Renewal

by Jf Perkins

  Mom asked, “Do we know what they are going to do with us here?”

  “No one is saying. People were sleeping on the floor last night, and they are feeding the people with food from the cafeteria. No telling how long that will last, and no telling how long people will be that uncomfortable without getting really angry. Now that people are getting up, they are mostly sitting on the floor against the walls, and trying to get close to the televisions. The line at the bathroom is getting long and the mood is already pretty bad in there. The guard folks keep saying that supplies are coming, but nothing about how long this will go on. I’d say we need to be pretty low-key about the fact that we have food though.”

  “Ok, so what do we do?” Mom was getting wound up. “And by the way, how are we going to pay for all the stuff we charged at Wal-Mart?”

  Dad just looked at her and quietly said, “If we need it, it won’t matter.”

  Dad spent the rest of the morning going through the giant pile of stuff they had bought, and packing it into six backpacks. We could almost tell which pack was ours just by the size. By the time he was done, the tent was down, the sleeping bags were packed, and the packs themselves were leaning up against the back side of the station wagon. The car itself was basically empty. Then, Dad put the full packs back into the car, keeping them low so that from a short distance, the car still looked empty.

  He rolled up all the windows except for the driver’s, and told us to settle on the grass. He switched the both radios on and sat with us on the ground. “Nothing to do but wait,” he said. That being the case, I fell asleep until Dad told us to move out of the sun. The morning mist had cleared away, and we were baking in the clear May sunshine.

  The radio was talking about mop-up operations in China by US Marines, and my Dad was scribbling something on the same pad my mom had used. She was standing in the shade fifty feet away, leaning against the fence and talking on her phone with an attitude that looked very agitated from our own shady spot.

  “Who is Mom talking to, Dad?” Lucy asked.

  “Probably everyone we know. I told her to let people know where we are, and to tell anyone in cities to get away if they can. They probably think she’s gone crazy. That’s why she’s waving her arm around like that.”

  Mom kept calling for a few more minutes, until we heard her say, “Hello? Hello? Louise? Hello?” She pulled the phone from her ear, and looked at the display. She got to her feet, and walked back over. “Signal is gone.” She said.

  “Let me see that, Honey.”

  Mom handed Dad the phone. He messed around with it for minute, and gave it back to her.

  “Not even the hint of a bar,” Dad said. “I wonder what that means.”

  The tone of the announcer on the radio changed. Dad jumped up and leaned in the window to turn up the volume. We could hear it clearly as the announcer was saying “…just received reports of a large explosion in Washington D.C. They’re telling us it was a nuclear explosion, and… Wait, our network has lost contact with D.C.” The announcer was silent. Then he started again, “Folks, I don’t know what is happening, but we now have reports of nuclear explosions in D.C., New York, Chicago, and… Where? And Los Angeles!” He was breathless now. “We assume it was a coordinated terrorist attack. We are trying to get more information… The news wire reports claims from multiple groups, and another claim via the internet that this was China’s insurance policy. Now we’re hearing warnings of multiple missile launches from East Asia… North Korea… Northern China… Heading this way.”

  The radio continued a string of frantic warnings, but we were no longer listening. A wave of distress rolled across the schoolyard as people ran from the building. Guardsmen got on loudspeakers and tried in vain to keep the crowd calm. People were jumping into their cars, and trying to leave. The gate was closed, but one guy drove his El Camino through it and plowed right into one of the two Humvees parked just outside. Guardsmen scattered and reformed around the other Humvee. It quickly became clear that other cars were planning the same maneuver and the Guard ran across the road to escape the impact. The last Guardsman on the heavy machine gun rolled off the Humvee just in time to avoid a series of cars that crashed into the vehicle, and each other.

  “Idiots!” My dad said through clenched teeth. He was trying to watch everything at once.

  One of the cars burst into flames right at the gate, and the fire spread quickly. We ducked instinctively, expecting a big fiery explosion. We got the fire, all right, but the TV style explosions we expected turned into deep “whump” sounds as tanks ignited and sprayed fire all over the gate area. The Humvee loudspeaker inside the fence was still yelling for calm, and amazingly, it worked. I guess the sight of people burning to death made a big impact. This wasn’t a TV show anymore.

  “The safest place to be is inside the building, people!” The loudspeaker yelled.

  Since it was perfectly clear that no one would be getting through the gate, what with the huge fire and all, the majority decided to go back inside, and maybe watch some TV. A couple of guys tried to scale the fence. The Guard soldiers just watched. Thanks to the level of American fitness in those days, they didn’t even make it to the barbed wire across the top. They climbed back down and slunk into the school building. Thinking about the escape hatch, I gained a new understanding of my dad’s brains in those brief, disastrous moments.

