Days 7 and 8, all at once and more than a little late

He was met with the thick rustling of ambient static. There were still a good number of kinks to be worked out in the phone system, but Megan’s voice came through clear and distinct enough.

“Just checking in, making sure nothing heavy’s fallen on you or Don.”

He smiled and scratched the back of his neck.

“Not yet. Give it a few hours, though. We’re just getting to the ‘delicate’ stuff, so the machines can’t really do the digging anymore. We’ve more or less gotta go in by hand.”

“You would go in by hand, wouldn’t ya?”

Jack chuckled as Zach’s distinct voice broke in through the receiver. He had a habit of doing that, much to Megan’s chagrin.

“Ew. That’s enough for me. I’ll see you and Don tonight. Have… Fun.”

The receiver clicked and Jack was left alone with his male counterpart.

“Seriously, if you’re down to the delicate stuff, how much longer before you hit the next site?”

“About a week. Probably. This is going to be a lot slower going than it was before, just ripping mounds of rubble apart. Now we’re being watch-dogged to make sure we don’t ‘desecrate’ the bodies.”

“Ugh. All right. Till tonight, then.”

“Yeah. Later.”

He hung up and yawned, body still reeling from the efforts of the day. There was still another half to go — the whole afternoon — but he was beyond questioning it. Life was reasonably good, perhaps better than it had been before the blast, even if his newfound purpose brought him into contact with terrors the likes of which most people would never have to witness, crushed skulls with grey-pink matter leaking out in all directions, squeezed through porous skin and micro-fractured skeleton…

Jack fell to his knees, his hand going to his mouth as he felt his breakfast fighting with his stomach, trying desperately to stay down as cold beads of sweat bled through his tank-top and pulled at his skin, making it clammy to the touch. It took a few minutes for him to regain his composure, after which he left the trailer and returned to the work site, just as the whistle blew once more to signal the end of their break.

The day’s work went quickly, the episode in the trailer left forgotten in the back of his mind, far away from the immediate task of clearing debris and tallying bodies, calculating damage and recalculating their estimates, trying to divine how long it would be before this one building, just one of a whole city, would be cleared and they could move onto the next.

It wasn’t the first one Jack had worked on and it showed in well in his manner and reflected negatively in his resolve. While he was more confident in his behavior and, thus, infinitely more efficient than the bumbling ass he had been at the start of the labor, he was growing rapidly disillusioned about his chosen course as it seemed that, no matter how much rubble they cleared away and how many bodies they sent the morgue, they were making only the most insignificant of dents in the sum damage.

The sun continued its celestial course and fell upon the Western horizon, pink and orange brilliance splitting the sky in lancing beams as the piercing whistle blew once more and the foreman yelled, freeing them of their obligations for the rest of the day. Don caught up with him as he was heading to their truck and slapped an envelope in his hands.

“Payday, kid. Can’t keep expecting me to collect for you, y’know? Gotta set up some kinda deposit system.”

Jack shook his head.

“There’s something comforting about having the money in hand, knowing that it exists and isn’t just a number in a system. Feels safer.”

“I guess I can sympathize. Anything certain is nice after what we went through, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The doors of Don’s pickup were disproportionately light, compared to the rest of the vehicle. They slammed shut after the two occupants had settled into their seats and turned the key, engine igniting with a raw roar. The frame shuddered beneath them and jerked as Don threw them into reverse, backing out of the destruction yard and out onto the open road, back toward Stratford.

One of the consequences of the destruction of such a major nexus of Western civilization was that, few survivors though there were, the remaining metropolises of the North-east had become noticeably more cramped with the influx of new residents who worked outside the destroyed areas, but lived within them. The cost of living, due to both this and the post-destruction economy dipping into the shitter, had taken such a sharp upward turn that it was common for entire families to share a one room apartment.

