Disclaimer: I still don't own any of the characters who appeared on the CBS Television show Jericho.
Author's Note: I apologize for yet another delay between posting chapters. Sometimes life happens faster than it can be coped with. I will be out of state for the next few weeks, so unfortunately there will be yet another delay. Eventually we will get there!
Chapter IV: The Catastrophe
September 20, 2006
It was nearing 6pm as Jake approached the shortcut which would take him directly to Green Ranch rather than through the center of town. Jake was idly listening to the President of the United States address the nation.
"And yet we all know that these divisions pale in comparison to the fundamental dangers posed by the threat of terror. We have an internal commitment to leave the world a better place for our children and grandchildren. This has always been our promise and will always be . . ." the old radio cut out and Jake leaned over to adjust it. As he straightened up, he came face-to-face with an older station wagon that had drifted into his lane. He tried to swerve out of its path, but the almost head-on collision was inevitable, spinning Jake and the Roadrunner around and into a ditch.
Jake vaguely remembered the impact of the accident. The next thing he knew, he was awakening at a precarious angle, staring up toward the ceiling of the Roadrunner. He couldn't catch his breath, and his right thigh felt like it was on fire. He sat up with a great deal of effort, his head pounding unmercifully. He inspected his thigh, noting a decent-sized gash. There was no obvious foreign body, and the bleeding was minimal. He marshaled his strength and got out of the car, willing his head to stop swimming.
Standing on his right leg wasn't nearly as good an idea as it had seemed when he first woke up; the first few steps took his breath away. He limped across the street to the station wagon, packed heavily as though the occupants were on an extended vacation. An older couple, he discovered upon closer inspection. Neither had survived. Jake sent up a small prayer of thanksgiving that there were no children involved; the last thing he needed was the life of another child on his conscience. This was certainly bad enough.
Jake closed the door of the car and leaned against it, wondering what had caused the driver to cross the center line. It was then that he noticed what they must have seen: a mushroom cloud in the western sky – probably above Denver, he calculated mechanically, his brain attempting to come to terms with what he was seeing. Denver had been behind him, so he had not noticed it earlier. It probably caused his radio to go out, his painful brain reasoned.
Jake looked around him. Some time had passed since the impact of the collision; and he wasn't sure how long he had been unconscious. He hadn't seen another vehicle during that time. He calculated that he was ten miles from Green Ranch, about seven from Jericho. He had spoken with Heather when he left Denver, she would be expecting him. She would be terrified if he didn't show up, given the circumstances. He started limping along the highway as rapidly as he could manage between his injured leg and spinning head.
He hadn't gotten far when he heard the sound of childish voices.
"Help! Mister!"
"Mister!"
Jake turned, trying to locate the source of the voices and determine if they were real or yet another nightmare of the many that plagued him for the last few weeks. The sun was sinking low in the sky, but he could make out the profiles of two children running toward him from a farm road that branched off the highway.
"Mister, please, save her," one of the children called to him.
Jake started to limp toward them as quickly as he could. "Why? What is it?" he asked.
"They need your help," the little girl cried out, "Mister, please."
"Mister, please. I-I think they're dying," the boy cried.
"Come on, Mister," the little girl took Jake's hand and hurried him back along the farm road. Jake hadn't spent a great deal of time in Jericho in the past few years, but he thought he recognized the two children as McCall grandchildren. Joanna's youngest, and maybe one of Rachael's, he pondered as he hobbled and hopped along with them.
Mayor Johnston Green was surprised to find Deputy Bill Kohler and Deputy Jimmy Taylor and his family in his entry when came down the stairs.
"Gail, what's wrong," he asked.
"Oh, Johnston," Gail replied, kneeling in front of a tearful Woody Taylor.
They told Johnston what they had seen. He went to the telephone, but it was dead.
"Nothing," he reported, replacing the receiver and striding quickly down the hall, trying to collect his wits. He had no idea what was going on, but he was already thankful for the Planning Ahead Committee and all of the preparations his father had insisted upon.
