William Forstchen - One Second After

He wanted to blow but could see she was exhausted, beleaguered.

“How are you, Caroline?”

“Fine, I guess,” she said woodenly.

He looked down the corridor. The stench was so overwhelming that he felt it should be a visible fog.

“What in hell is going on here?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

She was in shock. He could now see that. The poor girl was numbed, hollow eyed.

“When did you last sleep?”

She looked up at the clock on the wall. It was frozen at 4:50.

Feeble cries echoed down the corridor: “help me, help me, help me…”

“A few hours last night, I guess.”

“Are any other staff here?”

“There’s Janice down on the other wing. I think Waldo is still here.”

“And that’s it?”

She nodded.

“I’ll be right back.”

He braced himself and started down the corridor. All exterior doors were open, but there was no breeze and the heat was suffocating. Yet another building designed for complete climate control and year-round comfort with computerized environmental controls. The small windows in each room barely cracked open, and the temperature inside was as high, perhaps higher than outside.

The first room he looked into revealed an elderly woman; he remembered her as having Alzheimer’s. She was rocking back and forth, sheets kicked off, lying in her own filth.

The next room: two elderly men, one sitting in a motorized wheelchair that no longer moved, the other lying on a bed, the sheets drenched in urine.

They both glanced up at him.

“Son, could you get us some water?” the one in the wheelchair asked, ever so politely. “Sure.”

He backed out of the room and went back to the desk.

“Can I have a pitcher for some water?”

She shook her head.

“We ran out last night.”

“What do you mean, ‘ran out’?”

“Just that. No running water.”

“Don’t you have a reserve tank? Aren’t you supposed to have a reserve somewhere?”

“I don’t know,” she said listlessly. “I think there’s an emergency well that runs off the generator.”

“Jesus Christ.”

He opened the door to the hallway bathroom and recoiled, gagging. A woman was sitting on the toilet, slumped over… dead, already the smell of decay filling the tiny room.

He turned and went back down the main corridor to the kitchen, storming in. One elderly man was there, balanced on his walker, heavy steel fridge door open, a package of hot dogs in his hand, and he was eating them cold.

“Hi there,” the man said. “Care for one?” And he offered the pack up. “No thanks.”

John went over to the sink, turned the taps… nothing. “Damn it.”

Back out in the dining area, he took the lid off a large recessed canister that usually held ice. There was water in the bottom, and taking two juice cups, he filled them up and was back out and down the hall, returning to the room with the two old men. He handed each of them a cup.

“Thank God,” the one in the wheelchair whispered, sipping on it, John having to hold the other cup so that the man in the bed could sip it down.

The man in the wheelchair was wearing an old commemorative cap, “Big Red One—Omaha Beach 1944-2004” emblazoned on it. Pins across the front, which John instantly recognized, Combat Infantry Badge, Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, miniature sergeant’s chevrons. He felt sick looking at the man, sipping the last of the water in the cup and holding it back up.

“Son, I hate to bother you,” the man whispered. “My chair just won’t move. Would you mind getting me another drink?”

“John, where in hell are you?”

It was Jen, her voice shrill.

“Right there, Mom.”

“Sir, I’ll be back shortly,” John said, and he fled the room.

He tried to not look into the rooms as he walked down the corridor. An elderly woman, naked, sitting curled up and crying, a sickly scent from the next room, and he dared to look in…. A body of a bloated man, face yellowing with the beginnings of decay, bedsheets kicked off from his final struggle, his roommate sitting in a chair, looking vacantly out the window.

John reached Tyler’s room, Jen in the doorway, crying.

“We got to take him home,” she said.

For a moment John thought Tyler was dead, head back, face unshaved. The IV was still in his arm. Gravity fed, it was empty. The feeding tube into his stomach was driven by a small electrical pump, the plastic container attached to it… empty.

He was semi-conscious, muttering incoherently.

The smell of feces hung in the room and John struggled to control his stomach. It was something that always defeated him. He prided himself on being a damn good father, but when Mary was alive the diapers was her job. Mary’s chemo was a nightmare, but he had manfully stood by, holding her when she vomited, cleaning her up, then rushing to the bathroom to vomit as well. After she died, when the kids were sick Jen would come over to help. He was horrified by what he had to confront now.

“I’ll clean him up,” Jen said. “You find a gurney so we can move him out to the car.”

“How in hell are you going to clean him up?” John gasped. “Just find a gurney. I’ll take care of the rest.”

He backed out of the room and stormed back down the corridor to the nurses’ station.

“I’m pulling my father-in-law out.”

“Good, you should,” Caroline said quietly.

“How in God’s name can you allow this?”

She looked up at him and then just dissolved into sobs.

“No one’s come into work. I’ve been here since… since the power went off. Wallace and Kimberly—they took off last night—said they had to get home somehow to check on their kids and would come back, but they haven’t. I’ve got a kid at home, too. Her father’s such a bum, shacked up with someone else now. I’m worried he hasn’t gone over to check on her and she’s alone.”

Caroline looked at him, tears were streaming down her face.

“I need a smoke,” John said.

She nodded and fumbled in her purse and pulled out a pack, as if he were asking for one.

He shook his head, reached into his pocket, and took two cigarettes out, offering her one. They lit up. It was a nursing home, but at this moment he felt at least a smoke would mask the smell and help calm her down.

She took a deep drag, exhaled, and the tears stopped.

“I need a gurney to move my father-in-law.”

“I think you’ll find one down the next corridor. Waldo took it a couple of hours ago.”

“When was the last time these people were cleaned, fed, had water?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think, damn it.”

“I think two days ago. Then it just all seemed to unravel. Mr. Yarborough died, then Miss Emily, then Mr. Cohen. No one’s come to take their bodies. Usually the funeral home has the hearse here within a half hour. I think I called, but they haven’t shown up. Mrs. Johnston in room twenty-three fell, I think she broke her hip, and Mr. Brunelli, I think he’s had another heart attack.

“Now they’re all dying. All of them. Miss Kilpatrick is dead in the next room. God, how I loved her,” and she started to sob again.

He remembered Miss Kilpatrick, actually rather young. Bad auto accident, paralyzed from the waist down and in rehab and training before going home. Science teacher at the high school until she was nailed head-on by a drunk, one of her own students.

“She got some scissors and cut her wrists. She’s dead in the sitting room.”

He didn’t even see her as they came in.

“She said she knew what had happened and wouldn’t live through it.”

“Caroline, you’ve got to get help up here.”

“I don’t know. I’m just an LPN. I’m not trained for this, sir.”