Beth stayed in the water as I snaked back out to the opening to see what was going on. I couldn’t get all the way to the end due to the great heat, though the sounds told the story. Every house in the neighborhood was on fire at the same time. The unmistakable sound of a structure collapsing is familiar to any fireman who’s heard it once. I could hear explosions in the distance. The heat and smoke forced me back into the culvert. There we stayed for what seemed an eternity.
The air almost abandoned us. We had to keep our mouths near joints in the culvert, where fresh air seeped in. I thought I was going to pass out a couple of times. The air was so hot it felt like our lungs would quit working. Whenever I could talk, I checked to see if Beth was still alive and coaxed her to keep trying and not to give up. We almost suffocated several times.
I have no idea how long we lay in that culvert. Sooty water washed over us all day and all night, though we could only estimate when that was.
We could see the glow of the fires on the cement wall for about a day, and then it got dark. We didn’t dare move. The air was so superheated that we barely lifted our heads out of the water, only to breathe at that seam in the tile. That’s where the best air was. I know we shouldn’t have, but we drank a lot of water in that culvert. It was so hot; it felt like we were sweating underwater.
I found myself falling asleep with water running alongside my face, but somehow kept it above water. Instinct forced my head above water so I could stay alive. The same thing happened to Beth. We lived through the most horrible scenario never imagined by man, and I think most of it was because of instinct. We stayed in that culvert and neither one of us said a word to the other one. We just lay there sucking up the fresh air when it was given. We both went into a dormant stage, a survival mode. Our main purpose in life was to survive. At that time, that meant breathing. We talked when we thought things were starting to get better, when we could breathe freely, without hacking.
The odor of the air was putrid: a sickly sweet, acidic smell of burning wood, plastic, grass, rubber, and hair. We had nothing else to do but lie there and pick apart the smells in that culvert. I even think I smelled popcorn once. When you’ve been a fireman, the smell of burned hair never leaves you. Both of us had burned hair and when it gets wet, it smells three times as bad.
Every now and then a rat or muskrat would swim up along our backs, over our shoulders, and on up into the rest of the culvert. Beth freaked out the first couple of times, but then discovered that the less she moved, the quicker they left.
It started raining and the water inside rose quickly. It didn’t take long to get to a dangerous level. I was glad to hear her scream when the waters rose, a sure sign she was still alive.
“Get out, get out!” I screamed to her over and over again. We could barely breathe the air, but I knew we couldn’t breathe the water.
We both washed out on the same side we came in, out of a pitch-black culvert into the pitch black. Slowly, we glimpsed fires still burning, even though it was raining. These were people’s houses, or what was left of them.
We crawled up out of the slime and the muck, up onto dry land, only to see Tom’s house burned to the ground. I looked east, and by the glow I could see my house about two stories lower than it had been before we went into that tunnel. Funny, I knew that’s what I’d see, but I never thought I’d see it.
Chapter 5
Heroes and Truth
The air was acidic and thick with odors—a nauseating olfactory gumbo that caused our lungs to burn. We climbed out of the ditch, and as if on cue, dropped to our knees and started to vomit and cough uncontrollably.
After we caught our breath and stood up, we started down the road. No houses remained. The only light came from pits of burning rubble. All the trees we could see were smoldering, just the bigger limbs remained.
“Nick, was that a nuclear bomb? This is a living nightmare.” She could hardly speak. After spending that long in the culvert, I thought she was doing tremendously.
I just kept quiet trying to make sense of it all. Why would terrorists set off a nuclear bomb in this area? There’s a sparse population, no political, industrial or military targets around here. What else could have done that to everyone? Why would a bomb start with an earthquake?
We continued to walk towards our house. It didn’t take long to see it was gone. All that remained above level ground were the metal shells of our vehicles and the grandkids’ swing set.
“Nick … the kids… Oh my Go—” She stopped herself.
“Come on. Let’s go find them.” I took her by the hand. We turned back towards the fire station. We had to get some help and the only place I knew to get it was at the station. Plus I knew they would have some answers about what hit us. They had radios and would be in touch with anybody and everybody. I also remembered they had some “weapons of mass destruction” training.
The heat was stifling. The rain had stopped and the fires began to intensify. Radiant heat came from every cellar we passed, and it felt like being in an oven. Our clothes were wet and steam would roll off us if we stood too long near one of our neighbors’ houses looking to see if anyone survived. We dried out fast but we got some steam burns. We had to keep running in and looking, then running away to the darkness to cool off. Nobody was left alive. How could they be? How many people had found a culvert full of water fifteen feet away from them when it started getting hot?
The odor of burnt flesh wafted from each car we passed, and could be smelled as far as thirty yards away. The people looked like mummies frozen in black charcoal, mouths wide open begging for mercy. Maybe they had received more mercy than Beth and I.
By the time we approached the four corners of town, we had yet to find one home still standing, or one abandoned vehicle. Nobody had tried to get out.
