Total War

Chapter Twenty-one

Slowly, Sarah Rourke pushed away the blanket and mattress covering herself and the children. She smelled something-smoke? But no, she thought. It was plaster dust. "All right, children," she said. "I think we can see what's going on now."

Chunks of debris fell from the mattress as she pushed herself up onto her knees. Standing, surveying the littered cellar, she picked up her small transistor radio and shook it-nothing but static. She switched bands. There was nothing on FM. She turned the dial from side to side-still, only static.

"What's wrong with the radio, Mama?" Michael asked. His question was something she could have done without at the moment.

"Oh, I think the ground shaking must have loosened a wire inside it. You know," she continued lying, "these radios are made up of thousands of wires. Your father can tell you about it better than I can."

"Where is Daddy, Mommy," Ann asked, her voice little as the three Rourkes stood there in the partially collapsed cellar.

"Oh, he's coming, honey," Sarah Rourke reassured her. "It'll be all right," Michael said, putting his arm around his sister.

"Michael," Sarah began, "you stay here with Ann for a minute. I'm going upstairs to look around."

"Can we come? We don't want to stay here."

She looked at Michael, nodded. "All right, but stay behind me. Just in case anything is wrong upstairs." The flashlight-one of John's Safariland Kel-Lites-was still working as if nothing had happened. For a moment, as she focused the beam toward the stairs, the thought amused her. She could imagine her husband, in one of his magazine articles or books, saying, "This Kel-Lite flashlight survived World War III and kept right on working." The thought almost started her crying. She sniffed and started toward the staircase, then stopped. She smelled gas. "Michael, go back and very gently pick up the water jugs. Hurry, but be careful."

"But can't we get the water later, mom?"

"No, son, I don't know if we'll come back down here again. I smell gas, and we might be risking a fire. Don't touch anything metal, don't scrape against anything at all if you can help it. Then come back and hold your sister's hand."

Michael returned in a moment and handed Sarah two of the three water jugs he'd brought, then took his sister's hand. "Now, Michael, don't let go of her-no matter what you do. Do you understand?"

"Yes," he started, "but why-"

"Never mind," Sarah said. She looked at Annie, who looked as though she would burst into tears at any minute.

Sarah stooped down to her. The little girl-her hair different from Sarah's, John's or Michael's, a dark honey blond-raised her arms into the air. "Will you pick me up, Mommy?"

"I can't now, Annie. But I will later."

"I want somebody to carry me."

"You're going to have to walk, Annie," Sarah said firmly, then turned back toward the stairs.

Plaster in large chunks and small pieces of wood littered the stairs. She started to push them aside, but thought better of it; they could be nails or some small metal among the debris which could make a spark. Slowly, she picked her way up the stairs.

"Michael!" she screamed, turning and glaring at the boy.

"What did I do?"

"Don't kick that stuff off the stairs. It could make a spark. Just take my word for it and don't. Now, come onhold Annie's hand."

Annie dutifully grasped her brother's larger hand and walked beside him. As Sarah looked at the little girl's face, she could still see that the girl was on the verge of tears.

Sarah stopped at the closed basement door. The gas smelled stronger. She reached down to the doorknob, then stopped. "What if it makes a spark?" she asked herself, half aloud.

"What is it, Mama," Michael said. Then, "Here-I can open the door for you."

Suddenly, Michael was standing beside her, his hands already on the doorknob, pushing the door open.

"Michael!" Sarah screamed, grabbing the boy and his sister and drawing them against her. The door, the hinges creaking and sounding as though they needed oil, swung open. Nothing happened.

Cautiously, the boy and girl beside her, Sarah stepped into the house. The smell of gas was completely gone. As she looked up and down the hallway, she could see that, apparently, every window in the house had smashed inward. The rooms were littered with glass from broken dishes and vases, the overhead lights-everything was destroyed.

"What happened?" Michael said.

"Some very bad men dropped some big bombs on our country, Michael," Sarah said. "You've heard about the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb. Well, they have a lot more explosive force than ordinary bombs. All this mess is from bombs they dropped on Atlanta-and you know it takes us an hour and a half to drive there. So Atlanta was pretty far away." She shuddered as she heard herself use the past tense-"was." The zoo, the museums, the shops and restaurants-a flood of memories rushed over her. The people? Her throat started tightening, and, bending down to the children, she said, "I want us to get a few things and get out of the house. We'll stay in the barn tonight."

"Why would we stay in the barn, mom?"

"Yeah," Annie echoed, "why are we going to stay in the barn, Mommy. I don't like the barn very much."

