Natural Disaster (Book 2): Quake

by Lou Cadle

  He went to the back yard and spelled Haruka at shoveling out the latrine. He was pleasantly surprised when McKenna came out of the back door, toting a toilet seat.

  “It was pretty easy to take off,” she said. “I just had to stare at it awhile to figure it out.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Let’s measure it against what we’ve dug.”

  After they had, he sent her into the garage to hunt for lumber scraps. Two by sixes would be nice, if he could find some. They could run them on either side, balance the toilet seat on them, and just move it along the trench each day. After a week, slide it all the way down to the starting position, adding dirt over the waste. If he got this deep enough today, the latrine could last for a month before it was full and another had to be dug.

  And in a year or two, he thought, it’d probably be a great place to plant a tree or flowers, the soil enriched by the decomposing waste. He liked the idea of a tree being a sort of memorial to the bad times of the quake. Bash had admired the blooming crabapples here in Missouri. Maybe one of those.

  The pleasant fantasy of a future without constant emergency, with time for niceties like gardening energized him, and he got another half-foot of the length dug before it was time to change clothes for work. With some added effort tonight, the latrine would be usable by bedtime.

  Overhead, the clouds thickened.

  “Hey, girls,” he said, staring up at the gathering clouds. “Let’s get every pot and pan and plastic container in the house outside in the back yard to catch rain. Set them anywhere flat.”

  Bash joined the project, digging out an old dishpan, a cleaning bucket, and a stack of disposable aluminum cake pans, as well as his precious designer cookware. Within fifteen minutes, the backyard looked like a thrift store for kitchenware, with more than a hundred receptacles for rain. If they got even a half-inch of rain, they’d end up with a couple gallons of drinking water.

  Gale took the girls into work with him and set them to copying notices about avoiding touching the river water on poster board using permanent markers. He’d have his people nail them up all along the downtown and the neighborhoods closest to the river. The rain would destroy them within a few days, but the message would, he hoped, be conveyed by then.

  Helicopters had arrived before he got to work, bringing a four-foot tall swimming pool. Two men in the helicopter had jumped out and assembled it in no time flat.

  Sophie, who had been his second-in-command since Kay went home at midnight, and in the absence of Angela. She said, “About eighteen foot diameter, looks like. And they say they’ll airlift water into it.”

  Gale went over and looked at it, and there was a tag on its side that said, “6200 gallon capacity.” 6200 gallons wouldn’t be enough for the 18,000-plus remaining citizens, but it would come close. With 3,000 gallons produced from the lakes using the suitcase-sized filters that had come in the other helicopter load, they could survive on that, barely, if they didn’t have the hospital to think about.

  But the water to fill the pool hadn’t arrived by the time Gale arrived at work. He kept his eyes out, and his heart lifted at the next sighting of a helicopter, a big-bellied cargo helicopter. Communicating with staff was impossible with them landing this close, so everybody stood and watched as it came down in the parking lot.

  Gale ran over to see what it was. They had supplies he had requested, including antibiotics, hand cleaner, and food. But only two kinds of food — powdered potato flakes, and powdered milk, hundreds of pounds of them. Nothing else.

  Well, damn.

  He thought about it, and he realized on reflection it wasn’t a terrible choice. You could mix one with the other, douse it with room temperature water, wait five or ten minutes, and it’d surely turn into an edible paste. Without salt — and there was no salt in the delivery — it’d not taste good, and the kids who had whined about no McDonalds two days ago weren’t going to like this at all — but it’d keep everyone alive. He was glad to see a carton of gallon-sized zipper plastic bags in the load — somebody had been thinking ahead. He’d try and get the same people who had given out food at the grocery store in here to bag up the potato flakes and milk and get it distributed around town.

  The morning meeting of the Triumvirate was coming up, so he gave Sophie some quick instructions, wished the girls a nice day at school, threw all the medical supplies in his trunk, and took off for downtown.

