We had arrived at the buggy. She walked over to her side and climbed up.
“Here,” Shane said. “Let me help you up.”
I closed my eyes briefly in disgust at myself. Yes, I needed help into the buggy. But I was tired of it, tired of getting help and needing help.
If I was to move forward and search for my family, one way or another I was going to have to stop needing help.
26 – WRAPPED AND WARNED
It was a silent ride and not because I was angry with Jane. I wasn’t. She was honest with me and I had to respect that. I didn’t respect that she told me I smelled. However, the simple fact that she could smell my wound made me fearful of how bad it was. There was nothing I could do about it. Not yet. Maybe once I exhausted my search or went as far as I could I would seek medical help.
Just before we arrived on campus we found another camp. This one was at the edge of the university property, and unlike the previous one we had found they didn’t have generators.
We pulled up to the camp and Jane let us know she was going ahead to the observatory. She suggested we meet her there to camp for the night.
We agreed, but I wanted to follow her suggestion of asking around the camp about my family and people from my town. That was of course, if they weren’t there.
The camp wasn’t organized, there was no rhyme or reason to how they were set up. Just people gathering and surviving. There was a lot of conversation about what would be next, how they would proceed. It wasn’t hard to see each and every person.
I didn’t recognize a single face. My husband and daughter weren’t there, and neither was the mayor, a face I was sure to recognize.
The camp may have been a bust as far as finding my family, but it wasn’t when it came to information.
One man there who kept the huge fire pit going was extremely helpful. He told us it was more of a transient camp for travelers going both ways.
“A lot of people pass through,” Fire Man told me. “West and east. Going west to look for family, east to look for help.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Supposedly further east, Washington, Frederickson, they shut down their grids before this thing hit. They’re organizing and keeping things calm until it’s safe to turn everything back on. It’s supposed to be a survivor hub. Go there and find people.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Word of mouth. People traveling west to find family. They told us. And we just spread the word.”
I told him how I was searching for my family, how they came from a small town, and he said he remembered a group of about twenty traveling in old cars. They stayed one night and moved on. Destination, he believed, was Fredericksburg.
Fire Man didn’t recognize my family when I showed him the picture. Then again he only spoke to the man who seemed to be leading the group. A man whose description matched that of the mayor.
It all still didn’t make sense to me, and I conveyed that to Shane.
“In what way?” he asked.
“Why would my family keep going east? If they knew where I was and knew I was off grid, knew chances were good that I was alive, why keep going east?”
“Focal point and survival,” Shane said. “You have a baby. Your husband’s number one responsibility is to keep your child alive and well. If you were my wife I would find a place to stop, simply because I would be fearful that we’d be running in circles missing each other. What better place to stop than an established hub? A place where word of mouth is claiming everyone should go. I’d wager on that.”
Shane’s explanation made sense. Knowing that I was looking for my family and hearing of a survivor hub made me want to go there.
I wasn’t banking that Fire Man saw my townspeople, I wasn’t going to get too optimistic, but it was a lead and I’d follow it, until, like my search, I couldn’t go anymore.
Shane brought the map with him and made a notation for the camp. He said he was going to mark every place we stopped. After the camp he suggested we head to the observatory to rest for the night, adding that I didn’t look good.
That infuriated me. Not that he spoke untruths, but more that I felt as bad as he said I looked, and I didn’t want to feel that way anymore.
Being the sick person made me a dead weight they had to carry.
Even though it hadn’t been that long I was tired of feeling physically weak.
On the way to the observatory on campus I saw a chain drug store, and I thought of my grandmother. My mind flashed back to when I was a child and my mother took a tumble down the stairs cracking a rib. My grandmother insisted if she bound the rib, wrapped it firm, my mother would be able to function better.
My mother of course argued that it was not recommended and wrapping them could cause pneumonia.
My grandmother in her sassy way just told her, “Wrap the ribs and breathe.”
It was my only recourse, I had to try something to get relief.
The drug store was heavily picked over, except the section I needed. I knew it wouldn’t be. I grabbed a few Ace bandages, and right there in the aisle I whipped off my shirt wrapping my chest from breast to the bottom of my rib cage, firm and snug. The pain pills that West found took the edge off, but made me feel foggy. I opted for ibuprofen and downed four of them.
I didn’t know if it was mental or physical, but I felt better after wrapping my chest. Putting my shirt on was easier.
My hand only ached in the palm, it was strange. I grabbed bandages for that and headed out of the store. Just outside the doorway, I stopped. Right by the entrance was a bound stack of newspapers. Probably delivered the night before everything went down. The last paper printed, at least for a long time.
The front page caught my eye and I crouched down to the stack. It was twined tight with a plastic strip, and I had to roll it off the edge to slip one out.
The headline read ‘Two Hundred Dead in Dubai High Rise’ worse than that the sub header was foreboding, ‘Should we all unplug?’
