Pavement Ends: The Exodus

by Kurt Gepner

  "Okay," Hank said. "Let’s just get this done, quickly." Hank was already heading back to turn on the power. Over his shoulder, Hank spoke as he was leaving. "I’m going to open the side gates and put the dogs on guard, too."

  Evie followed him as far as the stairs to the basement. "Already did it," she said. "And Tessa is helping them." Hank threw her a dubious look. "She’ll follow their lead," she defended. "Besides, she has a very mean bark." Hank dropped the subject, muttering something about Tessa barking at everything.

  They both quickly attended to their tasks. Within ten minutes, the downstairs was again filled with light. By that point everyone, except Brian, had migrated below. Brian hadn’t really woken up, but Pauline was able to coax him to drink water. Theresa determined that he needed to drink eight ounces of water every single hour for a full twenty-four hours. So far, Pauline had taken the lion’s share of turns watching him. She claimed that it took her mind off of her husband and her lack of cigarettes.

  Hank had been told of Pauline’s diligence, but made no offer of the cigarettes that he’d liberated. It was only after Evie’s urging that he offered a pack to Pauline. She initially refused, being too conscientious, polite and practical to accept. "I’m not stupid," she’d said. "I know how much those will be worth." Hank persuaded her to take a pack, however, by suggesting that she wean herself. Her habit was heavy: two packs per day. It was probably her intense craving, rather than Hank’s reasoning, that overcame her objections. Regardless of which, she took the pack and headed out to the back porch to satisfy her addiction.

  Pulling every blanket and sheet from every closet and chest and adding them to the four sleeping bags that had been among their camping supplies, Evie readied the house for slumber. Nearly every room served as a sleeping quarters. In her preparatory work, she enlisted Jeremy and Patty to hold, put, fetch and tell anyone anything that she needed. As they progressed from room to room, Evie mentioned to the adults that they would be gathering for a nightcap in the living room before they all turned in.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  People weren’t accustomed to the circumstances, so they had been clustering in familiar pods. When they heard Evie’s invitation, they seemed simultaneously relieved and anxious to attend. Even Theresa groaned up from her bed and left Kalika in charge of her sleeping siblings. And once Evie reached the TV room, she left Jeremy and Patty in charge of the youngest children, which now included Abby and Emily.

  Although Theresa seemed even more ill, she used the impromptu meeting as an opportunity to re-dress the bandages on her primary patient. Brian was momentarily cogent and asked about the state of things. Theresa reassured him that he was getting the same medicine that he would in a hospital.

  The men helped him into the bathroom, where he availed himself of the commode. Then they gave Theresa silent sympathy when Brian asked her to help him clean up. She attended to her patient without complaint or criticism and Brian received her assistance with a practiced grace. When finally the obese man was sedated and tucked back into his makeshift hospital bed, everyone else found places around the living room and started recounting the day.

  Evie got Hank’s grudging consent to share drinks with those who wanted them. Norah was the only one who declined. She turned her head away as Salvador quickly downed two shots of Sauza Conmemorativo and then took a third shot of the tequila to sip upon. She did not approve of her husband drinking.

  Candice voiced her doubts when Evie bragged of Hank’s martinis, but after tasting the first, she immediately ordered another. Pauline and Bertel were each sustained by a generous pouring of 12-year Glen Livet, neat. Dale and Val each wanted a rum and Coke. When Evie apologized that they had no soda, Lexi volunteered some that she’d rescued from her car. There was enough for the three of them to enjoy with their Bacardi.

  Susanna Rae had a few ice cubes in a glass of Pinot Gris. Evie also took a glass of the white wine, while Hank poured spiced rum over three cubes of ice for himself. Camille brought up a bottle of Christian Brothers Brandy and announced to Theresa that she would be "feeling better by morning, if she’d only have a snort or two." She consented to try the remedy and took a full snifter without ice.

  As soon as everyone had a drink to nurse, the loosely assembled meeting began. The first to offer any comment was Camille. He addressed Hank from the Deco Waterfall chair that had been relocated from the second bedroom to the space previously containing the antique radio, by the front door. "It’s a good thing you always have something going in your head. It looks like we’re the only house on the block with lights. I’m real glad you married my daughter."