"Alright, it looks like the explosion came from the west, maybe Denver. Jimmy, get on the Radio. I want everybody at the Sheriff's station. Activate the Ranger Squadron on call. I'll pick up Eric, let's move." Johnston gave out marching orders.
"Alright," Jimmy responded, ready to go after participating so many drills over the years.
"Dad, don't leave," said a concerned and tearful Woody Taylor.
"Come here," Jimmy said, kneeling down and giving Woody a hug. "I'll be back real soon, alright?"
Jimmy stepped out the front door and Johnston started after him when Gale stopped him.
"Johnston. . . Jake," she said, knowing her oldest would be driving home from Denver that day.
"We'll find him," Johnston replied, giving her a hug.
Chaos met Johnston as he entered Town Hall. Norman Perry and Shep Cale were arguing over mine evacuation, the Sheriff had questions about emergency plan even after all of the drills they had held, and one of the deputies asked if the country was under attack. Johnston could only think how much more chaotic it would have been without the drills and preparation.
Johnston requested Geiger counters, and Deputy Bill Kohler went to get them. At that point Grey Anderson arrived in the office.
"Ah, Grey, good to see you," said Johnston, a subtle hint of sarcasm in his voice. He thanked Bill for the Geiger counters and set the box on the counter. "We can always use the extra help."
"Oh, thank you Johnston, Eric" Grey responded, oblivious to the jibe. "What can I do to help?"
"We'll let you know," Johnston replied somewhat curtly.
"Does it work, Dad?" Eric asked as Johnston turned on one of the Geiger counters and scanned the air.
"Looks O.K.," Johnston replied as the Geiger counter emitted minimal clicking. As he turned it off, Theresa Frederickson rushed into the office with her two teenaged children, clearly agitated.
"Mr. Mayor . . . Sheriff . . . the bomb," she said.
"Yes, Ma'am. So far, there's no sign of any radiation. We'll keep checking around town, but . . ." Johnston tried to reassure her.
"No, no, no! No, Sir," Theresa interrupted emphatically. "The bus isn't back from the field trip with my daughter. Well, DO something! You should be out there, looking for Stacy."
Clearly this was not part of any scenario they had practiced.
"Ma'am. Theresa." Johnston tried to get the attention of the distraught woman. "This is the first we've heard of it, but we'll deal with it, alright? Just please don't worry."
"That's easy for you to say," Theresa shot back, "You don't have a child out there."
Johnston decided to overlook the last comment and concentrate on something constructive. He pulled out a map and laid it across the opposite counter "So the school bus was here, at the caves. O.K., who can tell me where they might have gone for repairs?"
"There's Wilson's Garage off Route 160," Wayne Carroll the Fire Chief suggested.
"Or Cedar Run Road," Eric proposed. "Principal McVey said they took a detour before the phone cut out."
"Well I figure with two teams there are only so many places they can be," Chuck Dawes the Sheriff put in.
"What about the parents?" Grey Anderson shouted across the office, stirring up the already tense group.
"Folks, Folks! FOLKS!" Johnston raised his voice to get their attention in the din. "Look I know that every part of you wants to just rush out there. I don't blame you. But as your friend I'm asking you to think about that. You're safe here. Now what if, God forbid, you go out there and you get stranded, and your child comes back an orphan? You know the Sheriff and his men. You know they'll find your kids. So... please." Johnston turned back to the map and to planning search teams while Grey continued to look aggravated.
It was all Jake could do to keep us with the kids; small talk was out of the question. He really didn't know what he was getting himself into until they rounded a bend in the road and saw the lights of the school bus in the dark. Of course, he thought to himself, probably a field trip.
"The deer went crazy and started running all over the road," the little girl cried, indicating the lifeless body under the right front wheel of the bus.
"Alright, just don't look at it," Jake replied as they approached the bus and he saw the deer first hand. He entered the bus with a fair amount of effort and pain, and immediately encountered the unconscious bus driver.
He heard a feminine voice ask "Is he alive?"
He answered 'yes' mechanically, not wanting to worry anyone. Frankly, he didn't have time to do anything heroic about the bus driver; he hadn't felt a pulse when he had briefly checked. He turned toward the voice and was surprised to see Hope Bennett sitting in one of the front rows, looking pained.
