by Lou Cadle
“Oh yeah,” Bash said. He held his hands out and looked at them. The tremors had ceased.
“Do you need a ride home? We can all go together.”
“Don’t you need to stay until eight?”
“Lots of people here know what to do. I have the radio. I can leave an hour early for a change.”
“If it’s okay, yeah. It’d be better for me not to drive right now, and definitely not with the girls in the car.”
“I’ll close things down here from my end. It’ll probably take twenty minutes or so.”
“Thanks.”
“Go talk to the girls.” Gale said.
Bash pushed himself up and walked toward the girls, who were playing with the little kid again, some sort of game about freezing until he released them.
Haruka glanced up and smiled when she saw it was him. “Hello,” she said.
McKenna bounced up and gave him a hug. “Hey, Bash. Come and play with us.”
The toddler said, “Play play play,” bouncing up and down on his rear.
Bash stifled the urge to apologize to McKenna. As far as the girls knew, there was nothing to apologize for. And they were having fun — no need to ruin that with his worrying. He sat down on the blanket and said, “What’s the game?”
It was a half hour later when Gale finally came to get them. On the drive home, McKenna talked about school and a fight two girls had which had included a lot of nasty language. Bash wondered if she was this forthcoming to her own mother. McKenna mentioned Haruka’s Japanese language lessons. He and Gale held hands as they drove and listened to McKenna’s chatter, and Gale kept shooting him worried looks. It’d be good to unload some of his worries tonight, in bed. First, though, he had a meal to prepare.
The girls gathered water from their back yard caches while he put together food. Gale handed him the mashed potato mix, and he said, “We should warm water on the engine block on the way home tomorrow, now that we’re out of fuel. Get a closed metal container, put it in there somehow. Then we could have these warm from now on, as soon as we got home.”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea how to do that. I couldn’t identify an engine block if you dropped one on my foot.”
“It’d be the heavy thing lying on your foot.” Gale grinned.
Bash shook his head at Gale, then pulled out a can of Spam and three cans of vegetables. One was artichokes in dressing, and he’d just add the other cans to that and make a salad and slice the Spam on top, paper-thin, to give the illusion of more food. More crackers on the side. It was almost like a real meal, except for eating Spam instead of chicken breast. “The potatoes are helpful. I doubt we have food left for four of us for a week.”
“We’ll get by, somehow,” said Gale. His tone had a bite to it.
“Troubles?”
“I’m tired of mine. I want to hear about yours.”
“Later, in bed,” Bash said. “We can dump all our woes then.”
The girls came back in, carrying two saucepans with caution. A waft of frigid air came in the open door, and Bash moved to close it after them. “There was less than an inch in everything,” said McKenna, “but it added up.”
“I’ll go check the rainspout caches in front while you’re finishing getting dinner ready,” said Gale.
Twenty minutes later, they sat down to eat almost like a normal American family. Except for the gay parents, unrelated child and foreign child, thought Bash. They drank water from the vegetable cans and washed that salty concoction down with rainwater. So maybe not entirely normal.
In bed that night, Bash told of his day, and Gale soothed him the best he could. But there was no real soothing of either of their worries. “I don’t know how long I can do this,” Bash said.
“I know,” said Gale. “I’m stressed out, too, and tired, and I don’t even have life and death decisions in my hands. I know it must be harder for you.”
“You do too have life and death in your hands. It’s just death delayed a little. If you don’t get enough food and water, if you don’t take care of the bodies and the sewage, people will start to die.”
That gave him some strange comfort, to remember that many other people bore terrible burdens and that like, Gale and him, they were doing the best they could. Misery didn’t love company, but it took some solace in it.
Chapter 14: Gale
“We need to evacuate as many people who will agree to go.”
Gale had come to the decision while finishing the home latrine that morning. The weather had been damned cold, and misty, and he knew thousands of the people he was responsible for helping had awaken shivering, hungry, thirsty, and afraid. If the dampness didn’t abate, they’d go to bed in wet blankets tonight. So FEMA wouldn’t bring enough relief to them? Okay. He’d send the townspeople to them.
Flint said, “We have less than half a town now.”
“Fewer people would mean less strain on our resources,” said Dan.
“Fewer people to work at recovery would mean it’d take longer to get back to normal.”
They sat quietly for long moments, Gale letting the two others think it through.
“If we could march out the prisoners, that would help a lot,” said Flint. “We could relocate the police station, up to safer ground, and free up staff.” He squinted. “We could send a handful of reservists to guard them on a march out. Two of the Guard I can think of off the top of my head are homeless anyway, might appreciate getting out themselves.”
Dan said. “Where to?”
Gale said, “Wherever is the quickest to get to a functioning road. I’ll tell FEMA to have buses there waiting for them.” He hoped he could actually make that happen.
“You know where that would be?”
“I know Rolla is okay. Probably up that direction, but not so far as that, of course.”
“Due west, up the hill,” said Dan. “It’s a direct route, and if you get up in elevation, that’s more solid ground, right? In case of another quake.”
