Sunday, 28 December 2008 - 8:25 pm

Together until we’re not

Been trying to focus on things lower than the sky.  Thoughts about that go nowhere useful.

The south side of the river fared better than the north.  There aren’t so many high-rises here, less for the shockwave to catch hold of and topple over, but things are still pretty wrecked.  There’s no power now – it only stayed on long enough to make things worse – and no running water.  Shattered glass everywhere, cars tossed into each other and the scenery.  Buildings in various stages of collapse and creaking.  Some fires have already burnt themselves out; others are struggling on.

We didn’t push on today.  After seeing the sky, no-one really wanted to; I think shock is setting in for all of us now.  Carter decided that we should take the chance to rest and recoup, and no-one argued.  We’re all so used to listening to him that obeying is reflex now, as if we’ve all grown into extensions of his fire crew.

 

I’ve been trying to find out people’s names.  We’ve been struggling on alongside each other for days, but there haven’t exactly been many opportunities to stop and shake hands.  I think I’ve got almost all of them now.

I don’t know Carter’s first name.  He’s forty and strung out, and there’s a wedding band on his finger.  He has a strange momentum about him, as if he’s afraid to stop.  I look at him and it’s familiar.  I guess that’s part of why we don’t mind him being in charge; he seems to need it.

Sally is strung out for an entirely different reason.  I keep catching sight of her rubbing at her arms, as if she’s trying to drub something from them.  Or into them.  She’s pale and sickly; I think if the rest of us hadn’t bullied her into moving, she would have stopped and curled up somewhere in the city’s rubble days ago.  I assumed before she was just very shocked, but now I think it has a more chemical cause.

Liz must be about fifty.  She’s one of the stronger runners of the group – she has an iron determination in her spine.  Most of her attention is focussed on the two little ones she has hanging off her – they can’t be more than six or seven years old.  They’re not related – unless they had very different fathers – and I don’t think they belong to her.  Or they didn’t before all this started.  She doesn’t let them out of her sight now.  One of them – the only name I could get for him was ‘Nugget’ – has a head injury.  He’s been carried by one or other of the group for most of the time, in and out of consciousness.

There’s Dillon, of course.  My shadow, though he’s latching onto one of the firemen as well now.  I guess because I’m injured and can’t be out there doing so much stuff.  He’s thirteen.  I don’t know who he was in the city with; he won’t say and I didn’t want to push him.  Whoever it was, they’re gone now.

The fireman he’s attaching himself to is Thorpe.  I haven’t spoken to him much, but he seems like a sensible kind of guy.  I know he carried Nugget across the bridge last night; I remember seeing the kid flopping about like a broken ragdoll over his shoulder.

Another of the steadier rocks is Sax – he got called by the instrument he’s carrying.  It’s dented; I don’t know if it will play any more.  But he’s keeping it and that’s that.  He’s a big round-shouldered fella, and older than I thought now that I can see the grey in his hair.  It wasn’t until we stopped that I recognised him; I used to walk past him every day in the mall, playing his saxophone, dressed like a blues player from the ’20s.

Delaine is a born whiner.  Nothing is good enough, he’s hungry, he’s thirsty, he’s tired, he’s sore.  He’s the voice of all the little urges inside of us, the ones that the rest of us are too drained or too considerate to let out.  He has no such compunctions.  I hit him in the back of the head with a bottle of water earlier.  Not hard, but enough to get his attention.  I told him that I’d rather go thirsty than listen to his bitching.  I guess my nerves are getting a little bit ragged. Not bad for a left-handed throw, though.

Ben came over and gave me some of his water after that.  He’s the quietest of the fire crew.  He was one of the first firemen I saw; I think he’s been with us the whole time.  He’s the one who helped me climb off the bookstore after Harry.  He’s limping but he won’t let me check out his leg. 

The last of the firefighters is Trevor.  He keeps trying to crack jokes.  He even got Sally to chance a smile earlier.  I caught him worrying at the ring on his finger earlier.  He didn’t notice me; he just sighed and then rubbed his face, as if trying to dislodge a thought from the inside of his skull.