"Are you O.K.?" He asked her.
"Yeah," she responded nodding quietly, "but I, I think my leg is broken."
"Can you feel your toes?" Jake asked, willing his Army medic training to come to the front of his battered brain.
"Yeah," Hope responded, "Don't worry about me, worry about them." Jake took off his jacket and covered Hope.
"Is anybody hurt? Huh? Anybody?" Jake asked the children on the bus.
A boy toward the back of the bus raised his hand. Jake thought he might be a grandson of Jim and Judy Moore.
"Stacy's sick, she can't breathe," the boy reported.
Jake made his way to the rear of the bus, his leg continuing to plague him and his brain growing thicker with each passing minute. 'Can't breathe' falls under 'Airway'; he made his brain run down the algorithm. I'll have to fix this before we can go any further.
"What's wrong? Huh? What happened?" He asked, stopping by the seat of a little girl who was clutching her throat and looking at him through terrified eyes. No! He thought to himself, not another little girl on my conscience. Please, God, let her live, whatever the problem is.
"When the bus stopped, she was like this," the boy demonstrated by putting his throat against the back of the seat in front of him.
Jake knelt down in the aisle; trying to calm the little girl they called Stacy.
"It's O.K., let me see. Let me see, Stacy. It's going to be O.K. It's O.K." With this reassurance, Stacy took her hands away from her throat and Jake could see swelling and the bruise forming. Stacy was struggling to breathe. Jake could barely concentrate on the matter at hand; his vision was filled with the lifeless eyes of that other little girl. His head continued to throb, but he brought himself up sharply, telling himself that this little girl was still alive, and he needed to keep it that way.
"Do you have an ice pack?" Jake called to Hope. "We've got to stop the swelling now."
"Lucas, the first aid kit is under the seat," Hope instructed the boy.
"O.K. Come on. It's alright. Just keep breathing. Breathe normally, alright? It's O.K. It's O.K. You're fine. Just keep breathing normally. You're O.K." Jake continued with reassurances while waiting for Lucas to bring him the first aid kit. When it arrived, he took out the ice pack and cracked it to activate the chemical reaction. He placed the pack gently on Stacy's throat.
"Please," Stacy said to Jake in a gasping breath. "Hurts."
"Calm down. Hey Stacy! No, no, no, no," Jake cried as Stacy closed her eyes and went limp. He leaned down listening and feeling for respirations, but found none. The children around him were silent, aware of the gravity of the situation. One of them started to cry silently.
"Think, think, think," Jake said under his breath, the pounding in his head competing with the idea that he would have to think of something to save the girl's life.
"Alright," he said after a moment to collect his thoughts. "Look, I need everyone's help right now. Who has a pen? Does anyone?" The children stared at him blankly. "Does anybody have a pen? Alright, I need a pen."
"We have pencils," piped up the boy who had found him on the highway.
"No, I need a... I need a tube. Something hollow, um, a straw!" Jake was growing frantic.
"I have a straw," said the little girl from the highway.
"Here, let me see it, let me see it. Come on! That's too thin... Does anyone else have a juice box?"
The children answered with a chorus of "I do's".
"Alright, get them out. Get some Band-Aids out. What's your name?" Jake asked the girl from the highway."
"Julie," she answered.
"Alright, everybody give your straws to Julie, okay? Hurry! Quick! Make them into a circle." Jake hoped his instructions were making sense.
"Alright, you got that? Here you go, tape them together with those Band-Aids." Jake removed his pocket knife and cleaned it with a wipe from the first aid kit. He wasn't looking forward to doing this, but at the same time was grateful for the Army medic classes he had taken so many years ago.
"Who's the strongest kid? Huh?" Jake asked, not wanting to complicate things further by having his patient wake up and fight him while he was working with a knife. "You?" he asked the boy sitting behind Stacy. "You hold her shoulders down in case she wakes up okay? Don't look! Right here..." Jake performed an emergency cricothyroidotomy.
"Where's my straw?" He asked as he reached back toward Julie. He inserted the bundle of straws gently and gave Stacy two breaths.