“Usually,” said Gale. Unless it was landslide country. “I can ask George and Marilyn to confirm about the best roads, via their ham radio contacts rather than ask through official channels. The more I know from independent sources, the stronger my bargaining position with FEMA will be.”
“We need a map of Missouri,” said Dan. He got up to search for one. They were meeting this morning in the new temporary fire station, a block of buildings up in the industrial section of town. Dan’s files and equipment had been moved, but much of it was still in boxes. Who could have predicted that cardboard boxes would become another shortage, as people tried to rescue and store what belongings they could, and as rain ruined any boxes left outdoors.
Flint said, “I know the roads are impassable up through Johnstown. That’s nine miles. But if they’re bad all the way out to Fredericktown that’s more like fifty miles.”
“Or they should aim southwest,” Gale said.
“That’d be no further from the epicenter, though. And who knows how Arkansas is handling it.”
Dan came back with a state map, and they all studied it for a few minutes. Gale could tell they were getting used to the idea of a large evacuation, seeing how it could work.
Dan said, “If you had little kids in tow, you’d be lucky to make ten miles a day.”
Gale said, “Most people could make more the first day.”
“They’d need to carry, what? Eight pounds of water per day, food, blankets. No way is everyone going to own a good backpack. It’s have to be blanket rolls, and for that, we’d need rope.”
“What about shopping carts?” said Gale. Most of the stores still had carts stored outside and many had survived the quakes. “Just pile everything in and push it when you can. Bad patches of road, two adults could lift it up and over obstructions.”
Dan’s eyebrows flicked up. “I’d sure not want to try it.”
Flint said, “I think it’s a good idea. Have you been in those tent cities? They’re getting wor
se every day. And people are tearing down bushes, trees, trying to get cooking fires started. Trying to stay warm.”
Gale said, “I hear they’re seeing more burn injuries from that at the hospital.”
“We’ll be damned lucky if they don’t set the whole county on fire. But the worst part of ‘em is the stench.”
The latrines had been necessary, and ones that only a few families used could be kept tidy and odor-free, but the tent cities’ human waste was much harder to manage.
“If people quit using them — and they may if they’re too unpleasant to use — disease will start spreading,” Flint said.
“The thing is,” said Dan, “I’m afraid of this becoming a ghost city. And if strangers come into an abandoned town, they’ll loot.”
“I have an idea,” said Flint. His voice was hesitant, as hesitant as Gale had ever heard it.
“Go on.”
“Two ideas, really. One, let’s block off the south with debris. Little chance of that being fixed before the west roads. We’re starting on bulldozing hospital row, right? You’re done picking through that stuff?”
“We’re nearly done,” said Dan. “We salvaged what we could, but with the rain, some that we missed will be damaged anyway, stuff like bandages, gauze, anything in cardboard boxes.”
“And…” Again Flint hesitated. “I think we should be doing some looting ourselves.”
“I’m sorry?” said Dan.
“I think we should send my people door to door, break into houses that aren’t inhabited, and try to salvage whatever food and beverages they have. If FEMA won’t send us enough, we have to find it some other way.”
“I was thinking about organizing hunters to make up the difference,” Dan said. “There are lots of deer out there.”
“I think the deer have all taken to higher ground, too,” said Flint. “They’re not idiots. Better at survival thinking than we are. Have you seen any?”
Dan shook his head. “Maybe the reek of the river drove them off. Like you say, they’re pretty smart about self-preservation.”
Gale stayed silent as the other two talked about wildlife, trying to get his head around the idea of official looting. But damn, there probably was food out there, the owners gone or dead, the occasional thieves having surely not gotten all of it. When the others paused in their conversation, he spoke up. “I think it’s a brilliant idea,” he said. “There are dozens of full hot water heaters, too, I bet you. Yes. Definitely. Go through the houses and take what’s been abandoned. Drain the water. Do as little damage as possible getting in, and don’t risk your lives in unsafe buildings, but yes. I say to do it.”
Dan still looked uncomfortable.
Gale addressed him. “It’s survival. It sucks, I know, legally or morally or any which way you look at it, but we need the food and water. And if we can give the departing refugees the lighter-weight food, dried stuff like the potatoes, to walk with, keep them marching on that, and the rest of people in town can survive off what we scavenge.”
“It seems — I don’t know, I wouldn’t want people pawing around my house.”
“If you were dead, Dan, wouldn’t you want your neighbors to survive on what you’d left behind?” Gale said. “You wouldn’t begrudge them that.”
Flint said, “Who knows what else we might find — tarps, sleeping bags, camping tents, stoves, tools, propane.”
“Let’s hope the looters didn’t find it all first,” said Gale.
“I don’t think we have any active ones out there right now. We got them all, or they’ve gone away.”
Gale said, “If we don’t feed people better, even decent people are going to think about looting anyway.” He turned to Dan. “We’re decent people. You know that. We need to get control of the food supply that’s out there and distribute it fairly.”
Dan sighed. “I guess you’re both right.”
