Time Spike: Chapter Ten

    Anyone not on duty was crowded into the administrative building’s second floor briefing room. Over two hundred men and women stood shoulder-to-shoulder to hear what had happened to them, and what they could do about it. Forty-two from the night shift, and over a hundred and thirty from afternoons. Forty guards had not been able to make it. They were the temporary crew standing watch so the others could attend the meeting. Kathleen had made arrangements to tape the proceedings, so that once their shift ended they could hear and see what had taken place.

    The Quiver—that’s what those who had talked to Edelman were calling it—had taken place fifty-eight hours back. Since then a dozen guards had left, looking for home and family members—and all of them had returned within a few hours, some of them downright terrified. They’d returned with stories of strange animals, stranger insects, and no roads and no homes.

    The prisoners had also heard the stories. They knew what had happened. But so far their reaction had been subdued. There had been no confrontations. Even the inmate fistfights that normally erupted almost hourly had disappeared. The prisoners seemed to be holding their collective breath, waiting to see what was going to happen next. As one guard put it, they probably felt safer behind their bars than they would outside them.

    Most of the guards and all of the department heads knew this situation would change soon. There were over twenty-five hundred prisoners inside the walls and just a little under two hundred guards watching them, divided into two twelve hour shifts. That was a very dangerous ratio.

    Andy stood to the left of Joe Schuler. Rod Hulbert stood at his right. Joe had just finished giving the guards the same report he had given the department heads the day before. He had left nothing out. Andy had watched Jenny as Joe talked. Her eyes never left the man’s face.

    Before the meeting she had told him she needed to talk to him in private. Her department’s needs had to be addressed quickly. When he’d asked what the needs were, she had only shaken her head and said now was not the time to discuss them.

    Other department heads had not been so reticent. The head of the kitchen had told him they were just about out of bottled water, and that they would be out of propane in less than three weeks. Jake Conner, the maintenance supervisor, had caught him in the hall with still worse news. It turned out that the reason many of the toilets weren’t working was because all the laterals buried three feet beneath the soil on that side of the one-hundred-year-old prison were crushed or missing. The same thing went for the septic tanks.

    They could make do for the time being, for a while. But if the rest of the toilets went… Andy suppressed a shudder. Without plumbing, the prison would quickly become unbearable.

    His eyes went back to the new nurse. She had been under more pressure than most of the people in the room, yet managed to look fresh, even crisp. Her face betrayed none of the stress of the last two days.

    Lylah Caldwell, on the other hand, looked exhausted. Her lined face was now pale and puffy. It was as if she had aged five years for each of the last two days. Barbara Ray wasn’t here. She was in the infirmary with their two patients, Elaine Brown and Frank Nickerson.

    Andy had left a guard at the infirmary. They couldn’t really afford it, and since there were no prisoners within the clinic, it was probably foolish. But he couldn’t make himself pull the only protection available to the three women. They were not trained for this. Not that the guards were either, really. Everyone inside the prison was out of their element.

    Andy looked at Jenny again. She was listening to the speaker, ignoring everything else going on around her.

    Andy forced himself to look away from her and listen to Joe’s recap of his trip into town.

    “So, with what Rod and the rest of the guards saw, it’s obvious that we’re on our own. There’s no help coming from the outside. I’m going to let Jeff Edelman explain the technical side of this.”

    Andy watched Jeff walk to the front of the room. He was nervous, and Andy knew why. The room was filled with people who had had enough bad news already. They certainly wouldn’t want to hear what Edelman was about to tell them. They just wanted someone to reassure them that they would be getting their world back in a few hours, days or weeks. Not the forever stuff he was going to explain. Andy sighed and Jeff began talking.

    “I’m sure most of you have heard all the rumors by now. One of them is that we’re somehow in a different dimension. Another is that there was a war, and we were hit with a new weapon. Or, we were the only people not hit, the sole survivors of the weapon. We’re part of a secret government, or alien abduction experiment and we’re being tested. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if, deep down, some of us think this is just a dream and we’re going to wake up and be at home in bed too late.”

    He took a deep, somewhat shaky breath. “Well, it’s not. This is real, people. We just don’t know what it is. We do know there are no satellites in the sky. I had three staff members watching for one all night. From our location, we should have seen dozens of them in the course of just a few hours. All radio and television signals are gone, and this is also worldwide. There aren’t any ham-radios in operation. Nothing.

    “The parking lot ends, our world disappears, and the dirt and grasses begin. And if you go a little farther, even the grasses end and the ground cover changes completely.”

    He let that sink in then continued.

