Jacqueline Druga - Omnicide

“Oh, good Lord. Mark and his committees. I’m surprised he didn’t have a committee to have the festival.”

Eb only looked at her.

“We’re still having the festival?”

“Somebody asked,” Eb said.

“The world is ending and they still want their festival.”

“It’s important. It signifies life. We’re alive, Cass, when almost everyone else is dead. Speaking of which—”

Cass held up her hand. “Okay, if you’re gonna talk about Lena, that is a terrible segue.”

Eb winced. “It was, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Anyhow, what you did. How you had that instinct. It was great.”

Cass slightly pursed her lips and half shrugged.

“What? Why are you blowing it off? You saved her life.”

“And she is going to be pissed. She’s going to hate me, at least for a while.” Cass lifted her eyes. “Trust me, I know. And I can’t blame her. It wasn’t like I pulled her out of the way of a moving car. I took her choice away.”

“You and I both know she wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Cass nodded.

“So, what are you doing?”

“As I said we still have internet and I am on social media just looking for people. I thought I’d try key words.” She pushed the paper forward. “Just throwing things out. You know.”

“It’s a good idea. Quite a list. Why don’t you take a break? I’ll do this for a while. You need a break and need to sleep.”

“Maybe. Did you… did you volunteer for any committees?” She pulled the list back and began to type.

“Just the ‘don’t bury the festival’ committee.”

Cass laughed and hit enter. “Shit. Typo.”

“No, I joined the committee to look for survivors.”

“That sounds like a good one.” She looked at the screen and readied to retype the correct keyword. “Maybe I’ll… Whoa… Eb.” She turned the monitor some. “Look at this.”

It was the second time that Kit was doing dishes and it wasn’t even noon. The first time was after breakfast, the second time was when an out of the blue idea to bake cookies hit him.

“I know you hear me.” Kit aimed his voice toward the window where Kat sat on the porch not far from him. “Kat, I know you hear me.”

Or did he?

Kat had done nothing but play on his phone since a signal came through. There wasn’t anything he could look up or do. But he kept swiping through. What was he even looking at or reading?

Kit placed the final dish in the rack, shut off the tap, grabbed the towel and dried his hands. He turned and opened the fridge, reaching in for a soft drink. “You wanna soda?”

“No,” a woman’s voice replied. “I’ll take a beer if you have one. I haven’t been to bed so technically it’s a night cap.”

“Cass?” Kit asked shocked, then grabbed a beer from the fridge for her.

He was shocked to see her sitting on the steps of his front porch. “When did you get here?”

“Only a minute or so ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me she was here?”

Kat shrugged.

“What are you doing so intently on that phone?” Kit asked his son.

“Seeing if anyone is posting anything. Survivors, you know,” Kat replied.

“I’ll accept that.” Kit sat down on the step next to Cass. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine.”

“I heard what you did last night. Man, give you a badge and you jump right on that protect and serve.”

“It wasn’t a big deal.”

Kit nudged her. “She’s gonna give you hell.”

“I know.”

“How is she?”

“From what I heard, she’s good. I’ll stop in and see her after I get a little sleep. Get the fury over with.”

“What brings you here?” Kit asked.

“Well, as you know, I’ve been going on social media looking for people that got the warning in time. But it’s hard. Because they really only show up on your newsfeed if you follow them or are friends, so I decided to start searching keywords.”

“That’s a good idea.” Kit nodded and took a drink. “You found something.”

“I did. I was talking to Eb, typing in the word ‘plant’ but had a typo and ended up typing ‘plane.’ Apparently, two days ago, when it all went down, there was a plane. Here, I looked it up on my phone and did a screen shot of the posts.” She handed the phone to Kit.

Kit read the post. “Guess vacation is over. Got word we can’t land. Air isn’t safe.” He looked at Cass. “Wow.”

“Yeah. Swipe to the next picture. That’s the next post.”

Kit did. “Landing in Arizona. He doesn’t say where.”

“He doesn’t.” Cass took her phone. “But someone else does. I started searching the terms airline and other words. About two dozen people were posting from that plane. They landed on a highway. They said eighty-nine. Near or past Willow Springs.”

“That’s only two hours north of here,” Kit said. “So they’re just sitting on the plane.”

“Last post I could find is they weren’t leaving until they were told they could. But that was three days ago and nothing has been posted since.”

“Maybe their phones died or they lost connection,” Kit said.

“Or they left,” suggested Cass.

“Or,” Kat spoke up, “they all died and suffocated on that plane.”

Both Kit and Cass looked back at him.

“What?” Kat said. “If the pilot doesn’t power down, conserve power to circulate air once in a while, they would have died of carbon monoxide poisoning if they stayed sealed in there. Plane’s not gonna have power forever. They were probably too scared to leave.”

Cass lifted her phone some. “From what I read. Yeah. It looked it.”

“You’re telling me because you think we should do this?”

Cass nodded. “Since Eb said you are also on the committee for search and rescue, I do. I want to go though, Kit. I want to do something besides go stir crazy in this town.”

“Cass, you never leave anyhow.”

“There’s a difference between having a choice to leave and being stuck.”

“She brings up a point,” Kat said.

“Thank you for your input,” Kit said sarcastically. “So just take a ride up there?”

“We don’t know what’s up that way,” Cass said. “We should grab one of our scientists in case we see anything. Preferably the one that’s a real doctor in case someone needs help.”

“That’s a good point.”

“I mean, they may have left the plane. There are a lot of villages unregistered up that way—they could be untouched like us and those plane people could be fine.”

“Maybe at one of the rest stops,” Kit added. “Or…” He looked back at Kat. “Like my son said. They could be dead.”

“We won’t know unless we go.”

“Shit,” Kat cursed. “I mean shoot.” He stood up. “Looks like our search online is over.” He put his phone on the table. “Signal’s down again.”

“Let’s plan this,” Kit said to Cass.

Cass couldn’t agree more. That was the whole reason she went to see Kit. It was something she wanted to do and couldn’t explain why. It was a glimmer of hope. Now it would be one of the few chances they had to find survivors.

Their connection to the world, their short-lived blessing was gone, pretty much like everything else outside of Griffin.

Lena didn’t really want the tea, but her mouth was dry and she needed something in her system. Niles was in the room when she woke and after asking her how she felt, he proceeded to tell her about her condition.

Lena didn’t care.

She barely had the strength to get up and use the bathroom. Ada came and helped her with that, brought her a cup of tea, and helped her back into bed.