How to Find Peace at the End of the World (15 page)

Charley is also coughing crazily, an old man’s cough. I take the damp scrap of fabric and lightly wrap it around his entire muzzle. Breathe through the cloth, dammit. It’s getting hotter again and I wonder if the wind will ever shift the other way and provide some relief. I crack the bottle of water open and squeeze the remainder over our bodies. I notice that some patches of the comforter are already bone dry and smoking with the precursor of ignition. The heat continues to rise, or so it seems. It feels like we’re going to be cooked alive in a little wrap. But then, it begins to recede, the heat and the roar and the crackle. Then bangs, like gunshots. And that’s when I remember the ammunition I’d had in the back of the truck. I look out from underneath the comforter right as a gout of fire brushes its tendril of heat across my face. Another snap and I swear feel something graze my forehead. I prepare to die having survived the fire we are going to fucking die in a hail of bullets. All I can do is grasp the comforter with white knuckles as if the flimsy piece of fabric can protect us. I close my eyes and huddle into Charley as the pops pick up in frequency, like popcorn in a microwave. Several times I feel things, little vibrations in the ground and wonder if I’ve been mortally pierced and just don’t feel it. I yelp with the exquisitely painful awareness of both life and death and line between and when I do Charley is there to lick my face.
Soon, the bangs and reports peter out and I realize things might end well for us, even anticlimactically, but I wait, a low profile, under the comforter. When I haven’t heard anything for many minutes, I venture a peek out: the fire has been spurred on by the wind again: the fire stranded on the other side of the fire break when the wind turned had been extinguished and when the wind turned again the walls of fire on either side of the break came back around and rejoined before us, a resurgence. It’s been pushed onward by the wind, farther down, a few thousand feet and far enough away to give us some relief. I throw the part of our life saving comforter away from my body and make to stand, I’m weak. I have to crouch for a few moments and then when I stand I feel another heat on my back, then a great roar. I flip around only to see a second breath of fire consume the Beast: The gas, I think. The jerricans of gas going up: not the gas in the back but the tank of it that I had in the passenger compartment, or the tank underneath the truck. If the wildfire had left it relatively unscathed, drivable, then the internal fire took care of that. Then more cracks from whatever ammunition is left: I get back under my blanket.
When it’s all over I peek out again. I don’t know how long it’s been. An hour? More? I get up and notice the fire in the Beast has finally gone out.

I can’t believe we’re alive. I look all around at the charred plain. Almost looks like the hand of God reached down and cupped over us. We are on one of the only pieces of uncharred grass for thousands of feet in any direction. We’re parched. Some of my skin must be burned. I can feel in patches where I know my skin will blister or boil. Some of Charley’s fur is charred. But we’re alive.

I sit down on the scorched earth and start to laugh. I’ve decided that this story is a comedy. Divine absurdities. Since three days ago, that’s what it’s been. Charley throws his half of the comforter off and joins me, putting his head on my lap. I rub behind his ears.

When I am done cackling I begin to pat myself and Charley down. No gunshot wounds. I believe I have a few first degree burns. Charley has some singed fur. With my other hand I lethargically drag the duffel bag closer to me. I rummage around the contents: four bottles of water left, distorted by heat, but at least still intact. Some beef jerky. Some additional dried snacks. The hand chargeable flashlight that I had gotten from the law office. Some clothes. Thankfully I also have the large revolver and a shotgun. A box of fifteen shells and half a box left of bullets. Then the most precious gem, a small jar of preserved pears that miraculously has not cracked in the heat or broken apart in my rush to get away.
I wait until the hulk that was once the Beast cools down. It must be hours though my estimation of time has never been good.

I don’t know why I wait so long. Some misplaced sense of loyalty, like I want to honor its sacrifice or something.

Also, I want to check to see if anything is left.

I find little but the skeleton of the Beast charred black as the surrounding grass. It’s burned beyond recognition. RIP friend. I stand there and listen to the taps of water falling from the ruined duffel, the one I’d sliced apart and soaked with Ozarka before throwing it over us. The fire had dried it out in patches and things are still wet even though it felt like lying in an oven.

