After the Day Read online

  “Which one?” The clerk asked.

  “Um, the one with the blonde.” Chuck said.

  “You know if the power stays out you may need some variety.” The clerk said. “Just saying.”

  Chuck added five more magazines and bought a pack of lighters.

  After paying the clerk he carried everything home.

  People were still oblivious as to what was going on. Kids had no care in the world. The adults ran around worrying about petty stuff. One man complained his sprinklers wouldn’t turn on like they were supposed to. The comment about water made him realize something.

  Chuck picked up the pace and ran to the bathroom after setting the bags down. He turned the handle on the tub and water flowed into the tub. He thanked God that his water was still gravity fed. He ran to the kitchen and pulled all of his two liter bottles out of the bags he stored them in. He grabbed everything. Twenty ounce bottles and smaller he brought to the sink and started filling them. The pressure was good but it wouldn’t last.

  Chuck filled the tub and reserved that water for drinking and cooking first since it was exposed to the air. The rest he stored with the food in the basement.

  Chuck went outside and found that the sun would be setting in a few hours. There was one last thing to do. He grabbed a shovel and started digging the hole for his latrine. Many had not thought about it since their toilets were currently flushing but he wasn’t going to count on that for long. Thousands of gallons of drinking water were going to be flushed in the next day. Chuck finished with a two foot square hole about three feet deep. It would be a start. He figured solid waste would go there and he would store urine in a bottle and dump it in the yard as fertilizer.

  He was kicking himself for not thinking ahead. He knew the world was going to shit but he would rather bitch about it than protect himself. He spent the evening beating himself up but before falling asleep he acknowledged he didn’t do too bad with what he had. He was still better off than most people and he just had to keep it that way. Today was the first day of the rest of his new life. The world was never going to be the same regardless of how many people pretended otherwise.

  Chapter 2: The Day

  Digging through his closet for the last time he found his scrub uniform. The last days of everything he knew started to come back. The city started to fall apart and the people that tried their hardest to hold everything together were the ones that paid the biggest price for it.

  He looked at the dried blood he hadn’t bothered to wash off and could still smell the gunpowder in the fabric. The only thing he could say about getting by the moments of that week was that he did his best. It wasn’t enough and he lost everything but somehow he was still alive and that had to count for something.

  The emergency room was busy that day. Nothing was out of the ordinary. People scrambled around in a controlled form of chaos that made everything work. He was doing his job of cleaning rooms. Running from one room to the next trying to keep things going smoothly so that new patients could be moved in. He pushed his cart down the hall weaving past doctors and nurses then parallel parking next to the room. He pulled the sheets from the bed and pressed the button on the remote to turn the TV on. He changed the channel to the news and listened while he worked.

  “Tom, are you able to get to the waiting room? Someone spilled a drink.” One of the nurses asked while he wiped down the bed.

  He nodded in response listening still to the news. He learned years ago to multitask and take in everything at one time. Sometimes it really surprised people, other times it pissed them off thinking that he wasn’t listening.

  He grabbed his cart and decided to clean the spill before finishing. Getting some towels and a floor sign he walked into the waiting room. Placing the sign down and dropping the towels he pushed it around with his feet sucking up the liquid. The floor would be sticky from the sugar but he could fix that in a few minutes.

  Returning to the room he found several people cramming in staring at the TV.

  “We don’t know at this time what exactly has happened. It has been said that there was an incident in the capital. To what extent we don’t know, but we are trying to gather as much information as we can at this time. Speculation is leaning towards the use of a nuclear device in Washington DC. We have not been able to confirm that as of now but there have been reports form surrounding areas of a blinding light and a large explosion heard in surrounding cities…”

  The report went on.

  “Why are they talking if they don’t know?” One of the doctors said.

  “That’s how the news works. They keep you watching with speculation and more questions than answers.” A nurse added. Her name was Abby, a young brunette who started over a year ago. Married and in her mid-twenties.

  “Is this going to be like Katrina?” A patient care assistant asked. She must have been here during that time. It was a valid question. Their hospital in Michigan received patients from New Orleans when the hurricane hit.

  The charge nurse exited the room and started pulling manuals from the desk. She picked the phone up and started making calls. Most of the staff went back to the work they were previously doing.

  “Keep an eye on that for us, will you?” Kara, another nurse in the department asked as she walked out. “Let us know if there is anything new.”

  Tom nodded and watched the screen. A few minutes later he pried himself from the screen and finished cleaning the room. His job now was to check the news in every room he cleaned. It wasn’t long before video footage was being shown of the mushroom cloud hovering over what used to be Washington DC. For a few minutes the ER became silent and everything came to a grinding halt. Several people pulled out their cell phones and tried sending text messages only to find that the towers were being over loaded or shut down. The people that tried to make phone calls received a message saying “sorry for the delay in service.” The news reporter told the viewers to not call Washington. Most of the city didn’t exist anymore and phone lines and towers were being overloaded. That day was 9-11 all over again. He remembered his neighbor at the time trying to call her sister that lived in New York at the time. She later found out from family that she had quit her job at the Trade Center only two weeks before. He moved out of that apartment a few months later. He ran into that neighbor a few years later. She wore a head dress and converted to Islam. He was confused and surprised at the same time. 9-11 was one of the last times that he had talked to her. He wanted to know more about her conversion but didn’t have time. He never saw her again after that.

