by Pike, JJ
He rested against the wall alongside Dr. Handel, whom Hedwig hadn’t seen arrive. That was just like him, sneaky. Both of them were quieter and more reserved than Hedwig liked. She couldn’t tell what they were thinking most of the time. With Bill that didn’t matter much. He was a proven “good guy.” But Handel? He was a thief and a liar. In other words, the kind of scumbag you needed to watch at all times.
Nigel entered, his kit under his arm, and greeted the room with a cheery, “Hey, all!”
Sean dashed in at the last minute and joined Hedwig on the floor in the middle of the room.
Nigel unrolled his supplies and set to work. He spread a bedsheet on the floor of the cave placing a pair of gardening gloves on the far left corner, a cotton mask in in the middle, and one of Betsy’s aprons to the right. The apron had, “KISS THE COOK, But Don’t Touch The Buns!” printed across the top. They’d salvaged as much as they could from Jim and Betsy’s place. It had been a treasure trove of “not plastic” and “still good to go.” That meant a lot of cutesy aprons and clothes from the ’50s and ’60s.
“Aggie in the house?” Nigel kept his tone light. As if that might magically create a new answer.
There was no news. Aggie had been gone for months. They didn’t talk about it.
“Right. Let’s get started. MELT is a living organism…”
Hedwig was always tempted to mouth along, but she kept her lips sealed and her eyes on Nigel. He trotted out his usual lecture about the invisible enemy, word for word the same as it had been on that first day.
“We’ve been lucky…so far…”
Nigel would pause at that point in his presentation and look at the wall where Bill Everlee checked the days off, his black marker etching a line into the gray salt for each day they’d survived without further injury. They didn’t need to count the tally, but they did it anyway, slowly adding up the days that ran into months that were closing in on three-quarters of a year.
Hedwig barely needed the calendar on the wall to tell her what day it was. MELT had created a clock in her brain which automatically kept track of how long they’d been sequestered away from the world, waiting for...
What?
What were they waiting for?
For the nuclear fallout to stop falling out of the sky?
For MELT to die off? Or be killed? Or do the honorable thing and commit hari-kari?
No.
Nothing so glorious or improbable.
They were all waiting for the same thing.
She, like everyone else in that cave, longed for life to go back to the way it had been before some corporate suit decided to put profit ahead of human life. Those weren’t Hedwig’s own words. She’d been secretly listening to the radio. It riled up feelings that were better left alone but she couldn’t help herself. She snuck out of the mines, hid herself in the trees, and turned the dial until she found human voices. MELT was still on the warpath. Operation Donut was still the only plan anyone had floated. Everyone (sensible) had fled or been evacuated. Only they were still in the hottest part of the Hot Zone. Freaky.
Deep breath.
The big picture stuff made her feel floaty and out of control. She had to bring her attention back to the present, the local, the small and manageable. Truth was, she had things to do that made her useful in the local battle if not the outright war. Her job was to leave the salt mines, travel to a pre-arranged meet, buy as many pharmaceuticals as Sean’s friends Caleb and Rowdy would sell them, then come back. In one piece.
Nigel counted the tally and Hedwig kept counting with him.
Four straight lines, struck through with a diagonal, repeated how many times? Ten, twenty, thirty…
No one talked about the seven red dots which began at the end of October and marked off each month from that awful day through today. No point. It’d only lead to tears.
For eight months and nineteen days the salt mine had been their home. Nothing plastic had come through the doors, nor was it going to. She and Sean went out to collect what was needed and followed a strict decontamination protocol when they returned. Thus far, no one inside had gotten sick and no one from outside had gotten in.
And they needed it to stay that way.
“We’re going to walk through how to don and doff gloves…”
Hedwig laughed. No one except Nigel said “doffed.” It tickled her every time.
He knew what was coming so he paused until her giggles were done.
“Don and doff gloves. Don and doff masks. Don and doff outwear and clean them all.” He “doffed” extra hard, just for her. Well, and Midge, probably. If it was hard for an eighteen-year-old to get her head around the fact that they lived underground with no electricity and no running water and nothing coming in or out but what she and Sean managed to carry, then it had to be ten times harder for an eight-year-old. She was glad he made the little girl laugh.
“Are you listening, Hedwig?”
She snapped to. She hadn’t been paying attention.
“You’re the forward guard. You’re taking your lives into your own hands each time you go out there, but if you don’t do as I tell you—to the letter—you’re putting everyone else in danger, too.”
Gloves, masks, aprons. Every time. Nigel showed them how to put them on and take them off without contaminating any surface. It was remarkably intricate. He had a vial of ink no bigger than a bluebottle and he used it to good effect.
“This is MELT…” He squeezed a drop of blue onto the tip of his white cotton glove. He rubbed his forefinger into his palm and then squidged both hands together.
“You don’t have to waste ink, Nigel. We get it.” said Hedwig. “We’ve seen it before. MELT gets on everything. You can transfer it with the tip of your finger…with the side of your hand…with…”
Nigel stopped. Perfectly still. Very dramatic.
