Under the Gray Skies Read online

  “What? Never mind what?”

  Then she stopped. Completely stopped, turned slowly as if she saw something important and stared at the two story red brick building. It had very little damage.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I can carry them,” she whispered. “I only have this one bag.”

  “Carry what?”

  She ignored my question and walked into the building. Surprisingly, both doors were not shattered, only one, but the building was dark.

  Considering the shape the building was in, I figured she found us a good, safe place to stop. Even though I believed she wanted to get farther from town.

  I hadn’t paid much attention to what exactly the building was until we stepped in the lobby. Madison lit her flashlight. When she did, I saw it was an assisted living home.

  There was ash throughout the lobby, a thin layer that appeared to have blown in.

  “This way,” Madison said and turned to walk down a hall. She stopped and looked to her left. “Bet that’s the north end.”

  I saw why she deduced that. The entire end of the hall was full of ash. It looked like an avalanche of snow came in, only it was ash and debris. “That way is out,” she turned again. “This way. We need to locate the supply closet. Or a nurses station. Something.”

  “Maybe if you tell me what we’re looking for.”

  “Oxygen,” she replied. “Four canisters should work, we don’t need it for long just …” her eyes widened. “Oh my God, we need to check these rooms. All of them.”

  Immediately, without explaining anything further, she started checking rooms. I watched her check the first two, reacting the same way when she opened the doors. Step in, step out wincing from what could only be the sight and smell.

  I began my own quest, understanding completely why she was checking the rooms. These people, next to children, were the most vulnerable and probably forgotten. I didn’t express it, but I doubted we’d find anyone alive. After all, we were so far the only survivors. I doubted those weaker would have made it.

  We checked that entire first floor, as far as we could, even getting into the rooms where ash blanketed the hallway.

  Every room was the same.

  A body. Blackened from decomposition. Many already starting to split. Some people were on the floor, some in bed.

  Then we headed to the second floor.

  “Madison, I don’t know why …”

  “If you don’t want to look, fine,” she said. “I’ll do it myself.”

  I tossed out my hand in defeat. “I’ll take the left side.”

  I was less optimistic than she was in her search. She opened each door with energy and hope then retracted with defeat. Me, I slowly opened the door, peeked in and moved on.

  Until room 216. I opened that door, looked, saw a body on the bed and was going to leave when I realized that body looked different.

  It was a man. His skin wasn’t blackened, splitting or rotting, it was pale and pasty with splotches of blue.

  He had just died. I wasn’t an expert, but I knew he wasn’t as decomposed as the others. The sight of him shocked me. I stepped out of the room and hollered down the hall. “Madison.”

  She faced me. “Did you find someone?”

  “This man …” I pointed to the room. “He ... he just died. Like maybe a couple days ago.”

  “Damn it. I knew it. I’ll be right there.”

  After a nod, I walked to the next room. Entering that one a little differently. The door wasn’t secure, it was slightly open and I pushed on it.

  There was a wheelchair by the window. The window had been blocked by a mattress. The body in the wheelchair was positioned to look out.

  Only it wasn’t a body. It was a woman and just as I was backing out. She slowly turned her head toward me.

  “Madison!” I yelled.

  THIRTEEN – TWO FLOORS HIGH

  I was shocked. Almost to the point I couldn’t move and Madison was frantic with emotions upon us finding a woman named Ruth.

  Apologetically, as if it were her fault, Madison held a bottle of water to her lips. “Here you are. I’ll fix your oxygen …”

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  Madison didn’t answer, she continued with Ruth, crouching down by her wheel chair. “You have to be starving.”

  “Don’t fuss. I don’t need the oxygen. I haven’t had it in a week.”

  “How did you know?” Again I asked.

  “I’m so sorry you had to be here by yourself,” Madison said.

  “Oh, I’m fine. I’m ninety-two years old. I’ve seen worse. Been through worse. I think. Just glad you girls found me and if you could …” Ruth dropped her voice to a whisper. “Help me clean up. It’s been ... it’s been a while and I’m awfully sore down there.”

