Survivors of the Sun

by Kingslie, Mia

  ‘This nightmarish situation can’t last, In a day or two everything will be back to normal,’ she thought to herself, as she and Deedee still cuddled up together, drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Nine

  July 13, Day 3

  Georgia woke suddenly, sunshine streaming through the lounge windows. It felt so late. Behind her, she became aware of the children murmuring quietly amongst themselves, and the clink of cutlery against dishes. She stood up, and headed through to the dining room, feeling as though she had had no sleep at all. She felt hot and sticky and the inside of her mouth felt like an old sock.

  The children sat eating cereal at the table. Dry cereal, from what she could tell.

  ‘Hey guys, how are you all doing?’ she asked with all the cheeriness she could muster. Wondering, as she squinted at the bright sunlight, just how late it was.

  ‘There’s no water,’ Rebecca said, in way of greeting.

  ‘And the dogs peed on the floor,’ Jamie added. They couldn’t get out, their door was locked.’

  Deedee smirked. ‘Yeah, there is a huge puddle, and he slipped in it.’ She pointed an accusing finger towards Jamie.

  So no water and a huge puddle of dog pee, perfect way to start the day. Par for the course really, but thank goodness Deedee is talking again.

  She went to the fridge out of habit, scowling as the interior light did not come on. ‘Does anyone want juice?’ she asked, unscrewing the top of the apple juice bottle. It made a slight pshh sound. That didn’t sound right. Cautiously she sniffed it. ‘Never mind, it’s gone bad.’

  She shut the fridge door, and took a glass from the cupboard and headed to the bathroom. The dog pee can wait.

  Mid-morning found her sitting on the back doorstep, deep in thought, distractedly watching the kids play in the yard, Ant feeling the heat, sat in the shade next to Georgia.

  Earlier she had walked next door to see if Nina had come home, but there was no response to her insistent rapping. Then she had crossed the road and knocked at a few more houses. The children watching her through the window, but it seemed that as yet, no one had returned. She felt more and more desperate. She needed someone to tell her and the kids, exactly what was happening. Finally she made her way back home. It was becoming more and more obvious to her that they were as cut off and isolated as if they were marooned on a deserted island.

  She found herself going over Jack’s words. ‘It’s going to be like Katrina and Fukushima all over again.’ And for the first time since the power failure, she wondered if she should consider leaving. And go where? It was a very big step to take, especially when there were so few available facts to support such a decision.

  It certainly was not going to help, just rushing out into the unknown, joining columns of ill-informed, panicked citizens, streaming out of the city to nowhere in particular. For all she knew, at any moment there would be a funny bump sound. Then a humming as the power kicked on and the fridge started up again, and the beeps from various electronic equipment and computers, cheerfully heralding to all within hearing, that the power was restored. But that was an uncertainty. An unknown.

  What she did know was this. It had been three days since this had all started. There were no planes in the sky and there were dead people on the freeway. Prestos had been looted. (It was very unlikely to have been an isolated case.) There was no sign of policing, or rescue services and that alone spoke volumes about the state of the government. There was no internet, no phones and no water, aside from the water in the tub. They had already used a quarter, and unless it miraculously rained, there was no conceivable way to get any more.

  In spite of the heat she felt cold icicles of fear skate up and down her back. Even if they were very careful, they would only have enough water to last three or four days. Then what?

  If Nathan were here, then maybe, she stopped the thought dead in its track. There was no point thinking about the ‘ifs’ and the ‘maybes’. The hard undeniable fact was that Nathan was not here.

  She lit a cigarette, feeling very foreign and very alone on the steps. Picturing in her mind, her tiny form, there in the middle of Kansas City, less than a mile from the state line. The picture opening out and telescoping to show her becoming smaller and smaller until the entire continent of the U.S.A was visible, with herself smaller than an inconsequential bit of dust.