"Go easy... O.K... come on..." Nothing happened, so he gave her another breath. Stacy took a breath and opened her eyes. Gone, for the moment, were the eyes of the little girl from Safa. All he could see was Stacy, and she was smiling at him ever so slightly. Her color improved almost immediately. He stroked her chin with his thumb in reassurance and then straightened up. The pains in his head and in his thigh were still there, but they didn't seem to matter anymore. He sat back on the opposite seat, relief washing over him that this little girl would go in the 'win' column for him.
"How did you learn how to do that?" asked Lucas, the boy from the highway.
"Uh... Military school," answered Jake.
"Were you a soldier?" Lucas asked.
Jake laughed wryly. "No, a screw up." But he didn't feel like too much of a screw up at the moment. He carried Stacy to the front of the bus, the got out of the bus to move the deer to the side, exchanging looks with Hope in the process.
" Great! Where's the damn rescue party?" He mumbled to himself.
When he got back onto the bus, his next order of business was to move the bus driver out of the driver's seat. He had not felt a pulse when he had briefly checked earlier. Now that the heat of the moment had passed he took a look at the face of the bus driver. He recognized the man as Stanley Richmond's cousin Connor Jackson. Connor had been a year older than he and Stanley, graduating high school in 1990 and immediately enlisting in the Army. He had been in Desert Storm, and planned to stay in for his 20 and then retire, but Gulf War Syndrome had taken ahold of him and he had returned to Jericho shortly before the debacle with Chris Prowse. Jake knew Connor had been helping his brother on the farm; apparently he had been moonlighting as a bus driver by the looks of his well-worn work shirt.
Jake moved Connor to an empty seat with the assistance of two of the boys. He overheard Julie asking Hope if they were going to have school tomorrow.
"We'll figure it out, honey," Hope reassured her.
"I vote 'no'", Julie answered.
Heather was sitting upstairs in her bedroom. Chip was playing contentedly in his playpen. Heather was situated in her glider with her feet up and a bassinette on either side of her. As had become her habit, she fed the more demanding Sadie first and laid her back in her bassinette before reaching for the more patient Abby. They had gotten into a routine, but Heather was still tired from the constant demands on her time and energy. She couldn't wait for Jake to come home to help. He and Chip had become inseparable in the weeks since Jake had returned from Iraq. Heather must have fallen asleep during the moment of quiet, because she was suddenly awakened by a commotion outside. She was aware of the passage of time because the shadows were now long in the room. She glanced at the clock and noted it was just past 6:00pm. Jake had probably arrived home; that was probably the commotion downstairs, she thought as she laid Abby in her bassinette. She checked on the sleeping Sadie and Chip and went to the window to check for the familiar Roadrunner in the driveway below. It was then that she noticed the mushroom-shaped cloud in the western sky. Her blood ran cold and she felt physically ill.
Heather hurriedly quietly from the room and out to the front of the house where various residents of the Green Ranch were gathered.
"I heard the solar/wind system kick on and came out to see why," Joanna McCall was saying to Wes, who must have just come from the barn.
"What in tarnation is happening?" E.J. asked as Heather joined the group.
"I don't know, but I'll get my radio and call Town Hall." Heather turned and went back into the ranch house. The fact that Jake had not returned was nagging the back of her mind, but she figured he had swung into town to check on things before coming home.
"Ranger Base, this is Green Ranch, do you copy?" Heather checked in as soon as she reached her radio.
"Green Ranch, I copy," came the reply. "Everything OK with you Heather?"
"We're on wind/solar power, and we noticed the mushroom cloud in the west. Any word on what's going on, Jimmy?" Heather queried.
"Nothing yet. Oliver is here in the Sheriff's station trying to make contact with the HAM radio. Cedar Brook, Galloway, and a few other neighboring towns have checked in; they don't have power either. We still don't know what's causing this. I'll let you know if we hear."
"Thank you, Jimmy. Will you please send Jake home when you see him?" Heather asked.
"Um, I haven't seen Jake all week," Jimmy stammered. "Is he supposed to be here?"
