Stranded Box Set

by Theresa Shaver

  Dad was slowly passing the upside-down van when I saw movement in the crash. A lady was wiggling out of a shattered window and I screamed at him to stop.

  “Dad, STOP! We have to help them!”

  Mom’s face whipped towards the crash we were passing and then to Dad’s face. I couldn’t see him but whatever she saw there made her take a shuddering breath and look out the opposite window and away from the crashed van. My mouth dropped open in confused shock as he kept driving.

  “What? What are you doing? Why aren’t you stopping? We have to help those people!”

  He didn’t answer me but his knuckles flared white against the wheel again. I sat back and let the tears flow down my face and kept my eyes glued to my lap. I couldn’t bear to see the suffering we were driving past. I didn’t understand then how much in the world had changed when the bombs fell. I still believed in the good of the world, of helping your fellow man in need. It wasn’t until much later that I learned that to survive you could only help yourself and the people you loved. At ten years old I couldn’t grasp the scale of the destruction and the millions of deaths that were happening around the world. I only knew that my dad had chosen to look away rather than help and I started to hate him a little bit in that moment. I had no idea that in a few months, I would be the one looking away from the suffering of the world.

  My parents spoke softly in the front seat but I ignored them and searched my pack for my iPod. I wanted to drown out everything that was happening but when all I got was a blank screen I realized that I wouldn’t be so lucky. Whatever had made all the cars crash had killed my small music player as well. I dropped it to the floor and closed my eyes. There would be no escape.

  The drive into the mountains seemed to take hours and I dozed off now and then. I was half asleep when my mom let out a despairing moan. My eyes flew open and I searched frantically for what had hurt her. She was pressed against the passenger window, her palm flat against the glass, like she could reach out and change what we were driving past. I followed her line of sight and my breath caught at the view. A tangle of cars was crashed together half in the ditch, but what was so heart wrenching was the two figures standing beside them. I unbuckled my belt and slid over to the back passenger window so I could see them better. The boy was my age or a year older. It was hard to tell with the dirt and blood smeared on his face. In his arms was a wailing toddler that couldn’t be more than two years old. I searched the crashed cars for any adults but it was only the two boys standing. I could hear my Dad chanting “I’m sorry” over and over under his breath as the truck slid by the pitiful figures. When our eyes met through the window I unconsciously mimicked my mom by raising my hand and pressing my palm against the cool glass. The older boy’s forest green eyes stayed locked on mine as we moved past and at the last second he raised his own hand in a half wave and then they were gone out of view.

  Mom was sobbing quietly in the front seat and Dad tried to comfort her but she batted his hand away. I had never seen anything but love and kindness between them before and it was just one more thing to absorb in this new world. His voice was empty when he started to speak.

  “We have to take care of us now. We only have so many supplies and there won’t be any way to get more. If we start taking in others we won’t last very long. This is going to get a lot worse and there will be a lot more people who will need help. We just can’t…” He trailed off when his voice cracked and Mom turned her head to look at me before facing him.

  “They were just babies. What if it had been Skylar and our son out there? What if they were the ones all alone and hurt and people just drove past them? What if it had been our babies?”

  Sitting behind my Mom I could now see Dad’s face in profile. I saw his mouth tremble before firming into a hard line and his tone was just as hard.

  “Every meal we feed to someone else is a meal our kids won’t have in the future. I’m doing this for our babies. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you all safe. I’m sorry Van, that’s just the way it’s got to be now.”

  I slid back over the seat behind him and buckled back up. I didn’t want to look at his face. I closed my eyes again and thought about how grateful I was to have a dad that would do anything to protect me and then I thought about those two boys who might die because I had a dad who would do anything to protect me. He wasn’t the man I thought he was. I was so scared and confused that I didn’t know how to feel anymore so I didn’t. I just let it all go and slipped into a nightmare sleep.

  The harsh smell of smoke woke me and I rasped out a cough to clear my throat. When the truck cleared the smoke, I saw that we were driving through the town of Canmore. We had spent a few weekends in the pretty little town that boasted it was the gateway to the Rockies. My family would stay at one of the many chalet style hotels and visit the tourist sites nearby and drive the short distance to Banff for ice cream and museums. There was a huge artist’s community that my mother loved and we would always have to tear her away from the galleries in the small mountain resort town.

  The highway ran through the town but each side was lined with a fence to keep tourists from trying to cross it on foot so it was free of people. There were crashed vehicles that Dad had to navigate around, causing him to slow the truck down enough that we had plenty of time to see the state of the hotels and businesses that lined the road. Almost everything looked the same as the last time we had been here except for one huge hotel that was being consumed by flames. There were people in parking lots and walking down the service road but I didn’t see any vehicles moving at all. The sound of our truck’s motor was like a siren and almost every person in sight turned their heads in our direction. When a few men started running towards the fenced highway and waving their arms at us, I felt the truck speed up. I had to brace myself when Dad swerved around a wreck at the higher speed but in seconds we had passed through town and it dwindled in the distance behind us.

