by JJ Pike
She flexed both hands. Her left hand scratched and tapped. Metal. She grinned. Metal was a great conductor of sound. She didn’t need to get fancy. She had no way of knowing if her rescuers would recognize Morse code. She only needed to make her taps irregular enough that they couldn’t be made by anything inanimate, but frequent enough that they caught someone’s attention. She stopped herself and rewound the thought. The rats weren’t inanimate, but neither were they organized tappers. Their nails would make a sound that was recognizable as “rat nails” to the trained ear. That’d be nothing like the tattoo she tapped out on the pipe.
She tapped. She paused. She tapped some more. She waited. All she needed was a small sign. Nothing dramatic. A tiny noise would do it. But the noises she heard were so small as to be insignificant. A scrabble here, a scamper there. She closed her eyes and did her best not to imagine a rat army amassing to take her down. Didn’t help that the scene from the movie 1984, when the rats ate the kid’s face, was now playing full blast in her head.
“Concentrate on the tapping. Just keep making noise. Don’t think about what else is down here. Manifest what you want to happen, not what you fear may happen.” It was her therapist Dr. Moore’s voice. Weird who you imagine when you’re back is against the wall. She laughed, though it was little more than a snort of air. It was both a metaphor and her reality. She was against the wall in the worst way.
She hadn’t been able to take a physical inventory. She had no access to her body. She couldn’t pat herself down or look herself over or check for breaks and for all she knew, her back was broken or her femur was sticking out of her leg or her liver was impaled on some rebar. She took a shuddering breath.
That was ridiculous thinking. What did Petra call it? Stinking Thinking. If she’d been run through with rebar, she’d have bled out by now. Ditto her femur sticking out of her leg. Yes, she was probably injured. Yes, those injuries might be bad. No, she didn’t know what those injuries amounted to, but also no, she wasn’t dead. Keep holding on to that, Alice. You are not dead. You.Are.Not.Dead. Hooray for #notdead. She’d never quite gotten the hang of texting with her kids, but she’d picked up a few pointers. She closed her eyes and tried to envision it: #notdead.
Her encounter with the rat had taught her that what was in front of her was plenty sturdy. Concrete, in fact. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about how thick it was or what was on top of the slab or how far down she was. Think about good things, Alice. Think of your children and your husband. Think of rescue workers and specialized equipment and the #nevergiveup spirit of New York and blessed sunlight. Think of the millions of ways out of here, not the million ways you can die. Think about #notdead.
Chapter Five
“This is my knife,” said Bill. “Good for hunting, fishing, and hand-to-hand zombie combat.”
Alice didn’t laugh. She never laughed when they talked survival or gear. He knew why and didn’t fault her for it though, jeez, it would be nice if she cracked a smile about this stuff just once in a while.
“It’s too heavy,” she said.
Bill held the knife in his palm. It was heavy. That was what he liked about it. Hand-made, Damascus steel, and a horn handle. The horn was from Aggie’s first kill. He’d whooped and hollered and spun her around like she was a little kid when she’d bagged that buck. He turned the knife over and over, admiring the craftsmanship. There was a lot of history attached to that knife. He couldn’t put it aside. He needed it with him. He had to make her understand. But he couldn’t explain why, not without upsetting her. He smiled, hoping she’d get it without putting all the pieces together.
“Really, Bill. You need this bag to be light.” That was good. She was focused on the bag and not the knife’s history. They were safe from those memories. “Keep the knife for special occasions. Don’t add it to your bug-out bag.”
In the early days of their marriage, he’d have bust a gut to get her to laugh, but he knew that the prep-work they were doing now was life and death as far as she was concerned. He met her gaze, raised his eyebrows by way of a plea, and held it out for her scrutiny. “It’s perfection.”
She shrugged. “If you insist, put it in the ‘yes’ pile.”
The yes pile was high. He was going to have to go through it again. She wouldn’t rest until they had bug-in and bug-out bags, each of them with different gear depending on where they were going to be stashed.
“In any crisis, you always need food and water and a weapon,” she said, “but how you get those things will differ depending on whether we’re in the house in New Paltz, the cabin upstate, or New York City. If you’re in the city, you have access to days of food. People need to sell their inventory.”
“And the ones selling are doing so at massively inflated prices,” he said. “You would not believe what some of those deli owners wanted for a bottle of water or a banana or a bag of chips.”
“Don’t I know it,” said Alice.
He sidled up to his wife and gave her a peck on the cheek. “But there were plenty of people who gave their inventory away, as well.” When the rolling blackouts had rocked Manhattan back in 2003, he’d walked 20 miles before he’d managed to snag a ride. There had been no power all the way down the eastern seaboard. And no explanation as to why there was no power.
He’d been working as a structural engineer for Kratz, Feinstein & Olor, one of the top architectural outfits in the city at the time. The lights went out, the computers went down, the hall monitors started their evacuation rounds, and he and his colleagues hit the stairs. He called Alice while he still had a signal, per their own private protocol, then turned his phone off to save power. Then it was just him and a few million New Yorkers hoofing it up the West Side Highway in the middle of the afternoon.
