Days of Grace -- WfW 3rd part

We were given these Words for Wednesday:
    Annihilate          and / or       Business
     Zinfandel                              Panniers
     Lozenge                                Wooden
     Pacemaker                           Thunderstruck  
     Spokes                                  Podcast
    Invoice                                  Zesty
For this installment I used one more word: Pacemaker. 
Back to Mary in the tornado cellar:

  "Listen!" I said. "Do as I say. I have no time to explain. But please all of you, think positive thoughts. Think of love, children, flowers, fairy dust, sunlit meadows. Your true love. Hug one another, feel the love we share. I love you all!" Then I looked around in the tiny space. Ben and Sally hugged, hidden in wet pillows. Jimmy and Linda sat holding hands, they radiated the togetherness old, married couples sometimes do. It warmed me to the toes. Pete and Minna sat facing me, their faces hidden in wet pillows. I could see Mina absentmindedly stroking her stomach. Jill sat nursing the baby, smiling and cooing. George had Lil'George around the shoulders quietly humming Be a Man from Mulan. Janet and Gregor huddled close to their mum from each side.
  I called them: "Janet and Gregor, come to me. Granny loves you, and she won't let nothing harm you tiny scoundrels." they climbed into my lap. "Yes, one leg for each child," I said, as I had so often told first my own children, and since my grandkids. I put my arms around them, and we snuggled even closer. "I love you," I whispered. We hugged and held tight. I thought of my other children and grandchildren far away and mostly of my beloved husband still on his way home in a plane. I tried to cram all my love for him into the short time left to us. We sat in a bundle with our faces buried in the wet, smelly pillows, and heard the sound. Imagine the greatest, heaviest, slowest train ever passing on top of our cellar, A low, ominous rumbling sound, growing and growing and growing to almost unbearable volume. Fully expecting to die by crushing, asphyxiation, electrocuting or a lot of other nasty means, we just sat there holding one another and thinking positive thoughts. Then we heard the sound subsiding.
  "We survived the end of the world." Ben said dreamily. "Or maybe not. From what I've heard the Wave eats electricity, energy and oxygen to. Maybe there will not be enough air left for us to survive."
  Jill, my brave daughter laid a hand on the trapdoor.
  "Don't open," Ben warned.
  "No, I just wanted to feel it. It's hot. Almost, but not quite burning to my hand."
  "Let's eat and wait." James the old caretaker, said. We pooled what we had, it was a goodly pile, but still not much for seven adults and four children. We began by eating all the delicate fruits, peaches and grapes and Jill's lovely, fluffy buns. They would not keep.
  "Save the pips and stones," I said. "They might be what's left of this plant in the whole world."

  After our impromptu meal, Pete turned on the police radio. Nothing but statics, not even a carrier wave. He tried fiddling the settings, and got a faraway station in a language, we did not understand. It ended in a blood-curling scream. Pete turned off the radio. 
  We slept on the benches, the excitement had tired all of us out. and we woke later, just how much later, we did not know. We discovered that all electronic devices did no longer work. Something magnetic was our best guess, but watches, radio and mobile devices were all dead. We had no light but a single candle. After a breakfast of Jill's wonderful Christmas dinner things, we were ready for something else than the musty, hot cellar.
Jill laid a hand to the hatch and said that the underside was cooler than it had been. We opened the hatch. Or rather we tried. The old caretaker, James, guessed that the chimney stack, made of boulders in varying sizes must have fallen on it. We all put our collected muscles to the trap door, and it moved. Not much, but enough to wedge it open. We pulled the warm boulders through, down in the cellar. We piled them off to a side and threw some blankets over them to contain the heat. Finally we could open the hatch enough for Ben and my oldest grandkid to slip through. We sat for what seemed like a long time, until finally, one by one we got out.
  We stood in bright, but strangely subdued sunshine on bare soil next to the heap of boulders, that was all what was left of the farm. Not a trace could be seen of Pete's blue bus or even the road. Nothing but bare soil from horizon to horizon, no green grass, no houses, no train tracks. The wooden poles along the railroad still showed where it had been; they stood, or leaned or lay. The trees were all trunks, It looked as if almost everything had burned, but there were no ashes. And no smoke. The air was hot, but clean, sterile almost, and  thin, we drew deep breaths. It was like being in a jungle, hot, oppressing, yet clear air.
  "Will we run out of oxygen?" I wondered.
  "Let's go look at the well," James suggested. "Water is almost as important as oxygen. The well looked normal, deep, but not totally dry. Deep down water shone up at us.
  "Pines and spruce." Lil'George said. "We just learned about photosynthesis in Biology. They are the only oxygen-producing trees this time of year. We might have luck in finding some living ones."
  Slowly we went down to the river. It was a sorrowful sight, brown, dusty, not a drop of water left. But near where the waterfall had been, close by the big stones, we actually found some live spruce, the lower branches of the trees were not totally dead. The stones were hot to the touch, and we all briefly wondered what kind of disaster had befallen the world, to eat up almost all the water and all man-made things, and still leave trees and even poles standing. We decided to make a camp by the river. lugged our stuff down there and slowly made a camp. James began having trouble breathing after the exertion.
  "Oh blast it," he said. "I'm on a pacemaker ... have been for years and only seldom give it a thought now ... But the Wave must have killed it along with all the other electronics."
  We all hugged the old man, and left him and Linda to say their final goodbyes alone without the backing of tumultuous kids and a crying baby. We went exploring, slowly, laboriously following the bed of the train tracks. As far as we could see, or cared to walk, the earth had the same uniform, brown, dusty look. We were all thirsty and drank lots of water. Minna estimated the temperature to be in the vicinity of 40 degrees Celsius.
  "We should be able to see the sea from here, Pete said, "but all I can see is more of that brown, dusty earth." He was the tallest and strongest of us and he lifted up Janet as far as he could. But even with Pete standing on the highest point, she was not sure she could see a glimpse of water far away, or if it was only wistful thinking. We were all still dazed from all what had happened, or maybe the lack of oxygen made us numb in some way. We just walked, taking it all in, not reflecting very much on what we saw.

As evening fell, we returned to the river. There was still not a cloud in the sky, and the temperature dropped only slightly. James had died sometimes in the late afternoon, holding Linda's hand and looking towards the setting sun.
The stars came out and we all shut up. It was majestic to say the least. None of us knew just how many stars you could see when the night was totally dark. Or rather, of course we knew, but we had not fully realized it.

to be continued ...