Jacqueline Druga - Protocol One

We all did.

I should have been tired but I wasn’t.

Craig and Skyler decided to take on the task of caring for Angel and like everyone else, they were going to bed early.

It was quiet. Tom was working the night shift in the switch room. He was an option to visit if I could just calm down.

Problem for me was, with the quiet of the night came the thoughts and suddenly my mind raced with everything that had happened earlier in the day.

My plan was to go down to the lower level, kick up a fire in the portable fireplace, since no one would see the smoke signal, sip on some wine and just reflect.

Someone else had the same idea.

I spotted the orange glow when I walked in.

Spencer was sitting on one of the couches holding a mug and staring into the fire.

“I’m sorry. Am I interrupting?” I asked.

Being funny, he looked left to right. “Nope. Have a seat. The fire will burn another hour. Enjoy.”

I walked over and sat next to him, turning my body his way to have a face to face conversation.

“What brings you down here?”I asked.

“Reflection.”

“Me, too. Seems we had the same idea.”

He reached over and patted my leg. “How are you?”

I glanced down to my drink. “It’s hitting me.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“I don’t understand what I’m feeling,” I said to him. “I’m afraid to tell Tony.”

“What is it?”

“I feel guilty. Horribly guilty. I feel like I’m in a bad dream and I have this overwhelming feeling of bad. That I did something bad.”

“From taking a life?”

I nodded.

Spencer tightened his lips. “Why wouldn’t you tell Tony that?”

“He’s proud of what I did today.”

“He’s proud of how you reacted.”

“I took two lives today,” I said. “I can’t process all this death. I can’t. And I know what they did and how they acted, and I know their intentions, but no matter what, I still…” I choked on the words. “Killed two men. I can’t forgive myself for that.”

“You will. Eventually, you will.”

“You were a cop. This probably sounds silly to you.”

“Are you kidding me?” Spencer asked. “Anna, it doesn’t matter how many times you fire a gun at someone, you feel it. It bothers you. It bothered me today. Maybe I could have just injured her. We can second guess all we want, but the bottom line is, you feel the way you feel because you are human.”

“But even now, in this new world?”

“Right now, in this new world, it’s even more important not to lose that. You hear me? You make the decisions based on the good of humanity. That’s what makes you the person you are.”

I whispered a thank you and took a sip of my wine. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You don’t have to tell me. But… why did you want to stay behind and die when the comet was coming?”

Spencer’s first reaction was a heavy exhale.

“You changed your mind.”

“I didn’t want to die, Anna. No one does. And I still feel bad for coming here.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason I wanted to watch it all end. I don’t want to be a bother.”

“Spencer, you are not a bother.”

He paused, then very seriously looked at me. “I’m sick, Anna.”

“The pneumonia will take some time to…”

“No, Anna, I am sick. I was diagnosed three months ago with ALS -Lou Gehrig’s disease. I was set to retire in January. My health wasn’t holding up. My legs get weak, and some days my arms don’t want to move. It started out so minor that I never noticed. But then it hit me.”

I reached over and laid my hand on his arm. “I am so sorry.”

“No, I am. Because unless, I get up the nerve to walk out that door, then eventually I’ll be a burden to you all.”

“No, you won’t. You can’t say that and you can’t think that way. This is a different life now. None of us know what is going to happen. In this world now, we never know when it will be our time. And you’re not a man with an illness, Spencer. In this shelter you are another survivor and you’re doing the same thing as the rest of us. Doing the best we can, taking it one day at a time.”

“Thank you for that.”

“Thank you…” I waved my hand out. “For this.”

Spencer raised his cup. “Here’s to taking it one day at a time.

I clinked my glass to his. “One day at a time.”

October 20

By all research, models and predictions given by Peter, our veil of darkness was supposed to lift weeks earlier.

For days following the trigger day, we watched, waited and hoped.

Nothing.

Too much had gone on globally and his prediction was out the window. It sent Peter into a semi-depressed state.

Despite how nice the bunker was, it was cold and because we didn’t want to push the boilers, it hovered around sixty degrees. To those who lived outside, I guess that was a tropical paradise. To us, we thrived on the once a day, one hour fireplace hovering.

We set it up at bed time.

The fire place as designed as a backup. Enough wood to get us through the impact winter and darkness until we could go out and retrieve more.

I don’t know which brilliant mind did the math, but they were way off.

It was the one thing we had to ration.

I think we were fairing rather well, immersing ourselves into odd routines once the dust from our August attack had settled.

Physically, everyone was back to normal. Clarisse had been confined to the third floor of the hive and was allowed to walk freely with an escort. That escort was Spencer. He wanted the exercise.

Mentally we stayed strong as well, and I attributed that to Craig.

One night, not long after the attack, Craig, like such a teacher, called us to attention. “If we don’t take preventive measures, we could very well be facing something we didn’t think of. Without sunlight, without exposure, the body goes into a mode. Lack of sunlight also decreases serotonin. We need stimulus day and evening to keep us going. If not S.A.D. is a very serious condition.”

“S.A.D?” Tony asked.

“Seasonal Affect Disorder.”

“S.A.D.” Tony nodded once. “So if we don’t do something, we’re all gonna be sad?”

We laughed at Tony’s silly comment.

Craig did not. “This is serious. I am going to set up a schedule for each and every one of you. And you need to follow it or we will not be in a good mental state when the darkness ends. And yes, it is ironic that the depression state is an acronym called ‘Sad’.”

Craig and Tony worked together to make sure our down time wasn’t enough to make us crazy. We all had jobs, and then a second job in another department we trained in.

I reviewed a daily inventory, worked four hours a day in the Switch Room and trained with Craig.

The first order of business was learning an IV. Go figure.

We had game night on Tuesdays and Thursdays and every evening after dinner, we wound down around the fire and played that jukebox.

Of course, the jukebox stopped working for some reason.

Things were going smoothly.

I started a healing process. I still looked at Jackson’s picture every day, talked to him and listened to his music. It still hurt, but it hurt a little less.

I missed my son. How much of an asset he would have been.

One evening, we had fresh salad for the first time with dinner. Melissa was amazing, her mini green house produced radishes, leaf lettuce and snap peas. We still had a couple weeks on the carrots and tomatoes, but she proved to us we were going to be fine.

And that was what we worried about.

Not now, not next month, but the future.