by Brad Knight
“This is Gordon Thompson, reporting for CNN Headline News. Things have calmed down dramatically on the streets of major cities across this country. That of course, does not mean that we are not still in a crisis situation. The acid rain, which was been frequent in recent weeks has helped calm down the looting and burning of buildings. However, the situation for many families continues to be dire as supplies begin to run low. We are encouraging all of our viewers to stay within the letter of the law as you seek necessities.
“Unfortunately, most of the major grocery stores are still devoid of items, and are unlikely to get a new shipment of goods any time soon. Emergency drop-offs are occurring in all of the major cities. We will be announcing a bit later where and when those drop-offs are to occur.
“The president himself will be making a speech straight from the White House later this afternoon. Also, the government is working hard to get at least one major hospital back up and running in each major city. We will be displaying a list of these hospitals a little bit later in this newscast. Again, officials urge families to stay inside unless there is a serious emergency. There is still the risk of contaminated, possibly radioactive dust and acid rain, both byproducts of the problems with nuclear facilities that are occurring around the world. This is Gordon Thompson reporting for CNN.”
“Well, I guess things could be worse,” Mary said. “At least they didn’t report anything about any new threats.”
Mary’s optimism was one of the things that Troy loved most about his wife. No matter how bleak things became, she was always capable of seeing the silver lining. It was in this positive moment that a loud knock could be heard at the door.
Troy looked at his wife, and then jumped up to look at the security camera. He saw his best friend, Ken standing there looking like a shadow of his former self. He was gaunt and pale. There were several burns all over his face. Next to him was his wife and eight year old son who looked much the same way as he did.
“Open up buddy, I know you're in there.” Ken knocked again. Troy did not get up to open the door, but walked back over to the couch where his wife sat.
“It’s Ken, he and his family are asking to come in,” he told Mary, as Ken continued to shout outside the door.
“What are you going to do?” she asked him, as he looked at her with a grave expression.
“I don’t know,” he replied, turning back to the door.
Mary saw that Troy was considering opening it. She had to stop him. “Troy, if you open that door you could contaminate this bunker, you heard the man on the news. Think of the children, Troy,” she pleaded, holding on to his arm.
Troy was conflicted. His best friend was outside, begging to be let in, but he would be putting his own family in danger, perhaps irreversibly if he did so. The risk was too high.
Ken continued to plead outside. “Troy, for the love of God - it’s your best friend. We are starving and we need medical attention. I’m quite sure you have quite a few supplies in there that you can spare. I helped you build this place, for Christ’s sake. You should let me in based on that alone!” he shouted, becoming angry. The sound of falling rain began to filter into the shelter as Ken and his family began to cry outside.
“Troy, we are getting burned out here. The acid rain is back again. PLEASE!” he yelled as he pounded even harder. His son began to shriek in pain as the acid rain burned his skin. His mother did what she could to shelter him, but she was receiving bad burns herself.
Mary held onto Troy, stopping him from going to open the door. With the acid rain falling, contamination would be certain. She knew that Troy could pull away from her if he wanted to, as he was stronger than her, but instead he stood there, looking into her eyes, his face in a grimace as though in pain.
Ken shouted to his wife. “Come on, we have to find shelter elsewhere. The son of a bitch is not going to open his door. He has lost all sense of humanity. RUN!”
Troy looked through the periscope at Ken and his family who had begun running across Troy’s yard in search of shelter. About five hundred yards from the bunker, Ken collapsed as the acid rain melted off his skin. He lay bleeding on the ground. His wife and son collapsed a few yards from him, and did not move again.
Troy looked away as the family began to look like melted corpses as the flesh was completely burned off of their bones. Troy came over to Mary and began to break out in a loud sob. He had been strong for his family, all of these weeks, but seeing his best friend’s family cut down like this was too much for him. Mary comforted him as best she could, patting his back and whispering to him as the sobs came and went.
“Am I a monster?” he asked his wife, as he looked at her with a tear-stained face.
“Of course not, dear. You are only trying to do what’s best for this family. You couldn’t let them in. They were already pretty far-gone when they came here. They would have put a strain on our supplies and contaminate our shelter. You did what you had to do,” she said, reassuringly.
“You’re right, dear, I know. It’s just hard to see that happen to Ken after everything he helped me with. If it wasn’t for his help, we would not be here right now. He was a good man. He did not deserve what happened to him and his family.” Troy stood up and looked at the ceiling.
“Father God, you really have some answering to do if I ever make it to heaven - if there is such a place,” he said.
A few minutes later, the children came down with their homework ready for their father to check. He was sitting quietly on the couch, staring into space, and Brandon could tell something was bothering him.
“What’s wrong with Dad?” he asked his mother who was sitting at the kitchen table.
“Nothing dear, he is just tired, that’s all,” she replied.