  We had only driven a few miles from the town when Dad took an off ramp and exited the hi-way onto a secondary road. After that, I had no idea where we were as he changed roads again and again as we drove deeper into the mountains. Eventually, the pavement ended and the sound of gravel under the tires started to lull me back to a light doze. When the gravel ended the bumpiness of multiple ruts in a dirt track started to bounce me around the back of the cab. My bladder gave a painful twinge at the bouncing and it made me think of Mom. For the last few months of her pregnancy, she seemed to have to pee every ten minutes and I wondered how she was holding it on such a rough road.

  I leaned forward between the seats to try and see her face but she had angled her body away from my Dad towards her window. When I put my hand on her arm to get her attention, I felt a flinch course through it.

  “Mom, are you ok?”

  I snuck a look at Dad when she didn’t answer me but his face was unreadable.

  “Dad, I have to pee and I’m sure Mom’s got to go too. Can we stop somewhere?”

  He didn’t answer for a few seconds and I was about to ask again when he let out a tired sigh.

  “Can you hold it for a few more minutes? We’re almost there.”

  I sat back against my seat and nodded at him in the rearview mirror, as scared and confused as I was about what I had seen in the last few hours I was also really curious about where we were going. I was just a baby when my Dad was a soldier. Mom said the last time he deployed I was two years old and I screamed for him all through the airport when he left. That was his last tour and when he came back he started up a business as a construction contractor. Even though I envisioned a cold damp cave full of bats, I knew Dad would never bring us to such a place to live long term. He had made the trip to his cave at least once a month and sometimes more often for as long as I could remember so I knew that he would have fixed it up into something habitable.

  A huge rut in the path made the truck lurch and Mom let out a low moan. I was really worried about her and let a heavy breath of relief out when
Dad slowed the truck to a stop. My peanut sized bladder was screaming for relief but I knew Mom would be even more desperate, so I grabbed a box of tissue from the seat and scrambled out the door before opening hers and helping her down. We moved away from the truck behind some bushes and I tried to brace Mom so she could go pee, but she waved me off and braced herself against a tree. I spun away and found my own tree to balance against and did my business. I might be a mall girl at heart but I had camped with Dad a few times so I knew to bring the used tissue back to be burned later.

  Mom was back at the truck before me and she passed me a travel-sized bottle of hand sanitizer after taking my tissues and putting them in the plastic bag Dad used as a garbage in the front seat. As I rubbed my hands together, I looked around and saw nothing but wilderness. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath of the late summer forest smell and tried to let the stress of the last few hours go. Opening my eyes, I looked at my Mom’s strained face and sighed. As crazy as this living in a cave business sounded to me, at least we would all be together.

  Mom leaned wearily against the side of the truck and cradled her big belly with one arm. Her face was pinched and tired looking as she watched my Dad pull our bags out from the truck bed. A small mountain of bags grew and I hoped we didn’t have far to carry them all. Once he had removed everything he pulled my backpack and a few of the shopping bags from the pile and tossed them in my direction.

  “Can you handle these, Sky? I don’t want your Mom carrying anything.”

  With a nod, I gathered the bags and stood watching as he shouldered both his bug out bags and struggled to right Mom’s suitcase. The tiny wheels on the case would not be much help on the rough, overgrown forest floor. As he tried to right the case, Mom pushed off the side of the truck and reached for the shopping bags draped over my arms. I gave her a concerned look but she just shook her head and took the bags.

  “Go help your father with the case Sky, I can manage these.”

  I could see the stress that lined Dad’s face and the way his jaw was clenched tightly. He only nodded at me and shot a quick glance at Mom when I helped him get the case upright and we finally started moving. It was a ten-minute struggle to get to where we were going and we were all panting and sweating in the late summer heat when he finally came to a stop and dropped the bags.

  I looked around and saw only more forest and a rock wall. Seeing no cave opening I assumed we were taking a break, so I dropped my own pack and leaned against the rock wall to rest. I watched my dad take the shopping bags from Mom and gently rub her belly while speaking to her in a low voice. He kissed her gently on the forehead and then turned and stepped towards me.

  “Can you move Sky? I need to get the door open.”

  I looked at him in confusion but stood up and turned to study the rock wall behind me. There was no door. Rock, moss, dirt and a few weeds poking out from cracks, but no door. I gave him a weird look and waved towards the wall and stepped back.

  He gave me a teasing smirk before reaching out and pressing twice on a rounded rock protrusion. My eyes flared wide as a small square of rock moved to the side exposing a keypad. He chuckled at my expression and ruffled my hair.

  “It’s a false front. Now we just need to pray it was protected enough to survive the EMP.”

  He pushed a series of numbers that I realized was my birthdate and then hovered over the enter button. He looked at me and glanced back at Mom before taking a breath and pressing it. I think we were all holding our breath for the few seconds it took for something to happen. I flinched and stepped back at a clunking sound and watched wide-eyed as a piece of the rock wall seemed to break and slid to the side. I wasn’t sure what I expected but the empty room that was exposed wasn’t it. The tree-filtered sunlight shone into the room so that I could see that it was about ten by ten and mostly bare except for a drain in the concrete floor and a few panels that might be closets.

  Dad put his hand on my back and nudged me forwards.

  “Go on in, it’s just an airlock. The real door won’t open until this one gets closed again.”

