by L. L. Akers
While Trunk paced to the screen door and back to the den doorway, the other two men were stuffing ammo and bathroom supplies into bags; soap, shampoo and other things they could find. “Hurry up!” he said.
Suddenly, a shotgun blast thundered through the house; Emma flinched and ducked down low, and then popped up to look in the window.
The men grabbed their bags and ran straight out the front door, and seconds later Elmer was standing in the den, a curl of black smoke twirling out the end of his shotgun. He’d come through the back door.
Emma ran, weaving around Edith’s rose bushes, a huge Oak, and then around the corner, trying to catch them out front.
It was too late. They were already out and halfway through the yard, heading for Elmer’s truck.
She gave chase around the other side of the house, took a knee, and aimed, already knowing it was too far. She wished she’d grabbed one of the rifles they’d confiscated from the men on the road, instead.
Dirt flew up around the men as her shots fell short. They ran like their asses were on fire, jumping into the truck—two in the back and one in the front—and took off, kicking up a cloud of dirt, the muffler screaming behind them.
Elmer ran up beside her. “Cover your ears!”
Emma turned away, doing her best to cover both ears while holding her gun in one hand. Elmer fired again, spraying the driveway, and sending up a shower of gravel and dust.
40
Tullymore & Grayson’s Group
Tucker raced to Sarah’s door, his dirt-covered T-shirt stretched out in front of him like a make-shift bag. Four cans of infant formula clanked and splashed against each other as he ran.
Jake and Grayson jogged behind him, every inch of their faces other than around their eyes covered in red dirt. Their arms, hands, and especially their clothes were filthy. Grayson carried a bag of diapers in one hand, and the other was held against his jaw, every step bringing him more pain. Jake juggled a dozen jars of baby food in the front of his own shirt.
The three men ran up to the door, and after a quick rap of the knuckles, a haggard-looking Sarah swung it wide open, with Sammi held up against her shoulder.
If not for the stick-like limbs, Tucker would have thought Sarah was holding a five-pound sack of potatoes. Sammi’s patchy skin was sallow, laying in tiny rows of wrinkles at the elbows and ankles, as though wearing a suit that was too big.
The tiny bundle wasn’t moving… not even a breath could be detected.
Tucker’s heart raced and time stood still.
Am I too late?
Sarah’s eyes widened. “You found some?”
She reached out and plucked a can from Tucker’s shirt and turned and hurried into her kitchen. Tucker and the guys tried to stomp the dirt from their shoes, and followed her in.
Looking around frantically, she turned and handed Sammi to Tucker, not giving him even a second to prepare, and then pulled open a drawer, grabbing a hand-held can opener. She snatched up a pan, put it on the table-top Coleman camp stove, poked two holes in the top of the can and poured it in. While that was slowly heating, her fingers searched through the dish-drainer for a clean bottle, nipple and ring.
Tucker stared down at the tiny girl that lay awkwardly in his outstretched arms. Her eyelashes fluttered softly, like tiny butterflies against her cheeks, and her eyes opened. She whimpered softly at the loss of her mother’s warmth.
Grayson and Jake stood behind him, peeking over his shoulder. “Bring her up against your chest, dude,” Grayson whispered and then winced, holding his hand against his face.
Tucker pulled the infant close. She was so small. Her fingertips ended with little white nails that looked like upside-down crescent moons. The tiny package tugged at his heart; so very sick and still. Flashbacks of each of his own four children at this age zoomed through his mind. He remembered when they were sick, too. Not this sick…but so many nights of ear infections or stomach viruses had passed with him lovingly holding them to his heart while Katie changed their bedding, made them a bottle, or gathered fresh diapers and medicine.
No matter how many times it had happened, nor how many kids he’d brought up, he still remembered the helpless, terrified feeling of your own child being so ill. He remembered wishing he could trade places…take it from them and bear it himself.
And this child was much, much sicker than he’d ever seen one of his own. The agony that Sarah was going through must be unbearable.