    “I don’t know what has happened to us. And I’m not sure if it even matters. But since I can’t think of anything else that makes any sense, my guess is, we’ve moved in time. The position of the stars strongly suggests we aren’t in our own time line. Exactly when we are, I don’t know. But my second guess is—from what we’ve seen of the landscape—that we went back, not forward.”

    “Well, whatever’s happened, can’t it reverse itself?” That came from one of the guards standing toward the back of the room. He needed to half-shout to make himself heard over the little hubbub that had filled the room after Jeff’s last pronouncement.

    Edelman shook his head. “That’s a nice thought, but don’t count on it. If we let ourselves think like that we would be committing suicide. We’re here. And if we don’t accept that fact, we won’t survive. We’ll run out of food and water.”

    “If you don’t know what it is, then that means it could have been some sort of weapon. You can’t say it’s not. And if it was a weapon, something else could happen. We could get hit again.”

    “You’re right. We can’t say what it is or isn’t,” Joe answered for Jeff. He shook his head. “It could be any one of the explanations people have come up with. It could also be one of a hundred things no one has thought of. But does it matter? We don’t know why things are like they are. But we do know we have to deal with the situation. We take care of business now, and then later, when we can, we try to figure out what and why. As for it happening again, we don’t have any control over that, so we have to hope everything’s going to be okay from this point forward and work with what we have.”

    Rod Hulbert cut in. “Joe is right. We have too many prisoners inside these walls. We can’t afford to panic. Besides, as far as we can tell, whatever happened is over. It’s like the Quiver caused it, and now we’re in a new time for us.”

    Joe nodded and added, “We need some short term and long term plans. And we have to get busy right away. Otherwise we’ll get caught.”

    “When are we, then?” Keith Woeltje asked.

    Jeff Edelman shrugged. “I’m not sure. To find out exactly, I would need a computer programmed for that purpose. The plant and animal life in the area right outside the prison is not what was there before the Quiver, but they seem modern enough. Yet, when we look at the stars, we know we are definitely not in any modern time frame. We’re at least a half million years back. But keep in mind that is a conservative estimate. I could be off by a million years or more.” After a slight pause, he added: “A lot more.”

    A woman in the back of the room called out, “Couldn’t the situation be temporary? Couldn’t we go back home, someway?”

    Jeff Edelman shook his head. “No. We’re not in Oz and we don’t have a pair of ruby slippers. We’re here. And the odds of another Quiver or weapon blast, or whatever, coming along and refilling the river and taking out those mountains and trees and putting our town back…” He shrugged. “I believe whatever happened occurs very rarely. I believe we will never experience another one. But I don’t know that because I don’t know what caused this one.”

    The room suddenly erupted. It took almost two minutes of shouting for quiet to finally bring the room to a stunned silence.

    The room was dead quiet now, and people were listening. It was time for Andy to talk. He knew Jeff had fudged, right there at the end. When the two of them had talked privately, Jeff had said they were tens of millions of years back in time. He had actually guessed, a minimum of fifty million years. And he also believed it could be as much as a hundred million years.

    But Andy didn’t see any reason to bring that up here. Fundamentally, it didn’t matter anyway. Half a million years back in time or half a billion, they were still the only human beings anywhere in the world. So he would concentrate on what they needed to do.

    “With things the way they are,” he said loudly, “we’re going to have to change a few job descriptions and decide what we should do with the prisoners.”

    Before he could go any further, Terry Collins marched to the front of the room. He was angry, and it showed. “If all this is true, winter could be on its way. We need to get off our duffs, quit jawing about what has or hasn’t happened and get ready for God knows what. Are we headed for a three-month freeze or are we sitting at the beginning of an ice age? We don’t know how long we have to get ready, and we don’t know how long we have to get ready for. We have to get the prisoners out of their cells and put a shovel in their hands. We’ve got work to do, and they’re the ones who need to be doing it!”

    Andy grit his teeth. Until they knew more and had made plans, the idea of letting two and a half thousand inmates in a maximum security prison out of their cells was insane. Literally, in some cases, since dozens of those inmates were in fact psychotic. And while most of them weren’t, they were hardly what you’d call good citizens.

    The prisoner-guard ratio was too low, it was as simple as that. They were covering twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with a staff smaller than what just the day shift normally ran with. He caught a glimpse of Collins’ eyes and knew he wanted something that had nothing to do with the possibility of an upcoming winter. He had his own agenda and instinctively Andy knew what it was. This was Collins’ first move in a play for power.

