by Harley Tate
“You’ll lock up when you’re done? Bring me back the key? I don’t want to get in trouble with Ralph.”
Keith nodded. “I’ll bring back the key.”
Ed stuck his arm out again and Keith plucked the key from his hand.
“Thank you.”
“Just bring it back.”
Ed retreated into his scene, pulling the Minifigure out the door and walking him down the sidewalk as Keith and Jerry backtracked to the front door.
As Keith shut it behind him, he whispered to Jerry. “How long do you think it’ll take him to figure out Ralph isn’t coming back?”
Jerry shook his head. “I don’t think it’ll matter.”
Chapter Eleven
LAINEY
Keith’s Apartment
Los Angeles, CA
Tuesday, 8:30 p.m. PST
Lainey dragged the last bag of trash out the door while Bear nosed his way into the hall. “No, boy. You’ve got to stay here. Just for a few minutes.” She pushed him back inside and pulled the door shut as he whimpered in protest. While Owen sat in front of a bank of electronics, trying to rig a remote satellite connection between the van and the apartment, Lainey finished collecting the trash and organizing their supplies.
With any luck, Keith and Jerry would return with armfuls of food and they could rest easy tonight knowing they were ready to hit the road without starving. She hoisted the trash over her shoulder and headed straight for the chute. After dumping the trash inside, she stepped back into the hall and took a deep breath.
Everything was happening in bursts of commotion followed by agonizing hours of nothing. It reminded her of playing soccer years ago when she would hang out in a defensive position, watching the striker and the midfielders with the ball only to have it fly in her direction with no notice.
As she resumed her trek back to the apartment, the faint sound of music filtered into the hall. Lainey stopped to listen. Is that? She closed her eyes to hear better. It is! She followed the music, feet moving in time to the rhythm of the waltz as she neared a door.
Lainey pressed her ear against the wood and Patti Page’s voice echoed on the other side. Her mother played one of Patti’s records on repeat most evenings in the summer when they lived in Texas. Lainey would pump her legs back and forth on the swing tied in the tree out front, listening to her mother’s voice mix with the record.
But how was someone listening to music now? Lainey leaned back and knocked on the door. No response. She knocked harder. Nothing. Was it a battery-powered radio? Something set to automatically turn on? She frowned. What if someone inside needed help and she walked away?
After a moment of indecision, Lainey tried the handle. It turned.
“Hello?” She poked her head inside. The smell of lavender and mothballs twitched her nose. “Hello?”
She eased inside, shutting the door behind her as the band picked up again. The entry led to a hall and a living room beyond, bigger than Keith’s apartment, with a separate kitchen and eat-in dining area. A recliner sat in front of an old television and from Lainey’s vantage point, all she could make out was an arm perched on the armrest. A diamond ring glittered on the ring finger of a wrinkled hand draped over the controls to a small transistor radio.
“Excuse me? Ma’am?” Lainey eased closer. The hand didn’t move.
Lainey looked around. Every piece of furniture dated from another era. A wide cabinet housing a tube TV hugged the far wall. A low-slung couch perched behind an oval coffee table and chrome barstools with red vinyl seats tucked beneath the kitchen bar. A wedding photo yellowed with age hung on the wall, flanked by drawings of flowers and birds.
“Ma’am?” Lainey stepped closer. The last thing she wanted to do was startle the woman, but from the looks of the place, she lived alone. Had she been here the last three days all by herself?
A walker with tennis balls shoved on the bottom of the legs sat in the corner. Lainey frowned. How could a woman frail enough to need a walker survive on her own without power, safe water, or natural gas?
She eased into the living room and turned to face the recliner. An old, shriveled woman lay back against the headrest, eyes closed. A pink polyester housecoat snapped up to her neck and maroon velour slippers lay on the floor beside a pair of gnarled feet with bent toes.
Lainey cleared her throat. The woman didn’t move.
