Dark Road (13 page)

“Well, let’s start by getting an early dinner and getting three of us to bed.” Marissa said and then proceeded to yawn. That was one of the nice things about the injections; depending on how bad the muscle spasms were, the injections started numbing the muscle and surrounding area almost immediately and the resulting relief was just about euphoric in comparison.  The injections themselves would actually be sore in a couple of hours, but hopefully she’d be asleep by then.  She’d deal with the residual soreness from the injections tomorrow.

Dan smiled, “I’ll take the first watch. You really haven’t slept that well in weeks. I’ll be ok and I promise to wake you up if something happens. I think we need to make some more soup and then get you all into bed. We can pull mattresses into the common room so that everyone’s together.”

Dinner took about half an hour to make and eat and then the girls crashed. Marissa had the pistol with her but Dan had the shotgun, since he was on guard duty. It was still only 5:00 and he wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything left in the rest of the fire station. There were the other two storage rooms to check out. It was always possible that there could still be boxes of medicines or usable supplies in those rooms, or so he hoped anyway.

…

Dan spent the first hour alternating between scouring the kitchen and checking in on the girls. While she was asleep, Marissa was one of his girls. Their first pass hadn’t been as thorough as Dan would have liked so now he was taking his time to really go through everything.

He found one container each of coffee service sugar and creamer in one of the high cupboards where they had been almost totally hidden by a set of Southern Living Annual Cookbooks. The cookbooks had been donated to the fire station by an estate a number of years back. They broke them out at the holidays and made desserts mostly.

Lying flat in another high cupboard he found a full bag of chocolate chips. How those had been missed all this time was beyond him, but Marissa would be tickled pink when she woke up. He was pretty sure he knew which of the firemen had hidden them up there, too. Terry was notorious for his sweet tooth.

An hour’s worth of searching and that was all he had to show for it, a bunch of sugar.

The next hour he spent slowly going through the rest of the bedrooms. He checked in every drawer and closet, checking under the beds and between the mattresses, looking on top of the closets. Dan learned more than he cared to about the personal lives of some of his former co-workers by the types of magazines he found under some of their beds, but that was the extent of it right up until the end.

Dan was checking underneath one of the beds when he noticed that the batting under the box spring was coming loose and hanging down. The only reason he even noticed was because out of the twenty or so other beds he’d checked, none of the others had looked torn. In fact most, if not all, of the beds had been replaced in the last couple of years and were almost new.

Curious, he shone his flashlight on the area of the box spring. It looked as though a couple of staples had been pulled out and the lining had been pulled away from the box spring and then tucked back in between the box spring and the bed frame. Usually, the weight of the box spring would have pinned the lining between it and the bed frame—but it must have come loose when the bed got jostled as the room was ransacked, and now the lining was hanging down instead of being held up and in place.

Dan got up and pulled the mattress off and carefully turned over the box spring, trying to be quiet and not wake up the girls. He pulled off the lining from the corner and along the side and found a black nylon money belt folded up and hidden inside. Although he was tempted to open it up and look inside right then, he checked the rest of the box spring first to see if any other parts looked like they had been messed with—but they didn’t appear to have been.

He put the box spring back, put the mattress back, and sat so he would have a place to open the money belt. Inside, there were cloth pouches that held small rolls of coins. At first glance, Dan was a little disappointed, but only for about thirty seconds. At first it looked like there was an even $25 worth of change in the money belt, until Dan took a closer look. There were twenty $0.50 pieces, forty quarters, and a roll of dimes. No big deal, until Dan looked at the dates.

All of the dates were pre-1964, some as old as the 1950s. That meant that these were 90% silver and had been set aside for barter in case of…well in case the world came to an end. Now it was Dan’s turn to cry. He didn’t know if there would be anything else to find in this room, or even in the fire station, but on the off chance that they ran into someone who had something extra to trade, and they were willing to trade for silver, at least it was an option now.

