by E S Richards
He kept walking though, with no other option presenting itself, staying close to the water’s edge. Even though the smoke was thicker there, it gradually started to thin as he moved away from the burning bridge.
Looking down at the baby Len started to softly hum a lullaby he used to sing to James when he still had trouble sleeping. The melody calmed him but also made his eyes glaze with a sheen of tears. Everything he did reminded him of his family and yet everything that possibly could seemed to be getting in the way of him seeing them again.
South Haven won’t be as bad as Chicago, Len constantly told himself, his wishful thinking the only thing keeping him sane. Amy and James will just be sitting at home, listening to stories of what’s happening on the news. They won’t be in danger, they won’t be afraid, they’ll be safe.
The whine of an engine snapped Len back to his senses as he tried to discern where it was coming from. His first thought was the road; could somebody have possibly got a car working? It seemed impossible, especially with the roads gridlocked even more so than they were during morning rush hour.
Disregarding the idea Len turned his concentration back to the river, looking back in the direction of the burning bridge. Sure enough a small fleck of a boat was making its way toward him, tearing along the center of the still waters.
Len bit his lip. His first thought was to draw attention to himself, make them aware that he was someone who needed assistance in crossing the river. The twinge in his ribs told him to do the complete opposite though, the memory of being beaten by strangers far too fresh in his mind.
Instead Len hobbled toward a small shelter, one that used to be where people gathered to wait for a water taxi during the pouring Chicago rain. Now it wasn’t really used for anything by the look of things, the more upscale waiting platforms closer to the bridge and the newly built dock having taken its place.
Entering the old brick shelter, Len placed the little boy down on one of the seats. The small building was sweltering, heat appearing to magnify due to the enclosed nature of the space. He wiped a filthy sleeve across his forehead, the fabric of his once expensive shirt coming away covered in sweat, blood and dirt. Len barely gave it a second thought however, knowing survival was far more important than wealth or possessions in a time like this.
From the windows—although they were more like holes in the side of the building now, the glass long knocked out by weather or vandals—Len watched the approaching boat. It looked like a small speedboat of some kind, and as it fully emerged from the darkness of the smoke Len realized it was exactly that. The words Chicago P.D. were printed on the side, marking it as a vehicle of the city’s police department.
Squinting harder, Len tried to discern whether the people in the boat belonged to the police department as well. He could only make out two passengers, both with short hair—probably male, Len assumed—but their clothing was impossible to make out from such a distance. They continued tearing along the river, passing Len hidden away in his building without sparing a fleeting glance in his direction. Then, gradually, they began to veer out of the center of the river and toward the shore where Len was hiding.
Now Len really didn’t know what to do. The pair parked the speedboat maybe five hundred yards from where he hid, a journey Len was unlikely to make undetected. So, without any other options, he simply continued to watch them. One of the men jumped out of the boat, the other throwing a rope to the first, which he fastened around some sort of mooring block. When the boat was firmly secured however, the man simply climbed back into it and sat back beside his companion.
Watching their behavior for a moment, Len carefully noted how they interacted with one another. They seemed friendly, one of them casually putting their arm around the other. Over five minutes passed and they still hadn’t moved from the boat, appearing to just engage in regular conversation.
Len fidgeted where he stood. What were they waiting for? Who were they waiting for? The group with the shaved heads danced around in Len’s vision. Could these two others be a part of that faction? Their short hair put the suspicion in Len’s mind, but he knew he couldn’t live the rest of his life, however short it may turn out to be, frightened of anyone with a bald head.
As if on cue the baby started crying behind him and Len rushed to his side trying to quiet the poor boy. How long had it been since he had eaten anything? How long since he had been changed? Len knew perfectly well how to look after a baby, but not when he was alone in a desolate ruin of Chicago. He needed help and he needed to be confident enough to ask for it.
Picking the little boy up in his arms once more Len kissed the top of his head and stepped outside of his sheltered building. Whoever those people were in the speedboat, he needed to give them a chance. Hiding away like a coward wasn’t going to help anyone. Not him, not the baby and least of all his family. With a deep breath, Len started to walk toward the boat.
Chapter 12
They noticed him earlier than Len would have liked. One of the figures rose to their feet within the boat and pointed directly at Len, nudging the other with their arm. Len took a sharp intake of breath but forced himself to keep walking, there were only about a hundred yards to go now until he reached the small vessel.
Keeping one arm wrapped around the baby boy he’d carried from the center of Chicago, he raised his other arm above his head and offered the two people within the boat a polite wave.
“Hello!” he called, speaking first as he started to walk down the small jetty to where the police speedboat was bobbing peacefully on the still river water. “You guys alright?”