  Stronger, I repeated my question. “Madison. How did you know?”

  “We’ll grab some water,” Madison said. “I’ll clean you up. You know we are gonna need to get out of here. Maybe not today, but tomorrow.”

  Ruth laid her hand on Madison’s. “Stevie went to get help. I guess about five days ago. He didn’t come back.”

  “Stevie?” Madison asked.

  “Oh, nice boy. He was taking care of a couple of us that were left.”

  Nearly shrieking in my frustration, I yelled. “Madison, how did you know someone would be alive? Have you been here? Do you know her?”

  Madison looked over her shoulder at me. “No. I don’t know her, I just guessed because, because of this …” she lifted the oxygen tubing. “She survived because of this. I survived because I was in the ER on oxygen, thinking I was having a heart attack. You were stuck in what you called an air pocket and that’s probably what it was and that is why you are alive.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “The choke, Lace. I call it the choke, right? You asked what it was. It was this moment, it seemed like an hour, but it was only minutes, maybe even less.” Madison finally stood up. “All the oxygen was gone.”

  <><><><>

  I was in disbelief over what she said, I wanted to laugh in ridicule, and in fact I think I did. How was that possible? The oxygen was gone? Please. Madison spewed forth her response, then tended to Ruth. She hadn’t spoken about it to me in our travels, whatever she saw, whatever she witnessed haunted her.

  Helping Ruth was a therapy of sorts. She wiped her down as best as she could with bottled water and soap. She kept apologizing to Ruth for how cold it was. Ruth was a trooper, she just wanted to get clean. Her legs were bone thin and frail, and her skin was dried out and cracked. After finding her fresh clothes, we wheeled her into an empty room with no bodies or smell.

  Ruth was delighted and almost giddy when I gave her one of the bistro snack pack boxes. While she dined on the contents, Madison rubbed lotion on her arms.

  “We need you strong to move tomorrow,” Madison said.

  “I’m not good at walking, so maybe just leave me behind. Stevie went for help.” She tapped Madison’s hand. “I’ll be fine.”

  “No, we’re taking you,” Madison said. “If this Stevie isn’t back tomorrow, we’ll leave a note. We’re …” she looked up at me. “We’re looking for help. We’ll all go together.”

  “Madison. How do you think it was possible for the oxygen to leave? I mean it’s back, right?” I asked.

  “Maybe not leave per se,” Ruth answered, “that would be disastrous for everything. Did you see that cloud roll in? Stevie said whatever it was, not only knocked things over, it made the air smell and thick. Suffocated everything. He said it was hot when it went into his nostrils.”

  “It happened right after the cloud,” Madison said. “Lacey, you said you felt the quakes and then what? Fifteen, twenty minutes the cloud hit?”

  I nodded.

  “Same here,” Ruth said.

  “Not me,” Madison said. “I was south of here, so it took the cloud a little longer. I was visiting my grandmother in t
he hospital when the quakes hit. I had never felt one. I panicked. I had chest pains and swore I was having a heart attack. I couldn’t breathe. It was all part of the panic attack. I didn’t know. They did, I guess. The plopped me on a gurney, put an oxygen mask on me and stuck me in a corner while they dealt with injuries.”

  “So you know what happened?” I asked.

  “No one knows what happened,” Madison said. “Lights went out. Phones. Everything. Like an EMP hit. It happened after the quake and before the cloud. I remember it rolled in. A good forty minutes after the quakes. Windows blasted, the ground shook and it got dark, I mean really dark. I was just getting up to check on my grandmother, to go find her, when a nurse came to check on me and mid sentence, she froze. I mean … froze. For a second her eyes widened and ...” She paused. “I watched her turn blue, I mean the blue was almost purple, she looked like she gasped and she dropped to the floor. I whipped off my mask and that’s when I realized she suffocated. If I didn’t think I could breathe before that, when I took off my mask the air was thick and hot, like I was drowning. All that commotion in the ER … stopped. Everyone dropped. I clutched that mask to my face and didn’t move.”

