Darkness upon the Land

Three seconds of a complete absence of white noise passed before Reuben, who had stopped in front of the door when everything shut off, cocked his head to one side and rolled his eyes upward.

“That wasn’t funny,” he stated in a solemn tone.

Alexia’s heart began hammering so hard she could hear it as well as feel it, and she immediately sucked in a deep breath to help her remain calm. In through the nose, out through the mouth, slow and steady. His attention shot to her.

“You gonna be all right?”

“Haven’t broken anything yet.”

“Well, now we go to plan B.” He stepped back to the desk and set his gear bag on the chair. After rummaging through a side pocket, he pulled out an old-fashioned paper map that he carried to the window.

She gazed down at the screen of the PIT phone in her hand. The images flickered as icons dropped off, and then it switched to a plain black background with the words “No Service” glowing in white letters.

She thought she heard a boom in the distance.

He pulled aside the curtains before unfolding the paper, and after scanning it for a few seconds quietly stated, “Come here a minute, please.”

Reuben Baldridge, the memory savant who could quote whole books word for word and calculate mathematic formulas in his head, was also functionally illiterate. Modern technology helped him to cope with his handicap, and as she stepped closer to him to look at the map, she suddenly realized how much smaller his world had just become.

There was just enough sunlight now to shine upon the graphic layout as he pointed to a south-central corner of the depiction of Baton Rouge. “This is where we are, right?”

“Right.”

His finger slid toward a top corner of the map. “And we have to travel northwest in order to get to the bridge. Now that we’re on foot, the shortest distance has become a straight line. We’ll be cutting through neighborhoods on roads I’m not familiar with. You’re gonna tell me the names of those roads so that I can tell you what road to look for next as we leave the city.”

“We’re going to walk ninety miles?”

Reuben leveled his gaze at her. “Your ancestors did more trudging than that after they were shipped out of Nova Scotia. Yeah, I think we can walk ninety miles.”

As Alexia grasped one side of the paper she realized she could hear distant voices now. Talking, and sometimes shouting, seemed to drift in from both inside and outside the building. But her anxiety faded a bit as she traced her own forefinger along the map and stated the names of the roads they would need to look for.

The neighborhoods he mentioned were cross-cut with what now looked like a misguided entanglement of streets, so there were several to name off before they would finally reach a main road that led to the interstate and the only bridge that could get them across the Mississippi River. At least focusing on their plan to evacuate helped to settle her nerves.

She had named only about five streets when the shouting from outside became more adamant and loud enough to intrude on her conscious thinking. Movement at the top of the pane caught her attention as a plaintive whining noise also became apparent.

“Rube? Surely that isn’t...?”

With her peripheral vision she saw him also turn his attention to the top of the window. A couple of people ran by on the distant sidewalk and the shouting increased even more as a plummeting jetliner moved vertically across the clear blue sky.

She grasped his upper arm with the hand she had been sliding across the map and gasped. “Oh my God.”

Instead of taking his cue to duck or rapidly scoot away from her, he gripped Alexia by the arm as well and pushed her toward the bed.

“Grab your bag and get out of the room now!”

She was half surprised the duffle bag didn’t bounce away from her as she snatched it. And Reuben dismissed all sense of propriety as he grabbed her arm again with one hand and his gear bag with the other. They dashed for the door, and he actually kicked the banjo case back into her room and the door shut behind them.

“Fight it!” He barked as they scrambled down the hall.

She knew that because of his proximity to her, he could feel the vibrations of a threatening outburst. But before she could react to his order, a discordant boom and rumble slightly muffled the screams that had become mixed in with the shouting.

The building trembled, and the vibration she felt from it didn’t help in her efforts to contain her abnormality. At least they were running, and physical activity helped. But as more explosions thundered around them, she doubted it would make much difference.

Displays and artwork hanging on the walls tumbled to the floor as they sprinted along the hallway and into the atrium. They abruptly halted in front of the closed, sliding double doors that barred their exit. The tremors ceased even before the desk clerk leaning against those doors glanced over at them. Screams and rumbling persisted.

The glass before them was darkly tinted, multi-layered, and bullet proof. The desk clerk, a heavy set man of Hispanic origin, was trying to pry at the doors with a metal ruler. In his hysteria he gasped something to them in Spanish.

“We need something heavier,” Reuben replied even though he probably understood only part of what was said. He dropped the gear bag and kneeled in front of it to quickly procure a sheathed hunting knife.

