John Varley - Red Lightning

by Red Lightning [lit]

  Dad was silent for a while.

  "Where is she now? Where is Aunt Maria?"

  Grandma looked at him sorrowfully.

  "Manny..." Of course. I had realized it as soon as I heard she was dead, but it was harder for Dad. He grew up with her.

  "That's what we've been doing. That's why we're all so dirty. Every day, out into the mess. Drag the bodies onto bedspreads, wrap them up, take a hair sample, put it in a baggie. We've got a pile of wallets and watches, a room full of clothes. We don't undress them anymore, they're too... it's nasty, and too much work. Nobody's ever going to know exactly how many people died out there. We say a little prayer and we set them on fire, and we go away. And we come back here and eat a meal of Spam à la Jorge, and go to bed and sleep like the dead."

  Since Day One they had been waving a sheet with a red cross painted on it every time a helicopter or a low-flying plane went over. So far, nobody had landed. Grandma was pretty angry about that.

  "A few of these people, we don't get them to a hospital soon, I don't know if they'll live. I thought somebody would have showed up to medevac them out by now. I don't get it."

  "They'll probably be here soon," Travis said. "They're making progress. What I heard, hospitals all the way to Ohio are already full of people. Not much elective surgery going on. If you aren't bleeding, they say you need to take care of yourself."

  "Some of these people are bleeding."

  "What can I say? There's too much work to go around. But the European ships are starting to arrive in force. South Americans. Some African nations. Cruise ships mostly rode it out, they're converting them to offshore hospitals. Something will happen in the next few days. I hope."

  "Meantime," Dad said, "I want to get you out of here."

  There was a long silence. Sometimes I think I understand Grandma better than Dad does, because what she said next didn't surprise me.

  "I'm not going anywhere until all these people can come with me."

  The argument went on for a while, but eventually it was only Dad who was arguing that Grandma get into the Duck and get out with us. Travis and Dak didn't contribute at all. Both of them seemed willing to stick it out as long as it took. Mom dropped out early, and so did Elizabeth. As for me, I wanted to go home more than anything I'd ever wanted in my life, but I knew deep down that you couldn't just ask Grandma to leave everything that had ever been important in her life, even if it was in ruins. She needed a little time.

  But far more important, the people who had stuck with her after the water subsided had become a family to her, and she intended to stick with them until they had a place to go.

  The only reasonable plan Dad came up with was to ferry everybody over to the main­land in groups, where they could join the refugee camps.

  Travis spoke up for the first time, saying he was far from sure he had enough gas for that. He knew we had enough to get back out of the Red Zone, but thought there was a fair chance we'd be hoofing it the last miles back to Rancho Broussard. Scrooge was not a fuel-efficient vehicle.

  "How about the gas in the generator here?" Dad asked.

  "How about it, Betty," Travis said. "Didn't you say that was a diesel generator?"

  "That's right. We've rationed it, and we've got enough for about another week."

  "Unfortunately, the Duck won't burn diesel. What about water?"

  "We're okay there. We're not heating what was in the water heater tank, and we've been throwing our sewage over the side. Preferably when there's some bad. guy drunks down there. As long as we don't shower or bathe, we're good for another week." She rubbed at her dirty face, absently. "I'll admit, I got weak, we all get a pint of water once a day to wash our faces. Turns out that's a morale-raiser. I was about to do that when you guys arrived."

  "How about this?" I said. Everybody looked at me. Damn. I hated that. "You said you have some people who shouldn't be moved. That doesn't make sense to me. Seems to me that if they're in bad shape, the best thing to do is take them to the mainland. They had a tent hospital over there."

  "Not much of a hospital," Elizabeth said.

  "Well, with all respect to your nurse, they probably have more stuff over there than we do here. How about it, Grandma? Are any of them in danger of dying?"

  "I can answer that," somebody said. We all looked at a young black woman who spoke with a Haitian rhythm. Grandma introduced her as Elaine, the nurse.

