Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
DANIEL
Six months earlier
Between Utica and Springfield
The truck breaks down about sixty miles southeast of Utica, just outside Schenectady. It was rattling for a while, but both Daniel and Sam determinedly ignored the sound. They’d spent three days at Tom’s farmhouse, resting and recuperating as well as gathering supplies, making plans, although the truth was, at the end of the three days, Daniel didn’t have much of a plan besides go to the nursing home between Springfield and Worcester, get Alex’s mother, Jenny, and then somehow get back to the cottage.
At least they had food in the back of the truck—a box of preserves, some cans of tuna, a bag of potatoes, and some dried beef. Daniel had not managed to find any guns at the farmhouse, but they took a couple of butcher knives with them, along with some rope, matches, flashlights, and a change of clothes each. All in all, he feels they did pretty well out of it, although the knowledge of what must have happened to Tom and his family is like a heavy, dragging weight inside him. He can’t let himself think about it too much, or he won’t be able to keep moving.
They take Route90 east, and find, to Daniel’s relief and surprise, that it is a clear shot, as good as abandoned. The unrest seems to be in the cities, not on empty stretches of road with nothing to steal or destroy. Sam keeps the radio on and occasionally they get a burst of static, a babble of voices; they learn that the president of the United States is “alive and well” at an undisclosed location, and he is going to address the country “any day now.” The military have disbanded and then regrouped, and they’re now focused on strengthening “areas where there isn’t the danger of radiation poisoning or fallout.” Eventually they will start with decontamination, rebuilding, but it’s all hearsay and hope now; too much infrastructure has been destroyed and too much radiation remains for a clear or immediate way forward.
It’s apparent that more bombs have dropped over the last few weeks—some in other countries, as well. Daniel and Sam hear about Paris, London, Berlin. Tokyo and Moscow. In America, Richmond, Asheville, Augusta have all been hit, and, closer to where they are, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Hartford. Jenny’s nursing home is only forty miles from Hartford. Daniel does not tell Sam this.
According to one tense broadcast, people are still being advised to remain indoors and keep all windows and doors closed—not much of a help if you don’t have any food. There’s no more mention of army bases acting as assistance centers. The tone is more hold your breath and hope for the best.
At this, Sam looks anxious. “Do you think we’ve been exposed to radiation already?” he asks. “Are we…contaminated?”
Daniel manages a shrug. “I think we’d know it if we were, at least severely. ”
“But I mean long term,” Sam persists. “Can’t there be other effects? Like cancer and tumors and stuff?”
“There can, I think,” he allows, “but the fallout from radiation dissipates fairly rapidly, especially if you’re farther away from it. I don’t think we’ve been within a hundred miles of a bomb.” Yet. The truth is, he doesn’t actually know. He knows that wind, rain, the size of the bombs, and how far from the ground when they exploded can all affect the level of radiation in the atmosphere. Or so he recalls from various disaster movies, but is any of that even accurate? Probably not.
“We’ll stay inside as much as we can,” he tells Sam, and that’s when the truck gives its last rattle and gasp, and they roll gently to a stop on the side of the road, under a blank winter’s sky, empty, frozen fields stretching all around them, a bleak yet beautiful landscape of nothing.
“That’s not good,” Sam says quietly. Daniel leans his head back against the seat and closes his eyes. “Dad?”
“Let me think.” Except he can’t think. His mind feels fuzzy and blurred; is it exhaustion, malnutrition, or something worse? He feels as if everything in him is moving with painful, aching slowness, and he has to keep reminding himself of basic facts—they are in a truck. They are going to get Jenny. There might be radiation everywhere…or not.
Outside all is still and silent. Daniel forces himself to focus. He opens his eyes. “I’ll get us another car,” he decides. “And I’ll drive it back here.”
“Where…”
“You stay here with our stuff,” Daniel continues. “Keep the windows rolled up and the car locked. Stay out of sight if you can.”
Sam looks scared, and like he’s trying not to be. “Maybe I should get us a car,” he ventures. Daniel can’t tell if he is trying to be brave or if this is what he would really prefer. It can be harder, he thinks, to stay behind and wait, to have to be both powerless and ignorant, but he thinks about the warning of radiation, and he wants his son behind closed doors and windows, as safe as possible…if anything can be considered safe in this world.
“No, I’ll go,” he says, and he takes off his seatbelt.
After giving Sam stern instructions to stay in the truck unless there’s an absolute emergency, Daniel sets off down the side of the highway, toward Schenectady. It is a cold day, with the metallic bite of snow in the air, although it hasn’t snowed in several days; there’s a hardened, crystallized crust on the ground, and no more. Next to the highway is a slate-gray ribbon of river, chunks of ice bobbing in its frigid depths—the Mohawk, Daniel thinks, but he’s not sure.
Has he ever been to Schenectady before? He must have driven through it, but he can’t remember. It’s like half a dozen other small cities in this part of the world—some beautiful old architecture, a little rusted and run-down. Except, of course, it isn’t like that anymore, because everything isn’t just run-down, it’s ruined.
