Jacqueline Druga - Protocol One

“What did you ask them?” Tony questioned Tom.

“I asked them to verify their location and how many survivors. They said it was classified.”

Tony immediately grabbed the radio. “I’ll try.” He pressed down to speak. “Damnation Alley Damnation Alley, do you read?”

“Roger that. Loud and clear.”

We may have been loud and clear to them, but there was a lot of static coming from their end. We still could understand them.

“We are a survival Station in North East Pennsylvania called Protocol One.” Tony said.

“Never heard of it.”

“We have survivors.”

“Congratulations on survival. Please know there is nothing this station can do for you at this time.”

Tony pulled his hand away. “What an asshole.”

“Told you,” Tom said.

Tony tried again. “Damnation Alley, we are a privately funded shelter with a VIP and scientific experts.”

“We have VIPS and scientific experts too.”

Tony groaned and looked at me. “What is this? My bunker is better than yours? What the fuck. Sorry.” He depressed the button again. “Damnation Alley I am not playing games with you. My name is Anthony Garrison of Global Security and with me is Anna Jenner. Former wife of Senator Gil Jenner. We know your location and I can spew forth the list of VIPs that you have there, but I won’t. Since you won’t give me any information, can you at least get a message to Senator Gil Jenner?”

Nothing.

“Damnation Alley, come in.”

Finally, they returned, and they had lost their arrogant tone. “Protocol One, Senator Jenner never arrived at the facility.”

The second I heard that, I wheezed out all the air from my body and stepped back. Tony tried not to show emotion but I saw it. He froze for a second, hand hovering over the microphone while his jaws clenched.

“Damnation Alley, are you sure? Maybe he’s there.”

“Negative. We lost contact with the Senator in route. I was personally part of the search party that went out after impact.”

I walked from the switch room, I couldn’t listen anymore.

Tony asked more questions and the more he asked, the less I wanted to hear. I picked up enough of the conversation to know there was no mistake.

I just started walking. The shock of it all took me over and I really didn’t know where I was headed. I made it to the stairwell that went topside and midway up, I just stopped and sat down.

I didn’t know what to do. The shock was more than I expected. My thoughts were fuzzy and I couldn’t move. I literally couldn’t move.

Tony came blasting through the fail safe door, as if in a panic looking for me. He stopped suddenly and was breathing heavily. “There you are.”

I just stared at my hands.

“I’m sorry. I really am.”

I felt my lips tremble and I rubbed my hands together.

“Are you okay?”

I closed my eyes, trying to absorb it. “Um, yeah. I’ll be okay.”

But that wasn’t the truth. Truth was, I didn’t know.

Gil.

He planned everything. He had prepared for anything and everything about survival except for the possibility that he wouldn’t survive.

I didn’t know how much more heartbreak I could take.

In my soul and in my mind, I truly believed and envisioned Gil doing well, locked down in a high end shelter. But that wasn’t the case.

Gil didn’t make it.

The words didn’t make sense.

The whole situation did not make sense.

Not long before I had been waiting for something to jump out of the darkness, out of nowhere, and it now it had.

August 15

Poor Anna.

Did I want people to think that again? They would. Less, if they didn’t see how it affected me.

I was determined not to be Poor Anna again.

Poor Anna lost her son. Poor Anna lost the father of her child and the man who built all this for her.

Poor Anna has everything she needs to survive except a reason to live.

That was not how I wanted to be perceived. I asked Tony and Tom not to tell anyone. The others didn’t need to know.

After the news, I took a few minutes on the stairs then went up to watch as almost everyone went out to enjoy the air and the fires.

Funny how we dreaded the fires that burned out our world, yet we celebrated their light that night.

I stood at the blast door watching them. Tony stood with me. He asked me a few more times if I was all right. Each time I told him the same thing. I would be fine.

At one point, Tony said. “Well, I’m not. I’m in shock over this. I didn’t not expect this.”

My response was only, “Can we not talk about it?”

So we stood in silence.

The temperature hadn’t dropped much by the time Duke called it a night for everyone. Nelly didn’t go out. She stayed back with the children.

When we all retreated, it was good to see that Spencer came out of his room. He didn’t know me well, yet he asked if everything was okay because I looked like something happened.

Was I that transparent?

Maybe it was showing because I was processing it so much. Or at least trying to.

Skyler had left me a list of items removed from storage to stock the kitchen. I decided to enter them into the tablet, to take my mind off of things. But instead I found myself going through all of Jackson’s saved pictures.

Life had changed drastically and for the worse in such a short span of time. That happy go lucky woman, holding her teenage son, was gone.

Would she ever return?

After finishing the work, I decided to turn in. It wasn’t late and almost everyone was still awake. I was hungry, and decided to go for a snack. A fresh sheet of paper was on the cupboards. Even though Melissa felt we didn’t need to track what we used in the kitchen, Nelly did. So out of courtesy, I marked down that granola bar, then opened the cupboard to retrieve it.

It struck me as odd because Skyler had written down that he stocked ten boxes of bars when clearly he did not. I wasn’t going to fuss about it. I’d make my adjustments in the morning, yet I noted it on the checklist.

I read from a history book in my room until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. That was how I wanted it. To fall asleep without taking a chance of tossing and turning with thoughts of Jackson and Gil.

I woke at the rooster crow of the alarm, and as I did, I felt a tickle to my nose.

Believing some bug made it into the bunker and was crawling on me, I jumped up to discover the reason. The wayward long dark hair danced across my pillow.

Joie was sleeping in my bed and her hair was the nose tickle culprit.

I wasn’t going to wake her, but she rolled over.

“Hey,” I said. “Did you have a bad dream?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“You’re sleeping in my bed.”

“Daddy put me in here. He said you wouldn’t mind. He had an emergency.”

“Daddy had an emergency?” I sprang up.

“Are you mad I am in bed? He didn’t want me along.”

“No, that’s fine. I’m not mad at all. It was nice. When Jack… Jackson was a little boy, he’d always slip in bed with me.” Hearing my own words made me stop. The reality slap hit me. It was a daily occurrence when I woke up. A chest punch of pain that reminded me every day my son was gone. I pulled myself together and slipped from bed. “How long has daddy been gone?”

“The window picture was dark.”

That told me he was gone long enough for his daughter to fall back to sleep. I got dressed and asked Joie if she wanted to go to the ladies room with me. She did.

I figured I would freshen up, then get coffee and find Tony. I didn’t know whether to be concerned or pissed about the fact that he didn’t wake me.