Jacqueline Druga - Reset

He paused. “I have to see. Look at the dust, Nora.”

“Jason, listen. You only need to look out the window to…”

“I need to see. I need to feel it.” He clenched his fist and brought it to his chest, then continued on and opened the door.

He didn’t step into a hall, but rather a lobby, huge and open. It was bright, the sun blasted through the glass wall that he could only assume was the front of the building.

Through the sunlight he saw the dust, smelled it, and felt the thick humidity. It was hot.

He let his eyes adjust then turned to Nora. “Are you coming?”

She nodded and joined him.

Slowly Jason walked to the glass doors. Hands to the handle he pushed. The door barely budged.

He pushed harder and finally, with resistance, it opened.

The door wasn’t locked, weeds had grown through the cracks of the concrete and stopped the door from swinging outward.

Jason lost his breath when he stepped out into the sun. The heat added to the ‘slam’ of reality and he wheezed inward, trying to comprehend it all as he looked around.

It was a mainly concrete area, small buildings around a parking lot. But where there was grass it was overgrown. Weeds had grown wildly and high, looking more like odd shaped miniature trees. The seams of the sidewalk were filled with bright green growth. The buildings weren’t clean and shiny, they looked weather worn.

Not a car.

Not a sound.

Not a person.

After looking around, he raced toward the parking lot and stopped. The view before him was a barren world. Barren… dead.

“Hello!” He cried out. “Hello!”

His voice echoed back at him.

Face tensing with emotions, he spun and looked at Nora. She stood arms held tight to her body.

“Where is everybody?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Look at this.” He held out his hand. “This isn’t seven months. It can’t be.” He closed his eyes tight and with a painful realization that things had gone horribly awry, Jason, feeling defeated, released one quiet single sob and dropped to his knees. “What happened to our world?”

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be a source of support, but Nora couldn’t stay outside. Even with the sun shining, it exuded a sense of gloom and she returned to the small lab type office.

She felt hollow, empty and hadn’t a clue on how to process all that was going on. A feeling of loss washed over her. Her daughters, her husband. What had become of them? One thing Jason was correct about.

It was longer than seven months. It had to be. The growth of weeds and foliage was far too great.

When she returned, John had opened the blinds to all the windows and the room was brighter. The moods weren’t. Grant sat in a swivel chair staring out. Amy was in the corner staring at an empty backpack.

Malcolm was rummaging through desks, Meredith stood off watching him and John stood by the window.

“He’s still out there,” Nora said.

“Yes, well, maybe he is doing that praying thing he was famous for,” John replied.

“John, please.”

“He’s kneeling.”

Nora looked out the window. “That’s not a prayer kneel. That’s a ‘my world is over’ kneel.”

“Yes, well, emotionally we’re all doing that.” He turned from the window. “How are you?’

“Numb. Trying to process. Did the lab below decontaminate? Think we should get out?”

“I estimate it was two hundred feet below. Decontamination will be a fireball that will extinguish quickly, we’re fine. I believe and I also know…” He peered down to his watch. “We have about six minutes remaining. About right now, though, I can use some of that humor you said you had.”

“I don’t think there is humor in this.” Nora folded her arms tight. She turned her head to the banging of drawers. “Malcolm?”

Malcolm ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Did these people just up leave or not come to work?”

“What do you mean?” Nora asked.

“I mean the dates on papers stop on December fourteen. What the hell. I wish I could get into the computer.”

“What about the solar…” Nora’s eyes shifted. “Where’s the president.”

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked around, as if the president would suddenly appear.

“Did he go outside?” John asked.

“No,” Nora replied. “I was out there. He didn’t come out.”

“Where in the world could he…” John stopped and looked beyond Nora.

She turned.

The elevator.

The door was closed.

Nora hurried to it. “You don’t think?”

“Unless he slipped out somewhere else,” John said.

There was a keypad next to the elevator, Nora lifted the cover and pressed the button.

Nothing.

She pressed it again.

“Come on,” she beckoned. “Open… damn it.”

“Nora,” Grant hurried her way and grabbed her hand. “We don’t know that he’s down there.”

“Where is he?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes. If we are all that’s left.” She kept pressing.

From across the room, John commented. “Maybe he should have thought of that before he agreed to this population control plan.”

Nora paused only briefly to glance John’s way and then she returned to hoping on that elevator. “Is no one else concerned?”

“What if you go down there?” Grant asked. “And he’s not there? Then you are there when decontamination takes place. We don’t know. None of us paid that much attention. He could have slipped out after you. He could be in this building somewhere.”

“Again,” John said. “What does it matter? He was useless.”

Nora gasped out. “How can you say that?”

“He woke up, claimed he remembered nothing,” John said. “And then he tells us the entire plan. He was depressed, remorseful and he came up here and faced a reality he caused. Let him go. If he’s down there, let him burn. But please, for my sake, because I like you, step away from that elevator shaft… just in case.”

Malcolm said. “I think we should all go outside just in case.”

“They aren’t going to destroy a whole building in Marshal Flight center, or Redstone,” John stated. “We on a military base. No. It will snuff out.”

Softly, Grant spoke to Nora. “Come on. Nothing you can do.”

Hand still reaching to the elevator button, Nora backed up, rolled her fingers into a ball and turned around. “Maybe you’re right,” she said to Grant. “Maybe he’s in this building somewhere.”

“No,” Meredith said. “He took his life. I didn’t see him go down there, but it makes sense. Guilt will do that. None of this turned out as they planned. We see this.”

A squeaky chair caught Nora’s attention and she looked at Malcolm who plopped back down. He lifted a clipboard and began flipping pages.

“What are we doing?” Nora asked. “Dazed and confused, sitting around, staring out a window. Falling down emotionally?”

“I’m trying to find answers,” Malcolm said. “Something, anything that will tell us what went wrong.”

“The germ went out of control,” John added. “What more do you need to know?”

“How long we’ve been out? What exactly happened? I mean… really, think about it,” Malcolm said, “How do we know, maybe this base wasn’t just contaminated. You realize there is a nuclear power plant not far from here. What if the germ did more damage, what if power went down before they could secure that plant? There are also a million reasons why this portion of the base is abandoned. We haven’t left this room to find out.”

“I don’t see you jumping out the door,” John commented.