Jake wrapped one end of the chain around his wrist a couple of times and clutched onto the pail handle with his free hand. He leaned against the tractor and moved slowly to his right, rubbing his rear end against the blasted metal until he was certain he was facing south. He made a forty-five degree turn to the left and started walking out. The well would be somewhere out in that south-easterly direction. Fifty feet from the house, three-hundred feet from the tractor.
Or somewhere thereabouts.
Chapter 3
Jake weaved his way back and forth, heading south, and then coming back to the north. He was lost before he had even set out, but the disorientation and numbing confusion became much worse. The tractor was now lost to him forever. All that remained was the sound of his boots dragging in the dry dirt, and the steady, mournful whistle of air in his nostrils. He’d stopped breathing through his mouth; it hurt his throat too much. If he didn’t find that well soon, he’d drop dead.
After another hour or so, Jake didn’t much care if he found the well or not. His thoughts kept returning to his lost family, to what their final moments must have been like. What had Nicholas been doing? Playing with his video console in the living room? Or had he been sitting in the front yard pushing his toy cars around in the dirt? Did he see the blast take place? Had the flash burned his little eyeballs right out of his beautiful little head? Had Mandy been with him?
Had it ended quickly, or did they suffer?
The arm dragging the chain had gone dead. Jake’s fat fingers were tingling from the pressure of the links wrapped around his wrist. He imagined his arm had probably stretched out, and if he dragged the chain along any further, his knuckles would rub against the ground.
Jake gave up and fell to his knees. Fuck it. Not worth the effort… It’s all over.
He rolled over onto his back and stretched out. His foot hit something. Jake squirmed his dying body towards it more out of curiosity than caring. He felt the cold, pitted surface and thought it was a big, flat stone. The edge was rough but gave way to a curved regularity after a few more inches. Jake was back on his knees feeling the flat surface. It was the concrete well cover, or a good chunk of it, blown clear off the top and resting in the dirt. He reached out, feeling at the air, hoping to find the foot-high platform the cover had rested on. Jake found it a few moments later. The other half was still firmly in place with more than enough room open to pass the paint tin through. The shockwave had been incredibly powerful; strong enough to rip the three-inch thick concrete cover in two.
Jake found a few more chunks of smaller concrete and tossed them into the tin for weight. He wrapped one end of the chain around the handle and slowly started to lower his container. He could hear it bonking dully off the inner side of the well shaft. He slowed down even more, fearful the wire handle might detach from one side of the tin. I’ll dive into the water if that happens. If the fall doesn’t kill me, drowning will do the job. One way or another, Jake was going to drink his fill.
The links squirmed through his fingers one after another. Jake was beginning to think he might run out of chain before finding water, or worse yet, the well’s contents had been boiled dry like the slough that had narrowly saved Jake’s life. It has to be there by now… the reservoir can’t be that far down. He allowed the rest of the chain to slip between his hands. He was too thirsty and exhausted to try a second time. Jake started pulling the chain back up, and two agonizing minutes later his efforts paid off. The water was lukewarm and the first few swallows hurt like hell. It felt as if knives were piercing the back of his throat, and a sock filled with gravel was punching through his chest. The taste was magnificent.
Jake drank a quarter of the pail down and belched loudly. He vomited a few moments later and decided to rest before drinking anymore. Slow down, Jake, it isn’t a race. He scooped some out onto his hands and splashed it into his face. It hurt almost as much on the outside as it did going down inside him. Even in the dark, Jake knew his skin was a mess. The water leaked into open sores and cracks feeling like acid. He washed himself some more and the pain lessened. Jake drank what was left sloshing around in the bottom and started lowering the paint can down into the well for a second helping. He continued drinking and bathing and vomiting until he was too bloated and too tired to lower the pail again. Jake nodded off, sitting in a puddle of mud, grateful to be alive and terrified of living another day longer.
Chapter 4
The complete blackness had lifted. Night had given way to morning, or the heavy clouds of shit had finally started to clear. It was grey again, and even that dreary state was a welcome sight. Big flakes of white were falling all around Jake. They had settled on his shoulders and in his lap as he’d slept against the well. Snow in late April wasn’t all that unusual in this part of the world. Jake had seen some truly violent blizzards in spring with substantial accumulations of snow. But this was late May, and this wasn’t snow.
He brushed the deadfall from his arms and shook it free from the top of his bald head. It was like fragments of burnt newspaper, or thinner yet, like charred toilet paper crisped to a dull grey. The first snowfall of a new season. Jake retrieved one more pail of water and set away from his farm. He headed north—or his best guess at north according to where the greater part of the well cover had blasted free—away from the closest detonation point and towards the zone where the shockwave would have eventually petered out. If Mandy and Nicholas had survived, they would’ve likely gone that direction as well.
They’re dead. Give up on that. Be thankful it ended quickly for them. Go north and find survivors. Find someone to help you with your burns… Find someone to talk to.
Jake couldn’t see the sun, but he could see enough around him to know it was still somewhere up there. It was brightest directly above and behind him. High noon. He kept that dull smudge in mind as he made his way. He would eventually make it to Big Bear Valley; even if he strayed off a little to the east or to the west. The Little Saskatchewan River would be at the bottom of that valley, and if the shockwave had lost enough of its force, Jake figured he could re-fill his paint can. The Little Saskatchewan ran into Cooper’s Lake another twenty miles to the west. There would definitely be water there. Unless a nuke was dropped directly into the center of that big lake, Jake felt confident he could sustain himself for weeks. They didn’t call it the Land of a 100,000 Lakes for nothing.
Jake stumbled into the river a day later without even realizing he’d found Big Bear Valley. The land had become so featureless that distances and even dimensions were hard to judge. The forests and roads, the fields and hills—everything Jake had grown up within, and presumed would be there long after he was gone—were no more. The river was filthy, but he drank from it anyway. He had no matches or material to start a fire to boil the water clean. Jake could handle the stomach cramps, the vomiting, and violent diarrhoea of drinking tainted water. If that didn’t kill him, the radiation sickness eventually would. He was living his last days, and he would drink and eat whatever the hell he came across.