Go-Ready

by Ryan Husk

  “A little girl may be about to die, Gord-O. I think that takes precedence.” He watched a confused look come over Gordon, an amalgam of many emotions. Perhaps he was surprised at himself for thinking of his Molly instead of this girl. Edward figured it was more likely that he was just a little put off by being morally corrected by the man who’d busted his nose and pressed a gun to his head.

  “I understand,” he said. “But I need to find my wife.”

  “In all o’ this?” Edward turned to look at him. The bikers were already revving up. “In this chaos? With the roads the way they are and with phones not working? You want to find her, how, exactly?” He turned away, aggravated by Gordon’s constipated-looking face. He hopped back into the jeep, and a few seconds later he was joined by Gordon, who looked sulkily out the passenger window. Edward glanced in the rearview mirror, and immediately noticed that something else was wrong. “What is it?”

  She sniffled. “A text.”

  Shit, her whole family’s fucking dead. He just knew it. “From who?”

  Janet shook her head, wiped away tears from her swollen red eyes. “My cousin Connie. She said…” She held out the phone so that Edward could take it. He held it in his hand and scrolled down the message, and fought against the stone hardening in his stomach. Gordon leaned over and read it with him: We r hurt fire is everywhere cant see I ned help. Im burnt & mom’s skin is peeling off and i think dad’s dead. Something pulled Sammie into the sky & ripped him apart. i’m scared, janet.

  Gordon turned to Janet. “Where does your cousin Connie live?”

  Janet looked up, a river of tears spilling out. “Duluth.”

  A suburb of Atlanta. Jesus. Even if Connie survives the next hour, she won’t survive the night. How could he tell her this? Edward sighed, and tossed the phone back to her. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking out the window. Ahead, Wade and the others were just shoving off. Edward put the jeep in drive and started forward.

  He wanted to say something to Janet. There was nothing to say. He had once read a book called Hiroshima about the victims that had survived that first initial blast, how most of them lived only long enough to create a sea of screams, their flesh sloughing off, people trapped beneath debris, begging for aid that would never come. In detonations like this, houses and trees were tossed about like dice, and people became ants trapped beneath mountains of debris, much of it on fire.

  “Anything from your family?” Gordon asked. Janet shook her head.

  Not a smart move, Gord-O, reminding her of that. She needs something to occupy her mind besides thoughts of the dead and suffering. Edward believed that basic thoughts of survival were always the best cure for sadness. “Janet, hand me that big bottle from my bag, the one I said looks like a mayonnaise jar.”

  “Why?” she said, blinking through tears.

  “Just a precaution,” he said, following Wade and the others through the gate and down the dirt path. Muddy slush was left from a previous day’s rain—it was dark and cool in this forest, not a lot of sunlight to evaporate the moisture. “Probably won’t need them, but I think it’s best we go ahead and get them running through our system.”

  “Get what running through our system?” Janet said, lifting the jar from his bag. “What are they?”

  “Potassium iodide pills. Protects the thyroid glands from radioactive iodine. Every bug-out bag should have them.”

  “Potassium…?”

  “Iodide,” Edward said. “Iodide-131, to be exact. A lot of volatile fission product radionuclides get released in a detonation like this. Potassium iodide saturates the body with a stable iodide, protects the thyroid glands. It’s preferable if you take these prior to exposure, and get it moving through your system.”

  “The fallout?” Gordon said. “It protects you from the fallout?”

  Edward nodded. “Here, open it up and take a few.” Gordon took the bottle and took about ten, passed a few to Janet, a few to Edward, who swallowed them dry. “Try just taking one for now. It’s rare, but there are sometimes allergic reactions. Let me know if any of you get skin rashes, a metallic taste in your mouth, nausea, upset stomach…”

  “Is all this really necessary this soon?”

  The jeep hit a bump, and they all jumped involuntarily out of their seats. Edward fought the wheel for a split second to keep control. “It will be if the dosimeter shows an increase in the Gy units in our bodies.”

  “Should I even ask what Gy units are?”

