Reality check

When I came to, it took a long time to realize what had happened. The sky was dark and it seemed to be night. There was black soot everywhere. I tried to figure out where I was, but could not see well enough to recognize my surroundings. Then I remembered the big boom.

I had been walking down Arch Street and had just reached 6th Street and crossed into the large mall opposite the Constitution Center when I heard the big blast. That was the last thing I remembered before waking up. I didn’t recognize the mall and there were absolutely no streetlights. I could hear people milling around, some yelling, some crying, but it seemed best not to approach anyone until I learned more.

I felt for my handbag and found the strap still around my shoulder. Not that it would do me much good, but some thread of normalcy was welcome. The brick wall bordering Fifth Street was still standing. I sat and leaned against it for a minute, trying to decide what to do.

“Me puede ayudar?” called a woman’s weakened voice from nearby. I had no idea if she could see me or not and didn’t want to volunteer an answer if she had not. She touched my shoulder and it frightened me.

“Me puede ayudar?” she repeated. My Spanish is very weak, but I managed to ask what she needed.

“Mi hijo esta herido,” she said, holding the limp baby to her chest protectively.

“No soy medico,” I replied, hoping that was the right word for doctor. I started to wander across the street to see if the food court and she followed. There was nothing but rubble – and it was hard for me to tell where things had been. We scavenged and found two bottles intact: orange juice and milk. I didn’t want to look any closer as it was obvious that some people had been crushed in the rubble.

The road was sort of intact from what we could see and we proceeded down towards the river. I had no idea if my partner had survived the blast, but there was no way to find out. If this were a nuclear bomb, there would be few survivors. How the three of us had made it, I didn’t know.

We trudged southward for the next two days – slowed down by the baby who seemed to have recovered slightly. Because of the cold, the three of us slept as close together as we could – both for warmth and for fear of strangers. We encountered very few people and no one seemed interested in us. We found some wild mushrooms and ate them without even hesitating to think about whether or not they were poisonous. Hungry, tired, cold, we kept on going until we reached Darby.

A journey that would have taken about 20 minutes on a commuter train had taken us three days. The young woman’s name was Philomena. She had no idea where her husband could be and assumed the worse. Like me, she had concluded that looking for her partner would be an exercise in futility.

We found the town full of debris, but some buildings were still standing. We ran into two other women who invited us to join them in an abandoned basement they had requisitioned. It was good to have others around, but I had been slightly wary of other people, but the prospect of having a shelter was too tempting so we accepted.

They had built up a stone hearth where they could boil water and cook. It was much more appetizing to eat boiled leaves or grass than raw and I felt a little safer having things cooked, anyway. My concept of dietary caution had changed drastically in the last few days. Any acorn on the ground went right into my mouth these days.

Weeks went by and the sky began to clear slightly, but there seemed to be no sign of any organized authority or police or much of a presence of other humans. How long were we going to survive at this rate? At least Sally and Charlotte seemed to be good at improvising. Philomena and I both tried to contribute what we could, but she had her hands full with the baby who seemed to be rebounding from whatever wound he has sustained. (I never saw what it was.)

I tried to remember what I had read about nuclear winters to think of how we could find food. We were not going to survive on the meager diet we had managed to pull together. It was hard not to think about what would happen in the coming weeks and months, but it was a futile exercise.

I learned to focus on the continued walks to search for food of any kind and we all brought back various knickknacks. By the time a month had passed, we had a steady routine. Two of us would stay with the baby, and two would go out to find whatever we could – mushrooms, nuts. We finally found a bucket with which we fetched water from the nearby creek – hoping against hope that the water was not too heavily contaminated.

I kept expecting something to happen, but everything seems the same three months later. There is a bit more light, but everything seems grey and depressing. It was time for me to realize that I should stop thinking of the future.

The future is now.