by catt dahman
Following Bryan past piles of debris, they moved into the cafeteria where they saw large slabs of cement. Crying, people were beginning to crawl out of corners and from underneath rubble; some walked around in a daze.
Roy was gathering some of the people at one of the tables, brushing trash to the side, righting the tables and chairs, and asking them to sit down; he stopped and nodded to Kim as he walked by.
Sally, who had been getting more coffee, had been fortunate in that she was down there and alive. “If they have bruises, cuts, scrapes, things such as that, get them seated at a table out of the way. If it’s worse, call me. We’re going to have some dead, some dying, and some with bad injuries; I’ll need help with those.” She nodded approval to Roy and motioned for help from Beth, Kim, and Bryan. Sally brushed her hand over her forehead, pushing back stray hair, “What the hell just happened?”
"What do you need us to do?" Bryan asked.
“Bomb?” Kim said softly.
Beth noted that most were asking what had happened; she told the others that she would explain to those seated at the table. She told them there had been a bomb explosion nearby.
Len gathered people to help with the injured.
A hard-looking woman in black leather pants, black boots, and a Harley Davidson tank top walked over. Her face was heavily lined and bare of makeup, and her hair was hacked short, bleached white-blonde with dark roots. "I'm Johnny, and I’ll help if I can."
She looked unsure, glancing at Beth and feeling out of place. She was a fool for even thinking they would need her help.
"Thank, God, yes, we need more help." Beth pulled her over to help the young woman who had gone white and was staring into nothing. "She’s ice cold."
Johnny spoke softly to the girl, rubbing her arms briskly, while Beth brushed her off, cleaning away debris.
On the other side of the room, Len found a man dead in big pieces of rubble.
Out of nowhere, Mark came over with Misty to help Kim move chunks of concrete where they found a man's legs crushed, shattered beyond help. Kim called for Beth to talk to the man even though his face was gray and his eyes were opened and going glassy; there was nothing that could be done for him, but she could sit with him as he died.
The hallway, leading to the rest of the basement with all of its many rooms, was clear.
Sally and her volunteers came from that direction with beds on wheels and medical supplies. She reported that the rest of the area, ten or twenty times as large as the cafeteria, storage rooms, and more, didn't take much damage and no one had been hurt. She said that the pharmacy and a lobby on the other side of the hospital had been hit the worst, and from what they could tell, the upper floors were destroyed, as well.
With Len’s help, Sally applied pressure to a woman's wounds, grumbling about what they didn’t have. She gave the woman shots and said they didn't have nearly enough painkillers, antibiotics, or other medication. "I'd kill for more valium."
"For yourself?"
Sally grimaced, "That, too."
"If you give me a needle and thread, I can do stitches," Len told her confidently. To his surprise, she got the supplies, handing him what he needed and pointing to a long gash on the woman’s arm. “Sterilize, inject lidocaine, stitch her. Bandage.”
Soon, Sally called him to handle another stitching job, and Beth joined him as a nurse.
Julia approached them and sat down to wait her turn, saying Sally had told her to super-glue her forehead, while watching for a concussion since she had been knocked unconscious. “Luckily, I have a hard head.”
Chauncey and Big Bill had gotten body bags, as directed by Sally, and were carrying the bodies down to the morgue. Johnny, the woman in leather, and Billy, of Bucks and Ducks, joined them to help; Bobby, Billy’s brother, had been killed in the pharmacy. Bryan said all who had been in the pharmacy were dead, and no one disagreed.
In a corner, Thurman and Tink applied antibiotic cream and bandages to those sent over by Sally, while Benny and Kim found that Dallas was a great dog to sniff out the dead and injured. Katie, uninjured, was scared and was being watched by several friends in a separate room. She had found several children to play with.
It took hours to sort the scared from the wounded and the severely injured from the dead. It was difficult to keep going with all the death and dying, but they did, at some point collapsing into chairs to rest. Some of the volunteers had cleared a path to the kitchen; water, coffee, and soda were there. Some went to cook food for the rest.
Roy blinked his eyes behind his yellow glasses and said, "I've never been in an earthquake before."
"I told you what it was," Beth said, "and it wasn't an earthquake."
"Of course, it was," Roy chuckled, spreading his arms wide.
Bryan brought his face up from his folded arms. "It was a bomb. That's what the radio was saying about New York before this happened to us."
Roy got everyone quiet again as the alarm spread, "Buddy, you're scaring people with that talk."
"It’s not my intention to scare anyone, but I'm trying to be honest with all of you."
"You're full of shit."
Bryan snapped, "We saw it out the windows of the pharmacy, we saw the mushroom cloud, and then Lone Star and Red River got hit; we just caught the side blast."
“So this was nothing?”
“It could have left nothing of us but stone and ash,” Bryan said.
"Well, bad as it is, we have no proof yet," Roy snarled.
“Man, you are in serious denial." Bryan marveled. "Hell, it was a bomb."
"Well, it might've been a bomb, or it might've been an earthquake," Roy still protested.
Bryan thought about dragging the loud cowboy through the metal doors so he could see the burned people and destruction from the explosion.
