Above the Hush

by Jacqueline Druga

  “Auroras,” Shane explained. “They are caused by coronal something or other.”

  “Mass ejection.” West said as he stepped out on the back porch. “Solar storms, geomagnetic storms. This …” he pointed up. “is nothing like we saw last night. It was like another sky. It started like this, but then just went nuts. Lit up everything. None of us saw this the day of the big event, because it was daylight and sunny.”

  “How would this cause everyone to die?”

  West shrugged. “It’s hard to say, they can, and do affect power. What caused the polarity switch has to be a polar shift. It has to be. That’s the only thing I can think of. You know, North is South. South is north. Positive is now negative.”

  “Can that happen? Wouldn’t we have massive disasters?”

  “That’s what they say. I don’t know,” West answered. “That’s why we need to go to the Fan Mountain observatory. I figured, if we saw this, others did. Anyone with any background in this will hit an observatory. Hell, those at the observatory had to see it coming. If so, they’re there with answers, or someone is.”

  “There are other observatories,” Shane said. “If this one doesn’t pan out. There is Leander. That’s in Charlottesville. We want to hit Fan Mountain first because it is isolated.”

  “We have to do it fast,” West said. “We’re running out of time.”

  I crinkled my brow and then looked up to the sky. “Are we expecting worse?”

  “Worse than that?” He pointed. “Yeah.”

  Slowly I looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Come inside.” He stepped back into the house.

  I cautiously followed, each step I took hurt and I slid down into a chair at the table.

  West pushed the map my way. “Remember last night I told you I was working on memory?”

  “Yes.”

  “These red dots I placed, they are nuclear power plants. Virginia is number three in the country when it comes to nuclear power.”

  “North Anna is near here,” I said.

  “It is. We are, right now …” West said. “Within the circle I marked for it, which is a hundred mile radius.”

  I glanced at the map, there were entire areas filled with circles. “West, what’s going on?”

  “In the event of power loss, each of these stations,” West indicated to them. “Are equipped with diesel generators to pump the water needed to cool the core. Now … under normal circumstances, power is usually back on pretty fast. But not in this case. They are supposed to be designed so they are protected from surges, and I believe that to be true, because it doesn’t take long for a core to melt. Two days perhaps. So we have this system so they're protected. That core is hot, if it stops getting what it needs to cool down, it will evaporate what’s there until it finally starts to fully meltdown.”

  “Can it be stopped?” I asked.

  “No.” West shook his head. “There is no means to cool the cores on any of these once diesel fuel runs out. And if the generators cease to work because of another storm, then we lose any extra time. Unfortunately, it is not a matter of if it happens, it is a matter of when. It’s gonna happen, there’s no stopping it.”

  “When?” I asked. “When will it happen?"

  “If it didn’t already in some areas, at most another week. At most.”

  “What happens …” Shane asked, “when it does meltdown?”

  “Depends,” West answered. “Does it melt to the point it causes a fire and burns, sending up a plume, or does another big storm hit and the surge causes an explosion? With either of them, everything in a ten-mile radius is gone. Either burned or crushed by enough radioactivity for people to die within hours.”

  “Outside the ten miles?” I asked.

  “Within twenty miles you’ll have sickness immediately, death in days. Chances are it’s already leaking radiation. Anyone camped near there or living near there is getting radiated. We’re not talking one power plant, we're talking all ninety-nine nuclear power plants in thirty states. The amount of radiation produced by all of them leaves very limited areas of the country that could ... could be safe.”

  “Jesus,” I said with a gasp. “Is there anything positive?”

  “No,” West replied. “There’s no worst case scenario, it’s all worst case. It doesn’t get any better, it just gets worse. Think Chernobyl. Chernobyl to the max. All this …” his hand smoothed over the circles, “becomes a vast wasteland of uninhabitable land. Contaminated not just for decades, but for thousands of years. Between the geomagnetic storms and the meltdowns, this is hell on earth. If ever there was a moment when modern man is forced back into the dark ages, this is the moment. Right here, right now,” he said. “We’re living it.”

  21 – SPOILS

  I didn’t quite understand why everyone up and left town. By my estimate it had to be around thirty people, give or take a few. Where were they going to go? I could understand if they feared or thought about the impending meltdown, but it was evident they didn’t. Because they were headed right into it. What in the world would possess them to go? They had everything they needed right here in this town.

  Maybe their destination was Charlottesville, Richmond or even farther north to Alexandria.

  Shane had suggested that perhaps Roy was wrong. That maybe they weren’t in search of power to live, but rather away from power to live. Go somewhere off the grid. But if that was the case would Gridlock be the place for my husband? For all I knew, he may have headed there. After we exhausted a search of the east, Gridlock was my next destination. Unlike Ken, I would leave a note. Not only was my family separated, they were out in the world, and there was no way to find out exactly where they went. It was conceivable I would never see them again. With the impending meltdown not far away distance wise, I had to wonder what in the world would be next. It seemed like we were facing one thing after another.

  Toggling between seriousness and joking, I asked West, “What is next? Ice Age? Are we all going to freeze over while we're in the dark ages without any power or light?”