  Hank, who had secured his favorite chair, to the right of the fireplace, looked over at Evie. His wife sat in the other wingback, staring ahead. "Camille… you have no idea how glad I am." Evie regarded her husband sweetly, but with a sad reservation that left Hank mildly confused.

  "Oh, please," blurted Candice from a high-backed leather chair that had been relocated from the downstairs office. "Save the mush for later." She tittered briefly at herself, and then went on. "We all want to know what happened! What did you see out there?"

  Evie could see the exhaustion and irritation in Hank’s face as the woman’s nasally voice grated through their moment. She responded to Candice’s question, smoothing over its effect on her husband. "That’s right," she said with mock-reprimand in her voice. "Quit being so lovey-dovey! We want to know what happened."

  Hank’s features lifted as he looked around the room. His co-adventurers remained quiet, perhaps anticipating an explanation to some of their own questions. On the other side of Evie, Bertel and Pauline leaned on either arm of the window seat. Both looked careworn and older than the antique beneath them. Camille, who sat between them and the door, met Hank’s gaze and squashed his eyes and mouth shut with a smiling nod. The pruning effect was extraordinary, as the old man was not wearing his teeth. On the sofa Norah sat nearest her husband, next to Lexi and Susanna Rae.

  Hank locked eyes with Candice, who was reclined in the office chair with her hands steepled on her martini glass, just under her chin. With elbows on the armrests and legs crossed at the knee, she looked like a CEO, listening to the sales pitch of a junior officer. Next to her, Dale held his squat glass in both hands, between his knees. His forearms rested across his thighs. He looked as tired as Hank felt. Beside him, with her legs curled and feet tucked behind her husband, Val reclined against the arm of the Meridienne chaise lounge.

  Bundled in a heavy, crocheted blanket, Theresa sat on a dining room chair, between the Yosts and Hank. She alternately coughed and blew her nose into a wad of paper towel in her left hand and sipped brandy from a glass in her right.

  With all eyes on him, Hank curled his arms up until he was knuckling his ears. Arching his back, he threw his fists high and wide with a great grizzly bear yawn. "Oh man!" He grunted. "It’s been a long day."

  A few chuckles and murmurs of agreement filled the air. "Well," he said as silence splashed back into the room. "I didn’t wake up this morning expecting we’d be attacked by mobile phones and hairdryers."

  Everyone chuckled. Susanna Rae heartily blurted, "No shit!"

  "Of course," he went on as the consensus faded, "the rain storm is really what saved us."

  Hank let his assertion digest for a moment. Lexi was the first to express the consequences of the alternative. "Can you imagine what it must be like in L.A.?"

  "Oh my Lord!" Bertel quickly followed. "There mustn’t be a building left to stand. Even the roads would have burned away."

  The room fell into a somber lull. Candice sprung into the silence as Hank opened his mouth to speak. "It probably didn’t even happen down there! You said that we were attacked with nuclear weapons. There’s no way that our government would let L.A. get bombed."

  Hank sat back in his seat, stunned silent. Quickly gathering his thoughts, he said, "I never said that we got attacked. What I said..."

  "Yes you did," Candice shot, with a pointed
finger. "You said this is caused by an EMP from a nuclear explosion."

  Hank blinked at the woman and tried again to speak. "What I said, was..."

  "You’ve said it a half-a-dozen times," Candice asserted.

  Maintaining his calm, Hank tried again. "What I said, was..."

  "I know what you said!" Candice bit. "You don’t need to say it again."

  Lowering his voice into a frustrated growl, Hank repeated his attempt to address her claim. "What I said, was..."

  "I know!" Candice held up two curled fingers to either side of her head and with an pseudo-tennor voice said, "A high-altitude nuclear burst will cause an Electromagnetic Pulse which, through induction, will cause a massive electrical feedback that will fry everything on the grid and destroy computer circuitry." She dropped her hands and asked with a sneer, "Isn’t that a direct quote, right from your lips?"

  Pressing his fingers into the padded arms of his chair, Hank slowly wet his lips and replied, "It sounds a lot like something I would say."