The clerk’s eyes widened as Reuben unsheathed the eight-inch blade and strode to the doors. “You aren’t supposed to have that!”

Actually he did have clearance for that knife, but this was no time to explain. “You can report me after we get outta here.”

As his success at wedging a tool into the seam of the doors was quicker, Alexia realized she heard shouting and pounding back in the hallway. A mother and her eight-year-old daughter had also recently taken up residence, and she set her duffel bag beside his gear.

“Somebody’s trapped!” She ran back into the hallway.

Two doors down the mother repeatedly shouted for help as she fruitlessly hammered away at the door while the daughter cried. The security mechanism hadn’t been taken off lock before the power went out, so they were trapped inside.

Alexia pushed and pulled on the door handle as she yelled, “Are you all right?”

“Let us out!” the mother screamed.

Although there was nothing she could do, fire code specified another way out. But the backup generator was out as well as the main power, so the window would also be locked. It was also in a direction she knew they wouldn’t want to go.

“Grab a chair! Break out the window!”

“It’s burning everywhere outside!”

“It’s the only way to get out!”

“Alex!” Reuben called from the lobby. “We need your help to pull!”

“I’ll come back!” She shouted at the door before sprinting back to the exit.

The men had managed to pry the doors apart enough to slip their fingers into the seam and begin pulling them away from each other.

“Get in front of me.” Reuben shifted his grip higher on the door. “Grab hold and put your weight into it!”

She wondered how much good her measly weight would be, but Alexia leaned into his chest and stomach as she pulled on her lower position at the door. Her nostrils were assailed by the stench of burning fuel and rubble … and hair and flesh. She had to make herself focus on making the doors creep apart inch by inch, until finally they were wide enough the clerk could squeeze through.

As they grabbed their bags to slip out behind him, she gasped, “That mother and daughter might still be trapped.”

“We’ll check.”

The shouts were occasional, but sobbing and wailing persisted in the voices that seemed to drift around them as they strode toward the end of the building. All around them were columns of black smoke mixed with plumes of dust billowing toward the sky, contributing to the reek. There had been more than a plane crash to cause all this. The air was hot and gusty. As they rounded the corner, the sight caused her to gasp and immediately have to contain an outburst.

Fire blazed in numerous locations and yet seemed to follow a pattern, again from more than the plane. When she remembered the multiple explosions they’d heard, Alexia realized a gas line must have also been set off. People all around the city had just been injured or killed, and dozens had already started roaming the streets. Blood and burns were apparent on many of them. Had gas been run to the residence hall, she and Reuben could have been among them.

But there was no time to survey the devastation or ponder fortune. They easily found the window to the room with the trapped occupants because the mother was desperately flinging a chair at it. Although not bulletproof, the glass in the windows was a heavy-duty safety composition, and it didn’t give in to her efforts.

“It needs a weak spot,” he muttered.

He set the gear bag down again and squatted beside it to procure a leather pouch that looked like it could hold a horseshoe. The slingshot he removed was an item he didn’t have clearance to carry, but responsible Reuben never gave security any reason to discover it. This was no barefoot babe’s toy. It was a wrist sling designed to be a hunting weapon engineered for accuracy and high velocity. Although it didn’t have the range of a pistol, it could be every bit as lethal.

As he stood, he shouted to the pair to move away from the window as he gestured to one side with his other hand. They disappeared from view, and he raised the slingshot with his left hand while pulling back its line with the right.

The round steel pellet pierced the glass with a pop, and the hole it left was ringed for a few inches with a web work of lines.

“Hit it again!” He called.

The mother assaulted the window with renewed vigor. The lines grew longer with her first attack, and reached the edge of the frame upon her second attempt. The third blow caused the glass to shatter and cascade into thousands of tiny pieces.

Although the shards were supposed to be dull, she threw a blanket over the sill before sending her daughter through. Both of them helped the sniffling girl to the ground, and the mother quickly followed.

“I can’t thank you enough!” She gasped as her feet hit the grass. “But we’re not staying around here!”

She grabbed her daughter’s hand and quickly strode toward the front of the building, and Alexia and Reuben wasted no time in following them. With no break in his stride, he unbuckled his belt and slid the pouch to his hip before buckling back up.

“Sure that’s a good idea?” Alexia asked. She’d known about the slingshot most of the time she knew him, and naturally never revealed his possession of it. They were good at keeping each other’s secrets.

He slipped the weapon into its pouch. “Ever seen me act on a bad idea?”