  Edward decided he would not. It was better they didn’t know. A Gray unit measured an absorbed dose—the absorption of one joule of energy by one kilogram of human tissue. If a person got a dosage of one to two Gy, they would get a lot of nausea and vomiting. Onset of those symptoms would be about two to four hours. Maybe a headache. Only about five percent of those cases died without care, and those usually died within about eight weeks. If a person got a dose between three and six Gy, they would experience a lot more vomiting, and then there would be cognitive impairment, some of it permanent. Severe leukopenia, which was a decrease in white blood cells, would increase infection. Chances were good such a person would probably die within four to six weeks without care.

  And then there were the really bad symptoms.

  If a person was exposed between six and eight Gy, all those previous symptoms would set in in about one hour, plus severe diarrhea, hypotension, shock, and hemorrhaging. At eight to thirty Gy, a victim was looking at quick incapacitation, and when they woke up they would be in a kind of agony unlike any they could ever dream. Severe headache and fever that no medication could stop, vomiting and stomach aches that no medicine could touch. At that point, victims had anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks to live, tops. Once exposed to that much radiation, one hundred percent of all patients died, with or without care.

  Anything above thirty Gy and a victim would see all those symptoms within minutes, plus seizures, tremors, lethargy and ataxia. They’d be dead in one to two days, in the worst possible suffering any human being could endure.

  Yeah, let’s just not go there yet.

  They drove for another five minutes, mostly in silence. Edward checked the radio again. Nothing but the same announcement as before from HHS and Homeland, repeating. A few radio stations were now scrambled. Could be EMP interference, but it might also be an attempt by a foreign nation to jam local frequencies, causing rampant disorganization.

  He looked up at the sky. The Face still hadn’t reappeared. The clouds were churning angrily.

  Another three minutes of driving, and then the forest ended. When they hit pavement, three other cars zoomed around them, going at least seventy-five miles an hour on a two-lane road. Edward switched off the radio, glanced in the rearview to check on Janet, then looked out the window when he heard an approaching rumbling. In the back seat, Janet looked around sharply, almost panicking. Gordon’s eyes were searching the skies. “There,” Edward said, pointing.

  About a quarter of a mile away from them in the east, a trio of F-16s were flying just over the treetops. They rocketed by so quickly he almost missed them, low enough that even the grass rippled in their wake. The world boomed, and up ahead, Wade and others reacted as though they might’ve just heard another detonation.

  “Whoa,” said Janet.

  “Flying pretty low, aren’t they?” said Gordon.

  “Yeah,” said Edward.

  “What’s that about? Do they usually fly that low for reconnaissance?”

  “No. It’s better to be higher, get a better view of things. The cameras on the bellies of those things can zoom in close enough to count the hairs on your head. Strange.”

  “Maybe the higher they are, the easier for the tentacles to get you,” Janet said.

  Edward thought about it. Makes a little sense.

  They weren’t on the small road for long before Marshall signaled a left turn coming up. They turned onto a street named Hammond, and then cut through a residential area filled with people in th
eir yards, some standing on their roofs, looking north and south. There was a woman in the street that had collapsed, others had gathered around her. An ambulance raced past them with its siren blaring but did not stop for the collapsed woman, though the people around her were trying to flag them down.

  Marshall took them through a housing development that didn’t appear to be finished. A number of half-constructed homes were on either side, and numerous trees that stood sentry along the sidewalks looked to have been recently planted. Marshall cut across a muddy yard filled with bulldozers, Wade and Jeb followed right behind.

  “Hold on,” Edward said. “Might get bumpy here.” It did. The uneven yard and gravel driveways that they had to drive across caused them to jump and shift and skid, until they came to another road on the other side of the would-be suburb. They were then led down a road that was packed but still moving. “Getting more congested,” Edward said.

  “Why are we, like, goin’ this way?” asked Janet, who now clutched Atlas and ran her fingers through his fur. Edward had never seen the dog so at ease in a stranger’s care.

  Neither Edward nor Gordon answered her. They started seeing a few more shops on either side of the road, and then they came to a small plaza, and at the corner of the parking lot was a tall, gray building.

  “That looks like it up there,” Gordon said, pointing.