That was when he’d learned that some business owners would stick it to you in a crisis situation. No power meant no working fridges. No fridges? No way to keep salad or soda or yogurt cool. Not knowing how long the outage would last, some store owners hawked their wares at double and triple their normal prices, whereas others went out of their way to help their fellow New Yorkers. There were as many, if not more, “free give away” tables outside delis and bodegas as there were vendors who’d take your last dollar out of your sweaty palm. It had been an object lesson in human behavior. One he’d never forgotten. There would always be good people, as well as selfish ones. It’d made him glad, in a way, because it directly contradicted everything Alice said about human behavior in extremis. She expected only cruelty. He knew there was commensurate kindness.
“You only need this…” She held up his water filter. “This…” His insulated blanket. “And this…” She loved his Glock more than he did. But she was wrong. If he had to run for cover and he had the kids with him, he was going to at least need the diaper bag. He added it back to the “yes” pile. Along with baby food. No way Midge would be able to eat deer for days on end. And he surely needed his solar charger, the Gorilla tape, the Emberlite stove. Pliers, cord—shoot, he definitely needed his Pocket Guide to Wild Edibles. He reached over to the other side of the bed. Medicinal Plant Guide, back in the yes pile, along with the Cyalume chem lights and the candles. She was crazy if she thought he could do without any of those things. He hadn’t even looked at the checklist. That was all just off the top of his head. Ironic that she would train him for “preparedness” and he’d be the one to know what to take.
“Fine,” she said. She was smiling, so Bill knew she knew something he didn’t, which was annoying and endearing and then annoying again. She shrugged. “What? No, I am serious. That’s fine. If you think that’s what you need for an instant emergency bag, pack it up and go for a run.”
“Go for a run?”
“Yep. Run. Strap your backpack on, fully packed, don’t hold back, take everything you think you need and run.”
“This pack would go in the car.”
“I know,” she said. “You need a minimum of one bug-out kit that you c
an run several miles with. Because you don’t know when you’re going to need to abandon your car and evacuate on foot.”
“I’ve evacuated on foot before,” he said. “See my earlier comment about walking twenty miles out of Manhattan.”
“Walking is not running. And that was a brown out, not a black out. They discovered, almost immediately, that there was a blown transformer somewhere in Canada. You were in no danger and no rush. As I remember, you came home and I ran you a bath, then popped and dressed all your blisters. This is not the same. This is for when something real happens.”
Partly to make her laugh, but also to show her that he was tougher than she thought, he hoisted his 45-pound backpack onto his shoulders and headed off down their driveway. He was fit, so the first mile wasn’t bad.
Alice pulled up alongside him in the Forester. “Faster, Bill. There’s a fire raging at your back. You need to move faster.” She pressed her foot down on the gas and pulled ahead, but not so far or so fast that he couldn’t catch up. Which led to more gas, then more running. More gas, then sprinting. More gas and he was running as fast as he could, red-faced and breathless and sweating like he’d run a marathon in a polar fleece, non-wicking hoodie, and insulated long-johns.
“I get it,” he said. “You made your point.”
“Now add Midge. You’ll have to carry her. She won’t be able to walk far.”
Bill bent over, puffing and blowing and trying to catch his breath.
“And what about the twins and Agatha? You think any of them could keep that pace?”
And that was how his genius idea for the “fishing vest turned bug-out vest” had been born. He would only take what he could fit into a standard Pfleuger fishing vest. It had pockets galore, but it also boasted D-rings so he could hang equipment off his front, which made all his “stuff” easily accessible. It also left his hands free to take care of any kid-related issues like all those scraped knees and cut fingers and the inevitable hissy fits one had to prepare for.
And here he was, several years later, with his beloved fishing vest turning to gloop. Everything he needed—his knife, his cord, his water filter, his Glock—were secreted about his person. He tried to clear his head, but the general wooziness along with the stabbing pains in his face made logic impossible. He needed his gun most, right? He should rescue that. He reached inside his vest and grabbed his weapon. That was when he realized his pea coat was intact, but his fishing vest was a hot mess. Pea coat, wool. Vest, a lightweight composite material, probably a poly-cotton blend.
It wasn’t just plastics that were melting, it was plastics and plastic-derivatives. Alice had warned him. She’d been clear as diamonds and twice as hard. She’d cut through all the nonsense and told him the absolute truth. During their last phone call, he’d thought she was talking code when in fact she’d been straight with him. He needed to rid himself of all plastics. Immediately.
Bill tore at his fishing vest. It came off in huge clumps, leaving strings of tendrils in its wake. While he was ripping fabric from his front and doing what he could to gather up the polyester spaghetti that hung from his shirt to his gloves, he tried to remember what he was wearing, where it came from, what it was made of.
Pea coat: Army & Navy Surplus Store. All wool. Safe.
Fishing vest turned bug-out hold all: Woodsy Outdoor & River Emporium. A polyester-blend, obviously. Already toast.
Pants: He couldn’t remember where he’d gotten his pants, he’d had them so long. Good, old-fashioned denims. He was good there.
