Jagged- Chapter Four

Chapter Four
We weren’t on the road more than fifteen minutes when the trailer wheels started to slow again. The sun was just starting to peak over the rise of the land, grayish and pale in the haze that continually seemed to fill the sky. We were supposed to go forty miles that day. That’s what Mr. Elsa said after clucking his teeth at the hay supply. There was supposed to be a small town with a country store where we could resupply.
If it was still there, he added. But compared to the city, the land out here seemed relatively untouched by what had happened. At least the old barns and little country houses with their peeling paint and grimy windows still stood.
The trailer stopped. Margaret and I got on our feet. To the side of the highway was a huddled mass of blankets. Beneath the blankets were several pair of sneakers. I realized the blankets had pairs of eyes too; eyes that stared at us as wildly as if we were about to mug them.
Mr. Elsa was leaning over the edge of his seat to talk to them. I strained to hear the muffled conversation.
“Please,” I heard one of the taller ones say. Who were they and what where they doing on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere? Mr. Elsa nodded and then swung his long legs over his seat and joined us in the back.
“They’re trying to reach Hays,” his mustache twitched as he spoke. “It’s not far off of 1-70 and on our way to Ellis. Say they have family there. There’s more than enough room— I thought they could ride along.”
Margaret nodded and began re-arranging crates and blankets.
I looked back at the hunched figures. There was something off in the way they stared at the road, like they weren’t really seeing it and one of them wouldn’t stop swaying. They gave off an ere of illness. Like a diseased puppy, or the homeless man back in my city. Something I would rather avoid. But this wasn’t my trailer and I wasn’t in a position to decide. “Who are they?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Folk from Topeka,” was his only answer. He swung the back gate open and helped up a girl of not more than eight years old, huddled in a hand-made quilt that showed just her dirty nose and sharp eyes. Another girl of about thirteen scooted in next to her, was that blood trickling from her mouth? A brown-haired woman who must’ve been their mother and an elderly woman whose head shook uncontrollably underneath her shawl followed.
They gave Margaret and I a quick glance before settling in a tight bunch against the hay bales. Mr. Elsa got back into his seat and the trailer rocked forward once again. They seemed content to stare at the trailer’s wooden planks, but then the littlest one kept glancing at me.
At first, I didn’t understand why. Then I remembered the gash cutting across my face. I hadn’t re-bandaged it yet. I must’ve looked horrific.
Revolted at my own appearance, I turned my head so she wouldn’t have to see me, the freak show. But then Margaret put new bandages on it, and still the child stared.
Her eyes were like two dark stones set into her waifish face. Margaret had struck up something of a conversation with the mother. Something about the green fields of Hays during the spring. But the woman just mumbled and nodded, dabbing at her bleeding nose with a tissue. I noticed the little girl’s dirty fingers kept scratching underneath her quilt at her forehead.
“Don’t scratch it,” her mother whispered harshly.
“But it itches,” the child replied in a voice more like a squeak.
The trailer hit a bump and the blanket fell back revealing an oozing mound of flesh on the child’s scalp.
A gasp escaped my lips. The mother’s dark eyes flashed at me and in half a second, she had covered her child’s head again.
My stomach rolled and an odd gurgling came from my throat. But then the child’s sister tumbled forward and I realized the gurgling didn’t come from me. The girl’s skin turned several shades paler and then she was dry heaving, her stomach attempting to empty itself of its already empty contents. Nothing but a sting of bloody spit came out her mouth.
Her mother wrapped her arms which were a sick purple and blue around her trembling shoulders and tried to comforter her while she cried tearlessly, but within minutes, the mother herself was vomiting blood.
Something was seriously wrong with these women.
I tucked my knees into my chest and covered my nose with my sleeve, determined not to be the next victim. I tried to focus on anything but the sick travelers with their horrible wounds, but my eyes kept coming back to them. The children cried until they became too weak to do even that, their dirty bloodied heads falling into their mother’s lap. The mother stroked their sticky hair as she leaned her head back, closing her eyes. The elderly woman hardly seemed to notice the scene; she just stared blankly at the hay bales and continued rocking back and forth.