  With chin jutting forward, Candice spoke victoriously. "That’s because I have a perfect, photographic, memory."

  Hank retorted loudly. "But your quote is out of context. Now let me finish!"

  Candice looked washed with pleasure when Hank’s volume went up. "Sure, Hank." She put up her palms in mock-surrender. "You’re a big guy. You raised your voice. You say whatever makes you feel good. I’m sure it will make me sound like a fool," she said with a shrug. Then Candice crossed her arms and flatly said, "But I know the truth."

  Rolling his eyes to the ceiling, Hank shook his head and took a breath. "Are you done?"

  Candice became a petulant statue, glaring at him.

  Painting a smile onto a corner of his mouth, Hank gave her a nod and said, "Thanks." Wrapping his fingers over his knees, Hank said, "First, let me say that I don’t know what happened." The posture in the room seemed to shift when he said that. Everyone was quiet, Candice out of stubbornness. "I’ve read about what could happen if a nuclear bomb were exploded at a high altitude and this is a lot like that. But there might be another explanation for it."

  "What could cause this?" Val asked. She seemed relaxed, but Hank noticed that the knuckles around her drink were bone white.

  "Nothing," Candice interjected. She flung her free arm wildly as she asserted that "There’s nothing that could do this, except a nuclear bomb."

  Val regarded Candice dubiously. "How do you know?"

  Candice sighed and said, "Because... I majored in physics." She sat up straight in her chair. "I do real estate, because women can’t get jobs as physicists." She folded her right arm below her breasts, to hold her left elbow tightly, and pressed her thumb and forefinger across her brow. Very dramatically, with chin down and fingers splayed, Candice shook her head. "It’s embarrassing," she said in a small voice. She held her audience enraptured. Then she lifted her head and rubbed her sniffling nose. In the dim candlelight, her eyes glistened as she blinked back her tears.

  Some hybrid between a sob and laughter jumped from her throat. And as she drew a thumb across the bottom of her eye, she said, "I’m sorry. I try not to think about how my dreams were lost." Candice smiled, sheepishly. "It’s sort of made me a bitter person." Everyone in the room was silent.

  "Anyway," she said, throwing out her hand as if tossing away some trash. "None of that matters. What does matter is that I know that Hank was right. This is caused by a nuclear attack. The question is, what should we do while waiting for our government to get this mess straightened out?"

  "What can we do?" Pauline asked with a tinge of astonishment in her voice.

  "If we had a working radio," Candice said, sagely, "we could find out just how bad it is. Too bad all of our technology is ruined."

  "It’s not," Hank said, almost under his breath. He may as well have shouted. Everyone heard him and amazement was sprinkled liberally in their eyes. He had pressed his fingertips together in a contemplative pose.

  "Yes it is!" Candice sounded like she could not be wrong. With an imploring gaze around the room, she addressed everyone. "You all saw what happened." Her gaze settled on Hank. "You know that we tried your little wind-up emergency-radio and that stupid little camping TV/Radio thing. Why are you trying to stir things up?"

  Hank regarded her for a moment, utterly perplexed by her accusation. "I’m not trying to stir things up. Since..."

  "Then why are you saying this?" She demanded of him.

  "Will you quit interrupting me?!?" Hank roared, all patience lost.

  Candice again threw up her hands in surrender, this time slopping a little of her martini. "Sure, Hank. You brought out the big voice again."

  Hank pressed his lips tight and ground his teeth for several seconds before speaking again. "My pick-up, which you heard running," he said, fixing a glare on Candice, "is a stock, nineteen-sixty-five Ford."

  "So?" Candice challenged.

  Hank pummeled his thigh with his meaty fist. "Why are you being so fucking argumentative? What’s your problem?"

  Candice looked at Hank with pity showing in her eyes. "My problem," she said, making little quote marks with her fingers, "is with bullies. My problem is with men who are too proud to admit when they are wrong."

