Terrence wanted to do what was right by everyone. He had saved enough provisions to gamble and move west with his family. He would do that. He also wanted to do right by Dennis, a man who went out of his way to do right by Terrence.
Terrence would make sure he had what he needed and the directions to find Deana. There was also a lot of people that were alone in the gated community. Terrence would find someone to go with Dennis, bribe them with food if he had to.
If he couldn’t find someone then he would do all he could to convince Dennis to help him secure his family somewhere and then Terrence would make the journey with him.
There was no question about that. The world was different, but Terrence really wasn’t. He suffered a great loss, but it only made him stronger. If Terrence changed at all, it was for the better. He searched for the good instead of only seeing just the bad. There had to still be good out there.
Prior to the bombs, Terrence’s goal in life was to have a good job, make a lot of money, and provide a better life for his family.
Now his goal was to keep his family safe, alive and wanting to survive. After all he had been through, all the uncertainty in the world, those were things he was positive he could do.
Terrence would.
THIRTY-FOUR – Scorched and Enlightened
They had spent three days with Jonas. He was a good man and positive his wife was alive. He had checked twelve of the camps and was counting on her being in the last place he looked. He was also certain he would be kicked out again and nearly as positive that Kit and Abe would be kicked out as well.
“Don’t get discouraged,” he told them. “Just come back in.”
Kit wondered if there was something about Jonas that drew attention. She and Abe had hit two camps before even getting to Puyallup and not one soldier or worker asked for their work orders, or asked to see that wristband that all the workers seemed to wear.
They searched every bed, every cot and walked through the large square tents where people had set up temporary homes.
Nothing.
No one said a word to them.
Their days were spent walking, stopping, walking some more. At least eight hours a day was in a holding place while it was dark. Most of the time it was an old store, garage, or house. Never anything outside in the open. The truck would come, order them to get in, take them to a holding place, and let them go at dawn.
Kit wondered how she and Abe were able to be so unnoticed.
The last thing Jonas said to them before they parted ways was, “I pray you never get to the edge and see what was done to our world. Right now, we’re surrounded by a lot of area unaffected by what happened. Don’t go to the edge.”
Kit believed ‘the edge’ was some sort of metaphor.
She soon found out that Jonas meant it… literally.
It took seven days to get to her mother’s house in Puyallup. The residential neighborhood was largely unscathed, sans a few broken windows. No occupation take over or possession had occurred. Her mother’s house was fine, the door was unlocked and the house empty.
Kit had no delusions of walking up to the house and finding her mother. The entire house was untouched. No furniture moved, pictures still on the mantel. In fact, they were certain her mother survived.
It was evident that she had taken refuge in the basement. The windows were blocked out, empty cans were used as tiny fire cans. Abe said there was definitely more than just her mother down there. Kit didn’t want to get her hopes up that it was her daughter, it could have been anyone.
Her mother lived through the bombs, stayed below then left.
Was she sick? Hurt?
There were eight camps around the area, and Kit would check each one.
She took a few photos of her mother and Jillie, because it would be easier to ask people if they saw her if she had a picture, then they headed more toward the heart of Tacoma to look for Jillie.
Jillie’s apartment building was scorched. The entire surface of the building facing Seattle was blackened and the windows blown out.
The whole area was decimated. No one would have survived the heat of the blast.
The bombs fell at night, while people slept. Every resident of that building would have died before they knew what hit them.
Was Jillie one of them?
Kit didn’t want to believe that was true, after all, her father said he tried to evacuate her. Maybe she had left. Maybe she was the person in the basement with her mother.
Standing at Jillie’s apartment, Kit learned what Jonas meant about the edge.
From where she stood, she literally was on the edge… the edge of destruction. Vashon Island was gone. It took a direct hit. The entire body of water that surrounded it extended out. It wasn’t an airburst, it was a surface burst that caused a crater so wide and deep, it made the island look as if it sunk.
Unlike in Spokane, there was no rubble, no smashed buildings and houses, everything was just obliterated.
They stayed there staring out like some sort of post apocalyptic tourist and then they moved on to whatever camp was next.
That was when Kit realized why they hadn’t been stopped.
It was Abe.
He was ill. He coughed a lot, was thin and pale. Kit had spent so much time with him, she hadn’t noticed how bad he was until he was pulled aside at the camp.
No one ever stopped them because they probably assumed Abe was looking for medical attention.
They apprehended him immediately and because of all the highly contagious and infectious diseases that bred post bombs, they placed him in a mandatory quarantine for ten days.
They wouldn’t even let Kit near him. They did however give her updates after she fibbed and said he was her husband.
They had to rule out any communicable disease and hopefully he would recover.
Hopefully? Was he really that sick? Was Kit that caught up in her own search that she didn’t notice her new friend was dying?
What did he have? They said he was fevered and his lungs were filled with fluid. They were near certain it wasn’t Cholera, but they couldn’t be sure. Typhoid wasn’t ruled out. She learned that Cholera was an epidemic in the camp and already had taken the lives of over two hundred people. It seemed like a lot until Kit learned there were over five thousand people in that camp.
If her mother and daughter were anywhere, they were there. She would use that ten days, while waiting on Abe to look.
Ask every single person that she could, if they saw her daughter or mother, show them the picture.
It was a football field full of tents just for those transitioning, meaning those who were healing and those who were moving on. Outside the stadium where even larger housing tents.
Kit went from sun up to sun down searching.
She looked in every tent, every cot, every injured person. Heartbreaking as it was, she searched the burn ward, trying to find something in those so disfigured that they were unrecognizable. Any of them could have been her family.
Kit didn’t find them.
No one saw her daughter, or mother.
She did gather information on where the other camps were and made squares on her map.
One woman had told her about a huge camp that was made out of an old warehouse sections, it was six miles north and was almost all transition people. More than likely if her mother or daughter were there, they would have moved on, but perhaps someone had seen them.
During the ten days, Kit didn’t find her family, or anyone who knew about them. She however did a lot of thinking. She had been so focused on her daughter and mother she barely thought of anything else.
She reflected on how she had gotten to know Abe. He was a quiet man who had dedicated his life to his career. He didn’t have anyone except his brother and that was why he stuck with Kit. Where else and what else did he have to do?