One Second After

by William R. Forstchen

  The rock salt was a golden find, he realized, and they had then unpacked all the meat, salted it down, then repacked it. Next had come a wood detail, for sooner rather than later he knew the propane for the grill would run out, and by the end of the day they were all exhausted.

  He had promised Jen they’d go see Tyler today, then make a run up to her house to get some clothes and of course, check on the cat, so John got back in the car. It was only a short drive up to the nursing home, just about a mile. They passed half a dozen abandoned cars, a family walking by in the opposite direction, mother and father both pushing supermarket shopping carts, one with two kids inside, the other stacked with some few family treasures. Who they were he didn’t know, where they were going he could not figure out, nor did he slow to find out.

  Again, such a change. A week ago, seeing a couple like that he’d have pulled over asked if they needed a lift; the sight was so pathetic.

  As they pulled into the parking lot of the nursing home John instantly knew something was terribly wrong. Three people were wandering about outside. At the sight of them he could see they were patients, shuffling, confused, one of them naked.

  “My God, what is going on here?” Jen gasped.

  John started to go for the nearest of the wanderers, to guide her back inside, but Jen shouted for him to follow her.

  And the moment he opened the door, he knew something was horribly wrong. The stench was overwhelming, so bad that he gagged, backed out, and gasped for breath.

  Jen, made of far sterner stuff, just stood in the doorway.

  “Take a few deep breaths. I’ll be down in Tyler’s room.”

  John waited for a moment, tempted to light a cigarette. He held back, having gone through five packs in just two days. That left him six packs plus two cartons and he was already beginning to count each one.

  He took another deep breath, braced himself, and went in. Again the stench, feces, urine, vomit. He gasped, struggled, nearly vomiting, and fought it down.

  The corridor, which a week before had been so brightly lit and spotless, was dark, a large linen gurney parked in a side alcove the source of the worst of the smell. He quickly walked past it, turned the corner, and reached the west wing’s nurses’ station. One woman was behind the counter and looked up at him wearily. Her gown of Winnie the Poohs was stained and stained again. He spotted her name tag: Caroline, and vaguely remembered she was usually part of the night shift.

  He wanted to blow but could see she was exhausted, beleaguered.

  “How are you, Caroline?”

  “Fine, I guess,” she said woodenly.

  He looked down the corridor. The stench was so overwhelming that he felt it should be a visible fog.

  “What in hell is going on here?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

  She was in shock. He could now see that. The poor girl was numbed, hollow eyed.

  “When did you last sleep?”

  She looked up at the clock on the wall. It was frozen at 4:50.

  Feeble cries echoed down the corridor: “help me, help me, help me…”

  “A few hours last night, I guess.”

  “Are any other staff here?”

  “There’s Janice down on the other wing. I think Waldo is still here.”

  “And that’s it?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He braced himself and started down the corridor. All exterior doors were open, but there was no breeze and the heat was suffocating. Yet another building designed for complete climate control and year-round comfort with computerized environmental controls. The small windows in each room barely cracked open, and the temperature inside was as high, perhaps higher than outside.

  The first room he looked into revealed an elderly woman; he remembered her as having Alzheimer’s. She was rocking back and forth, sheets kicked off, lying in her own filth.

  The next room: two elderly men, one sitting in a motorized wheelchair that no longer moved, the other lying on a bed, the sheets drenched in urine.

  They both glanced up at him.

  “Son, could you get us some water?” the one in the wheelchair asked, ever so politely. “Sure.”

  He backed out of the room and went back to the desk.

  “Can I have a pitcher for some water?”

  She shook her head.

  “We ran out last night.”

  “What do you mean, ‘ran out’?”

  “Just that. No running water.”

  “Don’t you have a reserve tank? Aren’t you supposed to have a reserve somewhere?”

  “I don’t know,” she said listlessly. “I think there’s an emergency well that runs off the generator.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  He opened the door to the hallway bathroom and recoiled, gagging. A woman was sitting on the toilet, slumped over… dead, already the smell of decay filling the tiny room.

  He turned and went back down the main corridor to the kitchen, storming in. One elderly man was there, balanced on his walker, heavy steel fridge door open, a package of hot dogs in his hand, and he was eating them cold.

  “Hi there,” the man said. “Care for one?” And he offered the pack up. “No thanks.”

  John went over to the sink, turned the taps… nothing. “Damn it.”

  Back out in the dining area, he took the lid off a large recessed canister that usually held ice. There was water in the bottom, and taking two juice cups, he filled them up and was back out and down the hall, returning to the room with the two old men. He handed each of them a cup.

  “Thank God,” the one in the wheelchair whispered, sipping on it, John having to hold the other cup so that the man in the bed could sip it down.

  The man in the wheelchair was wearing an old commemorative cap, “Big Red One—Omaha Beach 1944-2004” emblazoned on it. Pins across the front, which John instantly recognized, Combat Infantry Badge, Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, miniature sergeant’s chevrons. He felt sick looking at the man, sipping the last of the water in the cup and holding it back up.

  “Son, I hate to bother you,” the man whispered. “My chair just won’t move. Would you mind getting me another drink?”

