Journal (29 page)

As
for the rest of the night, nothing is worth recording.  We agreed to meet in
the morning and everyone went off to bed, although I stayed up a while to write
out the last of these words.

On
April 16, 2054

I
awoke at first light with a weird feeling I wasn’t awake at all but still somewhere
in a dream.  I attribute this to Anna being beside me, a yet strange but agreeable
sensation, as well as being indoors and in an actual bed, with an actual pillow,
and with no wind or rain or chill on my face.  I righted myself quickly,
though, rolled out of bed, and dressed.  As I did, I detected no other movement
in the house, but that didn’t mean I was the first to rise.  Gabriel has taken
that place lately.

The
kitchen window framed a clear, pale blue sky and immediately filled me with a
careless sense of promise.  I guess I should have known better.

When
I stepped out onto the front porch, Gabriel was there, seated on the step,
hunched-over and leaning back against one of the support posts.  At first he
didn’t move, instead staring straight ahead at nothing that I could see deserving
his attention.  Finally, he looked back and up at me, over one shoulder, with a
beat down expression that immediately impressed me with the feeling that
something unpleasant had happened — again.  He tipped his head in the direction
of the shop, got up, and started walking that way without so much as a word of
explanation.  His manner of movement, though, as he crossed the yard, slope
shouldered and shuffling, well enough told me of trouble.  Though I had slept
well, I suddenly felt exhausted.

Before
we got there, I could see a piece of paper taped to the door.  Gabriel stopped,
several feet away, and allowed me to pass on by.

“Alan: 
Please meet me around back.  I need your help with something.  Hank.”

I
looked back at Gabriel, who shook his head but again offered no further.  I guess,
though, I really didn’t need more than was given.

Out
behind the shop, taped to the gate of the little cemetery I’ve previously
described, was a second note.  My eyes, however, didn’t catch there but instead
fixed to the shovel stuck deep down into the dirt piled alongside the open
grave — Hank’s grave. As I neared, more and more of the hole availed itself to
my vision; face, shoulders, chest, legs, the body of Hank@font-face
{font-family:atatj Thompson.  He had
shot himself with a chrome plated, .45 cal semi automatic pistol, that now
rested on top of his chest just below his chin.  The marker above showed, “Date
of Death, April 16, 2054.”

Strangely,
I didn’t feel that bad.  Surely, there was the body of a man who in life could
have continued on to the benefit and good of others.  As I’ve written, I think
we could have also been fast friends and maybe have even accomplished something
fine together, maybe.  But the grave is where he wanted to be.  He missed his
family and in his mind, there, next to them, is where he belonged.  So in death,
he got what he most wanted in life and no doubt found peace in at least those
last few moments.  I guess for that I am happy for him.

Gabriel
sided me at this point and handed me the note that had been taped to the gate.

“Alan:
 I apologize for doing this to you, but it’s something I obviously couldn’t do
myself.  I waited for you or someone like you to come along; someone who I
could trust.  I know you’ll cover me up and after do just one more thing before
you go.  If I can ask you to give the flowers a last watering, that would be
nice.  Marge liked her flowers.  They will bloom soon, I think. There’s not
much else to say other than take care of your family.  Hank.”

My
“family,” we’ve become that haven’t we?  I guess so.  I’ll do my best Hank.

Gabriel
leaned his rifle against the fence, but I told him that I’d take care of things
(I wanted to be the one to do it) and suggested that he re-survey the shop for
items that might be useful.  I also told him he may as well familiarize himself
with the UTV while he’s at it.  I then entered the cemetery and shoveled dirt
into Hank’s grave.  Before finishing, Anna joined me and together we patted the
earth firmly into place.  Each of us, I think, said a silent prayer, I know I
did, and it was back to business after.  Once again, I had the feeling of being
outside myself.  The earth was off its axis.  Things weren’t normal, even for
this world.

