Natural Disaster (Book 2): Quake

by Lou Cadle

  “Food,” he said, setting it on the table. “We have some in our emergency supplies, but I grabbed our bag of perishables at the market anyway.”

  “Our bag?”

  “I didn’t tell you about the rationing? Food and gas?”

  “We have a lot to catch up on.” Bash peered into the bag. Cheese, milk, fruits and vegetables.

  “The stores should have enough for a week.”

  “But we’re okay for longer, right?”

  “With this and one or two more bags, what there is in the garage, what’s on our shelves, at least two weeks.”

  “I’ll be able to eat at work tomorrow and the next day, I think,” said Bash, thinking of the sandwich shop.

  “I’ll make do with only breakfast and supper.” He looked around. “You’ve been cleaning.”

  “Sure. You know me.”

  “I do.” Gale pulled him into a hug.

  Bash squeezed him tightly for a moment, then relaxed into the comfort of his husband’s arms.

  “We’ll clean again tomorrow morning at dawn, if you want,” Gale said in his ear. “And talk more. But I need some sleep now.”

  “I need a shower.”

  Gale backed out of his arms.

  “Okay. Take something — “ he stepped over and opened a cabinet, and came out with a plastic container, a quart capacity. “Like this. Fill it with water from the hot water heater, pour a little over yourself. Soap, then rinse with the rest.”

  Bash tried to look cheerful at the prospect. He hoped the dim light made it look more convincing.

  “I’m afraid we’re going to have to adjust to it for a while. I can’t promise running water, or safe water, for at least a week.” He explained the plan for public faucets along a main line. “So I’ll get some on the way home every day, if I can figure out how to carry it.”

  “What about the solar shower thing we bought last year for camping? It’s five gallons, right?”

  “Perfect,” Gale said. “I’ll dig it out tomorrow.”

  “I guess we could both shower and even do some dishes with five gallons.”

  “Showering we might have to skimp on,” said Gale. “I know it sucks, but think of it this way. We’re alive, and our house is standing, and we have each other. That’s better than a lot of people in the fault zone can say.”

  Bash knew it for the truth. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

  “Sure.”

  “There are these two girls.” He went on to explain how he had come across McKenna and Huruka and how he was worried about them. “So I left them alone at their house tonight, but it’s pretty wrecked. And if the mother doesn’t appear…”

  “You want them to move in here.”

  Bash nodded, searching Gale’s face.

  “It will halve the time our food will last us.”

  “I know.”

  Gale sighed. “Of course we can’t just leave them alone. If the mother doesn’t show up tomorrow, yeah, bring them back here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re a good man, Bash.”

  “I feel like a man waking up from a dream, to find himself again.”

  “How so?”

  “The last year has been hard on me. Hard on you too, I know. But I feel like I’ve been paying attention to the wrong things, to the little problems, when so much about my life was good. Something like this….” He lifted his palms, unable to find the words.

  “I know. Makes you think about what’s important.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re important, the most important piece of my life. Don’t ever doubt that.” Gale reached for his hand. “Leave the kitchen for now. Let’s go to bed.”

  After a quick wash each, they both did. It took no time at all to settle down, after the day Bash had just had. Or was it more than a day? He was trying to count the hours since the quake when exhaustion overtook him.

  Chapter 10: Gale

  Sunday morning, Gale woke before dawn to the sound of rain, a light but steady patter against the window. He had burrowed under the blanket in the night. Temps had dropped, maybe as much as twenty degrees.

  Not good. Not good at all.

  He wasn’t sleeping outside, but half of his staff was, and so was half the town. Some were bedded down in their own driveways or back yards, their houses too damaged to risk staying inside, but enough of their belongings left intact that they didn’t want to abandon them. This rain would ruin some of what hadn’t been destroyed by the quake already.