Gale said, “Before we continue, I need to get on my radio to George.” But it was Marilyn who answered his call, and he asked her to find out the information about the roads, where they were open, how far people would have to walk to be able to meet a bus. Or a fleet of buses, more than likely. He wanted to convince lots of people to leave.
Then the Triumvirate continued with the morning’s business, a surprising amount of it. Midway through, Gale got a call on the handheld radio that linked him to the EOC. The helicopters had come with the water buckets, and they had about 3,000 gallons to last them until late afternoon’s delivery. They also had finally gotten the filtration systems, five large ones, not the six promised. No small ones at all. His staff was already out at the lakes, turning that water into drinkable water.
When he got off the radio, he said, “I hope everybody knows to collect rain water. Can we repeat that information at every opportunity?”
After they broke off the meeting, Gale swung by the EOC, to see if anyone had heard from Angela.
Kay was there, being his deputy. “No, I’m sorry.”
“I asked Fire to check through her house. They found no one there.” No bodies, either.
“You think she just left town?”
“Without telling us?” Gale said, shaking his head.
“Maybe she was embarrassed,” Kay said. “She liked you. She wanted your respect. Maybe it was too hard to say it to your face.”
“Surely she could have left a note, told someone else to tell us.”
“You could be right. I don’t know. She could be dead somewhere, though she’s not on the death rolls.” She shook her head. “I guess it’s just going to have to be a mystery for now.”
“Maybe forever.” He raised a hand in farewell and got going to his regular morning call to FEMA. He was tired of begging them for supplies. He thought it was time to tell, not ask.
Marilyn and George had a map of the state out and showed him what they’d found about clear roads. They also had called out to as many newspapers, radio stations, and television stations as they could, and they’d tried to encourage people to ask questions on internet sites about what was going on in smaller cities, like their own. “Hoping to create a sort of groundswell, where public demand drives what news crews might do.”
“Thank you. Great job, really,” Gale said. “I can’t begin to tell you how important you two are to me.”
Then it was time to have another fight with FEMA. He began, though, by thanking her for the extra water. He read off a list of supplies, including water-free hand cleanser and antibacterial wipes, which took up a lot of space but were needed at the latrines. He had his whole staff busy yesterday at a rough census, getting neighborhood leaders to report in, counting heads at the tent cities and the churches that had become dormitories, and they had about 2750 private households — some entailing people sleeping on their driveways or in their backyards — and two tent cities of over a thousand each, the hospital, and the jail. A population of about 17,000. Less than 40% of what it had been ten days ago.
And then he told the FEMA director his plan for evacuating the tent cities on foot. “We know that you could get us transport just east of Fredericktown,” he said.
“And then what?”
That’s your job. “You bus them to Kansas City or wherever the nearest refugee site with open cots might be. They’re going to freeze or starve or get sick if they stay here.”
“You don’t know what it’s like out here,” she said. “You still don’t have a television, or a radio?”
“I wouldn’t have time to watch if I did have one. And no, we’re too far from television signals to get much more than static. I think someone on my staff got an Illinois radio station night before last for a while. And no, before you ask, we don’t have Internet. We don’t have electricity. We don’t have cell service. Autumn is here and winter isn’t that far off.”
“You know the stock market dropped another 12% yesterday? The president had to freeze trading again.”
He took a breath, calming himself. Gee, I have a retirement account in
an index fund, too, but somehow that’s not seeming all that important right now. I have a growling belly and fingernails caked with dirt from digging my own latrine and there are babies crying all night at the tent cities because they’re cold and hungry. Which do you think matters more to me? But what he said was a toneless, “Thank you for the news. Over.”
“We’re running out of resources. People who were once generous have turned. They’re resenting refugees, now. They want their hospitals and stadiums and hotel rooms back. They don’t want the government to keep throwing money at this.”
“My people want safe drinking water,” he said. “A roof over their heads. A blanket that isn’t soaked with rain. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
They argued back and forth for another few minutes, and finally Gale said. “I’m sending these people out. I’ll have a reporter imbedded with them, too. That’ll be an interesting story, when they show up and there are no buses to meet them.” It was an empty threat, as he doubted he could get some stranger to walk dozens of miles in the cold rain for a news story, but she didn’t know that.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and signed off.
He hadn’t been done with her, actually. He checked his list. It’d have to wait until this afternoon.
“You know,” said Marilyn. “Once upon a time, back in World War II, people collected bits of aluminum, kids took their wagons around for it, so that it could be recycled and we could build airplanes. And they planted victory gardens. And had meatless Mondays, all so the soldiers could get fed. I guess we’re not that country any more.”
Gale nodded. “I suppose we don’t have it in us.”
“I wonder what makes a thing like that go away,” she mused. “Could human characters change so much?”
“I don’t know. I do know some people out there are saying we’re stupid for living in an earthquake zone.”
“Flood zone, tornado zone, ice storm zone, big city crime, hurricane coasts, San Andreas fault, droughts. Heck, everybody lives where something bad can happen,” she said. “You think people would have more sympathy.”