  The other thing she knew was that Nathan, Maggie and Lydia had not returned. She had no way of knowing when Nathan or Maggie would come back, and chances were quite high that Lydia had died in a plane crash. All of which meant, that as things stood, she was now solely responsible for the care of three children and three dogs and it was up to her to come up with a plan. A good plan because failure was not an option.

  Somehow, she had to keep them safe, feed them, and protect them. All by herself. To do that, she needed to be clear-headed and resolute. None of which she was feeling right now.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden spattering of gunfire, she leapt to her feet. Shit, that sounded close, only a couple of streets away, if that.

  ‘Kids,’ she yelled, ‘get inside now, I will bring the dogs in.’

  ‘Aw,’ Jamie called, ‘but we were just…,’

  ‘Inside, now!’

  She held the door open, as one by one, they came indoors, ‘in no particular hurry,’ she thought. Luckily, the dogs came on their own accord, panting from their romp outdoors and flopped onto the relative coolness of the tiled kitchen floor.

  Once they were all inside, she shut and locked the door, securing the dog door as well. Millie, of course, immediately whined, having a desperate need to go back out. She always needed to be on the other side of any shut door. Georgia ignored her, the last thing she needed right now was to be chasing round the yard after the dogs.

  She hurried to the living room and drew the drapes closed. It just seemed a safer thing to do. Then she double-checked all the locks.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Georgia said, ‘but those were gun shots, and they sounded a little bit too close for my liking, so just to be on the safe side, I think it better that we stay indoors for a bit.’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ Jamie said.

  ‘Can we play ‘Game of Life’,’ Rebecca asked, she seemed less than interested in gunshots that sounded a bit too close for comfort.

  ‘Sure,’ Georgia said, ‘great idea. Set it up on the breakfast table.’

  Okay, she needed to stop procrastinating and come up with a plan. She felt tears of frustration welling up inside of her. She should have done this all already, instead of foolishly thinking it was just a power cut. It is not as though the signs weren’t all there. Real mothers would have had it all organized by now.

  She went over to the table where the kids were playing.

  Jamie was winning, and Rebecca had been hit with school fees for twins.

  She pulled up a chair. ‘Do you want to play as well?’ Rebecca asked, as she sat down.

  ‘Not this time, honey,’ she said.

  ‘We have to talk…,’ she began.

  Jamie looked up at her, his brow wrinkled with concern. ‘Have we done something wrong?’

  ‘Why no, you…,’ she smiled, in spite of herself. ‘No, you guys haven’t done anything wrong at all,’ she reassured them, ‘but even so we do have to have a talk.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Jamie said, and she knew just by the relief in his voice, that he was feeling guilty about something he had done. Something, she wouldn’t like. It made her want to hug him to her and say, whatever you did, it doesn’t matter anymore. The rules have all changed!

  Deedee threw the dice. ‘A three and a six, I get to…’

  Georgia reached out and took hold of Deedee’s hand. ‘Deedee, I need you to listen as well, you can carry on with the game afterwards.’

  Deedee began to say something but then, when she looked up at Georgia’s face she changed her mind.

  ‘What do we have to h
ave a talk about?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘I think that we might have to leave Kansas City.’

  Now she had their attention. The three of them sat up looking at her, and Rebecca had gone very pale.

  ‘I’m going to be frank with you all, we are in a very serious situation. We have very little food left, and the only water we have, is what is left in the bath.’

  ‘But, why does that mean we have to leave?’ Rebecca asked.

  Georgia took a deep breath, not really wanting to say, what had to be said, but saying it anyway. ‘Because we can’t afford to run out of water, it’s a basic fact, we need water to survive.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jamie said, ‘that’s true, if you don’t drink for three days, you die.’

  The others sat quietly for a moment, digesting her words.

  ‘What about Dad?’ Rebecca asked. ‘We can’t go without him.’

  ‘And Mum would need to know where we are going,’ Jamie added.

  ‘Well, Dad might be back before we go,’ Georgia said carefully, ‘but if he isn’t here by tomorrow morning, we are going to have to leave without him, and as for your mum…,’ what should she say to that?

