“Do you think Steve and Maureen are OK?” Kelly asked.
In the many hours of boredom, David had wondered the very same thing.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Before we left, we told them not to drink the water.”
“I know,” David replied. “But they had no choice. I can only hope they used our bottled supplies.”
“Maybe they fled as well?” Kelly asked, deluding herself.
David turned to her in the darkness, causing the tank to wobble around.
“I don’t want to be pessimistic, babe, but…”
“I know,” Kelly replied. “I only hope they survive.”
“You awake?”
Kelly was staring at David, the morning light in the far east of the cloudy sky growing brighter. He stirred, ripped from a rare moment of slumber.
“Hm.”
“Look where we are.”
David opened his eyes, looking up at the cylindrical walls of their plastic prison, immediately reminding him that he was floating on a river in a giant teacup. Kelly was on her knees by his side, in her bright white overalls and gas mask, map in hand. Noticing the lack of trees passing above, he got to his knees to take in the view.
“Lake Chesdin,” Kelly said.
“Is that good?” David asked.
“Yes and no. It’s good that we finally know where we are…”
“But?”
“But, there’s a dam at the other end of this lake. That means the current is gonna crawl to a halt soon, so we’re gonna have to paddle in daylight, then if we get to the dam, we're gonna have to roll this thing around the dam and down the other side to the continuing stream,” said Kelly.
David sighed.
“This nightmare would make an epic movie but a mediocre book.”
Kelly laughed.
“Yeah, but it’d have to be in the fiction section. No one would believe we’ve survived this far.”
It took the entire day to traverse Lake Chesdin to reach Brasfield Dam; a journey of around ten miles. The current of the river had been replaced by still water reflecting the darkening skies above. Lifting the tank out of the water wasn’t as bad as they imagined, thanks to a boat ramp on the southern end of the dam, but getting it safely to the other side was a challenge, given the height of the dam. In the end, David opted to just let go of their craft, causing the dark green cylinder to roll and bounce forty feet to the shrubs below. The tank survived, and the two travelers continued their onward journey, but they had new problems: the shallowness of the river on the other side of the dam meant the bottom of the tank constantly scraped against river stones, something incredibly difficult to solve in the dark. Kelly and David rocked back and forth dozens of times to try and free up their craft, having to climb out and maneuver the tank manually on several occasions. There were also growing signs of human habitation, with the roofs of houses visible on the hills above the river.
“I reckon we’re probably getting close to Petersburg,” said Kelly, staring up at the dark shapes of power lines in the night sky.
“Hmm,” David replied, aware of the increased risk of human interaction.
“We’re going to need an actual boat, sooner or later,” Kelly added.
“True. But there’s a problem with that idea: propulsion. Even if we could find a boat, we can’t paddle a boat out to sea with a spade and a shovel.”
Kelly stared at the dark sky, before an idea suddenly entered her mind.
“Remember back when we were trying to get home after the pulse, we heard a lawn mower. Some really basic engines must still be working, right?”
David didn’t want to disappoint her, but he’d already considered that idea the previous day.
“In theory, yes,” David said. “But… even if we could find one that works, think of the noise. We’d be heard a mile away.”
David was right, Kelly thought. It would be suicide, but it would get them there faster.
“Alright. But what if we used an electric motor and batteries?”
David had already thought of that too.
“Well, in theory, that would work. But unless you have the battery pack from a Tesla car, we’d have to use a regular car battery. That would get us maybe a mile before it went flat.”
Kelly suddenly felt like she was battling with an enemy, not a husband.
“Well, I’m trying to come up with ideas to get us out of this mess,” she responded, crestfallen.
“I know, babe. You’re the brains behind this vessel which has already moved us, like, forty miles. That’s an achievement, so don’t worry. We’ll figure something out.”
The sound of the stream babbling over stones replaced their strained attempts at conversation, and they found themselves only talking to each other when issuing commands to free their grounded water tank; something which happened on a regular basis for hours until they’d made it closer to Petersburg, with the river deepening.
Being back in places of human habitation put their nerves on edge, with their guns always at hand. Bridges connecting the city of Petersburg passed overhead, their ugly gray undersides offering an unrestricted view into their plastic tank for anyone who might be walking across. It was when they were close to towns and cities when conversation stopped, out of fear of being heard and due to stress. And, it was as they were passing through Petersburg that evening, that they both heard the unmistakable sound of a human male voice.
Kelly shot a glance to David who crouched down into the fetal position, covering himself with his foil emergency blanket. Kelly copied him, and they slowly drifted under another dark bridge. If there was a person on that bridge they would have certainly seen inside the tank, but was it visible that there were two people and supplies inside?
“There’s something in there,” the voice said.
It sounded like it came from the end of the bridge, or maybe just under it. David and Kelly froze still. It was unlike her, but at that moment she prayed to God for mercy.
Fifteen seconds passed, maybe twenty before a gunshot rang out and a bullet hit the plastic tank, a clean round bullet hole appearing in the darkness above Kelly’s shoulder. Kelly held back the urge to scream.
“Are you OK?” She whispered to David.
“Yes,” he lied.
