Outage (Powerless Nation #1) (7 page)

She knew it was hopeless though. In the unlikely event she actually started the truck on her first try, she’d stall it for sure when she tried to leave. Then he’d shoot her. Maybe she could make a run for it.

Dee carefully mimed dropping the key on the seat and stepped around the front of the truck, putting the vehicle between her and the man. She tensed her muscles to run.

As she came around the other side of the truck, she almost cried out in surprise when she found herself face to face with a woman. She was heavily pregnant and stood with one hand braced against the truck. Dee could see she was in labor, and so involved in her pain that she didn't notice Dee at first, giving her a moment to study the woman. She was wearing a knit tracksuit, and her hair was pulled back in a scrunchie holder. Her bangs were wet with perspiration and stuck to the woman's forehead as she panted a quick rhythm.

Then she gave a low moan and the shallow breathing stopped. Her entire body tensed and Dee held her breath without thinking about it. She gave an audible sigh of relief when the woman relaxed, her contraction over.

The sound alerted the woman to her presence and she looked up quickly.

Dee held her hands out, skinned palms up, “No, it's okay, it's okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The woman clutched the side of the truck and wiped a trickle of sweat from her cheek with the back of one hand. “My pains started yesterday. Tried to get to the clinic but the car’s dead. Can’t work the phone either.”

Dee considered. “I was at the clinic yesterday,” she said, remembering the horrible scene in the lobby. “You might be better off at home. They don't have power and there were a lot of people waiting.”

“It's gotta be the clinic,” the woman said in a strained voice. “The baby's early and he's turned the wrong way. I can't... he's not gonna make it if we don't go.”

Dee felt like time stopped. She knew if she ran the man wouldn’t chase her far. He couldn’t leave his wife alone. Dee could get away. But if she ran away this woman and her baby would probably die.

She didn’t even have to think about it. Dee wasn’t about to leave them.

She opened the passenger door. “Come on, get in.”

The woman pulled herself up into the passenger seat and sat there panting, lips slightly apart. Dee wished she had some water to give her, and wondered at herself, wanting to help the people that were stealing her truck.

Another contraction gripped her hard, and Dee shut the door for her. When it ended, she heard the woman whisper, “I’m sorry,” through the window.

Dee didn’t answer. There were no words for this situation.

The man was done filling the tank and he slid behind the wheel. It was now or never. She showed him the key and said, “Can I at least ride in with you?”

He pulled the gun out and she thought he’d probably never pointed it at a person before today.

“Give me the key.”

She wondered if he could really shoot her. His hand shook but the look in his eyes was steely.

Probably.

She handed him the key through the open passenger window.

“Once I get them home I’ll bring you the truck back. Up to Doc. Kerns’ place, right?”

Dee nodded.

“Honey?” The man used a different tone to address his wife. “It's gonna be okay. God sent us this truck so we could get you to town in time. Just hang on.”

He closed his eyes as he put the key into the ignition. Dee saw his lips form a simple prayer of thanks as the engine roared to life. He put the truck into gear, and his eyes met hers as he turned toward town. There was no apology in them, just the desperate look of a man afraid for the lives of his wife and unborn child.

She watched as her food supply vanished down the road in a cloud of dust.

Dee's first reaction was to walk straight to the clinic and get the truck back. It was at least twelve miles though, and she didn't think she could get there before dark. They desperately needed the food but she needed her Grandpa alive even more. She was worried sick that he'd overdo it if she wasn't there to look after him. Without him, she knew she didn't stand a chance.

A terrifying scene met her eyes when she got back to the farm. The cows had broken through a section of fence and were roaming freely in the road. Out in the pasture she heard Jasper barking and saw Grandpa's bent form.

“Grandpa!” she yelled, and ran toward him. She got there just as he collapsed to the ground.

“Oh no, no, no,” she moaned and sank to her knees next to his still form. “Grandpa, you can’t leave me. You’re all I have.” Dee felt panic rising at the thought of being alone. First her brother left, then her parents. Even Mason. But not Grandpa. She refused to let him go.
 

