“Not anymore,” Steve added.
“Exactly!” Maureen continued. “Photos are valuable again. At least until normality returns.”
Maureen passed the photo to Steve, who studied it. He reached over and picked up the candle to see it better.
“I’m sorry it’s so dark,” Kelly said. “All of my photos from that roll of film came out dark. Some were a little splotchy too. I guess my chemicals are going stale.”
“It looks good to me, Kel,” Steve replied.
“I love it. I really mean it. Thank you so much,” added Maureen.
“And this is for you guys,” Kelly said to Braxley and Portia, handing them a Snickers bar each from her bag.
“Ohhhhh, what do you say?” Steve asked his children.
“Thank you,” they replied in unison, holding their Christmas gifts in their hands, better than any Playstation game or toy, given the circumstances.
“Can I eat it now?” Braxley asked his mom.
“Alright, but don’t get hyped up,” said Maureen, the kids tearing open the wrappers and stuffing their faces.
“Eat it slowly,” Steve said. “Make it last.”
The flame of the candle washed over the end of the cigar as Kelly sucked in breaths of air, using only her mouth. Clouds of smoke became visible and the end of her cigar glowed red as she passed the candle to Maureen, the four of them standing out the back of the house. The visible flame from the candle put them at risk of being seen from anyone in the forested area near them, but they were all armed, just in case. It had become a rule that any time one of them had to go outside, whether to empty the piss bucket or do the washing, they had a gun with them.
The nutty, sweet cigar smoke rolled over their tongues.
“Mine tastes a bit off,” Steve whispered. “Like smoking a galvanized nail. Where did you store these?”
“In the pantry,” David whispered. “Though the house has been sealed up to try and keep the cold out, so the cooking has made everything pretty damp.”
“Mine tastes alright,” Kelly whispered in the still night air, the sky full of stars.
“The stars never used to shine this brightly,” Maureen whispered. “There was always so much light from street lights and the city.”
The four of them looked up. A pale white dot moved across the sky.
“Satellite,” Steve said, pointing with his cigar.
They followed it with their eyes until it slowly disappeared out of sight, behind the trees. Maybe it was a communications satellite and people somewhere on the planet were using it to talk to each other. Or, maybe no one was was. Either way, it was a reminder of their isolation.
Chapter eleven
Revelation
Kelly organized her photographs chronologically, writing the date and approximate time of when each photo was taken on the back, in pencil. To save her limited supply of photographic paper, she only enlarged the ones she felt were the best or the most dramatic. This meant she had around a hundred photos which would have to remain trapped as negatives, until the rescue happened, whenever that might be. If at all.
“Babe, you busy?” Kelly asked David.
“Oh yeah, flat out,” he said, sarcastically.
It was a silly question.
“I could use your help. I’m organizing my negatives. Let’s go outside.”
With a pen and a sheet of paper in hand, Kelly collected her shoe box of negatives and stepped into the back yard, the winter air just as cold as it was inside. David came out behind her and they sat down on a couple of lawn chairs, the daytime sun shining above them, and a frozen bird, lying dead in the overgrown grass beside them.
Kelly held a negative up above her head, squinting at it.
“This was during the first week,” she commented. “Your hair looked good, babe.”
She passed the strip of negatives over to David who began studying the first one, featuring himself, green skinned with two white eyes and bright white hair.
“Even as a negative I looked better then. I’ve lost weight.”
He paused, studying that moment in history, looking at a younger, naïve version of himself.
“Have you got the negatives from yesterday?” he asked.
Kelly looked into the box on her lap, touching the strips of negatives.
“Here it is,” she said, passing it to David.
“Shit, I looked grumpy,” he said, looking at himself on the sofa when he was staring angrily at the living room floor.
“Oh, you were,” replied Kelly, picking up her pen.
“These ones are pretty pale,” he added.
Kelly stared at the negatives in her hand, taken some weeks prior. She paused, absorbing what David had said.
“Pale?” she asked.
“Yeah, this one,” he said, pointing to the second negative in the strip. “It’s kinda whited out.”
“That’s weird,” Kelly responded. She studied the other negatives in the strip. They were also more pale than normal. This was the first time she’d studied them in bright daylight.
“I never noticed that before. I thought it was the fixer that caused the photos to be dark.”
“What does the fixer do?” David asked.
“It’s used in the last stage of developing. You dip the finished photo into it and it removes the silver halide from the paper. I thought it had gone bad.”
“I don’t follow,” said David.
“Well, I thought the photos I made a couple of days ago were dark because the fixer had gone bad. But it’s the negatives that’ve gone wrong, not the positives. They must have been exposed to light. What a pain in the ass.”
Kelly studied the negatives, running her eyes over them all.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she continued.
“What doesn’t?” David responded.
“The bleaching. It’s even.”
“OK,” David said, getting bored with the conversation, seeing as photography was never a terribly interesting topic for him, pornography aside.