  Dad was telling us to stay down behind the car. I was wondering why we weren’t in the building if that was the safest place. It never occurred to me that the government might lie to us or give us bad information. The radio announcer was still talking fast. We heard a litany of government pleas to stay in our homes and to seek shelter in the basement if possible. We learned that twenty-nine missiles were in the air, after Navy ships managed to knock down sixteen. We listened as reports described the missile strikes on the West Coast cities and military bases, and the reports of our own second strike heading in the other direction. We learned that Israel was practically bristling with nuclear missiles, firing at targets everywhere, even as they were overrun by Muslims enraged by their first strike. The last thing we heard was that the remaining missiles targeted at us were harmless, clearly off target, heading for space. Then the radio stopped talking. We saw the sunny day get much brighter, and a weird sensation of multiple shadows on the grass.

  Our first urge was to look up, but Dad cried, “Don’t look! Whatever you do, don’t look!”

  We huddled on the ground expecting, I guess, to be blown to smithereens, but it never happened. The light went back to normal daylight and we never heard a sound. It still seems strange to me that the entire world can end without a sound.

  It only lasted for an eternal second or two. We heard a lot of nearby explosions; some like firecrackers and some with deep thundering echoes. They seemed to come from everywhere.

  “Transformers,” Dad said.

  Then a new swell of panic and outrage came from the school. Schools built in that era were not much for windows. It must have been cave-dark in there when the emergency lighting failed to activate. Dad opened the back door, frantically threw the packs out, ran over to the hole in the fence and shoved them through. He held the wire back as we all scrambled into the brush. Then he went back to the car, and pulled out some guns from under the front seat. We had never known they were there. He tucked two pistols into his belt, and handed the long guns through the fence to Mom.

  “Be careful. They’re loaded,” he said, and crawled through himself. He shoved us back into the bushes, and threw the packs in after us. He went back to the fence and clipped the bottom closed, twisting the wire to make it hard to remove. We all huddled in the little clearing while dad strapped packs onto our backs. Mine was much heavier than we had ever taken camping. It took a few steps to get my balance. When we were all loaded, he gave one of the pistols to my mother, and had her put the shotgun on his pack, fastened to some straps and webbing. He kept one pistol in his belt and the rifle in his hands.


  Dad led us through the brush until we emerged in rough pasture about 50 yards from the schoolyard fence. He pointed at a patch of woods about 100 yards across the field. “That’s where we’re going. Move as fast you can.” He waited until we had all passed and walked backwards behind us. We were walking fast, and Tommy was right in front of me, trotting along to keep up. We made it to the trees, and as soon as we were in the shadows, Dad turned and jogged in behind us. The woods were not very big, just the top end of a wet-weather drainage down to the river, but Dad seemed satisfied for now. That was good because we were all winded like we had run a mile. In reality, we were probably less than 200 yards from our car.

  We could hear the panic in the schoolyard. Dad made sure we stayed behind a rotting log, which was itself behind a row of bushes and cable briar. He was out on the edge of the cover, lying on his stomach with the gun pointed towards the school. We waited and he watched, talking quietly to us the whole time.

  “Nobody is coming this way. People don’t seem to think outside of roads and cars. This is about when they realize their cars are gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?” Kirk asked loudly.

  “Be quiet, guys. It wouldn’t take much to let people know we are here. And if they know that, they may decide this is a good way to go. Kirk, the cars are still there. They just don’t work anymore. Some of the diesels might, depending on how much electronics they have to control the engine, but our car has a solid state ignition, and the rest of the gas powered cars are probably dead.”

  “Why?” Kirk spoke softly this time.

  “EMP. Electromagnetic pulse… Somebody just exploded some nukes in space over America. The explosion didn’t reach us, and neither will the radioactive debris, but the pulse fried most everything electronic in the whole country. Car ignitions, phones, radios, computers, everything… If I had to bet, I’d say we did the same thing to them. Bottom line… It’s the end of the world, more or less.”

  Lucy was crying. Mom looked stricken, and finally asked, “What about our car?”

  “Forget the car, Hon. If we were at home, I could probably get the parts to fix it, but we don’t know anything about this area. It’s at least five miles back to town, and even if we could make it there and find a parts store, they probably won’t sell to strangers, at least not for anything reasonable. We don’t have much cash, and I guarantee no one will take credit cards when the machines that authorize them stop working, which they just did. And think about it. If everyone’s cars are dead, and ours isn’t, we’ll be the easiest target in town. We could never get it out of the schoolyard anyway.”

  Now Mom was crying too. “How do we get home?”

  “Well, if we had to, we could walk back to Nashville from here. It’s only sixty or seventy miles. There are two problems with that. One is that every single person from here to there is now a potential threat. People will be scared and either trying to defend what’s theirs, or they’ll be the other guys, trying to take it. Every place we pass will have to assume we are looters, and might shoot us before they can find out that we aren’t. And two, I’m sorry to say, is that by the time we get back, we will almost certainly wish that we were somewhere else.”