Dee turned him over and felt for a pulse. It had been over two years since she'd taken a basic first aid class and at the time she was focused on learning how to help a choking child, not performing CPR. She frantically tried to remember what she knew about heart attacks.

There was no pulse in his neck or chest so Dee positioned her hands over his heart and began to pump. After a few compressions she remembered she was supposed to be counting. “One and two and three and four,” she counted in a singsong rhythm. When she got to twenty-three she remembered she needed to give breaths too. Not too late, she told herself and pinched his nose closed and breathed into his mouth. She distinctly remembered how the manikin’s chest had moved with the breaths. Grandpa's hadn't. She knew there was a trick to it, what was it?

Dee started the next set of compressions, counting aloud and thinking. “ABC,” she said aloud, when it hit her. “Airway, breathing, and compressions.” She tilted her grandpa's head back so his chin was pointing to the sky and tried the breaths again. This time his chest rose and fell with each breath.

“Come on, Grandpa, wake up.” She shook him and yelled at him, “I need you, Grandpa, wake up.” He didn't respond and she did another set of compressions and then listened for a heartbeat. She thought she heard a faint thumping. She checked the pulse point at his neck and it was definitely there – the beat was faint, but his heart was pumping.

Dee wanted nothing more than to put her head down on his chest and cry until someone came to take control of the situation. No one was coming though. There was no way to tell anyone she needed help, and even if there was, there was no one who could help. Dee had never felt more alone and powerless.

She looked around and spotted the cattle grazing on the long grass that grew in the roadside ditch. How she hated them. This whole mess was their stupid fault. If they hadn't knocked down the fence Grandpa wouldn't have gone after them and had a heart attack. It would serve them right if she left them out there and they got hit by a car. She giggled at the thought, and knew at once she was acting hysterically.
 

Dee needed to find a way to get Grandpa back to the house. An image popped into her head of a small trailer she'd seen in the barn. It might work but she was terrified to leave Grandpa in the field. What if the cows stampeded and trampled him?

She took deep breaths to calm herself down and felt Jasper's warm tongue on the back of her hand. The dog looked at her with dark brown, trusting eyes. His gaze assured her. He wagged his tail and looked at Grandpa. Of course! Jasper could stand watch. She told the dog to guard Grandpa while she went to the barn to get the trailer. When she came running back with it she found Jasper sitting alert at Grandpa's feet and thumping his tail on the ground.

“Don't worry, Jasper, he's going to be okay,” she said confidently and patted the dog.

She wished he could help her get Grandpa onto the trailer. He was solidly built and she could barely lift him. Finally she turned the trailer on its side and rolled him in over one of the low sides and then grunted and tugged at the trailer until it was back on its wheels again with Grandpa safely inside.

Dee wheeled him straight into the house through the sliding door in the kitchen. It was easier getting him out of the trailer than in, and somehow she managed to get him up onto his bed. After a quick rest she took off his boots and socks, pants and shirts, and tucked him under the blankets, making him as comfortable as possible.

She checked his pulse again. Still there. Her lack of medical knowledge was frustrating – she didn't know what a good pulse felt like, she only knew that no pulse was bad. Not knowing what else to do for him, she kissed him gently on his wrinkled cheek and went to round up the cows. She might be a city girl, but even she knew that without the food in the truck, the cattle were the best chance they had to survive.

Once they had the animals in sight, Dee told Jasper, “Go get the cows, boy.” Jasper knew exactly what he was supposed to do and started herding the cows towards her.
Bad idea
, she realized, too late. When she saw four twelve-hundred pound beasts closing in on her she screamed and ran. The commotion startled the cows, who turned and ran the opposite direction. Dee could have sworn Jasper gave her a reproving look before he went and gathered them up again.

This time Dee stayed near the fence, and once the cows were through the broken place she wheeled the trailer in front of it. It wasn't a lasting fix, but it would do for the night. The little wheeled cart had proven its weight in gold.

Now that they were back in where they belonged, the cows and calf knew what they were doing. They headed for the barn, where Dee watched in amazement as the bull and two of the cows went straight into stalls. She hurried along and latched the gates behind them and then stared as they bellowed at her. It finally dawned on her when she saw the empty mangers that she needed to feed them, so she tossed some hay over the stall doors.