It had felt like the searing hot bullet had hit his calf muscle and entered his leg.
“Don’t waste the fucking ammo! It’s just rubbish!” a different voice yelled from near the bridge.
An inch of water began to pool on David’s side of the tank, mixing with his blood as they drifted a few more yards. His lower leg felt like it was on fire.
Kelly prayed silently, asking God to keep them safe. David began to pray himself, hoping God would let him live. Two atheists on a sinking ship.
“I’m getting wet,” whispered Kelly, the encroaching darkness making it harder to see what was happening.
“The tank!” Kelly whispered. “David. I think we’re sinking.”
“Kelly.”
“What is it?”
“Please, don’t get upset. But… I’ve been shot.”
“What? Where? Are you OK?”
“My leg. And I don’t know. It hurts pretty bad.”
Like most men, David was the type to claim he was dying of Ebola whenever he had a cold, as if no other human had suffered like he was suffering, so when he was acting so calm about being shot, she knew it was serious. The water was now four inches deep inside the tank and rising.
“I’m bleeding pretty bad. It hurts, Kel. The bullet hit the tank too.”
David removed the foil blanket and looked at his leg in the evening darkness. The white leg of his overalls appeared dark on one leg, near the back of the knee.
“You’re gonna be OK,” Kelly said, as if she were in a movie. The words never seemed to offer any comfort in films, so it was unlikely they would offer comfort in reality. “Just hang on, my love. I’ll paddle us to shore.”
Kelly got u
p, carefully, looking behind her. The bridge was drifting out of sight, around the curve of the river. She picked up the shovel and started paddling, but it only caused the round tank to turn in circles.
“Babe, I need you. Don’t give up on me. I need you to paddle,” she begged.
David wrapped his fingers around the jagged, sawn-off ridge of the tank and pulled himself upward and out of the six inches of icy water in the base of their craft, the movement causing a dull, buzzing agony in his injured leg. With one knee propping him up against the tank wall, he dipped his spade into the water and churned at the river just a few inches below. They formed a rhythm of paddling with equal force, preventing the tank from spinning too much in either direction, and moved closer to the bank, constantly moving with the flow of the stream. The tank was sitting deeper into the water with each passing minute, and the five minutes it took to move their increasingly un-hydrodynamic vessel toward the shore, resulted in it sinking lower into the dark, murky river. The water was reaching their waists by the time it touched the ground. David was losing blood and he had stopped communicating.
“I’ll help you out,” Kelly said. “Hold onto your backpack.”
Kelly ran her arm through one of the shoulder straps on her backpack and climbed out of the tank, causing it to tip over and water to rush in and flood it completely. David gasped in the freezing cold water, and clung to Kelly as the tank toppled over, submerging it almost completely. Splashing in the water, Kelly pulled David through the shallow mud, him hopping on one leg, until they reached solid ground. They collapsed on the bank, soaking wet and chilled to the bone. Kelly searched around frantically and saw a row of buildings near the water’s edge, knowing she had to go there for shelter, even with the risk of confrontation.
“I need you to stay with me,” she whispered. “We gotta try one of those buildings. Get your gun out.”
Holding each other’s torsos, Kelly guided David over a flat, concrete area, him hopping on one leg. They were now clearly visible to anyone nearby in their white, wet hazmat suits. With one hand, Kelly ripped her mask off and discarded it. She thought that if David was going to die, she would too. The first building looked like it used to be a business, but it had been looted bare, with only a counter remaining in the front, its entry door wide open. Kelly escorted David inside and placed him down on the floor, causing him to wince in pain
“I’m sorry, babe. Wait here.”
With her gun drawn, she crept to the back of the business, looking for a room where they could hide and she could use her flashlight to help stop David’s bleeding, but she found nothing that blocked their view from outside, with all the exterior windows being smashed. She went into the bathroom, noticing it had a separate room for the toilet. It was small; just a few square feet, but it had no exterior window. She rushed back to David, trying not to alert anyone in the conjoined building of their presence. Hoisting him to his legs, resulting in a gasp of pain, she dragged David into the tiny, dark room. Closing the toilet room door, she dove into her backpack and rummaged in the pitch black, trying to find her flashlight.
“Stay with me babe,” she begged David, who was propped up against the toilet, clearly in shock.
Grasping the flashlight, she fumbled with the switch on the side, immediately showering the tiny room with bright white light, piercing their eyes. She’d never seen David’s face in shock before; his eyes open and glassy but his expression vacant. She aimed the beam of the flashlight at his leg, the white hazmat suit a mottled blend of muddy brown and blood red.
“Jesus,” she said, pulling at the trouser leg.
This caused David to wince and grunt, feebly.
“I’m sorry, babe,” she said, tears in her eyes.
Her husband, the cause of so much love and joy, was slumped pathetically against a toilet, the life force draining out of him. What a pointless way to die, after they’d come so far. They'd survived death and disaster, only to fall victim to a fatal gunshot wound from an unknown attacker. What a waste of life, love and potential.