  “Our friends are there, our neighbors…”

  “They’re in the same boat. The power is out everywhere. It won’t be back on anytime soon, if ever. The factories are dead; lots of the trucks are dead. If it were just Nashville, then yes, we could expect things to recover, but right now, everyone we know is either trying to buy food at the stores, which will be empty by tonight, or if they are smart, they are trying to get to some place like this in the confusion. No help is coming. If the government still functions, which is doubtful given the bomb in D.C., they may be able to use the military to distribute food in warehouses. But all that does is to extend the time until Nashville runs out by a couple of days. When we had the floods a few years back, everyone pulled together because in the grand scheme of things, it was a small number of people affected, and the rest of the country was fine. Now imagine that flood, but it floods the entire city all at once and every other city at the same time. There will be no one in the entire country who doesn’t need help. Even if there is help to give, who gets it? I’m pretty sure Nashville is way down that list.”

  Mom was ready to shoot the messenger. “All right then, Mr. Sunshine. What do we do?”

  “For now, we stay out of trouble, and we survive. That’s all we can do.”

  And thanks to my Dad, we did.

  The sun had already set on Bill and Terry. Terry’s arm was asleep from leaning on the gate. He shook himself back to the present, and saw the tears in Bill’s eyes. Bill snapped back to the moment himself, blinked hard, and turned to Terry.

  “Sorry about the long winded speech. I guess I needed to get it out. Anyway, that’s how it started, less than two miles from here – for us, anyway. That was the Breakdown.”

  “That’s ok, Bill. I appreciate it.” Terry felt like he had been a part of something religious, the most meaningful church service of his life, except better, and more real.

  “Well, sorry, I guess the tour can wait for tomorrow. Come on back to the house. We’ll put you up for the night, get you some dinner.”

  “Yes, sir, thank you. It would be a long ride back in the dark.”

  “And dangerous… You’re good people, Terry. I couldn’t do that to you. Come on”

  Terry sat down to dinner with Bill, Aggie, and one of the men he had met when he first arrived. The table was covered with more food than Terry had seen in one place… well, ever.

  “Wow, ma’am! This is unbelievable. So much food.” Terry practically drooled on the plate.

  “Aww, Terry, don’t forget that we have power. That means refrigerators. What you are looking at is what we used to call ‘leftovers,’” Aggie said with a smile.

  Bill asked, “Do you say grace at your house?”

  “No. We’re usually too thankful to say thanks, if you know what I mean.” Terry replied with a hypnotized glaze.

  “Know what you mean. We had a lot of hungry years. Dig in. You’re our guest.”

  Terry piled two slabs of ham, three different vegetables, and two biscuits on his plate. He sized up the meal and suddenly felt himself blushing.

  Aggie smiled again. “Don’t worry. There’s plenty for all of us.”

  Terry stuffed food in his mouth for what felt like an hour, but soon enough, he came up for air. “Where are the other folks I met today?”

  Bill set down his fork. “Well, now that I’ve tortured you with my story, I’d like to introduce my little brother, Tommy. We call him Tom nowadays. He can still nap through the end of the world.”

  Terry stood up, dropping his cloth napkin on the floor, and shook Tommy’s hand. Tom grinned and gave him a few stout pumps, and said, “Bill’s just jealous. He needs a featherbed just to relax.”

  Terry laughed at the joke, and sat back down, stretching his hand under the table to retrieve his napkin.

  “The truth is, Terry, “Bill began, “We don’t live here. This is the front porch for us. We use it mostly for a guardhouse and a place to meet guests. Everyone else, except our mid-shift guard, is down in the village proper.”

  “A village?”

  “Yeah. We call it Teeny Town. Lucy’s name stuck.”

  “It’s not on the map.”

  “That is our intention. We would just as soon not tell too many people.”

  “You told me.” Terry paused, thinking through the implications.

  “Heh… Yeah, we did. We’re taking the chance that you will respect what we have done, and what we have to say. We’re not going to bury you in the woods. We really hope those days are over.”

  “Well, my assignment requires that I go back and report on exactly what I see.”

  “Is that your assignment, or one that someone else gave you?”

  “It’s my job, my responsibility, sir.”

  Bill turned to his
brother and said, “I told you he was a good kid.”

  Tom just nodded with a mouth full of asparagus.

  Bill faced Terry again. “We’ll talk about it more tomorrow.”

  They finished dinner among idle chat that Terry noticed left out a lot of details. He figured they were trying to give him some information without risking anything important. Eventually, Bill stood up and set his napkin on the plate. “Well, time for me to get some sleep. Talking wears me out. Aggie will get you set up with a place to sleep, and I’ll come back in the morning.”

  Twenty minutes later, Terry was under a wool blanket in an upstairs room. Aggie had shown him the honest to goodness bathroom with the flush toilet and the shower. She had also given him some clothes for the night, and told him she would get his uniform washed by morning. Amazing… Even more amazing was the hug she gave him before she disappeared downstairs. People in Manchester were not inclined to touch. Too many years of disease had made public touching a sort of taboo. Handshakes had eventually come back, but hugs with near strangers… No way. He was a typical young man, in that the feel of her chest on his stayed with him through the shower, and until he finally fell asleep.