  They’d managed to save the police station and jail with levee support and sandbagging the crap out of that one block, but the prisoners had all been moved to the upper level of the jail, just in case. The three of them met in Flint’s office, which reeked of chemicals from the river

  “Flint, you sure you’re safe in here?”

  “I’m sure I’m not. I’ll probably end up sick or dead or on disability. But what can we do? We can’t move the jail.”

  “We could let them go,” said Dan.

  “Fuck that,” said Flint. “We have to send a message about looting and theft and violence and being a bad citizen.”

  “I’m not sure that last is a crime,” said Gale, holding up his hand to forestall Flint’s reply, “But I hear you. We can’t allow the looting or violence. And as food gets shorter, I’m afraid violence will increase.”

  “The natives are getting restless already,” said Dan.

  “How so?” Gale said.

  “Some were screaming threats at my guys during rescue operations. I know they’re stressed out, and I know they’re worried about their families, but it nearly got out of hand a couple times.”

  “I had someone yelling at me, too,” said Gale. “Out by my assistant’s house, for no real reason.”

  Flint snorted. “Welcome to a cop’s pre-earthquake life.”

  Gale turned to him. “Is there anything better we can do to keep the peace?”

  “Warnings, cajoling, threats, then arrests. Pretend to listen, nod, and then repeat the order. What we typically do.”

  “But it’s not a typical situation. The aftershocks alone…” Gale said.

  “Amen to that,” muttered Dan.

  “And people are getting hungry and thirsty. Though there’s some hope on that front.” He told them about the water filters and empty pool.

  “Don’t forget we need food and water here at the jail.”

  “And for our guys,” said Dan. “If you want police and fire to function, we have to have water to drink and sufficient calories.”

  “I know. And I want my staff to be fed, too, even if it’s reduced calories, and the couple with the radios who are keeping us connected to FEMA, and the Guard people helping. But then there’s the hospital, and the school, which has to hand over something for lunch, and the heavy equipment operators, and everybody else who’s crucial to the recovery. What sort of rationing do we need to do?”

  “How much water is there?”

  “Full, the container is 6,000 gallons. But it’s empty right now, and I can’t swear how much they’ll put in there.”

  “Maybe they’ll fill it twice a day for us. Or three times.”

  “We can hope,” Gale said, but he knew his voice betrayed his lack of confidence in that hope. “We’re begging them, and I know they feel like they’re helping us as much as they can, but we need more.”

  “You know what we need? We need media,” said Dan.

  “Oh man,” said Flint, shaking his head. “I can hear it now, I’ll be arresting some looter, and it’ll be police brutality all over the TV and internet.”

  “I have no idea why we haven’t gotten any coverage before now,” said Gale.

  “They’re staying in the big cities,” said Dan. “We need to get word out that there are stories here, too.”

  “Are there?” asked Gale. “I mean, how can the story of a tiny town — tinier each day — that’s managing to hang on compete with riots and millions of rotting bodies and fires that are so pretty to watch on video?”

  “We could set something on fire,” said F
lint, grinning at Dan.

  “We could probably set the damned river on fire, if it doesn’t self-combust on us first.”

  “You’re joking, I hope,” said Gale.

  “Polluted rivers have caught fire before.”

  The thought was horrifying. “Maybe we should move the jail,” said Gale. “Maybe we should temporarily get the whole town off the lowlands, and transfer everyone to…” he trailed off.

  “Yeah, to where? More tent cities?” said Dan. “Empty fields? We don’t have the supplies or manpower. And you know, you’ll start to get epidemics up there in those tent cities. Maybe just flu, or e coli infections, but maybe in a few weeks something worse.”

  Gale sighed. “Maybe we should encourage people to leave. We’ll get water today, we have lightweight food that we can bag up. Which reminds me.” He asked Flint about getting the spouses to volunteer again to bag up and distribute food. Flint nodded the whole time he was talking. “So they have their half-gallon of water per person, and they have their bag of instant potatoes, and they can start walking.” And hope to find water somewhere the next day along their route.