Sarah poured the formula into the bottle and shook it with her finger over the nipple, then squirted a drop onto her wrist. Still not totally sure, she squirted some onto her tongue and grimaced. It was ready.
Taking Sammi from Tucker, she hurried into the living room and sat in a rocker, cooing to her in a soft voice. She adjusted a pillow and pulled her in close to her chest attempted to get her to latch onto the bottle, sliding the rubber nipple across her tiny chapped lips.
The baby mewed softly, but it was startlingly loud in the silent house.
Tucker, Jake and Grayson flinched as one.
Sarah threw a frustrated glance at the guys and tried again.
Sammi turned her head; first left, then right.
Sarah’s hand was shaking, making it that much harder.
Tucker held his breath. If he was a betting man, he’d have bet money that Sammi wouldn’t have survived one more night without some sort of sustenance. Anyone could see she was nearly starved to death already. Silently, he prayed the baby would drink.
Sarah shakily tried again, this time getting the nipple into the baby’s mouth. The guys all breathed a sigh of relief, as Sarah’s face lit up.
The relief was short-lived. Sammi pushed the milk right back out again with her tongue, and Sarah erupted into tears. “You have to drink, Sammi!” she yelled, causing the baby to jerk in surprise at her mother’s unusual outburst.
Grayson gave Tucker a little shove. “Help her. You got four kids, cowboy. I’m sure you’ve done this before. That poor woman is about to break,” he whispered.
Tucker threw a dirty look at Grayson from over his shoulder but hurried over and knelt in front of them. Gently, he wiped the milk off the baby’s face and neck with a cloth diaper that had hung over the arm of the rocker.
“Shhh…” Tucker said to Sarah. “You’re probably upsetting her. She doesn’t need to hear you cry.”
Sarah thrust Sammi and the bottle to Tucker and quickly stood up. “I can’t do it. She doesn’t want this. She smells me, but she wants what I can’t give her.”
Tucker watched in disbelief as she stomped out of the room, trying her best not to cry out loud. With pleading eyes, he looked to Jake.
Jake backed up. “No way, dude. I don’t even have kids.”
Grayson shook his head and offered his own lame excuse. “My tooth is killing me. I can’t do it either.”
All three men were a nervous wreck.
Reluctantly, Tucker sat down in the rocker, doing his best to push the pillow in place the same way Sarah had. He pulled the baby close and shook the bottle, turning it upside down to get a drop of milk to come out, and then rubbed Sammi’s tiny lips with it.
As he held his breath, the little girl tried to latch on. Slowly, she began to drink.
Grayson and Jake leaned in to watch. “Phew. That stuff stinks,” Grayson whispered.
Tucker glanced at him in disapproval, but wrinkled his nose. “Yeah. It does,” he admitted.
Jake and Grayson looked on in awe, the baby finally at peace in Tucker’s arms. Slowly, he began to rock her, getting more comfortable, and suddenly the little girl came to life, greedily sucking at the milk.
Her stick-like arms and legs jerked spasmodically. Tucker looked toward the door that Sarah had disappeared through in alarm. “Sarah?” he called out.
Sarah reappeared, poking a tear-stained face around the doorframe. “Is she taking it?”
“She is. But does she always jerk like this?”
Grayson and Jake moved ba
ck again to their respective spots as Sarah tiptoed back to her child. “Stop, Tucker! She’s throwing up!”
Tucker wrenched the bottle out her mouth. He tugged the cloth diaper out from under his leg and mopped up the spew, wrinkling his lip in revulsion. “Here, take her,” he said, and stood up.
Sarah took her baby back and sat down. She tried once again to feed her child. Tears streamed down her face as the baby vomited up anything that went down.
Tucker looked at Grayson and Jake in concern.
“Did you check the date on the cans?” Grayson asked.
Tucker hurried into the kitchen alone. A moment later, he cussed. “Sarah, stop feeding her. This stuff is two years out of date!” he said, as he came back, holding the can up in the air, looking at the bottom of it. “They’re all out of date. Dammit!”