  Policy in the hospital quickly changed about administering drugs and conserving electricity. Tom was surprised to see that the administration and managers were ahead of the game. The next day it was announced that all ports to the US were closed and gas had tripled in price. It was unknown when shipments for drugs would be delivered.

  There was a meeting that took place for all the managers in the hospital. It took most of the day but they decided that they would try to hold out as long as they could. They had gone from a modern full service facility to a third world clinic over-night. The city asked people to not use any unnecessary appliances and turn off any lights that were not in use. Maintenance quickly took notice of any diesel vehicles in the surrounding parking lots for possible sources of fuel for the generators when their three day supply became low. The ER shut all doors to anybody who didn’t have an emergency.

  Tom never left work. His house for the most part was safe. All of his doors had extra locks and the windows were either Plexi-glass or reinforced with a plastic film that kept them from breaking. Even his car had a lock on the gas cap. People called him paranoid but in a bad neighborhood, paranoia is survival. Many of the nurses never came back to work and only the most dedicated of doctors stayed.

  Then there was the day when security was chasing a group of teenagers through the halls. They were trying to steal medications to sell in the streets or get high for their personal use. Tom, a student
of history thought about the days after Katrina. Security detained them for a short time but let them go, not wanting to feed them. The police were already short staffed and not answering calls due to lack of personnel.

  When they learned this one of the nurses called her husband on a hand held radio to find out what was going on. He arrived ten minutes later with their family SUV filled with supplies and telling her they had to leave.

  “Where are we going to go?” She asked. She was irritated like everyone else. Everybody wanted to get as much information as they could.

  “My family has a farm in Wisconsin. It’s in the middle of nowhere. We’ll be safe.” He said pointing to their car. Their three kids sat in the back seat watching.

  “Safe from what?” She asked.

  “The other hospital was over- run by looters. They stole all of the supplies that they had left and killed some of the staff.” He said.

  The people listening were silent. Security had a reasonable control over the entrance to the hospital but the building was so large and too many doors to control everything.

  “We have patients here still.” She said. “We can’t just leave them.”

  “We can’t, but you can.” It was Doctor Hartman. He was a tall, slender middle aged man. One of the few doctors Tom respected, not just because he stayed. Even before the nuke Hartman was one of the only doctors that wasn’t filled with ego like the younger residents that had the God complex. There were even nights where he went out drinking with some of the nurses and other staff buying drinks and listening to them. There was something different about that man. He was respectable.

  “Your kids are in the car waiting for you. We’ll get things here.” Hartman was serious. She hugged him and turned to the car. She couldn’t look back. Her husband sat in the driver’s seat and took off down the road. There were a dozen people left in the ER.

  Tom tapped Hartman on the arm.

  “We need to talk.” Tom said. Hartman nodded and they went over to a map of the ER.

  “We might have a chance to keep this going if we can secure the ER.” Tom said pointing to the map.

  “What are you thinking?” Hartman asked.

  “We can isolate the rest of the ER from the building. It’s too much for us to cover and we don’t know who else is in the hospital. We need to get everyone in the same place. These doors here and here we can turn the power off and barricade. We can do the same out front so there is only one way in or out. In the meantime we need all of our vehicles across the street in the ramp. That way we can get away if we have to run.”

  “What happens when we are shot outside?” One of the security guards asked listening in.

  “That won’t happen.” Tom said. “We’ll have a sniper placed here watching the vehicles and guarding the door.”

  “Who’s going to do that?” Hartman asked.

  “We don’t have any weapons besides night sticks.” The same guard added.

  “I’m going to make a run home and pick up what we need.” Tom said. “In the meantime get two groups together and start checking all the floors for more staff and get them down here. They won’t be safe if people start searching the hospital for supplies. What I bring back we can divide. I’m going to leave now and save time. In the meantime same rules apply, only emergencies are allowed in. Treat what you can.”

  “What happens if you don’t come back?” Hartman asked.

  “If I’m not back in an hour, make plans to leave.” Tom left through the main entrance and ran to his car in the parking lot. Most of the cars were gone and he didn’t see anyone around. He started the motor and saw that he still had almost a full tank of gas. The drive to his house took longer than normal. People tried to stop his car. One man stood in the middle of the lane and Tom swerved around him as he kicked the side of the car and yelled. A block later a man ran up pulling on the locked handle and flashed a gun at the window.

  “Open the fucking door!” He yelled as Tom hit the gas and sped off. Loud cracks rang through the air as Tom ducked in his seat and tried to look in his rear view mirror to see if the man was still shooting. When he passed the one gas station in his neighborhood he looked long enough to see that the store had been cleared of any goods inside and the pumps were covered in signs that said no gas here.