The whole room was looking at him, then her, then him again. He was going to haul her over the rocky floor and tell her why she was an idiot and would get them all killed.
Nigel didn’t reprimand her in the way she’d expected. Instead he spoke quietly, which was almost worse. “It’s when you think you know it all and are safe that you’re going to be caught unawares. Vigilance. Vigilance and practice and…” He waited.
“Never letting your guard down,” she replied, chastened.
They drilled—left glove off from the outside, clean fingers inside the top of the right glove and peeling one with the other so they were inside out and tucked inside each other, no ink on any surface—until Nigel was happy with their performance which meant Petra was all googly-eyed for Sean and Paul gave her the thumbs up.
Then it was time to say their goodbyes and get going.
Mimi decided she’d stay with Midge and Bryony a while. Petra pulled her chair over to the other side of her sister’s hammock, folded her hands over her enormous belly, and made herself comfortable.
Hedwig didn’t see Bill or Dr. Handel leave.
Nigel did his usual: Came over and wished them well. Told them they’d be fine. That he’d be praying for them. That them coming back was more important than anything they could find but, he dropped his voice to a whisper, “We really do need the chemo meds for Mimi. No pressure, but…you know what I mean.”
She knew.
They all knew.
He pressed thirty pills into her hand, saluted, and left.
Sean hung around Petra giving her little butterfly kisses on her hands. The man had no shame. Like, in a good way. He didn’t care who knew how much he loved her. It was sweet. Too sweet for Hedwig. She wanted none of that mushy stuff. After what had happened in the camp she didn’t want to be wooed or sweet-talked. She wanted loyal, reliable, and totally readable. She wanted Paul. She’d accidentally found the perfect guy.
“Be careful,” he said.
“I always am.” She wanted to hold his hand, but she didn’t want to at the same time.
“Find Petra some more pre-natal vitamins, if you c
an.”
“Yes.” Her stomach lurched. He was going to kiss her. She was ready this time. Maybe. No, really she was. She trusted him. He wasn’t like them. They were far away. Gone. Not here. Not him. It was cool. She knew where she was. If things got too much she could walk out the door and no one would be shocked or upset. She was supposed to walk out the door. It was totally safe. Her heart was in her throat making her mouth dry and numb. Weird how all that training on the crisis hotline—talking to rape victims; sorry, survivors—hadn’t prepared her for flashbacks and panic attacks and the occasional outburst of rage at nothing-in-particular. Here she was, safe as safe can be and she was visibly shaking at the prospect of the boy she loved kissing her.
Paul leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Come back as soon as you can.”
“I will.” She bolted away from him, her blood on fire with happiness and dug through the box by the back door to find her mask, gloves, and “three layers of outerwear, to keep the MELT at bay.” Putting her outfit on was easy. It was sterile. It was coming back that they had to take their time.
Sean joined her at the back doors and dressed himself in their weird protective gear. None of it, by itself, would keep a microbe at bay. The idea was to keep as many barriers as possible between them and the outside world. And not invite MELT to cling to them. Hedwig dressed in Betsy’s old clothes while Sean donned Jim’s wool trousers from 1952. The date was sewn into the waistband along with Jim’s name; all his clothes were that way. It was as if Betsy thought their clothes were going to go walkabout.
Cotton gloves. Old potato-sack tunics on top of Jim and Betsy’s clothes. Wool face masks. Sean looked as ridiculous as she felt.
They checked each other over for gaps in their ridiculous getups.
She’d have preferred Paul to come with her, but Dr. Handel had strictly forbidden it on account of his whole spleen situation. Hedwig was set to marry the boy in the bubble. She didn’t care. He was smart, funny, gentle, respectful. She imagined her mom and dad eating him up with a spoon, he was so wholesome. Her dad would lecture them on the fact that they were too young to get married but her mom would be taking her own wedding dress apart at the seams and fitting her “little girl,” and gushing, with pins in her mouth about “how time flies so, so fast” and “I wish Grandma Julie was here to see this, she’d be so proud” for “the big day.” Hedwig had a gaping, cavernous hole in her heart where her parents should be, but that was her loneliness and nothing more. She knew they were okay. She could still see them when she closed her eyes, which meant they hadn’t died.
“You ready?” Sean’s voice was muted by the mask, but she knew what he meant.
“Give me a second.” She ran down the darkened corridor, pulling her mask off as she went. “Paul?”
No answer. She kept running.
“Paul?”
She found him a few hundred yards away from the lounge, feeling his way along the wall in the dark.
“I love you,” she said, planted a kiss on his lips and ran as fast as she could in the opposite direction.
Sean had his hand on the outer door, ready to let the sunlight flood in. “Feel better?” he mumbled. “Did you tell him? Finally?”
Jeez. Did everyone know their business?
“Just go,” she said.
She squinted as they stepped outside. The sun wasn’t quite up but it was still brighter than they were used to. They sealed the door behind them and raced to the trees.
Hedwig checked the hollow on the far side of the elm. Under a pile of leaves there were several pheasants, three rabbits, and a huge box of eggs.
“Aggie,” she said.
