The Last Zephyr, page 23
The walk, the cry, and the support from his friend were good therapy for the burdened conductor who was leading this bedraggled band in a banged-up train. The sight of Candelas completely destroyed seemed to sap hope from Nick’s heart. He was tempted to quit, just walk away. The others can save themselves if they want, he thought, but I don’t feel like going on.
This was a pivotal moment for Nick. He had to decide what he was going to do with himself, what kind of man he was going to be. He thought of his two sons living in Europe with families of their own. He was afraid they would be ashamed of him if he gave up. Another thought pulled him back: his job wasn’t finished. His father had taught him that winners in life finish what they start. Quitters might suffer less, but they never win. Nick, and everyone else on the train, had committed themselves to survive together. They weren’t done yet.
Finish what you started, he told himself. He raised his head, took as deep a breath as he could, and pushed powerfully through the final steps to the vestibule door of the 540 car. At the threshold, he thanked Rashid for joining him on the slope. The two were warmly welcomed back on the train.
The Sandovals were busy in the bottom of the crowded 510 car, operating the mental health clinic. One person after another came to them to talk about feelings of giving up, grief, fear, and despair. Some had depression so deep that suicide felt like a real option. Rashid suggested Nick go chat with them.
The seasoned conductor had never been to a “shrink” before in his life. But he could feel his grip on sanity slipping. He paid them a visit. Maria, Javier, and Nick talked for twenty minutes. When Nick left, he was ready to lead again. His grief was not quenched by any means, but he found a way to compartmentalize it. His loss would not dominate his thoughts, at least not yet. He would allow the full impact of the most emotional event of his life to hit him, but on his terms and in his timing.
Nick took Reagan out to dig. They worked for two hours in the filthy dust. At the work site, they saw Jay, a man well over eighty years old, giving all the effort his body allowed. Noah, Alex, and Luke were still working hard without any complaints in spite of their youth. Brewster, Harry, and James, the three oldest train fans from the Silver Sky, were dragging piles of ash down the slope away from the tracks. Musician Jimmy had pulled the hinges off his guitar case and was using the big half as an ash scoop. Nick saw Senator and Mrs. Jackson, covered in volcanic debris, toiling away at the endless burden before them. Literally everyone was involved in the massive effort. Neville, tour director Linda, and the whole British group were making use of the “crap cart” to haul ash out of a drifted cut.
What a beautiful sight, Nick thought, to see the young and old, rich and poor, strong and weak all working for a common purpose.
Patty and Sharon, friends from Hastings who had originally taken the train to visit Yellowstone, had been digging for hours. They were exhausted. Patty, in an effort to lighten the mood, said to Sharon, “I’m so thirsty I would even drink a glass of warm Kool-Aid.”
She knew Sharon was on the town council that promoted the Kool-Aid Museum. The humorous dig did not sit too well.
“Patty, right now I just don’t want to hear it. I’m tired, I am hurting all over, I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, I’m scared, it’s cold, and I want to go home.” She started to cry.
Patty felt terrible. She hugged her friend.
Rob and Herman rolled through the Zephyr. Discouraged and worn-out people lay exhausted in the seats and rooms of the passenger train. They all looked to see what Herman had to say on his headband this time, hoping for some kind of inspiration.
Herman didn’t smile as usual. He was more determined now. His message was blunt: We don’t quit!
After six hours of hand digging and “zephyring,” the train crew was finally able to punch through the drifts of Barbara Gulch. It felt like heaven to be rolling on a relatively open track as they approached Leyden siding. Every one of the diggers were spent. Water was given freely, even though tanks in two cars were already dry.
Chapter 35
Cold War Horse
“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
—Thomas Paine
“How ironic,” engineer Christina thought as she gazed upon the desolation from the cab of the 313. She had almost bought a home in Candelas ten years earlier, but chose not to because she was afraid of radioactive contamination. The ground just north of where the Candales community was built had been a weapons factory during the Cold War. Rocky Flats built enriched plutonium triggers for America’s nuclear arsenal. After a billion-dollar clean-up, homes and stores were allowed to be built on the fringes of the site.
The government claimed it was safe, but Christina would have had to sign a “release of liability” form to buy the house she wanted. Any possible future links to health problems related to the radioactivity of the land under the home would have been at her own risk.
At the time, Christina had felt rather vulnerable. She had recently been divorced and was raising her son as a single mother. All her decisions were made to give herself and her son the strongest possible chance for a comfortable and secure life. She knew there wasn’t enough money to take unnecessary risks. She didn’t say much about it. She simply moved to Highlands Ranch thirty miles to the south. That choice was typical of the kind of person she was: quiet, prudent, and deliberate.
Christina often wondered if she was overreacting back then. Only time would tell, she thought. As it turned out, there wasn’t enough time to find out. The town, built next to the birthplace of so many weapons of mass destruction, looked like it had lost a nuclear war. Utterly lifeless, shattered, burnt, and silent. The Red Horse statue referred to as the Cold War Horse, dedicated to the memory of those who worked at Rocky Flats, was melted into the ground.