As Len approached he realized that both the people in the boat weren’t male, one being a young woman just with short cut hair. The man with her looked a similar age, possibly both in their mid to late twenties. They definitely didn’t look like police officers though, telling Len immediately that the boat didn’t belong to them.
“Hi,” the woman spoke first, “yeah, you?” Len could see right away that she felt awkward by the forced conversation and as he came to a stop just a few feet away from the boat he saw equally awkward expressions upon both of the boaters’ faces.
Something told him neither of them were a threat, they were simply trying to keep safe while Chicago was falling down around them. As the older member of the group, Len tried to summon up some courage to act his age and give off an air of composure to the couple.
“As good as can be expected,” he offered the two people what he hoped was a confident smile. “I found this little one,” he gestured to the baby in his arms, “in the city. Don’t suppose you have any food he could eat, do you?”
The woman gasped, “He’s not yours?”
Len shook his head, jiggling the little boy against his chest to try to keep him quiet. “No, his mother didn’t make it. And when I found him there wasn’t a single other person around, I couldn’t just leave him.”
“Climb aboard,” the man in the boat finally spoke, “we’ll see what we can find.”
Len thanked the two people and manoeuvred himself into the speedboat as gracefully as he could with a baby in his arms. He introduced himself, learning that the couple weren’t even from Chicago, but actually lived much further west in Bloomington, Illinois.
“We’d only come over for a long weekend to see Freddie’s friends from school,” the woman, Jen, told Len their story while her fiancé rifled through the containers in the boat, searching for some food that would be suitable for the baby.
“We can’t have been in the city more than ten minutes before people started panicking. Hadn’t even managed to tell Jess and Pete we’d arrived; our phones stopped working on the way over. So we thought we’d just walk along the river as planned toward the café where we were supposed to meet, but we never made it.”
Jen started sniffing toward the end of her sentence, Freddie moving to sit across from her, placing a hand on her knee in comfort.
“There’s water, although we’re surrounded by plenty o
f that,” Freddie tried to make a joke while passing a bottle of water to Len. “And a load of dried ration packets that I think you just add water to. Not sure any of it is suitable for a baby though, sorry.”
Len accepted the bottle of water graciously, unscrewing the lid and taking several large mouthfuls himself. It had been a while since he’d eaten or drank anything, but somehow the fatigue his body was undoubtedly feeling had been pushed aside by the danger of his situation.
He looked down at the baby boy, nestled between himself and Jen in the boat. Water was going to have to do for now, but eventually he’d have to find something more to feed the little guy and figure out what to ultimately do with him.
“Do you mind?” Jen posed the question to Len while picking up a bottle of water of her own, meaning to hold the baby for him.
“Err no, go ahead,” Len shrugged, although he couldn’t deny the sense of attachment he felt toward the baby.
“Does he have a name?” Freddie asked from where he sat, watching his fiancée as she carefully helped the little boy drink.
“No,” Len shook his head, “I don’t know anything about him.”
“He looks like a Matthew,” Jen mumbled under her breath, Len uncertain whether the name meant anything to her.
It didn’t sound like she was waiting for a response either, her body seeming to calm somehow as she held the baby in her arms, rocking him softly with the motion of the boat. Both Len and Freddie watched her quietly; all three of them somehow finding a moment of peace amongst the billows of smoke and miles of wreckage that surrounded them.
“So where are you going?” Freddie broke the silence with a question first, finally pulling his eyes away from his fiancée and the young child. “Our plan is to try and take this boat as far as we can manage down the river. It flows all the way back to Bloomington, seems like the most straightforward way to get there.”
Len nodded at the plan, suddenly wishing he had a boat of his own. Crossing Lake Michigan and reaching South Haven would surely be easier if he could stick to the waterways.
“I’m trying to reach my family,” he spoke with a wishful gaze in his eyes. “They’re across the lake in Michigan; my little boy and ex-wife. I’ve got to get to them somehow, but it’s a long way to go.”
Freddie was quiet for a moment, thinking. Len knew he was traveling in the opposite direction to the couple and so they wouldn’t be able to journey together, he was just glad for the small rest and the easy conversation with people who didn’t want to hurt him.
“Well, we can give you a ride to the other shore at least,” Freddie smiled, tipping his head backwards to the other side of the river. “I assume that’s where you want to be?”
“Yes, please!” Len gushed with gratitude, finally seeing himself making progress in his journey to his family.
“There’s just one problem,” Freddie continued quickly before Len could get too excited. “We need to refuel.”
Len sank back in his seat; his posture slumping again after the moment of premature excitement Freddie had dealt him. He didn’t know where the man intended to find gasoline from, most of the cars he’d passed having burnt away, charring themselves into shells.
“The water taxis,” Freddie offered, noting the look of confusion on Len’s face. “They should still have gallons of gasoline inside them, and nothing seems to have happened to them yet.”