Thankfully, Jack’s sister was off at school. Her living situation was relatively unaffected, other than slightly more expensive gasoline that she wouldn’t stop bitching about. His mother, though, had lived with him and his father in Stamford, their house now a pile of cinders and wreckage. The obvious solution had, therefore, been to group together with the survivors her son had befriended and, between the five of them, rent a reasonably sized living quarter. This was made possible by the government’s refund program.

All right, so it was less of a refund program and more a result of mass blackmail on the part of the survivors and their loved ones. It was difficult for an already financially strapped government to deny their outcry and, before long, the survivors all had money in hand and Jack had taken to living in a three bedroom apartment with his mother, Don, Zach and Megan.

Their proximity had sparked several unexpected developments. Most notably, sleeping arrangements had taken an odd turn when Megan had found herself cast out of the room she shared with Jack’s mother when Don had revealed his softer side and Dawn had openly swooned. It was romantic to think of it now, but, at the time, there had been much grumbling and a little in the way of inappropriate pranks, justified by the new couple’s inappropriate and public displays of affection.

“Again,” thought Jack, “they aren’t inappropriate so much as they even exist at all.”

An involuntary shiver ran down his spine.

The drive home was punctuated by small talk, peppered with Don’s burlesque sense of humor. Stratford came up on the highway after less than an hour, another nigh-beneficial side effect of the attacks being the near-complete dissolution of speed limits on affected highways, and the duo pulled into a parking spot right out front of the large complex of which their modest home was only a minute fraction.

Okay, more like a fifth. Still, that’s less than half.

Dinner was waiting for them when they entered, delectable smells wafting into waiting nostrils and drawing them to the table where the other two young ones already sat, Dawn still up and throwing together the salad. As Jack sat down, Don walked over to her and slid his arms around her waist, pressed himself up against her and leaned in, kissing her on the nape of her neck. She giggled as his beard tickled her flesh and turned back to face him, gifting him with a quick peck on the cheek before swatting playfully at him until he made his way over to the table, where Jack had his head down in his arms, holding in gastro-intestinal horrors for the second time that day.

As soon as they were all sitting, their plates piled high with mashed potatoes au gratin and London broil, the news came on and their attention, other than their chewing mouths, was diverted to the small, kitchen television.

“Hello, Stratford.”

The original anchor had been replaced by a young, inoffensively attractive woman. Considering his nervous breakdown a few months prior, on the heels of the Nuclear Holocaust (or so the networks were calling it), the turn of events had not been especially surprising.

“Cleanup efforts continue in the North-Eastern United States, but the question on everyone’s mind is, ‘When can we start rebuilding?’ Reports have not been optimistic as, according to sources within the labor union, the workers have just now hit the delicate part of their jobs and, in tandem with union disputes over compensation for work in the irradiated areas, there are still entire sections of the North-East that have not even been touched yet.

“Less asked, but no less considered, is the equally pertinent question of, ‘Who has done this to us?’ Reports from the United States government have been limited and terse, referencing highly classified data tied up in at least four of the major intelligence agencies and a number of private defense contractors. We’re almost afraid to ask, but, is it possible our government could have known?

“For today’s sports…”

The click of the remote was far too audible in the suddenly silent room, the flash of the screen and the whine of the cathode ray tube powering down in the television. The last thing anyone wanted, least of all the four survivors, was to even consider that the United States government had had any sort of foreknowledge as to the events of their little Hell.

Still, if there was even the remotest possibility, wasn’t it worth considering? If it could bring potential closure or, even better, justice, would that be worth the potential damage it could do to both their spirits and country? These questions were left unvoiced for the rest of the dinner and, even later, as they were trekking off to bed, their silence continued.

The next day was Jack’s day off. He and Don had staggered their workdays so that there was always someone at the work site, in case anything important turned up. It was a languorous day of sitting in a room, reading a bad pulp novel about a nuclear apocalypse in small town USA and playing a portable game system. He was surprised mostly at himself and his newfound love of manual labor and a developing distaste for the electronic media that had, until so recently, all but ruled his life.