  “John, where in hell are you?”

  It was Jen, her voice shrill.

  “Right there, Mom.”

  “Sir, I’ll be back shortly,” John said, and he fled the room.

  He tried to not look into the rooms as he walked down the corridor. An elderly woman, naked, sitting curled up and crying, a sickly scent from the next room, and he dared to look in…. A body of a bloated man, face yellowing with the beginnings of decay, bedsheets kicked off from his final struggle, his roommate sitting in a chair, looking vacantly out the window.

  John reached Tyler’s room, Jen in the doorway, crying.

  “We got to take him home,” she said.

  For a moment John thought Tyler was dead, head back, face unshaved. The IV was still in his arm. Gravity fed, it was empty. The feeding tube into his stomach was driven by a small electrical pump, the plastic container attached to it… empty.

  He was semi-conscious, muttering incoherently.

  The smell of feces hung in the room and John struggled to control his stomach. It was something that always defeated him. He prided himself on being a damn good father, but when Mary was alive the diapers was her job. Mary’s chemo was a nightmare, but he had manfully stood by, holding her when she vomited, cleaning her up, then rushing to the bathroom to vomit as well. After she died, when the kids were sick Jen would come over to help. He was horrified by what he had to confront now.

  “I’ll clean him up,” Jen said. “You find a gurney so we can move him out to the car.”

  “How in hell are you going to clean him up?” John gasped. “Just find a gurney. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  He backed out of the room and stormed back down the corridor to the nurses’ station.

  “I’m pulling my father-in-law out.”


  “Good, you should,” Caroline said quietly.

  “How in God’s name can you allow this?”

  She looked up at him and then just dissolved into sobs.

  “No one’s come into work. I’ve been here since… since the power went off. Wallace and Kimberly—they took off last night—said they had to get home somehow to check on their kids and would come back, but they haven’t. I’ve got a kid at home, too. Her father’s such a bum, shacked up with someone else now. I’m worried he hasn’t gone over to check on her and she’s alone.”

  Caroline looked at him, tears were streaming down her face.

  “I need a smoke,” John said.

  She nodded and fumbled in her purse and pulled out a pack, as if he were asking for one.

  He shook his head, reached into his pocket, and took two cigarettes out, offering her one. They lit up. It was a nursing home, but at this moment he felt at least a smoke would mask the smell and help calm her down.

  She took a deep drag, exhaled, and the tears stopped.

  “I need a gurney to move my father-in-law.”

  “I think you’ll find one down the next corridor. Waldo took it a couple of hours ago.”

  “When was the last time these people were cleaned, fed, had water?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think, damn it.”

  “I think two days ago. Then it just all seemed to unravel. Mr. Yarborough died, then Miss Emily, then Mr. Cohen. No one’s come to take their bodies. Usually the funeral home has the hearse here within a half hour. I think I called, but they haven’t shown up. Mrs. Johnston in room twenty-three fell, I think she broke her hip, and Mr. Brunelli, I think he’s had another heart attack.

  “Now they’re all dying. All of them. Miss Kilpatrick is dead in the next room. God, how I loved her,” and she started to sob again.

  He remembered Miss Kilpatrick, actually rather young. Bad auto accident, paralyzed from the waist down and in rehab and training before going home. Science teacher at the high school until she was nailed head-on by a drunk, one of her own students.

  “She got some scissors and cut her wrists. She’s dead in the sitting room.”

  He didn’t even see her as they came in.

  “She said she knew what had happened and wouldn’t live through it.”

  “Caroline, you’ve got to get help up here.”

  “I don’t know. I’m just an LPN. I’m not trained for this, sir.”

  She began to sob again.

  “Where’s the supervisor?”

  “In her office, I think.”

  He nodded, left Caroline, and went down towards the opposite wing and turned into the administrative corridor. The door to the supervisor’s office was closed, and without bothering to knock he pushed it open.

  The woman behind the desk was fast asleep, head on her desk.

  “Ira, wake up,” John snapped angrily.

  She raised her head.

  “Professor Matherson?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  She rubbed her eyes and sat up.

  “I know you must be upset.”

  “‘Upset’ isn’t the word for it. This is an outrage.”

  She nodded silently.

  “I know. I’ve got four people in the building, maybe three; I think Kim-berly took off. I sent the last of our kitchen staff down to the town to try and get help. But that was hours ago and no one’s come back. No water, no air-conditioning, no refrigeration for food or medication…”

  She fell silent, then looked down at a checklist on her desk. The woman was obviously pushed over the edge and reverting to an almost standard routine to hide in.

  “Last rounds I counted seventeen dead. Six families have pulled their relatives out…. Let’s see, that leaves forty patients and three staff on overtime. Normally during the day I have over thirty working here.”

  God, you’d think everyone would have pulled their people out, John thought, then realized the difficulties of that. Some had no family nearby at all. A couple retired here, the spouse died, the other wound up here, the kids somewhere else, New York, California, Chicago… the American way.

  Even for locals, just five or ten miles away. How to get a sick, demented, or dying parent or grandparent moved? And many most likely just assumed or wanted to assume that “Grandpa is safe there; we’re paying five thousand a month to make sure of that.”