“I’m so sorry,” Margaret whispered. “I wish I could do something.” She rummaged through her tiny first aid kit. “I’m afraid I’m all out of anti-nausea medicine.” Her brows furrowed together into one red line.
The anti-nausea meds. She must’ve used them all on herself and me. That truth hit me like a rock as we bounced down the long dusty highway.
Margaret and I made a meal of more saltines and a packet of applesauce when the sun reached its highest point. The food seemed to bring some of my energy back. Margaret offered the women some water, but it only made them vomit more. When Mr. Elsa pulled the trailer to a stop and told us he was going to go water the Mules down at a creek he saw, I jumped to my feet and offered to help. Mr. Elsa’s bushy eyebrows rose, but he didn’t refuse me and I was grateful. I would’ve done anything to get away from the old, shaking woman and the children with their tearless eyes, even if it meant getting near the mules.
I stumbled after him, my legs wobbly from sitting so long, down a ditch and into a brown field. Connie, his little speckled dog ran circles around us, causing me to jump every time he leapt at my legs.
Mr. Elsa told me to hold the rope of one of the mules, Briggs, he called it, while he took the other down to the creek. I hadn’t noticed I’d been shaking until I reached out to take the end of the rope.
“You ok?” he asked.
I didn’t think I was, but the only other option was to go back to the trailer. So I just nodded and took the rope hoping the grunting animal beside me wouldn’t decide to make me its mid-day snack.
Images of the vomiting girls, blood dripping out their mouth and noses kept flashing in my mind. By the time Mr. Elsa’s worn hat appeared over the ridge, my body was convulsing as badly as the old woman’s. Tears streamed from my eyes, and my chest heaved for breath.
Mr. Elsa’s arm was around me. “What’s wrong?” he tried to soften the gruffness in his voice.
I tried to answer, but only more sobs came out. How was I supposed to tell him that I couldn’t go back there? Couldn’t face those eyes, that smell? But I didn’t have to answer, because as in-between one of my sobs, a scream that seemed to stab my very heart came from the trailer.
Mr. Elsa gave me one bewildered look. “We need to go back there. Can you manage?”
“Yes,” I chocked. He took the lead rope back from me and I staggered after him back up the ditch as another shrill cry rippled across the ground.
The mother was standing. I could just see the top of her head over the trailer’s side. We ran around to the back gate and then I nearly collided into Mr. Elsa’s stopped body.
Clutched in her mother’s arms, was the limp body of the child. Her blankets had fallen, revealing her thin limbs, her brown hair falling over her mother’s arms. Those dark eyes that had stared so intently at me were now closed, she could’ve been asleep, but her mouth hung open.
“My baby,” the mother wailed and then collapsed into a heap, cradling the child in her arms. “She’s gone. She’s gone.”
The sister and elderly woman behind her, were like me, too shocked or numb to move. After giving her some time, Margaret and Mr. Elsa seemed to be the only ones with any sense at all. Margaret wrapped her arms around the mother, crying tears of her own. Mr. Elsa offered to help bury the girl. He set off with a shovel into the brown field. It took a while, but then the mother finally released her clenched embrace on her child.
“Goodbye my sweet love,” she whispered through chocking moans and then kissed the girl on the forehead. Mr. Elsa took the body from her arms, wrapped it in the hand-made quilt and disappeared into the ditch. The mother, Margaret and the others fumbled after in a procession of grief and tears.
I probably should’ve followed but found myself rooted to the pavement like one of those big trees that rose up out of the flat land.
Their wails washed over me with the wind. I found myself crying again too. But it wasn’t for the death of the child. It wasn’t for the mother who was now watching dirt fall onto the body of the girl she had given life too. It wasn’t for the empty whole that soul would leave in the lives of all those who knew her.
No, my tears were for myself. Hotly and stupidly. My knees hit the pavement, my head bent. I grieved the death of my own life. My lungs burned. My lips rattled and shook as tears and snot dripped off them.
It’s all over. There’s nothing. Nothing left.
A hand touched my shoulder some time later. I didn’t have to look to know it was Margaret. She rubbed my back and stroked my tangled hair.
I was vaguely aware of Mr. Elsa’s boots on the road, the knickers of the mules, but I couldn’t find the strength to move.