  Other citizens were living in the new tent cities. The lowland city parks were unusable for that because of sulfurous fumes. Those parks were also too close to the Mississippi and all the disease and danger it carried. There was a tent city on the high school grounds, two at green spaces on the outskirts of town, and a third, potentially the largest, up beyond the interstate on the highest ground around, outside the city limits on the fallow field of a generous farmer.

  Gale crawled out of bed, trying not to disturb Bash and walked down the hall to peer into the guest bedroom. The girls, McKenna and Haruka, lay side by side. He and Bash had become foster parents to these two. He had been worried about taking them in, a worry not about having enough food or about extra responsibility, but about being gay in an anti-marriage-freedom state. And the Japanese girl’s parents wouldn’t love it, either, he was sure. Japan was a generation behind the U.S. on the gay issue, he had seen firsthand, on a professional trip to an earthquake conference in Kyoto. But Bash had asked, and Gale hadn’t been able to say no. Other people were just going to have to suck it up, and admit that keeping these two girls safe and fed was more important than their bigotry.

  As he watched, McKenna flopped over in her sleep, as big in her gestures, as aggressive in sleep as she was awake. He liked the girl, but Bash had taken to a father role as easily as he took to breathing. Haruka was more of a cipher, quiet and thoughtful, hard to get to know.

  Gale went into the kitchen and used the toilet in the half-bath off the mudroom. It turned out you could flush without power or water, but you didn’t do it for everything — there simply wasn’t water to spare. Last night, having heard the forecast for rain, he had set buckets under the downspouts on the house to gather water for just this purpose.

  A flashlight set on its end on the kitchen table functioned as a table lamp. He switched it on, sat down and started his to-do list.

  Most important was food. He, Bash, and the girls had groceries, the last two bags of the rationed groceries still sitting on the counter, what was left in his trunk and their year-old emergency supplies. But the people in the tent cities and a even a good number who were still in their homes were running out. People who had shared freely on day one were rethinking that strategy now. And he couldn’t blame them, because he was hoarding what he had, too.

  That was the first order of business with FEMA this morning. Get an airdrop of food, MREs or whatever was available. And have a talk about water. Smart locals had listened to official advice and taken care with what water was left in their hot water tanks, saving it for drinking. Stupid people had wasted theirs on showering and were out, except for the little coming from the city’s water tower. The police had to take over rationing water at the central taps yesterday, limiting the take to three gallons per household. So those who hadn’t learned smart water practices before were forced to learn it now. The Guard took water out to the tent cities but, again, there was only enough to drink. People were going to be smelling pretty ripe by now out there.

  The flashlight rattled on the table, giving warning, and Gale grabbed for it as the aftershock built. It wasn’t much of one. When it passed, he balanced the flashlight again and went on with his list.

  “Good morning.”

  He turned to see Haruka standing in the doorway, rubbing at her short black hair.

  “Good morning. Would you like something to drink?”

  “No thank you,” she said. “May I sit?”

  “Of course
.” He gestured to a chair. “Did the shock wake you?”

  “Shock? Oh, aftershock, the tremor. Yes.”

  “What it is called in Japanese? An aftershock, I mean?”

  “Yoshin.” Pointing to his pen, she said, “I’ll show you, if you wish.”

  He passed her the pen and paper and watched as she drew in quick strokes two ideograms for the word. “That’s lovely,” he said.

  “With a brush, it is more nice,” she said.

  “Is English writing hard for you to learn? I can’t imagine trying to learn to read in Japanese.”

  “It is easier to speak,” she said. “And I practiced speaking more.”

  “You must miss your home and family. Now more than ever.”

  She nodded slowly. “But they know now? That I am not dead?”

  “Yes, they should by now. The radio people here read out all the survivor names on their radio yesterday. Those people who heard it put it up on the internet.” They had also read all the confirmed dead over the airwaves and that had gone up online too. “Your parents can find your name there.”

  “I think rain has stopped.”

  He listened. “I think you’re right.” Faint light shone through the blinds on the window. “I’m going to start a fire outside so we can have tea and breakfast.”

