBOOK – DAY ELEVEN

  Dear Davis,

  This is my first night outside the hole. The eleventh day since the world lost color. I found a place to sleep for the night in a plane. I don’t know if you’ll ever read this, or if this notebook will make it home. I am writing to you first because you are my best friend. I’m scared. Scared I’ll never get out of here, out of this city and state. There’s so much destruction. Where are the rescue workers? A flight attendant named Amber has helped me out. Sadly, she has done so posthumously. I just need to thank her. If you look on the previous page I did. I’m making a list of all those who help in one way, or another. Hopefully that list will be short because I will be out of here soon.

  Lace

  EIGHT – CROSSING

  Was I that injured, that sick, that I would sleep that soundly and long sprawled across three hard plane seats that slanted downward?

  I did and I also dreamed.

  I dreamed of Lindsay and that stupid song she played in the car on the way to the airport. She was so excited about the trip.

  “Come on, Lace, sing. You know this song.”

  Was she joking? Me sing? She got enough of me singing when I was younger and we both submerged our worlds into that teen idol music.

  She was singing, but we weren’t in the car in my dream, we were on that tram.

  Why was she singing? Everyone around us in that dream was panicking and scared, sniffling and crying. Lindsay just sang.

  In the dream I saw the huge cloud of smoke and debris rolling towards us. The second it impacted I woke up.

  Sitting up in my makeshift bed, I caught my bearings and looked at my watch. I had been sleeping for ten hours. I was afraid to move again as an ache filled my body. It was the first time since being in the tram that I dreamed of the impact.

  What was it?

  Earthquakes first, then a wall of gray clouds rolling at us with a force that knocked down everything in its path.

  I went through my mind trying to imagine what kind of event would cause it? I just didn’t know.

  All I knew was I was in a destroyed area left and forgotten about, and I had to get out without any help.

  It didn’t cross my mind that whatever occurred was global, it couldn’t be.

  I gathered my things, shoved the blanket and a pillow in my bag and after a bottle of water, decided it was time to leave.

  The plane was warm, in fact it was the first time I felt warm in days. I didn’t understand it, the skies were still gloomy and dark, and the sun wasn’t even partially visible. How could it be warm?

  I lowered my small suitcase and backpack from the plane door, then the metal rod that I would use as my walking stick. Afterwards I climbed down standing on the crushed cars.

  The rain had added even more water to the ground, only it caused some sort of cleansing and the water didn’t run clear, it was murky and thick.

  I didn’t want my things to get wet, so I was careful with them as I finally reached the ground.

  The water wasn’t deep, but it was slushy, and the ground hidden below it was uneven. I had to move slowly.

  I attributed all the water to the humid and muggy feeling. Even though it wasn’t hot the air was thick and heavy.

  The compass led me east and I followed that direction. I would head for the mountains, they had to be safe. Although, I couldn’t see them in the distance, I knew they were there.

  I moved through a disaster zone obstacle course. That was what it was like. The pavements lifted, some twisted upward like giant walls. Railway tracks embedded into the ground and cars were everywhere, crushed and piled on top of each other.

  I kept looking back to the plane, trying to gauge how far I walked. After about a hundred feet, the watery mud stopped. About the same distance, the area dotted with monuments of debris turned into small hillsides of rubble and dirt. Ones I couldn’t go around, I had to climb over. I could tell by the remains that it was a highway, the slabs of concrete, the occasional yellow paint and the cars.

  The mounds caused me to reflect back to ninth grade science and the videos of how the Grand Canyon was formed. Watching the videos, seeing how the earth was pushed by a force of nature. The mounds of rubble and dirt that were on the outskirts of the airport looked shoved. As if the hand of God just pushed everything back like a plow.

  Something, some tremendous force happened west of where I was.

  On the third, last and largest mound, a huge metal pole protruded like a flagpole, part of it held the sign for the international airport.

  I hadn’t made it far, but it took me a while with the climbing and I decided to take a break. My legs were sore, my back hurt and my hand was blistered from gripping my metal pole walking stick.

  At that moment, looking out, I felt relief.

  Behind me the airport was reduced to sticks, pieces of rocks, smashed and moved. Before me, I saw recognizable building shapes and even a few palm trees survived. While some buildings were smashed to piles of rubble, some remained.

  While the overcast and gray fog blocked a clear vision, I felt since some buildings survived, people must have too. My journey ahead wouldn’t be as hard.

  After a break, I made my way down that mound, sliding occasionally as I lugged my small suitcase and backpack. When I stepped to the ground at the bottom, I noticed a thin amount of ash. It reminded me of dark and dirty snow. A thin layer of ash covered every single thing that along with the gray sky everything seemed to blend in.

  The air was still muggy, and even though my mouth and nose were still covered by a cloth, I could smell the familiar odor of death. Actually it was pretty strong.

  I didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  Soon, I believed, the fog would thin enough for me to see people. At that moment, all I saw was the Hilton sign laying on the ground. The hotel was still intact and so was the oil change shop across the street. The oil change place was closer so I made my way there.