"Damn, you're stubborn." Len stepped forward. "You all saw the mushroom cloud?"
"Yes, I told you that just minutes ago… a few hours ago, I mean…or whenever it was; we saw the cloud towards Doddridge or Shreveport.” Beth was furious now. “I told him, I mean.” She pointed to Roy.
Len shook his head, "I never thought it would happen."
"You believe this?" Roy was surprised.
Thinking, Len rubbed his chin and frowned. "Well, I don't see why we wouldn’t believe it; I can't give ya any reason why not to believe it. Beth doesn’t make up shit."
Roy glared at her. "I'm not totally convinced that that's true, but if it were, we should get the hell out of here. We need to go where they can find us easier."
"They?” Bryan leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. "Who the hell is ‘they’?"
Roy was unable to answer.
"There's someone out there coming to help us," someone said.
"Maybe we should get out of here and go to the mountains. We don't need to stay here. You said there were sick, crazy nuts out there, biting people, and now we have a bomb on top of us."
"It wasn’t on top of us, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Okay, look, there's radiation falling from the sky in dust, and it's dangerous, and if more of the United States has been hit, such as New York, it's gonna be snowing, and the radiation will be falling with it. And it’ll be cold."
"Snow?"
"Yes, all that dust and crap will get thrown up into the sky and cover up the sun, and then the weather will turn cold. That causes what is called ‘nuclear winter’.” I don't understand it all, but it was on TV.”
"For how long?"
Bryan shrugged, "Possibly years. Maybe months. It's been all speculation until now, and then we have a virus out there that we don't understand, though we know it causes people to want to hurt and eat us." He lit a second cigarette right behind the first one. "Leaving here is not only unwise, but also is dangerous for anyone out there; he would die of radiation while being chased down by the crazy cannibals. It's worse than what you're imagining."
"How long do we have to stay in here?"
"At leas
t a month, but we have to stay in here anyway because we’re trying to stay away from the sick people." Bryan wanted to bang his head against the table; they just didn't get it; even before the bomb, they had a big problem. The word ‘nuclear’ was panicking them. He backed up, “It was a bomb…maybe not like an atom bomb, maybe some other kind of bomb, but we have to assume we need to stay inside a few weeks.”
"Maybe somebody will come for us before then."
Roy agreed. "Maybe."
"Unreal.” Bryan almost screamed. "You saw what the outside was like before those who caught Red. Now, people with it are gonna be chasing the survivors who didn't get smashed by the damned bombs.”
Roy glared again.
"Look, we have the generator for heat and light and to keep the food from going over," Len said calmly. "We were stockpiling and using this sanctuary against whatever was out there already. That said, I've been out there; I know how important it is to stay somewhere safe where we can set up security… where we can meet our basic needs…where we have medical help. Here we have people. It's worse out there now, but it's nothing we can change, only adapt to and make better. In here." Len stood.
He had their attention in a way Bryan could not get.
“Okay, we had a list of everybody who came in. We need to make a new list of everyone still here and those we lost, cross checking so that we know who is missing and whom to look for. I need some people working on that.
Sally needs some people with her, helping tend to those who got hurt. We need a group to finish clearing out this cafeteria so that we all still have our meeting place, and we need a team to continue searching for the dead and injured.”
“Mark, get a few for security, will you? There is already a team busting their asses, hauling out those who didn’t make it, a selfless, honorable way for them to show those people respect.”
Everyone went about his chores with new energy, Len’s speech having made everyone see what was right. Humans have a need to earn praise; most wanted to hear Len say that they, too, were doing honorable work.
He wasn’t unaware of that, having led troops, so he knew his old work was done and his new job was to go around, lending a hand when needed. Mostly, his job was to praise those working tirelessly, reminding them that their dirty, sad jobs, while horrifying, were important. They needed a pat on the back.
Right now, he missed trained troops, not that Bryan did not know how to encourage and lead.
George waved for Len’s attention, moving close to him, he said, "There was a lady who sat over by Roy; she was crying a lot, I mean really crying a lot."
"I think I know who you're talking about," Len said.
"She went to the ladies’ room a while ago, still crying. After a while, she didn’t come out, so I went over and called out. No answer.”
"Have you checked on her, yet?"
"I came to get you."
Len knew the old man didn’t want to be alone when he saw whatever had happened.
George and Len went to the ladies’ room while the groups worked.
Inside, was the woman, lying where she had fallen, her wrists cut deeply, and awash in scarlet. There was also broken glass, with the sharp edges bloody. She had no pulse.
“This is a real shame.”
George stared down at her. "You couldn't take it, could you? You couldn't stand what the world had become, could you? You took the easy way out, leaving us to hammer it out and to struggle through it. I can't blame you. But I can't join you, either."
“Maybe she lost someone just now in the blast, or maybe it was all of it together,” Len suggested. He walked out.
George looked at himself in the mirror. "I can handle this. I can do this." The man in the mirror agreed.
Working with the others, Beth held off for a long time, but her bladder was about to burst, or so it felt. For some odd reason, she felt as if the bathroom might slam the door and lock it behind her, holding her captive. There she would sit in silence until she died. It was crazy, she realized, but she still thought about it.
