A Catch in Time Page 3

  “Holy shit!” the woman cried. She blew out a breath. “Thanks, honey.” Wincing, she sat on the hood. “My name’s Kate.”

  “I’m Laura. Laura Morgan.”

  Easing herself off the car, Kate timorously set her foot on the ground, grimaced, and leaned back against the car. “I’m screwed,” she said.

  Laura pointed across the street. “I live right over there. Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  She probably doesn’t have insurance, Laura thought. “Is there someone else you’d like me to call? You obviously can’t walk.”

  “Honey, where’ve you been?” Kate’s quizzical look matched her tone.

  Laura wasn’t sure how to answer. The question didn’t make sense. She saw Kate’s pale skin become suddenly paler, her few freckles standing out.

  Laura grabbed her arm. “Are you all right?”

  “I—sure, yeah. Just—kinda dizzy. Just a little. All of a sudden.”

  Laura put an arm around her. “You may be more seriously hurt than you think. You really should get to the hospital.”

  “Don’t you know what’s going on around here?” asked Kate. “In the city? Maybe the whole world?”

  Laura was relieved. That was what Kate was talking about; yesterday’s incredible, life-changing experience. The nation must be taking a holiday.

  Laura grinned, but before she could say anything, Kate said, “I’ll tell you what, kiddo, if you want to help me on over to your place and invite me in, I wouldn’t refuse. I’ve been up all night.” She rubbed one temple. “Headache, too.”

  Laura tightened her arm around Kate’s back and took a step forward, but Kate didn’t step with her.

  “Just a sec,” Kate said. “I really feel woozy. Must be all the smoke.”

  Smoke? Laura looked up. For the first time she noticed the haze. There was a fire somewhere. She glanced along the street. Funny how deserted it was, she thought. She lived in a busy neighborhood, with several shops around the corner and three or four small restaurants just two blocks over. Odd. Not one pedestrian or moving car.

  Two blocks away, a tangle of cars clogged the intersection. An accident? People always gathered at an accident. But, no, there weren’t any spectators. And she began to notice other things, like a car on the sidewalk, another smashed into a pole. And lines were down everywhere.

  In the unnatural silence of the morning Laura heard only Kate’s breathing and her own. No sirens, no voices. And her block was empty.

  “Kate,” she asked, tentatively, “what’s going on?”

  Lucas sprinted the four blocks home. Gasping for air, he slammed the front door behind him. That had been close. The red-haired lady almost caught him. And she’d messed up his fun. He could have steered that car down the hill if she’d stayed out of the way.

  No sounds coming from upstairs. John Thomas was probably still sleeping. Lucas smiled, then went into the kitchen to find something to eat. He hoped John Thomas slept for a long time. With his father dead, and John Thomas sleeping, he could do anything. This new freedom felt better than anything he’d ever known.

  He’d just have to stay away from grown-ups.

  Still smiling, he poured cereal into a bowl.

  CHAPTER 6

  PARNASSUS AVENUE, BORDERING THE HOSPITAL, teemed with people. Laura joined the crowd cramming through the main entrance into the lobby. Kate needed crutches, and Laura needed answers. So she’d walked to the hospital.

  Surely, she thought, all that Kate had told her before nodding off couldn’t be right. How could no one remember what had happened?

  Laura vividly remembered. Not everything, but a great deal. She was bothered by a few gaps, a nagging feeling that something important was missing. Yet, everything she did remember seemed so complete. It explained everything.

  Kate said she’d fainted or something, fallen and hit her head. That would account for her memory loss, Laura thought. But Kate also said that everyone she’d talked to had blacked out. Blacked out. The words felt wrong to Laura. They accounted only for unconsciousness, not for what had happened during it. Remembering her own immersion into knowledge, Laura could understand how no one had maintained consciousness, but to think that everyone had forgotten what they’d experienced during those minutes …

  Impossible.