Margaret’s arms were under me. “Come,” she said, heaving me up. “Come.” Half-standing she walked me to the trailer gate, then climbed up herself.
“Catherine, come,” she called, her eyes urgent, almost pleading.
“I can’t,” I mumbled, spitting out hair stuck to my lips. I was aware that the mother and other women weren’t in the trailer either. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“You can,” Margaret stretched her arm out to me. “You just have to get up into this trailer.”
The gate seemed impossibly high.
The mother’s keening in the field reached my ears. “Oh God, there’s nothing. Just death. Everyone’s died. We’re all dead.”
Nothing. That was the word I used.
“Catherine. Now.” Margaret’s words plowed into my thoughts. Somehow I pushed my hands onto the wood planks and Margaret helped pull the rest of me up. “We’re good,” she called to Mr. Elsa who cracked the reins and the trailer moved forward away from the creek with water for the mules, away from the dead girl and her family.
“They’re not coming,” I stated the obvious.
“No.” Margaret’s single word answer was like closing a casket.

Jagged- Chapter Three

Chapter Three
The scent of vomit, rubbing alcohol and— something else hit my nostrils. Good heavens, what is that stink?
Crinkling my nose, my eyes cracked open. A cream cloth ceiling above me. And a broken light, like the kind in the interior of cars, hanging by a single wire. Where am I?
Putting my hand to my head, I felt a soft bandage. I pushed on it harder. Ouch.
I sat up, but became incredibly dizzy. My feet were pressed against a door handle. Why am I in the backseat of a car?
“She’s awake,” a voice said from behind. I turned. The glass of the backseat was broken and left in shards like teeth. Cool air seeped in like the car was breathing it.
I saw a blue flannel shirt and pair of muddy jeans walking away. On a dirt road. The land, flat and yellow, lengthened on like a piece of stretched cotton until it reached a dusty-blue sky. Where are all the streets? The buildings?
Buildings. Images of collapsed gray sky scrapers came to me, an unpleasant slide show.
Gasping for breath, my hands clung to my knees. The city. The condo—
“Good, let’s get her out,” another voice outside the car said. This one sharp and somewhat familiar, liked I’d heard it once before in a dream. Or a nightmare.
The door behind me opened letting in more chill air and that awful stink. Again, the blue flannel shirt, but beside it, a wide face framed by red hair with gray roots.
“How you doing, honey?” the middle-aged woman asked, holding out a Styrofoam cup to me.
“Where are we?” my voice cracked.
“Here,” she pushed the cup into my hands. “Drink first. Talk later.”
The edges of the cup were brown, but the water inside looked clean. I put it to my lips. The water was lukewarm but it did soothe my throat a moment, before it turned to fire.
Horrified, my eyes accused the woman.
“What’s in that?” I chocked. I’d had strep before, but my esophagus burned like nothing I’d experienced.
She shook her head and I noticed the skin under her hairline down to her chin was puckered and red. As though it had been burned. She poured more liquid into the cup from a large plastic jug. More burns on her arms. “It’s the after-effects. Drink more.”
But I held the cup away like it might detonate.
“Drink,” she commanded. No. She huffed and tilted her head to the side. “You’ve been vomiting the past two days. You’re going to die from dehydration. Now. Drink.”
Vomiting? Well that explained the smell. “Two days?”
The skin around her eyes sagged a bit. She looked so horribly sad, and dirty, and tired. “Yes.” This woman had saved my life. She stopped and put me in her car.
“You didn’t have to get me.”
“I know,” she answered. I brought the cup back to my lip, flinching as the water went down.
“Good girl.” She said it like was an eight-year-old taking cough syrup. “Now, we need to get you out of here.” She backed out the door.
I just blinked and sat.
“We ran out of gas,” she explained, re-emerging.
“Gas?” I tried to put the pieces together.
“Yeah. Luckily Mr. Elsa here,” her hand motioned to the blue flannel, “came by. He’s going to take us in his trailer.”
Her hands coaxed me out with little waves. I pocked my head out the open door. Mr. Elsa was the one wearing the jeans and blue plaid. He was a massive man, his chest the width of a small car. His square jaw was covered by a curly salt and pepper beard. This Paul Bunion figure would’ve terrified me but his coal-black eyes looked down at me with kindness.
