Dust (23 page)

He pulled out a chair at the small table, and I sat down.

“So, this is where you live.” I tried to make conversation.

A metal cup was set before me. I watched as Tanner poured a small amount of liquid in there for me. I didn’t need to see what it was; the smell of the whiskey was strong.

“Doctor’s orders. Drink it,” he said.

Hesitantly, I brought the cup to my lips.

Tanner sat at the table with me. He lit a cigarette, placed the lighter on the table, folded his hands and looked at me. “Get rid of her, Jo.”

The sip I had begun to take, slipped into my throat over my shock. I coughed. “What?”

“Get rid of her. As cold and as callous as that sounds, do it. Mentally stressful conditions are just as detrimental as anything else in a shelter. She adds that stress. It’s survival of the fittest and strongest now.”

“But she is strong.”

“Oh, yeah. Real strong.” Tanner chuckled in sarcasm. “Strong with her words, her anger. And strong enough to pretend she is some sort of martyr.”

“She just doesn’t want help.”

“Then there’s nothing you can do. I saw her, Jo. She looks like everyone else. If she doesn’t get help, inside of a week she’ll be dead. And if she’s in your shelter, she’ll die there.”

“I can’t just abandon her. I can’t.” I took a sip. “She didn’t do anything but say things.”

“Jo,” Tanner softened his voice. “Her words were as brutal as any weapon. You think it will get better?” he shook his head. “You tell Burke. You tell Burke exactly what she said to you and let him make that call.”

“He’ll kill her.”

“Nah.” Tanner facially disagreed. “He will however refuse to let her in the shelter again, and that isn’t all that bad of a thing.”

“Oh, Tanner. I wished it was that simple.”

Tanner nodded. “Think about it. OK?” he stood up. “But I’d better get back. Before I do, I have something for you. When you told me last night you’d be here, I got it ready. Hold on.” He lifted a finger, and walked behind a curtain.

I finished my whiskey and stood as well. He didn’t take long, a few seconds. When he returned, the first thing he handed me was a manila envelope.

“Here. These are the cloud statistics I was telling you about.”

I felt the thickness of the envelope. “Seems like a lot.”

“There’s notes in there too. It will occupy your nights, that’s for sure.”

“Have you read it?” I asked.

“Nah. I got the overview. You read and be our expert. OK?”

“I’ll try, thank you.”

“One more thing.” He lifted a small tan pouch with a strap. “For Nicky. In here, is pretty much what you need. A bottle of numbing solution, it’s small so use it sparingly. Some morphine, and antibiotics. They are pill form, but if you get her mouth numb, she should take them. Up her ration of water, bed rest, warmth and calm. She should pull through this.”
 
He brought the strap over my head, then adjusted the pouch so it hung under my jacket. “OK. We have to go.” laying a hand on my back, he led me to the door.

“Tanner?” I stopped before we left. “Without upsetting you, can I ask why you are doing this?”

“Lots of reasons I suppose. Nothing in particular, and nothing that chivalrous. It’s just me. Jo, I don’t know if you realize this or not, but ... ” He paused in opening the door. “I’d like to join up with you guys. Starting when this thing hits. If you’ll have me.”

There was zero hesitation in my reply, “Tanner, of course we’ll have you. You didn’t even need to ask.”

“Yes, I did.” He chuckled.

I smiled. “Well, OK, you did. But, still, we welcome you.”

“Thanks.” He gave a nod and walked me outside. “Be careful heading home.”

“I will, but I think I might do what I came here for, and look for Tammy’s kid.”

“Good luck then.” He reached out and gave a gentle squeeze to my arm. “I’ll see you later.” He backed up, and then stopped. “Jo. For what it’s worth, Tammy’s words were wrong. Her implications about you—wrong. I am very glad I met you, all of you. So far, nothing I’ve seen you do was done out of selfishness. That’s my opinion. Take it for what it’s worth.” With a flash of a soft smile, Tanner turned and walked away.

I didn’t respond, not even with a ‘thank you’. Clutching my manila envelope close to my chest, I turned and sought my direction again. Though I failed to speak it, I did appreciate his words. He said to take them for what they were worth, and what Tanner said, at the right moment, was worth more than he realized.

***

The question of where I would begin was answered for me as soon as I stepped into the main section of the rescue station.

A crowd had gathered. They shoved to see something, despite the military’s attempts to move them back. Something inside of me screamed that it had to do with Tammy. I feared that she collapsed, found Mick, caused a scene. I moved forward to the crowd certain that the worst had occurred. I made it within ten feet when I recognized Johnny Welsh.

Johnny was a neighbor of Tammy’s. A friend to her son, possibly best friend, he was a bigger boy and easy to spot. He slipped from the confusion.

“Oh, shit.” I darted his way. “Johnny!”

He was looking over his shoulder to the people as if he had something to do with the trouble. He turned when I called him the second time.

“Johnny.” I hurried to him.

“Oh, Jo.” He smiled. “Wow, Jo. How are you?”

“I’m good. You?” I asked, knowing he was ill to an extent. His loss of hair, poorly healed burns showed that.