We made it to the fire station. It didn’t take me long to figure out what happened here. The trucks were all out on the pad. Hose covered the ground, still connected to the engine. We walked past burned bodies on the ground. My friends were lying around, under, or in the trucks. Their personal protective equipment was no match for the intense heat they’d experienced. The Nomex protective bunkers and jackets still retained their original shapes, though crusty and discolored. Each detail of stitching was recognizable, though the member in the gear wasn’t. Except for the rookies, each wearer’s name was monogrammed on the front and back. These were all neighbors and friends that I used to spend time with. In a sense, Beth saved my life; if I hadn’t met her, I would have been down here with them.
After Beth saw all the death and destruction, she realized that her kids could never have made it. It was just a freak thing that we had. We were in the right place at the wrong time. No matter how you put it, the odds of anyone else being alive in this area were extremely low, but we still had to check.
We decided to walk the road and go two towns over where her kids lived. There was another fire station there. Maybe that area had been spared. Maybe her kids made it to safety.
I kept thinking that the sun should be coming up any time now. We spent a majority of the time walking in the dark, feeling for the side of the road with our feet. The trip, which normally took ten minutes in the car, stretched on for what felt like five or six hours. When we got near her kid’s house, we looked for a glow in the distance like we had seen at other houses. None could be seen.
“Does that mean that they might have made it? Maybe their place was spared.” She was looking for any chance at hope.
We arrived at the dip in the road near the kid’s house. “Sit here until I get back.” I hated to leave her.
I‘d never seen her helpless. Her face was blank and emotionless. She sat down on the roadside bank. There wasn’t much else left to sit on.
As I walked away, I kept looking back to make sure she wasn’t following. I could scarcely make her out against the glow of the last house we passed. Only the cellars had light in them now. There’s a lot of fuel in a house and it all settle
s in the cellar. It burns and smolders for days, sometimes weeks. That’s why we couldn’t see her son’s house glowing in the distance. His house was a one-story house built on a pad with no cellar. All the fuel lay on the ground, bombarded by the hot BBs. There was nothing left to smolder or burn. I wasted little time looking. Nobody could have survived that.
I tried to run to the nearest culvert in the road, but with all the smoke, running was impossible. Out of breath, I got down on my knees and looked in. “Kids?” I asked, with little expectation of a response. “Kids?” I repeated, quiet enough that she couldn’t hear.
I turned around and headed back to where I’d left her. I could see her, still looking off into the darkness. Her silhouette was that of a woman who already knew the answers.
“Let’s head to their fire station. They could be there.” I took her hand, and when she got up I put her on my left side. We walked by her son’s house. She never looked to her right. We just kept walking, and neither one of us said a word. We walked in the dark towards the next town. Every home, farm, and business was gone, burned to the ground.
The next town was about a mile ahead. I realized that neither one of us had eaten in two or three days. I’d lost my appetite.
I couldn’t decide whether to keep trying or not. What was the sense of it? Could it be possible that we were the only survivors? I kept checking culverts along the road. If we thought of taking refuge in one, somebody else might have.
I wondered how far we needed to go to get out of the blast zone. It had to be better just around the next bend. Why was it still so dark, and why the earthquake? I was still thinking of a bomb.
We eventually arrived at the next town, which was just as desolate and leveled as the others. It was difficult to know exactly where we were. The only point of reference was the train rails coming into town.
When we got to the fire station, we found the same scene as our town. They also had fought to the bitter end. There must be a gene in firemen that makes their will to live to be so strong. Their station was also burned to the ground, but their training building wasn’t. It was built entirely out of concrete. Talk about pure irony. The only building left standing was one built to catch fire every time it was used.
Chapter 6
The Basics of
Survival
I pushed the metal door open with my foot since it was still too hot to grab with my bare hand. It swung open, but it was so dark we couldn’t see. Beth stood holding the door open with her foot.
“I’ll be right back, don’t move.” I ventured off into the darkness.
“Don’t you leave my here alone. Get back here, Nick. Nick? God damn it, Nick.” She knew I’d be back.
After returning from gathering wood, I ventured into the burn shack. Two firemen had taken cover inside. They’d escaped the flames, but not the heat. Their bodies needed to be moved to the back away from where Beth and I would be spending the night. The first attempt to move one resulted in flesh being torn from the arm of the first man. Dragging them by their bunkers, I cleared an area for us to start a fire and rest.
Beth sat and cried while I worked.
It didn’t take me long to build a small fire using coals from the back room of the training building. This was the same fire that wiped out everything we knew in our world. All of the people we loved died a horrible death. Her children died in agony, while we lay in a culvert like a couple of rats.
This fire was as necessary to us as the air we sucked up along the inside of that culvert. Now we were in control of it again. It lit the walls and we could see what we were up against. We looked clearly into each other’s eyes for the first time in days. Soot ran down her face like a glamour girl’s mascara in the rain. I held her until we needed more wood, neither one of us said a word.