“Aint much,” his coarse voice growled from under his mustache. “But the mules are strong.”
“Mules?”
Sure enough, two tawny brown mules were hitched up to what must have been an old car-hauling trailer. Rough planks of wood were boarded up on the sides, but the top was open.
“Come now.” She took my hands, careful not to put pressure on the cuts, and helped me out.
Standing, the sky and grass started tilting to the side.
“Easy now.” Mr. Elsa took my other arm. Who are these strangers?
My head spun so bad, I thought I might pass out.
“I— I think I need a hospital.”
They half-dragged me the rest of the way to the back of the trailer. Bales of hay tied with red nylon were stacked along the sides. Blankets had been laid in the center. At the front, wood crates made a sort of seat for the driver. Jugs of water and grocery bags containing who knew what were piled beneath that.
“I’m sure you do,” the woman answered, “but I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.”
A hospital not possible? They set me onto a worn rose-patterned blanket.
Mr. Elsa just gave a sad look, then went back to the car for the last jug of water.
The mules nickered and I realized theirs was the other scent I couldn’t name before. Livestock. Great. And a dog. Mr. Elsa came back around, a speckle-furred dog circling his heels.
“In,” he commanded and the mangy creature leapt up. Tail wagging, his wet tongue was soon all over my face. My arms flailed and pushed at his furry chest in a useless defense.
“Connie, off,” Mr. Elsa said with a half-laugh.
I smeared the slobber on my check with the back of my hand. “I, uh— don’t really like dogs.”
Mr. Elsa’s black eyes blinked. “Oh, okay. Connie, you ride up here with me.” He chucked the water jug next to the others then heaved his massive body onto the make-shift seat. The little dog sprang up beside him.
The woman climbed up, settling on a blanket beside me, using her hand-bag as a cushion to prop her head against a bale of hay. It occurred to me I didn’t have a single possession with me. Just the dirty, blood stained running clothes I was wearing. No cell phone. No credit cards.
The sun was sinking low in the sky, cooling the air. My legs and arms shivered. The woman handed me a blue plaid shirt and pair of gray sweats.
“They’re probably too big,” she said. They were but I put them over my running cloths. Still shivering, she tucked a worn blue blanket around me.
“Thanks.” But my gratitude was being drowned by panic.
Mr. Elsa “yipped” and slapped the reins. The mules responded and the trailer creaked forward toward a destination unknown to me.
The woman’s head rocked with the movement of the trailer. “My name is Margaret Smith.” She folded her small hands which were covered in deep cuts into her lap. “We’re headed west.”
I coughed down some of the terror. “I’m Catherine.” The bumpy road made my cheeks giggle. “Why west?”
Margaret fiddled with the rim of her blanket. “Well, honey. We haven’t heard much. Communication has been down.”
“Communication— like no cell service?” Had the earthquake done that? Even all the way out here? We were far, far from the city, that much I knew.
She huffed. “Yeah, you could say that.” Her fingers rummaged through her handbag and pulled out a silver cell phone. “I haven’t gotten a single bar since— the city. The cell towers must be down or something.” The phone beeped. “Great, and now I’m going to lose battery.”
What I wouldn’t give for my cell. My fingers practically twitched to feel the smooth plastic of it. But no service?
The trailer jostled on the bumpy dirt road. I’d never seen land so long and flat. “Where are we?”
“Kansas.” My only thought was Wizard of Oz, but I wasn’t much in the mood for playing Dorothy or Toto. “And we have to go further west?” The furthest west I ever wanted to go was Boston and that was only for their spring sales.
A wrapper rustled as she pulled out a packet of crackers. “Try to eat this,” she ignored my question and put one in my hand. “But take it slow.”
I didn’t want to eat crackers. Didn’t want to go west. I blacked out and two days later, found myself in the back of a rickety trailer on a dirt road in Kansas. “I’m sorry. But I’d really rather go back to New York.”
Her look was pure pity. Which only made me madder. “Katherine, honey, we can’t go back to the city.”
