Dark Coup (7 page)

Twice he thought he felt her squeeze his hand, and yelled for the medics, but both times turned out to be minor seizures.  Neither was as bad as the one that had put her in a coma, but they weren’t a good sign.

“I’m not taking her off of the antibiotics,” Ty said.  “We don’t know if they’re working or not, and if they are, we need to give them a chance to do their job.  The fact that she’s still having seizures isn’t encouraging, though.  I’m sorry, Eric.”

“Is there anything I can do,” Eric asked.  “I feel so helpless.  I’m just
sitting
here.”

“She knows you’re there,” Ty said.  “If the antibiotics are working and she comes out of the coma, she’ll know you were there.  Don’t underestimate the power of your presence.”

…

One of the medics had brought Eric dinner when he realized that he hadn’t left the tent all day except to use the latrine.  If something happened, Eric wanted to be there for it no matter what it was.  He ate with his eyes on Karen, watching her for some sign that she was coming out of it.

It was because he was sitting up and not hunched over her hand, and could see more of her body, that he noticed the exact moment she stopped breathing.  He didn’t recognize it at first, only that something profound had changed. After about ten seconds, he realized what it was and called for help–after almost dropping his untouched plate of food on the floor.

“
Karen!
” he yelled, knowing at this point that it was a futile gesture.  He fumbled for her wrist to check for a pulse, hands shaking like he’d been injected with one-hundred cups of coffee.  He pressed his ear to her chest, listening for any beat at all, just as Ty ran into the tent.  He’d been on his way to another patient when he’d heard Eric yell.

He saw that Karen wasn’t breathing right away and checked for a pulse at the throat.  If her heart had stopped there really wasn’t any point in CPR.

“Eric,” Ty said, and gently took Karen’s wrist from his hand.  “She’s gone.”

Eric nodded and as he hung his head the first tear fell to the floor.

“I need to go get a couple of the medics,” Ty said.

Eric closed his eyes for a heartbeat and then turned to look at Karen’s still form; his fiancée in all but name.  The woman he had wanted to marry but had never found the time or words to ask.  Now she was gone.

“We need…” Ty started.

“
I
need a couple of minutes,” Eric snapped and then took a deep breath.  “Surely you can give me five minutes.”

Ty closed his eyes and nodded and then left the tent.

Eric brushed Karen’s hair with trembling fingers and tried to get some of the tangles out.  Karen wasn’t really that fastidious, even though she claimed to be a girly-girl.  She looked calm now.

“How am I supposed to go on without you?”
Eric thought. 
“Wow that is so selfish.  I’m sorry.  I feel like I’ve let you down again.”

“You’re beautiful, you know that?”  Eric said.  “You’ll always be beautiful.  I love you.  I was going to ask you to marry me.  I even have a ring, right over there…”

Eric got up and went to his trunk, got out the ring, and brought it back to the bed.

“See,” he said, and showed it to Karen.  “I even had it before the lights went out.”  Eric was starting to sob.

“I, uhm, I’m not going to be using this ever, now, and we were together for so long, and one of the things you said the night we lost power was that you were waiting for me to propose,” Eric said. He had to stop talking for several seconds; the words couldn’t get past the strangled feeling in his throat.   Finally, he wiped his eyes and nose with the back of his hand, unable to keep up with the tears but allowing himself to see. “I’m going to go ahead and give this to you now.”

Eric gently pushed the ring onto Karen’s left ring finger, kissed her hand, and kissed her tenderly on the lips.  “I had it the whole time, babe. I’m so sorry.  I love you so much, Karen.  Oh, God, Karen, I love you so much.”

Chapter Seven

June 2, 2013 - Redemption

Rachael had been up since the sound of the steady rain and water dripping into buckets woke her up shortly after dawn.  Sleeping in wasn’t an option if she and Aurora were going to have a warm bath this morning.  The fire she had going outside, under the carport, needed to be stoked, water needed to be brought to a boil, and at least a dozen buckets of water needed to be hauled in to the tub.

As Rachael was lugging buckets into the bathroom, she took a moment to appreciate the roof over her head, leaking though it was. 
“At least we’re in a house now,”
Rachael thought,
“and not that drafty cabin, or worse, a tent.”
  With the thought of the tent came the realization, again, that Joel and the kids were in tents up at the base in Promised Land. 
“How miserable must they be right now,”
she wondered.

