Sunlight streamed in through the window. It was morning, but I had no idea what time. My phone was out of power, and it’d been years since I’d worn a wristwatch.
Then it dawned on me—blue skies. I was staring out the window at blue skies.
Lauren was curled up under the covers, with Luke wedged between us. Leaning over, I kissed her cheek and tried to pull my arm out from under her head. She sleepily protested.
“Sorry, baby, I gotta get up,” I whispered.
She pouted but let me go, and I swung out of bed, carefully tucking the covers back around the two of them. Shivering, I pulled on my stiff, cold jeans, put on a sweater, and quietly left Chuck’s spare bedroom—our bedroom now.
The generator was still purring outside the window, but the small electric heaters running off it weren’t keeping out the cold very well. Even so, I admired the clear blue skies outside again.
Grabbing a glass from Chuck’s cupboard, I leaned over the sink to fill it with water. I turned the tap, but nothing happened. Frowning, I turned the tap off and then back on, and then tried the hot water. Nothing.
The front door creaked open, and the noise of a radio announcer spilled in. Chuck’s head appeared, and he saw me playing with the taps. “No more water,” he confirmed, dropping two four-gallon cans of it on the floor. “At least, not in the taps.”
“Don’t you ever sleep?”
He laughed. “Water was off at five when I got up. Not sure if the city pressure can’t make it up six floors with the pumps off, if the pipes are frozen, or if the city mains are off, but one thing’s for sure.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s goddamn freezing outside—at least ten below and windy as hell. Blue skies bring cold weather. I liked the snow better.”
“Can we fix the water?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Do you want me to get some water with you?”
“Don’t think so.”
I waited. I could see he had something unpleasant in store for me.
“I need you to get gas for the generator.”
I groaned. “What about Richard, all those people out there?”
“I had Richard go last night, and it was hopeless. He’s about as useful as tits on a bull for stuff like that. Take the kid.”
“The kid?”
“Hey, Indy!” yelled Chuck, leaning back into the hallway. From the distance a “Yes?” echoed into the room. “Get some weather gear on. You and Mike are going on an adventure.”
Chuck turned to leave but stopped and smirked at me. “And fill two four-gallon cans, can ya?”
“What kind of name is Indigo?”
I was crouching, trying to hide from the wind, and letting the kid do the work. He’d been quiet on the walk down, just staring into space. When I asked him to dig out the first car, he began shoveling without a word.
“Family’s from Louisiana. Used to farm the stuff down there. They named us after it.”
He didn’t look African-American, but then he didn’t look Caucasian either—dark, short-cut hair, and exotic, almost Asian features. The most eye-catching thing about him, unusual at least, was a gold chain that hung around his neck with a crystal pendant swinging from it.
“Poisonous, isn’t it?” I asked, referring to indigo, trying to make conversation.
We were outside on Twenty-Fourth Street, on the opposite side of the street, a few buildings down from our place. Our group had already siphoned most of the cars close by.
The kid nodded and continued to dig. “Sure seems that way.”
Looking up and down the street, I imagined the millions of people trapped in this wasteland with us. From here, the city looked abandoned, but I could sense the masses hiding in the gray monolithic buildings that hunched shoulder to shoulder into the distance—a frozen desert between concrete towers.
I heard a hissing sound and worried it was a gas leak until I realized it was the sound of fine particles of ice being driven by the wind across the surface of the snow.
“So how did you figure out to come and knock on our door?”
He pointed up to our windows on the sixth floor. “Not many other lights on. I wouldn’t have bothered, but Vicky and her family, they needed help.”
He was referring to the mother and two young children still asleep on the couch in the hallway. They’d looked exhausted.
“She’s not with you?”
He shook his head. “But they were on the train with me.”
“What train?”
He stuck his shovel into the snow and leaned down to clear ice from the gas cap, banging it slightly and then opening it. “The Amtrak.”
“You were on that? Were you hurt?”
“I wasn’t …” He sagged visibly, closing his eyes. “Can we talk about something else?” He grabbed one of the four-gallon cans. He looked at me, the sky reflected in his clear blue eyes. “Doesn’t your building have an emergency generator?”
I nodded. “Couldn’t get it started. Why? Think you could?”
“It wouldn’t run the heating system even if I could.”
“So why’d you ask?”
Propping himself up on one knee, he pointed at our building. “Chuck said his generator runs off gas or diesel. Did you check how much diesel there was in the emergency generator tank in the building?”
The wind whistled past us.
“No,” I laughed, “we did not.”
Not five minutes later we were standing in the apartment basement, listening to the hollow tinkle of the second canister filling up. It was cold, but much warmer than outside. We didn’t even need to siphon the fuel, because there was a release valve on the bottom of the tank.
“Two hundred gallons!” I said excitedly, reading off the side of the tank. “That’ll run our little generator for weeks.”
Damon smiled, closing the release valve and screwing the cover onto the plastic canister.
I wanted to know what had happened at the Amtrak crash, but he seemed fragile, so I needed to tread carefully.
“One thing I will insist on,” I whispered, even though nobody else was there. “This is our little secret, okay?”
He frowned.
“I mean, don’t tell anyone else about the generator tank. We’ll make getting gas our job. While everyone thinks we’re off outside sucking it out of cars in the snow and cold, we can sit down here and relax, have a chat. What do you think?”
He laughed. “Sure. But won’t they notice we’re coming back with diesel instead of gas?”
The kid was quick.
“Nobody but Chuck is likely to notice, and he’s good for keeping secrets.”
Damon nodded.
“Feel like having the first chat now?” I asked.
“Not so sure.”
“Come on, talk to me.”