  Voices, groans, and shouts filled the air. Considering all the wrecks she’d skirted on her walk here, Laura wasn’t surprised. But, looking around the crowded lobby, she only saw faces twisted in fear. High voices verging on panic rose like steam through the heat of the mob. Crushed on all sides, she stifled her urge to bolt from the raw emotion rippling through the crowd. Kate was right, she thought uneasily. These people really didn’t know what had happened during the … blackout.

  And their fear was a growing contagion.

  As Laura edged through the thicket of bodies, she quickly realized that the snatches of misinformation dominating the crowd were more dangerous than their fear of the unknown. One man ranted about mass hypnosis. Another group argued bioterrorism versus chemical warfare. Others shouted warnings of the Apocalypse. The noise was deafening.

  Finding crutches seemed less and less likely. Chairs lined the walls, all occupied, and people stood two or three deep in front of them. Gurneys held two or three seated patients. No one was at Admitting, and she saw only two white-coated figures moving among the injured.

  She hesitated, unsure whether to approach one of the overwhelmed medics with her request. Rumors of power outages floated through the rage of pessimism. Everyone complained of headaches.

  Laura took a side corridor, hoping that she’d find crutches somewhere. A woman’s gruff voice could be heard above others. “These headaches!” she yelled. “I’m telling you, they sprayed us with something. We’re all gonna die!”

  Laura turned into another long corridor, lined with stretchers bearing bodies. Some of the people were dead, though no sheets covered their faces. Behind her, a lone blue-coated figure bent over one of the living. Unnoticed, she ducked into a stairwell and shut the heavy door behind her, relieved at the sudden silence.

  Taking the stairs at a steady pace, she heard only the echo of the schussing of her footsteps on the cement stairs. All those complaints about headaches. It can’t just be coincidence. She didn’t have a headache.

  She was glad she hadn’t said anything to Kate about what she knew; Kate would have dismissed it as another of the “half-baked theories” she’d railed against. I’ll tell her later, when we know each other better. They’d agreed, before the painkillers she’d given Kate had wooed her to sleep, that she would stay with Laura. Her own apartment was clear across town, and she didn’t even have a cat to miss her.

  At the third floor, winded, Laura stepped into an empty corridor. The door shut behind her, clicking loudly in the silence.

  “Is somebody there?” A voice drifted through the empty hall. “Hello?”

  Another voice came from farther down the hall. “Nurse? Nurse?”

  Laura moved quickly from one open door to another.

  The first three rooms were empty, beds unmade. The fourth was occupied by an elderly woman who lay propped against pillows. A blanket, folded at her waist, stretched taut over the rest of her long frame. Her feet peaked the blanket at the bottom of the bed. She wore a pink quilted bed jacket, its satin ribbon neatly bowtied at her neck.

  “I’m so glad you came,” she said in a surprisingly strong voice. “I’m ready to go and would appreciate your assistance.”

  Laura didn’t know how to respond. She needed to find crutches and get back to Kate. She’d left her apartment hours ago, and Kate must now be awake and in pain. She hadn’t had the foresight to leave pills on the coffee table with a cup of water.

  Pressed between urgency and decency, she paused. Despite her age, the woman appeared calm and capable.

  Maybe she remembered.

  Laura blurted, “Do you have a headache?�
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  “I’m seventy-four years old,” said the woman, her voice firm, words carefully enunciated. “I’ve suffered a stroke, a minor stroke, mind you, but a stroke nonetheless. I’ve been through the Great War, the Great Depression, and more natural disasters than is prudent for a world to withstand. I’ve lost my husband, my children, my grandchild, my sisters, and my brother over the years. Apparently, another disaster has struck. My headache is the least of my concerns. I am ready to go, do you understand?”

  “You want to die?” stammered Laura. “I can’t do that!”

  Without warning, nausea blossomed through her. It hit so suddenly, she sucked air in gulps. She grasped the doorway, her skin feeling simultaneously hot and cold, numb and itchy. The conflicting sensations passed and left her hands trembling.

  The woman stared impassively at her.

