Pavement Ends: The Exodus

by Kurt Gepner

  Marissa nodded with worry in her eyes.

  With his left hand, Hank pressed his fingers into his brother’s flesh so he could feel the bone. "Hold his shoulder, so he doesn’t move," he instructed Marissa. With his right hand, Hank grabbed his brother’s left wrist and pulled.

  Matt’s eyes fluttered open and he gasped in pain. "Hold still," Hank barked. Matt fainted again as Hank felt the ends of bone snap together like a couple of Legos.

  "Lay one of those sticks right here by my thumb," he told Marissa. While she did that, Hank used his teeth to peel away the end of tape until he had a two-foot strip dangling from the roll. He sat the adhesive side against the stick and told Marissa to pat it down and wind the roll around.

  "Tight, but not too tight," he said. "Good," he said. "Now wrap the top."

  "Shouldn’t we put all three splints on his arm?" Marissa hesitated.

  "We will," Hank replied, with an edge of impatience. "First this one, then another…. You’ll see."

  She didn’t pursue the question, although Hank could tell that she did not see. After Marissa wrapped tape around her husband’s upper arm, Hank placed a second stick just under Matt’s armpit, so the point went past his elbow. Holding it in place, he said, "Now wrap it in the middle."

  "Now, I get it," Marissa said in the tone of Eureka!

  They placed the last stake along the back of Matt’s arm, against his triceps. Once the splint was completed, Hank checked his brother’s fingernails. He said, "It’s a lot more difficult to tell, because he’s hypothermic, but if you press on the nail, color should come back right away. If it doesn’t then blood’s not flowing, which means the splint is too tight. It looks like everything’s fine. Now hold him up," Hank told his sister-in-law.

  With duct tape, Hank bound his brother’s arm against his chest. Matt’s palm was pressed against his sternum and his elbow was at his side. A half-dozen wraps of tape ensured that his arm was utterly immobilized.

  When Hank finished with Matt’s arm, he fetched several water bottles and dropped them next to his brother’s head. Then he climbed into the makeshift bed, next to Matt, opposite of Marissa.

  Fifteen minutes passed before Matt warmed enough to really start shivering. All the while his wife and brother spoke to him and used their breath and bodies to bring up his temperature. When Matt opened his eyes, Hank twisted a lid off a water bottle began pouring sips into his brother’s mouth. Matt managed to swallow some of it. More time passed and Matt curled into a fetal ball, shivering violently. In that state, he couldn’t drink any water, but Marissa and Hank continued to press their bodies against his. The night was a long one.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Slivers of dim light needled through gaps in the bay door just as Hank’s lids drooped shut the final time. Matt was resting, nestled warmly between him and Marissa. They had spent hours rubbing his body, holding him and coaxing him to drink water. In the end, Matt was able to consume four and a half bottles before slipping off into a fitful slumber.

  Hank vaguely wondered about what horrors his brother had seen and endured to have brought him to this point. He didn’t ponder long on the subject, however, as he gave himself over to sleep’s embrace.

  Dull upturned cars lay along the streets like a colony of exterminated roaches. People walked, naked and gray, along the road; they came from everywhere and were going nowhere. Before him, in a crossroads, a child’s wading pool was ringed by a patch of freshly mowed lawn. He stood in sandals, casually holding an iridescent garden hose that snaked through the grass to a spigot mounted on a fragmented brick wall. As he sipped lazily from a brown beer bottle, he watched as blood sprayed from the nozzle and filled the pool. Reclining comfortably under the sanguine shower were the two women whom he had killed. Standing in a line on a brick path that led to the pool were the women of his family. Hank asked them, "What are you doing here?" Lexi looked at him as if he should already know the answer and said, "We’re waiting our turn."

  "Uncle Henry?" Steven’s voice came from a distant place. Hank felt the tickle of fingers brushing his ear. "Uncle Henry?"