Jasper was going the rounds with the mother cow and new calf. As Dee watched, she realized the dog was trying to split up the mom and baby. He succeeded in herding the calf into a small pen alongside the cow's stall, but as soon as the mother bellowed, the calf came running out. Dee told Jasper, “And here I thought you could handle this on your own, dog.”

Jasper gave a pointed wave of his tail as if to say, “I don't see you helping.” Dee solved the problem by closing the gate to the calf's pen once the dog had it inside.
 

The mother cow was finally in her stall and it was the moment Dee had been dreading.
 
She contemplated the milking stall.

“Am I seriously supposed to go into that tiny space with that huge cow? She'll crush me for sure.”
 

Plastic bucket in hand, she tentatively approached the gate. When her hand touched the latch, the animal turned its head and looked back at her. Dee tried for a soothing voice, “It's okay, I'm just going to milk you a little. Nothing to worry about.” She sidled into the stall and put the bucket below the cow's udder.

“So far so good,” she said to herself and reached for one of the teats. She gave it a pull and nothing happened. She pulled again and the cow stamped her back foot and snorted. Dee scrambled to get away from the cow and only succeeded in falling backwards off the stool.

“It's not working,” she told Jasper, who was watching from outside the stall. He wagged his tail but offered no help. “Maybe the calf drank it all today.” Dee hoped this might turn out to be the case, but knew it wasn't true when she looked at the cow's full udder.

“This shouldn't be so hard,” Dee complained, and gave the teat a half-hearted squeeze. A little bit of milk dribbled out. Maybe you had to squeeze instead of pull. She gave another squeeze and a little pull at the same time and was rewarded when a nice stream of milk flowed into the bucket. “I did it,” she shouted to Jasper. At the sound, the cow raised a back leg and calmly kicked over the bucket.

It took a while, and her hands ached, but Dee finally felt she'd gotten all of the milk into the bucket. She took it near the barn door where she could see it better in the fading light and was appalled – there was straw floating in the fresh milk. She picked it out with her fingers, pretty sure that wasn't the right way to do it, and then poured the milk into a clean glass bottle. One cow down, two to go.
 

Dee looked over at the pregnant cows and remembered how irritable her best friend's mom had been when she was pregnant. With that memory bright in her mind, Dee decided to let the expectant cattle have the night off. She checked the chickens' food and then considered the water situation. When she tried the hose nothing came out, and she didn't see anywhere to haul water from. Facing yet another unsolvable dilemma that night was too much for Dee. Exhaustion hit her like a fist to the gut and she didn't think she could have hauled water even if she knew where it was. The troughs weren't completely empty and she decided it would have to do.
 

She was sure she was forgetting a lot, but the animals were all in their own pens or stalls with food and some water, and she had a bottle of milk and three eggs. A warm feeling of pride filled her chest. She'd done the farm chores, and so what if it had taken her a few hours and a dog had done half of them? She'd never felt more capable.

The feeling of competence lasted until she went into the house to fry up the eggs and was faced with the gas stove. Dee was too tired to conquer any more unknowns, so she ate a whole jar of peaches from the pantry, checked on Grandpa who was breathing steadily, and fell asleep on the sofa for the second night in a row.

CHAPTER EIGHT

W
HEN
D
EE
WOKE
UP
the next morning, she realized she was extremely hungry and thirsty. Her mouth was dry and her lips and skin felt thin and cracked. She thought back over the last couple of days and tried to remember when she'd last had a real drink of water. Last night she had the peaches which counted for something, but she'd barely had any water since the bottle at Jennifer's house. That had been Monday, and today was Thursday.
 

Dee knew her first priority had to be finding clean water, and wondered why she hadn't thought of it sooner. Most likely, she berated herself, because she took clean water for granted. At any given moment she was surrounded by sources of water – a fridge that filtered water that had already been cleaned and filtered, bottled water, or worst case, tap water straight from the sink or a drinking fountain. She didn't like the taste of plain water, often opting for flavored vitamin drinks or adding a drink mix to her water bottle.