Finally, her discomfort won her over. She headed for the door, marked ‘ladies.’ George and Len came out, startling her.
She did a double take, checking the sign on the door again. "The sign says ladies; you two are men." She smiled.
They smiled back, but Len seemed to be grimacing.
"You don't wanna go in there."
"Yes, I do want to go in since I'm about to pop."
"Use the men's, instead."
“Len, George, what's the problem? You need to go on and just tell me; what's going on?"
"There's a body in there."
For a second, she stared at both men as if they had spoken a foreign language. "And? Len, you know how many bodies I‘ve seen lately since I've been around you? How many did I shoot?" She was flummoxed.
"This one is different. Suicide."
"Who was it?"
George told her, and she used the men's restroom without another word. She said she would stand guard outside the ladies’ restroom until they could return with a body bag and mops. As she came out, Bryan approached, and they told him what had happened.
"Did you check the men's restroom first?” he asked George and Len.
They admitted they hadn't.
"They were nice to have saved me from having to see that, but I didn't need them to check the room first. If there had been anything in there, I would've handled it."
"It's still best to let a man check."
"A man? Do you have any idea what I was doing all those hours when I was with Len? What in the hell do I need a man for now?"
For the first time in hours, Len was enjoying himself again. George snickered.
"Women need men. Until you drop your pants and show me you’re a man, then you're a woman whom we have to watch out for," Bryan said as Len began shaking his head with dread and George stared at the floor.
Beth went red with anger. "You would love for me to drop my pants, you douche," she yelled at Bryan while shooting George and Len dirty looks.
“I didn’t say it,” Len protested.
"Well," Beth pushed past him roughly, hearing him chuckle as she went back down the hallway, “You’re bad, too, George.”
“Next time you mouth off and she whips your ass, I’m gonna be watching and laughing,” Len promised Bryan.
10
Hagan
Things were bad enough, and now, there was a damned earthquake. Hagan lost his balance and rode the hallway like a bucking bronco until the movement stopped, seemingly a lifetime of shaking and hearing noise. A shower of rubble knocked him to his stomach, pounding his head into the floor. He passed out.
When he awoke, the noise was gone. Nausea gripped him as he tried to stand in the confined space that canted to the side. One half of the hall was completely covered in a pile of trash. Prying the remaining bit of the door open, he found that the hall ended at a ragged slab of concrete. He was buried alive. Pressing his back against one side of the hall, he looked around, trying his damnedest to stay calm.
That's when he noticed a foot, bloody and grey, peeking from the rubble, crushed under the slab of concrete. Hagan crawled back to where he had been, noticing a closet that had its door snapped in half, seemingly as if it had been compressed to half its size.
He rested for while and then went back to where the slab and foot were. Inching forward, he saw the floor disappear into a wide crack. "Hello," he called into the maw of the black hole. He regretted having come up here instead of staying in the basement.
For a long time, he lay on his stomach, staring into the ink; he had lost track of time, but when he came back to his senses, his neck ached, he was thirsty, and his bladder felt full to bursting. His watch was shattered, so he had no idea how much time had passed.
Hagan relieved himself in the closet. He looked over the inventory again. Sheets. Scrubs. Nothing useful. He went back to the hall, dragging things to make a pallet, his entire body aching. His he
ad throbbed with each heartbeat; Hagan figured he had a concussion.
For a while, he begged the big crack in the floor to leave him alone, telling it that he would not feed it. As soon as he said that, he came to, wondering why he had said it.
Next, he listened to the sounds of rescuers, thinking that it might take them a while with the hospital like this, but he decided it was his imagination. Slowly, he remembered there were zombies and that many were infected with Red, but, then, he figured he had imagined all that as well. Nothing sounded plausible at that point, whether it was the big black crack in the floor demanding to be fed, or rescuers, or zombies, or the damned tooth fairy, dancing the Charleston.
“They’re coming to get you, Barbara,” he quoted.
He wondered if he might run out of air. He gasped a while.
Hagan went over the little area in minute detail. He drifted. When he awakened again, he felt a little better and that he might know what was real and what was claustrophobia and concussion. The fairies and rescuers were false; zombies and big cracks were real. The jury was still out on the flying monkeys.
Hagan crawled back to the mouth-like crevice. "You gonna eat me all up?” He shined his flashlight into the maw, the beam lit nothing but rubble and ink, and he could see nothing, but when he turned the beam off, he was positive that he could see a pinpoint of light far below.
He blinked. He was afraid that this might be his imagination or in his aching head, but he knew it was real.
After a while, Hagan had made a rope of braided strips of bed sheets from the closet. "Just like the movies...getting out of Alcatraz," he told the mouth. But there was no other way out. At least this was a chance. If he waited too long, he would be too weak to try anything. His claustrophobia was making him feel stark-raving-Lord-hand-me-a-bucket crazy.
Tying the end of his makeshift rope to a piece of iron bulging from the wall, he pulled, testing it. The other end, he tied around his waist and retested. "I'm comin’ down, so don't bite."