  He parked his car next to the side door of his house and ran to the front door. He was sure to lock his car and quickly took an inventory of everything that he needed. He grabbed his knife collection that was rolled in a felt case. He stacked all the food he could carry next to the side door. Upstairs he pulled all of his hunting rifles and ammo out of the safe. He took the locks off and quickly checked to make sure they were clean like he always kept them. He piled them in a large duffle bag and put the ammo in a hiking bag.

  He grabbed extra scrubs and other clothes he would need to change if he was to keep watch for long periods of time. He wore a small revolver on his belt along with his favorite knife, a marine corps K-bar that wasn’t legal to carry before. He pulled on a grey trench coat that he figured would help him blend in with the parking ramp. He piled all of the supplies next to the door and knew he would have to work quickly to fill the car. If anybody saw him he knew he would be killed just to get their hands on it.

  Tom moved the 4x4 piece of wood away from the door. Originally it kept people from breaking in. He slowly unlocked the dead bolt and opened the door. No one was around. Using the button remote he unlocked the doors and trunk and carried out the guns, placing them in the back seat. The ammo he placed in the passenger seat. The trunk he piled with canned and boxed food. Last was a box of books and other supplies. He closed up the car and locked it. He went back in the house and closed the door securing it like it was before. He walked to the front door and locked it behind him. He was surprised that nobody had tried to break in before but now they would find nothing. He turned the corner of his house and found a man looking in the car. He pulled the revolver out immediately and pointed it at the man.

  “Can I help you?” Tom said slowly walking towards him.

  The man reached for his gun and Tom fired. The man’s gun was out in his hand now. Tom fired again hitting the man in the chest. He fell and yelled as he grabbed his chest. Tom ran up and grabbed the gun from the ground. It was a small semiautomatic pistol. Unlocking the car Tom threw the gun in the car and sat in the driver’s seat. The man was still yelling.

  Tom started the car as a group of men came running towards him. He hit the gas. Flying out of the driveway he hit two of them. One slid onto the hood and yelled at him. He couldn’t make out the words. As he turned onto the street the man slid off taking the windshield wiper with him. He watched the man roll to the curb as he sped away. He didn’t stop at the stop signs, slowing down enough to check for other cars. Back on the main street he hit the gas and flew past everyone he saw. He saw the man that shot at him earlier and the man pointed the gun. The slider was pulled back. He was out of bullets but still trying to intimidate people into stopping.

  Tom drove like a mad man. When he arrived at the hospital he parked outside the main entrance and at first people didn’t recognize him. He opened all the doors and the truck.

  “Take everything inside.” He said to the security guard and two of the nurses. He grabbed the duffle bag of guns and the back pack in the passenger seat. At the main desk he set it down and pulled the zipper open.

  “Holy shit.” One of the guards said.

  “Okay, we have here a .22 rifle, 7.62, 12 gauge pump action, and a 9mm I received from a nice man that tried to steal my car after it was loaded up. I don’t have any ammo for that.” Tom walked to one of the other boxes that was carried in and pulled out his knife collection. He unrolled the collection of steal inside and started handing out knifes for the people he felt fit the best. The nurses he gave small folders or short fixed blades. To the men he tried to gauge them by experience and ergonomics. The guards received tanto blades. The other men received various styles of bowies and
survival knifes.

  “Where the hell did you get these from?” One of the guards asked.

  “They’re mine.” Tom replied.

  “You’re like John Locke in Lost.” Some of the other people understood the reference.

  Tom gave the 12 gauge to the security guards and divided the boxes of ammo among them. He took the 7.62 for himself and gave the 9mm to one of the nurses. The .22 rifle he handed to a doctor that he over-heard talking about hunting the year before.

  “Does everybody have their cars parked at the top of the ramp?” Tom asked.

  “Everyone does except for the people searching the hospital. There are some people stuck on the top floor but they have critical patients that can’t be moved except by elevator and those aren’t working.” One of the guards said.

  “How many people?” Tom asked.

  “Four on the fourth floor, six in the PEDs unit, and about a dozen next door in trauma.” The guards replied.

  “Do they know what’s going on?” Tom said.

  “Yeah, we told them but they aren’t leaving.”

  Tom thought for a minute.

  “Call the floors make a list of everything they need from the pharmacy to stay afloat. Take two guys and go downstairs. Grab everything from the pharmacy you can get your hands on. Don’t leave anything that can be stolen or sold on the streets. When it’s here send up runners to the floors and drop off the supplies. Have trauma start moving all of their patients here so they can be protected. In the meantime do we have radios that we can charge on the generators power?”

  “Well, we have the old ones, they cover all channels.” One of the assistants said.

  “Get them charged and we’ll use them for the hospital and when I’m across the street. The people that need to move their cars get your things, we’re taking the tunnel.”