“Roy,” I called again, then as I stepped in the room, I saw his hearing aid on the desk. No wonder he didn’t have luck with the radio, he probably didn’t hear anyone replying. I moved another five feet to behind Roy and I reached out, gently tapping him on the shoulder.
With a shriek, Roy jumped in his chair and even scared me, making me jump as well.
Laughing, I put my hand to my chest. “Sorry to scare you. We were …”
Roy held up his hand, rolled his chair from the radio and grabbed his hearing aid, placing it in as he rolled back. “Aw, that’s better. What’s up?”
“We were …”
“Audrey!” Shane shouted from outside. “You guys have got to see this. Get Roy.”
“Anyhow,” I said. “West was worried about the antennae and we wanted you to have a heads up.”
“Audrey!” Shane yelled again, this time sounding closer. “Hurry before it’s done.”
“Tell them I thought about the antenna and …” Roy paused, his eyes widened with fear and his finger went to his ear.
“Audrey,” Shane’s voice was near. “Did you hear me?”
I looked over to see Shane standing in the doorway at the same time I felt the rush of static electricity and looked down to see the hair on my arms standing on edge. “Shit.” My first instinct was to grab hold of Roy’s chair and pull him away from the radio. Hand on that chair, I just started to pull when I felt it.
It took only a split second.
Everything rippled before my eyes as what felt like a million burning needles ripped into my chest and through my body with such an intense force, my feet lifted from the floor and flew backwards.
That was all. Nothing after that.
Everything went black.
18 – NEEDED PAUSE
Breathe.
It was all a cascade of voices and flashing of faces, one right after another, some overlapping, everything flashing before me as if I were a camera taking photographs.
“Hi there!” It was that annoying talking elephant of Molly’s, the one with the girl’s voice. “My name is Ba-Ba-Blue, what’s your name?”
“Can’t you see what he’s doing to you?” Ken stared at me.
“You’re pathetic, Mom. Don’t cry over me,” Michael blasted, eyes red, as he swayed back and forth.
“Are you ready to play?”
Breathe.
“Look at him. He’s on a path of self destruction.”
“You’re not a mother. Never were.”
“Let’s read a story!”
Breathe.
“I don’t want him around Molly,” Ken said.
“He’s my son.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“Mine, too.”
“Act like it. Can’t you see what he’s doing to you?”
“I hate you, Mom.”
“He’s killing you.”
Goddamn it, Audrey, breathe!
I released an outward wheezing breath, then panicked as I opened my eyes and was unable to inhale. After a few attempts, arms flailing, I started coughing.
“West, get me the oxygen.”
Shane’s voice sounded distant, like in an echo chamber. I felt something come near my face, in my confusion I didn’t recognize it as oxygen and I swatted it away. The moment I did, I felt a horrendous burning in my hand.
“Don’t fight. Don’t fight me.” Shane put the oxygen near my face. “Breathe. Breathe.”
I did and then I closed my eyes.
That instance, maybe it lasted a minute or two, was rushed and I was in such a state of confusion I hadn’t a clue to what was going on. I felt a sense of clarity when I opened my eyes later to a room brightened with daylight. I also felt a crushing pain in my chest the second I moved.
“Whoa, whoa, wait.” West rushed over. “If you need to sit up let me help you. I have another ice pack for you.”
I shifted my eyes, I was in my own living room on the couch. I felt a tingle and some dryness in my nostrils. I reached up and saw my hand was bandaged.
“You got burned pretty good,” West said. “I don’t think it’s anything that won’t heal. Now that you’re awake we can get you to take some antibiotics. But don’t move. Not yet. Give me a minute.”
“Can you take this out of my nose?”
“Can you breathe?”
“Yeah.”
West removed it. He then lowered the sheet. I was already laying semi propped up. He sat on the coffee table next to me and began to unwrap a cloth bandage from my chest. After I was bandage free, he took several white ice packs off me and replaced them with new ones. When they touched my chest I felt the cold. West began to bandage me up again. “Let me know if this is too tight.”
I nodded. Even that hurt. I winced.
“We have pain medication for you.”
“Where did you get the oxygen?” I asked.
“This one … same place I got the pills and the instant compresses … the drug store. Last night we used Roy’s portable tank.”
“Did I die?”
“Well … hard to say. Did you want to try to sit up?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll do it slowly, and I’ll put pillows behind you. Ready?”
I signaled with a nod of my head that I was, and West gently lifted me from behind, placing more cushions against my back. It hurt like hell, but when I relaxed and didn’t move, it wasn’t as excruciating.
“You stopped breathing, your heart stopped and you turned fifty shades of blue pretty quickly. Had Shane not been right there, yeah, you probably would have died. You just had a momentary vital sign cessation.” He handed me some pills. “Take those. One is for pain, one is an antibiotic” He held the water bottle for me.
I put the two pills, one blue the other white into my mouth and took a drink of the water. It was hard to swallow and for a second they got stuck in my throat, I hurriedly took another swig. I cringed as I felt them go down every inch of my esophagus. “For how long?”
