by Lynn Lamb
“We have intelligence that the bombers will be overhead sometime in the next forty-two hours,” he said.
A gasp of moans escaped from the crowd. None of us thought that we would have to be in the caves for that long.
“I know, I know. It’s a long period of time, but it’s the best we can do. Maybe it will be over sooner than later,” Mason said.
“How are we going to eat and go to the bathroom?” someone yelled out.
Jackson jumped in with his well-honed, people-person, personality, heh. “Your food rations are ready and in your snow caves. We also put up curtains in front of buckets with sawdust. You all know the drill. Look, this isn’t a permanent predicament. We are trying to keep you all alive. It’s not pleasant, but it is necessary.”
“What about my garden beds?” asked Charlotte.
“We will continue to run a heater in the truck, but we can’t make any guarantees,” said Major Cassandra Kim. “We know the importance of keeping your seedlings alive, but we can’t risk lives in exchange for pineapples.”
Ugh, even she had no bedside manner. For a bunch of genius experts, none of them were very smart.
I started a decidedly whiny inner-dialogue that went something like this: but this was supposed to be their meeting while I listened on in judgment.
But I moved back to the front and did my duty. “None of us are looking forward to this, including the military team. But we have no other choice and neither do they. We have made it through so many tough and horrible times, and we will make it through this the way we always do, together.”
“Why do some people get electricity and others don’t?” asked a snarky Rolette.
“Well, Steve,” said Jackson. “Some of us need electricity to keep your sorry ass alive.”
Holy crap, he went there.
“What Colonel Jackson means…” I started.
“Is exactly what Colonel Jackson said,” Jackson interrupted me. “Now, Rolette, shut up while we finish up here.”
That meeting went well.
Part IV: The Siege
Sometimes I feel like Dorothy who passed over Oz, and was dumped into Wonderland. Realistically, there may be lions and tigers and bears out there, but I am more overwhelmed by the Mad Hatters, hookah-smoking caterpillars, and the “off with their heads,” oh my.
∞
Ammie and Thomas were standing in between two trucks, engaged in a low toned conversation; however, it seemed more like an argument. Both usually quiet intellects, it was out of character to see their faces twisted in anger, arms flying about.
They stopped arguing and leaned into each other for a passionate kiss.
With a thunderbolt to my stomach, I realized that it was a lover’s spat.
Maybe it is a combination of everything that has occurred in the past months, but I think I have grown a violent streak. I wanted to tear Thomas’ head from his body.
“I’ll kill him,” I said aloud. Jackson must have been following me because as soon I charged toward them, he was right behind me. He swept his arm across my stomach and pulled me back behind the truck.
“First, your husband has decided that I’m his personal punching bag and now look at you. For people who claim to be such pacifists, you and that man of yours are some of the most violent people I know,” he said in a hushed whisper.
“Why are you always around? Let me go, you bastard,” I whispered back. “Or I’ll show you what I can add to those bruises on your face. Mark’s been holding back, but I will show you what a Balous can really do.”
“Nope,” he said. “No can do. She’s an adult, Laura. She is smart, and she knows what she’s doing. Let her make her own mistakes.”
“She’s still so young. Her brain maybe advanced, but when it comes to matters of the heart, she has no idea what she is in for with a man old enough to be her father,” I tried to explain.
“If anyone’s going to get hurt, my bet’s on him,” he said. “She’s just like you, Laura.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Did Mark tell you why he hit me, this time?”
“No, but I figured you deserved it.”
“Last night, you were screaming you didn’t want the shot, and I thought that you had every right to refuse it. So, I tried to get them to stop, and that’s when your very large, very strong husband, hit me. See, the Patton women know what they want, and should be allowed to make their own decisions. My guess is that this thing between Thomas and Amanda has been going on for a while. Let’s deal with it after the… you know.”
“Do you think that there is going to be an after?” I looked at him, begging with my eyes for him to say yes.
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
∞
The MT (military team) decided that we would go into our caves at fourteen hundred hours. I wasn’t ready, but it was doubtful that I ever would be. My guess is that everyone felt that way, but agreeability was the tone for the rest of the afternoon.
It is amazing what humans will do to live, like tunneling into the freezing ground.
We started the task of moving our most necessary supplies into the several larger ice caves. It might take a while before we could uncover the trucks, so we needed a place to keep our things until it was safe to come out and liberate our vehicles.
Part of me wondered if hundreds of years from now these caves would become part of an archeological dig. What would an anthropologist think of what they found?
For most of the Villagers, the hardest part physically and psychologically was burying our transportation. If we needed to hightail it out of here fast, there would be no way to do it in our trucks. We would have to go on foot. There were just too many variables to make that ideal.
Everyone did what they had to do. The tractor whirred around us as we dug with shovels, buckets and whatever else we could find to use. With each load of snow we threw on the trucks, we were one step further away from a feasible escape.
Our faces grew red and sweat dripped from our brows by the time we were done with our task.
∞
Things were moving quickly by the time we were ready to bunker-in.
