America's Demise 01 - Wasteland

by Druga, Jacqueline

  “You’re welcome, and please. Bring us back information,” Bill said.

  “I will. I will.” Filled with knowledge and confidence, along with a little excitement, Falcon left Bill’s home and readied for his journey.

  6. Nuclear War

  Thankfully Falcon was on leave, between tours, when the strike happened. It happened over the course of three days. Back then there were still radios, and a community television in town picked up the government station.

  Before the country divided between East and West, there was much of an Eastern government, but there was one. It just didn’t have the resources or manpower that the West had.

  The nuclear weapons used were no bigger then the historic ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—enough to cause destruction, flatten most of a city, crumble the citizens and throw the military into disarray.

  Twelve American cities were hit. No rhyme or reason for the strikes. Falcon supposed it was just whatever was convenient.

  Stacy was a mess over it all. “Please tell me they’ll stop. Please,” she said over news that Louisville was hit.

  Falcon reassured her that the weapon was small and the radiation wouldn’t be that bad.

  Soon, America retaliated with its own strikes, bigger ones. It didn’t escalate.

  It stopped.

  They actually celebrated in town, thinking it ended the war, but within days, messenger came for Falcon that he was to report for duty outside of Former Louisville.

  He was to police the undamaged streets and look for survivors. He wore a radiation suit that whole time and wondered how much damage he was doing to his body, despite the suit.

  Three months on, three months off to repair any radiation damage.

  One of the first days he was policing the vacant streets, Falcon found a broken cell phone.

  “What’s that you got?” another soldier asked.

  “A relic of the past,” Falcon replied.

  The soldier laughed. “The Past? They just aren’t working right now. They will again. Give it time.”

  Falcon disagreed, but didn’t say so; he just nodded, dropped the phone and continued on. But that cell phone, working or not, was the last one he held in his hand, ever.

  The cold front came in six months post nuclear attack and some called it a mini ice age. They said places like Pittsburgh and Albany were buried in snow.

  Falcon could only imagine, since the farm had stayed under two feet of snow for two months. It started falling in September and by December, when the temperatures really plummeted, it turned to ice.

  It took a year for temperatures to start to rise and almost another year for the snow to melt. But the ground was good after that, the best it ever was. Things grew. Everyone hoped it was a renewal.

  But the war continued and the ozone had been compromised. Two more harvests and things spiraled down hill.

  Joshua was conceived in the second year of the cold. That amazed Falcon because he was certain the radiation had killed all his sperm. He never got sick, but he never grew anymore hair.

  But Josh was healthy and as big as a horse when he was born.

  Lilly, on the other hand, was the miracle baby.

  Not her conception, but her birth.

  Stacy swore up and down that the baby in her belly kept her safe from getting ill. Just about the time she got pregnant with Lilly, bio weapons were used all over and it spread a germ that began a pandemic like no other.

  Stacy, being a nurse, felt she needed to take care of the ill.

  She kept Joshua though, and her father, sealed in the kitchen and side room of the house, quarantined from everyone.

  But she herself felt protected.

  She was wrong.

  Just as the pandemic slowed to a crawl and quarantines across the country were lifted, Stacy got sick very sick.

  At almost nine months pregnant, Falcon was summoned home.

  Like 95% of all those who caught the plague, Stacy wasn’t going to make it.

  Falcon made it home in time. Stacy’s neck was blue from swelling; she could barely breathe and talk. Each time she coughed, she struggled to get her breath again. Worst of all her fever raged.

  There was one doctor remaining in town. He was at the farm. Stacy had been there for so many of the sick; he couldn’t bring himself to leave her side.

  “She won’t make it through the night,” the doctor said.

  Falcon held her had, Stacy was out of it, non responsive. As he placed his forehead to her belly, he felt the baby kick. ‘The baby is still alive?” he asked.

  “Probably has the flu as well.”

  “What are we gonna do?” Falcon asked.

  “Let the child die with his mother,” the doctor suggested. “Do you want to bring another baby into this world?”

  “But is it right to let it die in there?”

  “If we let it be born, it’ll die out here, probably within an hour. In there, it isn’t suffering.”

  Falcon just wanted to cry. Stacy couldn’t give him an answer. He felt like crumbling each kick he felt. He was losing his wife and his child.

  “Cut it out,” Jim, Stacy’s father, said. “Cut it out of my daughter.”

  Falcon lifted his head.

  “I have raised my child for twenty-nine years. I know what she would want. She’d want that baby to have a chance. Even if slim, give it a chance,” Jim said.

  The doctor breathed heavily. “She won’t survive a surgery.”

  “She isn’t surviving anyhow.” Jim’s words trembled. “I’m losing my daughter, my only child. Please, don’t let me lose the life inside her, as well.”

  The doctor all but said it was a lost cause and a waste of time. But they performed the caesarean.

  They sedated Stacy and the moment the doctor made the first incision, Stacy passed away. Holding her husband’s hand, her head tilted and she died.

  The doctor removed a little girl. She was the tiniest thing anyone had ever seen. They said she wasn’t even five pounds and no one expected her to live through the night.