Weird. The Beast almost even looks melted in a sad way. Not in the rictus of death, but as if it had wanted to keep going for me but in the end couldn’t. Its fender droops on each side and its hood is melted down into the engine compartment. The center of the roof has sagged down below the sides of its face. The truck bed is completely gone probably because of all the fuel that had been in the back and because it was flimsier stuff. I don’t even look that hard. I know everything is gone. There will be no salvage here.

In the midst of mourning I hear a whimper beside me. Charley has plopped down at my feet. His pure white fur is already streaked with gray darkening to black.

“Come here boy,” I say to him as I stoop down. It’s hard to tell just where he’s hurt because his fur isn’t singed and the places he’s licking are dirtied with ash. I part the snow white fur and where I don’t see ashy gray I see bright pink and wonder if this is supposed to be the actual pallor of his skin.

“How did you get so dirty so quick boy?” I ask as I try to follow his tongue but it’s an impossible task, really. Ah, boy, you’ll survive. If I feel like I just have really bad sunburn, with all your hair I’m sure you’ll be all right.

No, I shouldn’t say that. I look up at the burned, ruined plain all around me. I’m worried about the wrong danger, the wrong damage. We’re not singed, but we’re out here in the seeming middle of nowhere, no vehicle and not much water. Nothing really except for a few salvaged bottles, a few dry crackers.

I linger over the cool remains.

I look until I can’t stand to look anymore, to be still.
We’ll have to hump it on foot, God knows how long. I gather the content of the duffel bag. I tie up the torn open canvas into something that works somewhat like a bag and put the gathered supplies back inside. Four deformed bottles of water. A package of saltines. Some Clementines squished to nearly indistinguishable pancakes. Silver lining: at least it’s a lot lighter than it had been. “C’mon boy,” I say. Charley turns back from where he’d wandered off to, sniffing some phantom in the ash. I bid a fond farewell to a friend, the horse I’d rode in on.

Then I turn and Charley follows.

We walk back towards the freeway but suddenly I feel tired. I feel like if I take another step I might not be able to lift my leg up again. Yet I do. I make it back barely to the rutted road we‘d come in on, Fuck it, I lie down and pull the canvas bag over me. Charley lies down next to me and exhaustion takes us.

???? It’s The Next Morning.

What do you do? You walk alone and you hope it’s only for a while. Not completely alone: you walk with your dog. You walk towards a city you can’t yet make out where the road disappears on the horizon, where your last hope in the world might be.

Shouldn’t you find hope where you can? You’re only a hundred or so miles away. From what? You find a purpose, a consolation anyway. A philosophy. An idea curling down from your head to twirl around your finger. An absentminded comfort.
I walk first with this fantasy: the ridiculous hope that everyone is simply in hiding, the remote hope that they have gone south to avoid the catastrophe, the realization that this is probably not the case, the real here-ness of this smelly pile of gray ash streaked white fur walking beside me, the idea that my eyes are probably the last human eyes that will ever fall upon this horror behind or that beauty ahead, the sun firing its rays across a smoke smudged sky. From here on out, just me.
 

The wind picks up. I feel it on my face and I see it in the graceful curlicues drawn on the screen of smoke. I walk with eyes up, admiring.

A comfort, maybe: the thought that something beautiful remains. Also that I exist. Such obligation. It must be the loneliest and least lonely moment of my life. I walk now like a new man, the momentum lifted from my eyes I begin to come around to the possibility that I might not find something at whatever end I’ve chosen for this journey. It feels like I’ve been frivolous these last few days, I suppose, just like it would have if somebody I loved had died and I’d gone back to living my life as a grown child. Now all I have is time to look back on a world of regret.