Was she sleeping? Unconscious? Had she just passed away? Lainey didn’t know if she could handle another death on the heels of finding Daphne. She reached out, about to shake the woman, when the wrinkled hand moved.
The woman held one finger in the air. “This is the best part.” Music swelled from the tinny speaker, the brass band belting out the last few measures as Patti Page’s voice rose to meet it. As the song faded, the woman pressed a button and the apartment fell silent.
“The Tennessee Waltz will always be one of my favorites.” She blinked and a pair of tired blue eyes focused on Lainey. “Now, how can I help you, my dear?”
“I was wondering if I could help you.” Lainey smiled in relief. “Are you all alone?”
“Ever since 1986. My dear Chester passed away over thirty years ago now.”
“Do you have any family? Anyone who can look after you?”
The woman took a minute to respond. “Has something happened?”
Lainey blinked. “Don’t you know?”
“I’m afraid not. When the power went out, I expected a few hours in the dark, not three days.”
“Hasn’t anyone come by or at least knocked on your door?”
The woman brought a wrinkled tissue up to her nose with a shaking hand. “My nurse didn’t come yesterday or today.”
“Did you try calling?”
“Can’t seem to get a dial tone.”
Lainey swallowed. She hated to be the one to tell this lady that the world would never be the same. No sense in sugarcoating it. “There was an explosion.”
“A transformer or something at the central station? It’s not far from here.”
“No.” Lainey clasped her hands in front of her as she spoke to keep from waving them about. “Downtown. A nuclear bomb.”
The woman gasped. “No. That’s not possible.”
“That’s what everyone thought, but it’s true.” Lainey cast about for somewhere to sit and found an ottoman lurking near the television. She pulled it over and perched on the edge. “A coordinated attack occurred all across the United States Saturday night. Twenty-five bombs hitting the major cities. New York, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, all hit. The government is in chaos.”
The tissue fluttered in front of the woman’s face. “We planned for things like this in the fifties, but it’s been decades since anyone talked about the Cold War.”
“A domestic terrorist organization is claiming responsibility.”
“So we’re not at war?”
“No.”
The woman asked a few questions and Lainey shared what she knew, starting with the tip from her sister all the way to the British Consul, her reporting, and Rick’s latest email. She didn’t know why she felt compelled to lay it all out at this stranger’s feet, but once she opened her mouth, the words poured out. Maybe it was frustration at not breaking the story before the bomb, or fear of the unknown, but she didn’t stop talking until her voice cracked and she ran out of things to say.
After a few moments of silence, the woman reached down beside her chair and pulled up a clear tube. She held it to her nose with one hand while she pressed a button on a small machine with the other. Something hissed and the woman inhaled as she closed her eyes. After a moment, she lowered the tube. “I’m sorry, every once in a while I need a little oxygen. Don’t breathe like I used to.”
Lainey stared at the machine. “That’s an oxygen tank?”
“They’re a little more fancy now than just a big metal canister and a screw top. Took me a while to figure it out, but I got the hang of it.”
“How long will that last?”
&nbs
p; The woman shrugged. “Depends on how much I use it, I guess. A week, maybe more if I slow down.”
A week? That wasn’t very long. “Where does your nurse live?”
“Heavens, I have no idea. But I don’t expect her to be coming this way. Not with all that you’ve just explained.”
Lainey paused. She didn’t know what to say or what to do. Oxygen wasn’t something Keith could pick up at the store in the lobby. “So when that runs out…”
“I’ll have a while.” The woman smiled. “Don’t look so grim. Everyone has to go sometime. After all the things I’ve seen and done… Well, let’s just say I’ve had a good run.”
Lainey barked out a laugh. “I can’t believe you’re so nonchalant about—”
“Dying?” The woman pointed across the room to a bookcase. “Grab that photo album on the bottom shelf.”
Lainey did as the woman asked and brought the faded leather volume toward the chair.
“Come closer. I want to show you something.”
