Dust (11 page)

“Burke is not Sam’s wife. I am.” Lifting the bandana to tie around my head, my attention went to Sam. Surprising me, he was sitting up on the cot.

“Jo.” Sam held his side. “I’m fine. I can wait until Burke gets back.”

Shaking my head as I finished the bandana, I walked to him. “No, you can’t.” I laid my hand on his cheek. “You’re burning up.” My eyes closed and I clenched my jaws. “God, Sam. I am so angry with you. So, angry. Why couldn’t you just stay in the shelter? Why did you have to run about?”

“Those were choices I made, Jo.” Sam struggled to stand up. “My choices. OK? I’m fine.”

Answers. I needed answers. My heart told me to run and get him help, while my head was asking me if I were nuts. Searching, I glanced around. Matty and Simon sat on the floor watching the whole thing. Looking so lost. Then my eyes shifted slowly from right to left. Davy. Sam. Dan. ‘Someone!’ I screamed inside. ‘Someone just tell me what to do!’

Dan did. “Jo, my opinion may not count, but I say go. I’ll be here ... ”

“What!” Sam blasted then caught his breath. “Don’t tell her that shit.”

Confirmation given. I needed to hear no more. “I’m going.” I backed up.

Sam grabbed my arm. “Jo, I’ll stop you.”

I removed his fingers as I chuckled in disbelief. “You can hardly stand. You can’t stop me.” I turned.

Davy blocked my way. “Maybe Sam can’t. But I can, Mom.”

Granted my teenage son was taller than me, but I was still his mother. And knowing him well, I was certain he would not physically grab me, throw me aside, or hold me back. I wagered on that and side stepped Davy.

“Mom.”

“I’m going.” Hurriedly, before Davy could prove me wrong by grabbing me, I made it to the stairs.

Dan halted Davy. “Let her go. You’re a child, you haven’t a clue what is going on.”

Harshly, Davy pulled from Dan. “Blow me.” He rushed to me. “Let me go. I’ll go with you, OK?”

“Davy, you stay here. Stay with Matty and Simon.” I kissed him softly on the cheek. “That’s your job. I promise I won’t be long. It’s not that far. OK?”

Davy nodded. It was evident by his expression that he agreed with defeat. Sam just stared at me. For a moment I took in all of their faces, before I lost all momentum and courage, I placed on my gloves and walked up the steps.

I would be less than honest if I said I wasn’t afraid to turn the doorknob. I was. Twelve days I had been in the basement shelter, never leaving it, not even to go upstairs into my own home. I hadn’t a clue what was ahead. Slipping my sunglasses on to protect from the sudden light, I opened the basement door.

It was quiet, almost too quiet, no sounds from downstairs carried to me at all. I closed the basement door and looked about my kitchen. The beams of daylight illuminated the thick fog of dust that floated in the air. With the exception of the broken window, and a toppled item or two, everything looked normal.

Turning to walk down the little entrance hall, in a reaction move, I stumbled back. The sunglasses did little to prevent the blast of light that blinded me. My arm shot to cover my face and I turned toward the wall. Daggers of pain pierced my eyes, and as I inhaled to wince away the pain, I inspired into my body, something I didn’t expect—a horrendous smell. Pungent and sour, my glands felt as if they immediately inflamed, saliva gushed into my mouth, and my throat retracted the gag.

Leaning my forehead toward the wall, I involuntarily ejected the overabundance of saliva from my mouth, and ran the back of my arm over my lips. I kept my eyes open and unshielded, taking a few moments to let them adjust to the light. But why was it so bright? I covered my nose with my hand, and I lifted my head. Like an overexposed picture, everything was painfully bright, losing all definition and color. I could see my front door; it was closed. So where was the brightness coming from? Another two steps and that answer was given to me.

To speak the words, ‘My God, what happened to my home,’ would have been an impossibility at that moment. My eyes watered, and the shock of it all suspended me into a solid stance. I couldn’t move.

I once had a bookshelf and table lamp in the front corner of my living room. They were gone. In fact, that entire corner was replaced with a huge gaping hole. Half of the sofa was buried beneath debris, and the fireplace mantel lay on the floor. It was a phenomenal sight to behold, like a set somewhere that you’d expect to see on movie sound stage. I would have been able to see my neighbor’s home through the hole if it wasn’t for the midsize red Chevy sedan. The front of the vehicle was partially in my home, while the remainder of the automobile, upside down, seemingly rested against my house. And with the discovery of the vehicle came the source of the odor; the driver of was still in the car. His decaying body was crushed against the steering wheel and his head pierced by the bits of broken windshield glass.

I had seen enough, and it was time to walk away, to leave. If such a horrendous vision perched itself literally in my home, I could only image the terror that was ahead.

12. Tent Three
 

Everything was gray. No color at all to the world, it was like I walked through a black and white film. I lived on a street where very little space separated each home. In some cases, this was a blessing as far as damage went; in other cases it was detrimental. I did not see a home on my street that wasn’t touched or tainted by the bombs in some way. In fact, the frame home across from mine, looked like a tilted domino between the homes on each side of it. I will say that somehow I was the destructive lottery winner, being the only home on the entire block with a car shoved into it. It puzzled me why the damage to my house came as such a shock. Perhaps it was the fact that Sam, Burke, Dan, Craig and Tammy had all ventured through my upstairs and not a single one of them mentioned the fact that a Chevy was parked in my living room. One would think this would be a tad of information I would like to know. Maybe they didn’t think much of it because they had seen far worse.