“I mean, if light got in there somehow, like if I opened the back of the camera, or if daylight came through the curtain during developing, maybe a few frames would be ruined, but not the whole lot.”
“Well, it can’t be daylight that's the problem if you always do your developing at night.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe the original roll of film was bad?” David suggested.
“That’s never happened before,” Kelly replied. She studied the negatives closely, annoyed that she’d lost some good photos for an unknown reason.
“Photoshop,” David said. “When we get rescued, you can fix the photos with Photoshop.”
Kelly wasn’t really listening.
“Look here,” she said. These ones have splotches.”
David leaned in, looking through the negative.
“I don’t get it. I was so careful,” Kelly said, a defeated tone in her voice. “Somehow, light radiation has got in there before I could develop the negatives.”
It was the combination of the words ‘light’ and ‘radiation’ together that stuck out in David’s mind. It was like the word ‘tunafish’. He always thought it was pointless to add the word 'fish' to the end of the word 'tuna'. Of course it was a fish, he thought. It’s hardly going to be a 'tunabird'. He chuckled to himself, the dead bird in front of them unable fly like a living bird or swim like a tunabird.
Kelly continued to study the negatives, while David pondered light, and where it sat on the scale of electromagnetic radiation. Visible light, after all, is a form of electromagnetic radiation, just like radio waves. Yet, the light we see occupies just a tiny part of the entire spectrum. Visible light sits below non-ionizing radiation like microwaves, and above harmful, ionizing radiation, such as X-rays or gamma rays from nuclear waste.
At that very moment, some dots began to join in David's mind. This was quickly followed by a sudden chilling sensation which washed through David’s very being.
His eyes changed from staring vacantly at the trees to being intently focused. David quickly looked down at the grass, studying the small bird lying dead on the ground. He frowned in frustration, thinking a dozen thoughts at once, but none of them good. He got up from his chair suddenly and stood in the sun, moving towards the dead bird, looking at it intently. This sudden movement surprised Kelly, and she looked up at him in confusion, but David looked deadly serious.
“The birds,” he said flatly, his eyes moving in deep thought.
Kelly had stopped fishing around in the shoe box for another line of negatives to compare and stared at her husband, who was now acting erratically.
“The birds,” David repeated, scanning the lawn.
“What about the birds?” she asked.
David spun around to face Kelly.
“They’re dead.”
Kelly frowned.
“Yes. Your point being?”
It was evident on David's face that was wasn't trying to be funny. A few seconds of silence followed.
“You’re scaring me, Dave.”
His eyes darted around. He turned back to the bird on the ground, then spun back around to Kelly. He was breathing quickly.
“Get inside.”
He jumped forward towards Kelly.
“Get inside!”
David ran for the door, Kelly getting up too, her box of negatives in her hands.
“Get inside!” he shouted again, Kelly now rushing in behind him.
“Babe, talk to me,” she said, standing in the hallway.
“The birds,” he said, now panicking.
“David, what’s going-”
“The film,” he said, talking over her and pointing repeatedly at her negatives. “Can radiation affect film?”
“Well... Maybe. I guess so,” answered Kelly.
“Chernobyl,” he said, still pointing at the box of negatives in her hands. “After Chernobyl, the workers wore radiation badges. They were made of film. Like, normal camera film.”
Kelly stood in the hallway, processing this information.
“Are you saying the birds have been killed by radiation?”
David stared at her, scared to say yes. Kelly's eyes looked down the hall to the spare room.
“My God. My photos. The bleached negatives. And Steve! Steve said he tasted metal. Pennies. Remember?”
“Yes. And the cigar,” David added. “He said it was like nails.”
“Shit. I thought he was joking,” Kelly replied.
“Me too. But remember that Chernobyl documentary. They said that some people tasted metal after the meltdown. People who had liver problems.”
“Jesus Christ,” Kelly said, both of them standing in the hallway, unsure of what to do.
“But where's it coming from?” Kelly asked.
“I don't know!”
Filled with thought, they stood motionless.
“Wait. The power station,” David said. “How far away is the closest nuclear power station?”
Kelly stared at the wall, thinking.
“North Anna nuclear power station. About a hundred miles north of here,” she answered.
“My God,” David said. “It all makes sense. I never thought of it. The pool. The spent fuel pool. They store all the used nuclear rods in the water to keep it cool… Jesus. It’s been months. The water must have all evaporated or boiled away by now.”
“Of course,” Kelly responded, nodding, her mouth ajar. “But why are we only seeing dead birds now?”
“I don’t know. That first goose. Maureen said she saw it, what, three weeks ago? Geese migrate for winter and they must have flown over the power station.” He looked back at Kelly.
“Winter,” he continued. “In winter we get northerlies. The wind changes and blows down this way.”
“Shit,” said Kelly. “The Geiger counter!”
David shook his head hurriedly.
“It’s fried.”
“Try it again anyway!”
David was now starting to panic.
“OK. Uh… OK. I’ll try it now. You... get in the bath! Wash yourself, right now! Don’t touch your clothes. Wash every part of you and rinse off with emergency water. I’ll try the Geiger counter.”