  “Perhaps,” she then said, “as little as two days ago, I might have felt remorse for having taxed your delicate sensibilities with my request, although I must say, your reaction is a tad extreme. However—and I apologize for my curtness—I have no patience left. Please send someone else in here.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t. I’d still be responsible.”

  The woman turned her face aside and spoke to the wall. “Then kindly leave my room.”

  “I can’t do that, either.”

  “Good heavens.” The woman looked at her. “Has it become your purpose in life to torment me?”

  Laura knew she had only one option. “I think I should take you home with me.”

  The woman huffed something like pshaw. “I don’t know you. Nor”—she frowned—“do I wish to.”

  “I’m Laura Morgan. I live a few blocks away and I came here to find some crutches for—my friend.”

  The old woman assessed Laura. After some moments, she said, “Mrs. Catherine Swithenburne.”

  “Mrs. Swithenburne,” Laura said, sinking into a chair, “would you at least let me try to explain what’s going on?”

  Catherine lay against her pillows throughout Laura’s summary of the chaotic hospital and the city beyond. Never averting her gaze, her silence continued for some moments after Laura completed the story.

  “That accounts for the racket that kept me awake, and the neglect I’ve suffered. However, it does not explain why I should go home with you. I have absolutely no desire to be amongst a gaggle of mismatched misfits. I will die here.”

  “But, we can help you. We can …”

  Catherine’s voice was sharply edged with something new. “My family was taken from me, one by one. Tragedy has only three possible effects on one’s life; it either shakes one’s faith, strengthens one’s faith, or drives one mad. I consider myself a sane atheist.”

  Stubborn resolve brought Laura to her feet. “Mrs. Swithenburne, I’m going to go find a wheelchair for you and crutches for my friend. Then I’m taking you out of here.” Laura moved swiftly.

  “You will do nothing of the kind, young woman!” Catherine cried. “Miss Morgan.”

  Laura came back to the doorway.

  Catherine sniffed, chin high. “If you must do this, please do not forget my medication. Since my survival has become imperative to your conscience, know that medications are imperative to my survival. Also, find something for this dreadful headache.”

  Laura smiled, and went scavenging at the vacant nurses’ station.

  It wasn’t easy to maneuver the wheelchair through the jumble of people and cars in front of the hospital. Catherine Swithenburne sat erect, silent, swathed in hospital blankets, clutching her old valise on her lap. A pair of crutches and a cane lay at her side, their rubber-tipped ends sharing the footrest.

  Laura had found two men in the lobby who helped get Catherine down three flights of stairs and had left them with the suggestion that they search other floors for patients. Gripping the wheelchair handles, walking as quickly as she could, she felt relieved to be leaving the tumult behind.

  Her vision narrowed to the twisting asphalt before her, bounded by wrecks on either side. She was aware of Catherine’s gray-haired head beneath her, turning from side to side. As the sounds from the hospital became muffled with distance, they moved through the chaos and carnage.

  Catherine spoke. “Parts of the city are burning.”

  Laura also smelled the acrid smoke.

  “I imagine there is no way of knowing how extensive the power outage is.”

  “My gas stove isn’t working, either, but I have running water.”

  “Do you have candles?”

  “A few.”

  “Provisions? There are bound to be food shortages in the coming weeks.”

  “I’ll have to stock up. There’s a market not too far from my place. I’ll go after I get you home.”

  “Looters may have already taken everything. It’s getting late,” said Catherine. “The streets will be dark. Will there be someone to help you?”

  “There’s only me and Kate,” she answered.

  “I assume Kate is the person requiring the crutches?”

  Laura smiled involuntarily. “Yes.”

  It was only then that Laura began to realize that survival was now the standard for existence. Real survival, requiring food, water, and shelter, not the survival to which she had been accustomed, the kind that required money, education, and the pursuit of luxuries. Meanwhile, the new understanding she’d gained pulsed within her. She was bursting with it and had no one with whom to share her excitement. Surely someone else remembered.

  “We’re going to need a man,” Catherine declared. “And weapons. Better get the weapons before you get the man, in the event he proves himself ill-chosen.”