  "I've got three patients whose wounds are infected. I cleaned them up as well as I could, but some of them were lying in filthy water for a couple days. They need more help than I can give them, and they need it fast."

  "Travis," Grandma asked, "can that crazy-looking thing make it to the mainland and back, and still have enough gas to get y'all home'?"

  "Us all home," Dad said.

  "This is still my home, Manny, until all my guests are taken care of."

  "We should be able to make one crossing," Travis allowed.

  "Then let's do it."

  Travis and Dak handled the ambulance ferry duty. We all helped manually operate the window-washing equipment on the side of the hotel to get the people to the ground, which was hard work but not nearly as hard as carrying stretcher cases down all those stairs. We all stood together and watched Scrooge roll off and lose itself in the heaps of debris.

  Down there on what used to be the pool deck, thinking about the long walk back up the stairs, I noticed the big black scorch mark on the side of the building and remembered the night before, when we all worried the Blast-Off was on fire. I asked Grandma about it.

  "Lots of bad boys out there," she said, looking up at the scorch. "We've been fighting a running battle with them since about Day Two."

  "Who are they? Convicts?"

  "Some of them. A couple boatloads rowed over early on, looking for loot. Hotel safes, luggage, cash in wallets, they'd take anything they could find. Street gangs, too. The bad survived along with the good.

  Later on, everybody started getting real hungry and thirsty, good and bad people. Some of them drank standing water, and now they're regretting it. Not much we can do to help the sick ones, and it breaks your heart.

  These people" – and she gestured up at the roof – "these people, we started out about half paying guests and half people who ran in off the streets when the alarms went off. It wasn't a huge rush, at first. You know how it goes. Don't believe it at first, then a building panic, then everybody's in their cars and in about five minutes there's wrecks on all the bridges, nobody's going anywhere. More running around, and then the pictures start coming in from the Bahamas.

  By then I was sort of organized. I got Mario and Hugo and we stood by the door with guns. 'Everybody's welcome!' I was shouting. 'Only don't trample each other! You have plenty of time to get to the top.' Couple of shots in the air and a good look at Mario and Hugo calmed them down. But first I sent everybody to the pantry in the restaurant, had everybody carry up a box of canned food.

  So you got people thinking it through and people who panic. Some guys came back and made a bunch of trips with food. Other people carried up big boxes of frozen steaks and chickens and veal and ribs, whatever they could grab. Saw one big fellow about to bust his gut humping six big boxes of ice cream up the stairs. Ice cream!

  There were three waves, each a little smaller. It was so noisy, Ray, you have no idea! Like a giant garbage grinder, everything crashing against everything else... and we still didn't know if the building was going to hold up, it just lurched when that first wave hit. It's a little off kilter now. I noticed that a beach ball, if you put it on the floor, it rolls into the southeast corner of a room now, water pools there if you spill it. But it seems solid enough.

  So after, there were three schools of thought. One group thought we ought to just sit tight and wait for the authorities to come rescue us. And eat my food and drink my water while we waited. Another bunch thought we all ought to leave and make our way inland. Safety in numbers, I guess. A couple guys appointed themselves
leaders, and there was a fistfight, and I had to fire a couple more shots. Then there were those who didn't want to sit and wait for help and didn't want to wait until the leadership business was sorted out, either one. Those were the folks who had loved ones in other parts of the city. Some of those just took off on their own, which is a shame, because those that waited just a little longer, I sent them off with at least a bottle of water to drink.

  I never did see any of those folks again."

  She stopped talking then. Just sort of ran down. I realized that Mom and Dad and Elizabeth were standing beside me. I hadn't heard them come up. Dad made a gesture to me, afraid to speak himself, I think.

  "So what did you decide on?" I asked.

  Grandma shook herself and looked around. Her shoulders sagged, and she looked older than her years for once.

  "Everybody was free to go, of course. But nobody was welcome to stay and freeload, except the sick and injured. I still don't know if we all should have left. Maybe we could have got the stretcher cases over the water and out of the... what did you say they're calling it? The Red Zone? And if you think the river is choked now, you should have seen it right after the wave, before a week's worth of tides.