    He had to stop this, now. Collins was one of those guards that, unfortunately, sometimes worked their way into the ranks and even managed, as he had, to get promoted. Callous, completely self-centered, not much different from the men he was protecting the public from. If the man gained control it would be work crews this week, slaves next week. This week, it would be all guards under his protection, next week it would be just his favorites. The rest of the guards would find themselves needing protection.

    “Sit down, Terry.” He kept his tone level, but it was very cold. “You and I know it sounds good, but can’t be done. We have to get ready for tomorrow, but first we have to figure out what that tomorrow is.”

    Andy hesitated. What did the people need to hear? Then he knew. The truth. That was what they needed, and what they had the right to. “You’ve all heard the numbers. We have a two-month supply of food, if we stretch it. Our water is almost gone. Our sanitation system is shaky. And we have no heating or cooling after tomorrow. Medical supplies are limited. Our firepower is limited, because we only have so much ammunition. We don’t have enough clothing.”

    Collins was nodding, as if Andy was agreeing with him.

    “We don’t know our environment. We don’t know what is going on around us. You heard Edelman. You heard Hulbert. You heard Joe. We don’t know when we are. We don’t know who is outside these walls, if anyone. There could be a friendly, advanced, civilization on the other side of the mountain, or no one but us anywhere on the planet.”

    The room was completely silent. Collins was actually smirking, now.

    It was time to lower the boom. “And before we’ve had time to figure out how to deal with any of this, Mr. Genius here”—he pointed at Collins—“thinks it’s a really bright idea to let twenty-five hundred of the state’s most dangerous felons out of their cells. Maybe he thinks some good ideas will emerge from the ensuing debate between Boomer and his boys and the Aryans.”

    That brought a sudden gust of laughter from most of the guards. Collins seem to wilt a little.

    “No, I don’t think so,” Andy said forcefully. “There will be no get out of jail free cards passed out. Not yet, anyway. Not until we know who and what is outside the prison walls, and until we’re sure we have the situation under control.”

    “If we wait too long,” Collins shouted, “it will be too late! We will die!”

    “No. If we move too fast in the wrong direction, then we will die. We can’t afford to get careless. And I can’t think of a better definition of the word ‘carelessness’ than poorly supervised prisoners.”

    He looked at Schuler.

    “Joe, how many men are on exploration duty?”

    “Four teams of three.”

    Andy looked at the men and women crowded into the room. “These men are out there looking for water, food, and anything else that we might be able to use. They are also looking for signs of civilization, for other people.”

    He looked at Jenny. “What’s medical doing?”

    She stood up and faced the crowd. “We are doing very little. We’re holding back on everything and anything that doesn’t have to be used to keep a person alive today. We’re looking for replacement treatments and replacement meds. We’re setting up first aid classes to teach people how to deal with medical emergencies common in a more primitive environment. We’re also in the process of developing hygiene classes. Careful washing of small cuts has suddenly become very important. The same thing goes for avoiding worms and other parasites. We are all going to have to learn new ways of doing things if we want to stay healthy.”

    “Baker,” Andy called, “what are you doing about our heat source?”

    Laughter rolled from the man. “We’re trying an experiment. I don’t know how well it’ll work, but I read once in a magazine where villages in India do it. We’re setting up methane toilets. Little outhouses designed to turn fecal waste into a gas that can be burned.”

    A moan came from the crowd, followed by boos and shouts of, “Oh, how gross!”

    Baker shrugged. “Look, folks, it’s what we got. The Indians use pig crap, and we don’t have any pigs. On the other hand, we’ve got almost three thousand people in the prison, counting everybody. That’s a lot of crap. So much, in fact, that with the sewers down the maintenance guys are wracking their brains just trying to figure out how to get rid of it. We figure we may as well do this while we’re at it. If nothing else, it should generate enough methane to keep the kitchens going.”

    “Okay,” Andy said. “You get the idea. We have problems—a lot of problems—but we’re working at solving them. We’ll use our prisoners’ favorite recipe for pruno to make a form of fuel. When it’s done we’ll be able to mix it with what gas we have. That will allow us to stretch our supply and use some of our older vehicles and generators. During the Second World War, the Germans used alcohol to fuel their war effort. It’s not the greatest answer, but it will do the job, at least for a while.

    “When we get these things under control we’ll get busy solving some of our other problems. Have a little faith. Man has survived a long time with nothing but his brains. I really think we’re smart enough to get through this.”