  “Looks like what?” Janet asked, leaning forward.

  Edward licked his lips. “We’re gonna stop over here at these marts, search for supplies, maybe stop at CVS for you while we’re here. Run in, grab some stuff for you, some food for the road if this plaza’s got a mart. No big deal.”

  They spotted the parking lot, and almost at once Edward dreaded having brought Janet’s predicament to the group’s attention. The parking lot was a mess. People were jamming the roads, causing total gridlock at one intersection. The bikes were able to cut around, but the jeep was a tighter squeeze along the shoulder of the road. The parking lot of the pharmacy was also jam-packed, but not with raiders. The people that had gotten tired of waiting on the people at the stoplights had started cutting through parking lots to try and go around, but had quickly gotten themselves in another jam—no way out of the parking lot.

  Fucked themselves, he thought, and then realized that that was just what they were about to do. Thankfully, enough people were still trying to obey the laws by not jumping the curbs, so that gave them the advantage.

  While Wade and his buddies went along the side of the road, Edward went straight for the curb. “Hang on!” he said. Janet let out a screech as he drove them up and over the curb, through a short grassy ditch, and then up into the parking lot where he sideswiped someone’s Camaro, setting off the alarm.

  “Jesus, is it really that much of an emergency?” Janet asked.

  “It’ll be fine,” he said, parking the jeep directly in front of the CVS’s front door. He thought to leave it running, but then worried about somebody commandeering his vehicle—some desperate schmuck like Gordon. Hey, if it happened once, it can happen twice. So he took the keys and said, “Wait right here, we’ll be back.”

  “Why’re you taking Gordon’s gun?”

  He’d hoped she hadn’t seen that action. “Ready, Gord-O?” Strictly a rhetorical question, he didn’t mean to let the man sit out here, alone with the girl and his vehicle. They might start getting ideas. Perhaps Gordon Devereux was hiding some hotwiring skills.

  Gordon watched him tuck the Glock in his waistline. Edward gave him a look that said don’t question it. He shut the door and jogged around to the front door. Wade’s hog grumbled past. He jutted a thumb twice behind him, indicating a gas station across the street. Edward nodded and the bikers chugged over to fill up. Behind him, there was a sudden loud screeching, tires on pavement. Edward turned and saw a Civic trying to cut around the traffic jam at the intersection, had to stop suddenly, and smashed into the ass end of a Chevy Volt. Glass and fiberglass scattered across the road, there was shouting, and a cacophony of horns.

  Above them, the clouds briefly parted, and one red eye peeked out, then vanished.

  Edward dashed past three CVS employees standing, mouths agape, shaking their heads, and alternating between texting and taking pics. “Look at the cloud!” one of them called. “I know, it just keeps spreading!” said another. “Does it seem like it’s getting darker to you guys?” The gray haze in the sky overhead was now unmistakable. Yeah, definitely a Big Ivan, Edward thought, stepping up to the front doors.

  The automatic doors delayed a bit, then opened for him and Gordon. The first thing Edward noticed was that the place smelled like talcum powder and bleach. The second thing he noticed was that the lights were out. No EMP this far out. CVS must be closing shop early. Like 9/11, businesses everywhere were shutting down. There were two customers waiting up front at the checkout counter with two or three bloated baskets apiece, looking panicked. One woman in a jogging suit was blubbering into a phone, saying, “Mama! Mama, you there?”

  A woman in a CVS Pharmacy uniform stood behind one of the counters, hollering, “I’m sorry, folks, but we’re closing! Ma’am, we’re not…sir! Excuse me, gentlemen, I don’t know if you’ve seen what’s going on outside, but we’re closing for—”

  Edward didn’t bother listening to the rest. He jogged past the first few aisles, spotted the sign for insulin supplies, and turned into it. There was a man there wearing a CVS uniform, he spotted Edward and Gordon but said nothing; he had a phone to his ear, and was saying, “Yeah, yeah, I’m just about outta here, too.” He’s bailing. All businesses are emptying out. People are rushing home to loved ones. We’ll be lucky to get out of here without—

  “Sir!” hollered someone. It was an older man, bald except for a gray crown about his head, walking in quick steps behind them. “Sir, we’re closing!” Manager. Only a dumbass manager would be inculcated enough with duty that two customers behaving strangely trumped the apocalypse. The thought made Edward smile; he had a special love for humanity, the way a darling sister who kept fucking up her life could have her own kind of charm to a brother who accepted her string of fuck-ups as his entertainment. “Sirs? Gentlemen?”