  I glanced back at Mom but she just gave me a tight smile and waved me forward, so I grabbed my bags and stepped into the room. Mom and Dad followed me in with their own bags. Looking around the small, dim room I gnawed at my lower lip with my teeth in nervousness. I didn’t know what was going to happen next when Dad reached out and put his hand against a panel I hadn’t seen before and pushed a button. A scream was clawing its way up my throat when the door we had come through slid closed, taking the dim light with it.

  Mom’s hand on my shoulder changed the scream to a squeak of fear as we were plunged into blackness. As soon as the door made the clunk sound I had heard before, red light filled the room. My Dad said something that I couldn’t hear over the pounding in my ears but the computerized voice that answered him rang loud and clear.

  “Welcome back Daniel Ross. Voice imprint authenticated. Scanning for radiation and other environmental impurities. Scan complete. Sterilization commencing.”

  My mouth was dropped open in shock and I was scanning the ceiling for where the voice was coming from when the soft red light changed to an intensely bright UV beam that blinded me. Starbursts flashed before my eyes as I rubbed away the tears that had immediately sprung up. I felt Mom rubbing my back in sympathy as she blasted Dad.

  “A little warning next time Daniel!”

  Just as my eyes started to clear, the light changed again to normal fluorescent lighting and the clunk sound came again, this time from behind me. Dad stepped towards me and lifted my chin.

  “Sorry about that sunshine. I should have warned you about the lights. Let’s go in and I’ll show you our new home.”

  I had a million questions on the tip of my tongue but before I could ask the first one, I felt a whoosh behind me and spun around. Just like the outside door, a section of the wall had slid to the side revealing the next room. I took a tentative step towards it and found myself snorting out a spontaneous laugh. My preconceived notions of a damp dark cave were swept aside as I took in the exact replica of our living room from the home we had left just hours ago. The furniture was the same as well as the family photos on the walls. The only difference was the paintings that were hung were copies of pieces my Mom had created instead of the originals.

  I walked deeper into the room and saw open doorways to my left. Glimpses of beds and dressers showed me where we would be sleeping. To my right, past the living area, was a modern looking kitchen with an island counter and shiny new appliances. I spun around with a smile of delight that soon faded as I watched my Dad help Mom lower herself to the couch. Her face was strained and I immediately went and sat beside her.

  She clutched my hand in hers and gave me a tired smile. “I’m ok, just tired. I just need to rest for a bit and I’ll be fine.” She tried to look reassuring.

  Dad studied her face intently before finally nodding. He blew out a breath and rocked back onto his heels before speaking to us both.

  “OK…there are a lot of things I need to explain to you both but most of it will have to wait for now. Time is of the essence in order for me to get everything we need to survive comfortably before we have to seal up and stay put. This will be our main living area. There is more to the cavern system further back into the mountain but I will show you that later. The voice you heard in the airlock is an artificial intelligence response interface application. Shortened down, its name is AIRIA and it will answer questions and guide you in any way it can. So first it needs to voice print you both.” He held up his hand and addressed the computer. “AIRIA, voiceprint my daughter, Skylar Ross. Access level yellow.”

  “Welcome, Skylar Ross. Please state your name and birthdate for voice print recognition. Access level yellow.”

  My voice trembled slightly as I said my name and birthdate. Mom did the same except she was granted access level green, whatever that meant. We sat in silence for a minute waiting for Dad to explain more of what was hap
pening but he just looked at us uncertainly and rubbed at his face. I had never seen Dad look uncertain before and I was starting to get nervous again at what he might say next. He finally knelt in front of us and his face softened.

  “Everything you need for now is in this room. You are both completely safe but there are things we will need in the future to make our lives more comfortable. I have to go, now, to get those things before the fallout makes its way to us and it will be unsafe to travel anywhere.”

  “Dad, NO….” I got out before Mom cut me off.

  “Daniel, you can’t leave us here! What if something happened to you?”

  He gripped our hands tightly and gave them a little shake to silence us before explaining.

  “Listen, I have planned this moment for a long time and I know what I’m doing! There’s a farm nearby and I’ve had a deal with them for a few years. I pay to keep some livestock on their spread. We need those animals! I’ll only be a few hours to get them loaded on the trailer I have there and get back here. This living area is only a small part of the cave system I’ve set up. There’s another entrance closer to the back where I’ll unload them and store the truck…I promise I won’t be long!”

  Mom was shaking her head as he spoke and burst out as soon as he finished. “How do you know it’s safe? There might be radiation out there right now!!!”

  Dad’s mouth firmed up into a tight line before addressing the ceiling. “AIRIA, estimate time of fallout reaching this area.”

  “Yes Daniel Ross, calculating now. Based on the last satellite images available of the closest ground strike and prevailing winds, radiation contamination will reach your current location in seven hours and forty-two minutes.”

  Mom shook her head in confusion. “Daniel, how on earth could that computer know that? How do you have access to satellites?”

  “Bill…well, let’s just say this place is a backup to an official bunker the military built in the east. He wanted something out west just in case. We worked together on this place and he supplied the technical aspects of it as well as, well, almost everything.”