Where, in this destroyed and desolate landscape, is he going to get a car? A car with a set of keys, because he does not know how to hotwire a car and he is feeling far too fuzzy-headed to figure it out. He tries to picture it—the screws he’d have to undo, the wires connected to the ignition and battery he’d need to identify and twist together, the motor wire he’d have to cut off and touch to them to turn the engine over. He knows that much, from watching a YouTube video once out of idle curiosity, but he doesn’t think he can actually do it all.
So he needs to find a car in someone’s driveway, he decides. Someone who is dead.
Strangely, this idea fills him with something almost like comfort. It’s not stealing if they’re dead, and it means he won’t have to hurt anyone.
He keeps walking .
Just past the empty and vandalized Hungry Chicken Country Store, its wooden porch sagging and its windows broken, he crosses the Mohawk River onto Route5, near an RV park and marina. He hears a noise from the park, and stops, instantly alert. When he left the truck, he took one of the knives with him, stuck into his belt-loop, and he fingers it now, wondering if he’d be able to use it. If he even knows how.
He hears another noise, a sort of gulping sound, and slowly he turns. A little boy, about two or three years old, is standing by some bushes. His face is grimy and tear-streaked, and he isn’t wearing a coat even though the weather is hovering around freezing. Daniel hesitates. The boy stares at him and sniffs.
“Hey,” he finally says, and his voice sounds rusty, like he hasn’t used it much, and he hasn’t, not like this. “Are…are your parents around?”
The boy simply stares, unblinking, seeming as if he doesn’t even register him at all. With great reluctance, Daniel moves toward him. He scans the area, but all he sees are some dilapidated-looking RVs in the distance. There’s an air of abandonment about the place, and he wonders if this boy has been living on his own, and why.
“Where are your parents?” he asks. No reply. Daniel stares at the boy, who stares back at him. He does not know what to do. He has been walking for at least half an hour; he can’t bring this boy back to the truck, and neither can he bring the child with him, since he doesn’t even know where he’s going.
“Look,” he says. “Why don’t you go inside?” He nods toward one of the RVs. “I’ll be back in a little while. I’ll look for you then, make sure you’re okay.” He knows he is telling himself as much as, if not more than, he is this little boy, who looks as if he doesn’t understand a word Daniel is saying. “All right?” Daniel tries again. He points toward the nearest RV. “Go in there. Stay warm. I’ll be back.”
The boy stares at him for another long moment. Daniel gives him an encouraging smile. Then, thankfully, the boy slowly turns and walks back to the RV. As he disappears inside, Daniel hurries onward, down Route5, toward Schenectady. He doesn’t look back.
Another hour of walking takes him to a promising suburb of the city, older homes with gracious lawns, now weedy and frozen, an air of shabby gentility hovering on the edge of true dilapidation. He can find a car here, he thinks, even as he acknowledges that many of the houses look empty, their cars gone along with their owners. Nearly a month after the first bombs, Daniel supposes people have run out of food. Have they gone looking for it elsewhere? Have they fled this suburb of Schenectady for something that seems safer?
A few of the houses look lived in; there are signs on the front lawns warning people away. Daniel gives them a wide berth. The back of his neck prickles, and cold sweat trickles between his shoulder blades. He’s pretty sure he’s being watched, and a knife does not feel like nearly a good enough weapon.
The road he’s on curves around to the left, and he follows it, keeping to the trees as often as he can. He scans the houses, unsure what he’s even looking for. A nice, shiny SUV with a “please take me” sign in the window? Panic starts to cramp his stomach, and he feels dizzy. He’s too tired for this. He’s too spent.
Then he sees it—a house that looks empty, but with a Chevrolet jeep in the driveway, at least twenty years old, but hopefully still drivable. He looks around, and he can’t see anyone. Quickly and quietly he walks up to the front door and tries the handle. It doesn’t budge. He looks around again, and then peers through the grimy window next to the front door. He glimpses a front hall, a coat stand, a table with a telephone. It looks like an old person’s house, judging by the black lambswool overcoat, the old-fashioned telephone .
He takes a deep breath, and then jabs his elbow hard through the window, shattering the glass in one clean break that is strangely satisfying. Carefully he reaches around through the jagged shards of glass still in the window frame; they catch at his sleeve as he flips the lock on the door. It clicks open.
He opens the door and steps inside. The smell in the house is musty and sweet, and catches at the back of his throat, nearly making him retch. Someone, he realizes, is dead in this house, and has been for some time. He is not about to go looking for the body, not when all he wants are the car keys. He breathes carefully through his mouth as he hunts around the hall for the keys—the table, in the pockets of the coat. Then he sees them right by the door, hanging on a hook on the wall. He exhales slowly in relief.
He is just taking them off the hook when he hears a creak behind him, and he whirls around, the knife in his hand before he’d even realized he’d grabbed it. A woman is standing there—tiny, frail, elderly. She trembles as she looks at him.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she whispers.
Daniel breathes out and puts the knife back in the belt-loop. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he tells her. “I’m just taking your car.”
Her shoulders slump. “Robert died last week,” she whispers. “Upstairs in the bed. It was the radiation that got him.”