  ‘Oh,’ Rebecca said suddenly, ‘I think I know what happened. I think that Mum forgot that she had changed the schedule. Seeing as how she didn’t pick us up when she got back from Kentucky. I bet she decided to pick us up tomorrow afternoon at the usual time. After all she is never late.’

  Georgia stared at Rebecca in amazement. Obviously, Rebecca was not quite getting a grip on the state of affairs if she really believed her mother was going to turn up tomorrow. Was she really that empty headed?

  ‘Well,’ Georgia began, ‘I think she might be late this time and we don’t have much choice, we have to leave and we can always leave a note. Water and food are not our only worries. Jack was telling me that the Nuclear power station at Wolf Creek probably has no power either, and without power, to keep the cooling towers doing their job…, it could…, well, the station could go into melt down in the next few days.’

  ‘Like a nuclear bomb?’ Rebecca asked, her voice a little scared, her fingers touching her throat.

  ‘Yes, like a nuclear bomb.’

  Jamie went very quiet and nervously rolled his shoulders.

  ‘I told you,’ Deedee said, ‘we are all going to get ‘radio-rated’, and our skin will melt off and fall…’

  ‘Shut up, Deedee!’ Rebecca and Jamie said together. Deedee shut up.

  ‘So,’ Georgia continued, ‘you see, we can’t wait too much longer. I will get us packed and we will get a good night’s sleep tonight, and we will leave tomorrow sometime.’

  ‘Where will we go?’ Jamie asked.

  ‘That, I am not sure of yet.’

  ‘We could go back down to the house in Bethel,’ Jamie said.

  Georgia looked at him for a moment weighing up the idea. Bethel was a tiny farming community in Southern Illinois, where Nathan’s family had originally settled. She recalled the many times when she and Nathan had visited, staying in the family home.

  That in itself had been a bit of an adventure, more like camping really. The house had been so terribly neglected, having been empty for years, and originally it lacked all the modern conveniences, prior to renovations. It was almost comical; the very basic kitchen still had the original cast iron woodstove (rusty as hell), and tank water. Here she gave a little start, the house still had water tanks!

  Then she sighed regretfully. Unfortunately Bethel was so far away. If not for that, it would have been a very good idea. Especially as Nathan still had relatives living there, and she was pretty certain that there were no nuclear power stations nearby.

  Slowly she shook her head. ‘It is out of the question, Bethel is too far. It is more than three hundred miles away, and I have no idea how we would get there.’

  ‘Walk, I guess,’ Jamie said

  ‘Walk?’ Rebecca said, ‘that is stupid Jamie, we can’t walk over three hundred miles.’

  ‘I don’t want to walk anywhere,’ Deedee said. ‘I do not like walking and anyway my shoes would get dirty.’

  Georgia looked down at Deedee’s glittery sandals. Never mind getting dirty, they wouldn’t last five minutes.

  ‘We could too walk,’ Jamie said, ‘the pioneers did. They walked everywhere.’

  ‘No they didn’t,’ Rebecca said, ‘they had horses, and wagons.’

  ‘I don’t like horses,’ Deedee mumbled to herself.

  ‘Well, that’s okay,’ Georgia said, ‘because we don’t have a horse,’ and then she added, ‘my grandfather walked across Europe.’

  ‘He did, why?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘It was during the Second World War. He was living in Amsterdam at the time, and he was rounded up with a group of men, and loaded onto a train. He escaped somewhere near the Russian border and walked all the way back. He never found out what happened to the others.’

  ‘That’s a long way,’ Rebecca said. She had only recently been studying Europe in her home schooling lessons.

  ‘Yes, a very long way, it took him a year to get back, and he arrived back in Amsterdam the day before the war ended.’ Georgia fell silent remembering. Her grandfather had said little about that year, except once, to say that it was very important to have gold, gold bracelets. During wartime you can buy anything with a single link. Gold became the currency. Gold and sugar, he had added, at times sugar had been worth more than gold.