Kelly searched her pocket for her Swiss Army knife, the flashlight firing its bright light in all directions as she retrieved it, pulling out its largest implement: a knife. Putting the flashlight in her mouth, Kelly tore at the dirty pant leg with the blade, hacking up the the fabric, revealing David’s wet and blood-soaked thermal leggings underneath. She realized that pulling the thermal legging up to the knee would be faster than trying to cut it, so Kelly prepared to slide it hard in one swift movement, mentally readying herself to confront the gore it concealed. David moaned in pain as she did this, causing her to apologize to her husband, tears in her eyes. There was blood all over his calf, which she needed to clear up to see the entry and exit wound, and to determine if his shin was shattered or if he'd bleed to death right there and then.
Kelly unzipped her own hazmat suit down to her waist and removed the sweater David had given her before they left on that stupid raft. Part of it was still dry. She rubbed the sweater over his calf, clearing the blood away.
“Babe, it’s OK,” she said, feeling around his leg for the exit wound.
Blood trickled down his leg toward his shoe. It looked like he might live, she thought. It might not be the end.
“Please, God,” she whispered, desperately.
Aware that she needed to clean and bind the wound to stop blood loss, she opened her first aid kid, taking out a plastic tube of saline solution, biting the top off and squirting its contents on David’s leg. In the chaos of the moment, it struck her as strange that a gunshot wound can look so benign from the outside with the true damage remaining unseen beneath the skin. Problem was, she couldn’t find the exit wound. Kelly leaned in, trying to be calm, looking all over David’s hairy calf, trying to find where the bullet had exited. His shin was intact, so where did it go? She pawed at his leg, causing him to wince in pain.
“I can’t find the exit wound,” she said, frustrated.
She adjusted the flashlight's position all around the leg, desperately.
“It looks like… It looks like… I don't know. It looks like maybe the bullet... Maybe it hasn’t gone in.”
Maybe she’d watched too many movies, but she gradually began to hope that David’s dramatic gunshot wound wasn’t actually that bad, at least from the outside. She squeezed the calf muscle gently and studied it closely. The bullet had taken a chunk off the back of his leg, but there was no entry wound. It was more like a deep slash, and while it would certainly hurt for a while, it definitely wasn’t going to kill him. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“How bad is it?” David whispered.
Kelly, out of frustration, did something she probably shouldn’t have.
“Oh, babe. You’re gonna die,” she said, flatly.
“What?” David responded, not sure what to make of this news. He seemed to perk up, mostly by surprise. Kelly was saying he’d be fine only a few minutes ago, so how could he be dying?
“It’s true, I’m sorry babe,” she continued. “The truth is, we’re all gonna die one day.”
David’s shock was starting to wear off and his brain was beginning to recognize the dull burn of pain signals firing from the damaged nerve endings his leg.
“Are you… Joking?”
Kelly slumped back against the toilet door. Her husband needed a bandage, but he wasn't going to die that night in that toilet room.
“It’s a flesh wound, Shatner.”
“A flesh wound?”
“Yes. Nice acting though.”
“Acting?” David said, angry. “I thought I was going to die. I was fucking shot!”
Kelly breathed in, exhaling heavily, relieved.
“You were. And it’s just a flesh wound. I'm glad you're OK, babe, but I just know I’m going to hearing about this for the next thirty years. ‘Oh, I can’t do the laundry, I was shot’ you’ll be saying. God help me.”
David was relieved by the news but greatly offended with its delivery.
For once, he didn’t know what to say, and the two sat in silence for a few seconds.
“Here,” Kelly perked up, handing him some alcohol wipes and a bandage. “Fix yourself up. Auditions are at 9 AM tomorrow.”
She loved that man, but God, if he wouldn’t be the death of her.
It was a long, cold night, trapped in that room, no bigger than a closet. Kelly had retrieved their foil-like emergency blankets, and David had his head rested against Kelly’s breasts, the two of them still damp from the river the night before. Kelly snored for a brief moment, waking David up with a fright. If normality ever returned to their lives, he promised himself that he’d drag Kelly to a doctor to fix her God-awful snoring. Most nights were like sleeping with a damn Harley-Davidson.
It was pitch black inside the toilet room, making him wonder what time it was. This caused him to instinctively feel for his wristwatch that was no longer there; sitting somewhere back in that motel in Bedford. He woke up Kelly, touching her face. God, it was good to feel her face, he thought. Kelly began to stir, entering the land of the conscious.
“We gotta get out of here, babe,” he said. “We can fix the hole in the tank and continue, if it’s dark.”
Kelly thought for a moment. She just wanted to be somewhere warm. What she wouldn’t give for a damn hot shower and fresh clothes.
“Alright,” she said. “But let’s eat something now. It might be our last meal if there are crazies outside.”
Peering around the toilet door in the morning light revealed a ransacked office with a dead plant on the front desk. There were fishing sinkers, hooks and a couple of life preservers on the ground. Creeping forward, David limping on his damaged leg, revealed an enclave of similar single-level businesses on the water’s edge. A couple of empty boat trailers sat on the concrete out front.
“There’s a boat trailer,” Kelly whispered, pointing across the lot, suddenly optimistic. They edged forward toward the front window of the business, hoping that perhaps some higher power had indeed granted their wish and delivered them a boat in the middle of the night.
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