Megan and Zach returned a little after three in the afternoon, a long day at the local community college wearing them down to the point of monosyllabic questions and answers.

“How was your day?” he would ask one or the other.

“Fine,” said Zach.

“Ugh,” offered Megan, “Yours?”

“Boring.”

See? Two syllables for Jack.

They would then have a raunchy and nigh-incestuous threesome. Well, no, they wouldn’t, but the thought of kicking Zach out of the room and relieving Megan of her clothes was never far from Jack’s mind. It was usually while he was having these thoughts that her new boyfriend would call, as though he could determine from miles away the precise current of imagery running through Jack’s perverted noggin.

“Must be fucking prescient,” thought Jack.

The three hooked up a console to the kitchen television and tried to decipher the miniscule images – a hectic barrage of colors and lights that made sense only to those with a controller in hand and a wellspring of experience to draw on. Two rounds in, Jack, as he inevitably did these days, bowed out and left the two to their procrastination, grabbed a snack from their malnourished pantry and went back to the room he shared with Zach. He came back out, after another spot of reading, to use the refurbished-but-barely-functioning computer and check for any new information on the cleanup efforts, particularly in Stamford and Norwalk.

His mom arrived home, as she always did, just before six and they started on dinner. Another reason it was good for him to be home on separate days from Don was that, given over to their own devices for the majority of the day, the two laborers were liable to either destroy something or get into conversations that were far more awkward than Jack had any intention of ever continuing. That and, without the older man distracting him, Jack was more than happy to help her with dinner. Don came home to the four others already sitting at the table, food waiting to be served. He also bore an envelope and a gray complexion.

“Jack… Read.”

There was a single slip of thick copier paper in an equally thick security envelope. It summoned Don and him under the umbrella of “all fallout survivors” to northern New Hampshire, to where the government had relocated its base of operations. Under the precepts of martial law, such a request was less of a query and more of a demand. Cars would be provided to chauffeur them to the facility and, eventually, back from it to home.

Obviously, the cleanup crew already knew of it, seeing as they had received the letters to begin with, but why had it been sent there at all? Why not to their home? Regardless, it seemed as though the four of them had a bit more to do before their lives could return to normality.

Dinner was finished in relative silence, no one wishing to discuss the only thing on their minds. Dawn was close to tears during cleanup, uncertain intentions doing little to quell her fear, irrational as it may be, that she might be losing important people in her life once more.

Calls would be made in the morning to arrange for time off and, when she came back the next night, Jack’s mother would return to an empty home.

The cars were prompt - black Lincolns with tinted glass for windows, bulletproof as the reinforced sides of the car. They left after a brief, cold breakfast of whatever semi-nutritious bars they could find in the pantry. The seats were comfortable, but, at five in the morning after a night of nothing but constant thought and worrying, Jack was incapable of staying awake, startled to consciousness every so often by the occasional bump in the road, taking in small, isolated snippets of beautiful, barren countryside. The air grew colder and the heat in the car intensified to match it as they proceeded north.

At one point, Jack awoke to a manner of shouting, a voice only slightly muffled by the rolled up windows. The road was cordoned off by an array of orange and fluorescent yellow cones, like candy corn with gangrene, and a striped, mechanical arm, stretching straight across from what was either a tollbooth or a security checkpoint. The voice was coming from his right, but he paid it little mind until he heard something smash against the window, inches from his face, and felt the car rock with the impact. Spread across the window was the single most grotesque face Jack had ever seen, features angled and twisted, running together as though they’d melted into one another and, judging by the lumps and discoloration – the ashen flesh – they might have.

Armed men in uniform, but no uniform the young laborer recognized, came up from behind and dragged him away by his arms, but as he separated from the window, his flesh stretched and separated, a layer of it remaining behind and exposing the working muscles beneath as his shouts became screams, bloodcurdling outcries that pushed all thoughts of sleep or even rest from Jack’s mind. A club to the back of the head and he was out, the checkpoint was cleared and the vehicle continued on along with its fellows.