  Hank remembered that he was in a garage, in the middle of the end of the world. He realized that Steven may have heard, or seen something, maybe something threatening. Hank lurched upright and threw off the sleeping bag. It was very dim in the garage, although light pressed in from a multitude of crevasses and cracks in the surrounding walls. In a voice raspy from sleep, Hank whispered, "What is it Steven? Did you hear something?"

  "Yes," Steven answered.

  "Quietly," Hank instructed, speaking in a breathy whisper. "Tell me what you heard?"

  Emulating his uncle, Steven whispered, "I heard you crying. Why were you crying?"

  Hank looked at his nephew and gave him an uninformative grunt. "You’re a sweet boy," he said and ruffled the child’s curly blonde locks.

  "Who’s that?" Steven pointed at the fetal lump pressed against his mother.

  "That’s your father," Hank said.

  Steven’s face illuminated, but Hank pressed a quelling finger to his lips. "He needs his rest more than anything, right now. Go wake up your sister and tell her what I just told you."

  With a child’s enthusiasm, Steven skipped to the shelf where his sister slumbered and woke her quietly.

  "Is everything all right?" Marissa asked.

  "It’s right as rain," Hank answered. "Or so said the oracle," he muttered abstractly.

  "What time is it?" Marissa sat up rubbing her eyes.

  "It’s light time," Hank drawled. He got up and stepped over and around the tools and boards that were strewn about his project. After unlocking the bay door, he pushed it open. Everyone shielded their eyes against the brilliant morning that flooded into their dark little shelter.

  "How is he," Hank asked over his shoulder.

  Marissa examined her husband. "Sleeping soundly," she said.

  "All right," Hank nodded. "Let him sleep until I get this contraption working.

  The two bicycles were now connected by three pieces of four-foot long two-by-fours and vaguely resembled the sort of bike that you might rent in a coastal tourist town. The two-by-fours were attached to the frame with U-bolts. One stretched from one head-tube, where the forks and handle bars connect, to the other. Another two-by-four extended from one down-tube to the other, just behind the front wheels. The last stretched from seat-post to seat-post.

  The whole assembly was surprisingly stable and would allow two people to pedal beside each other. The handle bars were now adjusted ninety degrees out, so they were parallel with the frame. Hank had bent the inner handles upward and lashed them together with electrical cord and a broom handle. The broom handle now served as the new handle bar for both bikes.

  Hank manhandled the wagon so the tongue rested on the center of the lowest connecting two-by-four. Then he used a one-hundred-foot extension cord to firmly lash the tongue to the cross bar. After securing the trailer with the cord, he pulled out the roll of duct tape and wrapped his knots until they appeared to be nothing more than a gray, silver mass. The whole task cost him the better part of an hour.

  "Marissa," he called out as he tore away the roll of duct tape from his last wrap. His sister-in-law was beside him before he looked up. "Let’s give this a try," he said.

  Marissa gave her daughter the instruction to yell and scream and wake up her father if anything remotely suspicious happened. When she was satisfied that Ella knew exactly what to do, Marissa closed the bay door and fastened the chain to appear locked.

  They both climbed on the bicycle contraption and spun the pedals to a ready position. Looking one another in the eye, both showing equal portions of hope and skepticism, they pressed down hard against the load. The trailer followed and they crept into the street. They could only use the three lowest gears, but soon they were moving about with reasonable ease.

  Whether by necessity, or common sense or collaborative instinct, in the course of two trips around the block, they devi
sed a method of communication that allowed them to pedal, shift and steer without stumbling over each other. They were ready to go.

  Both grinned with satisfaction as they parked their new vehicle in front of the garage. It had performed well, taking potholes and turns without any real difficulty. At one point, they had it cruising at near running speed. That was when they discovered its major deficiency. Specifically, the tiny bicycle brakes were not effective at stopping the mass of the trailer. This was not an insurmountable obstacle and Hank declared the contraption a stellar success.

