He didn’t call their names. Jake was too afraid of the silence that would answer. He picked his way through the ruin, and there wasn’t much picking to do. The house had been incinerated, and even the main flooring where the living room, kitchen, dining room, and three bedrooms once sat was gone. All that remained was a gaping hole into the cellar, and all that was down there was a swirling pile of ash.
Jake staggered away from the destruction. He covered his burnt lips with his fat, blistering fingers and tried not to retch. Gone. They’re gone. They never had a chance.
The barn was gone, and all the livestock within as well. The only other thing sitting in his yard to prove a farm had been there was his old John Deere tractor. It had blown over onto its side, the thick rubber tires blasted away, and the trademark greens and yellows were now solid black. All the junk that had been accumulated by three generations of Heez farmers had been picked up and moved away in an instant.
Jake called their names now. He stumbled about in a daze, kicking up ashes and dust, and screamed until there was nothing left but screeching rasps. With nowhere to go, and no one to find, Jake settled into a fetal position up against the overturned tractor and wept himself to sleep.
Chapter 2
When he woke up, Jake thought he’d gone blind. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. All was in complete blackness. I’m dead. The world ended and I died. The exposed rim of the tractor wheel dug into his side and Jake knew he wasn’t dead. He was still lying in the dirt of his farm yard, and day had obviously slipped into night. If the nights were going to be this dark, he wished he could just go back to sleep and never wake up. What if the darkness was permanent? How would it be if this all-encompassing blackness became a constant as the sun rose and fell each and every godforsaken day?
Jake fought off a fresh surge of panic. There had been a thermonuclear exchange, and it had been massive. There was all kinds of shit in the upper atmosphere blocking the moon and the stars from view. It would settle eventually—days, months, years—Jake had no idea how long it would take, but he was certain things beyond those black clouds were still out there. He would see the sun rise again.
With the panic attack averted, Jake started to worry about his next—and more immediate—problem. He needed water, and he needed it fast. How long had it been since he’d last drank anything? Morning… I had a glass of water first thing when I woke up at 6 a.m.. Coffee too, just after that. Jake felt fairly certain he hadn’t slept more than twelve hours against the tractor. That meant he hadn’t had anything to drink for a maximum time of fifteen hours, maybe sixteen. It felt more like sixteen days. I should’ve gulped down that slough water when I fell in. Should’ve slurped that fucker dry before the nuke boiled it away.
The house was no more. He couldn’t pour himself a glass of water from the kitchen sink. There was no bathtub faucet in the washroom to quench his thirst from. Jake couldn’t even drink out of the toilet. Think, Jake… Where does the water come from?
The well.
The underground water supply was located less than fifty feet east of where the house once stood. Jake no longer knew where east was, and even if he did manage to crawl off into the complete darkness and stumble across it, there was no way of accessing the precious fluid from deep within—not in his present burnt and weakened condition. Even if he somehow managed to remove the hundred pound concrete cover, Jake had no means of getting to the two-thousand gallon reservoir tank below. Any ropes that may have been lying around the yard or sitting coiled up inside the house or barns had undoubtedly been fried into nothingness. There were no spools of wire to secure a pail, or piles of chain to—
Chain.
Jake had last used the tractor he was leaning against to pull his truck from a snowbank. That had been over four months ago, halfway through February after a heavy snowstorm. He had used the tractor to pull it free, and he had secured the truck bumper by a forty foot length of chain. Mandy steered the truck while Jake drove the tractor. He parked the tractor and had gone to remove the chain from the hitch but decided against it in the end. Why? I had forgotten my gloves on the ground after securing the chain to the truck bumper. It was cold, and my fingers were wet and freezing. I couldn’t be bothered.
Jake crawled around the tractor, feeling his way along the dry earth. His fingers found the metal frame at the back and finally settled on the rough circular hitching hole. Jake felt around it and discovered a heavy metal hook attached. He made a weak whooping sound as his hands wrapped around metal links. It was still there. The chain was still attached to the tractor, bundled up in a lazy pile like a cold, dead snake.
Jake let it drop into the dirt and started climbing his way up the back of the tractor. The chain would only be of use if he could find some kind of water container to attach it to. There had to be something in the tractor cab—a discarded water bottle, an empty coffee cup—anything he could lower down into the well to hold water. The cab’s glass windows had been blown away, so Jake didn’t have to struggle looking for door handles in the dark. It was disorienting crawling in sideways over the seat. The vinyl seat covering was gone and Jake’s fingers got caught in the metal springs. He rested one knee on the seat frame and tried balancing his other foot on a gear shifter in an attempt to extricate his hand. The hand came free and Jake toppled over, unable to find anything else in the dark to grab onto. His back slammed into the door now resting against the ground and the fingers that had been caught in the seat springs settled on a curved surface near the foot clutch.
What’s this? He ignored the pain flaring up in his lower back. He knew full well what he’d found, and it was a hell of a lot better than an empty water bottle or discarded coffee cup. It was a paint can, complete with wire handle. It had been sitting in the corner of the cab for years, collecting smaller mechanical parts and junk—dead spark plugs, screws, bolts, and a hundred other little pieces of farm life—that Jake had fully intended to someday throw out. Today was the day, he figured, turning the pail upside down and giddily letting the accumulation spill over his gut and down into the door frame. It was an odd, surreal feeling; clutching the now empty can against his chest as if it were the most valuable item left in the world, when only hours before it had no meaning in his life whatsoever.
But it was the most precious thing to him at this very moment. It might very well help extend his miserable life. Jake climbed out and jumped to the ground. He found the back of the tractor once again, unhooked the chain, and started coiling it loosely around his shoulders. He stopped after the third loop, the metal already hanging from his body felt impossibly heavy. There was over a hundred pounds more to go. He would never be able to carry that much weight in his condition. He would have to drag it.
Drag it where? He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, how was he expected to find a concrete well-cover fifty feet from where his house once was? Jake took a few deep wheezing breaths and fought the claustrophobic dread away. Use your head. Rationalize.
He was next to the tractor. The tractor had been parked approximately a hundred yards north of the house. Think, Jake, which way was the tractor parked… which direction? It had been punched over onto its side from the shockwave. The nuclear blast had come from the south. That meant the tractor had either been facing west or east. West… I parked it facing west beside the empty gas tanks bordering the northern shelter belt of trees. I always parked it there.