  “Is the state still working on getting the roads clear?” said Dan.

  “Roads and river both, with the Corps working fulltime on the river,” said Gale. “But all we can do is wait until it happens. Maybe I should ask for buses to meet refugees as close to us as they can, and we should just empty the city, send people out there. But I’m pretty sure it’s still fifty miles or so before the roads are navigable by car. I can’t guarantee they’ll find water or food along the way.”

  “The radio — commercial radio, I mean — said they were getting refugees in Wichita, Omaha, Oklahoma City. Dallas, Chicago, Indianapolis, too.”

  “I wonder how many of those people will never return to their homes,” Gale said.

  “They went back to New Orleans.”

  “Not all of them,” Flint said. “Two thirds, three quarters only.”

  “You remember the house trailers from the news?” Dan asked. “FEMA set up trailers then.”

  Gale nodded. “And they had half the population still living in them a year later.”

  Dan said. “We’d take that. Take it and be grateful.”

  “Not until after they’re sure the quakes are done,” said Gale. “There’s no reason to set up housing and have it fall down again a month later. Besides, without roads, you can’t get trailers here anyway.”

  “How can we know when the quakes are done?” asked Dan.

  Gale shrugged. “You’d have to ask a geologist, but I’ll be confident they’re over maybe six months after the last big one, when the aftershocks aren’t coming any more often than a small one every week or so.”

  “Six more months,” said Dan.

  “With next to no aftershocks,” Gale reminded him. “And we’re not nearly to that point.” He sighed. “In 1812, there was a third big quake. There’s no reason to think that there won’t be this time, or maybe there’ll be four.”

  The three of them just sat quietly for a long moment, thinking about that.

  “Well.” Flint slapped his hand on his desk. “I need supplies today. Six months from now is too far ahead to think.”

  After Dan left, Gale stayed to ask Flint about a weapon for personal use.

  “You should have thought of that day one,” snapped Flint.

  “I wasn’t thinking ahead. And I didn’t have two teenage girls to defend then. I don’t want a gun. I really don’t know anything about guns. Just something, even pepper spray, a Tazer.”

  “We don’t have Tazers to spare.”

  “You have less population to zap now.”

  “But we have strangers coming north all the time, too. Some are going to find places to hole up here. And from what you say about food and water, we can’t afford to take in even one. I have to be able to move them along. On top of that, behavior in town is going to get worse, and soon. You can count on that.”

  “True enough. Well, I’ll just make do.”

  “I tell you what,” said Flint. “When my kids were little, they had BB guns. I’ll have my wife run one over to you this evening. It won’t hurt anybody much, not unless you’re a dead shot and get them in the eye, but it’ll be something to wave. Maybe from a distance, you’d scare off teenagers or fools.”

  “I appreciate it.” And a hammer and kitchen knife would have to do otherwise. Didn’t he have a hatchet in his tools? He thought so. He wished he had some way to train himself and the girls in self-defense in a day or two, how to fight with fists or a knife, but that was silly, just wishful thinking. It took years to get any good at a martial art. And if someone had a powerful gun aimed your way, fighting with fists was a stupid idea. What the girls did — hide in the closet — was the very best course of action. Run, hide, and only fight when you had no other choice.

  The question was, he considered as he got in his car, did defending your food and water supply constitute “have to?” When a household is down to its last can of soup, is shooting a looter “self-defense?” A moral conundrum to consider another day. He swung by the hospital and delivered the antibiotics and other supplies, and headed to George and Marilyn’s again.

  As he was walking up to the house, his walkie-talkie squawked at him.

  “What’s up?” he said.

  Sophie was on the line. “They brought water, like you see them do with forest fires, one of those buckets?”

  “Great. Is the thing full?”

  “No. That’s why I radioed you. Maybe a third full.”