Len nodded slightly, he had passed by several large water taxis on his walk down the river. In fact, looking back over his shoulder he could still see them bobbing in the distance behind him, about halfway between their boat and the burning bridge in the background.
“Okay,” Len nodded, feeling a burst of strength inside of him at the real opportunity to get one step closer to his son. “Let’s go then.”
Len and Freddie rose from the speedboat, leaving Jen behind with the baby boy. Freddie took a moment with her, instructing her to drive into the center of the river if anyone started to approach her while she was alone. He promised her they’d be back soon, and then they’d be able to make their way home. Len kept his eyes fixed on the baby, comfortably sleeping in the woman’s arms. He thought of James and promised himself for the hundredth time since everything had began that he would see his son again soon.
“So where were you during the explosion?” Freddie asked after they were out of earshot of his fiancée, a pained expression on his face.
“The…” Len started to question exactly which explosion Freddie was referring to, but quickly realized he had to be speaking about the gas line rupture. Thankfully Len had been safely hidden in his office’s underground parking lot at the time, but he could only imagine what it would’ve been like for someone outside.
“I was underground,” he replied eventually, “I didn’t see it. Were you…” he trailed off slightly. “What happened?”
“It was crazy,” Freddie started, the moment repeating inside his head. “We didn’t understand what was happening at first, but it was like a tidal wave of heat and fire, screams, destruction… Buildings just started falling to the ground as a massive fireball swept through the roads. We could see it coming; we could literally see it steaming straight toward us.”
“It was running down the gas line, I understand it now,” Freddie nodded his head slightly to himself. “But at the time it just made no sense. I grabbed Jen and sprinted toward the river, throwing her in before me. Tens of other people joined us, doing anything to try and avoid the flames.
“That didn’t make it much easier though,” Freddie shuddered, his grip on the empty gasoline canister in his right hand tightening as he relived his near death experience.
“The water was full of bodies and debris, it was hard to just stay afloat. The air was so thick with smoke you could hardly see, either; it was almost impossible to breathe even above the water. I kept one hand on Jen and just started swimming away from everyone, trying to make it away from the center of the chaos. We floated downstream a bit and eventually found the boat. Completely collapsed into it and passed out overnight. Woke up this morning and everything was just so quiet. It’s like the whole of Chicago has disappeared, we’ve barely seen a soul.”
Freddie trailed off into silence, his experience all too recent to just brush under the carpet. Len walked beside him wide eyed. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to be outside when the gas line ruptured, to watch as a wall of fire came rushing toward you.
He felt like he should say something to Freddie, comfort him somehow but the words failed to come. What sympathy is good enough for someone who so strongly believed their life was going to end just twenty-four hours earlier?
“You were lucky,” Freddie quietly spoke again, “I hope some of that rubs off on us.”
Again Len had no idea what to say to the man, so simply placed a hand on his shoulder and steered him slightly to his left in the direction of the water taxis. It hadn’t taken them long to travel back up river toward the larger boats, even with Len’s injuries slowing him down.
He could still feel his eye swelling in size every time he blinked and the pain in his ribs making every breath harder than it should be. He made a mental note to himself to try to bandage his ribs up somehow when he got the chance. Even wrapping some fabric around his midsection should help with the pain, or so he hoped.
“Where’s the gasoline then?” Len finally spoke as they approached the first large water taxi, still yet to find another person on their short walk.
“Down I’d guess,” Freddie shrugged, “crew quarters? Engine room? I’m sure there’ll be signs.”
Len shrugged back and followed Freddie up the ramped stairwell that was still firmly attached to the jetty. He didn’t know much about boats, but that sounded right to him. Many years ago, before James had been born, he took Amy on a cruise around the Caribbean. Two weeks of sun, sea and over-indulgence. A smile crossed his lips at the memory. He remembered there being signs all over the cruise liner back then, hopefully Freddie
was right and the water taxi – although much, much smaller – would follow the same direction.
Much to Len’s delight the engine room was remarkably easy to find. Weaving through Employee Only doors and corridors soon brought them to the ample supply of gasoline. Len was impressed to find such a hoard stored on just one boat, but then he realized they spent about eighteen hours a day just traveling up and down the river, they definitely needed generous supplies on board.
Freddie tossed the empty gasoline canister he had brought with him to one side, those on the water taxi much larger than the little bucket he’d found on the speedboat.
“Let’s take as much as we can carry,” Freddie said eagerly, excited by the prospect of being able to drive the boat all the way back to his home. “We can come back for more if we need to.”
Len nodded and moved to pick up a barrel of gasoline with each hand. They were heavier than he expected and instantly he knew the journey back to their speedboat would be a struggle. He was determined not to appear weak though and dragged his gasoline every step of the way without complaining.