“Oh no!” Sarah flipped Sammi over on her knees, gently patting her back. A stream of formula shot out of her mouth, hitting the carpet with a wet sound.
Once again, Sammi’s stomach was empty. Softly, barely more than a whisper, the baby heartbreakingly cried. Sarah stood up, pacing the floor and patting her child’s back.
Tucker paced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even think to look. The guy that gave it to me has two grandkids that are still babies. That couldn’t have been theirs; they’re not even a year old.”
Grayson harrumphed. “Probably bought it on the black-market. Can’t trust nobody nowadays…” he grumbled.
The room erupted in the sound of a waterfall, bringing Sarah’s pacing to a standstill. All eyes turned to her. A long, greenish stream of liquid shot out of the diaper onto the low-pile carpet.
The men physically cringed, their lips curling as one, and Grayson shuffled toward the door. “I’ll meet you fellows outside.”
Jake turned to go, too. “I’m with you.”
Grayson beat him to the door handle, Jake following closely behind. “There’s a bag of diapers right there on the table, ma’am…” he said to Sarah before walking out and closing the door behind them.
Tucker slowly shook his head and held his hands up, palms toward the ceiling. “I’m so sorry, Sarah. I’ll figure something else out.”
Sarah held Sammi close to her. She began to hum a lullaby while she rocked the child in her arms, pacing a small path through the soiled carpet, seemingly unconcerned about the trail of liquid now running down her own clothes and being smeared across her living room floor. She looked past Tucker with tired, vacant eyes.
“Go clean her up, Sarah. I’ll be back.”
Tucker hurried through the door, on Grayson and Jake’s heels.
The three men—scared by a bit of baby poop—rushed across the lawns to Tucker’s house, shoulder to shoulder. A tremor ran through Grayson and he shook it off. “That baby was shitting like a cow pissing on a flat-rock,” he mumbled under his breath.
Tucker unholstered his sidearm. “Shut up, Grayson.”
Grayson scoffed at the threat. “Pfft. I was just sayin’. Put your pea-shooter away, cowboy.”
Jake sighed. “Hey guys…enough.”
“This ain’t for him,” Tucker snapped, as he checked his gun and then re-holstered it. “I’m going to talk to Curt again. I think he’s lying. He’s got some formula. I could see it on his face. He’s going to give it to me, so help me God.”
41
Tullymore & Grayson’s Group
Tucker loudly beat on Curt’s door again, any presence of niceties now gone. They’d been standing there for ten minutes waiting for Curt to come to the door.
Grayson looked at Jake, standing beside him at the bottom of the stoop, and shook his head. He turned to go. “Hey man, he’s not here. We’ve got to get back to the farm. The ladies are all alone.”
Stubbornly, Tucker ignored him, and waited for the door to be answered.
Grayson meandered through the yard, looking at the rough new stumps sticking out like sore thumbs from what must have previously been manicured landscaping. “This fool does know these trees won’t burn, right? They’re too green. They need to season.”
Tucker shrugged, and finally gave up on knocking. “Let’s check the backyard.”
Jake and Grayson followed him as he stomped behind the house.
Tucker pointed to a neighbor’s back yard three houses away. “There he is.”
Curt stood over a group of people, watching as they dipped water from the only other swimming pool in the neighborhood. A line of folks stood waiting for their turn holding old milk jugs, tea pitchers and buckets, waiting to fill up their containers. His sidekick, Joe, stood on the steps of the pool, in water past his knees, nearly getting his gun wet where it hung on his side.
Tucker made his way over, with Jake and Grayson beside him. They stepped up to the edge of the pool and looked down into a nasty brew of green, stagnant water.
Grayson wrinkled his nose. The water was filthy. A film of algae covered the pool, and the number of sticks, leaves and other debris made it difficult to scoop up just water. It was obvious the water had basically been standing since the power went out. No one had done a thing to it. And worse, there were no pots hanging over fires anywhere around, and no filter system to be seen. “Y’all doing the filtering and boiling somewhere, I hope?” Grayson asked.
