Dark Road (11 page)

The whole process took about ten minutes and when he was done he wiped his mouth off and then rinsed it out, sparingly, with some water.

“It smells minty,” Jessie said as she was falling asleep.

“Leave it to the six-year-old.” Dan said.

…

There was no broom, but the area between the doors and the bathroom where they were going to be sleeping was basically glass-free so they used wads of napkins to “sweep” the floor and laid out their blankets and sleeping bags to try and get some rest. The girls were asleep when Dan laid them down but he and Marissa were another story.

“I don’t know how long it’ll be before I can fall asleep.” Dan said.

“Same here,” Marissa said, “But I’m guessing I’ll probably get to sleep a little before you.”

Dan nodded and reached for the shotgun. “You try first. I really don’t think I’ll be able to even relax for a couple of hours. I know that means I might not get any sleep at all tonight but so be it if that’s the case.”

“Ok, but if the adrenaline wears off and you feel like you just can’t keep your eyes open, wake me up, ok?” Marissa gave Dan a hug and a quick kiss.

“Will do, promise.” Dan said and walked to the end of the small dining area opposite the restrooms to be nearest the door.

Against her will, Marissa was asleep within a couple of minutes with the image of her husband standing guard over the three of them, leaning against the counter. The sunlight coming through the window woke her up and the first thing she saw was her husband standing guard in the same position, leaning against the counter. He looked like he hadn’t moved since she fell asleep.

…

“What time is it?” Marissa asked, quietly, trying not to wake up the girls.

Dan checked his watch. “7:30, you didn’t get that much sleep.” Dan said.

“And I’m not getting any more on this floor.” Marissa replied.

“I’m sorry. I wish we had a pad or something.” He said as he levered himself away from the counter and made his way over to her.

Marissa was getting up and stretching. “Don’t be, at least I got some sleep. You look like…you didn’t.”

Dan’s gaze flicked to the bathroom and back to Marissa. “Well, my mind was kind of preoccupied last night. I’m still working things out.”

Marissa hugged him and then the girls were starting to stir.

“So begins another day,” she said.

…

Breakfast was thin cream of wheat for the girls and vitamins for everyone. They had packed every bit of remaining food from the house, which wasn’t much, and were hoping to be able to find, scavenge, or somehow trade for more on their way to Natchez Trace. Regardless, there hadn’t been anything left in the neighborhood and they’d had to get out when they did for the girls’ sake if nothing else.

“We haven’t got much extra room but let’s see if there’s anything left here worth taking.” Dan said after they had burned their breakfast trash. “Bekah, stick close to Mommy and Jessie stay by me, ok?”

A chorus of ‘Oks’ later and they were walking into the kitchen.

“I’m not too hopeful of finding anything to eat back here.” Marissa said under her breath.

“Me either, but I did see a lot of paper products in the storage closet, and if nothing else we can grab some TP and napkins.” Dan said. “We can also use the paper cups and not have to worry about washing for a while.”

The closet was a mess and looked like it had been ransacked repeatedly by people looking for food. Anything that may have been in here had probably been destroyed accidentally. Dan just shook his head.

“This is disgusting.” Dan said. “We ran out of toilet paper in the neighborhood almost three weeks ago and here there are cases of it. Paper towels, paper cups, napkins.”

Marissa put her hand on his arm. “I know, it’s not your fault though. There’s soap over there, too. There’s only so much you could be responsible for.”

“We can only carry so much,” Dan said, “So let’s only take…what, a half a dozen rolls?” Dan looked at Marissa.

Marissa nodded. “It’s a toss-up between how much we’ll use and how much we can carry.” She said. “I think that’s fair though.”

“Let’s grab a couple of stacks of cups.” Dan was thinking out loud at this point. “And a couple of bundles of napkins and…what do we have here?”

“What? Dan, what did you find?” Marissa asked.

“Well,” Dan said, “It’s not exactly food but I think it’s an unopened case of ketchup packets.”

Marissa frowned in thought. “It’s heavy, but I’m sure it’ll be worth bringing in the long run.”