Tucked inside the egg box were two well-worn pieces of paper. The top one was a map, the bottom one blank. Together she and Sean studied the map. A green heart marked their location. Pink hearts marked the Everlee’s former home. Between the two locations Aggie had drawn faces with ex-ed out eyes. Those faces with a circle in the center of the forehead were MELT-related deaths; the rest were…well, they’d given up coding non-MELT deaths. If there were no signs of MELT it didn’t mean diddly. Better to assume they were all carrying and avoid all carcasses.
“Other than the seven dead bodies over by the creek, I don’t see anything new,” he said.
“Here…” Hedwig pointed at the southeast corner of the map. “More cave-ins.”
Sean nodded. “So we’ll head north. It’ll take longer, but…” He shrugged. No need to say more. They traded data with Aggie-the-invisible in hopes they could avoid MELT.
Hedwig folded the map and put it in her top pocket. She retrieved one third of the iodine pills Nigel had given her, wrapped them in the blank sheet of paper and stashed them at the base of the tree. She gathered the supplies Aggie had left for the family and headed toward the back door. Someone would check in a while. Aggie had never let them down. Not in eight months. She was the real hunter in the group even if she never deigned to show her face.
By the time Hedwig had returned to the grove, Sean had peeled off his mask, folded it carefully and balanced it on the exposed trunk of a tree. Same with his gloves and tunic.
They’d never discussed it and they’d certainly never told anyone inside the mine but there was no way you could cross the open countryside with several extra layers of clothes slowing you down.
Hedwig took off the extraneous clothing, reclaimed Aggie’s map, and together they headed north.
CHAPTER FOUR
YEAR ZERO (formerly known as 2021), SEPTEMBER (I think), Day TWELVE (for sure; I’m keeping a tally in the back of the notebook; I’ll track time as accurately as I can).
RIDDLE ME THIS: If thirty people, carrying anywhere between 20-50 pounds each, travel in a southerly direction on foot, through decimated (understatement of the year; I don’t know HOW we’re going to do this; there are fallen trees, broken limbs, impassable paths EVERYWHERE) and potentially infected terrain, how many days does it take until someone blows a fuse?
The answer is: One.
Silverstein (I think her first name is Grace or Gilda or Gabby) was tasked with collecting firewood. Not a brain teaser. Go out and find stuff we can build a fire with. There’s been enough damage that you don’t need a chainsaw. She came back, stacked her loads, and Bubs (whose name I don’t know; he seems to have been an Army cook forever; he knows his stuff) took her to task about the dampness of her stash. She told him to “shove it” and it escalated from there. Alex Mikey stepped in once the two of them drew weapons. Seriously, people. How hard can it be to keep your shit together? We either do this as a team or we’re all screwed. (I thought having soldiers would mean there’d be more discipline and less need to threaten them with bodily harm, but it seems that’s not the case. Hoyt told them there would be “serious penalties” for anyone using their weapon without “just cause” or “a direct order from me.” Bullets are at a premium. We can’t use them to take each other out.)
I guess I need a list of who’s in the convoy if I’m going to attempt to profile who does/doesn’t do well under pressure and/or who is/isn’t infected. Might/might not be useful for later. (By later I mean when the world goes back to normal. I want to know what we could have done differently. I already know where I screwed up on my own preparedness.)
I don’t have all the names. Might have to come back and add some in later. I don’t know many/most of these people. [DAY 14 added: All good; filled in the rest of the names.]
General Hoyt. Crossed out. I don’t just need a list; I need a chart.
Categories:
Gender
Age
Rank/title (if applicable). Crossed out. [No point. Rank isn’t a factor now. Everyone is under the General’s command (which effectively means the General plus Christine Baxter).]
Job/task (on this mission). [UPDATE: 00/14: This changes almost daily. I’ll try to keep up, but…not sure it helps us much. Anyone who’s fit enough to do anything can and will be tasked with whatever needs to be done.] [UPDATE #
2: Never thought I’d miss having access to a photocopier. I need to make several copies of this chart if it’s going to be useful. The “old ways” are only romantic and appealing if you don’t have to live without modern conveniences. Hand-writing this out a hundred times is not my idea of a good time. I’ve given up on tracking who does what. I hunt. Baxter and Hoyt hide away and talk to “commanders.” Michael does as little as he can. The rest of them pitch in and do as they’re told (kind of). We’re doomed.]
Physical characteristics (related to fitness to travel; we’re only as fast as our slowest member).
Infected?
Infection spread? Crossed out. Won’t have accurate data on who is/isn’t infected, but I’m going to record my impressions as we go. Could add up to a useful data point.
[DAY 14: Came back and added two new columns: death and cause. I’ll record the day (D) and cause.]
[DAY 18: Added a column for notes. May need to re-copy the whole thing so I don’t have to keep crossing stuff out and adding new details.]
NAME
G
A
RK
JOB
CHARACTERISTIC
INF
D
Cause
Gen. Hoyt
M
60s
Comms/lead
Slow
Y
Prof. Baxter
F
50s
Science
See: Hoyt
N
Rayton
M
48?
Science
Fast/fit
N
G. Hawes