Lainey obliged, scooting the ottoman next to the recliner.
The woman opened the album and flipped the pages, black and white photographs whizzing by. “Here. Look at this.”
The grainy photo showed a woman with her hair pulled back in a low ponytail, sitting on a stool inside what appeared to be a medical tent. A man lay bandaged beside her, blood staining the sheet dark. “Where is this?”
“Vietnam.”
“Were you a nurse?”
“No. A reporter just like you.”
Lainey jerked back. “You were a foreign correspondent?”
The woman smiled. “Not quite. I bypassed the foreign desk and went straight into the field. The paper needed someone out there and I volunteered.”
“I didn’t know any women were in reporting in war zones then.”
“Not many were. I heard later that my boss thought I was the least qualified reporter in the newsroom.”
“I don’t follow.”
The woman reached out and patted Lainey’s hand. “It meant I was expendable, dear.”
Oh. Lainey didn’t know what to say, so she focused on the album, flipping the pages and reading the headlines of the newspaper clippings preserved for more than fifty years. Almost every article relayed a staggering number of casualties. Lainey swallowed down a swell of emotion. “How did you keep reporting when the news was so bad?”
“It was my job.” The woman closed the album and pressed her palms against the cover as it rested in her lap. “But I didn’t show you this to make you cry.”
“Then why?”
“I meant it when I said I’ve had a good run. I’ve seen amazing things, gone all over the world, met incredible people.”
“So you’re going to give up?”
“No. I’m going to enjoy the rest of my life, as long as it lasts. Without modern medicine, I’d have passed out of this world a long time ago.”
Lainey wrapped her arms around her middle. “I can’t help thinking about all the other people in similar situations. Without working hospitals, how will people who need medicine survive? Or all those who rely on equipment without electricity?”
“They won’t.”
“It seems so hopeless.”
“Nonsense.” The woman reached out and squeezed Lainey’s knee. “You just keep on doing what you’re doing.”
“Reporting?” Lainey scrunched her brows together. “Why? What’s the point?”
“People need to know what’s happening. When I was in Vietnam, I didn’t know if anyone read my articles. I didn’t know if my reporting of the facts on the ground mattered, but they did. Years later, I would run into someone who followed our coverage. You never know who’s out there, watching and reading.”
Lainey wanted to believe her, but there were so many what-ifs. “I don’t know if I can cover this. It’s not just a story. It’s the end of the world.”
“Then treat it like that. Don’t think of it as a story you need to cover. Throw any concept of ratings or reviews or approval out the window and concentrate on the facts. Relay the facts.”
“What if that’s not enough?”
The woman smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Sometimes we have to do the best we can, even if we fail.”
They talked some more, Lainey explaining about the KSBF van and the old woman listening and nodding. When her head bowed and barely jerked back up as she nodded off to sleep, Lainey stood. She eased out of the apartment as quietly as she’d entered and stood for a long moment in the hallway.
Did she have the strength to report on the aftermath of the nuclear bombs? Lainey sucked in a breath. Only one way to find out.
Chapter Twelve
LAINEY
Keith’s Apartment
Los Angeles, CA
Tuesday, 10:00 p.m. PST
The door to the apartment opened and Keith sidestepped inside, arms loaded with bags of groceries. He hoisted them onto the counter as Bear jumped and sniffed at the air. “Down, boy.”
Jerry heaved his own bags up and leaned against the wall, chest heaving. “Remind me to start doing pushups. I need to bulk up to pull my own weight.”
“I think you’re doing just fine.”
Lainey hopped down from a barstool and pulled the closest bag down enough to peek inside. It was stuffed with boxes of everything from crackers to cookies. “Wow. Looks like you had your choice of everything.”
“Store hasn’t been open since the bombs.” Keith closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
After a fresh shave, the bags under his eyes seemed more pronounced. He must have been exhausted. They had been through so much since leaving the courthouse that morning, it hardly seemed real.