  He said, “I wouldn’t rule that out.”

  Seriously? How insane was that?

  I had been spoiled by the information and technology world we had built. I relied heavily on it. Have a pain … look it up. Need a hotel room … look it up. Anything, anything I needed to know I searched for on the Internet. I needed answers to what was going on, and there were none. Nothing. It was like I had every ounce of knowledge sucked out of me, stolen, never to return. But it really wasn’t, eventually we would find a new way, a way to learn things for ourselves, or teach ourselves.

  The prospect of the new world we faced was a frightening one. It was one that I would have to learn how to live in. In a sense, I envied my daughter, Molly. She didn’t know the world I grew up in, the one I came to be spoiled by. She would know this new world and would thrive in it. While others like me, recoiled from it in some sort of way.

  How would we manage to stay warm? To eat? To get well when we’re sick, or the big one, to find other people?

  West didn’t mince his words. “If you want to eat you’ll grow your food. If you want a community you will build one. If you want a doctor, you’ll find one. If not, then you’ll be one.”

  Adapt and change. Or die.

  A long-term plan for survival would be needed, one a little different than anyone ever imagined, one open for anything, because now anything was possible.

  I couldn’t put my mindset to any particular plan though, because I couldn’t think of a future, not until I knew what had become of my family.

  22 – SCATTERED WRAPPERS AND PAPERS

  I should have found a way to sleep standing up, because laying down didn’t help my chest and ribs, it made it worse. Not moving for several hours made every turn, every lift of a limb or breath I took to be painful. There was minimal bruising on my chest, the worst pain came from my hand.

  Once again, I tried to wiggle my fingers and didn�
��t feel the middle two. While Shane told me they were there, a part of me didn’t believe him.

  Before leaving, I felt it was time to change the bandage. I needed to look and see what I was dealing with. I didn’t know when we’d be back if I’d have a chance to change them on the road. Then only definite plan to return to my home was after we exhausted a search of the east and were headed west to put distance between us and the nuclear plume.

  I gathered up the supplies that Shane had picked up at the store for burns. Ointment, special bandages. Slowly, I began the process of unraveling the bandages. They wrapped over my fingers up to my mid forearm, that was where I began to pull them off.

  The first spool of bandages ended just above my wrist, there wasn’t a mark under them. Then I started to unwrap the next spool. Nothing was on my wrist, lower palm or thumb. As I got to the midway point of my hand, I started noticing some discoloring. Then I got to my fingers and wanted to scream. Not in pain, but in shock. My index finger and pinky were red with peeling skin that exposed seeping flesh, but they were nothing compared to the fingers I couldn’t feel. There was a reason for it, they may as well have been gone. They were black, like old pooled blood had gathered under the skin, they were bent slightly. No matter how hard I tried to move them, they wouldn’t move. To make matters worse, a horrendous smell came from my hand that I attributed to those two fingers. They were obviously dead.

  I couldn’t bring myself to touch them, or put ointment on my hand. I fumbled with the fresh bandages, trying to hide them. That was exactly what I was doing, hiding them. Perhaps if I didn’t see the fingers, they would miraculously get better. I wrapped my index finger and pinky separately, then the dead ones together bringing the bandages only to mid palm.

  “Need help,” West asked.

  “No, I got it.”

  “Did you put ointment on them?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Two look like they’re healing, the other two ... no amount of ointment is going to help them.”

  “I know.” West slightly lowered his head. “We’re hoping we can find medical help for you.”

  “Is that why you didn’t tell me?” I asked.

  “What good would it have been?”

  “What happens if we don’t find medical help?”

  “We have strong drugs, we have a little space at the base of the fingers. We’ll cut them off.”

  “You’ll what? You?”

  “Me or Shane. If we don’t find help in a few days they have to go before the black spreads any further.”

  I understood what he was saying, hell, all I had to do was look at my fingers to know. It could have been worse, I could have been dead.

  After I finished, I was ready to go. A fresh battery was placed in the older hearing aid. I sat in the backseat of the old Dodge Dart.

  The plan was … no one would say anything. Not a peep so Shane who had the hearing aid, could heard the static. If he heard it, he’d reach up and pull out the hearing aid. West would shut it off, and at the same time Shane would put the car in park and turn off the ignition. They had five seconds. It was something they spent the evening before rehearsing while riding up and down the street. Practicing so we didn’t lose the ignition, or a life.

  Despite knowing the old car theory had been tested, and even seeing it work when they practiced, it was still unnerving. The pain pill worked better than the Xanax and I contemplated taking up heavy drinking.

  The Dodge Dart was an interesting ride. The first turn Shane made I slid completely across the back seat, the belts had long since been removed.

  Other than the slip and slide ride, I tolerated the first leg of the journey pretty well.

  The plan was to go to the observatory first. We would take the secondary road there, head north to Charlottesville, possibly a little farther east, before hitting I-64 to head back toward my home town.

  Fan Mountain Observatory was fifteen miles south of Charlottesville, set in a remote area and it took a trip up a steep, winding, piss poor road to get there.