As I moved in the direction of the rescue station the damage was relatively the same to every house. A roof missing, a side of a building collapsed, windows shattered. Most un-repairable, but not as destructive as I had anticipated. Another thing I had noticed was I didn’t see any people. Somehow I expected to see wanderers, but I didn’t. At one point I thought I heard someone following me, and I even turned around prepared to yell at Davy, but no one was there.

The directions were simple. Craig said if I went to the top of my street, hung a left and kept walking, I would eventually run right into the rescue center. The time it took seemed to take forever, and I hoped I wouldn’t miss it. Craig made no mention of what building it was in. Even though I was in my own backyard—so to speak—I felt like stranger in a new land. Like Charlton Heston in the ‘Omega Man’, drifting through a barren, obliterated world, with no sounds, no people.

Deserted.

Those thoughts lasted only until I found the rescue center. I spotted it like an Oasis in the distance, and I realized how dense I was to think I could have missed it.

Buildings that had fallen were bulldozed out of the way. Tents—too many to count—were erected as far as the eye could see. But the tents were a nonentity in numbers compared to the carpet of people surrounding them.

In slow, zombie-like droves, people moved toward the station. It was only as I drew closer, that I realized that the humongous crowd was actually the waiting line. The check-in table was buried too far ahead to see. Some survivors had made their own little camps within the waiting area. Groups here and there. Like indigents, they huddled together, sharing a blanket while encircling a small fire. Crying, suffering. In passing them I tried to avoid eye contact, but that was fruitless, they all stared at me when I walked by them, as if I looked different in some way. Moans carried to me like bad music, people shoved and pushed. Others even grabbed me; I paid them no mind and forged ahead.

“Get to the back!” a man yelled, shoving me hard.

I was a billiard ball, bouncing off one person and into another. It was in the midst of the smells and pushes that I realized how right Burke and Craig were. We couldn’t have brought Sam to the station. No way. But right then I wasn’t there seeking aid for myself, I was there for medication. If I could only make it into the actual set up, surely I could find someone who could give me what I need.

I edged to my left, to my right; I used the tosses of my body to propel me further ahead. The sounds changed and that clued me in that I was nearing my destination. I could hear calls for ‘medication’, and ‘medic over here!’ I was almost there. My heart beat stronger, I moved more determined, keeping my focus ahead.

“Hey, watch it!” Someone screamed at me.

“Stupid bitch, I was here first!”

Wham!

Every ounce of air wheezed out of me when I felt the painful blow strike just below my ribcage. My knees buckled, everyone seemed to spin around me. I turned and saw the face of whom I guessed was my assailant. His face was bloody, dirty, his fist raised high in an aim at me.

I saw it coming, but by the grace of God I was shoved again. This time, it stumbled me forward. In a total state of pain and confusion, half unable to breathe, my hands reached out for someone, anyone, to help me regain my footing.

An arm. I felt an arm and I gripped it. My clasping fingers caused a shrill scream of agony, and had I not been wearing gloves I probably would have felt the reason for the cry. My eyes saw it at the same time my gloved hand sunk into the charred flesh of the woman I grabbed.

She jerked away her limb, leaving black, flaky remnants on my hand. My mouth opened in a long silent scream, as I backed up as fast as I could.

Then finally ... air. With no crowd to forge into, I fell to the ground. Quickly, I picked myself up, and flung the glove from my hand, wiping my palm on the leg of my jeans as if the flesh oozed through the cloth of the glove. I wanted to cry out, but only an ache of a moan seeped from me as I did some sort of shuddering dance of disgust.

I had to grab my bearings. A mission had to be completed. Foregoing the glove, I turned around. It all had to be a nightmare. To question where all the people came from was inane. The answers were all around. Aside from the lines of individuals, military trucks hauled masses of injured into the camp. Dumping them carelessly like garbage onto tarps that lay upon the ground. Then just leaving them.

My mind was in a fantasy fog because I truly believed all I had to do was ask someone for help and they’d quickly oblige.

How wrong I was.

I set my sights on military personal and anyone who looked as if they were medically helping.

The first soldier I approached didn’t see me. The second looked my way for split second then brushed by.

Bodily I blocked people, calling out, just trying to get some attention. “Excuse me. Excuse me can you ... ”

Gone. They walked away.

Another individual spotted, I rushed to them. “Excuse me, can you tell me.”

“Lady, move.” He said then abruptly walked away.

I spotted a rectangular table perched just before a tent labeled ‘Three’. Two men sat there, and no injured appeared to be waiting in line. I found out why when I made my approach.

A soldier stopped me. “No civilians.”

“But I just need to ask something.”

“If you’re looking for an individual, then you need that table.” The soldier pointed to a line of tables, rows deep with people waiting.

“I’m not looking for someone, I’m looking for help.”

“Then go somewhere else,” he ordered. “This isn’t the place.”

“Can’t you just ... ”

“Go!” he said firm.

“Fine.” I took two steps back, huffed in frustration and spun. When I did, the flap to tent three opened and I saw inside. I caught glimpse of a doctor and knew that was where I had to go. Looking over my shoulder I checked on the soldier who instructed me to leave. When I saw he was busy, I darted in the tent.