The woman in the heels who came out of the law firm is still with us.  She’s having a lot of trouble with all of this; she has to be chivvied to eat and drink.  She’s vacant, like her driver has taken a break and others need to step in to guide her.  Trevor has been keeping an eye on her, but even he hasn’t been able to get a name out of her.

The last fella is Simon.  He was trapped near a fire and has the worst burns I’ve ever seen.  There’s not much left of his shoulder and one side of his face.  We’ve done what we can for him, but he needs a hospital.  He moans a lot, but no-one dares to mind.  Except Delaine, but even he only mentioned it once.

 

So that’s us, that’s our bunch of survivors.  Is that what we are now?  Our label?  Survivors, refugees?  All I know is that we’re alive and together until we’re not any more.

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Friday, 2 January 2009 - 2:42 pm

Simon

Simon died last night.  No-one knows when; he went quietly, in his sleep.  I don’t know if it was his injuries or the infection; probably both.  He never got the help he needed, and now he’s dead.

We gathered around him this morning.  No-one said anything; we had a moment of silence almost by accident. 

Then there was breakfast to sort out and water to portion out.  Food and water, water and food; it always comes back to them.  I had to shoo a couple of the others away from there before they would do something useful.  Something else.

 

The worst thing is that it was a relief.  Simon’s suffering is over now.  We don’t have to soothe him, or try to get water in between his burnt lips.  I don’t have to wonder any more if all of these delays will kill him.  If I’m going to kill him by doing the wrong thing.

No wondering any more; he’s gone and I failed to get him to the hospital in time.  I don’t know what else I could have done to save him – I keep trying to work it out, but I can’t think of anything else I should have done.  There must have been something.  Maybe I’m not smart enough, or experienced enough.  I shouldn’t be in charge here.  How did I end up in charge?

It’s an awful feeling, the guilt of being glad that someone is dead.  It settles in my stomach like warm poison, like rancid alcohol.  I didn’t know I could ever feel that way about someone.  I keep telling myself that the relief is for his sake, for his peace, but I think that’s a lie.  I think I’m glad he’s gone, because it’s simpler and easier for us that way.

I think I’m a terrible person.  I don’t want to think about someone’s life like that.  Is it just the situation that is making me like this, or was I always this callous?  Always this selfish?  What the hell am I doing?

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Friday, 2 January 2009 - 6:24 pm

Pushing on

I couldn’t keep thinking about Simon.  Instead, I looked through the equipment that Carter collected before the rain took him.  Laid out the map and tried to figure out where we are, where we need to be.  Tried to work out a route to the hospital.

Thorpe asked me why I was bothering.  He’s come out of his silence to snap at everyone with poisonous pessimism.  I almost took his head off.  I told him to go ask Nugget if we should just forget the hospital trip and fester here forever.  Not to mention that there might be real help there, actual contact with organised people.

The kid is still not doing well.  She has one blown pupil in a bloodshot eye and she isn’t awake much.  (I had thought that she was a he, but apparently I wasn’t paying close enough attention.  I’m not doing much right at the moment, it seems.  I feel like I’m stumbling all the time.)  Sax managed to get her to eat today.  I don’t know enough about headwounds to help her; I just know that it’s bad and she needs proper medical care.

I don’t want to lose her too.

 

I found a truck down the street that will hold all of us.  All of us that are left.  I spent most of the day going over the engine, trying to figure out if we can get it going.  All those years watching my dad fiddle with engines seem to be useful for something after all. 

I can’t think about my dad right now.  It makes my throat close up; it makes me useless.

Ben came to help me; he’s often at my elbow lately, which is helpful considering that I still can’t use one arm.  We managed to figure out that the truck’s battery still has juice but the ignition is dead.  Then the rain forced us to scurry back inside.

 

The laptop is almost out of juice.  How will I cope when that happens?  My writing arm is broken – I can’t hold a pen.  I don’t know what to do about all the things that are broken.

 

Someone just asked if we should bury Simon.  I have no idea what to tell them.

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