  “That’s not good enough.” That gave him five thousand gallons to spread between more than 18,000 people and the hospital.

  “No, it’s not,” she agreed.

  Gale signed off and went to the door, backing off again while George rammed the front door open.

  “Maybe I should just leave it open,” he said with a rueful smile.

  Gale shook his head. “Cold tonight, and people are getting more bad-tempered out there.” He told him of being robbed and the fire chief’s experience, plus Flint’s sense that people were getting worse. “Keep it shut and locked. And if you have a gun, keep it handy.”

  George nodded. “I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that people are acting up.”

  “It’s normal,” Gale agreed. “Usually for seventy-two hours, people are cooperative, and then they turn and become selfish and impatient. If anything, we got some extra hours over and above the textbook average out of our neighbors.”

  “So those drug dealers in Katrina who rescued people in their neighborhoods went back to being bad guys, huh?”

  “In no time flat. Now get me FEMA. I have an ass to chew.” He said that just as Marilyn walked in with a tray. “Sorry about the language, Marilyn.”

  She laughed. “No problem. I have a present for you.” She handed him a steaming cup.

  He caught the scent. “Coffee?” he said.

  “We had some instant in the back of a cupboard. Probably stale, but George mentioned you missed it.”

  “Wow, thanks.” He took a sip. “You have a working camp stove?”

  “No. I can warm water by putting a covered pan on the generator. It gets damned hot there and the lid seems to keep out the gasoline taste.”

  “Smart.” He drank more coffee. It was funky tasting, but it was still a treat. And a kindness he appreciated. It was good to know as some people got worse as the stress didn’t abate, some people stayed decent. Of course, George and Marilyn and he and Bash still had a roof and a bed and had buried no bodies. Maybe he shouldn’t judge those who had it worse.

  From his seat at the radio, George said. “They’re ready for you.”

  “Thanks for the supplies,” said Gale into the mike, “But less than two thousand gallons of water? That doesn’t begin to take care of it.”

  “It’s the maximum the helicopter can carry.”

  “Is there any way we can get more? More deliveries every day?”

&
nbsp; They haggled back and forth, and finally Gale was able to wangle one more afternoon water delivery. He was up to 7,000 gallons, still not enough, especially with the dehydrated food. She said they had to find ways to cache rainwater, that it was the only long-term solution. She could maybe get more personal microfilters, and they could drink the rainwater, even if it had been runoff from a roof or street first. Or they needed to get to old farms, where there were hand pumps, and start taking water out of underground.

  Both the director and Gale were testier today than they had been. He tried to find a balance between being serious, letting her know how bad it was going to get, and spreading enough honey on his speech to keep her feeling positive toward him and prone to helping. It was an impossible tightrope to walk. He wished for the town’s sake that Evelyn had survived. She really had been the better politician.

  When he signed off, he turned to George. “I have a project for the two of you.”

  “Sure,” George said, sounding eager to help.

  “We need press. We need to get a television reporter to helicopter into this town and do human-interest reporting. We need to put pressure on FEMA to push us up their list.”

  “I don’t know of anyone in the news industry.”

  “I don’t either. But I know you and Marilyn are smart. You can use your radio contacts, you can figure out some way to sell the story to a hungry newsperson. Start with Rolla and Springfield radio and TV and move on out from there. Go national if you can.”

  “They say, if it bleeds, it leads. What can they take pictures of?”

  “We have a hospital that’s rubble, breached levees shored up by debris, and rows of bodies from the second quake still awaiting burial. We have tent cities where people are getting hungry and thirsty and angry about it. We have some photogenic sand blows in the yards of middle class houses, and a town jail kept dry by a sandbag wall. There’s plenty for them to work with. And push the small town angle. If they’ve been focusing their reports on Memphis and St. Louis, they might be getting bored with the repetition. Hell, you and Marilyn are a good human interest story, the couple who keeps us in contact with the real world.”