  “Just need to grab a few supplies,” Edward said, looking at the insulin supplies on the shelves. There were two boxes of five pens of fast-acting insulin.

  “Well, you can’t,” said the manager. “Look, mister, I’m sure you know what’s going on out—”

  “I sure do, and I just need to grab some supplies before things get really out of hand.”

  “Well, that’s actually why we’re shutting down.”

  Gordon looked at the man. “Why? Because people need things?”

  The manager’s eyes flashed. “No, because it’s a rush right now. We started turning people away thirty minutes ago when some idiot came in here with his wife and kids and started taking off with all the diapers. When I tried to stop him, he threatened me with a baseball bat he had in his car. Five minutes later some other fella came in here and just walked right around the back counter and started taking antibiotics. When I put my hand on his elbow to escort him out, he shoved me to the ground.”

  Smart, Edward thought. Survivors, all of them. “Well, we’re paying customers,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, but the machines aren’t working. The bombs…they must’ve set something off, because our credit and debit machines aren’t—”

  “I got a little girl out there that’s diabetic, and she’s running low on insulin.” He picked up the boxes. “This all you got? Just two boxes of the fast-acting pens?” The manager gave him a disparaging look. “Look, I know you have more in the back—”

  “And those should be left here for other diabetics needing—”

  “All right, look, Kevin,” Edward said, looking at the manager’s nametag and whipping out the pistol. Gordon’s eyes went wide, as did the manager’s. They both took a step back. “We’re cutting to the chase here. Society just went to hell, it’s vanished, no more Twi
tter, and no more fucking Instagram. Those people out there on the road? They just haven’t come to grips with it yet. When they do, there’ll be a rush on this pharmacy that you won’t be able to stop, not even if you lock the doors and chain them.”

  Kevin the Manager swallowed. “So, you’re…what…getting the jump on everybody else?”

  “Seventy percent of Americans are on some type of medication. When they storm this pharmacy and others—and they will storm it—the diabetes supplies will be the first to go. A year from now, half the shit in this store will be on the black market, probably even replace heroin and meth as sellers.”

  “You’re thinking too far ahead on this—”

  “And you’re not thinking far enough. Food, water, and medicine. That’s what people are going to need. And you know what? I think I like that other guy’s thinkin’.”

  “What other guy?”

  Edward aimed the gun at him. “The guy you said came for antibiotics. Let’s go in the back and find the good stuff. Amoxicillin, some ACE inhibitors, Z-Paks, the works.”

  Gordon held up a hand. “Whoa, hey, Edward—”

  “Oh, shut up, Gord-O.”

  “Wade said no violence.”

  “Have I acted violently?”

  “Hold on, let’s just…let’s take a chill pill—”

  “Take a chill…? That’s hilarious coming from you.” He smirked at Kevin. “Ya know, this guy pulled this very gun on me not an hour ago and demanded a ride. ‘Take a chill pill,’ he says now.”

  “That was different.”

  “How was that different, Gord-O?” he asked, growing impatient. By pulling the gun on Edward and without thinking, Gordon had unintentionally forged their very group, and now was stupidly not showing a united front. His deficiencies in times of crisis were manifold.

  “Antibiotics and medicines; you said you had all that stuff in your go-ready bag or whatever,” said Gordon.

  “That bag was meant for me and maybe one other. But I’ve got a few more people to worry about now, don’t I?” He’d set out this morning with his usual apathetic view of mankind. When Bradley had refused him, he’d thought that that was the last stop he would make for anyone else’s benefit. But the girl…he had to at least give her a fighting chance. It wasn’t right to just let her die like this, not without at least knowing if her family was alive or dead.