  “What about others, like you with oxygen on?”

  “Unless they were unconscious, people whipped off their masks, or ran to get help. I thought of that, I did,” Madison said. “With no power, I was connected to a little canister and I carried it with me. Anyone I did see, they didn’t have the oxygen on.”

  “That’s the first thing you do,” Ruth said, “You feel trapped, connected and tied with the mask on. You pulled it off to move. Unless you know, you can’t.”

  “I thought that about my grandmother and ran up to her floor. The debris, the cloud had blasted through the window and she was covered in debris,” Madison said with a whimper. “That’s when I said fuck it … sorry, Ruth.”

  Ruth waved her hand in a ‘no worries’ fashion.

  “And I took off my mask. I was able to breathe.”

  “It was lighter out when the air came back,” Ruth explained. “I mean, still dark but not as dark as when the air left.”

  “I can’t explain it,” Madison said. “No one can. And there’s no one around to explain. I looked, I searched that hospital but I could only search for so long. I heard it coming.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The wave. The sound of rushing water.” Madison’s eyes gazed out as she spoke. “It looked huge and I just bolted to the stairs. It ... ended up not being as high as it looked. Two floors, but enough for me to get scared. I stayed on the higher floors for a few days until the water receded enough for me to leave or at least not worry about another wave. But every time I made it so far, it would rain in some sort of freak storm.”

  “How did you get out of the city?” I asked.

  “My rental was parked on the fifth floor of the garage. It was actually okay. It wasn’t damaged and the garage survived. Surprisingly. Then again, that car only got me about thirty miles and I had to start walking. I kept on walking.”

  I understood Madison a little better, her journey and what she had gone through. It was no wonder she didn’t hold hope that her family was alive, and that with her bags she carried so much sadness. She had seen things I hadn’t.

  I also understood why Madison was like she was with Ruth. Apologetic and empathetic. Eager to help her, clean her, make her well. It was almost as if by helping Ruth she was in a way, making up for being unable to help her grandmother.

  One thing was certain, while I wasn’t forefront in cleaning Ruth and getting her stronger, Madison and I were on the same page. Wheelchair or not, there was no way we were leaving Ruth behind. We’d bring her with us and make it work. I was willing to bet, even though Ruth was unable to walk, there was a lot of wisdom in her ninety year old mind that would come in handy.

  <><><><>

  Even though it was just a little past five PM, night had fallen and we hunkered down for the evening in room 213. It had been vacant before anything happened and it was free from any bodies. We made a mattress on the floor so Ruth could lie down, then with nothing else to do but wait and plan, we sat around talking. Ruth told us that initially, after the cloud and the quakes a lot of residents did survive. None of the staff though, except for Stevie. How he managed to get oxygen on remained a mystery. Madison joked that perhaps he was sucking on it as a form of a high. After all he was young.

  Ruth explained that he was about twenty, she wasn’t sure. Everyone looked very young to her.

  Initially, Stevie left. In search of his family, but they had passed away, and so he returned.

  Stevie did all that he could, she said. But with those that remained, a lot suffered injuries in the quake, broken bones and hips that were untreatable under the circumstances. In addition, insulin and any other medication that needed a refrigerator had gone bad, and those individuals died as well.

  Eventually it was Ruth, Stevie, and just a couple others.

  “After Bernie next-door died,” Ruth said. “Stevie knew he had to go get help. That’s when he went.”

  She told us that he had left her water and food, before he took off. It struck me as odd. Why would he do that? Why would he leave her supplies if he was coming back? Unless he was fearful he wouldn’t, or he knew he wouldn’t. In any event it just didn’t make sense that he would stay there after the quake and help her and then just leave without returning. In my mind, and in my heart, something happened to the boy, Stevie. Unfortunately, in a world without phones or people, unless he walked through the door we could very well never know what happened to him.

  FOURTEEN – THEORETICALLY SPEAKING

  Every time Ruth took a sip out of the airline bottle of booze, it sounded like her top lip kept getting stuck.