"He was in Denver on business, but should have been home by six or so. I figured he went into town when he didn't arrive home. Just let him know I asked, please, if you see him." Now Heather was in a panic to get off the phone and start looking for Jake. She took the radio and went back outside to the group.
"They don't know anything yet," she informed Wes and Joanna. "Jake should have been home from Denver by six and he isn't in town, either. What should we do?"
"Did you notify Mayor Green?" Wes asked. "The Rangers should be able to look for him on the local roads. We'll work our way out from there."
Heather shook her head and held out the radio, not trusting her voice. Wes made the radio call while Joanna herded everyone over to the bunk house for dinner and Heather collected her now awake babies. Before they could begin eating, Gil Bennett arrived out of breath and asking questions, two toddlers in tow.
"Hope is substituting until the new third grade teacher arrives next week and they had a field trip to some caves in Gove County today – Monument Rocks or something? Anyway, she never got home. I saw the cloud and heard the power switch over while I was out doing chores. What's going on?"
Gil finally stopped for a breath as Joanna led him to a chair. "We don't know yet what has caused this, but we'll call the missing school bus in to Town Hall so the Rangers can be looking for it." Joanna reassured him.
Wes put actions to words and stepped out the back door with the radio. When he returned a few minutes later, he told them that the Sheriff had teams out looking for both Jake and the bus. Heather and Gil just looked at each other, at a loss for words.
Emmett Green and his new wife Eleanor were watching the news as they sat down to dinner in Kansas City. The sound on the Emergency Alert System caused them to look up, but at first they reasoned EAS drills were frequently held on Wednesdays and went back to their meal. When the tone continued, and then a voice began telling of multiple nuclear bombs which had been detonated in cities across the nation, they looked at each other in shock. Emmett grabbed a pen and paper from the counter and made notes of what broadcaster was saying. Brief film footage of people running away from a city was shown, and then the broadcast stopped. They still had power, but when Emmett changed the channels, none of the stations seemed to be broadcasting.
He picked up his cell phone from the counter and tried to make a call, but it wouldn't go through. The landline telephone was working, and he made several calls in rapid succession as Eleanor started gathering things from around the house to a central location. They had participated in the emergency drills in Jericho during the past few years and had developed a plan of action to be followed if an emergency such as this ever took place.
Within the hour, they were packed in their sedan and traveling across the city. The expected level of chaos was taking place – people were standing on the sidewalks of their upscale community, discussing the news with their neighbors. As they reached the commercial section of town, traffic was erratic as drivers tried to decide where to go and what to do. The highway was relatively clear as they made their way toward the University of Kansas and the home of the Norton family.
Laura Green Norton, her husband Mark and their son Curtis lived in a home near the campus of UK. Their daughter Michelle had graduated from nursing school and was sharing a nearby apartment with medical student Christy Peterson, also from Jericho – Doctor Peterson's daughter. One of Emmett's phone calls had been to alert Laura of the current events and give them an hour notice to get ready. She had, in turn, called the girls.
By the time Emmett and Eleanor arrived at the Norton home, everyone was packed and ready. Emmett left Eleanor and the packed car there and went with Mark Norton to the Greyhound Bus Station which was a short distance away. Without drawing any attention from the frantic staff, they parked Mark's non-descript compact car and boarded an empty bus parked behind the station. They made sure the gas tank was full. Mark had driven a school bus to pay his way through college, so driving a Greyhound bus was not too far of a stretch. They returned to his home with the newly liberated bus and everyone clambered aboard with their belongings.
The next stop was the Wal-Mart distribution center where Curtis Norton worked while attending college. While the Nortons and Emmett had contributed financially to the preparations made on their behalf in Jericho, it had occurred to them that they weren't able to bring anything special to the town's efforts. When Curtis had been hired to drive a forklift and load trucks a few years earlier, the plan had come together. If a situation occurred that was so catastrophic as to precipitate a nation-wide emergency, the rule of law would no longer exist. All they would need is a vehicle large enough to carry them and their shopping procurements to Jericho. That was when the Greyhound Bus idea came about. Passenger coaches typically have 400 gallon gas tanks and get 3.5 miles per gallon. About 100 gallons would be used on the trip to Jericho, providing the town with the excess 300 gallons. Under the coach were compartments usually used for luggage. They would nicely hold a great number of supplies.