The
vehicle dramatically changed our situation.  Most important, we would be at our
destination by tomorrow or the next day.  Secondly, we could carry more food,
water, sheltering material, and weapons than if on foot.  Third, we wouldn’t be
expending as much energy in our travels.  At the end of the day, we wouldn’t be
as tired, and we would be in better shape to fight if it came to that.

It
wasn’t all good, though.  Driving the vehicle will make noise.  Anyone within a
mile or so will be able hear us.  It will also leave tracks more easily
followed and be harder to hide should our enemies be near.  We’ll take the
negatives for the positives, though.  I am damn tired of walking.  Who wouldn’t
be?

We
re-inventoried everything; spread it all right out there on the floor in the
shop.  We set aside three days of rations and a small alcohol stove to cook them,
along with a box of matches and a small pot.  We added a jug of water as well
as three individual containers for each of us.  A ten by twelve tarp was set
aside with a length of rope.  Finally, the weapons: the rifle, twelve gauge
shotgun, three pistols, Anna’s assault rifle and ammunition for all consequenceswot of them. 
And the prize; Hank had two cans of gun powder for reloading.  To these we
taped nails and punched a small hole in the screw cap for a fuse.  Now, we had
crude hand grenades.  A few other items were included in our pile: the machete,
a couple of hand tools, a roll of tape, and four clean blankets.  We were ready
to go.

With
Gabriel behind the wheel, we drove back to Road P, going maybe ten miles per
hour.  Hank’s machine was certainly capable of going faster than that.  The
terrain just wasn’t suitable for speed with all the ruts and obstacles and with
two of us riding on the small cargo platform on the back.  It was still twice
as fast as we normally traveled so no complaints from me.

The
first few hours were uneventful except for one little thing — smoke, only a
whiff at first.  But as we continued on our way south, the smell kept getting
stronger and stronger, and we could also see a dense, steel gray haze to our
southeast, back in the foothills.

By
our mid day stop, it was like gray gauze draped our world.  The odor of burning
vegetation was unmistakable.  This somewhat surprised me because even though
this part of the state received less rainfall, it still seemed too early in the
season for wildfires.

I
bent down and grabbed a handful of weeds and squeezed them.  Some of them
easily crumbled, others didn’t.  My guess was that the dead stuff was the
material left over from all the previous dry seasons, ready fuel, six, seven,
eight years worth, mixed in with new and greener growth.

Maybe
it was a lightning strike that started it, or one accidently set by some poor
soul trying to keep warm, that got out of control.  Who knows?  It doesn’t
matter I guess.  It was on us, and at the time that’s all that counted; that
and the fact that our eyes were starting to feel raw, and our lungs were getting
that deep dull ache when we breathed in.

We
switched places at that point, Gabriel getting in the back with Petra, me
moving to the driving position, and Anna sitting in the right front.  I also
cut four, six inch strips from the end of one of the blankets to fashion a
scarf of sorts for each of us.  We wrapped them around our faces, covering
everything except for the slightest bit of our eyes.  We started off again.

After
another ten miles or so, the smoke was as thick as coastal fog, cutting
visibility down to a hundred yards.  We wet the fronts of our makeshift masks
and kept going, though.  We couldn’t turn back now.  We were so close.  At this
point, there was very little conversation going on between us; no talk of
Woburn or what we’d do when we got there.  I doubt anyone was even thinking about
it.  I think instead we were all wondering if this time we were pushing our
luck just a little too far.

I
looked back a couple of times while driving and noticed that Petra had turned
her face into Gabriel’s body, and he was rocking her.  But maybe that was just
the movement of the vehicle instead.  I also caught Anna looking at me once,
but I couldn’t read her expression because of the wrapping that covered her
face.  No doubt she was as worried as I was.

A
hot wind kicked up about thishimself; kill or be killed.  with t point, and I was suddenly occasioned by a very
unsettling recollection.  Many years ago, long before the troubles that have
brought mankind so down low, I watched a wildfire survivor interviewed on camera. 
He was a scruffy old coot, crinkled and dry as high desert chaff, no doubt much
more so in appearance because his ordeal just recently happened.