  Evie couldn’t stand how her husband was being treated, but she hated confrontation. She let Hank handle things up to now. But she couldn’t sit back and listen to a stranger belittle her husband, like Candice was. "Excuse me! Hank is no bully! And for your information, he is rarely wrong. So Miss ‘I majored in physics, but couldn’t cut it in the real world’ why don’t you just shut up and let him talk?"

  Candice raised a brow at Evie and slightly lifted her chin. "All right, Evie," she said as she assumed her CEO posture. "Go on, Hank."

  Hank ground his teeth some more, before continuing. "The relevance of my truck being a stock, nineteen-sixty-five Ford, is that in nineteen-sixty-five, they used transistors in their radios."

  Candice kept her mouth pressed closed.

  Looking around the room, Hank saw nothing but anticipation in the eyes of the people there. "Okay. Let me put it this way: The truck runs, because the battery was disconnected when the pulse happened." He held up his left fist, with pinky extended. After bowing it back with his right index finger, he extended his left ring finger and pressed it back as well. "Transistors are tough. Even if the battery had been connected, the radio might have survived." He pressed back his middle finger. "It’s an AM radio." And finally, holding up his forefinger, he pressed them all back, saying, "and, at night, AM bounces off the ionosphere, which means you can sometimes hear signals from thousands of miles away."

  Everybody was looking excited, except for Candice. Hank concluded. "Given that there are obviously no locally competing signals, we should be able to hear if anyone from Maine to Mexico is broadcasting."

  Dale jumped up. "Let’s do it!" In a great flood of enthusiasm, everybody but Candice and Theresa spilled into the back yard.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The pick-up was parked in front of the shop. In moments, the hood was up, the battery was connected and the dim, green glow of the radio dial was illuminating Hank’s bearded face. He cranked the dial to the left as far as it would go. Hissing static crackled from the speaker. Then he proceeded to slowly move the indicator across the band. Sometimes a gasp was heard from those gathered around, as they could no long hold their breath. But that was the only human sound. There was no pattern in the chaos. At someone’s urging, Hank meticulously turned the dial in a slow migration back to the left. There was no broadcast signal.

  What little spark of hope there might have been was all but extinguished. Then Candice, who had silently joined the group, could no longer hold her tongue. And with her voice she fanned a small ember of doubt. "What is wrong with you people? You don’t even know if the radio is working. Have you thought that you might not be hearing anything, because it got damaged? You can’t know."

  Hank disconnected the battery an
d closed the hood. The group shuffled back to the living room. The night air was cool, but their doused spirits left them cold. They asked what it could mean, but they already knew. The radio was working fine. Nothing was heard because there were no signals.

  With everyone being well beyond exhausted, there was a consensus to bring the informal meeting to an end as soon as possible. Hank suggested that there be a person keeping watch from the rooftop all night through. Susanna Rae resisted the idea, arguing that the dogs were very capable guards and that having somebody pacing around all night would probably keep everybody from getting any rest. Surprisingly, it was his son-in-law who voiced agreement with Hank.

  Salvador posited that nobody was likely to get much rest anyway. But knowing that somebody would be awake and ready to react to the dogs would keep everybody from jumping up every time they barked. Heads bobbed agreement at that logic. Each time the dogs had menaced a passer-by, a great storm of feet converged on the corner of the house where the disturbance was happening. It was not likely to change unless they knew a guard was watching over them.

  People were tense and fearful, but a certain practicality (which Susanna Rae labeled ‘paranoia’) was budding. The majority agreed that the little brick cottage on Thirty-Second and Jasmine, its five thousand square-foot lot and its very convenient supply of electricity, food and other valuable assets, was a haven that would attract far more would-be residents than it could bear. Dissenting from that opinion were Susanna Rae and Candice.

  In particular, Candice stated, "People don’ really act like characters in a movie." She had mixed another martini for herself while everyone was outside and the effects were becoming pronounced. "Shure, some people might ask for help, but you gif them a few crumbs and tell them to go away. They’ll look for hand-outs someplace else."

  She cast an appraising look about the room. Her head wobbled a bit, further betraying her inebriation. "You know. On any day b’fore now, I would haf drove past an’ barely noticed this shabby, little corner lot. But t’day," she slurred, "I feel like I’m livin’ in a mansion."