  I don't know. But in my heart I knew I had to stay, because there were people hurting out there. When the water went down for the last time, we could hear a few of them screaming.

  So, anybody who wanted to stay at the Blast-Off had to go on the rescue details. I'm not saying there was a lot of argument about that, at least not after the first twenty-four hours, when anybody could see that no help was coming anytime soon.

  It was scary at first, going down there. Remember, we didn't have a very clear idea of what had happened. So there we were, cut off, no communication until about Day Three, when somebody dropped some leaflets. All the time we were on the ground we kept looking and listening for that next wave.

  But you get used to that. Pretty quick, in fact. After you've pulled your first dozen bodies out of the shit, you start to wish another wave would come. Your whole world has turned into a toilet, literally, the stench, even before the bodies started to swell up and pop in the sun..."

  Once again she seemed lost in the past, and I thought she wouldn't go on. But she did. In fact, she even laughed for a moment.

  "Those idiots saved the steaks? Turns out it was a good thing. I mean, that first day, we ate well, and brother, we needed it. You know the kind of people we get. Lot of retired people. My age and older. Some of them pretty out of shape. None of them shirked. In fact, I had to make one old guy stop working when his wife came to me and told me about his heart condition.

  Some people couldn't eat at first, of course, or couldn't keep anything down. But hun­ger gets everybody soon enough. We didn't have much steak or chicken left by the time it was getting too ripe to take a chance on. Since then it's been rice and beans and Spam and creamed corn."

  "What on Earth were you doing, stocking Spam, Mom?" Dad asked. "I don't remem­ber it on the menu at the restaurant."

  "Oh, silly old me, that was hurricane supplies, Manny. We didn't have any canned meat at all in the restaurant, as you well know, except a lot of tuna fish. We even have mayo, but no bread to put it on. No problem, though. Jorge had his spices and his pots and pans. You'll be amazed at the stuff he can whip up. Although I hope I never eat another bite of Spam in my life."

  She smiled briefly again, then went on.

  "I think it was about Day Three things began to get edgy. Three or Four; it got sort of hard to keep track. That's when the bad guys really started rampaging. At first it was just liquor and looting. We steered clear of each other. Then they started to get bolder. And hungrier. And some of those boys were just plain ornery in the first place.

  We had to give up the rescue operation and sort of pull up the drawbridge. So we boarded up and decided to just stay here until the food and water ran out. I figured that if we had to make a run for it, if help still hadn't come, at least we'd be healthier and better fed than those we came up against.

  But then it got really hard."

  "What do you mean?" Dad asked.

  "Remember fallout shelters? You dug a hole and stocked it with food and water for a few months. What do you think is the biggest problem having a fallout shelter?"

  "Having the only one in the neighborhood," Mom said.

  "What could you do? After the wave we took people in. Anybody who showed up. I still thought help would arrive in a few days, but I think I'd have let all comers in, any­way.

  Then there was a time when people were leaving, trying to find their way home. Oth­ers were staying, in other hotels, in condos. And food started to get scarce. That was bad enough, you hate to turn away hungry people. The last few days, hungry, thirsty people have been showing up downstairs, begging for food and water. Some of them are already sick from drinking bad water. I guess Americans just aren't used to the idea that water can be deadly, this isn't the third world. Yet, anyway.

  I've had to... ration. There's just no way I can turn away a woman and her three chil­dren without a drink of water. So, I've been handing out two liters of water and a bowl of rice to most of the people who show up. It's meant cutting our own rations, but what the heck?

  Still... I don't really know how long we can hold out. Does anybody know anything? Manny? Kelly? Did anybody give you any indication of when we might see some food and water delivered out here?"

  Mom shrugged, helplessly.

  "Nobody we talked to really knew anything. Everybody seemed to be digging in for the long haul, though."