A chill crawls along Daniel’s spine, turns his hand slippery. “We’re too far from all that,” he says, and he hears the waver of uncertainty in his voice. “And it’s been too long.” He’s sure he read somewhere, before this all happened, that the levels of radiation in the atmosphere are under dangerous levels after just two weeks. They started rebuilding Hiroshima and Nagasaki after just a few months; people reported to work the next day .
And yet already he recognizes that this is different. There have been more bombs, over a longer period of time and of a greater power; he recalls reading that the nuclear bombs in modern arsenals are up to sixty times more powerful than the ones that were dropped on Japan. And how many have been dropped now? No one even knows but it’s most certainly in the dozens, judging from what they’ve heard on the radio.
Besides, people are different now. They don’t have the same pull-together, can-do attitude of the 1940s, everyone willing to sacrifice for the greater good, a sense of duty and honor more important than safety or comfort. Everyone is an individualist these days, concerned with their own personal journey , which, when faced with a nuclear holocaust, means everyone is out for themselves. He has seen the truth of this every day of this hellish journey from Ontario to here.
The woman shakes her head slowly. Her hair is limp and white, her eyes faded into a mass of wrinkles. She has to be well over eighty. “He was out when it happened,” she tells him. “He saw the flash. We weren’t sure if it was from Boston or New York, but it lit up the whole sky like a firework.”
Daniel does not want to hear this. He does not want to imagine that he, and more importantly Sam, might right now be breathing in radioactive particles that are slowly killing them from the inside out.
“What happened?” he asks, with reluctance. “How do you know it was the radiation?”
“He had trouble breathing. Felt dizzy all the time. And then he got all clammy and sweaty and his stomach was swollen…I think from the internal bleeding.” She speaks both sadly and knowledgeably, and Daniel doesn’t know what to make of it.
“You’re nearly two hundred miles from either New York or Boston,” he says, almost like an accusation.
She shrugs. “He was outside a lot, trying to make this house secure. Helping other people…he was a good man.” Tears come to her eyes. “And he wasn’t the only one, either. Lots of people have died. Our neighbors…I heard her screaming, in pain. It lasted for days. And so many people have left, but where are they going? Where is there to go?” A tear trickles down her wrinkled cheek, pooling in a deep seam. “I’m just waiting to die. I want to die,” she exclaims on a moan. “Why couldn’t I have gone first?”
Daniel has no answer to this. They’re sixty miles closer to the blast sites than they were in Utica, and it seems that has made a difference, although perhaps this level of desolation is coming to Utica and beyond, as well. Perhaps it’s just a matter of time, if the bombs keep coming, the radiation traveling downwind, the cloud looming over them all. “I’m sorry I have to take your car,” he tells the woman. It’s not so much an apology as a statement of fact.
“Robert is the one who drove it.” She stares at him sadly. “Where are you going?”
“Near Springfield.” He tells himself it will be safe; it’s been nearly four weeks now, since the first blasts. Maybe people were dying of radiation a few weeks ago, but not now. He’ll keep Sam in the truck or indoors as much as possible. They can still do this.
“Good luck,” she tells him, and then she shuffles back into the living room, presumably to wait out the rest of her life. It is a sad yet also moving thought, its own kind of bravery. Daniel is about to head outside, but then he decides to investigate the kitchen. He doesn’t feel guilty as he takes two liters of bottled water and another knife, just in case. There’s no food left, but if there had been he knows he would have taken that, too.
The car takes several tries to start, but then Daniel is reversing out the drive and heading back to Route5 and the bridge across the river. He doesn’t see anyone along the way, and he wonders how many people here have died. At the bridge, he glimpses the sign for the RV park and marina, and he groans aloud. He does not want to go find that boy. He does not want to have to deal with him.
And yet…can he really leave a child on his own? Resolutely he pulls the car onto the side of the road and heads into the park. It is utterly desolate, the RVs either shuttered and locked up tight or completely abandoned. Daniel picks his way through the tufty, frost-tipped grass as he calls out, “Hello? Anybody here? Little guy? I said I’d come back for you…”
He goes to the RV the boy had gone into before and sees that it is empty; there’s a sour smell about the place but at least no dead bodies—and no boy. He stands there for a moment, wondering what to do. Wanting to go.
He steps outside again. “Hello…” he calls. There’s no answer.
Daniel stands there for several moments, breathing in and out, imagining the radioactive particles entering his body, his bloodstream. Killing him slowly…or maybe even fast. How is he to know?
“Hello…” he calls out again, half-heartedly. High above him a bird twitters, and the sound comforts him—and gives him the resolve he knows he needs. There is still life—for that little bird, for him, and, most of all, for Sam.
His gaze sweeps around the campsite, searching for a sign of the boy, and then in the distance he sees a woman peek her head out of one of the camper vans. Her hair is tangled, her expression suspicious. She has the dirty-faced boy hoisted on one hip.
“Are you okay?” Daniel asks, and in response she retreats into the van, shutting the door behind her.
Daniel waits another moment, and then he turns and walks back to the car. As he drives across the bridge, all he feels is relief.