Energy and endurance were running out on every level on the Zephyr. The amount of effort it took to get by the Highway 93 bridge, through the drifts, plowing the rock slides, shunting the dead freight train, and more, had taken their toll.
On a physical level, workers were hungry and thirsty. They were doing herculean labor on starvation rations. Muscle mass, stamina, and coordination were on the decline for everyone. Small and annoying physical irritants like old injuries and hurting backs were becoming harder to ignore. Compared to the thin air up at Moffat tunnel, breathing was easy down in Denver. But it was still hard to get enough oxygen through the rapidly degrading masks. Ash and sweat had a way of caking up in a person’s hair, but there was no more water for washing. Life was miserable, and getting worse.
Fuel, food, water, and battery power were all running low. Comforts and protective equipment like gloves and regular clothes were worn thin. Hope itself was starting to wane. Where were the survivors in Arvada? Surely someone would come out of the ruins to greet them, or at least beg for supplies and a ride. No one was there.
René looked at the internet to see what people outside the Dead Zone were saying about the Zephyr. She went to the Friends of the Zephyr page. There was Derek’s shot of the gleaming train reflecting a brilliant sunrise through crystal clear skies at Barr Lake more than ten days prior. She peered out the window. The train was on a curve. She could just see to the end of it. The skin of the train cars was filthy and horribly scratched in places. Light from the sun was hazy and obscured. There was nothing beautiful about the train anymore. She wept. She was homesick for beauty and vibrant color.
In the health clinic, a young woman, Alison, came seeking help. She had nausea, headaches, and was not feeling herself. It had been going on for three days. Dr. Abraham was busy, so nurse Susan made the initial diagnosis. There is something familiar about this lady, Susan thought.
She asked where the woman was from, and where she had been traveling to. She and her husband Brian were returning to their home in Provo, Utah. She had just auditioned at the Juilliard School of Music. Her dream was to make it into the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. His parents had bought them a sleeping car room. It was like a honeymoon—at least until Yellowstone.
As soon as the lady said, “Sleeping Car,” Susan knew who this person was. As Susan had waited on the platform back in Omaha, the train rolled by with two very engaged and surprised lovers frantically trying to close the curtain of their lower-level bedroom window. The crowd on the platform cheered and clapped as the car rolled past to the far end of the station.
The nurse held on to her professional demeanor. “From the symptoms you are describing, my guess is you are experiencing morning sickness.”
“You think I am pregnant?” Allison asked, sounding a bit surprised.
“Is that possible?” Susan wanted to know.
“Yes, we have been trying for a few months now. But this is a terrible time to be pregnant.”
Susan agreed, but did not let her opinion show. “Let’s not jump the gun. We are going to use one of our four instant tests donated by other passengers.”
The test was positive. Susan had a look at the paper strip. “Well, congratulations! Now don’t you worry about a thing. We will help you through these early stages. Then we will be rescued. You and your baby will be just fine.”
Allison was shell shocked. She thanked Susan. “I can’t wait to tell my husband. He is out digging ash now, but his shift ends soon.”
That’s when Allison finally asked if Susan had seen something “interesting” on the platform in Omaha. Susan didn’t answer right away, not knowing what to say. Susan was embarrassed. “Oh, my goodness, are you one of the people who saw us?”
“Um, I . . . ”
“It’s okay, I just don’t think I have ever been more embarrassed in my entire life,” the blushing young woman said.
Susan was kind. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about. It is our secret.” The two women smiled.
Chapter 36
Nobody?
“When left to stand alone, the brave stand together.”
—CB
Getting past the first parts of the Denver metro area was relatively easy. Bridges over the tracks all held up. Over-engineering and investment by the railroad and the Colorado Department of Transportation were paying off for the Zephyr. Other than some automobiles that were stuck in traffic jams as they had tried to cross the tracks, no major obstacles challenged the Zephyr. Christina plowed through the abandoned cars and trucks with the 6413, like Eric Bieniemy used to run through the Nebraska defensive line. It was easy, but the noise was explosive. Nick thought it ironic that those crossings were designated “quiet zones.”
The promise of resupply upon entering the city quickly faded. Fires had burned everything. Still-smoldering piles that had once been houses lined both sides of the tracks. Not a usable drop of gas, not a functional vehicle, not a living thing—anywhere. Just deadness wherever anyone looked. Nick had seen something similar before. On December 30, 2021, the Marshall Fire engulfed over 1,000 homes just twelve miles north of where he had lived. The scene he was seeing was the same, only multiplied a hundred fold. At least back then there were some surviving homes and trees, he thought.
FEMA coordinators were not giving the Zephyr any good news. No other survivors from the entire Denver area had communicated with the outside world in days. The few that did manage to live through the first harrowing days, had either died since, or found a way to get south, out of the dead zone. Most simply stopped communicating.
The Zephyr pushed on. With only a few hundred yards of visibility through the haze, no one could see the towers of Downtown. When the train finally got close to North Yard, the tall grain silos came into view like a beacon.
