by Kurt Gepner
It occurred to Hank how ridiculous it was that the theme of his thoughts had settled on long-term survival. Even as he chided himself for being such a doomsayer, however, he continued parsing their situation. The park and school, about six blocks away, have five acres of arable land, at most. But there’s no way to keep hungry people from raiding our garden.
There is plenty of land near the river. The wildlife refuge has enough land to sustain thousands of people, not to mention a river of water. But the river water would be hazardous. A frown grew on Hank’s face. Aside from that, when people start getting thirsty, the river is the first place they’ll go. And even if the thousand-odd acres out there could be plowed and planted, it would get (maybe) five thousand people through the winter. How many souls are inside Vancouver city limits? How many thousands of acres of cultivation are needed?
So many people… A vast uncertainty washed through Hank as he contemplated the multitudes surrounding them. They won’t understand how much work it takes to prepare for winter. If not for my time on the farm, I wouldn’t either. When fresh vegetables and fruit are shipped in daily, from Brazil, Ecuador, the southern states and a million other places around the world, no one ever has to store anything through winter. They just go to the grocery store.
Finally Hank gave up on his cautious considerations and adopted the assumption that their situation was permanent. In his mind, Hank’s reality shifted from one of surviving a disaster to one of living in a new and challenging world. His thoughts continued their wanderings, but more deliberately focused with his new perspective. Scrounging and salvaging will be necessary. That will supplement our supplies a little, but for how long? There will be a lot of people scrounging. It won’t take long for people to figure out that this house is full of resources.
Maybe we can trade antibiotics and other drugs for food and water. I have a pot-still packed away in the shed. One of Hank’s occasional hobbies was the making of moonshine and his pot-still was a CO2 canister with a coil of copper tubing attached to the nozzle. If I kept it running, I can produce a couple gallons of hundred-proof alcohol per day, provided I had enough ingredients. What would that be worth? And what would keep people from storming into the house and raiding all of our supplies?
We’ve got a working truck. That’s an incredible asset. My steam generator can safely put out about ten kilowatts. That’s more than sufficient for this house, shop and the apartment above the shop. It’s an anchor, he thought. But what is tied to that anchor? Is it a ship in a stormy sea, or a noose around our necks?
How can this house sustain fifty people? How can it sustain even just my family? The only way to make it safe would be to build a fortified wall and clear away everything around us. That’s crazy. Even if it were done, like some medieval keep, where would we get the resources to hold it?
Fort Vancouver has a small military contingent. They’re probably sorting through their resources right now. They might eventually withdraw to the old fort. That’s if they realize just how bad it is.
Most people have probably congregated in churches, schools and other public centers by now. There are probably a few surviving houses, like this one, where the locals have taken shelter. Very few of those houses that survived will have a generator, so electricity will be rare. And what happens when the hundred thousand people in Vancouver and the million plus people in Portland run out of food?
Law and order, he thought with a shiver, will cease to exist as we know it. Once their resources are drained, government will declare martial law. The older vehicles can be operational in a week, or less. Fuel shouldn’t be a problem, for a while. They’ll find the most secure buildings and establish safe zones. Eventually, they’ll start sending out expeditions to secure resources. Once this house is found, it will be drained.
It’s all about the food. When people starve, they’ll do anything for food. There’s just no way that they can feed all of these people. There’s going to be famine! Even if they got the interstates cleared and started shipping in food from agricultural zones, who’s going to do the farming? Nearly every major operation was almost completely automated, with huge computer controlled machines doing all of the work.
Finally, Hank could no longer resist an idea that had been nagging at him since that afternoon. It’s the only way, he thought. We’re all going to have to…
His introspection was broken by the sound of running feet. Someone was running east on Thirty-Second. A split second later the dogs were at that corner of the fence. As the sprinter came abreast of Hank’s yard, the dogs barked menacingly. "Oh, shit!" A voice rang from the darkness. Hank could just barely make out the shadow of a person running down the middle of the street. The dogs paralleled his movement, within the confines of their perimeter. They could have easily jumped the four foot picket fence, but they were conditioned by years of training. Tessa didn’t jump the fence, simply because the other two dogs were holding their ground. The runner turned south on Jasmine Street and kept running.