  Light poured into the dingy little garage as Hank again slid open the door. Both children were squatting to either side of their father, watching him as he quietly snored away. Roused by the light, Matt groaned and opened his eyes. When they saw their father’s open eyes, the children swarmed over him and Marissa rushed to his side. They held Matt and poured their affection on him as if he had just been resurrected from the dead.

  Matt was in a great deal of pain and extremely weak but entirely cogent. He told his story over a morning meal from the supply of food Hank had brought with him. Their remaining inventory of food totaled one more bag of trail mix, a can of corned beef hash, two cans of sardines and a quarter loaf of wheat bread. That was enough for one more meal between them, so far as Hank was concerned. Marissa thought they might ration it into two meals. Hank didn’t argue the point as they listened to his brother’s story.

  It started with the peculiar weather they had been experiencing. Due to the protracted and worsening storms over the past week, Matt’s company had given their employees the option of leaving for the day. Many workers availed themselves of that option and the factory was reduced to a maintenance cycle. In his role as a department manager, Matt had opted to stay and oversee the shutdown. At the moment of the event, he was outside smoking a cigarette. The smoking area was on the opposite side of the campus from the tanks of liquid hydrogen. That was how he and a score of others had survived the explosion.

  Fortunately for Matt, he had taken shelter beneath the broad umbrella of a cedar tree to enjoy his cigarette in peace. If he hadn’t, he would have been among those in the smoking area who were killed or injured when the building collapsed on them. The blast was so powerful, however that even with the building as insulation, he was knocked off his feet.

  Right away Matt and a few other lucky survivors started helping the injured. They got everybody out of the rain and tended to critical wounds as best they could. Among the survivors was Randal Dearborne, who was a principle scientist in the company’s R&D division.

  According to Dearborne, the cataclysm was caused by a direct hit from a pulsing series of massive, solar flares. He had been conducting experiments in crystalline magnetic resonance and had just stumbled upon a radical and strange phenomenon. He discovered that the Earth's magnetic poles were shifting, South to North and vice versa.

  During the polarity migration of the Earth’s magnetic field, an event that Dearborne had theorized about in his doctoral thesis, he discovered that multiple poles were forming. Not only was North becoming South, but there were several Norths and Souths splitting off and spontaneously forming farther and farther away from the Earth’s axis. This was causing magnetic field lines to break and new ones to form.

  Steven asked what a field line was. "They are invisible bands of magnetism that stretch from one pole to another," Matt told his son. "And they form a barrier that protects us from cosmic rays." That simple explanation seemed to satisfy the young boy.

  Matt continued relating his knowledge to his family as he hungrily gobbled down the last granola bar from Hank’s travel pack. Dearborne claimed that powerful magnetic bubbles were forming between the points where several poles had gathered. But preceding each split of the poles there was a huge fluctuation in the magnetic field causing meteorological and geologic anomalies.

  "Daddy," Ella interrupted. "Does that mean that all the tornadoes and earthquakes were caused by the poles shifting?"

  Matt smiled warmly at his daughter. "You’re spot on, Little Girl. Along with Human Caused Global warming, our little planet is in a mess." Ella glowed from his praise and he continued relating his story.

  Dearborne said that neither the polarity shift in the Earth’s magnetic field, nor the massive solar flares were unprecedented events. According to the geologic record, the Earth’s magnetic polarity flips pretty regularly about every two-hundred-fifty-thousand years. Oddly, it has not happened in over seven-hundred-fifty-thousand years. The planet was well overdue for a magnetic field flip.

  In turn, the solar flare was similar to one that had been well documented in eighteen-fifty-nine. That one was called the Carrington Event, after the scientist who observed several days of flares happening on the sun. "Back then," Matt told his children as a teacher to students, "there were very few electrical devices. Can either of you remember one that was in use during the Civil War, which also happened in the same era?"

  Even though the brother and sister were of different ages and Ella was extremely bright for her age, there were certain subjects that they studied together. History was one of those subjects and recently the Civil War had been the topic. Surprisingly, it was Steven who provided the answer. "Telegraphs?" he asked, hopefully.

  "That’s right, Steven." Matt rewarded his son with a proud smile.