As she tried to remember anything he’d ever done that could qualify, she suddenly recalled what he did with the black case back in the building.

“You’re not really going to leave your banjo here, are you?”

There was a tone of resignation in his voice. “I have to accept the fact it’s too heavy for me to carry all the way to Esperanza.”

Reuben had so few possessions compared to most people, and that banjo was probably the most expensive item he owned. He began learning to play the instrument over ten years ago, and Alexia had to admit he was pretty darn good. It seemed to be such a rueful fate for him to leave it behind.

At the front of the building, mother and daughter took off to the right, but he gestured toward the left. She glanced back at the pair as they headed the other direction.

A twinge of worry pulsed through her. “They didn’t take anything with them.”

“Mama looks like she knows where she’s going,” he replied.

She was still concerned, but was also grateful there were no shouts of “Baldridge! Gautreaux! Get back here!” There were still plenty of people milling around.

Now that they had some distance from the fires, the temperature felt like a little over sixty degrees. That could seem slightly chilly at first, but she knew it would prove to be almost perfect for the rate at which they would be walking. This otherwise would have been a beautiful day in late March. Strained voices continued to waft from other people who were outside.

They marched along the sidewalk until they turned left again to cut across a park-like area that would take them to the nearby neighborhood.

“Fisher,” Reuben stated the next road to look for as they turned right on the first road.

The suburban setting was quieter. The residents seemed to be gathered in clusters and gawked at the columns of smoke, and pretty much ignored the couple. Even when they cut across yards to reach the next road more quickly, nobody seemed to notice them. And neither of them said much in the roughly forty-five minutes it took to finally reach the business street that would take them to the interstate.

They heard the commotion before they could see what was going on.

“Good Lord,” he murmured. “The morning news got everybody stirred up already.”

Alexia could feel her heart begin to hammer again as she looked upon the street before them. Stalled vehicles filled the road, some with their engines still running. The newer cars which were navigated by the traffic-control satellites were unable to move without any signal, and what few older vehicles might be in the mass were unable to slip free from the gridlock. At the time all power was lost many people were either on their way to work or perhaps leaving the city as they had planned to do. Only a few cars and trucks still had people in them because most had been abandoned by their drivers. Those who were staying inside were probably trying to avoid the chaos that surrounded them.

Yelling, shouting, and screaming were mixed with the clamor of shattering glass, splintering wood and banging metal. People were either running along the street or breaking into buildings. The runners seemed to be either loaded down with armfuls of goods or intent on obtaining those goods. Occasionally somebody would try to wrestle away somebody else’s loot, and fights were breaking out in various spots along the street.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” she gasped.

“We can’t.” There was almost a growl to his voice. “Heading south would delay us longer if we tried to head down to the next bridge.” With a frown he gazed to the left. “What we can do is stay outta the street and behind these buildings. At least we won’t be in the middle of that mess.” His attention returned to her. “How’re you doing?”

“I want to get far, far away from here.”

“Just keep it together, and we’ll be outta here before you know it.” He grasped her right hand with his left. “You’ve been doing great. All you gotta do is keep it up.”

Reuben kept a hold of her hand as they strode toward the alley and lots that skirted the rear sides of the businesses. As she felt the warmth and strength of his hand gripping hers, she suddenly suspected why he was hanging on to her. As part of his overdeveloped propriety he usually made it a point to keep some distance. But this way he had an early warning in case she became sufficiently disturbed.

He had good reason to be wary. People were darting back and forth between the businesses, occasionally running past the two of them with armloads of food and sundries. She assumed the looters were taking the supplies back to their homes in the nearby neighborhood.

Three men who weren’t as burdened as most of the others ran out from a restaurant’s back door and onto a loading platform that was high enough for delivery trucks to back up to. They were young, probably in their early twenties, and had exactly the look that would make Alexia want to stay away from them even though she wasn’t supposed to judge by appearances. Two had long hair, one scraggly and the other pulled back in a ponytail, and the last one’s head was practically shaved. They all had numerous and large tattoos, they all had on rumpled clothing that looked like they hadn’t changed for a few days, and they all had rings bristling from their ears and noses and lips.

“Look over there!” The one with the ponytail barked as he pointed straight at them.

The two others chimed in together, and she couldn’t discern everything they said beyond the words “What they got.” But she did hear the shaven one exclaim “C’mon!”

Two of them shoved their plunder to the scraggly-haired man, and then they leaped from the platform and sprinted toward Alexia and Reuben.