  When she did, they gave her another week.

  No mother’s milk, limited baby formula. One week.

  But Lilly defied the odds. There was something special about Lilly. Not that there wasn’t about Josh, but Lilly, she was the fighter.

  Lily was a survivor. Her entire ‘no nonsense attitude’ wasn’t that of a normal six year old.

  And because of that, Falcon felt it all right to talk to her and Josh before they journeyed north.

  Tell them the bad as well as the good.

  Tell them why they would see what they would see.

  Prepare them. Even though he knew it would breed a lot of questions, Falcon didn’t mind. It was road talk.

  But it would be the truth.

  As Bill Gleece said. . .

  No By the Waters of Babylon world for his children.

  7. Moving Forward

  “Okay, so let me get this straight,” Josh said to Falcon as he climbed into the vike. “You made us sit there and listen because you think we thought everything would look pretty?”

  “Aren’t you expecting that?” Falcon asked.

  Josh shook his head. “We aren’t dumb. We know it’s not gonna look like them pictures in the books and magazine. There was a big war, Dad.”

  “Just making sure,” Falcon said as he lifted Lilly. She smiled at him. Her eyes were so big and brown.

  “I want to see new people,” she said. “Think we will?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Josh said, “Heard there are mutants out there.”

  Falcon paused as he got into the Vike. “Now where did you hear that word?”

  “Chad.” Josh replied. “He said there are mutants in Indiana.”

  “Daddy?” Lilly asked. “What’s a mutant?”

  Falcon answered, “It’s someone or something that doesn’t look normal, someone who is deformed.”

  Lilly screamed.

  Falcon c
losed off the ear closest to her. “Stop.”

  “I don’t wanna see a mutant,” Lilly said.

  “There aren’t any mutants,” Falcon added as he snapped the rein to the horse.

  “Chad said,” Josh added, “they have three arms.”

  Lilly screamed again.

  “Will you stop?” Falcon said with a snap to his voice. “We aren’t gonna see any mutants.”

  Josh laughed.

  Lilly shook her head. “Don’t know if I want three arms. The extra one would just dangle. Hang there and dangle.”

  “Stop,” Falcon argued moving the horse at a steady pace. “No one is gonna have three arms.”

  “Then they’ll have three heads,” Josh said.

  Lilly screamed.

  Josh laughed.

  <><><><>

  Falcon pulled the reins and brought the horse to a stop moments after Josh’s awe filled ‘whoa’ rang out and the boy began to stand.

  Falcon expected the ‘awe’ or shock, but not so early.

  He knew it was coming. They pulled down the driveway and the kids joked. They were filled with enthusiasm as they headed to town, confident, maybe even cocky, about the trip. And then the chatter slowed as they made it through town.

  It was quiet as the town became a mere speck in the background.

  And Falcon felt Lilly’s little fingers wrap around his when they couldn’t see the town anymore.

  Her head rested against is arm as he sat between the two kids.

  Josh stared out, quiet, intermittently biting his nails.

  The winding road was quiet. They didn’t see a soul or animal. Dead trees lined the cracked road that still had dust from the storm and scattered crushed leaves.

  It wasn’t until they passed the bent sign, faded and partially hidden that both kids seemed to tense and sit up.

  They pulled on to the highway.

  “Whoa!” Josh blurted out.

  The vike stopped.

  “What is this kind of road?” he asked.

  “It’s called a highway. Or it was.”

  If it appeared vast to Falcon he could only imagine how it appeared to the children who had never seen a highway.

  The six lanes with the open middle extended as far as the eye could see.

  The concrete was dry and cracked, with weeds, long since dead extending from the middle. The hills and mountains that surrouneded the highway were brown, like everything else.

  Even the abandoned vehicles here and there seemed miniscule and small.

  “Holy cow,” Josh said. “How big were people that they needed roads this big?”

  Falcon chuckled. “It wasn’t the people, it was the cars. Everyone had one. Most people had two and this road here, was one of those roads that took people from major city to major city.”

  Lilly asked. “Why don’t they use them anymore?”

  “Most folks don’t have the water we do. Although, I suppose up north it’s not as bad. Horses need water. And there aren’t any more cars. So there is no need. Plus, you know, people just aren’t going to the big cities.”

  “Why?” Lilly asked.

  Josh said, “Because of nuclear war, he told you that. They burned up or got sick or just moved on. Gees.”

  “To where?” asked Lilly. “Did they go to the oceans, Daddy?”

  “Maybe,” Falcon answered. “Or someplace green.”

  Lilly sighed. “I want to see green, Daddy. Josh saw green.”

  “When I was young, but not much though,” Josh said.

  “Daddy?” Lilly asked. “When you were my age, did you see green?”

  “All the time, baby girl. All the time.”

  Lilly shivered and folded her arms, raising her head boldly. “Oh, then I want to see green. Just once. You think we’ll see green going to the Peemale?”

  “The what?” Falcon asked.

  “Peemale. You spell it all the time. I can spell. PML.”

  Falcon was going to correct her, but didn’t. “You know what, for your sake, I hope we do see Green.”