    He shot Collins a look. For the moment, at least, the bastard seemed cowed by the ridicule he’d gotten. “I’ve appointed over a dozen project managers. Each of these managers will need volunteers. They will be posting lists sometime within the next few days. Anyone interested in helping out, sign up. If you don’t see something that will utilize a skill you have, come talk to me. I’ll give your name to someone who can use what you know.”

    Jeff Edelman spoke up. “I need people with mapping skills. That means people capable of drawing a straight line, and good at drawing things to a scale. It doesn’t mean someone who has actually drawn a map professionally. We need to send someone capable of mapping an area with each exploration party that leaves the prison. It would be nice if that person could also catalogue the different plant and animals being found.”

    Rice was next. “I’m building a green house. I need laborers able and willing to do some shovel work, and people with green thumbs. I’m also looking for anyone who understands sprouting and herb production.”

    Collins flared up again. “And when are we suppose to do all this volunteerism? We’re working twelve-hour shifts with no days off. We need to put the prisoners to work, I tell you!”

    Andy took a deep breath to steady his nerves. He really wanted to take a poke at the jackass standing in the middle of the room. “Collins, you aren’t going to force me into making a snap judgment. So, sit down and be quiet, unless you have something constructive to say. Everyone here is aware of our limitations and most of us are aware of our responsibilities.”

    Kathleen stood up next. Her face was a combination of pale white areas and red blotches caused from crying. “If this is going to last for more than a few days, we need a place to rest. Is there a way we can move prisoners in with each other? We, the guards, we need bedrooms. Someplace to get away that is our own. Someplace quiet. And we need a place to go when we’re off duty and want to be around people. Maybe we could keep the cafeteria open.”

    Andy looked at Hulbert.

    “Sure,” the man said. “I’ll open the cafeteria as soon as we finish here. But I don’t want any bloodshed so it’s going to take a couple of days to arrange sleeping quarters. We can’t just pile the prisoners in together. Imagine sticking Boomer in with one of the skinheads.”

    The room erupted into laughter. “Boomer” was the nickname for an inmate named Timmy Bolgeo, and it fit the man. He was a three hundred pound black weight lifter who was normally easy enough to deal with. But he did have an anger management problem, and when his temper went things got pretty thermonuclear. The skinheads were his favorite method of venting.

    Andy grinned and motioned for Woeltje to open the doors. The guards’ laughter could be heard all over the building. And laughter was as good a way as any to end the meeting. Actually, it had ended a lot better than he’d thought it would. In retrospect, Collins’ opposition had given Andy the handle to settle people down.

    With the meeting over he asked Jenny if he could walk her back to the infirmary. Her easy smile and soft voice were two things he had come to lean on, these past two days. They eased his tension and made making bad choices easier.

    And all the choices had become bad. Like his decision to cut water rations in half. And food rations by one third. And his decision to not notice that the only diabetic getting an insulin shot was a young guard who stood watch in the east tower. The nurses had agonized over that decision. They could keep all the insulin dependent diabetics alive for sixteen days, or one diabetic alive for six months. They had chosen the six months. And they had chosen the youngest person in need.

    Jenny was the one who finally made the call. She was having to make all the tough calls coming out of the infirmary. The other nurses had basically jumped into the back seat, leaving it to her to drive the bus.

    She was making and then living with her bad choices, just like he was.

    “Before the meeting you said you had a problem.” He walked slowly, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. He’d spent almost all his time since the Quiver in meetings of one sort or another.

    “Yeah,” she smiled, but it was thin and didn’t hold any humor. “I’m running out of supplies. Seizure medications, anti-depressants, blood pressure meds, heart meds, you name it. Unfortunately, we were running low on a lot of medications when this hit. Starting tomorrow, people aren’t going to get their regular doses. I juggled the diabetics. Put them on oral meds instead of their injections and changed their diets to buy them a little time. I could do it with the prisoners because I could control their activity level as well as their food intake. A guard was different. If she was going to work she had to have her meds.”

    They were at the door to the infirmary.

    “I’m sorry you were put in the position of choosing, Jenny.”

    “Sorry or not, I have to do it again. And then again. And again.”

    He had to restrain a powerful impulse to reach out and stroke her hair. It was hanging lose today; the rubber band she had been using to tie it back was gone.      “We’re all doing it. We have no choice.”

    She nodded then leaned against him. They stood like that a few moments, her head on his chest. He could feel her tears as they soaked through his shirt.

    “Jenny!” Barbara called from inside the building.

    She straightened and smiled. “Thanks for the shoulder.”

    He nodded and watched her disappear into the building and mentally kicked himself. Some men would have come up with something to say that would have made her feel better. They wouldn’t have stood there like a lump of clay.