Shirt: It was a birthday gift from the twins. It had to go. It was still in one piece but given how fast his vest had turned to goo, he couldn’t chance it. The problem was getting it off without taking his coat off. No way he wanted the stuff that was in the air touching his back.
He hunkered down on the rubble, balancing on his knees with his elbows tucked in tight, ripped the buttons off his pea coat, then made himself a makeshift tent, using the coat as his shield. Only when he was sure he was protected from the falling ash did he begin unbuttoning his shirt. His fingers got stuck on the first button. Damned gloves. Made him all thumbs.
“Yes, yes, Aggie, I know. Not literally all thumbs. Four fingers that are currently acting like thumbs.”
But it wasn’t his hands that were the problem. His right-hand glove was stuck to his button. He couldn’t get it unstuck. It was dark inside his pea coat hutch, so he couldn’t see what was what, but there was no question, his hand was stuck. Where were the gloves from and what were they made of? He cast his mind back. They had to have been from Alice. She would have wanted him to have flame-retardant gloves. Not that New York State was particularly fire prone, but “you never know.” It was one of her mantras. “You never know.”
The gloves were supposedly the top of the line, when it came to fire and safety; used by pilots and astronauts and soldiers. But whatever they were made of, they were sticking to his buttons. He needed to get out of his shirt before it melded itself to his skin. He pulled one glove off and grabbed a button. It squished between his fingers, searing itself to his fingertips. It was the buttons that were the problem, not the gloves. He hadn’t had that problem with the buttons on his coat. Perhaps because they were bigger or made of a different kind of plastic? He couldn’t stop to think about it. He pulled his shirt out of his jeans and rolled it over his head with one hand, while holding the back of his pea coat down with the other.
When his shirt was fully off, he ran his hands over his face and picked out the burning remnants of his respirator. White-hot pokers, forged in the fires of Valhalla and pressed against his skin would have been less painful. He tugged at a dangling end and had to swallow a scream, just as Aggie had all those years ago when he’d gotten it wrong.
“Go slowly, Daddy. Please.” Aggie had been racing down the hill outside their New Paltz house and swerved to avoid a head-on collision with his car. He’d been distracted, driving on auto-pilot, took the corner too fast. She’d slid down the sidewalk, grinding grit into her knees. He leaped from his car and ran to her, checking her for cuts and bone breaks, holding her close when he found she was okay. She gulped back the tears, more frightened than hurt.
He treated her wounds for a couple of weeks, taking them down from “red raw” through “yellow and soft” and finally “crusty scabs he had to convince her not to bother.”
They were down to the Band Aid and Neosporin stage of treatment. He was a Band Aid ripper, she was a peeler.
“Close your eyes and count to three,” he said.
Aggie closed her eyes. “Please, Daddy. Don’t tear it off, there’s still a scab under…OW!” Her eyes flew open. “Dad! I told you not to do that.”
“Yes, but it’s over now, isn’t it?” He grinned. He would win her over. He always did.
Had he been right or had she? Should he rip the elastic from his face or peel it off slowly? He tested a corner with a light tug. His face rebelled against the excavation, sending stabbing pains up into his skull. If it was this bad now it was going to be a lot worse later. He couldn’t leave the straps in his skin. He had to do it.
“Right.” Deep breath. “One, two, three…” He pulled with all his might. The elastic dangled in his gloved hand, flesh hanging off the end. He steadied himself, breathing hard, praying he wouldn’t pass out. He started counting down. One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight…stay focused. Keep breathing. The pain will pass.
“Sorry, Aggie. I should have listened to you.” He was sweating, the world swirling in and out of focus.
“Get up, Daddy. Don’t lie down. You’ve got this hill. Heck, you could climb a whole mountain range.”
Eventually Bill lifted the edge of his coat to allow some light in. His fishing vest was a goner. Total write off. There were lumps where the pockets had once been. In the top right, a hunk of swirling red and a flash of steel was what was left of his Swiss Army Knife. In the top left, his compass. Mush. Gone. Useless. His water filter flattened out as he w
atched, dripping into the concrete below. His Glock was pitted, pocked, beginning to dissolve. He didn’t want to think about what happened when the corrosive agents made it to the bullets. Would they heat up? Would they explode? He had no manual, no guide posts, no way of knowing what would happen next.
He pulled his coat over his head and tried to stand. The rubble beneath him shifted. It wasn’t what it seemed. He’d thought it was an unstable building, newly collapsed. That was bad enough. But what he was balanced on was made alive with a compound that was dissolving his world. He was stuck on a living, breathing wreck.
“Not breathing, Daddy.”
No, Aggie. Not breathing. Worse than that. This agent doesn’t need to breathe. All it needs is plastic. Any kind of plastic. All kinds of plastic. The agent that Klean & Pure had let loose on the world was ravenous, chowing down on all the many treasures in the glooped-up remains of his vest. Only his knife remained. The one he’d fought Alice for. Made of steel and bone and some artisan’s sweat and skill. That knife had made it. Nothing else. He was going to have to search Manhattan in a pea coat and jeans with nothing more than a hunting knife.