She was the first one to find the dead baby. It still made her cry, just thinking about it. Nora didn’t cry when it first happened. It was more like something didn’t feel right, but at the same time it was expected. It was inevitable that the carnage would reach Pt Arena and that death would show up on their protected shores. Maybe that had made it easier.
At that time, they had been holed up in and around the pier for days. There was a supply crew that left and ventured beyond the makeshift gate of piled up cars and logs, but they never spoke about what they found when they ventured out. She didn’t know if that was because they didn’t find anything noteworthy or if it was because they had agreed not to tell any one.
Nora was pretty sure that was a requirement to be on the crew, that you didn’t talk about what it was like out there. She was just as sure that eventually, as they needed to wander further and further out for supplies, and as the tension grew at the pier, that someone would start talking. Herself, she didn’t really want to know. She already knew. It was better to leave it to the imagination.
The pier was in a protected cove. Surrounded by crumbling chalk cliffs and steep hills, the cove provided only one narrow passage down to the wide grey sandy beach. The town had paved a road through this crevice and back in the day, when the fishing boats were still active, it was the busiest road in town by far. The pier was huge, two stories of bars, restaurants, and shops.
They sat just in from the water, not out over it like some piers. That was to avoid the massive waves and storms they would get during the winter months in Northern California. Some days, when you would watch those cold pacific ocean waves pound the pillars of the main dock, you would wonder how it stood there, taking that beating. It was emotional that abuse, at least that’s how it always felt to Nora.
At 2:15 one day, the power went out, there were no TV or Radio signals. There was no longer any internet. It had been that way for a couple of weeks now.
Nora knew the time because there was a small pub and wine bar in town called 2:15. The owner Jack had lost his winery when he and his wife divorced, and he had settled in town and opened up the bar. He wasn’t good at opening before 2pm, though there were customers to be had that time of day in Pt Arena, and as a person he was always late. So he opened the bar at 2pm each day and to set the proper expectations, he called it “2:15”.
She remembered standing outside the bar that day, and when Jack opened the door for her, the power had gone out. It was a small town and it had been dying for some time. It had remained on life support due to the fact it was the only affordable place to live within driving distance of the exclusive enclaves and fancy seaside hotels that dotted the surrounding coast. She wondered how the fancy people had fared that day.
Get Lee M. Williams’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
She assumed a lot of them were dead. In her mind they were fighting each other tooth and nail. Probably arguing about who was more right. She could hear the fights and the yelling. Words like, “liberal. Necon. Right-wing. Left-wing. Republican. Democrat. Immigrant. Libtard. Red State. Blue state.” were being screamed in her face.
Were people killing each other? Had something else killed them? Had any one survived? Was there still a government? Were their police on the streets and stuff? Did people have jobs? She really didn’t care.
Nora cared a lot about people, but after the elections she got to a point where she grew numb. The stress was just too much. Day after day of watching protests and riots in the streets, people were arrested in their homes, whole cities were shut down, military planes and helicopters were always flying somewhere overhead.
Then they had this thing called ‘Interior Actions’. They were suppose to secure the border, to cut down on crime, and to make people feel more safe. It didn’t work. The more they wrote those actions, the more people felt less safe, the more they got angry. Every time you went online and every time you turned on the TV all any one would talk about were those actions, and the politics, and the wars.
At first she had stopped logging on or turning on the TV, and that worked for a little while, but even then there was this foreboding, this sense of guilt. There was this overwhelming feeling that something wasn’t right, that something had changed, and as much as she couldn’t put her finger on it, as much as she didn’t want to know what it was, she felt bad. She felt bad because in the back of her mind she knew, she knew what all of this meant. It was over. It was just a matter of time and watching the events unfold each day.
After they had settled in the cove out by the old pier, she kept up her morning walks. It was good to get out by the sea, to smell that air, to feel the mist from the waves, to hear the roar of the ocean as it tumbled onto the beach and beat the sand and the rocks into submission.
When she saw the body it had occurred to her that it might be a baby. They were the most vulnerable. That’s really what had been the most frustrating part of the election, knowing that the people most effected by what was happening couldn’t vote and didn’t have a say in what was happening. Nora could feel it. And how do you explain to somebody arguing about politics, someone who only sees politics, someone who thinks everything is about politics, that what you are feeling isn’t right? That this isn’t going to go anywhere good? That people are going to get hurt?
The skin was white and purple and blue and cold. The arms were swollen and flaps of flesh extended out from beneath the torso and onto the sand. Little legs moved in the waves like they were dancing to a song that was being played somewhere else.
She didn’t cry.
Nora pulled the thick wool scarf from around the top of her head where she had it bundled and wrapped it around the body of the innocent child. She swaddled it in her arms for a moment and brushed strands of sand from it’s face. The eyes were closed. She was relieved about that for some reason.
She stumbled in the cold wet sand. The edges of a couple of waves came up and licked the top of her bare feet as she walked with the dead child back toward the pier.