  I was angry, because I couldn't figure it out.

  "Why don't they leave?" I asked. "I mean, there must be boats somewhere they could fix up. Make a raft, or something?"

  "Some people have done that. I understand there's a sort of water taxi with a Boston Whaler people are rowing back and forth. But I don't think you realize how many people survived out here, Ramon. There's a lot of tall buildings along the coast, and most of them survived. The crossing is no picnic, either, which you know. Falling into that water is not something you want to do.

  But part of it is some kind of syndrome, I guess. Shock, grief, and sheer exhaustion. These people are dehydrated and weak, and a lot of them just sit there and moan, until thirst drives them to get up and look for water. They need food and water, first, and then they need medical help."

  I remembered what I'd asked about at first, which was the bad guys, the ones who were responsible for the fire we saw last night.

  "So people are pissed at you?" I asked. "Because they don't think a bowl of rice is enough?"

  "No, the bastards who tried to fry us last night are guys who already had a grudge against us. The rats and cockroaches that come out of the swamp after a hurricane, only a lot more of them this time, both the lowlifes who were on the street and survived the hit and the inmates who didn't drown in their cells. Ask yourself this. You're the warden at a big penitentiary, like Raiford, and you hear the government telling you the biggest wave anybody's ever seen is headed your way. Now, I don't know for sure, but I don't think a lot of high-security pens are located very close to the ocean, beachfront prices being what they are. But there's bound to be some, we've got so damn many prisons in this country. Then you got your medium-security places, and your city jails. If you're the warden, and your jail is only two or three stories high... what are you going to do?"

  It was a tough one, I had to admit. Pick and choose? Let the ones go who were in for drugs or embezzlement, keep the ones who were murderers locked up? And what about the criminally insane?

  "There was this dude calls himself 'The Humongous' – which is a laugh, since this dude is six-six, maybe 120 pounds he's so eaten up with the speed. We'd heard from the survivors at the Sea Breezes that his gang had raped about a dozen women there, and killed one of them and two men. So we were ready for them when they roared up on their big hogs.

  I was on the fourth floor with my bullhorn. I told t
hem to get their sorry asses off of my patio. They laughed, and headed for the stairs. So I started putting rounds through their gas tanks. That got their attention. They fired back, but this was... Day Four? Day Five? Whatever, by then they still had plenty of guns but were having trouble finding ammunition. They fired a few rounds, but when they saw they wouldn't be able to get at us without being in my field of fire for way too long, they hightailed it.

  We didn't see them here again until last night. They're pretty cowardly, they only operate in gangs, and only when the numbers are in their favor. They managed to stack a lot of lumber against the side of the building and we didn't hear them. It gets dark out there at night, now, and we don't waste power to run any lights down there. Have to change that. Anyway, they poured gas on it and set it on fire.

  Big mistake, tactically. When we saw the light, we could see them. I'm afraid I got a little angry. I didn't see any bikes around this time. So I shot at Humongous. I was aiming at his arm, a pretty thin target from the roof, let me tell you. And the little turd moved at exactly the wrong moment..." She stopped. She took a deep breath.

  "I think I killed him, Manny."

  "Jesus Christ, Mom," Dad said. "He was trying to burn you out. If you'd tried to escape, he'd have killed you. If ever there was a justifiable homicide..."

  "I'm not worried about the legal part, Manny. You see any cops around here? And you think any of my people here would testify against me? I'm not even sure I killed him. His pals dragged him off, and it was too dark for me to tell much. But I know I got him in the chest, and if he is alive, he'd better get to a hospital real quick."

  "In any case," Mom said, "it's over and done with, Betty. There's not one of us here who wouldn't have done the same thing."

  "That's not it. I know it was justified. I know if I hadn't done it, somebody else would have, either vigilantes, or the Army if they ever get here, or the cops would have arrested him, and there's plenty of witnesses to the capital crimes he's committed... and I have a feeling that order's going to be restored here a lot quicker than law, if you know what I'm saying."