  Once the EOC had better cooking arrangements, he had brought their hibachi back home and set it up on the deck. He went out to light a fire. Damn, but it was cold out here. Rain dripped from trees and pattered on the autumn grass.

  The charcoal bag was nearly empty. Not enough left to cook meat — not that there was any raw meat left in town to buy — but enough to heat water two or three times. He carefully stacked five pieces and lit them. Then he went inside and poured drinking water from a two-gallon container into two sauce pans and went back to set one on the fresh flame. There was tea, and there was plain instant oatmeal from the grocery rationing bag, along with some brown sugar and canned fruit from their own cabinets. He hated oatmeal — loved the smell, but hated the taste, oddly — but he’d eat it. And be grateful for it.

  By the time the water was hot enough for tea and oatmeal, the whole household was stirring, woken by the growing daylight. People were reverting to their natural states, he thought, rising and resting with the schedule of the sun. He found he didn’t miss television or artificial light or noise — though he liked the few minutes of music he got to hear in the car every day.

  Inside, he put away his notes and let Haruka set the table with paper bowls and cups, also from the rationing. He and Bash weren’t paper-plate kind of guys, usually, but water couldn’t be spared to wash dishes.

  After breakfast, everyone used the toilet, and Gale flushed just once with the rainwater. Bash insisted on using a half-cup of the rainwater to scrub the toilet, too. If it didn’t continue raining, he’d have to get over that, Gale thought.

  McKenna wanted to go with Gale to the EOC, but Bash insisted they stay here and do homework. “School starts again tomorrow,” he reminded them.

  “I cannot believe we have to go to school,” McKenna said. “Seriously. Now?”

  “I’ll be fun. It’s outside.”

  “What if it rains?”

  “They’ll figure it out,” Bash said, brightly.

  Gale was reminded of his own childhood, his mother trying to stay cheerful through his surly adolescent mornings.

  “It’s not like we can have organized classes,” McKenna said. “People won’t have all the same book.”

  “I’m sure the teachers will know what to do. You can read here, too. We have some classic novels on the shelf.”

  McKenna sighed.

  Gale thought, Bash sounds just like my mother, and now I’m about to become my father. “I really don’t want you two wandering around on the streets today.”

  “Why not?” McKenna said.

  “Because I don’t trust people,” he said. “The golden days are over. People are getting hungry. Some will be getting violent.”

  “Like me that first day,” she said.

  Gale had heard the story of her attack on the drug thief. He got the boy’s name from McKenna, checked it against the known dead list, and saw the kid’s name wasn’t on it. Nevertheless, he had told Flint the whole story. Flint had said, “Without a corpus delicti, I don’t give a shit. I have bigger fish to fry.” Apparently, that was going to be the end of it.

  To McKenna he said, “I’m glad you can take care of yourself.”

  “I miss Facebook,” she said, in some inexplicable teenage link of logic.

  He said, “Maybe the cell phones will work again today.”

  “Really?” Both she and Haruka perked up at that.

  Gale said, “They’re working on it. I promise you they’re going as fast as they can.”

  Another aftershock stopped her reply and the four of them sat and looked up in unison as the house shook.

  “You sure it’s safe here?” McKenna said.

  “No,” he admitted. “And if there’s another big quake, run outside. If you can’t get outside fast enough, get under the kitchen table. Check?”

  “Check,” she said.

  Bash said. “We have a couple games and puzzles you guys can play today. Let me show you where those are.”

  “I’m not a kid,” she said.

  “Good. They’re not kids’ games.”

  “I’m sure enjoying this Brady Bunch moment,” Gale said, “But I have to get in to work.”

  “What’s a Brady Bunch?” McKenna said and when he looked at her in surprise, she grinned. “Gotcha, old man.”