“I’m fine, son,” Troy said, overhearing their conversation. He tried to pull himself together so that he could continue to be strong for his family. “Come over here and let me see that essay that you wrote.” He tried to maintain as much normalcy as he could, under the circumstances.
Troy looked over the essay, getting out a red pen to circle any grammatical errors or parts that he wanted Brandon to look back over again. He had assigned the children an essay to help them express how they would change their lives when and if things ever returned to normal. He was pleased to see that the whole experience was bringing out the humanity in his son.
In the essay, his son expressed the desire to become a doctor in a charity hospital to help people who were recovering from injuries associated with the natural disaster that had occurred. Troy was also pleased at how his son’s writing had come along since they had begun to live in the bunker.
“Good job son, you have a lot less grammatical errors in this one. You have just a few run-on sentences and misspelled words that I circled for you. I also want you to work on a more effective introduction. Make those corrections and get the essay back to me tomorrow,” he said, patting him on the back for doing such a good job.
“Thanks, Dad,” Brandon said as he got up to go back upstairs.
Cordelia came over to the couch to hand her father the essay that she had written. It was always like pulling teeth to get Cordelia to do any lengthy writing. She hated doing it and always had a hard time getting started. She much preferred to express her self vocally, which she did at every available opportunity.
“Here you go,” she said as she got up and went over to the kitchen table to sit with her mom.
Troy began to read the essay and he began to frown. He was deeply troubled at the sentences that he read, realizing that Henry’s death had definitely affected her in a most profound way. In her essay, she said that if things returned to normal, she would move out to the middle of nowhere to live by herself. She said that ever since the death of her one true love, she did not ever want to be close to another human being as long as she lived.
After reading this, he also circled a few grammatical errors. What was clear was that her writing skills were greatly improved in th
e last few months. It was also quite evident that she bore some deep emotional scars from what she had witnessed.
“Cordelia dear, can you come over here for a moment?” Troy said as he looked up at her. She came over and sat down beside him.
“Please don’t tell me that you want me to redo it,” she said.
“No, dear. First off, your sentence structure and grammar is greatly improved. What’s disturbing me is the nature of what you wrote.”
“What do you mean?” she said, not understanding.
“Cordelia, in this essay you said that you never wanted to be close to another person again, and that you would live all alone way out in the country.”
“So, what’s wrong with that? It’s not like things are ever going to return to normal again, anyway. So what does it matter?” she asked him pointedly.
“Cordelia, you cannot let Henry’s death affect you this way. First off, things will eventually get better, and we will live to see the day when we can go back to a more normal way of life and leave this shelter, hopefully forever,” he said. “You will meet other boys and learn to become close to someone again. Then one day, hopefully, way off in the future, you will be happily married and have children of your own,” he finished with a smile.
“I would never want to bring children into a world like this.”
“You say that now, but one day you will change your mind about that. It’s the easy way out to say that nothing matters and try and isolate yourself. It’s much harder to face reality and try and do everything you can to make your reality more livable. I want you to look on the bright side of things as much as you can, and when you think about the future, I want you to think about all of your hopes and dreams that you had before all of this happened.”
“My dream was to marry Henry.”
“Well, there will be plenty of other boys that would feel lucky to be with you. All you have to do is open your heart to the possibility. Don’t close yourself off and give up all hope. As long as there is hope and determination, human beings can persevere, even in the most dire situations. You have to believe that.”
Cordelia looked at him long and hard before finally flashing him a smile. “I’ll try, dad, but it’s going to take time.” She managed to give him a slight grin, whether genuine or not, Troy wasn't sure.
“Of course it will,” he said as he brushed her hair back behind her ear. “Just hearing that you will try makes me feel so much better. Now get up there and correct the few errors that you made.”
“Okay, dad, you got it,” she said as she went upstairs.
***
After six months went by, the family had gotten into a pretty steady routine. The only real concern was with the provisions. Just as Troy had expected, certain keys items were beginning to run low after this many months. The reports from the news said the acid rain threat was beginning to dissipate with time as the amount of toxic waste in the atmosphere began to stabilize.
The biggest concern was the water supply. The family only had about forty gallons of water left, and this would probably only last them about another two weeks tops. Troy would have to make their first supply run soon, and he had no idea what the supply situation was. He planned on taking Brandon with him and seeing what the local grocery stores had in stock, if they were even open at all.
Troy has tried calling various local businesses to find out what their current situations were, but he got little response. One man that ran a local gas station did answer the phone. He told Troy he had some water he could sell, but he hadn’t received a supply of gas for many weeks now. Troy figured he’d get what he could from there and then proceed to the grocery stores and beyond.
The unfortunate thing about living in a small community like Dickson was that it was not on the government’s radar as a place to drop off supplies. The nearest government drop-off was in Nashville, which was hundreds of miles away. Troy decided to run the idea by his son first to see how he would take it, and also make sure that Mary was alright with it.