  There were no windows, every bit of glass was shattered and I walked inside. Chairs were tossed about and the counter had collapsed and lay sideways.

  I didn’t hear anyone. I didn’t see anyone, but I saw a phone.

  It dangled from the broken counter and the receiver was on the floor.

  A landline.

  My cell was dead, but I knew landlines didn’t need power. I grabbed the base and followed the line to make sure it was still plugged into the wall.

  After a few times of hitting the handset, I got a dial tone and I whimpered out in relief. My friends made fun of me for still having a landline at home, but at that second I was grateful for it. I dialed my home number.

  It made a weird clicking sound then a whistle like tone. I pulled the phone from my ear.

  No. My home was three thousand miles away. Nothing could have happened there. It hit me, I actually didn’t have a real landline, it was one connected to my cable service. Even there, was the cable out?

  The only other person I knew that had a landline and a real old fashioned one was my mother in Ohio. I knew her number and dialed it.

  It rang.

  Hearing that ring told me not all was dead in the world. That it was a fluke I couldn’t reach my home.

  Two rings.

  Three.

  “Hello.”

  My mother answered the phone. She didn’t sound good. She sounded weak and worri
ed.

  I could barely speak. It had been days since I spoke a word and coupled with my emotions, I choked as I said her name. “Mom.”

  She didn’t say anything at first, she made a sound, a cry out, a scream maybe.

  “Mom.”

  “Oh my God, Lacey,” she said. “Oh my God.”

  She was surprised, grateful even, to hear from me. That had to be it.

  “Mom. I’m alive. I’m scared and stuck. No one’s around. I need help.”

  “Lace, everyone …”

  Nothing.

  “Mom?”

  I couldn’t hear her. Everyone what?

  Her voice returned. But the connection was bad. I couldn’t make out what she was saying. It sounded like random syllables.

  “Mom, listen. I can’t hear you. Listen, I am alive. Tell the kids and Davis I love them and I am gonna find help. I’ll be home. Mom … Mom if you heard me, press any button on the phone.”

  After a beat, I heard a tone.

  I sighed out. “I love you. I’ll be home. I’ll find help. If you can get a hold of someone, anyone, I’m outside the airport.”

  Another tone, this one pressed repeatedly.

  She heard me. That’s all I needed.

  “I love you.”

  I swore I heard her say, “love.” After, she hit another tone.

  I stayed there, holding that phone until I knew we were no longer connected.

  Everything was fine back home. I just had to get there. It was going to be easier now, my mother would call for help. I just had to wait it out.

  Stepping out of that shop, I was pelted with the rotten egg meets ammonia smell. I had a bottle of Amber’s cologne in the front pocket of the suitcase, I grabbed it, held my breath, took off my face cloth and gave a pump of cologne to the cloth. I had done so before I left the plane, but it had worn off some.

  I moved forward, examining the ground for tread tracks that maybe people had left. There were no tracks. Cars were scattered about, some wrecked, some had doors open, all were covered in a smeared muddy looking substance as if when it rained whatever covered the cars tried to wash off, but instead turned into mud.

  The covering was either really thick, or it didn’t rain hard in that area. It was possible, I had walked at least a good mile. In Ohio and West Virginia it wasn’t uncommon to get rain or snow, while the neighborhood down the road got nothing.

  Walking across the street, I set my sights on the Hilton, maybe people were hiding out in there. As I passed a car, I bumped into its open door.

  I didn’t mean to look inside, I wished I hadn’t.

  Immediately, the smell of decay cut through my perfume tainted facecloth and made my eyes water. The smell would have made me throw up had the contents of the car not done it first.

  The bodies of a man and woman were in the front seats. Unlike the flight attendants, they didn’t show signs of injury. Their bodies were black from decomposing, both of their heads tilted back with their eyes and mouths wide open. A vile black substance leaked from the man’s bloated body and down the side of the driver’s seat.

  I spun from the sight, flung off my face covering and every bit of water I drank splashed out of my mouth.

  The retching and gagging didn’t stop, even after nothing came out. Using the back of my hand, I focused on controlling my saliva glands, calming my gag reflexes and catching my breath.

  I lifted the cloth, turned and looked at another car.

  With a swipe of my hand, I cleared the back window and screamed.

  Children.

  No, young children, possibly toddlers strapped in car seats. Their little bodies black and bloated as their open mouths appeared to be gasping for air.

  I don’t know what possessed me. In a frantic state, I walked by every car, wiping a window, looking in.

  Every car had bodies.

  I wanted to scream. In fact, I did scream, a gurgling scream that didn’t echo in the dead town but was absorbed into the thick air.

  Grabbing my suitcase, backpack over my shoulder I ran for the Hilton. There were cars in the driveway. Even though I didn’t want to look, even though I tried not to, I still saw the bodies in the cars.