  "Oh!" Ella growled. "I was going to say that!"

  "Next time," Marissa said and hugged her daughter.

  Matt continued relating his knowledge and answered the natural question of how the telegraph related to the solar flare. The eighteen-fifty-nine flare caused the wires that ran across the land, from telegraph to telegraph, to jump around and shoot spark at anything nearby. Sage brush and office furniture caught fire. The whole telegraph network went down and it crippled banking and other businesses for about two weeks while they repaired the damage. What happened this time was just the same, but tremendously worse, because so much of civilization was electrified.

  The reason Dearborne knew about the recent flares was that his experiments were very sensitive to sun spots and other solar activity. He had done a great deal of research and he was tied into the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NOAA kept constant surveillance on the Sun and issued warnings in the event of a solar flare.

  At the time when everything went haywire, the NOAA had issued an alert. The sun had just begun a series of massive solar eruptions about an hour before it reached Earth. The most peculiar thing was that its trajectory did not directly intersect the Earth’s path. The NOAA expected the particles that were ejected from the sun to skim the northern hemisphere, but not actually collide with our planet. What Dearborne theorized was that the fluctuations in the magnetic field that coincided with the arrival of the flare actually pulled it directly into the Earth.

  Without the normal protections that shield us from cosmic rays the flare slammed into our planet. As the charged particles streamed through the atmosphere, they generated an incredible amount of electromagnetic energy. When that kind of energy passes through conductive materials, such as power lines and household wiring, those materials become supercharged through induction. In turn, such a powerful feedback is created that anything connected to those wire gets fried. And since that electromagnetic energy was so vast it destroyed all micro circuitry and even caused nausea in many people.

  After explaining the event, Matt related his personal experiences throughout the tragedy. As he went on with his narrative Matt gained some vigor in his voice although his body remained feeble.

  Once the survivors had been gathered together under a fallen wall that formed a sort of lean-to, they waited a long time for help to arrive. Eventually, Matt decided that no help was on its way. He braved the storm and took off for the Hillsboro Airport. It was the closest facility that might have emergency communications. What he found after a two-mile trek to the airport, however, was even greater chaos than he had left.

  The fuel was still burning
and a few planes had crashed. There was nothing that Matt could do, except trudge on, so he continued to the Armory at the Washington County Fairgrounds.

  The National Guard there was beginning to get organized, but they were unwilling to send help with him, because none of their vehicles would run. They had some medics that were treating wounded, mostly people who had suffered burns, but the commanding officer wouldn’t let them leave their post. Instead, since they were setting up a field hospital, Matt was told to bring the injured people to the fairgrounds.

  Having no other recourse, he slogged through the smoke clouded torrential rains back to the factory. Only three others, among the fifteen who were gathered, had avoided injury. Two of the injured were unconscious and three couldn’t walk. None-the-less, they all worked together and the whole group of them got to the camp. Sadly, Randal Dearborne went into a coma and died from blood loss shortly after they arrived.

  Matt fell into the work detail, helping to set up tents and organize the civilians into teams. Over the course of the day, more and more guard members found their way to the Armory. By dark time, twenty-six soldiers had reported for duty. Most of them had no uniform, because their homes had been destroyed or they were at their civilian jobs when the Flare had come.

  Somehow Matt had become the de facto civilian leader, so the Army officers called him into a staff meeting comprised of three lieutenants and four sergeants. He found out that the soldiers in the camp, a total of thirty-seven, accounted for all but five assigned to the Armory. They were a residual contingent, mostly composed of soldiers with some sort of injury or hardship. The remainder of the unit was currently deployed to the Middle East.

  Among their assets were several large tents, generators, lights, weapons and enough food to feed their whole company for six months. What they lacked was information, working vehicles, clear orders or experienced leadership. The commanding officer was a twenty-five year old, First Lieutenant name Chancey. He had two Second Lieutenants, both of whom were even younger, and the rest of the unit was composed of enlisted soldiers.