Were those tears blurring my vision? “Why?” But before she could answer, my insides started twisting. Stomach heaved. Watery vomit spewed out my mouth onto the blankets.
Little stars of light filled my vision as I stared at the bile staining the sheets. I dabbed at the wetness on my mouth with back of my hand. Margaret crawled over. She wrapped up the mess in the blanket, tucked them away in a corner and put new covers on.
“What’s wrong with me?” Stars filled the better part of my sight as I strained to focus on her brown eyes.
“Radiation poisoning. I think.”
Radiation? “I thought it was just an earthquake.”
“I don’t think it was, honey.” Not an earthquake. I slumped my forehead into my hand. Sharp pain reminded me about the gash.
Margaret scooted closer and put her hands on my knees. She smelled of dirt and sweat but there was also a faint trace of lavender. Like the kind of perfume my mom used to wear. The memory only shattered the last bit reserve of control I possessed. “I know. I know,” she crooned, “It’s a lot to take in.” Tears forced their way out my eyes as I squeezed them shut. She just let me cry, patting my leg. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had treated me like that— so nurturing.
Twenty minutes or so later, I regained some control over the sobs. I used the tissue she gave me to dry my cheeks and nose. “Radiation poisoning?” The question came out crackly.
She pulled her unruly red hair back into a messy bun. “It’s my best guess. I’m no doctor. Just a bit of nursing school ages ago.” She sighed. “I had it too. So did the others—”
“Others?”
She stared into her lap. “Yeah, back on the highway near the city. Those who were in their cars when it happened. The pavement was slick with vomit.”
I tried to imagine all those people, spewing out their cars. But if there were others, none of them were with us now.
I ran my fingertips along the soft bandage that wrapped around my forehead.
“We should probably change those,” she added. She was the one who had put them on. “Like I said, I only know a little after all these years, but the bleeding has mostly stopped. I can’t guarantee how it will look though— We just have to keep it clean now. Wouldn’t want you to get infected.”
She nibbled on her cracker, then noted mine setting untouched on the blanket. “You should be feeling better by tonight. Depending on how much exposure you got.”
Exposure. Buildings crumbling like they were made of sand and pebbles.
“What do you mean?”
She shifted her wide hips. “Well, where were you— before I found you on the street?”
My body shuddered. My mind did not want to open up that hallow place. I swallowed, but mouth still tasted like bile. I forced myself to think back. “The exercise room. In the basement.”
Her brown eyebrows rose. “That’s probably why you made it out at all. Your exposure shouldn’t have been too bad.”
She made it sound like a good thing.
“I was underground also,” she continued. “On the fourth level down in a parking garage. I’d come just for the weekend to visit my daughter—” Her voice trailed off like the dust the mules kicked up. “Good thing I filled up the car the night before.”
A sharp wind blew hay into my face and hair. The stuff itched, but what caught me was the smell of smoke that the wind brought and a tangy metallic scent. “So why are we going west?”
Margaret nodded to the driver’s seat. “Mr. Elsa says that’s the way all the animals have gone. Animals always follow clean air.” The mules nickered again as if in conformation. “And there are less cities.”
Less buildings.
The idea of some vast and terrifyingly open place bounced in my mind with every jolt of the trailer, but I was so weak— so numb, I couldn’t possibly allow myself to think of anything else. Of what had happened. Or what would happen.
Nestling my head into a pillow made up of waded blankets, I fell asleep before I could stop myself.
The creak of the slowing tires woke me later. The sun had long since set and the sky was a deep and milky black under low-lying clouds. Those were the kind of clouds that made the space between earth and the heavens feel small and musty. Like putting your head under a dusty blanket.
Margaret had fallen asleep and was just waking up as well, hay sticking out her hair like Chinese chop sticks. She rubbed her eyes as the trailer came to a stop at the side of the road by a large tree whose limbs were like gray arms. I had enough sense to notice the road we pulled off of was now pavement.
Mr. Elsa’s big head poked over the hay bales. “It’s past midnight,” he said in his low grumbly voice. “The mules need a rest. I thought we’d make camp here for the night.”
Margaret filled her arms with blankets and things. I peered over the edge of the trailer and tried to make out any form of a building in the darkness. A hotel, a house, anything. Mr. Elsa unhitched the mules and led them down a slope toward the tree.