Lainey let the bag go and leaned back. “How’d you get in?”
“A neighbor had the key.” Jerry yawned as he spoke. “I don’t think the guy leaves his place much.”
“How about you? Any more news?”
Lainey shook her head. “I met one of your neighbors down the hall.”
Keith opened a bottle of water and chugged half of it down while Lainey tried to push thoughts of the old woman and her impending demise out of her mind. She didn’t want their help and they couldn’t afford to spend a week tracking down oxygen for what would only be a temporary reprieve.
Admitting she was walking away from a person who would die without assistance didn’t sit well with Lainey, but what choice did she have? She sighed.
“What is it?” Keith stared at her, eyebrows lifted with concern.
“Nothing. Just tired.” Lainey put on a brave face. “Are we heading out in the morning?”
Keith nodded. “That’s the plan, right? Hit Owen’s house first?”
“About that.” Owen walked over from his perch beside the door to the balcony. After Lainey returned to the apartment, Owen had pulled in a patio chair and sat beside the glass, scanning news sites and typing away while Lainey had rubbed Bear’s head and kept the dog calm. “I don’t think we should worry about my place. It’s out of the way.”
“Isn’t there anything you want to pick up? We don’t know when we’re coming back.”
“All of my photos and video are stored in the cloud. Assuming the EMP didn’t fry the servers, then I should be able to access them eventually. Clothes can be replaced. My furniture and dishes were crap.” He shrugged. “I’d rather follow the story and not waste time, anyway.”
“Then we’re on to Jerry’s place?’
“You’re sure you don’t want to go home?” Keith’s question made Lainey wince.
Part of her did want to go home to grab clothes and mementos and say goodbye to her old life. But they didn’t have time. Her mother and sister were out there somewhere, and Lainey needed to find them before it became impossible.
Owen had a point about Canada, too. Once the border closed, it would become close to impossible to make it out of the United States. If they wanted to leave, they needed to go now, not backtrack deeper
into Los Angeles.
“I’m sure. We can’t take the chance.”
Lainey fell silent as Jerry explained to Keith and Owen the best way to reach his small house in Altadena. They would have to skirt Burbank and Pasadena and risk large swaths of local freeway to make it, but Jerry’s house sat due northeast, the same direction they needed to travel.
“You said you have food and other supplies?”
Jerry nodded. “I keep the pantry stocked. Got a shotgun, a rifle, and a pickup truck, too.”
Lainey swallowed. They would be foolish not to bring the weapons and a second car. “Then it’s settled?”
Keith nodded. “We head to Jerry’s first thing in the morning.”
Wednesday, 8:00 a.m. PST
Lainey sat in the back of the van, holding onto Bear’s leash as Keith pulled out of the apartment parking deck. Jerry sat beside him in the front, prepared to navigate the twenty miles to his house. Owen sat across from Lainey, hunched over his tablet. With the satellite dish up and operational, he could pull real-time data from news sites all over the world while they drove.
From her vantage point in the rear of the vehicle, Lainey could only catch glimpses of the street ahead. A block or two off the main commercial street and Keith’s neighborhood turned residential with multimillion dollar homes gated off with iron fences and automatic gates.
But as they neared the 101, houses once again gave way to strip malls and corner gas stations. Keith slowed as they approached an off-brand, local station.
“It’s no use.” Jerry shook his head. “Looks boarded up from the inside.”
Keith accelerated. As they drove, evidence of unrest and desperation increased. A string of medical marijuana facilities looked like movie sets after a riot, all smashed windows and shards of glass. Knocked-over trash cans littered the driveway of a house converted into an inn and graffiti marred a bank of garages beside a coin laundry.
Lainey pulled Bear closer and ran her hand through his fur. A sign advertising Cellular Phones, No Contract, stuck out in the road above what must have been a corner store. Nothing remained except a burned-out shell. She practically hugged the dog for comfort. “How close are we to the freeway?”