One night after dinner, Troy brought up the subject.
“There’s something that we need to discuss as a family. As I told all of you several months ago, some of our supplies will not last after six months or so. Well, it’s now been six months, and we are getting short on certain critical items, such as our water supply. What I’m looking to do in the next couple of days is make a supply run. I know of a gas station that has some water left, and from there I’m going to head to the grocery. Brandon, I would like for you to come with me, if you would,” he said as he turned to his son.
“Cool, yeah, I’m more than willing to go, dad,” Brandon said anxiously. “I’ve been cooped up here for so long, I’m starting to forget what the outside world looks like.”
“We will have to be very careful. There will be people out there that are desperate, and we don’t really know how bad the dust is at this point. The good thing is that the news is starting to report that the acid rain has begun to decrease, and it is now becoming safe to venture out again. I want you to prepare yourself because we are sure to witness some horrible sights out there. A lot of people have died and I’m sure we will see the evidence all around us. The other thing is we will need to take a couple of guns with us to defend ourselves if necessary,” he said gravely.
“Cool.” Brandon became excited about the prospect of shooting a gun.
“Do be careful, Troy. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to the two of you out there,” Mary said, as she began to gather the dirty dishes from the table.
“I will dear, don’t worry. I wouldn’t go out there at all yet if we had adequate supplies, but the fact of the matter is we don’t. If we were getting low on canned corn or something like that, we could make do, but without water we won’t last much longer.”
Cordelia got a look of worry on her face as she thought about this.
“Don’t say that, you’ll scare them,” Mary said.
“Sorry, I’m just saying, we have to find water, and do it really soon,” Troy said.
“What about the creek water?” Brandon asked his dad, thinking of the small spring branch that ran through their acreage.
“It’s far too likely to be contaminated. It’s probably really acidic and may also be polluted by the dust and debris that has been kicked up into the atmosphere. Our best bet is to try and get our hands on as much bottled water as we can find. For all we know, the grocery store may be up and running, although I doubt it due to the fact that they won’t answer their phone.”
“What if the store is closed, what then?” Mary asked.
“Then, we will have to keep looking until we find a place that still has water available, I guess. We’ll head down the road to McEwen or BonAqua. Somebody is bound to still have some supplies out there.”
Chapter 9
Brandon and Troy loaded their weapons and took a few bags, gas masks and two backpacks that they were hoping to fill up with supplies. The first plan was to head for the closest grocery store. If inventories were tapped out in town, they would continue down the road until they found something.
“Please be careful,” Mary said with a look of worry in her eyes.
“We will. Try not to worry. I can’t be sure how long this will take us. It all depends on how far we have to go,” Troy said. “Remember not to open the door for anyone, no matter who it is.”
“I won’t, don’t worry,” Mary assured him.
“Dad, do you have to go out there?” Cordelia was thinking back to her boyfriend and the fate of others that they had witnessed.
“Honey, if there were any choice in the matter, I would stay here, but we have to get some more water and whatever canned goods we can find,” he said. “Alright son, are you ready?”
Brandon nodded his head anxiously and put on his gas mask. Despite the risks of venturing outside, cabin fever had fully set in. Brandon just wanted to feel the wind in his face and see the wide open world again, though he knew it might look somewha
t different than the world they left behind months ago. Troy put on his gas mask and opened the series of locks on the door. The door opened and they quickly slipped out of it and shut it immediately.
“Activate the locks!” Troy shouted to his wife from just outside the door.
The first thing the two companions felt was the freezing cold. A mantle of grey clouds was shrouding the sky above them; no sunlight pierced this layer.
“Here, put on an extra layer, it’s even colder than I had anticipated.” Troy and his son got out their coats and put them on. They looked around them and saw noting but a bleak landscape, littered here and there with corpses. They came across the body of Cordelia’s boyfriend, which was badly decayed.
Troy put his hand on his son’s shoulder when he noticed that he was looking at the body.
“Son, I want you to prepare yourself. You are likely to see many more bodies. We have to keep in mind that we are the lucky ones and not let it get to us.”
Brandon nodded his head. He had been trying to mentally prepare himself for what he might see on the outside. Seeing the bodies was a little harder to take than he thought it might be at first.
They headed east down the street, and at first they saw no one else around. A few more bodies were seen along the sidewalk. Their bodies were mostly decayed, being victims of the acid rain, which had now abated.
After about a mile or so, they heard the sound of a car driving down the road.
“Quickly, into the woods. We do not want to be seen by anyone. We don't know who we can trust,” Troy said. Brandon did as his father told him. Once in the woods, they peered out and heard the car come to a stop. A second later a tall man with a rifle got out of the car and signaled to the driver.
“Come on, they went this way,” the man said.
“Leave them,” the driver said. “We don't know what weapons they have, and if we try and go in after them they could easily mow us down.”