  However he had walked alone; she would be walking with three children and the dogs. Regretfully, she dismissed the idea of walking to Bethel. It was simply out of the question.

  Before she could even consider leaving Kansas City, she had to decide what to do with Deedee. She had been thinking in terms of all three children, but what were the legal ramifications of that? While there was no question that Rebecca and Jamie would stay with her, unless their mother miraculously turned up alive, Deedee was another matter.

  What if Maggie didn’t come back? Somewhere out there, Deedee had a mother, Stella or Stacey something, she wasn’t sure; a woman who would be wondering, in the light of what was happening, where her daughter was. In fact the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she couldn’t just leave Kansas City to parts unknown with another woman’s child. It could even be considered kidnapping, couldn’t it?

  So before she could even think about an undertaking like that, she would have to find out whether it was possible to get Deedee back to her mother. But Georgia quickly discovered that that wasn’t going to be possible. Deedee had no idea what her mother’s new address was, or even her mother’s full name, and after careful questioning, it became obvious that none of them knew it.

  ‘We still have a little time,’ Georgia finally said aloud, ‘everyone keep thinking of ideas, and meanwhile I will start to make a list of what we will need to take with us.’

  Chapter Ten

  Georgia went into the lounge, over to the roll top desk, and as she slid the top open she could feel her heart pounding. Now that she had made the decision to leave, she was filled with trepidation. Her hands were visibly shaking as she pushed the now defunct computer aside and reached over to the printer for a sheet of paper.

  One thing at a time, she told herself, desperately trying to calm her racing heart. Write a list of what needs to be packed, what needs to be done. Picking up the pen, she wrote pack, and then underlined it twice. That was all very well, but pack what? Georgia wondered. Another wave of panic swept over her as her mind went blank.

  She took a deep breath, making a conscious effort to calm herself. We need water, which is the most important thing, so we need water bottles…, and maps and a compass. Thoughts and ideas began crowding her mind and she hurriedly began writing again. Then I guess we need to deal with…, oh and we need iodine…, the kids have to have iodine, it’s what you do in a nuclear catastrophe. What sort of iodine?

  Then her mind racing off on another tangent, she thought, ‘I need to pack jeans…
, and…, oh my God, mustn’t forget an axe! Yes definitely need the axe.’ Finally, she was back in control of her panic, and thinking clearly.

  After a time, clutching several closely written sheets of paper, she called the children away from their game. With their help, everything on the list was gradually gathered together and placed on the rug in the lounge, and one by one, the items were checked off.

  ‘This is like playing Family Cranium,’ Jamie giggled. ‘When we get the card to find three things in a certain category before the timer runs out.’ They all laughed then, because invariably poor Ant got snatched up and rushed to the table. She covered so many categories, small, black, furry, soft, white…. Ant’s look of total indignation at their uncouth behavior always set them laughing.

  Georgia stared at the pile. There was no way they could carry all that. She started going through it all again, dividing it into three piles. The necessities, the would be nice to have, and the out of the question luxuries.

  The axe, several lighters, a flint stone, a couple of boxes of ammunition, a pair of binoculars, and the zip up first aid kit, all went into the totally necessary pile.

  Every so often she would ask something like; ‘Oh Rebecca, go and find a pair of nail scissors and tweezers.’ or a moment later, ‘Jamie, could you grab the little needle and thread kit, it should be in the top drawer of the sewing table.’

  The fishing rod went onto the luxury pile, but the hooks and two reels of nylon went into the necessity pile. She kept thinking of other things they would need as well. The fly. Where did Nathan store the fly? That was an absolute necessity, if they ever were caught out in the open, at least they would have some shelter. Rebecca was dispatched to the garage to look for it.

  She came back a moment later. ‘What is a fly?’

  Georgia paused, what was the American word for it? Tent cover? No, that wasn’t right, then she had it. ‘The tent canopy,’ she said, ‘your dad put it in the garage I think, last year when he was reorganizing everything in there. It’s an olive green color.’