  “You okay there?” Madison asked her.

  “Yeah, pass me more of those olives, please, thanks.” Ruth reached for them and hiccupped. “Like having a martini in segments.”

  I saw Madison’s face. She looked down to the three empties and watched Ruth finish a fourth.

  “I don’t usually drink like this,” Ruth said, “I need to relax and this is the first night in awhile I’ve done that. Ever sit alone in the dark? You hear things.”

  “What about these candles?” I asked in reference to the ones we had lit. Ruth said Stevie left them for her.

  “Oh, I never lit them. I was afraid I’d fall asleep and catch fire,” she said. “Yeah, in the dark, you do a lot of thinking.”

  “Why didn’t Stevie bring you all into the same room?” Madison asked. “I don’t understand that.”

  “I didn’t want to share a room,” Ruth said. “I like my room, or did. I don’t know why Stevie did what he did. He was young, but he tried.” She looked at Madison. “You never heard what it was? I mean you saw the cloud after each of us.”

  “No,” Madison replied. “No news. It all happened so fast. The quakes we got at the same time. I was watching the news and nothing was said when the quakes hit. It’s only guessing. My first guess was a meteor.” She then turned to me. “What about you, Lace? What did you think?”

  “Well, when I regained consciousness I thought it was a nuclear war, or the big one. California falling into the ocean. You know all those things we heard could happen.”

  “Cascadia fault line,” Ruth said. “Runs right up the coast … could I just have one more?” she asked. “Not like I’ll stand up and it’ll hit me.” She giggled.

  I reached into my backpack.

  “Boy, you raided that plane.” Ruth smiled. “There was no one alive on it?”

  I shook my head. “No. The flight crew had been killed in the quake. No one but them was on the plane.”

  Ruth nodded. “Bet me, if lack of breathable air was actually the reason everyone dropped over, there’s a bunch of planes out there that landed with a fuselage full of people.”

  “I don’t think,” Madison said. “I mean, there was an EMP of some sort.” />
  Ruth uncapped her tiny bottle. “I know she was stuck in a hole, but I wasn’t, neither were you. Did you see any planes fall from the sky? Cause they would drop like flies if it was an EMP.”

  “No,” Madison answered.

  “Neither did I,” Ruth said, “Besides, it depends on how high the EMP is. If a plane is flying above it, it’s safe. I believe. Look at it this way: did the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima fall? Nope. It took a picture. If there aren’t any planes on the ground, they’re out there.”

  “Come to think of it,” Madison said. “I haven’t seen any wreckage.”

  “If oxygen is the key, there’s lots of people alive. Although,” Ruth shrugged. “I suppose those using oxygen regularly aren’t much use now. Me, they just gave it to me because I’m old. When I saw that cloud coming, I cranked it up.”

  “All this ash,” I said. “The gray, the dark skies, no sun. It’s gotta be debris just floating up there.”

  “Many things could have caused it. Meteor, like Madison told,” Ruth said. “What goes up comes down. The gray came too fast. And what you girls described …” she pointed to me. “You saw lightening in it. You …” She then pointed to Madison. “Didn’t. You were hundreds of miles south. It lost speed, but I don’t think it was rolling, I think it was spreading. North, south, east ... west. I didn’t get a good look, but I swore it had the makings of a pyroclastic cloud.”

  What the hell, was the first thought I had. Ruth just rambled off nonchalantly a word that confused me me. Pyroclastic?

  Both Madison and I looked at each other when she said it.

  “What?” Ruth said. “Because I’m old, I’m ignorant?” She laughed. “I was a professor at Cornell, Earth and Atmospheric Science, for twenty-three years.” She took a sip of her bottle. “Lost a little, I can be ignorant about some things. I mean I’ve been retired nearly thirty years. Some stuff slips. Not this.”

  “Okay, wait,” I held up my hand. “What is a pyroclastic cloud?”

  “Debris from a volcano, mostly,” Ruth said. “Although, a meteor would cause it and when the towers fell, that created one. But Volcanoes mostly.”