This
man described, in the most colorful of terms, his unfortunate experience and
his fortunate survival.  His spontaneous poetry, at least a single portion of
it, has apparently lingered all this time in my brain and was called up by the
similar circumstance we found ourselves in.  Most particularly, he said that
just before the flames found him, “it was as though the devil’s breath swept
across his land and kindled the very earth upon which I stood.”  He survived
when “God’s hand tumbled me over and down into a dry ravine” where he lay for
the next hour.

I
slowed our machine with these thoughts fresh in-mind and eventually stopped
altogether, suddenly convinced that a great calamity was about to fall upon us. 
As it happened, the place I halted was one that was more asphalt than
vegetation.  We dismounted at this point, all of us except Petra, and I
directed them to clear the weeds on both edges of the road as best they could
and work to the center.  We set about kicking and scuffing and pulling free the
weeds for twenty yards north and south, throwing what we had loosened to one
side or the other.  Once fairly well accomplished, we remounted our vehicle and
positioned it near the western edge of the blacktop, so certain was I that the
fire was coming from the east.  There we waited, hoping that our little island
would be avoided, and we would be saved.

As
we waited for death or for deliverance, the wind picked up speed, blowing hot from
west to east.  This confused me to such an extent that I thought I had made a
mistake.  I questioned if the fire wasn’t approaching us from the west instead
of the east, being driven by the air flow.  But it dawned on me that I hadn’t
been mistaken at all.  The flames were consuming great quantities of oxygen and
so sucking the air in its direction, feeding its voracious appetite.

I
know this sounds crazy, but the fire seemed to be a living thing; an inexorable
force, a juggernaut destroying everything in its path.  I don’t ever remember
feeling so small and helpless as I did at that moment.  We seemed totally
defenseless.

The
space around us suddenly cleared of smoke, it all being pulled with the air
toward the approaching fire.  The weeds and brush at the side of the road bent
to the east like bony fingers pointing toward the danger —
it’s there, that
way, coming for us
.  The heat increased by degrees to the point that I
wondered if everything might not eventually explode into flame.  At that point,
an idea came to my mind; a way to perhaps ensure our survival.

I
jumped from the vehicle and clawed through our gear until I found the matches, which
I carried along with one of our spare cans of alcohol to the eastern edge of
our little asphalt island.  I next splashed small amounts of the flammable here
and there along the whole forty yards and ignited it.  At first the brush was
slow to catch.  Soon enough though, the oxygen that was being sucked up and
toward the main fire, fed these flames, racing them uphill with the wind. consequenceswot

My
hope was that if I could burn enough of the area immediately between us and the
fire, it would deny the fire the fuel around us and we would be saved.  For the
most part this worked, except that embers ignited some of the remnants of our
early effort to clear the road.  These I attacked with my boots and soon both
Anna and Gabriel joined in until they were extinguished.  After that, we just
waited by our little vehicle.  What else could we do?

Somewhere,
I guess the two fires joined and the bigger one continued to burn our way, only
to the north and south of us, surrounding us with flames.  But we were saved;
hot, scared, awed by the power of the fire though we were.  I have to add, in those
moments when the storm rushed down upon us and since, even now, I’ve been
unable to avoid the most unsettling thoughts of what our death would have been
like had my scheme failed; a bullet, almost anything instead.

After
a good long time had passed, we traveled through a landscape of gray and black,
still smoldering in places, tendrils to the sky.  Sometimes we passed a
foundation with a house or barn crumbled down around it, fence posts turned charcoal
stubs, vehicles hollowed and resting on their metal rims, stinking, the earth a
holocaust, an ash desert, we the only things living.  Our wheels ground down
beneath them what was left, floating a frail gray dust that settled on
everything.  Our way, though, was cleared of all obstruction save few, allowing
us to pick up speed and make up most the progress lost.