I gathered up more wood. It wasn’t too hard to find, I just looked around the edge of cellars. There was always some that didn’t burn all the way. I brought Beth a lot of wood so she would feel comfortable. We needed it for the light and not the heat. It was plenty hot enough.
We needed to get water and fast. With this elevated heat we wouldn’t travel much further unless we got some water, and food. I had to sit and think about it. I had to think about it for a long time. All the Seven Elevens were out of business. The rivers and streams were so full of soot and ashes, the water had to be bad. The rain had stopped, and when it had been raining, I hadn’t thought of catching it. I had been hoping that help would be around the next corner.
“I think we have to help ourselves from now on. Stay here. I’m going to look for a pizza place. You want anchovies?” I wasn’t sure if the timing was right for comedy, but I had to try to get some life back into her eyes.
“How long are you going to be gone?” She was still pissed at me for leaving her alone at the door earlier.
“Not too long. I’m going to see if I can find something at the supermarket, try to find some water, or a cold beer.” I tried one more time at the comedy thing. Getting the same response, I turned to go into town. “Be right back.”
“Get me one too,” she said with barely enough enthusiasm to get the words out.
I’d take it. She retained some of her sense of humor, although it was buried beneath layers of other emotions.
I walked to where I thought the corner store was, and carefully stepped into the debris. No door was necessary. I immediately stepped on a nail, through my sneaker, and into the thick part of my foot, luckily not too far into the skin.
I needed to see. I searched for more wood to use for a torch, and quickly found enough, along with the fire to start it. It wasn’t the brightest, and I had a hard time keeping it going. I found that by holding three boards together, the fire would last longer. I walked back to the store and carefully picked my way around the debris and the dead bodies. People had run into the store when the firestorm came, but it was no escape. The remains no longer resembled bodies, more like bones surrounding a pile of guts that smoldered and emitted the stench of death. I’d been getting so used to death, these were just more obstacles to step over.
It took a while to find a couple of good cans lying in the rubble, a few were protected from the majority of the heat. Labels were burned off, but they looked fine other than that. Any other cans I found were opened by the heat or crushed when the roof collapsed.
I tiptoed to where I thought the front of the store was, and rummaged around for a while. The glass to the display case lay shattered on the floor. Looking through the ashes and coals, careful not to get too close to the hot ones, I noticed a familiar shape.
“That’s a knife,” I said aloud, as if there were somebody listening. I reached down and picked it up, then just as quickly dropped it. It was still quite hot. I picked it up again and blew on it as if it were a piece of hot corn on the cob. I put it in my pocket once I was sure it was cool enough. It went straight to the ground. Both pockets had the bottoms burned out. I should have known. I was suffering with blisters there on both legs.
The knife had a hole for a strap. I needed to devise a way to hook it to my jean’s belt loop. Copper wire lay all around, power no longer flowed through it. My new knife was assigned its first job: cutting wire. I was careful to use the part near the handle. That way, the rest of the knife would stay sharp. A valuable find. The blade was in good shape and it still locked in place.
I fashioned a makeshift strap out of copper wire. I carried three cans of food and a new knife. Water still escaped me. I would have to think about that one a while longer.
I made my way back to the training building, or “smokehouse,” to find Beth with a faraway look of hopelessness, staring at the fire and its reflection flickering on the wall.
I tried to walk in without frightening her, but as soon as I spoke, her body convulsed like she had received an electric shock.
“Damn it. You could’ve let me know you’re back.”
“I found some food…sorry didn’t mean to scare you. Found three cans. Don
’t know what they are. I found a knife too…see?”
“Did you find a can opener, Einstein?” Her sarcasm was the first sign that she had some of the old Beth left in her, thank God.
“Yes, I told you I found a knife. It’s not a Swiss army knife but it will work.”
“It smells different in here,” she said, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy trying to open one of the cans. I was starving now and really wanted to know what was in this can.
“What did you say?” I said, concentrating on opening the can, careful not to cut myself.
“It smells different in here. Outside you smell burned rubber, plastic, and death. In here the only smell is burned wood or hay. If I have to choose between the two, I pick in here.” She didn’t know about the two men I pulled to the back of the building out of her sight.
I pried with the knife to open the first can. “It’s corn.” I reached out my arm and handed the can to Beth. “Here, drink the juice too. It may be the only source of water we’ll get for a while. It smells okay and it’s still warm. Be careful not to cut yourself on the jagged top.”
She smelled her corn.
“You eat that one, and I’ll take the next one.” I started to open the second can. I’d already learned to put the can on the floor and open it from the top by kneeling directly over the can, pushing the blade straight down. Once it started to cut, I pushed down on the back hard, then rotated the can and repeated the process until I got back to where I’d started. Not pretty, but it got the food out. Funny to think I had been so careful not to ruin the blade when I was cutting the wire. Now look how I abused it.
The Second Intelligent Species: The Cyclical Earth Page 3