After Dan had gotten himself back together, he put the coins away and started looking through the rest of the room. It had been picked over already, and there wasn’t anything left to find. The remainder of the rooms were the same way. Dan was still happy when we went to start on the rest of the supply rooms.

…

Seeing the dented steel door brought his spirits down a little, but not much. There were other medical supplies he could gather and take with them, and they
had
been able to get some relief for Marissa out of the ambulance. The remainder of the supplies would be useful, but bulky, items. Dan wished they had the room to carry the contents of both rooms with them, along with an AED.

You’re back in the building for three hours and all of the sudden you’re back at work.
Dan shook his head.
The world has moved on, Dan. Let it go and get what you can to help your family, and be ready to go tomorrow morning.

In the first room, he gathered cotton balls and petroleum jelly, which would be good as tinder to start fires in the future. He’d gotten good at starting fires with a single match over the last several weeks, but that little trick he’d gotten from the library book. If he’d had a flint and steel he could catch the cotton ball, and the petroleum jelly would keep it burning for several minutes.

Next were tongue depressors. Made of wood, they were individually wrapped in
plastic
and would be waterproof and
dry,
so they would be great tinder
or
kindling if everything else was wet. He could start the fire and hopefully dry out natural stuff, and so on and so forth.

Bandages, ok, Dan—don’t go crazy. You have gauze, you have tape, and you can make bandages. So how about that wrap that sticks to itself, but not to skin?

So next came the sports-type wrap that doesn’t stick to skin, and some extra tape—but not too much tape, because tape is heavy and bulky.

Burn gel? And we’ll be in the woods, so poison ivy and itch cream, in general, might come in handy. I really wish there’d been some steroids in the other room,
Dan thought.
Stop thinking like that, deal with what we have. This is making a difference.

Burn gel, itch cream, and calamine lotion.

Ok, I could be in here all day; time to go check on the girls and then hit the other room.

The girls were fine, and then it was time for the last supply closet, which turned out to be a rather pleasant surprise.

“Ensure!” Dan exclaimed, and then clamped his hand over his mouth. They didn’t have a lot of it on hand but they had a case that they kept to refill the ambulances, since they kept a couple of cans in each one. Again, it wasn’t perfect, and it wouldn’t last long, but it was six meals per person for his family! At one a day, that would last almost a week. “Too bad it’s not chocolate,” Dan said to himself.

Dan spent the rest of the time carrying his additions to their supplies to the common room where the girls were sleeping, and then poking around the fire station. He found an unused bar of soap in the janitor’s closet and then decided to grab some hand sanitizer from the supply closet.

At about 11:30, Dan gently woke Marissa up. “Hey, Riss, you sleep ok?”

“Like the dead, but now I really have to pee.” Marissa said.

Dan laughed. “I say pick one of the inside bathrooms and just use it. Don’t worry about flushing; just use one of the further away ones for right now. We aren’t going to be here long and it’s not worth risking going outside.”

Marissa nodded and when she got up, her flashlight hit the pile of boxes that Dan had brought in. “More stuff?” She asked.

“Yeah, we’ll go through it in the morning and break it down.” Dan said. “I think you and I should go through the supply rooms, too. I don’t want to forget anything, and another set of eyes will be good.”

Marissa nodded again and set off.

When she got back, Dan was getting ready to try and get some sleep. The girls still hadn't even moved.

“Are you going to be ok for a few hours?” He asked.

“Yeah, I'll be fine. I really did get plenty of sleep and it helped a lot.” Marissa said. “You, on the other hand, look worn out. Try and get some rest. I'll be ok, I promise.”

With that, Dan took Marissa at her word and let her stand watch, and undoubtedly poke around the fire station until she needed some more sleep, or until they all woke up.

…

It was a pity they couldn’t take one of the mattresses with them. Marissa had actually slept better here than she had the last couple of weeks at home. Admittedly, part of that was probably the fact that her neck and shoulders weren’t the throbbing mess that they had been, but, whatever.