I acted like I was not worried as I said good-bye to half of my family. They were not very good actors either, but they were brave enough.
I was underground with Mark, Jake and Fitzpatrick before long. It must have been hard for Fitz to be with the three of us. Not only did he not really know us, but we were not helping. We were acting like the tight little group we were. We made jokes to break the tension. He looked at us as if we were insane. I could have told him that we were, but I thought it better for him to find out on his own.
Hershey and I snuggled, and Mark ordered me to take one of the pills I was keeping in my pocket. He handed me a bottle of water, and I did a slight of hand with a pill to make him believe that I had swallowed it down.
I’m not really sure why I didn’t just take it, maybe because he ordered me to. That’s never been a very good tactic with me. You would think he would know better.
“You gonna be okay?” he asked me. He was going into his hard ass zone. It’s where he needed to be.
I nodded.
“Just let me know, promise?” he asked.
“I will,” I told him. We kissed, and he went to work.
The three men put on their headphones, and I envied them something purposeful to do. I put my ear buds in and listened to my music as Katie had suggested. Eyes closed, I lay on my bag while they worked. I did some of the mental exercises Katie had gone over with me, and they seemed to be helping.
I started to wonder if it was possible that the MT was wrong. Maybe the planes would completely skip over us; after all, stranger things have happened.
I blame myself for thinking that. Of course, as soon as I did, the ice cave walls began to shake.
Mark tore off his headset. He rushed over to me, and from behind he wrapped his legs around me. I pushed against
him to shelter myself in his embrace.
Jake and Fitz stayed plugged into whatever it was that they were listening to, but Jake had turned his body to the side so that he could keep his eye on me. We locked eyes and knew exactly what the other was thinking; something that we could do for as long as I could remember.
We were under a radio silence, so we couldn’t check in with the rest of my family. I knew that Jake was beside himself with worry for the girls. I was too, but Bailey, Annie and Ammie were in Bri and Billy’s very capable hands. I had to believe that they were all right. Truth be told, I needed them more than they needed me.
The walls began to crack loudly. Shit, shit, shit was all that I could think.
I pulled two pills out of the pocket of my jeans and swallowed them without any water. I was livid with my pigheaded self that I hadn’t taken them earlier because, according to the Doc, they were not going to take effect for at least a half an hour.
And as soon as it had begun, it ceased.
It was over.
∞
I could hear someone screaming up top, and I plunged my nails into Mark’s arms, but he wouldn’t let me loose from his tight grip. I squeezed so hard, his arms began to bleed.
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
When he finally gave up and his arms loosened, I flew away from him.
“It’s over,” I said, not paying attention to his pleading.
“It’s not over,” he yelled after me.
It was too late. I was already up the rope ladder trying to raise the hatch. I was able to push it a little to the side, enough for me to poke my head out and see that it was Steven Rolette doing the screaming. I couldn’t reconcile the image I was seeing with the logic in my head. Why would Rolette be giving the all clear signal?
Jackson came plowing through the snow after him, and I was finally able to make out what Rolette was screaming, his head tilted to the heavens.
“I’m ready, God. Come and take your believer. I am right here.”
“Shut the fuck up you lunatic, and get back in your cave,” Jackson screamed.
“It’s over and He didn’t come for me,” Rolette barked at Jackson.
“It’s not over. They hit the Valley, but it’s not over. They are going to be passing this way in minutes. They will see us out here. You are going to get all of those innocent people killed.”
Steven dropped to his knees into the deep snow.
I could feel a vibration. Jackson was right; the planes were on their way.
Jackson pulled a gun from the holster belted on his upper thigh. Steven stood.
I pulled myself out of the cave and ran towards them. It felt more like running in quicksand than snow.
“Laura,” screamed Mark from the mouth of the snow cave.
“Stay there. I will be right back,” I told him.
Jackson was thrashing at Rolette, trying to catch one of his flaying arms.
“Get back, Jackson. I’ll get him under control,” I yelled over the sound of the planes.
Jackson took a few steps back.
“Steven, it’s okay. We just need to go back inside our caves. We are safe,” I tried to reason with him.
His eyes showed no recognition of what I was saying.
“I am safe in God’s hands,” Rolette said.
“No, don’t,” I shouted, but it was too late.
I couldn’t actually hear the shot, but I could feel the warm fluid run down my face. I tasted the copper on my tongue. I could only feel my own screams rattling in my head.
Jackson had run to Rolette so quickly that he hadn’t hit the ground yet. I wiped the blood from my eyes and saw Jackson carrying Rolette in his arms towards one of the supply caves.
My head reverberated with the words Jackson had spoken just days before. “Can you see the sky from the trail? Yes. And that means they can see you from the sky.”
Most of the blood splatter had made it onto me, but there was enough in the snow that I just didn’t know if it could be seen. I was not going to let Rolette’s blood be the cause of death of all of my people.
I took off my jacket, but it was too blood-seeped to use. I pulled my sweater off over my head. I looked back when I heard Mark’s yelling, and then I saw his head go under the snowy horizon and a uniformed arm come up and pull the lid back on the cave.