The wind is blowing East, the only way I know is because I’m travelling north on the highway. The asphalt is sticky, still cooling.
I haven’t seen a good place to stop in miles. I realize that I don’t really have anything to worry about. I-45 is one of the most trafficked interstates in Texas. Just a few miles down the road I should be able to find a rest stop, though no telling if it’s burned all to hell. Dammit brain, why do you have to always ruin hope with being all realistic and shit?
I want to sit down and rest, but all my water bottles are gone. Half into me, half into Charley, well maybe a little onto the road as he couldn’t hold still long enough to let me get a good pour into his mouth. Then he’d look down at the wet dirt and look back up at me: that all?

So we’re walking with just the box of crackers now. Useless really because what we really need is water.

For hours I feel like I’m going to collapse. Next step to last. Next to last. Then up ahead like mana from heaven. A structure with melted wheels and a blackened top, but one still intact. I get closer and see the windows melted down in clumps but somehow the body still has some paint on it and it still looks like what it had been, one of those old all steel station wagons, no plastic anywhere to be found. Even better: Inside is hard foam cooler and in the cooler, past all burned stuff, past all the perishables that have been rotting for several days in a less than cold Texas winter, I find a package of hard salami and a few bottles of water.
 

I vomit, of course. I dry heave. I take the water. Leave the salami. Twenty steps away I realize my stupidity. I go back and palm the salami, secret it away in a pocket for later. I give Charley some water.

As I walk the thoughts settle down on me again like mortal dread. That feeling of having been dicking around these last few days comes back to me like a buzzard circling around in the empty sky.

What am I doing? What have I been doing?

What else can you do when walking in an uninteresting wasteland other than examine your own actions. Or first you begin with only the actions.

At least end it. Get to the end and answer the question. Dammit.

Why delay?

I don’t know if I want to know.

Why not?

I’m scared, of course.

What the fuck is there to be scared of?

There’s nobody here.

So the fuck what? You just keep looking then. Cowboy up you pussy.

Cowboy up.

?????? PM. I don’t know how many hours it is before we get past the patch of burn we started off in. The sun is already low in the sky. We must have walked several miles. Many times I stopped to scavenge around the burned down structures next to the highway. Also, the vehicles. It occurs to me now that if I had wanted to save at least a good amount of stuff in the Beast, I should have parked it beside the road, or even better I should have found an overpass bridge to park it under. That’s hindsight for you, haha.

Inside a wrecked 18 wheeler that was carrying a load of steel pipes I find some more food and bottled water: mostly what I assume to be trucker fare like Slim Jims, Pemmican, red hot Cheetos, a can of cashews and sourdough pretzels. Too bad it wasn’t a Wal-Mart truck or something.
I watch the sun go under with a mounting sense of dread. Walking around will definitely not be the best idea. The 18 wheeler is levered up a tree on the side of the road. The cab tilts at about a 20 degree angle backward on its jackknifed cargo. I get inside with Charley and close the door behind us. Charley slides slowly to the back of the cab and comes to rest against the edge of the trucker bunk. He puts his head down as if in defeat, too tired to fight gravity. Sitting in the driver’s seat, it feels vaguely like I’m in a rocket ship, about to take off. I try the seat controls, not expecting them to work, but hey, they do. I recline and the feeling of being in a ship ready to launch into the night increases. I wonder if I’ll begin to get light headed sleeping like this. The sun’s barely down and I’m so tired. A few minutes later I’m done for.
??????PM?AM?  I wake with a start. The crescent moon is high and casting an eerie glow on the interstate and the trees all around. Again that feeling of mortal peril descends on me. Charley is snoring deeply in the back seat. It’s cold. I can’t do a thing in the near pitch darkness. Even getting out of the cab might mean falling, breaking a leg. I turn over and pull tighter into a fetal position and fall asleep again.
 

??????AM?  In my dream I’ve simply fallen down a hole. A grown up, male Alice. All the fanciful things, Humpty Dumpty, the magic potions, the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, the Queen of Hearts, it’s all been delirium prompted by a bump on the head. My loved ones and medical help is gathered around me. They’re shining a flash light into my eye. Wake up! Wake up Dan! I hear Amy’s voice, terrified, pleading.  It’s surprisingly peaceful in this ditch surrounded by a copse of trees.