  Laura thought of the gun her father insisted she take with her when she moved from their ranch to the city. Her father was dead now, along with her mother and older brother, their deaths almost instantaneous with the blackout. Somehow, their passing had been a part of what she’d experienced, and mourning was not necessary, though she couldn’t help feeling sad about not seeing them again. She had only her younger brother, Conrad, now, but he was in Munich, at the Oktoberfest. She wondered how Conrad would ever manage to get home. Maybe he remembered the new things, as she did.

  “I have a gun,” she told Catherine.

  “Splendid. Now we need a man.”

  Laura smiled. I think I’ll wait for Kate on this one. It was strange how close she felt to Kate, after only a couple of hours of conversation. Maybe it was because Kate was maddeningly straightforward. The way she’d taken over Laura’s sofa as though it were her own, chattering despite the pain of her ankle. Her brash jokes and strong opinions. Her agreement to stay with Laura. She saw no point in returning to her empty apartment, to be alone in a world “gone crazy,” as she put it.

  Getting Catherine up the long flight of stairs proved to be awkward but manageable. The stroke that had debilitated Catherine’s right side had not affected her remarkable strength and, with Laura supporting her, they were able to slowly climb the steps.

  Kate was awake and Laura told her that Mrs. Swithenburne would be staying with them, then told Catherine that Kate had been one of the Golden Gate Park gardeners. Given how briefly she’d known them, she had little else to offer as introductions. Settling Catherine into the armchair, she went back down for the wheelchair, crutches, and cane. Laura then wrapped Kate’s foot with an Ace bandage she’d pilfered from the hospital.

  “So, you’ve saddled yourself with two crippled Kates,” Kate said.

  “I’m not sure that Mrs. Swithenburne is a Kate.” Laura glanced at Catherine.

  “To my friends, most of whom have passed on, I am Catherine.” She removed several bottles of medication from her valise and meticulously placed them on the table at her side.

  Laura nodded, unsure how to address her. “I’ll see how our food’s holding out.”

  The available food was not sufficient for three people for any extended time, but Laura found several candles, which she set around the living room.
Darkness blackened the windows and rain gusted against the glass. Laura drew the drapes and, together, they ate sandwiches, washed down with water.

  There were four apartments in her building, built in the forties. Each was equipped with steam-heat radiators and working fireplaces. After their meal, Laura used a little firewood for additional warmth and extra light.

  They all sat quietly, wrapped in blankets and afghans. Kate lay on the couch, eyes closed, and Catherine sat in the armchair, feet on an ottoman. Laura sat cross-legged near the fire, staring at the flames.

  There was so much to think about. Things she’d seen today. Disappointment at knowing that Kate and Mrs. Swithenburne had no memory of the things that had been revealed during the blackout. She wondered if that would change, once their headaches went away. Maybe the pain was blocking memory paths. Ibuprofen hadn’t helped.

  Somewhere nearby, horrid snarls of fighting dogs interrupted her thoughts.

  “I hate that sound,” she said, trying not to imagine the fate of the loser.

  “We’ll be hearing more of that in days to come,” said Catherine. “Cities full of domestic animals gone wild. I’ve seen such things with my husband, during travels to Third World countries.”

  Then came a series of popping sounds, punctuated by yelps.

  “Idiots!” Catherine cried, thumping a fist on the arm of her chair.

  Kate, startled, rose on one elbow. “What’s going on?”

  “They are shooting the dogs.” Catherine’s voice was grim. “Fools. Dead bodies litter the streets. Who is going to dispose of them all? Nature’s scavengers should devour all they can. Soon, putrefaction will bring unbearable stench and disease.”

  Laura blanched. Swallowing hard, she grabbed a candle and fled to the bathroom. Leaning against the sink, she placed a hand on her stomach. It seemed as though every time she confronted thoughts of death, the tiny life inside her made itself known.

  She knelt at the toilet and let her nausea overtake her.

  CHAPTER 7

  ELI LANDED WITH A GRUNT, BREATH KNOCKED FROM his lungs.