Remnants of the Day- The Lost Years Page 5

  He took I-94 straight to Chicago and found the exit a few miles before the border with Illinois. The casino wasn’t difficult to find with the flashing lights and billboards every couple of miles. John followed the signs to the parking lot and spotted Chris outside.

  He pulled up to the sidewalk and honked the horn. Chris stood up from the bench he was sitting on and looked through the window with a look of wonder.

  “Hey,” he said opening the door.

  “Get in,” John had his mind running with the info he picked up over the last two hours.

  Chris buckled in and they drove back to the highway.

  “What the hell is going on?” John asked as he set the cruise control on.

  “Hell if I know. I only heard the first report. Then I hit the car.”

  John filled Chris in on what he heard and it wasn’t anything more than Chris had heard.

  “You think Al Qaeda got their hands on a bomb?” Chris asked as they sat in the van.

  “I don’t know what to think.” John was honest with his response.

  “Man you’re like the guy who knows a guy that knows the shit about the shit. How do you not know what’s going on?” Chris said.

  “I don’t have a clue. It could be anybody. Hell the NSA has always said that it’s not a matter of if, but when a bomb will go off in America,” John said.

  “Shit, This really happened,” Chris was in shock and they raced home to find out more. John figured that the highway patrol would be back at the station learning what happened on the news. He set the cruise control to 90 mph and waited to get home.

  John and Chris listened to the radio but didn’t learn anything new. Everything was speculation.

  “This is bullshit,” Chris said as they listened to the talking heads guess as to what happened.

  They rode the exit ramp back into town.

  John pulled up to Chris' apartment and set the van in park.

  “What do you think will happen?” Chris asked.

  “Buy food, listen to the radio, and hope for the best,” John said.

  “Right, let me know what I can do to make this up to you,” Chris said.

  “Don’t worry about it. Anything for a brother.”

  They shook hands and Chris went into his apartment.

  John drove back to his apartment.

  The television was a wealth of disinformation. Nobody had anything to offer for what happened. The smart channels continued revolving images of Washington with the mushroom cloud. Others had their host debating as to who was responsible. One had a mix of both, showing the mushroom cloud and having the host talking over the image. After an hour John knew they had no idea what was going on.

  He drove down to the local Costco and found the parking lot packed with vehicles. He didn’t like the amount of people there and sat in his van trying to think of another place. He left Costco and went to a GFS (Gordon food service) and parked in a spot. They weren’t nearly as busy and he went inside with his wad of bills. He grabbed a cart and for a second thought about Chris wondering if he was picking up food as well. He never thought about offering him some cash to buy food incase things became worse.

  He cruised the aisles and filled the cart with various items. A fifty pound bag of rice, cans of beans, and canned foods of all kinds. He tried to stay away from the frozen food but picked up a few bags of chicken and pizzas that he thought looked good. After loading the first purchase he went back in and bought another bag of rice and anything that sounded good. He had cans of ravioli and soup. The variety wasn’t much but it was food he could live off of. He finished with the second load and hoped thing wouldn’t get really bad.

  He carried his purchase up the stairs and when he was done he didn’t plan to leave ever again. He was done. The stairs were a nemesis he didn’t want to encounter anytime soon.

  Leaving the bags sitting in the kitchen, except for the frozen items, John pressed the power button for the stereo. His usual classic rock channel wasn’t playing music or commercials as they normally did. Instead it was live coverage of the news channels. He guessed those channels also owned the radio stations they were broadcasting on. Hours later the talking heads on the television were arguing about who most likely nuked Washington D.C. As usual it was opinions based on no evidence. Al Qaeda was suspect number one with 9-11 in their past and the first Trade Center attack in the early 90’s.

  Another host was guessing it was domestic with the Okalahoma city bombing being carried out by two anti-government militia members. He argued that the rise of the radical right was a breeding ground for anti-government sentiment. The response from the other broadcasters was to call him a communist and immediately state that “America is the greatest country in the world.”

  John turned the radio off and went into the kitchen. He kicked the running board and pulled it away from the floor. Reaching in he pulled a wad of cash out. He needed something to do. In Afghanistan his down time was filled with books. Anything he could get his hands on to kill the boredom.

  Turning his phone on he found he had no service. He figured the system was either overloaded or the government shut it down until further notice. Either way he had few options. He remembered seeing the library downtown while looking for a place to eat. He drove downtown and parked on the side of the road. He walked two blocks to the library. He stood in line for a minute at the information desk. As he walked up to the teller he noticed a sign that said the internet was currently down.

  “I guess this means I can’t get a card?” he said pointing to the sign.

  “Afraid not,” the teller said.

  “Can you recommend any good book stores then?” he asked.

  “We have one in the basement with used books. They have a good selection and its cheap,” the young African American man told him. His name tag read ‘Sam.’

  “Thank you.”