After every trip with the buckets, Rachael peeked in on Aurora who was still fast asleep in the bedroom.  As much as she wanted to be able to watch her baby every second of the day, she knew there was no way she’d be able to do so.  One of the first things they’d done when they moved into the house in town was to put the mattress in the master-bedroom directly on the floor so that there was less chance of Aurora rolling off of it while unattended.

On her third set of buckets, and after one set of hot water from their tea kettle and Dutch oven, Rachael heard Aurora making noise and babbling like she did every morning.  She dumped the two buckets she was carrying into the tub and went to get her baby.

“Well good
morning
!” Rachael said, and was greeted with a giant, open-mouth gummy grin.

“Let’s get you fed so Mommy can get back to work,” Rachael said.

Rachael treasured the time she spent nursing her daughter, but hoped this wouldn’t be one of her marathon sessions.  The last thing she needed was for the Dutch oven to boil over into the fire, or for the tea kettle to scorch.  It wasn’t like she could go down to the super-center and get a new one.

…

As soon as Aurora was finished, Rachael carried her into the living room and laid her on a large square of blankets.  Living in a house with carpet and not being able to vacuum, well, Rachael never thought the day would come that she would wish for a working vacuum cleaner.

She retrieved the buckets from the bedroom and then carefully carried the hot water from the outdoor fireplace under the carport where it had been heating, and dumped it in the tub.  She set one more Dutch oven of water to heat and carried two more buckets full buckets of cold water from the rain gutter cistern at the corner of the house into the bathroom.

“You know, for as much as these weigh,”
she thought,
“these buckets really don’t hold a lot of water.”

The tub was as full as it was going to get without cooling off too much, so she gathered their laundry and the remaining clean towel-half.  Nobody used full towels anymore; it was too much work to clean a whole towel when you could use half a towel and you got just as dry.

Once everything was ready, she stripped down, added her clothes to the laundry pile, and went to get Aurora.  She undressed her baby girl and then stepped carefully into the lukewarm bathwater.

…

The best part of the bath, aside from getting clean, was the soap.  One of the women in town made the most
heavenly
herbal goat’s-milk soap.  She’d been making it almost the exact same way since before the power went out and it was amazing.  All by itself it made the bath worthwhile.

Rachael tried not to think about the fact that she would never have taken a bath with her older two when they were this age.  Instead, she focused on the obvious joy Aurora took in splashing and the fact that she was able to take a warm bath in the tub.

Once they were both clean and before the water was too cold, she climbed out and toweled them both off, starting with Aurora.  She put her baby in her last clean towel-diaper and a long gown made out of a cut-down military blouse and took her back into the living room.

Rachael wrapped a blanket around herself, combed out her wet hair, and then set to work on the laundry in the tepid water.  As she finished each piece, she wrung it out and took it to the carport where she had a clothesline set up.  She couldn’t hang it up in the yard because it was raining, so this was going to have to do.

Once the laundry was done, she went into the living room to nurse Aurora again on the couch.

…

Just as Aurora finished nursing, there was a knock at the door.

“Of course,”
Rachael said,
“and here I am looking like I’m dressed for a toga party.”

After Rachael got herself put back together, with Aurora firmly on her hip, she went to open the door, knowing it could only be one of a handful of people who were in isolation with her during the quarantine.

“Look, it’s Aunt Sheri,” Rachael said to Aurora, who giggled.

“C’mon in,” Rachael said and opened the door all the way to let Sheri in.  She hadn’t taken a good look at her guest yet.

Sheri didn’t say anything right away, just stood stock-still in the doorway.

Rachael had been looking at Aurora while she held the door, expecting Sheri to come right in, and when she didn’t, Rachael realized something was wrong.  Sheri hugged her arms tightly around herself and Rachael saw, finally, that her eyes were red from crying.

A lump rose in Rachael’s throat and she had to swallow two or three times before she could speak.

“Joel,”
she thought. 
“The kids?”

“What is it Sheri,” she finally asked as she reached out with her free hand and pulled Sheri inside and then closed the door.