Another hour saw them at the gate of the facility; an underwhelming cube jutting from the side of the mountain, though given the size of the mountain itself, this could easily have just been perception. The doors slid open, massive, steel slabs driven slowly outward by slick hydraulics, and the cars slid smoothly into the gaping entryway, which slammed shut behind them with the whine of klaxons and the resonating clunk of two trains meeting head-to-head. Before Jack could truly process what he was seeing, the lights in the cavernous entryway blinked out and he was left in total darkness, just the driver, Zach and him.

That was when the sound started.

It was not a wholly unpleasant sound, at first. A bit grating, no nails on a chalkboard type of terrible, but it seemed like it should stop, something that should resolve at some point. But it didn’t, it wouldn’t and, soon enough, it had gone past irritating and straight to mind-breaking, dull, un-ending, repetitive. The raging roar of something deep within the bowels of the facility, or maybe a high-frequency whine right nearby. It was impossible to tell.

Jack tried covering his ears, but the gesture did him little good. He looked to Don, having similar trouble, and then to the chauffeur, sitting stoic in the front seat. He tapped the man’s shoulder, but to no response. He shook him, pulled hard, and the head rolled back, his sunglasses fell off and it grew apparent that he was unconscious. Soon, Jack saw his vision blur, images swimming before him until they faded entirely, dropping to black.

The light was bright, far too bright for his newly opened eyes. As his eyes adjusted, he found that he was alone. Don must have been taken to a different room or, he thought as he observed his surroundings, was more likely waiting his turn. Cop and courtroom dramas had conditioned him with a certain image of what an interrogation room would likely look like and this, most certainly, was not it. Either dreary or stark white, cast in complete shadow or light with a single table and two-way mirrors on one wall for observation.

Here there was just light. As his eyes took that in, he noticed the bulbs from which it issued. Fluorescent lines of blue-white interlaced with columns of incandescent spheres. It struck him to wonder at the purpose behind the disparity. The lack of a window did not escape his notice, either, though he could see a camera in the corner of the room, up in the ceiling. His malicious side hoped they’d forgotten to filter the image.

“Hello, Jack.”

The voice echoed, making it impossible to determine from whence it came. Presumably a speaker, or a vent of some kind, but he could see neither. A speaker could be hidden in a bulb or, if they were as devious as he suspected, in multiple such fixtures.

“Care to answer some questions?”

No, no he did not. He expressed this sentiment with a one-fingered gesture of defiance.

“Are you sure?”

Forthcoming he was not. Not at the moment, anyway.

“All right, then. Let us know if you change your mind.”

He waited, expecting a shock or the noise again. Maybe he would go unconscious from gas or something, anything to get him talking, but no such input came. No one entered the room and, by that point, his eyes had adjusted, and so he continued to wait.

He twiddled his thumbs and whistled quietly, more to himself than anything else. He felt tired and irritable, sweaty and clammy. Warm.

Definitely warm.

In fact, he could feel the sweat heating up. He could feel it between his shoulder and his side, in his armpit, stinging the flesh. He could feel it sticking to his clothes, his good shirt and equally good pants.

And then he could see it, the incandescent bulbs, lighting up row by row, growing in intensity as their dimmers were raised until they overpowered their fluorescent brothers. He could see the yellow-white light and feel the heat wafting from the bulbs filling the chamber, which suddenly felt far too small, a conveniently efficient sweatbox.

His shirt was the first to go, buttons flying as he ripped it free and flung it aside, a fluttering red flag. The undershirt next, a white wife-beater already stained yellow with sweat and stink, gone and in he pile with his shirt. Shoes and socks and pants, all discarded in due course, Jack struggling with the buckle of his belt in desperation as his body tried desperately to shed enough water to cool off.