About twenty seconds later, two more runners came by, following the same path. The dogs harassed them with equal vigor. Hank waited and listened. He heard nothing for nearly a minute. Then, in the distance, he heard a single shout for help. Nothing followed for a few minutes. Then he heard a pleading voice yell, "No! No!" It was quickly followed by a scream that was abruptly ended. Silence followed. He strained to hear something for ten minutes, at least.
Satisfied that whatever tragedy it may have been posed no threat to his home and family, Hank pushed himself up and stepped lightly to the ladder. It was time for someone else to take over. He figured Salvador could take the middle shift.
Evie met him in the kitchen. In a hushed tone, she asked what had happened. The dogs had awakened her. Hank quietly told her. She accepted his answer without reaction and showed him to their new sleeping arrangement. Before climbing under the covers, Hank roused Salvador. He threw a jean jacket at his groggy son-in-law and got him up on the roof. He explained what had happened and told him to wake up Dale in a few hours. Then Hank crawled into his bed and pulled a blanket up to his chin.
Less than a minute passed before Hank was snoring. Evie unlaced his boots and pulled them off. Then she crawled in next to him and listened, for a very long time, to his rhythmic rumblings.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Salvador hunkered down in the same spot Hank had occupied. He was cold and sat shivering. The pistol that Hank had given him was belted to his waist. It seemed to him that he was yawning even more than he was shivering. This was way outside of his experience. He wondered, desperately, how his family back home was doing.
Coming up here was a stupid thing to do, he berated himself. I should be home looking after my mother and my little brothers. Now I’m stuck. The only thing running is that old, piece-of-shit pick-up. That probably couldn’t get me a hundred miles. He was startled by movement in the yard. Quickly, he shined the flashlight down and lit up the three dogs.
God, those mutts scare me. I’m glad they’re down there. I can’t see why Norah has to be such a control freak. If she would just do the things I tell her, it wouldn’t be so hard to get by. We wouldn’t fight so much if she just knew her place. I should have married a Mexican girl. Why did she let herself get pregnant? She’s so irresponsible. I don’t know why I thought that marrying her would change her.
Every time the dogs passed, he lit them with the flashlight. Then he probed the surrounding area with its beam before dousing it. Heights never bothered him, but he knew that the dark was where evil hid.
I know English just as well as Spanish, but my mother doesn’t. So you’d think that Norah would learn Spanish, so they could talk. But, no. She says that American Citizens should know English. "A common language unites us," she says. She’s such a hypocrite. If she really believed that then she would have learned Spanish, so she wouldn’t feel so left out by my family. Every time we go over there, she just sits like a lump. Then she bitches that everybody talks about her whil
e we’re driving home. Of course they talk about her.
They ask me why I married the stupid white girl. When I tell them, ‘because I got her pregnant,’ they ask me why I slept with her in the first place. What am I supposed to tell them? ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Because I could.’ ‘Because she was gorgeous and nice and she liked me.’
Now what am I supposed to do? I can’t hike back. If it’s as bad as Hank says, then I’ll never get home. I hate Norah for dragging me up here. These aren’t my people.
A woman’s distant scream split the silence. Salvador stood up and perked his ears toward the highway. He heard it again, from the neighborhood on the other side of the interstate, at least a quarter mile away. It sounded like she was screaming, "My baby." A girl’s scream joined the woman. Salvador could hear her distinctly. "Momma!"
Salvador didn’t wait for another scream. Dashing to the ladder, he nearly slid off the roof in his haste. He caught his footing and scampered down as quickly as he could. Not wasting time with the gate, he was up and over the fence with barely a touch. He rolled an ankle when he landed, but he didn't feel a thing. Another scream spurred him to greater speed. At the end of the road he turned right and ran across the overpass. He noticed that somewhere, far up the freeway, there was a fire burning. Once across the overpass and at the first road, he stopped. Trying to control his labored panting, he listened.