“Not long. He yelled for me and was doing CPR when I came in. Maybe a couple minutes. It wasn't long,” West said.
“Roy?”
West shook his head. “We couldn’t save him. We tried. He was too close.”
Instantly I panicked. “I didn’t ask him,” I said grabbing West’s arm. “I didn’t ask him, West. I let him talk, I should have asked him first and foremost. He just rambled and I didn’t stop him to ask.”
“Ask what?”
“About my family.”
“Audrey, he said the mayor evacuated the town. They were looking for a place with power for those who need it. He said that. I would think if something would have happened with your family he would have mentioned it then. Don’t worry.”
I tried to move. “We have to go. I have to look for my family. I have to look for Michael.”
West stopped me. “You’re not going anywhere. Not today at least. You aren’t moving. You have a pretty nasty burn that we can’t chance getting infected and you also took some trauma to the chest. I need you to rest and keep that oxygen on.”
“It bothers my nose.”
“Keep it on anyway.” West raised it to my nostrils.
“Hey, she’s up,” Shane said as he walked into the living room. “Wow, should her color still be that bad?”
“What’s wrong with my color?”
“You’re a little pale.” West winked. “Oxygen should help that.”
“I can’t just lay here,” I said.
“Yes you can,” West argued. “Can we trust you to just lay here and relax, or do one of us have to babysit you?”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“You gave me this list last night.” West held up a sheet of paper. “Remember?”
“West and I are gonna go look to see if Michael is at one of those houses.” Shane said. “We found a picture on your fridge. We know what he looks like. We also want to scour the perimeter around town, look for the bike. You said you
know the license plate.”
“MM-6980, Virginia plate,” I replied.
Shane took the paper from West’s hand and wrote on it. “We’ll look. We will check this entire town. If he made it here, we’ll find him.”
“You said he left the camp two hours before the event, right?” West asked. “Then if this is where he headed, we’re gonna try like hell to see if he made it.”
“What about Molly and Ken and the rest of town?”
“One day … one plan at a time.” West handed me the water. “Sip on this.”
“Thank you. Thank you for everything.” I looked at Shane. “Thank you for saving my life.”
“It was easy,” Shane said. “You weren’t ready or wanting to go anywhere … you came right back.”
Treating me like a child they made sure I was settled before they left. I hated feeling so useless, but every time I moved another part of my body ached. I was drained, and the pains in my body were battling to see which part would take top billing.
The last thing I wanted to do was be the weight they had to drag around, the weak woman, damsel in distress. I vowed after they left I would give myself one day. Then after that, pain or not, I was going to get up and keep moving.
<><><><>
The pain medication kicked in and I was out like a light for some time. Long enough for the temperature and lighting to change in the house and for the cold packs to be not as cool. I was still alone in the house, Shane and West hadn’t returned. I felt horribly uncomfortable and decided I needed to sit up. Other than that, I swore I felt better and a bit stronger.
I moved slowly. First with my legs, inching them off the couch. Then I took a deep breath, my ribs hurt as they expanded, and I slid my way into a sitting position. Once there, I panted, as if in labor, until the pain eased.
I glanced down to the bandage on my hand. If the burn looked anything like it felt, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see it. I couldn’t feel my middle and ring fingers, surely they were still there. There wasn’t any blood on the bandage, yet I still couldn’t feel them.
The front door opened and Shane stopped in his stride. “Why are you sitting up?”
“Did I lose my two fingers?” I asked.
“No. Why?” he asked.
“I can’t feel them.”
“They’re burned pretty bad,” he said. “Just don’t look at your hand. Not yet.”
“How bad are they?”
“Bad. Take a pain pill now before you start feeling it again.”
“I will.” I peered around for my water bottle. It must have fallen while I slept. “Where’s West?”
Shane pointed backwards just as West walked in.
“Well?” I asked.
West looked at Shane and they both walked to me.
My stomach dropped. They were hesitant.
“We checked those places,” West said. “Michael wasn’t there. One of the homes. The one just across town. No one was there, at all. No bodies. Nothing. Before you freak out ... you have to hear what we have to say. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Shane slowly extended a motorcycle license plate to me.
I hated to look, but I did.
MM-6980.
It was Michael’s. I clutched it in my hands, closed my eyes and brought it close to my chest. “Where?” I whimpered.
“I told you not to freak out,” West said. “Didn’t I? Anyhow … we found the bike on sixty-four, it would have been the route he took from Gridlock. About two miles out of town. It wasn’t in a pile-up and it wasn’t wrecked. In fact, it was on the side of the road resting against the guardrail.”
“We think he abandoned it,” Shane said. “It was out of gas. No keys anywhere.”
“There were tracks on the shoulder. He must have walked it for a while,” West explained. “We didn’t go any further than another half a mile. But I am going to guess he ran out of gas long before that.”