  The way West spoke I expected cars to be there and people camping out, but no one was there. The bay window to the observatory was open. I felt pretty good when we got there, until I moved from the back seat and the pain hit me again. I hated, absolutely hated feeling bad. I also didn’t like the fact that there was no way I was going to make it up to the observatory deck.

  The temperature was warming up and while Shane and West went up to the observatory I went into the attached white building, the station house, for some shade.

  I wasn’t sure what they expected to find, neither of them knew what they were looking for or at.

  More than anything they were hoping someone was there. It was evident that no one was.

  At least at first glance.

  I waited in the station house, stared at the pictures on the wall and located a snack counter. I hadn’t even realized I had been craving sweets until I saw the candy. I grabbed a chocolate bar, opened it and as I put the wrapper in the garbage, I saw loads of wrappers.

  Strange, I thought to myself.

  “You are not going to believe what we found,” West said

  “You too.” I held up the candy. “Where’s Shane?”

  “Still up there. Is it melted, the candy I mean?” West asked.

  “Not quite.”

  Excited, West made room on the snack bar check-out counter and spread out some papers.

  “What is this?” I asked. Looking down at the paper with circles, hand drawings and mathematical equations I didn’t understand.

  “Someone was here. Just as I thought.”

  “You think they’ll be back?”

  “She already is,” came a deep woman’s voice from across the room.

  I looked over to see a broad shouldered woman walk into the station house. She wore standard BCU’s and a military tee shirt. Her dark blond hair was cropped short and dashed with gray, she wore square glasses. She was a presence. Her voice told me she was older, as did the hardened lines on her face.

  She walked over to the counter with authority, reaching out for her papers. “This is my stuff. What are you doing with it?”

  “This is amazing,” West told her, protecting them and stopping her from grabbing the papers. “We came here hoping someone had figured it all out. Looks like you have.”

  “It’s speculation.”

  “Aren’t you surprised to see people?” I asked. “I mean, we’ve not seen many.”

  “Because they won’t unplug. How hard is it to get it. Unplug … live. And I’ve seen people. There are many camps set up. People think the cities and towns are the problem. Plus, I just got back from taking the man and woman who were staying here to another camp for medical help. Speaking of which.” She stared at me. “You are awfully colorless. Is that injury infected?” She nodded at my bandaged hand.

  “No, just bad,” I answered. I was shocked and tried to pull somewhat away from her prying eyes.

  “Where is there medical help?” West asked. “She needs it.”

  “There’s a pretty raw set up outside Charlottesville, then a nice one about a hundred miles southwest of here,” she answered.

  “This.” I pointed to her papers. “You did this, right? Can you tell us what is going on and what this means?”

  “I can tell you,” she said, reaching for the papers and spreading them out. “Question is ... do you really want to hear it?

  23 – A VIEW FROM ABOVE

  She introduced herself as Lieutenant Colonel Jane Ladka of the United States Air Force before she grabbed a peanut butter candy bar and placed her charts neatly on the counter. She excused herself for a moment to go up to the observation deck to get a folder. West went with her in case there was trouble, then she, West and Shane all returned.

  “God you’re pale,” she said to me, then opened a folder. “You’ll have to excuse my drawings. I wasn’t using the camera on the scope.” She laid a printed image on the counter. “This right here w
as taken eight months ago. This is the one that got me worried. “Our sun is in a cycle. These areas here …” She pointed to numerous circles. “Are the beginning of solar flares. Now they’re normal and nothing to worry about, however, this area here,” she pointed. “Looks like a small swirl of clouds … that’s the beginnings of a Coronal Mass Ejection. Only …” she switched to another photo. “That didn’t release. This is two months later. Not only is it growing, there are numerous others joining in. Sure, it burped out a few CME’s, nothing major, but it wasn’t letting up. It was building. I was actually concerned that maybe the sun was going nova, or maybe burning through its hydrogen at an astronomical rate. Which you know, would eventually make the core collapse and the sun a red giant, evaporating all earth’s water. That later part won’t happen in our lifetime. Although I’m still not ruling it out. Not with the latest activity.”

  “Christ,” Shane gasped out. “How do you know this Colonel? Is this a hobby?”

  “Jane, just call me Jane, and no. It was part of my job, I was a scientist for NASA for fourteen years. I was up there twice. In space.”

  “Wait. Stop.” West formed a ‘T’ with his hands. “I know you. Colonel J. Merin Ladka. You were let go a little bit ago from NASA for posting an article on their website.”

  Jane nodded. “That’s me. They took it down. Said I was causing panic, or could cause panic. It was my prediction about this. I was off by a couple weeks.”

  “Were they trying to bury the information?” I asked.

  “No conspiracy,” she answered. “They said I was wrong. They said it was no larger than Carrington and would probably miss earth like in 2012.”

  Shane asked. “Carrington?”

  “In 1859, before we had all this stuff relying on electricity, a geomagnetic storm, the largest ever recorded hit earth. It was fast, too. CME’s typically take three days to reach earth. Carrington took about seventeen hours. It was named Carrington because the scientist that discovered it before it hit was Richard Carrington. So that event was big and fast.”