Well, I’m not going to just sit here and watch them sleep,
she thought.
Dan obviously found some useful stuff; wonder if he missed anything because he didn’t think it would be useful?

Marissa noted that everything seemed to have come from either the supply closets or from somewhere inside the building proper. She decided to check out the ambulance and see if there was anything that could be used for non-medical purposes. She’d always been good at out-of-the-box problem solving.

She did a quick walk through of the building as quietly as she could before heading to the garage to check on the bikes and start on the ambulance.

At first she didn’t know where to start. The inside was a mess and it was dark. All she had was her flashlight, and the last thing she wanted to do was run it down in the middle of their third night out of the neighborhood. On a whim, she went to the front and opened the driver’s door and found the headlight switch. Even if there was a battery left it was probably dead, but she figured she would give it a try.

Nothing; no click, no spark, no sign of life. Oh well, it’d been worth a shot.

Back in the rear of the ambulance she cleared off a place to sit, and then turned off the flashlight and thought.

What would they have in here that we could use that wouldn’t be obvious? What else can we salvage?

Chapter Fourteen

Dan woke up to the smell of oatmeal. It was the first time in at least a month that he’d smelled oatmeal, and it made his stomach rumble. He’d give Marissa the benefit of the doubt and assume she’d been ok for the rest of the night as it was already full light outside.

Bekah was still asleep but Jessie was up, and, Dan guessed, helping Marissa make breakfast. He relished what was likely to be the last really comfortable bed he’d be sleeping in for a while for another couple of minutes, and then woke Bekah up. He didn’t want her waking up alone, and, either way, he wasn’t going to leave either of his daughters by themselves.

“Morning, sleepyheads,” Marissa said as they came downstairs. Marissa had started the fire on the driveway behind the fire station, but the oatmeal had been quick oats, so they didn’t need to boil over the fire.

Dan looked over at the ambulance with everything unloaded out of the back and stopped in his tracks. “You’ve been busy,” was all he could say.

“Yes I have, and I didn’t use up all of the flashlight batteries either.” She said with a smile. “In fact,” she tossed him another flashlight.

“Where did you get this?” Dan asked.

“From the firemen’s locker room,” Marissa said. “A lot of their gear was gone through and missing, like axes, facemasks, air tanks, and the flashlights that they clip onto the
outside
of their kits, but anything that was in the big pockets, or that wasn’t obvious was missed. Obviously whoever went through here was looting rather than scavenging,” Marissa paused, “like we are.”

“Well, there is that.” Dan said. “Good catch, amazing find. How many were there?”

“I found five flashlights, two mini pry-bars, and three multi-tools.” Marissa said.

Dan just shook his head. “I wouldn’t have even thought to look in there. What made you head there in the first place?” Dan was sitting down to eat breakfast now.

“I wanted to look through the ambulance to see if there was anything that could have a secondary use…you know, other than its original, intended purpose, but I didn’t want to waste the flashlight. I tried the headlights, but they were dead, so I had to go looking for some other form of lights.”

Dan was nodding. “I see you found the bag of chocolate chips, too.”

“Oh yeah,” Marissa said with a grin.

“So, is there anything else we can use in the ambulance?”

“Not much.” Marissa admitted. “I found a collapsible shovel, and a couple pairs of gloves, and three more flashlights with extra batteries.”

Dan nodded. “Those would be because all of the ambulances were ALS, or Advanced Life Support, rated. Technically, the flashlights, shovels, and gloves aren’t required, but there’s a checklist of things that need to be there at all times, and we took even the suggestions in the appendix pretty seriously.” Dan was trying to use the past tense for his former life as an EMT.

Dan shook his head. “About the only thing we didn’t have on all the rigs was a HAM radio with emergency frequencies programmed in. That could have come in handy right about now. Not that I would really know how to use it, but I’m guessing I could figure it out.”