It was right there. The warning was out, even if it came across sensationalized, there was knowledge of something happening. No one listened. Not even Charlie listened. He glued himself to the computer watching. Everyone probably believed it would happen elsewhere. Not to them. Not all over.
But it did.
I took the paper with me and headed toward the others.
27 – DEWEY
Shane didn’t mean anything by it other than as a friendly gesture. It was late afternoon and we were setting up our camp in the observatory building on campus. Shane brought over a sandwich he made using canned chicken.
“Thought you might be hungry.” He handed me the plate. “Eat that. Until we learn how to bake bread in a hearth, it’s gonna be a while until we have bread again.”
I accepted it and ate it, but when I was just about finished, I got angry at myself. Why did I need him to not only cook for me, but also hand me the plate. Did they view me as the most pathetic person alive?
I felt it.
That sandwich wasn’t the only meal they prepared for me. In fact, I hadn’t cooked food for myself since I was at Gridlock. Lord knows I didn’t prepare anything when I sat on my front lawn staring at my house, scared to death to go in.
When West gave a big speech about how no one should travel alone, did he realize the weight he’d carry because of me when he said that?
I was a proverbial ball and chain. Not only were they dragged into my plight, I slowed them down in the process.
Two strangers. They had to save my life when I stupidly grabbed on to metal knowing the shock was coming. Save my life, fix me, help me, dress me. That was after I was electrocuted. Before that, they couldn’t even ride their bikes at a good pace, because I was worthless at peddling. My God, they had to go into my house and check for my family. They went out and searched the entire town for my son.
If I put that on two men I barely know, I could only imagine what I did to those closest to me.
Was that why I didn’t have any friends? And I didn’t. None. Not true friends. None that would drop what they were doing for me. Then again, maybe they did one too many times and I didn’t notice. Anyone that I called a friend, really wasn’t. The only texts I ever got were from my husband or son. I met no one for coffee or lunch, no girl’s nights out.
My entire life had been about my family, and I made them do everything. It was never me.
I was barely out of high school when Michael was born. I moved in with my parents. They watched him while I worked and went to school. They bought his diapers, formula, food and clothes, until I met Ken.
Then he took over all that.
When my parents passed away in the accident, Ken made the arrangements. When I couldn’t find Michael, many times … Ken went out and looked.
The closest I ever came to doing something alone was going to Gridlock. No wonder Ken was so worried.
Never had I done anything on my own without relying on others. There I was, everyone I loved and cared for was out there in a godforsaken world, and I couldn’t even take on the task of finding them myself.
I decided that would end.
I couldn’t allow Shane and West to continue the search, not when things were getting dangerous. We were in the area that would be affected by the meltdown. It wasn’t fair to have them dive into that.
It was my fight, not theirs.
If I were going to lead my own battle, I had to prepare.
Jane’s words to me earlier stuck with me. We were talking about disasters following a pole shift and she said, ‘I’d say look it up, but you rely on the internet’
She didn’t say it to insult me, she was honest. I was as lazy as everyone else. I probably wouldn’t have unplugged either had I not been at Gridlock.
Lucky for me, I was at a great place, a college campus. I grabbed the lantern and slipped out without saying anything. My destination was the campus library.
The red building with white pillars was easy to find, signs gave directions, and it was only a couple blocks away.
The historical building was cold inside, and the only source of brightness was whatever sunlight poked through the windows. Where the books were, there weren’t that many windows. It was massive, signs pointed to different sections, but I hadn’t a clue where to begin.
It hit me when I stood there, when was the last time I stepped into a library? It was vast, the shelves high and narrow. Standing in the center of one room was when I saw it. It caused my heart to thump in my chest.
The long and tall cherry oak cabinets with small drawers.
“No, no, no,” I whined aloud.
It was like stepping back in time to my high school days. I hated it then, I used to pretend to know what I was looking at. I wished I would had paid more attention to the card catalog.
I opened a drawer and flipped through the cards, then another and another. I growled loudly, slamming one of the drawers. “Who uses the fucking Dewey Decimal System? Who? Who even knows it? Oh my God.”
My head lifted when I heard footsteps.
It was probably West, swooping in. He’d probably ridicule me about looking for a book.
When he emerged from the shadow into the light of my lantern, I saw it wasn’t West.
The young man was probably the same age as Michael. His bushy dark brown hair was parted on the side and needed a cut. He wore glasses, and was thin. He walked cautiously toward me, lifting one hand in a wave.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello.”
“Do you need help?”
For some reason, the moment that innocent young man asked me that, I lost it and flipped.
“No!” I shouted, my voiced bouncing off walls. “I may not look it, but I am not sick!” I slammed one of the drawers. “I don’t need medicine, I don’t need treated, a bandage, cooked for or saved. Okay? Okay? Okay?” Another drawer slammed.
“Okay,” he said, calmly. “That wasn’t what I meant. I mean, if you did need like medicine or food, I’d get it. I meant …” he reached over and opened a drawer. “This.”