“You think there is anything in those that we can eat?” Thomas asked Ron in the kitchen of the diner. In order to keep the work crews going, Thomas had given out rations faster than planned. The shelves and cupboards of the diner were now frighteningly bare.
“Maybe we need to tell Nick to let us have a look in the silos,” Ron said.
“I’m on it.” The chef headed upstairs to get a hold of Nick on the PA.
The train was stopped at CPDS 003—Utah Junction. Track team #2 was busy cleaning out switches. Larry, Christina, René, Nick, Jake, and Charlie had already spoken to railroad leaders. They all felt the main track to Prospect Junction would be free of parked freight trains. They assumed the Zephyr should be able to cross the Balloon Bridge and head south on the Pikes Peak subdivision, the old joint line to Pueblo and beyond.
Another conference call began at North Yard. “What is the status of rescue from the east?” Nick asked.
“Nick, there is no nice way to say this: Nobody is coming to help you. It isn’t that we don’t want to help. We just can’t get through. I’m sorry,” said Qwana Rice, CEO of the passenger railroad company. “But we are not giving up. We will do all we can for you from here. I am working with Bradford at the UPR to get a train loaded with military troop carriers from Texas to run as far north as we can. Right now, all those vehicles are being used in Kansas and Oklahoma to evacuate civilians from the fringe zone. I think soon they can load up a flat-car train and maybe get to Colorado Springs. You guys had to do so much to get to where you are now. But we have to ask even more—you need to go south on the Pikes Peak sub. Get close to Cheyenne Mountain.”
Nick knew what she was saying. “So the military is willing to go get the Brass out of the bunker at NORAD, but not us. We can hitch a ride if we find a way to get there?”
Rice put it differently, “The railroad is coming for everyone we can rescue. Because we need the military’s help, we are allowing their personnel and civilians to hitch a ride with us.”
Nick replied, with a hint of sarcasm, “Oh, well then, on behalf of the crew and passengers of the Zephyr, when you put it like that, we feel much better.”
Chapter 37
Resources
“When all effort proves insufficient, a little bit of good luck can go a long ways.”
—CB
Yao Ping was with the search party sent to check out the grain silos. The imposing concrete structures still retained warmth from the eruption ten days before. Steel doors in the walls of the silos were discolored from fire. Using rock bars, the team was able to pry open an unloading shoot. In normal times, grain would have spilled onto the loading dock. Nothing came out. Inside they saw blackened charcoal that appeared to have been corn at one time. The chef and his food specialist were ready to go back to the train in defeat.
“Wait, do not go,” the Chinese man begged. “We must dig deep—to the core. We may find good seeds.” Yao Ping knew that fire needs three things: fuel, spark, and oxygen. He thought there was not enough oxygen in the silo to create fire. So even though the grain near the burning hot concrete walls would have cooked and turned to charcoal in the eruption, the further into the middle they could get, the better the seeds should be.
Using the longest implements the team had, they dug a two foot diameter hole eight feet deep into the contents of the silo. It was still a blackened mass, but some streaks of color in some kernels gave hope that deeper in, there might still be some life-sustaining grain. No one on the team wanted to crawl into the hole to dig further for fear of a cave-in.
“Maybe we will find food in a grocery store further south . . . ”
Before Ron could finish his excuse for giving up on the silo full of corn, the small, highly educated man from China scurried into the black hole with a shovel and started whacking his way deeper. If the unstable roof of the charcoal hole gave way, the young man would be crushed and die in an instant. Black debris shot back at the men still outside the silo. They rapidly scooped out what Yao Ping sent them. Then they heard rumbling from deep within the bowels of the massive structure.
First there were dirty tennis shoes. Then two legs blasted out of the hole. A moving mass of yellow corn surrounded the rest of Yao Ping as he burst out of the silo. The slight man jumped back to his feet, gasping for breath as tons of yellow kernels flowed to the ground like water.
“You did it!” Thomas yelled at Yao.
The diminutive man smiled broadly. The whole team started filling the containers they brought along. They returned triumphantly to the Zephyr as the train was ready to proceed on the main track through North Yard.
“Food! We’ve got tons of food!” Ron hollered to the people at the open door of the diner. They ran out to help. Nick got to the diner shortly thereafter.
“Corn?” Nick asked as he looked at the bounty of yellow sustenance.
“Yes, isn’t it beautiful!” Ron said with excitement.
“Um, yes—great. I love corn.” He didn’t let anyone know about his allergies that had forced his family to leave Iowa more than fifty years before. I still hate corn. I have another ten pounds or so to shed before things start getting serious for me. I can keep going without eating corn, he thought to himself.
Nick asked one of the locomotive engineers to come to the kitchen. Christina showed up. Thomas and Ron were looking at bushels of beautiful corn just waiting to be turned into something edible.
“I can’t give you cooking power—HEP—because we are getting very low on fuel,” Christina explained to Ron, who replied, “But I have to make bread, or something with this stuff. We can’t eat it hard and raw like this.”
Just then Jake, who had walked south to the yard office, keyed his radio and shouted out to all those who could hear him, “I found fuel!”
Jake was at the UPR tower and engine servicing facility.