Kelly stood in front of him, not quite believing this was happening.
“Go!” David shouted.
Kelly bolted into action and ran to the bathroom, taking off her clothes, while David darted into the spare room. He dropped to the ground and opened the disused microwave with the Geiger counter sitting inside. Fumbling with batteries again, he pushed a fresh set into the back and turned it over, holding down the power button on the front. Nothing happened.
The sound of splashing water came from down the hall.
“Fuck! It’s freezing!” came a shivering voice, gasping for air.
“It doesn’t work!” David shouted. “It’s still broken!”
David dropped the Geiger counter on the ground and started removing his endless layers of winter clothes as he ran into the bathroom. He had to wash any radioactive particles off himself, if any were on him. Kelly was standing naked in the bathtub, shivering, rubbing a bar of soap over herself frantically. Even in a crisis, David found himself aroused at the sight of her naked body, something he hadn’t seen for days due to the temperature inside the house. Kelly frantically worked a soapy lather over herself, the suds collecting on her breasts, her nipples hard and pronounced due to the cold. She was beautiful. David tore at his pants, dropping them to the floor.
“Seriously?” She said, incredulously. “You’re getting hard now?”
David didn’t respond, aware there was no time for intimacy. He climbed into the bath and poured icy water over himself, causing his lungs to fight for air.
“Soap,” he said.
Kelly passed the bar to him. She reached down to the bathroom floor and sparingly poured cold water over herself, washing soap from her hair and face, the suds sliding between her legs on their downward journey.
David rubbed the soap over himself while Kelly got out, shivering. With numb hands she tried to dry herself with the towel hanging on the rail.
“Get dressed. Wear clothes that have been stored for ages. Nothing that’s been hanging outside,” he instructed, while he began rinsing himself.
“Where are we gonna go?” Kelly asked, standing with wet hair in the bedroom, putting on clothes. David rushed in and started getting dressed himself.
“I don’t know. But we have to get away from here.”
“What about Steve and Maureen?”
“I don’t know,” David repeated, shivering.
“We have to tell them!”
David’s hair, poorly cut by Kelly the previous week, was longer in some parts than others and it was still dripping wet. He rubbed it vigorously with the towel.
“I don’t want to scare them,” David said.
Kelly pulled jeans up over her thermal leggings, fastening up her button fly. She reached for another sweater to put on top of the sweater she was already wearing.
“But they have to know,” she continued. “Signal them. You know you have to tell them.”
David sat on the bed, trying to put on a pair of socks with cold, numb fingers.
“We can’t take them with us,” he said.
Kelly knew he was right. The kids would slow them down. But they couldn’t just leave them.
“But they have to know. They need to know,” she demanded. “Tell them now.”
David jogged down the hallway to the kitchen and connected a wire on their rudimentary communication system to the positive terminal on the car battery sitting on the counter. He pushed the button frantically for ten seconds and waited.
The 12 volt lamp next to him sat dead. He didn’t want to rush over to their house, partly because he didn’t wish to be outside for a second longer than necessary, but also because he couldn’t bear to see Steve and Maureen fear for their kids’ lives.
He
pressed the button frantically again, pushing it about forty times. Finally, his lamp illuminated, a beautiful, long glow, which meant they were ready to receive a message. David grabbed the piece of paper which had their version of Morse code, and tried to push the button as calmly as possible, his hands shivering.
“What’re they saying?” Portia asked, watching her mother with a pen and paper, ready to write.
“Nothing yet, sweetheart,” she replied.
“Oh, here we go.”
The lamp pulsed, followed by a pause, then a couple more flashes, and another pause.
“S… T… A… um, what’s that one. Dot dot dash?”
Portia studied the paper.
“G.”
“Good girl. You’re a smart one,” Maureen said, patting Portia’s head.
“I… N… S… I… D… E…”
“What are they saying, mommy?”
Maureen’s face was one of confusion.
“Honey,” she called out to Steve. “Come here a minute.”
David called out to Kelly, who was busy filling up the backpack with essentials, still unsure of where they could go.
“I told them to stay inside. They flashed that they got the message. Do I tell them about the radiation?”
Kelly ran past David and into the kitchen, opening the pantry, looking for their last two chocolate bars.
“I don’t know,” she said, getting out of breath. “I’ve got to get the map.”
David waited by the lamp and push button in case they replied. Kelly rushed past him and ran into the spare room, grabbing the crumpled map of Virginia off the shelf. She turned and hurried back to the kitchen, putting it on the counter.
“It’ll be faster if we take the bikes, wherever we go,” Kelly said.
“The suits. Go put on a hazmat suit,” he told Kelly. “And get the masks.”
Kelly disappeared into the spare room again opening boxes in search of the bright white hazmat suits they ordered off Amazon a couple of years ago.
“Found them,” she called out.
“They’re not replying,” said David.
Unprepared Page 17