  He followed Bash down to hall to catch a quick private goodbye kiss. There was a moratorium on sex with the girls in the house, and they had agreed not to kiss or hug in front of them. It was irritating but not impossible to live with. Bash and he had been together a long while, after all, and didn’t need to stay draped over each other all the time like newlyweds.

  He left for work. He was early, but he wanted to get lists of supplies needed from everyone for the radio call to FEMA at nine. The Triumvirate met at eight. An early arrival would give him a full hour to catch up with Angela and his team leaders before the meeting.

  The aftershocks kept up all morning, five or six during his two meetings, much more than there had been the day before. None was strong, but the endless grind of them put everyone on edge. By the time he radioed in to FEMA, he was a little edgy himself.

  “I don’t want rice and beans,” he said into the mike, straining to keep calm. “We don’t have the water or fuel to cook them. I want MREs or canned foods, something like that. Over.”

  “The weight of cans makes that impossible.”

  “At least they’d have safe liquid to drink in them.” He had passed the word this morning to his teams and to Flint and Dan to tell all citizens. Everybody needed to drink the liquid in those cans of vegetables and fruit from here on out. It may not taste great, but it’s potable liquid. Do not waste it. “What’s the news on the barge?”

  “The Corps is still working on the river. It’s not the river it was, and they don’t have a clear channel much south of St. Louis.”

  “And you can’t get one of those fixed wing planes from the military? Something that can land in the limited space we have?”

  “We’re working on it. You don’t understand. I have St. Louis to worry about, and Memphis is the hardest hit and taking a lot of the national resources.” She went on complaining and he let her — not that you could interrupt with this radio set-up; you had to wait for the “over.”

  When that word finally came, he said, “I appreciate that. I appreciate your position. But you appreciate that we’re maybe 24 to 48 hours from a food riot here. Which reminds me. Our police chief wants more riot equipment. I have a list.” He read it out to her. Rubber bullets and tear gas. A town their size didn’t have a big stock of such things. Though he had begged Flint to not use the tear gas unless it were the last resort, truly a life or death
situation. With the water shortage, how the hell would people wash their eyes after a dose of tear gas?

  He read off the last of the other supplies. “But I’d rather have food than any of this. And I’d rather have water than food. A tanker of water.”

  “We’re working on it, truly we are, Mr. Swanton. You know FEMA has always…” and it was off to the political races again, sound bites and ass-covering. He exchanged glances with Marilyn, who was manning the radios this morning.

  “Yada yada yada,” she said, with a wry smile.

  Gale snorted and asked her, “You two are still set for food and water?”

  “Yes. Luckily, we had just gone shopping the day before the quake, but in four or five days, we’ll be down to the dregs, too.”

  The FEMA director was winding her stump speech to a close, so Gale turned back to the radio.

  “We’ve cleared out the Walmart parking lot and towed all the cars,” he said. “We’ve bulldozed light posts there, too, painted a big old X for you. So there is a clear space for landing bigger helicopters in town. Or even for dropping by parachute.”

  The problem was, he knew, water weighed an awful lot. What 24,000 survivors needed in water was eight pounds per day per person ideally, four pounds at the bare minimum. That meant 50 tons of water per day just to keep his townspeople alive. And that was one small town out of the whole earthquake zone. He did understand that they weren’t the only ones needing help. But his understanding of the scale of the disaster didn’t make his neighbors less thirsty, did it?

  They had one of the biggest rivers in the world flowing by their doorstep, but it was a polluted, chemical-laden cesspool. It had been for three generations or more, but after the earthquake, it was a real danger. Benzene, chlorine, arsenic, mercury, many in high amounts, had been added to the regular pollutants. Really, at this point, you probably didn’t want to sit within a mile of the river, but his outdoor Emergency Operations Center was closer than that, as were the fire and police stations. And the hospital, and hundreds of homes. He couldn’t help that. His town was built on that polluted river.

  He ended his frustrating conversation with FEMA, thanked Marilyn, asked her if their gasoline situation was okay — it was — and he drove back to the EOC.