  Running as fast as I could, I made it up the driveway and to the front doors. The glass was shattered and there was a car smashed through one of the huge lobby windows.

  One step, that was all I took and I knew the Hilton wasn’t any different.

  Inside the lobby the dead were everywhere. Men, women and children, overlapped, they looked as if they just died where they stood. The front desk agents were dead on the registration counter.

  I couldn’t breathe. Hyperventilating, I fought to catch my breath. Before I had even stopped wheezing, I ran back out of there, down the driveway and back to the street.

  There was no sound, not even the buzzing of flies.

  Where were the insects with all the decaying bodies?

  Once I hit the road, I lost it. I dropped my suitcase and backpack then I fell to my knees.

  What had happened?

  I felt abandoned, lost and helpless. I didn’t know what to do. At that moment, all I could do was fall in the street and cry.

  NINE – SLUMBER

  I tried to reach my mother again but was unsuccessful. It didn’t even ring, just that same weird tone I got when I called my own home. I started to doubt my own sanity. Had I even talked to her? Did I imagine it? Every phone I lifted, the same thing happened, so I went into a couple of businesses and tried again.

  The mountains were my focus now and I wanted to get there. I believed it was a good destination and maybe authorities and workers were set up outside of town.

  I grabbed a map from a Quik Stop gas station just a few blocks into my walk and planned my journey. One road would take me straight toward the mountain. It wasn’t a highway. Those were impassible and the ones with any overpasses had fallen. From what I gauged, the mountains were about six miles away. Not far at all. There also looked like there was a small community just at the base of the mountain and another on the other side. That road though would be a bitch to walk.

  What was I thinking? Not an hour into my walk, my legs started to hurt and so did my back. I felt weak and the mugginess of the air made it hard to breathe. That was the physical side of it, emotionally, I felt worse.

  With the gray overcast look to everything, it felt like gloom and doom with every step.

  The quakes apparently didn’t spare the area. If a building wasn’t made of a solid frame that had some give and shook with the quake, the structure was reduced to fragments of stone and brick. The traffic still lined the road, cars full of families trying to get out.

  When did this happen? How long were they in their cars, or in towns before they decided they had to go?

  I saw an old man laying in the middle of the road, dead, his hand still holding a plastic grocery store bag. Canned goods spilled around him.

  The city wasn’t brought down by the earthquake or that destruction cloud, something else happened.

  With each step I thought back to that day.

  The tremors, the hard shakes, flickering of power.

  It had to take about fifteen minutes, maybe more, to get from the gate to inside that moving tram.

  Surely, whatever knocked the tram from the tracks and tossed me into a mound of rubble wasn’t the same thing that hit the east side of the city.

  They had time to get in their cars and try to flee. They had time to gather in hotel lobbies and loot stores for supplies.

  Was there an evacuation order? I didn’t see one military truck, only police cars.

  It was a mystery to me that I wish I could solve by picking up my phone and looking online.

  But those types of instant answers were gone.

  Another two hours into my walking, which I determined was only two miles, I hit more of a residential area. There was less traffic on the street and I figured if I could find a car, I could get out of the area faster.<
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  I had left that plane just before noon and as it pushed four PM, the skies darkened as if nightfall was only minutes away.

  It was getting harder to see and I didn’t want to waste my flashlight. I could have been smart and found another flashlight somewhere, but in my mind help wasn’t that far away. I just had to get there.

  I passed a house with a white car in the driveway, the trunk was open and a man lay outside the driver’s door. Apprehensively, I approached, afraid to look inside, hating to see even more bodies. There was no getting used to it, each body struck an emotional chord within me.

  No one was in the car, I sighed out in relief and saw the keys were clutched in the man’s rotting hand.

  Again, I wasn’t a survival guru. I wasn’t. I knew enough however that if some sort of power surge hit, like an EMP, then things wouldn’t work. My phone went dead and I was unable to power it up again.

  Whatever hit my phone, had to have hit before those in the east side of town decided to pull an exodus. The lights went before that. So how were the cars running … unless they weren’t running when it hit? For the most part, I was just guessing what happened.

  For all I knew a nuclear weapon, or two, exploded and I was a walking corpse by absorbing radiation into my body. Perhaps I was facing nothing but a slow and painful death.

  I had to try. At least drive to where I could stop somewhere safe until daylight.

  The man in the driveway was getting ready to leave, that was evident. Placing down my bags, I bent down to his body and holding my breath, I reached for his hand. The second I uncurled his fingers, they pulled from his hand connected only by a thin strand of glue like fluid.

  My gut filled with nerves along with hope that the car would start. As soon as I placed the key in the ignition and heard the ‘ding’ of the bell, I knew it would work.

  I started the car and checked the gas gauge. Half a tank, it would get me at least over that mountain should there not be any help at the edge of town. Either way, the end of town, the bottom of the mountain was my stopping point for the day. Taking that mountain road wouldn’t work, without electricity it would be far too dark and dangerous. It was already getting too dark to see clearly.