Camp. Like camping. I’d heard some people enjoy that sort of thing: tents and food cooked on a fire, sleeping on the ground; that sort of thing. I’d never been.
“Are you ok, honey?” Margaret came over to me.
I shivered in the cool night air that still tasted metallic in my mouth. “Yeah.”
She helped me out of the trailer and kept a hand on my arm as we made our way down the grassy slant. I was left at the trunk of the tree which the mules had been tied to while Margaret helped Mr. Elsa build a fire. Tucking my blanket tighter under my chin, I kept a stiff stance, wary of the large snorting animals beside me. But Mr. Elsa must have known his animals well, within seconds it seemed their eyes were closed and their fat stomachs rose and fell evenly. But their tails still flicked once in a while, indicating that at any moment, they might charge.
“Come sit, Catherine,” Margaret called. A small fire was licking life from the wood they had gathered. The light of it flickered in Mr. Elsa’s small, dark eyes as he held his hands out to warm.
The only fire we’d ever had had been one that you turned on with the flick of a switch.
But as I sat on a blanket close to Margaret, it was warm. Soon my nose and cheeks were hot, but my backside felt like ice.
No one spoke. Margaret’s head began to bob.
“I’ll put some more wood on,” Mr. Elsa said quietly. “You two get some sleep now.”
Without question, Margaret spread a blanket out onto the grass, tossing a rock or two out into the darkness. Though thoroughly exhausted, and warmed enough by the fire, I couldn’t bring myself to do the same. Sleep on the ground?
Embers rose like ghosts into the air as Mr. Elsa put more logs on the fire. I watched them rise into the blanket of gray clouds, tiny sparks of life. Rising with such hope to take their place among the stars. But they too turned into shadows.
Eventually, Mr. Elsa’s head fell to his chest and didn’t rise again. A deep snore rumbled from his nose, but Margaret didn’t stir.
I didn’t like being awake and alone. The wind made the branches of the giant tree sway like arms pleading for help. Their creak was like a thousand voices crying. I put the blanket over my head, tucked it tight over my mouth and nose so only my eyes showed. I focused on nothing but the fire and waited for morning.
My nostrils felt like icicles when I awoke. Somehow, I had dozed off in the night, sitting, just like Mr. Elsa. The fire was a pit of ashes, all the embers just lifeless gray flecks. Mr. Elsa woke as well, but he got right to his feet and didn’t even stop to rub his neck like I did. He must be much more well-suited for this camping stuff.
He spoke in a quiet tone to his mules, rubbing their ears. His little dog was off chasing something in the brown grass.
My stomach gave an audible grumble.
“Hungry?” Margaret said, sitting now.
I nodded.
“That’s good,” her mouth cracked into a smile. “The worst of it is over now.”
But the clanging in my head, the weakness in my muscles as I stood and the metallic taste in my mouth made it hard for me to believe her. She brought us back up to the trailer and put the packet of crackers into my hand.
“You need protein,” she said, “but you’ll have to start with this.”
I mumbled a “thanks,” and tried to open the package but the plastic slipped between my fingers.
“Here.” She opened the wrapping and put the round wafers into my palm. She was about to walk off, but then, judging my condition, decided to help me up into the trailer.
“Now eat.” I followed her instructions as she helped get the mules hitched up by nibbling on a cracker.
The tiny grains of salt melted on my tongue turning my mouth into a mixture of buttery- metallic taste. What was happening? I leaned my head back against a hay bale and caught my reflection on the backside of a frying pan that was strapped to a wooden crate. Straw stuck from my tangled blonde hair. My green eyes were small in the deep shadows that surrounded them. My cheeks were hallow, skin pale and dirty. My lips were two gray lines. But that wasn’t what caught me. Shakily, my hands went to the bandages. The soft cotton peeled off, layer by layer. Each one spotted redder than the next, until the last one, soaked through and claret, fell onto my lap.
The skin puckered fatly around the gash that ran from my hairline, across the right part of my forehead, down my chin and across my right cheek. I didn’t cry. I didn’t blink. I just let the knowledge set in: my life, my face, all that remained of it was left broken, shredded— jagged.