“Getting better. Hey, did you see Mrs. Smithton?”

“Tammy. Yes. Did you?”

Johnny whistled. “Did I ever. I didn’t know she didn’t know. I thought she was here for help. I didn’t want to be the one who told her.” He rambled so fast I couldn’t stop him. “I was just sitting with my father. When I told her, she flipped out. Pushed his cot. Then the Chinese nurse came over. She shoved her, screamed at me and took off saying she’d see for herself.”

I was making some heads or tails out of what Johnny was saying, but still wasn’t sure. “Are your father and Chinese woman OK?”

“Oh, yeah, I think the Chinese lady is fine. I’m not sure. She’s laying over there. They’re checking on her.” He shrugged.

“Johnny, what did you tell Mrs. Smithton?”

Johnny drew solemn. “The truth, Jo. The truth.”

“About?”

“Mick.”

I nodded. “What did you tell her?”

Johnny let out a deep breath. “She asked me if I saw him the day of the bombs. I told her ‘yes’, because I was with him. We cut school. Mick wanted to wait in line for concert tickets. The line opened at ten. We took the subway down, but I came back so I could sneak the car from my dad. I said I’d be back for him.”

“What time did you leave him?” I asked.

“Nine. Right after rush hour.”

“Do you know what happened to Mick?”

“He had to have died, Jo. He had to. I told Mrs. Smithton that. That’s when she got mad and said she’d go see for herself.”

“What makes you think he died?” I questioned further.

“Because of where I left him. At the arena. That’s center of town.”

My eyes closed. “Ground zero.”
 

20. Impending Fate
 

Tammy returned just after six in the evening. For some reason, I thought she was gone forever. That she had taken off, searching for Mick, and would never return. But she did. Silently too. Informing none of us about her discoveries regarding Mick. She went up to the first floor and didn’t come back down. I asked everyone if they thought we needed to do a suicide watch with her. Burke ignored me. Craig chuckled. Rod, he said he didn’t recommend it giving her mood, and Dan was crude, stating his opinion that suicide would be the answer for Tammy. Davy thought if our focus was going to be on someone that was ill, it should be on Nicky because she wanted help.

How right he was. Even in pain, Nicky allowed for our aid. The numbing solution helped in her taking the medication. That was step one. Step two remained to be seen. It was a ‘wait and see’ with her.

For as much as I did not want to speak to Tammy, I didn’t want anything to happen to her. I walked up to her door, knocked once, told her not to respond, then I informed her that outside the door were two antibiotics, two valium, and a bottle of water. Her choice to take them or not. When I snuck up an hour later, the medication was gone.

It was a weird thing, but my mind kept on going to all those old nineteen fifties movies about nuclear war. One especially. ‘The Cyclops Man’. Though a ‘B’ horror flick at best, it rang eerily true to some extent. In the movie, the man was exposed to an atomic bomb. The radiation made him grow, but it also made him insane. Not that Tammy was a towering fifty feet, but she most certainly had hit a maddening stage, just like the character in that movie.

Even if she was healed, Tanner believed there was no turning her back. In his opinion Tammy had exceeded the normal boundaries of realism and rationalization. Mrs. Yu needed six stitches, and Tammy’s attack upon her was a warning. He cautioned again not to let her back in the shelter. He asked me to tell Burke everything. I promised Tanner that I would think about it. But by the time I arrived home, I couldn’t tell Burke. He was already in a fit of anger that Tammy had left me at the rescue station alone.

I was anxious about reading the documentation that Tanner had given me. However, since Burke and I decided not to tell the others right away, I knew I couldn’t pull out those papers. Waiting had its advantages. It gave me time to get informed.

Everyone settled at his or her usual time, and then I held out a little longer before grabbing a small lantern and positioning myself at the kitchenette table. It was quiet. When I pulled out the documents I was astounded at what I needed to make heads or tails of. I wasn’t a scientist, and I wondered if I would be able to interpret what was given to me.

At first, I leafed through the stack, and then I spread them about. The second time I went through them, the data made more sense. By the third run through I was taking notes. That’s when Davy found me.

In an unusual occurrence, he was without Simon. He sat with me and asked what I was doing. By all accounts I was busted. I could have searched for a story to tell him, some tale or lie. But I didn’t. I was honest and blunt. I told him, “Davy, nuclear winter is heading our way. These are the stats of where it’s been.”

Davy projected no shock or surprise. In fact, he looked at me as if what I told him wasn’t a news bulletin. I was very grateful that I opened up to my son. He scooted his chair closer and together we hovered those documents.

It was evident—through sporadic handwritten scribbles—there was some who tried to blame the severity of the cloud on multitudes of different things. One person even attributed topography to the fluctuation. Good in theory. Not on paper. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see what was happening. Like Tanner had said, it was moving our way. Losing potency along its course, but it was still going to be a killer.

The Army gathered their statistics in a raw form, but it was the best that they could do. I was impressed. A world torn asunder yet, someone was still running about with a clipboard, collecting information, recording it for others. The newest history books in the making. Ironically, the information assembled was going to help preserve the future generation that would read that information.