“He gave up and walked or … he watched the thing hit, then just ditched the bike and ran into town.”
“And don’t think we didn’t look,” West said. “We searched the highway and the embankment. No body.”
“Either way. He made it here.”
“You said you didn’t ask Roy. If you had he would have told you Michael made it. I really believe he would have.”
“I think when we find Ken and Molly, you’ll find Michael.”
Both men stood before me and my head went back and forth as I listened to them talk as if they had rehearsed what they were going to say. I believed what they told me, I heard every word. One would think with the knowledge they gave me along with hearing Roy say the street was evacuated, I would be on cloud nine, screaming, “yes, my family is alive.”
But I wasn’t.
I just couldn’t bring myself to feel hopeful.
19 – SETTING A PATH
I thought maybe it was the drugs or the pain, or even the fact that I nearly died that caused the shadow of gloom to hang over my head, but as the day moved on the shadow remained. In fact, by evening I was feeling stronger and thinking pretty clearly.
It was ironic that I was searching again for my son, like I had done so many times before in the past. Once again someone reassuring me he was fine. Yet, where was he?
I was never optimistic when it came to Michael. For two years I had been preparing myself for the worst, waiting on that day when the call would come, telling me my son was dead.
Sleeping with the phone next to my head, because I was certain one night I'd get that dreaded phone call.
Now, he could be gone and I would spend the rest of my life never knowing what happened.
The only thing I did know was Ken and Michael were not together, despite what Shane and West believed. Even if Michael wasn’t dead and if his body hadn’t been thrown all over the highway like many others, if he had indeed made it to Waynesboro, I knew instantly he wasn’t with Ken.
They despised each other. The last thing Michael would do would run to our house and face Ken with the news that he left me behind and alone.
No way.
In fact, every scenario in my mind kept playing out with the same end result … Michael being dead.
If Michael made it to town before the event, I figured he was racked with guilt over leaving me. He probably was trying to call Charlie at the camp and was somewhere surrounded by electronics.
Or if Michael made it to town and witnessed the event, like West suggested, he still wouldn’t run to Ken, Michael would have found a car and drove it to get me, eventually being caught in one of those surges on the highway, in a car I’d never find.
More than likely I was giving Michael more credit than I should, especially by believing my son was not selfish and cared about me enough to feel guilt, or to even come find me. The old Michael would have. But I hadn’t seen the old Michael for a long time.
I kept those thoughts to myself and his license plate with me.
Holding the plate was like holding a little bit of my son.
By supper I felt strong enough to make my way to the table, I even felt a little hungry. West informed me he wanted to fill me in on the plan and would do so over a meal. It was too hot to eat when the sun was up, but it cooled down when night rolled in. Shane made a nice dinner out of things he found in my cupboards. He made vegetables, soup and formed canned chicken into patties and cooked them on the grill.
It didn’t dawn on us the night before about the starter on my gas grill, we just opted for old fashioned cooking out with charcoal from the local store.
I supposed we would have to rethink a lot of old habits.
As we dove into our dinners, the map sat center of the table, West dropped a hearing aid on it. “It’s not a failsafe warning system, but it will work. It will be our alarm. Not to stop us from electrocution, but to save the car’s ignition.”
“What car?” I asked.
“We found an old Dodge Dart. Tomorrow morning we’re gonna take out the radio and
get it ready,” West said. “Then when you’re ready we’ll head out.”
“I’m ready. I’ll be ready. What’s the plan?” I asked.
“Not that it’s a booming metropolis,” West replied. “But Charlottesville is about twice the size of this town. If that’s hit, it’s gonna be safe to assume so is the whole state. I think we’ll start seeing more people the further we get from the mountains. Let’s face it, there will be people that didn’t have power or were off the grid, farmers who were working in their fields, or people who unplug every electronic when they go to bed. They’re out there. They’ll be setting up camps, trying to figure out what’s next.”
I pointed to the map. “Roy said they went East. There are two routes they would have taken.”
“We'll take one,” Shane said. “Loop around.”
“Do you think they’re headed to Charlotte or even Roanoke?” I asked.
“Or Apex Power,” West pointed. “It’s about forty miles from here. It’s a wind farm. Windmills. But they still produce electricity. Then again, people may not be thinking that way. Like us with the grill. They may start generators … like Roy.”
“We’re gonna find them,” Shane said. “There is probably a large group traveling together with children. They’re probably stopping a lot. They’ll set up somewhere. But I will tell you this, we are going to head southeast first.”
“Is there a reason?” I asked.
“Yeah, there is. Answers.” Shane stood. “Confirmation.” He walked to the sliding glass doors of the dining room and opened them.
“Is it?” West asked him.
“Yes.” He peered out and then when he looked at me he extended his hand. “Come take a look,” Shane said. “We think we figured out why this is happening.”
20 - IT DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER
For as damning as I knew it was, the spectacle in the sky was absolutely amazing. Swirls of greenish blue streaked across the sky. I had heard about them, but had never seen them.
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