  John took the stairs down and looked around. He spotted the book store and stepped inside. For the small size of it he was amazed at how many books it carried. Everything was categorized in the few aisles they had. An older man with a white beard said ‘hello’ and told him about the “still shopping” signs he could place on books while he continued to shop. John took advantage of it.

  He went to the science aisle and started grabbing books that caught his eye. He flipped through the gardening books and picked a few out. In ten minutes he had a stack with a sign on it. Thirty minutes later he was in the science fiction section. Then the fiction and classics. He found a military section and grabbed the few that looked good including Marine Sniper by Charles Henderson.

  John went through the spy and espionage section and asked the man at the counter his advice. The man pointed out the top sellers he noticed leaving the store. A few minutes later the manager came out and said the store was closing soon.

  “Oh man, this store is awesome. Is there any chance I could keep shopping?” John asked.

  “We run on donations and the people here are volunteers,” the woman stated.

  John reached in his pocket and pulled out the wad of cash.

  “I can donate,” John said.

  “Well a hundred makes you a benefactor and they get special privileges,” the woman said.

  “Here is a hundred and I won’t be much longer.” The woman nodded and the doors were closed as John continued through the store. He left with a few boxes of books and had his name added to the list of benefactors to the library. Pulling into the driveway he remembered his ordeal with the stairs and his groceries.

  He sighed at the task ahead of him and after three trips was finally finished.

  The sun was starting to set and he sat at his kitchen table with the first book he found on top of his stack of boxes. The Postman by David Brin was cracked open in his hands for the first time.

  The radio blared in the background but nothing of any importance resonated from the speakers.

  Chapter

  Fatima dropped her boys off at the daycare center and
drove to work. She parked in the ramp and found a spot in the middle of the ramp. The waiting room was full and she knew she was going to have a rough day. Most of the complaints were minor and in some cases nonexistent. People appeared to be in a panic and were coming in with all kinds of made up complaints. One person even believed they had ebola.

  Fatima went through the charts and did what she could. Everyone was stressed, from the patients to the staff. Conversations always went back to the events in Washington. Before she knew it she was two hours past the end of her shift. She finished her last chart and went out to her car. She went through the security precautions and left with her boys. She remembered that she didn’t have much food at home and went to the grocery store to pick some up. All the carts in the entrance were gone. Long lines were at every lane and she decided to just pick up some pizzas instead.

  At home Fatima and the boys ate their way through an extra large pizza. Their faces speckled with the tomato sauce on the corner of their mouths as they smiled. She sent them to bed and read them stories as they each fell asleep. She tucked them in and turned the light off.

  A deep feeling of fear came over her. For a second, she thought about not going to work the next day. She didn’t know how long she stood in the doorway. She closed the door and went to the living room. She poured a glass of wine for herself in the kitchen and sat on the sofa.

  It had been almost a week since the bomb went off. As time went on people were in more of a panic. The patients in the ER were more willing to cause a scene. Violence had become a constant norm to the point where security started to simply throw people out when they became a concern. During a shift a few coworkers would end up becoming patients for Fatima because of an encounter with a violent patient. She was starting to worry about her own safety.

  The next morning she dropped the boys off at the daycare and drove to work. She parked in the ramp again and took the tunnel to the hospital that ran under the street. She didn’t like being outside these days. When she came into the department the rooms were full and the waiting room was packed.

  She had an idea to get things moving faster. Going to the charge nurse she asked to work the triage area.

  “You know policy says we can’t do that,” the charge nurse said.

  “How many of these people are going to pay. Let me see them and send them home before they come in. We know who the time wasters are. Send them into my room, I check them and send them home. There is no reason to waste resources on people who don’t need to be here.”

  Dr. Hartman over heard the conversation and stepped in.

  “Put her out there. She’s right. We don’t have time to waste on people that don’t need to be here. We will deal with the repercussions later,” he said. Visibly he was agitated and stressed. Usually he was relaxed and enjoyed his job, these days people were pushing him to his limit.

  Fatima took the first triage room and told the desk to start sending her the non-emergency complaints.

  Three hours later the majority of the waiting room had been thinned out and the doctors in the department were finally seeing patients with serious concerns.

  Some of the patients would argue with Fatima about what they had.

  “I know I have something wrong. This cough won’t go away,” a girl in her mid twenties said.

  “You’ve been smoking since you were 13, of course there is something wrong. You need to stop smoking and your cough will go away. Your lungs need to heal,” Fatima said.

  “I need a prescription or something. My chest hurts.”

  “You need to stop smoking.”

  “Why am I paying for this if you won’t help me?” the girl said.

  Fatima noticed the security guards were hovering by the door. She turned to the desk and took out a prescription pad. She wrote the medication and dose. Then signed her name at the bottom.

  “Here,” she handed the paper to the girl.