"Well," she said patiently, "the gas that we all smelled down in the cellar. Gas could still build up and explode. We'll be safer in the barn. Now, come and help me." Automatically, she started toward the kitchen, but changed her mind. "We're going upstairs to get a few clothes and things just in case we don't get back to the house for a while. Michael, take some jeans, underpants, a couple of shirts, all your socks and two extra pairs of shoes and put them in your back pack. Then get Annie started. Take your sweaters, too."

"It's not very cold out, Mom," Michael started. She leaned down to the boy and put both hands on his shoulders. "Michael-you're very smart and sometimes you're very grown up. But sometimes I need you to do what I say-exactly what I say. Now hurry and do it. And don't forget to start getting Annie packed too."

She went up the stairs ahead of the children and glanced in their rooms to make sure everything was safe. Like the downstairs, the upstairs looked, she thought, as though a hurricane had struck.

Shouting, "Watch out for broken glass-Annie, stay with Michael," she walked to the end of the hall and the bedroom she shared with her husband-when he was home. She went into his dresser and found the only other gun besides the shotgun that he had forced her to keep in the house. She looked at it, reading the words on the side of it, "Colt's Government Model Mk IV/Series '70," then underneath that, "Caliber .45 ACP." As she held the gun, she wished she'd listened to her husband more attentively when he'd told her about it. She remembered his leaving it there several months earlier.

"Now, this is a Government Model .45," he'd said. "Just a pretty ordinary gun but a damned good one."

"You mean a .45 like the little guns you carry?"

"Yeah," Rourke had said. "Just bigger. Now I know you have trouble with slides on automatics, but I've left one round loaded in the chamber. After you shoot the gun-cock it first-leave the hammer up and just put up the safety. See?"

Sarah had gotten the discussion over with as quickly as possible. Now, she turned the gun over in her hand. It had rubber grips, black, with medallions of tiny horses on them. Shrugging her shoulders, she stuck the gun in the waistband of her blue jeans, shivering a little because the metal was cold against her skin. In the same drawer, she found two extra clips, which, her husband had always told her, were magazines. She took those and a box of ammunition and stuffed them into a large canvas purse, then went into her own dresser and got underwear, some T-shirts, and two sweaters. From her closet, she took two pairs of jeans, identical to the ones she wore. She put two pairs of track shoes into the huge canvas bag as well, then went back to her husband's dresser and took as many pairs of his white sweat socks as she could fit into the case. She snatched up their wedding picture, too, stripped it from the frame, and folded it in fourths, then put it into an inside pocket of the bag.

As she passed the bathroom, she took a canvas bag from under the sink-an old U.S. mail bag-and began stuffing it with soap, tampons, toothpaste, Band-Aids, and disinfectant spray.

Michael was ready and waiting in the hallway and she checked his pack, sending him back for his sweaters and telling him to grab as many rolls of toilet paper as he could and stuff them in his pack.

As fast as she could, she helped Annie pack, stuffing extra clothes for both children in Annie's back pack. She walked the children downstairs, the water jugs still down at the foot of the stairs where she'd left them, and carried everything into the kitchen. Her husband had insisted on her keeping a supply of freeze-dried foods from Mountain House and similar items, these all in a large duffel bag in the pantry. She grabbed this up, opened the bag, and stuffed a few cans of soup and beans and a can opener inside it as well. "Now," she said, "I want both of you to drink as much as you can of the milk in the refrigerator. I have to get everyone's vitamins and some blankets."

She left the children and ran back into the hallway and up the stairs, getting vitamins from the bathroom vanity and blankets from the spare bedroom. She wished now she'd let her husband buy them the sleeping bags he'd wanted to.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she stopped and caught her breath.

"Come on, children," she shouted, then started back toward the kitchen for them.

"I'll put the milk in the refrigerator," Michael said.

"You don't have to darling," Sarah began. "There isn't any electricity."

With Michael carrying more than she'd thought he could, and Ann dragging Sarah's big canvas purse, Sarah started everyone from the kitchen, then thought of one other thing. She reached into the top drawer beside the sink and took the very sharp, Henkels boning knife, wrapped it in a kitchen towel, and slipped it into the duffel bag. She could barely move the bag.

As they reached the end of the hallway, she stopped and turned into the living room. "Wait a minute."

She went over to the mantle, grabbed the pictures of the children, and stripped them from their frames. Then she took the double-barreled shotgun from over the hearth and grabbed the box of shotgun shells from the drawer in the small end table.

"Okay," she said, trying to make her voice sound cheerful. "This is going to be quite an adventure." As they stepped onto the front porch, coats on, arms loaded with belongings, she could hear the horses in the barn, whinnying, frightened. And she realized why. In the darkness-although the late-night sky in the direction of Atlanta was bright like a sunset-she could hear the wild dog packs howling. The sound frightened her, too. "Come on, children-let's get to the barn," she whispered.