  “But you’ve got to do something,” John protested weakly.

  “Pray, tell me what I should do first,” she said quietly. “Did I tell you we were robbed last night?”

  “What.”

  “Some punks. One had a gun, and demanded the drugs. They took all the painkillers, pills, the liquid morphine.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. The one with the gun had a shaved head, earring, tattoo of a serpent on his left arm, red motorbike.”

  “Animals,” John said coldly.

  Tyler was on a morphine pump. Jesus, if he comes round it will be hell for him.

  “That’s what I called them and they laughed.”

  John found he couldn’t answer her and was filled with a sudden pity for her. She was a good woman, her eldest son a member of his scout troop a couple of years back.

  “I’ll get into town and see if we can get these people evacuated somehow.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m taking my father-in-law out now.”

  “That’s good.”

  “What about his feeding tube, the formula?”

  “I wouldn’t trust the formula anymore. It’s supposed to be refrigerated.

  We still might have some cans of Ensure. Use a funnel and gravity feed it into him.”

  John nodded, stomach rebelling.

  “I better go.”

  He left her in her miserable solitude, and went into the next corridor. It was a deeper hell here. The entire wing was the “restricted wing,” all the patients with Alzheimer’s or another form of severe dementia. A number of them were out in the hallway, those capable of some mobility wandering aimlessly, at his approach reaching out with withered hands, some speaking, others just muttering or making incoherent sounds. He felt as if he had just fallen into a surreal nightmare. He could not stop for them, help them; to do so would trap him in the nightmare forever.

  Passing an emergency exit door, he looked outside. There was a patient slowly shuffling towards the woods. With the entire security system down, the ankle bracelets that were touted as the newest thing in safety, which automatically locked the door and set off an alarm at the nurses’ station if someone with dementia tried to open it, were now deactivated. It was a wonder that any who could still walk were inside the building, and he wondered how many had indeed just wandered into the woods.

  He spotted a gurney at the end of the corridor, and as he approached it, to his horror he saw that the body of small, withered old man was on it, an elderly woman standing beside the body, stroking the man’s hair.

  John approached, determined to take the gurney, if need be, but as she looked up at him, his will failed and he backed away, then fled the ward.

  He returned back to the wing where Tyler was. Somehow, Jen had indeed cleaned him up, a pile of torn soiled sheets tossed on the floor, a torn blanket wrapped around him. She looked at John, eyes calm, her strength amazing him.

  “Did you find a gurney?”

  “I’ll carry him out.”

  She had already disconnected the hose of the feeding tube and the IV tube. John slipped his arms under Tyler and stood up. The man, in spite of his wasting away, was still heavy, and John braced himself for a second before daring to take a step. He turned to ease out the door and then continued out into the corridor, walking fast, a race against dropping Tyler. They went past the desk, Caroline said nothing, Jen raced ahead to open the back door.

  In the corner of the sitting room John saw the slumped-over body of Miss Kilpatrick in the corner, a pool of drying blood was soaked into the
berber carpet beneath her, flies were swarming on it.

  Gasping for breath, John was out the door and down to the car, laying Tyler down in the backseat. He opened his eyes; there was a glint of recognition.

  “It’s ok, Tyler; we’re taking you home. It’s ok.”

  He couldn’t speak. The cancer had long ago devoured his throat, vocal cords, and spread into his chest. His breathing was raspy, sounding like another bout of pneumonia was setting in.

  Still, he had enough strength to grasp John’s arm and squeeze it, then let go.

  “Jen, start the car; I’ll be right back,” and John handed her the keys. He went back in and returned to the nurses’ station. “Caroline, I need some Ensure.”

  She nodded towards the storage room. He went in, again a struggle for control. Someone had vomited on the floor. He gingerly stepped around the mess, tearing open storage cabinets; the bandage that covered his injured finger was soaked through with God knows what and finally just slipped off. Empty shipping cases of the precious liquid were scattered about, and when just about to give up, he found two cartons of twenty-four cans, grabbed them, and stepped back out.

  He started for the door, hesitated, and then turned, going back to the room with the two old men. He took two six-packs and placed them on the old veteran’s lap.

  “Thanks for what you once did for us, Sergeant,” he whispered.

  The old man smiled and nodded. John felt a bit foolish at first but could not stop himself. He came to attention and saluted the old man, who stiffened in his chair, smiled, and returned the salute. John left him and headed to the car.

  Dumping the cans onto the floor of the front seat of the car, John climbed in.

  “Get us the hell out of here,” John said.

  He turned away, blocking out the sight of the demented patients wandering about outside. If he stopped for them he would be pulled back into the nightmare, with Tyler stuck in the backseat in the sweltering heat.

  They drove out and several minutes later were back home. “Ben, Elizabeth!” John shouted.

  The two kids, soaking wet, came out of the pool, laughing, but then slowed as they saw John struggling to maneuver Tyler out of the car. Elizabeth stepped back. “Oh, Pop-pop,” and she began to cry. “You need help, sir?” Ben asked nervously. “Just get the door.”