  “’Stop smoking. Starting now.’ Who do you think you are? This is bullshit!” The girl threw the prescription paper at Fatima. A moment later the security guards grabbed the girl by her arms and hauled her outside.

  The girl was screaming as she was dragged outside and told not to come back. Fatima had reached her breaking point. She was tired of people thinking they could continue their self destructive life styles and just pick up a magic pill to correct their mistakes.

  The security guards walked back inside and had the waiting room looking at them. One of the men looked at the group, turned and looked out the door then back at the people.

  “No manners,” he said lifting his hand and pointing his thumb towards the door.

  “Oh shit, they ain’t messing around,” one of the people in the waiting room said.

  Every couple of hours the same message had to be sent to the crowd.

  A few seconds later the lights flickered and the computer screens went black. Everyone froze in place and waited for the backup generators to kick on. They didn’t.

  Some of the staff started to gather papers to continue their work. It would only last so long before they ran out of forms without a copy machine. The security guards opened the doors to the department to allow sunlight in. Everyone noticed their cell phones no longer worked. They didn’t turn on, as if their batteries all died at the same time.

  The charge nurse sent Kara to find out what happened to the power. Putting some flashlights together she went into the basement and found the maintenance men with the generator.

  “The electronics are fried,” the older man in the group said.

  “Can you get it going? Do you need the electronics?” Kara asked.

  “Nope, we can bypass that. I never liked them adding more of this crap to it anyway. Just more stuff to breakdown.”

  Kara went back upstairs and gave the charge nurse the information. Over the next few hours they waited. They found out a dozen patients on the floors above died when the power went out. The nurses were distraught about the sudden loss of life. Some tried doing CPR but the defibrillators weren’t working. Some respiratory therapist stood over patients who were hooked up to breathing machines using airway bags to keep the patients alive. They took turns with other staff telling them to continue with the same pace.

  Security carried stop signs out to the entry ways and closed down the hospital. They would allow people who were really injured or sick to the ER but everyone else had to leave.

  Tom the cleaning guy was agitated. In his personal life he was a prepper at home. He didn’t talk about his hobby knowing that most people would think he was crazy. Hurricane Katrina came to mind with the hospitals quickly running out of supplies and being over run by looters. He knew it was coming. Before the power went out he was keeping track of this around town. Most of the grocery stores were out of food and other supplies. He knew that at any given time stores only had three days worth of food for the entire community. He had a years worth of food in his basement at all times, but that was only for himself.

  Security had bullet proof vest they wore but they were still unarmed. The uniform would only keep people away for so long until they noticed these men were unarmed.

  Some of the nurses turned their badges in at the desk and walked out of the building. Nobody could blame them. They had families and wanted to go home. A few minutes later one of the nurses came back and said her car was dead. She had been parked on top of the ramp.

  Tom had an idea what happened. He had read One Second After and knew about EMPs (electromagnetic pulses). He went out to the ramp and asked a few people who parked on top of the ramp to follow him. He started his car that was parked in the middle under several feet of concrete and rebar. The car purred to life. Then they went to the top level and each person sat in their cars with no electricity to start their cars. They went back to the ER and told everyone what had happened.

  “Anyone who parked inside the ramp their car should start, if you were on the top your car is dead.”

  “What the hell is going
on?”

  Tom tried to explain what an EMP is, but most people looked at him like he was an idiot because of his job.

  “You’re a janitor, what would you know about these things?” one nurse said.

  “Look, this can happen from massive solar flares like the Carrington event in the 1800’s. We just had a nuclear explosion in Washington D.C. I would have to guess that someone detonated a bomb above the United States wiping out the electrical grid and all electronic devices. Does your phone work?”

  “No,” the nurse said.

  Dr. Hartman stepped in.

  “I think Tom has a point. We have to assume that his theory is correct until we find out otherwise,” Dr. Hartman said.

  “Are you saying we are at World War Three?” another nurse asked.

  “We don’t know what is going on. But he have to assume that someone did detonate a nuclear bomb to wipe out our power grid,” Tom said.

  “Why?” someone asked.

  “Because without power our entire country is shut down. Right now all of our supply trucks are sitting on the highways unable to deliver food. Unless water is gravity fed to our sinks and toilets we have no water and won’t once the water towers are empty. Our gas stations can’t pump the fuel from the ground tanks. Our fields won’t be harvested. Our communications are down. We have no police or fire department. EMS are stranded where they are. Everyone is on their own.” Tom said.

  The reality of the situation sunk in and more people left the ER running to their cars. Most of the people that were parked inside the ramp, sped out a minute or two later. A handful came back not realizing they had parked at the very top.

  “What do we do?” one of the shamed coworkers said refusing to look at anyone.

  Tom grabbed a dry erase board and wiped it clean.

  “Everyone with running cars write down where you live. The people who are stranded will leave with the people that live closest to them.” Tom wrote his name and neighborhood at the top. He also knew that there was nobody that lived in his crime riddled area.