  Her innocence made him smile and Falcon snapped the reins to get the horse moving once again.

  8. Bathing

  Falcon truly hoped, for his daughter’s sake, there would be some green as the highway crossed through the Daniel Boone National Forest. It extended so long, how could there not be? That was what Falcon thought.

  But nothing. No green.

  It looked as if wildfires had ripped through the forest. He recalled seeing the smoke a year ago and wondering what it was. Someone said it was the forest, but to Falcon there was no way it was all gone.

  Maybe it wasn’t.

  Maybe north it remained,

  But where they were there was nothing but broken tress, blackened and dead.

  They saw a man camped out off the road just as they hit the edge of the former forest at New Mt. Vernon. He had a small tent and Falcon watched as he walked from his roadside camp to the road, waving his hands.

  His eyesight was still good and Falcon immediately looked for others who might be hiding. His senses didn’t tell him it was an ambush. He couldn’t see any others and the man wasn’t armed.

  Falcon was and he pulled his rifle to his lap as he slowed down the horse.

  “Daddy?” Lilly asked in a tiny whisper. “Why’s he stopping us?”

  “Don’t know. I’ll find out.”

  “Do we have to stop?” Josh asked. “We should just wave and keep going.”

  That wasn’t a bad idea, but Falcon couldn’t do it, especially when the man smiled as they stopped.

  “Well, hey, where you folks headed?” he asked. His face wasn’t too dirty, not like some of the other transients Falcon had seen.

  “North. How about you?”

  “I’m headed south, trying to get to Tennessee. Heard there’s green down there. At least a good bit of green.”

  Falcon shook his head with a shrug. “I haven’t been that south in years, so I wouldn’t know. We’re headed into Indiana. Know much?”

  “Not been to Indiana,” the man replied. “Just Ohio. Will tell you this though, if you can, avoid, Ohio. Lot of dangerous transients there but haven’t heard much about Indiana. You can’t get through Lexington. Road’s gone. There’s a bathing and transient place just about a mile west and a road that will take you through Louisville.”

  “That safe?”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty good,” the man replied. “Saw nothing or no one after the station.”

  “Thank you,” Falcon said. “We appreciate it. If you take this road straight south, you’ll be safe as well. Did you need anything?”

  “No, I’m good. Just was wondering what the passage was like. Well … safe journey to you.” The man tipped his head.

  “Safe journey to you too,” Falcon replied and moved the horse.

  Josh asked, “What’s a bathing station? I keep hearing that.”

  “To be honest, I didn’t think they were real. Just tales, you know,” Falcon said. “But they’re places where the government brings in water so people can get clean, have a drink, and rest safely as they move from one place to another. “

  Josh whistled. “Boy, a lot of people must move.”

  “They’re called transients,” Falcon explained. “They have no homes and they just go about looking for a good place to settle.”

  “Probably looking for green,” Lilly said. “And any of them ‘tran’ people we see probably don’t know where the green is or else they’d stay there, right Daddy?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Oh, I hope we see green.” Lilly rubbed her hands together. “Please, God, let me see green.”

  It didn’t make Falcon smile to hear her say that; it broke his heart. Though he could barely remember being Lilly’s age, he could vividly recall a lot of things he hoped for and waited for and not one of them was a patch of green, fertile land.

  How sad that in her lifetime she had not seen a tree, felt the grass, smelled a flower.


  Falcon wanted to tell her that perhaps God wasn’t going to be answering that type of prayer. He was pretty sure people had been praying for green for a long time and the prayer still hadn’t been answered. Then again, maybe the voice and prayer of a little girl was what God needed to hear.

  It was a saying he had heard several times in his life, but didn’t really think it held true until they arrived at the bathing station for the evening.

  Out of the mouths of babes.

  How right Lilly was and Falcon knew it when he asked the first transient if he had seen green up north. The transient had replied, “If I did, would I be here? I’d be there.”

  The bathing station wasn’t what Falcon had envisioned. Actually, he didn’t know what he envisioned. It was a large metal building set inside a fenced off area. The people at the station took your name and gave you a number.

  Inside the building were shower stalls and each person got a four minute shower. Falcon wasn’t permitted in the woman’s area with Lilly, but there was a government woman who helped her.

  Falcon was nervous about that and it was the longest four minutes he could recall waiting. But Lilly emerged clean and smelled really nice.

  They set up their camp for the night away from everyone else. The bathing station didn’t provide food, but they did provide a quart of drinking water and a bucket of animal quality water for the horse.

  Some people had their own food; some didn’t and were hungry. Falcon could see them going from person to person asking for food until the government officials asked them to leave. No solicitation or begging was permitted at bathing stations.

  Not that Falcon would have turned anyone down. He wouldn’t. He promised himself he’d follow his wife’s rules when he could.

  But beggars never made it as far as Falcon.

  There were no fires permitted. Falcon didn’t bring a tent, so they stayed inside the Vike despite the fact it was hot.

  Josh understood about the beggars. Lilly didn’t. She kept asking him questions, wanting him to explain why some people were leaving when it was night and why the group with children had to go.

  Falcon explained that they were asking others for food and that was against the rules.