Thank you, Fitz.
I used my bare hands and my sweater to cover the blood and shuffled to the supply cave so that my footprints would hopefully not show in the snow.
Jackson was waving for me at the mouth of the supply cave.
∞
I started down the rope ladder, but my ice cold fingers caked in blood slipped, and I landed on my feet with a solid thud that I felt through my entire body, all the way up to my teeth. The camera in my pocket hit my hip, and I pulled it out.
I looked up in time to see the wooden lid of the cave eclipse the light and plunge us into complete darkness. I heard the rustle of Jackson’s uniform as he made his way down the ladder.
“Don’t move,” he said. There was more rustling, a click and then a whack before Jackson’s flashlight came on.
“Turn around,” he ordered.
But of course, because I’m me, I didn’t. Instead, I turned on the camera in my hand so that I could use the onboard light.
It was dim, but the scene appeared on my screen where I could see Rolette looking back at me. “He’s alive,” I let out in a gasp.
I tried to bend down to him, but Jackson caught me and turned me towards him. “No, Laura. He’s not.”
I pushed away from him, forced my eyes to adjust, and I saw what Jackson was trying to shield me from. Blood was forming a puddle under Rolette’s head from where he had been dropped six feet onto the ice hard floor. It also leaked from his mouth and a sucking wound on his chest.
Warm bile rose from my stomach up my throat. I waved my camera’s light from side to side, searching the room. I saw a bucket in the corner.
I made it there just in time. I threw up on top of the saw dust. I flashed the light into the bucket and saw one intact pill. I grabbed the edges of the container and tried to swish the contents so that the saw dust would cover the vomit and mask the smell.
I heard a thump, followed by a “shit.” Jackson was making his way through the freezing space to a table filled with provisions. I shone the light of my camera at the table, and he picked up a tarp that he then used to loosely wrap Rolette in.
The sound of the ice cracking once more seemed to startle him, and he whipped his body around to me.
“Are you okay? Did you take the pills before?”
I didn’t have it in me to lie or explain. I shook my head.
I didn’t take the light off of him. I just watched. He fumbled around the table some more and grabbed a bottle. “Shit, it’s frozen.”
I took the pills from my pocket and held them out in front of me to show him. I don’t know what I expected him to do, but he kept fumbling around. I knew that if I tried to swallow them without water again they would just choke me now. I had no saliva to get them down.
Jackson went to one of the walls and started to chip away at the ice. Once he had a hand full, he put them in a cup that he had found on the table along with some matches and a candle.
He lit the candle, and I jumped towards him. “Stop, you’ll asphyxiate us.”
“No, not with a few candles. That’s only if we build a fire,” he explained.
I realized that his voice sounded worried. I had never heard him worried before, even with all that we have been through.
He started heating the ice with the candle while he watched me. “Laura, you’re not breathing. Breathe.”
“Okay,” I said stupidly. More cracking happened right next to my head, and I moved closer to him, right into his flank, as a matter of fact.
“Good. It’s melting. See?” he held the cup up to me.
I nodded and took it from him, even though the ice hadn’t all melted ye
t. He pulled it away from me just before I got a sip.
“Don’t look at me like that. It’s for you to use to get the pills down. And it needs to melt more so that you don’t freeze from the inside out.”
I nodded, “Rrrrriiigghttt. The, the pills are right here.” I showed him my fist again.
He looked at me for a moment. “I am going to just talk to you until this is melted, okay? And I want you to just listen to my voice, and don’t think about anything else. It’s just you and me and the sound of my voice.”
“The walls are breaking,” I told him.
“That’s just your tacky-phobia,” he told me earnestly.
“Taphophobia. Tacky, tacky-phobia must be a fear of ugly clothes,” I told him, equally as earnest.
Jackson’s laughter started as a low rumble. When I thought about what I had said, I even chuckled.
“Okay, here’s the water,” Jackson said, handing me the cup. “Take your pills, and drink it all.”
I did as he told me. The water helped wash down the burning of the bile in my throat.
“Now, I am going to take care of the body, but I don’t want you to watch me. Promise you won’t watch.”
“I wo… won’t,” I said.
I closed my eyes and rocked back and forth. Jackson began to hum the song that he sang at the Christmas party, but he couldn’t cover the sound of the tarp dragging on the ice.
“Laura?” he said, as I heard the sound of him picking away at the ice again. “Are you still breathing?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Just keep focusing on your breathing, or you will pass out,” he told me.
“You can stop that. I don’t need any more water,” I said.
“That’s not what I’m doing. Just keep breathing.”
“Stop telling me that. I get it, breathe. Wh, wh, what are you doing?”
“I’m trying to make a groove in the wall to tuck the body into so it freezes.”
“Why are you freezing him? Don’t, don’t freeze him.” My voice hit a high pitch that I couldn’t control.
“Honey, he can’t feel it anymore. He’s gone. I just want to keep his body from excreting an odor when I figure out how to warm it up in here, that’s all.”
