“The pneumonia will take some time to…”
“No, Anna, I am sick. I was diagnosed three months ago with ALS -Lou Gehrig’s disease. I was set to retire in January. My health wasn’t holding up. My legs get weak, and some days my arms don’t want to move. It started out so minor that I never noticed. But then it hit me.”
I reached over and laid my hand on his arm. “I am so sorry.”
“No, I am. Because unless, I get up the nerve to walk out that door, then eventually I’ll be a burden to you all.”
“No, you won’t. You can’t say that and you can’t think that way. This is a different life now. None of us know what is going to happen. In this world now, we never know when it will be our time. And you’re not a man with an illness, Spencer. In this shelter you are another survivor and you’re doing the same thing as the rest of us. Doing the best we can, taking it one day at a time.”
“Thank you for that.”
“Thank you…” I waved my hand out. “For this.”
Spencer raised his cup. “Here’s to taking it one day at a time.
I clinked my glass to his. “One day at a time.”
41 – DISSIPATION
October 20
By all research, models and predictions given by Peter, our veil of darkness was supposed to lift weeks earlier.
For days following the trigger day, we watched, waited and hoped.
Nothing.
Too much had gone on globally and his prediction was out the window. It sent Peter into a semi-depressed state.
Despite how nice the bunker was, it was cold and because we didn’t want to push the boilers, it hovered around sixty degrees. To those who lived outside, I guess that was a tropical paradise. To us, we thrived on the once a day, one hour fireplace hovering.
We set it up at bed time.
The fire place as designed as a backup. Enough wood to get us through the impact winter and darkness until we could go out and retrieve more.
I don’t know which brilliant mind did the math, but they were way off.
It was the one thing we had to ration.
I think we were fairing rather well, immersing ourselves into odd routines once the dust from our August attack had settled.
Physically, everyone was back to normal. Clarisse had been confined to the third floor of the hive and was allowed to walk freely with an escort. That escort was Spencer. He wanted the exercise.
Mentally we stayed strong as well, and I attributed that to Craig.
One night, not long after the attack, Craig, like such a teacher, called us to attention. “If we don’t take preventive measures, we could very well be facing something we didn’t think of. Without sunlight, without exposure, the body goes into a mode. Lack of sunlight also decreases serotonin. We need stimulus day and evening to keep us going. If not S.A.D. is a very serious condition.”
“S.A.D?” Tony asked.
“Seasonal Affect Disorder.”
“S.A.D.” Tony nodded once. “So if we don’t do something, we’re all gonna be sad?”
We laughed at Tony’s silly comment.
Craig did not. “This is serious. I am going to set up a schedule for each and every one of you. And you need to follow it or we will not be in a good mental state when the darkness ends. And yes, it is ironic that the depression state is an acronym called ‘Sad’.”
Craig and Tony worked together to make sure our down time wasn’t enough to make us crazy. We all had jobs, and then a second job in another department we trained in.
I reviewed a daily inventory, worked four hours a day in the Switch Room and trained with Craig.
The first order of business was learning an IV. Go figure.
We had game night on Tuesdays and Thursdays and every evening after dinner, we wound down around the fire and played that jukebox.
Of course, the jukebox stopped working for some reason.
Things were going smoothly.
I started a healing process. I still looked at Jackson’s picture every day, talked to him and listened to his music. It still hurt, but it hurt a little less.
I missed my son. How much of an asset he would have been.
One evening, we had fresh salad for the first time with dinner. Melissa was amazing, her mini green house produced radishes, leaf lettuce and snap peas. We still had a couple weeks on the carrots and tomatoes, but she proved to us we were going to be fine.
And that was what we worried about.
Not now, not next month, but the future.
The less we relied on our storage the better we’d be.
The biggest challenge was going to be the grains. For some odd reason, they just weren’t taking. They did well enough to feed to the chickens, but us, that was something that would have to wait until things warmed up.
We had flour and stuff in storage, but I put that on high ration.
Bread was made once a week.
We each got a half a loaf. I always sliced my super thin and made it last. I was the envy of everyone when the day before bread making rolled around. It got a little stale, but toasting it worked.
I decided to be nice and make Peter and I sandwiches for our Switch room shift. I made egg, lettuce and radish sandwiches.
While the three ingredients didn’t sound like they went together well, when your diet consists of prepared meals, soups and boxed stuff, it was a gourmet meal.
I’d hear from Tony time and again for favoring Peter. But he was nice. Really nice and other than Tony, I likened him to my best friend.
“It has texture,” Peter said as he bit into my impromptu lunch. “I like it.”
“Me, too. So… question,” I said. “What’s the surface temperature? Because I am either getting used to this cold or it feels like it’s not so cold.”
“Well it’s a balmy sixty-four in the bunker.”
“Whoa.”
“And…” Peter looked up on the computer. “Minus fifteen outside. See? See? This is what I mean. Black and cold. Makes no sense. It should still be minus forty like it was two days ago.”
“What’s Damnation Alley saying?”
“Slight warning not much to brag about.”
I grabbed the radio and Peter stopped me. “Mulligan is not working.”
“What? No. Why? He’s always working.”
“Not today.”
“Who is on?” I asked.
“Stevens.”
“Dick.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s wrong with Mulligan?”
“Apparently some sort of respiratory ailment has hit their bunker,” Peter said. “Bound to happen. We just lucked out.”
“No,” I corrected. “Craig had foresight. He quarantined out first head cold to see if he could keep it from spreading. And he did. It worked.”
“Tony was not happy about being quarantined.”
“It was funny.” Despite the fact that our morning radio buddy was not working, I grabbed the radio again and called out. “Damnation Alley, Damnation Alley, come in, this is Protocol One.”
“We read you Protocol One.”
“How’s the weather there?” I asked. “Over.”
“Dark and cold.”
“Same here. How is Mulligan? I hear he’s under the weather.”
“He is, Protocol One. We expect him to be fully functioning again in a couple days.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Are you up to playing the game?”
“I don’t play the game. Mulligan may play the game, but I don’t.”
I mouthed the word ‘dick’ to Peter, he nodded knowingly.
“Anything to report?” Damnation Alley asked.
“Negative. You?”
“With the exception of our flu bug nothing…. Hold on, Protocol One.”
There was silence.
He came back on, only this time the usually drab and business as usual Stevens sounded enthusiastic. “Protocol One, have to get back to you. You aren’t going to believe this. We just received radio contact from another camp!”