“Sit down,” Rachael said, and then sat next to her on the couch.  “What is it?”

A tear crept down Sheri’s right cheek just before she spoke.  “It’s Karen,” she said.  “Karen’s gone, Rachael.”

…

June 10, 2013 - Promised Land Army Base, Natchez Trace State Park, Tennessee

“Eric, I,” Kyle paused after knocking on the tent frame around the door.

“Didn’t anyone teach you it’s polite to wait to be told to come in?” Eric asked without looking up.

“Sorry,” Kyle said.  “Are you moving into a different tent, or into the town?”

Eric did finally stop the packing he was doing and stood up, but didn’t look at Kyle.  “Something like that, yeah.”

Kyle grabbed the closer of the two folding chairs in the tent, and took a seat.  “Talk to me, Eric,” he said, leaning forward.  “I’m not saying spill your guts and have a good cry, but you need to talk to somebody and you need to do it yesterday.”

“Not now,” Eric started.

“Yes, now,” Kyle interrupted.  “Cut the crap and the macho bravado and talk to me.”

“What do you want from me?” Eric said as he turned around, eyes red and puffy.

“Honesty and some emotion, for starters,” Kyle said.  “Don’t hit me, but it’s been a week since the funeral.  You’ve been walking around like a robot.  Nobody can get more than a half-a-dozen words out of you at a time.  You’re ‘fine’ when they ask, which you obviously aren’t–nor should you be.”

Eric just stood there with an undershirt in one hand, a pair of socks in the other; shoulders slumped, looking at Kyle.

“Sit down,” Kyle said.  “Put that down and talk to me.”

Eric collapsed onto the two cots he’d been sharing with Karen until a week ago–the first time he’d sat on them, much less slept on them, since she’d died.

“There’s nothing left for me here,” Eric said.  “I don’t care anymore.”

It was all Kyle could do to keep his jaw off the floor, but he didn’t so much as twitch.

“About anything,” Kyle prompted.

“I know it doesn’t make sense, but yeah,” Eric said.  “Everything is up and running and there isn’t really any reason for me to stick around.  Mallory doesn’t need
me
, specifically.  The base–the military side of things–has been running smoothly for months.  Frankly, I don’t know that I did all that much to help get everyone out here.”

“Well,” Kyle said, “don’t sell yourself too short.  You and I both know that a large part of that semi-truck group wouldn’t have come if not for you.  You apparently made quite the impression on Mr. Grace that first day.”

“And I haven’t done much since,” Eric said.  “I’m a techie, Kyle, a geek.  Not quite as bad as Sparky but that’s really what I do.  Mallory only promoted me because I had the seniority.  That and she needed
somebody
with at least some command experience to back her up.  Honestly though, I’ve been next to useless recently.

Eric sighed.  “I’m done, though, Kyle,” he said.  “They don’t need me and I really don’t need them.”  Eric looked over at the old-school Alice pack he was filling.  “I’m leaving.”

“Where to,” Kyle asked.

“To be honest, I’m not completely sure yet,” Eric said.  “I don’t want to be so far away that if something happened I would be completely SOL, but I need to go, and I think it needs to be a clean, permanent break.”

Kyle nodded and chewed the inside of his cheek for a couple of seconds.  “Do me a favor,” Kyle said.  “Don’t leave just yet.”

Eric squinted his eyes and was about to say something, but Kyle interrupted him.

“No, I’m not going to say anything to the Major, or anything like that,” Kyle said.  “I’m coming with you.”

“Wait a minute,” Eric started.

“I’m not asking for your permission, Eric,” Kyle said and held up his hand to keep Eric from talking.  “I’m coming with you; I just need a little time to get ready.  I’ll even tell you why.”

“Fair enough,” Eric said.  “You know why I’m deserting; I should know why you’re doing it, too.”

“Ouch,” Kyle winced.

Kyle took a deep breath and then began.  “Ben Franklin,” was all he said.

“Really,” Eric said.  “You’ve got a beef with the guy who discovered electricity?  I mean, sure, we all miss it and…”

“No, not that Ben Franklin, wise guy,” Kyle said, “the other one, the one from Fort Campbell; Mallory’s big, strong hero.”