Embarrassed and defeated, I exhaled and dropped my head down to the open drawer in the third column, second row of the card catalog cabinet.
28 – COUNTDOWN
It was a huge, leather bound book almost too heavy for me to lift and it contained the most beautiful maps. I found the map of this area and it was perfectly detailed. Using another book, I marked where the nuclear plants were, along with the camps we had found, the route we had taken. Troy knew that library well. For a young person who probably lived off his gadgets he was adept in the Dewey Decimal system. He barely needed it to find the books I wanted.
I lifted my eyes slightly when Troy dropped another book on the table.
“This should do it. This is all about radiation.”
“Thank you. Did you find the book on that Telsa guy?”
“Tesla,” he corrected. “No. Not yet.”
Carefully, I ripped the map page from the book.
“I will go … whoa, hey, wait. You can’t rip out that map.”
“I need it. And really, what good are they going to do here now?” I asked.
“Um … civilization will rise again and these will be more than needed.”
“Yeah, well in a couple days they’ll be contaminated and this whole area off limits for a thousand years.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” He scratched his head. “I forgot about that.”
“You thought about that?”
“Sure.” He said down. “It’s gonna be soon, and it’s going to be big.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The big CME that’s coming, it’s going to be like a lightning bolt. I am going to be far away from anything remotely electronic, metal, you name it. I’m just not taking a chance. Those generators at North Anan pumping water into the core are protected. They won’t be from this CME, and I really think we’ll see an explosion. Not like, a mushroom cloud, but it will go.”
“Can I ask why you’re here? Not in the library, but on campus. Did you lose your family?”
“No, I know where they are. Both my parents are doctors, they are working at different camps. Speaking of which … maybe you should find my mom for that hand.”
“You didn’t even see it.”
“I can … uh smell it.”
I winced. “I’m sorry.”
He held up his hand in a no worries manner. “No. I promised my parents I’d meet up. I wanted to watch the big CME, try to pinpoint when it fires off. Also mark down every little one that happens as well.”
“Are you studying to be a doctor?”
“No. I’m an astronomer, earth science, that sort of stuff.”
“Is that how you all knew how to survive?” I asked.
He nodded. “I knew it was coming. After India, we unplugged. I figured we’d get hit between five and eight a.m. We shut down everything in the house. We woke up … We thought maybe we had overreacted until … until we started hearing the car crashes and planes dropping. So … you are looking for your family?”
“I am.”
“How do you know where to look? Were they visiting people?”
“No, a neighbor said everyone went east. I am going to look for as long as I can,” I said. “Wouldn’t you?”
“No.” He shook his head. “If I knew my parents were out there and didn’t know where, I’d perch my butt down somewhere that I knew they’d look, because if we’re all out searching we’re going in circles.”
“That’s a good point.”
“Maybe if you went to a hospital camp to take care of that hand and whatever else is wrong with you, maybe they’ll look for you there. If I was out looking the hospital camps would be the first places I’d check.”
“I can’t do that. I have to search,” I said with frustration. “I don’t even know if they’re together. I have so much ground to cover. I just wish I could just drive there.”
“Then you’re lucky,” I said. “One of those small pulses will fry you. I saw it happen.”
“Not lucky, I’m smart.” Troy said. “I have been logging the little ones. I know when they shot from the sun, I know how long they take to get here and I know when not to drive.”
“Wow.” I sat back. “Still, there’s no way to be certain and that scares me because there’s no way not to get electrocuted.”
“Sure there is. Wear a Faraday suit.”
“Wait. What did you say?”
“A Faraday suit,” he explained. “It’s a metal suit that works as a inductor, so no electric ever gets in …”
“I know what one is.” I stood up and smacked my head. “Oh my God. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. I knew this. My father was a lineman.”
“Then you know about the suit, the hood ...”
“Gloves and boots, yes.”
“I can give you the times I believe the pulses are coming,” he said. “If by chance the car blows. Find another.”
The loud, “There you are!” shouted by West caught both of our attention.
Troy and I turned to see West, Shane and Jane walking our way.
“Wow,” Troy said. “I didn’t know you weren’t alone.”
“Audrey,” West stormed my way. “What the hell, we were worried. You just left. You disappeared.”
“I’m sorry, I wanted to come here to learn some things,” I said.
“Why?”
“Ah, dude, no,” Troy said. “Don’t be like that. She is trying to gain knowledge. Knowledge is power.”
“Who are you?” Shane asked.
I held out my hand. “This is my new friend, Troy. He’s really smart. He helped me out and knows the Dewey Decimal System.”
“Who doesn’t know the Dewey Decimal System?” Shane asked.
“Me.”
“She just needed assistance. Not help,” Tory said. “So I just ... hey. Hey.” He turned and snapped his finger at Jane who was looking at something. “Army lady. No, that’s my stuff.”
Above the Hush Page 11