Curt looked over his shoulder at the guys, then dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “Don’t listen to him. That guy doesn’t even live here. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Tucker staggered back a bit at Curt’s rudeness to a stranger—he had never even met Grayson—and shook his head at Curt’s dismissal of Grayson’s advice. His snub to Jake—whom he did know—didn’t go unnoticed either.
He bit his tongue. Not my circus. Not my monkeys.
Grayson shrugged. “Okay. But mark my words…y’all drink that water and you’ll probably be running like a scalded dog and shitting through a screen door from thirty paces, without hitting a wire.”
For once, Tucker was in agreement with Grayson. He’d already talked to the entire neighborhood as a whole—before they’d voted for a leader—about the dangers of drinking the pool water. It was the most controversial subject they’d discussed…many thinking the chlorine and chemicals had made it safe to drink.
He had no idea if they were right or wrong, but Curt and his crowd were there for that conversation.
A few of the guys, who supposedly had first-hand knowledge of the chemicals that went into pools, disagreed, saying first the water needed to be filtered, and then boiled, before using it for drinking or cooking. These folks said boiling it first would just concentrate any chemicals, making it toxic.
Yet others argued for boiling it first, and then filtering.
No one knew the answer for sure…so majority ruled that the safest route was to filter it first—several ways—and then boil it. He agreed with that plan. He didn’t want the responsibility of people getting sick.
In addition, they’d assigned teams of older kids and teenagers the chore of keeping the pool clean and moving the water around as much as possible.
They took turns with paddles and nets, every hour on the hour during daylight. First they skimmed the pool for bugs and debris, then spent the rest of their assigned time walking around the edge of the pool with their paddles in the water, creating movement.
He had no clue if keeping the water moving helped anything, but it sure didn’t hurt, and it kept the kids busy too.
They’d also assigned a water-filter team that rotated every hour. At one end of his swimming pool, they had a filter station set up.
The first filter was home-made, and it was huge. Several people had extra bags of sand they hadn’t used for their kids’ small sandboxes or play areas. Using the sand and wood that they made into charcoal, they created a five-layer gravity-fed filter system.
The filter worked by pouring water through a layer of gravel-sized rocks, then a layer of small pebbles. After that, it went through a layer of sand and a layer of the home-made
charcoal. Finally, it dripped through an extra-large white cotton T-shirt.
It was a slow process, but they kept it going most of their waking hours.
Once the water had filtered through their home-made system, it was then carried over to a Big Berkey filter system that a neighbor had donated to the group—temporarily at least. It was nearly brand new, and it sat up on the corner of a table along with a clean bucket for moving the water.
After passing through the Berkey, the water was taken to the third station.
The third station was a Sawyer Mini filter attached with tubing that was drilled into the bottom of one bucket, that then filtered into a new clean bucket beneath it. This one took quite a bit longer than the Big Berkey, and would wear out faster. Luckily, several people had these, so they had back-ups.
Finally, after running through the three filter systems, the water was carried over to be boiled in a cauldron over a fire. It looked like overkill, but better safe than sorry.
Several people had duplicated their huge home-made filter with smaller versions that were made from empty two-liter drink bottles, to keep at their own house. They cut the ends off the bottles and turned them upside down, thus the clean water dripped out the small opening in what was the top, and they were able to hang it and refill small water bottles for drinking, and then cap it when it wasn’t in use.
Tucker allowed any family that had already ran out of water at home to take one five-gallon bucket of his pool water each day for drinking, bathing or whatever they needed it for. But soon, if the power didn’t come back on, he’d have to tighten the water rations. It was amazing how fast the water-line in the pool was going down.
Yeah, not his circus, but some of these folks following Curt were still his friends—at least he thought they were. But regardless, they were still his neighbors. Tucker couldn’t hold his tongue anymore. “Look, Curt. Grayson’s right. If y’all are using that water for drinking and cooking without treating it first, you’re going to get sick.”