A few more minutes of searching through the storage closet revealed a few more useful items as well. “Coffee filters,” Marissa said as she pulled out the box. “Most of the water we run across is going to need to be pre-filtered and that’s one of the things I read in the book. Coffee filters make a pretty good pre-filter.”

“Excellent point,” Dan said. “They aren’t too heavy either. Let’s bring a bunch and keep them in the plastic, if we can, to keep them clean.”

Dan held up a number of plastic bags from a napkin box that had been ‘reused’. “Iced tea bags. They were in the wrong box. There’s a half dozen or so in here, the big bags for the commercial urns out front. We can break them down and stretch them out for the small kettle.”

Additional scrounging by Jessie and Bekah found almost a hundred unbroken salt, pepper, and sugar packets each behind the counter as well as an even dozen salad crouton packs.

“Well,” Dan said after everything was packed in as tightly as it could be in the few remaining free spaces they had left, “I think it’s time to hit the road.”

Chapter Twelve

“I don’t see any reason we can’t make it to the fire station today.” Dan said. “It’s only about four miles if we can do a straight shot on the main roads. Even if we have to detour, we still have most of the day to get there.”

Marissa was stretching gingerly. “Let’s hope it’s intact; I don’t think sleeping on the floor is the only reason my neck and shoulders are so sore.”

Dan nodded in understanding. Her joints had been a pretty good indicator of changing weather in the past and there was no reason to believe that they were wrong now.

“Bekah, you ready to get going?” Dan asked.

“Yup,” she said.

“Jessie, you ready?” He asked.

“Uh huh,” she said. Dan and Marissa had noticed that Jessie had regressed a lot since the event and hoped that they could draw her out now that they were on their way and no longer in the neighborhood.

With that, they were off. Within a couple of blocks Dan came to the conclusion that they were going to be doing a lot of detouring. The road from the neighborhood had been pretty open up to this point, but things were already getting clogged up. It wasn’t clear if the cars up ahead were an intentional barricade or if they were left over from people running out of gas—but Dan wasn’t planning to get close enough to find out.

“Bekah, stay close to your Mom, honey. The route’s kind of up in the air right now.” Dan said. “Rissa, I’m going to take us down Douglas and then get on to the parkway. I doubt there’s any traffic and it will be less closed in by houses. I’m hoping we can see further, and I really don’t want to have to check and see if that’s a roadblock ahead.”

Marissa agreed completely and was now furiously trying to think of a way that she could carry a three-foot-long shotgun while she rode her mountain bike.

While there were hundreds of stopped cars on Ellington Parkway—some of which had been burned out, and some of which had been smashed out of place by larger vehicles—the way looked clear of any roadblocks until the next freeway. The going was still slow as Dan and Marissa were keeping a lookout for any movement on the road, listening for any movement, and picking their way carefully around all of the broken glass.

They had both been wrong in thinking they could have made it very far in any type of car or truck. At this point, the roads were so clogged that they would have made better time on foot; not to mention that a running car would have attracted way too much attention.

The parts of downtown they went through were a mix of burned out blocks of buildings and smashed in windows.  Looting had apparently run rampant for the first several days, if not weeks, after the power had gone out.  Underneath everything there was a lingering odor that it took Dan a while to place—decay.  Dan seriously hoped it was just vegetation.

It took them almost two hours to travel just over a mile and a half down the parkway. Their biggest scare came when Dan surprised a flock of birds by back-pedaling. The clicking spooked them, and when they all took wing at the same time they just about gave Dan and Marissa a heart attack.

Marissa was cursing not having the shotgun out to see if she could have gotten a couple of the pigeons. “We would have had to go get them since they were flying away from us and into the woods.” Dan said. “Plus, the shots would have just attracted attention.”

“I know, but it makes me want to have something to hold it at the ready even more.” Marissa said. “I hate having to fumble to get it out.”

It was 11:30 when they got off the Parkway and made their way towards downtown. They were going to have to stop and eat something, though, as both of the girls were complaining about wanting lunch.