A man’s voice, rough and full of malicious laughter, sounded in the darkness. "Son-of-a-bitch! She bit me! Get back here!" Salvador was already running toward the voice. "Momma, Momma, Momma!" He heard a girl’s voice, closer. She squealed and cried, "Let go! No! No! No! Let me go!" She screamed with ear shattering volume.
Then Salvador saw them in the pallid light of the clouded moon. At the top of a steep driveway, a tall man with pants around his ankles was snatching up a young girl. The girl was naked and battered, trying to pull away, but the man’s fist clutched a tangle of her long hair. As Salvador sprinted up the driveway, the girl’s screams masked the sound of his feet.
Yanking the girl backward, the brute buried his free fist into her kidney. The blow knocked the wind out of her and her scream was cut abruptly short. Just as the man was grabbing her by the throat to drag her to a pile of musty couch cushions, Salvador punched the barrel of his pistol just below the man’s ear and pulled the trigger.
The corpse fell over sideways. Its head made a sloppy, crunching sound as it hit the concrete and then the body jerked spasmodically. The girl fell along side it, pulled down by the hand still tangled in her hair. From deeper in the carport, over the ringing in his ears, Salvador heard another man’s voice. "What the fuck?!?"
Salvador fumbled with the pistol to open the breech. The man, he could see by his silhouette against a white painted wall, got quickly to his feet. Salvador broke open the pistol and the spent casing ejected. The man rushed toward him. He pulled a bullet from his pocket and shoved it in the waiting chamber.
Salvador saw the man’s engorged penis, just as he snapped the pistol closed. The pistol locked shut and the man collided with him. They both sailed through the air, falling more than ten feet down the steep driveway. The full weight of the man crushed Salvador into the concrete. He felt his head bounce and saw a white-hot flash before his eyes.
For a split second, Salvador felt like he was just waking up. He was disoriented and dizzy. Then his head snapped to the right as something crashed into his left cheek. He trapped a tooth with the back of his tongue. His nose was crushed by something. Blood was flooding his mouth and throat. He forced his eyes open.
A man with a patchy beard and a blood smeared T-shirt was raising his fist to hit him again. As if on the string of a marionette, Salvador’s arm leapt up to press the pistol under the man’s chin. Frozen, with fist in the air, the man looked down into Salvador’s eyes. Terror and pleading was what Salvador saw. He cocked back the hammer and the man held his breath and squeezed shut his eyes.
Salvador pulled the trigger.
He couldn’t lie there for long. The blood was choking him. He pushed the body off of himself and rolled over to vomit. Salvador coughed and spit out his tooth. Blood poured freely from the tip of his nose as he spat bile and blood out of his mouth. Scattered on the ground were shards of glass from broken beer bottles.
The girl was crying, "Momma. Momma. Momma." He couldn’t move. A warm liquid was running past his ears. Salvador reached up and felt the back of his head. It was meaty and it stung a bit. The girl cried louder, begging her mother to get up. Salvador tried to stand. His knees wobbled and he collapsed. He tried again. Gouts of fiery pain erupted along his left side. The girl’s cries melted into sobs.
Holstering his pistol, Salvador stood with hands on knees. Taking short steps, he pivoted around and looked up the driveway. It looked like a river of blood. The sanguine fluid was pooled around his feet. He could just barely make out the huddled shape of the girl under the carport. With a groan he took a step up the drive. Pain lanced through his ribs. His face throbbed. Another step and another got behind him. Each one was joined by a bowel-deep groan of pain. Finally at the top, he could see the pale skin of the girl lying across a woman’s naked body. The girl was sobbing.