While they had been packing the bus, the power had gone out. It was fully dark by the time they left the house, and the distribution center was deserted by the time they arrived. Curtis had a key, but it was unnecessary – apparently the evening shift had abandoned the warehouse without evening bothering to lock up.
Using flashlights and headlamps, each of the seven members of the group took a large cart and began walking up and down separate aisles locating things that would be useful in a long-term grid-down situation. During the planning stages, they had all enjoyed playing the "what if" game, announcing what they would choose. Now it was soberingly real. They knew where things were located due to the diagram Curtis had provided. The men collected work boots, sturdy shoes and work gloves, jeans, overalls and hunting gear, figuring it would be a long time before those items were produced again. The ladies collected boxes of deodorant, toothbrushes and toothpaste, sunscreen, Chap Stick, over-the-counter medication and first aid supplies. Laura remembered that Jake and Heather had just had twins and collected every box of diapers she could find in every size. Curtis went to the locked area where guns and ammunition were kept and collected everything they had. Christy and Michelle found the batteries and loaded all of them onto their industrial cart.
They met back up at the entrance to the warehouse, compared notes, and took their supplies to the bus. Curtis and Mark made another round in the warehouse looking for things they might have overlooked while the others loaded the boxes into the lower compartments of the bus. Finally they were packed and on the road again.
When they reached the edge of town, they went to the home of Dennis Duncan, Gail Green's youngest brother. He and his wife had asked to be included in the preparations of Jericho once he had heard about them, but his wife had died in a car accident the previous year leaving Dennis alone with three small children. Emmett and Eleanor Green and the Nortons had done what they could to support them while they adjusted. Dennis and Mark Norton worked together at the University of Kansas teaching mechanical engineering and chemistry respectively, so their social paths already crossed on occasion.
Having had a bit more time to get organized, Dennis had himself and his children neatly packed and waiting when the bus arrived to collect them. There were many helpers to load their things and help get them settled into the bus. At 10, Seth was the oldest and determined to be awake for the process. His sisters Melissa (7) and Natalie (5) had fallen asleep on the couch and were carried gently out by capable hands. On the road by 11pm, they hoped to reach Jericho by sunrise, depending upon road conditions. They had said a prayer for journey mercies and for the countless lives affected by the events of the day before leaving the Duncan home.
Sharon Brady was watching TV in the bedroom of her posh New York Apartment when the Emergency Alert System broke through and warned citizens that multiple nuclear bombs had been detonated in cities around the country. The voice of the announcer reassured Sharon that Manhattan had been spared, so she turned off the television and picked up a magazine to occupy herself instead. Her husband Bob was away at a late meeting and her daughter Olivia, in her senior year of college, was at an evening class. She made a mental note to tell them the news in the morning, thankful they lived in a city that could take care of itself. She rolled her eyes as a brief thought of Jericho and their paranoid plan of preparation passed through her mind. The magazine wasn't that interesting, and she had an early meeting, so she turned off the light and went to sleep.
Once Jake had cleared the driver's seat of the bus, he started the bus and headed back toward Jericho. His head had not stopped pounding and he was so sleepy. He looked in the rear view mirror at Hope. She, too, looked tired and painful. The trip back to town took far longer than it should have, but eventually they could see the lights in the distance. While the rest of the town seemed to be on solar/wind power, there was a gathering of people at the gas station and it looked to Jake like someone had started up the lights they used for road work. He headed the bus there, honking the horn as soon as he entered the town proper. There were ample volunteers to assist the children off the bus; then Gil Bennett and Heather were entering the bus to check on Hope and Jake. Jake couldn't think of a more welcome sight than Heather's face at that moment. He agreed to being taken to the medical center for sutures once Heather reassured him that their kids and the Bennett kids were safe at home under the watchful eye of Ellen McCall. He mentioned seeing a prison bus off the road when Eric passed by, then put his head back and drifted to sleep.