Dan and Marissa had both heard of making tomato soup from ketchup packets and hot water and they were about to learn the hard way if it was really possible. They stopped near the river so they wouldn’t have to use up their already boiled drinking water for cooking. Dan set about looking for enough wood to make a quick fire while Marissa got out their small kettle. Everyone drank from one of the few remaining water bottles they’d had and had been keeping refilled, and Dan marked the cap and the bottle with a big black ‘X’.

“Nobody drinks from this one anymore, got it?” He said, looking at the girls. When everyone nodded, he went to the river and filled it up.

“Rissa, get one of the coffee filters, I want to pre-filter this before we boil it.” Dan said and directed her to hold it over the kettle.

After two more trips to the river, the kettle was full and the fire was going, and ten minutes after that, the water was boiling. After three minutes, they took it off the fire and let it start to cool. In the meantime, Marissa had been making their “soup”. She’d put a half a dozen packets of ketchup into each cup with a half a packet of salt and pepper, knowing that they were surely going to need the seasoning.

She even splurged and opened one of the crouton packages to put on top after the water was added. She needed the girls to drink this and was willing to try anything to help them get it down the first couple of times

With the water added, it was clear that there wasn’t nearly enough ketchup. Marissa sighed. “This isn’t going to last nearly as long as we’d hoped.”

“I know, it’ll be ok. Let’s just make do for as long as we can, though.” Dan said.

It took another nine packets to make it thick enough to look like soup, and Marissa hoped the girls would drink it. There really wasn’t that much, either.
Fifteen half-ounce packets, 7.5 ounces of ketchup, and another cup or so of water
—she wanted to cry.

The girls didn’t seem to mind once it cooled down enough to drink, which was quite a bit as it was fairly warm outside. Dan didn’t say boo about it, and when Marissa finally had hers she realized it wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. It certainly wasn’t Campbell’s, but it was better than nothing by a long shot.

“I don’t think I can do this for three meals a day, but for lunch I think it’ll be fine as long as it holds out.” Dan said.

“Do we have any more crackers?” Jessie asked.

“Not today, honey,” Marissa said. “Tomorrow, though.”

Bekah piped up, “Here, you can have mine,” and scooped her three croutons into Jessie’s cup.

Marissa was truly on the verge of tears at this point.
Here we are eating ketchup soup made with river water and my oldest daughter is sharing her stolen croutons. Please, God, give me strength!

Dan reached over and squeezed her hand when he saw her eyes glistening.

“Ok, ladies, anybody have to go to the bathroom?” Dan asked.

Everyone just looked at each other and nobody answered, including Marissa.

“Oh, come on. We’re going to have to get used to it. You’ve been going to the bathroom outside for almost three months now.” He said.

“But Daddeeeeee,” Jessie said. “That was at home, in our own back yard. We had a fence!”

Dan closed his eyes and tried to find the words to explain that the rest of the world didn’t have a fence and that at some point they were going to have to pee.

Marissa came to his rescue, sort of. “Fine. If you don’t want to now, then you just have to hold it until we get to Daddy’s work.”

Dan looked at Marissa. He wanted to say, “That’s fine for the next few hours but what about the next few weeks?” He shook his head and put his paper cup in the fire to start burning their trash before putting it out.

Marissa got their meager possessions packed back up while Dan made sure the fire was out and then got out the map of downtown.

“Do you think we’ll still be able to make a straight shot from here?” She asked.

Dan shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea, but I would guess that downtown—any parts that aren’t burned down, given all the smoke we saw the first couple of weeks and the fact that it
still
smells like smoke—is going to be less populated than the suburbs. If I had to bet, I would think we should be able to go almost straight there.”

Marissa was measuring to make some quick calculations. “I come up with about two miles still to go. I think that’s as far as we can ask Bekah to go today.”

“I think that’s all any of us are going to be good for after last night.” Dan agreed.

Marissa shook her head in slight disgust, “Three months ago you or I could have biked twenty or thirty miles in a day, on paved roads, easily—and not be worn out at the end. We’re hoping to make five miles and knock off around 3:00 today. It’s going to be a long trip to Natchez Trace.”

“That it is, sweetie; that it is.” Dan agreed.