A wave of nausea gripped Salvador when he saw the blood between the girl’s thighs. He made himself recover and pulled off his jacket. Draping it over her shoulders, he asked, "What’s your name, princess?"
Pleadingly she cried, "Momma..."
Salvador knelt down next to her. He knew what he would find when he said to the girl, "Come on over here and let me help your momma. I’m a fireman. I don’t have my hat, because I’m off duty."
The little girl pushed herself away from her mother with a sob and huddled under the jacket a few feet away. Salvador examined the woman. He didn’t really need to check, given the angle of her head. Her face was mauled. Touching his fingertips to her neck, he bent down to listen for a breath. The skin was already cooling. Salvador covered the corpse with the scraps of clothing that he found strewn around the body. Seeing what he was doing, the little girl wailed her loss to the world, until her voice gave out.
Salvador wanted to comfort her, but when he got near, she flailed her fists at him and curled into a fetal ball on her side. He left her to her misery only a minute, then he crouched down next to her and said, "I have a safe place to take you, Princess. Please come with me."
The little girl didn’t hesitate. She reached her arms up and encircled his neck. Lifting her brought fresh tears of pain to his eyes, but Salvador forced himself to his feet. The girl wrapped her legs around his waist and the pressure throbbed excruciatingly from neck to thigh. She buried her face deeper into his shoulder and clung tighter as he started to walk. His knees buckled and he caught himself against a pole of the carport.
Taking a deep breath that wheezed in his chest, Salvador looked at the steep slope of the driveway. Through sheer willpower, he swallowed down his pain and again began putting one foot in front of the other.
As the corner of Thirty-Second and Jasmine came into view, Hank and Dale were beside him. They tried to dislodge the girl, but she gripped him even more tightly. Little spots of pain-light flashed before his eyes and he told them to leave her alone. They helped him walk up the steps of the porch and at the door Norah met them.
"Oh my God!" She cried and reached for him. He flinched in anticipation of the new pain her touch would give, but she stayed her hand. "What happened, Honey?"
His voice was muffled through his swollen lips and his jaw fiercely ached. "Get her cleaned up. I need stitches and some water."
Many hands helped Salvador through the door. They coaxed the girl off, with Evie and Pauline easing her to the bathroom. Salvador was helped into the kitchen where Theresa, already masked and gloved, was waiting for him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They’d thrown out caution and the cool, bright florescent light from three separate fixtures pushed back the darkness. In the center of the floor the short-backed
deco-waterfall chair sat on a bed of towels, with more towels laid over it. "Help him out of his pants," Theresa commanded. When he was down to his boxers, she cut his T-shirt off his torso and told him to sit down. As he did, she shoved a white ramekin, containing several pills, under his nose. A glass of water appeared in her other hand. "Take them," she commanded.
Salvador dumped the bowl’s contents into his mouth and swallowed them down with a gulp of water. He was very thirsty, but Theresa snatched the glass from his hand before he could swallow more. She told Hank to grab his hair clippers and proceeded to examine her patient. "Does this hurt," she asked while prodding his ribs.
His answer was a barely stifled scream. That seemed to be the only answer he could give to any of her probing questions. Dale deftly directed the beam of a flashlight everywhere Theresa moved her hands. She circled Salvador, pausing for some time on his face. She asked all of the standard questions. His fingers began to tingle.
"Well, Salvador, all-in-all, I’d say you’re pretty beat up," she announced.
Despite his pain he let out a small laugh. "You sure?"
She nodded. "Yep. I’m pretty sure."
"How bad?" he asked.
Theresa seemed startled. "We just went through this, don’t you remember?"
"What?" he asked with some confusion.
"Okay, from the bottom up," she started. "You’re left ankle is severely sprained, but I don’t think it’s broken. You’ll need a cast."
"It doesn’ even hur," he said in disbelief. Bending at the waist, wincing in pain, he saw that his ankle was the size of a football. "Oh," he mumbled, wondering how that had happened. He could hardly speak, because his face felt swollen and painful. "Whu else?"
