The Rain

A Post-Apocalyptic Story by Joseph A. Turkot

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 Part 1

Chapter 1

There are a lot of stories about how the rain started.

The thing that always comes to mind first isn’t the how though, it’s the
how much
. Back when they were taking measurements still, according to Russell, the numbers to know were 15 and 5,400. Now he’s slapped a new number on after those two: 8,550.

            15 inches a day, 5,400 in a year, and 19 years since the rain started. That’s 8,550 feet of rain. He still does the math, keeping track after all these years with that old formula. We have no idea if it’s accurate. But it’s important to think about it, he says, because it reminds us to keep moving.  

We’re camped again tonight in the Bighorn mountains as I ponder the numbers for the millionth time. Our tent isn’t much—a leaky spread of canvas on some aluminum poles. The bandits that have been trailing us for the last few days don’t seem to know where we’re at anymore. Russell says they used to call this mountain Hesse. He thinks the highest peaks on the range are still several thousand feet above the water, but right now we’re only a few feet from the edge, in case we have to move out quick—in case they find us. All I know is it’s cold as hell up here. And out there, on the water, it looks like the dirty canvas that our tent is made out of, except it goes on forever. I can see a couple other spikes rising out of the canvas—other mountain tops. Some more rock than mud, some only mud. Our boat’s no good though. It won’t make it much farther. And I think ice has been forming on the water for the past few days, but Russell says it’s my imagination.

            When I can get Russell to talk about it, the time before the rain, he doesn’t give me too much. He only likes to talk about why it started. Which theory he buys. Since Rapid City though, he doesn’t want to talk about anything but Leadville.  

When he found me, and my dad died in the rain, he took me because he was worried someone might try to eat me. That was fourteen years ago. He said it didn’t matter that I was a happy baby girl, with bright blonde hair and a smile that vanquished the gloom of the rain. They’d eat me as soon as burp me.

            He usually mentions the solar flare first—he says it was a sunburst, something that comes once in a long time. The scientists talked about it on TV he said—TV is when there are pictures of people that move. So the sun shot out a long branch of invisible something, messed up the Earth’s magnetic field, currents, or jet streams, or something like that. And then it happened—the great Pacific started swooping up into the sky, as he says. And everywhere else, the rain started.

It came slow at first, and sometimes, not even every day. Russell seems to like telling this part, but I have a hard time believing it. I’ve never seen the rain turn off. He said no one even wore plastic yet, covered their skin, worried about exposure, hypothermia, or the rubber flesh that forms and slides off like a glove. And then it became clear to everyone that the rain wasn’t going to stop. It was just going to keep on coming. And everyone thought that there’d be some explanation, something that would help fix the problem. But there never was.

            The other theories are bullshit, he’s told me a thousand times. Conspiracy theories. Weather manipulation, manmade effects of pollution. All of it bullshit. Only the sun could cause this, he says.

I don’t really care too much about the reason it started. I guess, since it’s been this way my whole life, it would be like contemplating that you fall down after you jump up. You accept that it happens, and you move on.

            And that’s what we’ve been doing for the last fourteen years. Moving. One place to the next. I remember when I was a little girl, and we walked on the roads a lot more. Russell says where we’re going, there are whole towns that are still above the water. We’ll be walking roads again. And there’s a place where it’s stopped raining. That’s when I know the bullshit has started coming from him instead of the conspiracy theories. It’s raining everywhere. I’ve never seen anything to make me think otherwise. And we’ve traveled from New Jersey to Wyoming. But now we have to move 520 miles south he says. Leadville, Colorado. He hasn’t stopped talking about it for the last year. We’re going to Leadville, there’s a whole city there, thousands of feet above the water. Where the veneer is still thick.

But we couldn’t go directly there, because the route across the Great Plains is flooded. Thousands of feet of water, but moving water. I don’t mind the still water. I hate the moving water. And the worst are the waterspouts. Used to be called tornados, Russell says. But there are too many of them on the Plains, tall and clear and deadly, spinning arms to heaven, and we had to move north first. And that’s how we picked up this crew of face eaters, as he calls them. They’ve been following us for days, but suddenly, they haven’t been in sight. Each time we cross a valley of water along the Bighorns, they’re behind us, rowing after us in their boat, a canoe similar to ours. There’s three of them, so they can rotate bailers more often, and they move a bit faster over the brown. I thought we’d hit a patch of water too wide, and they might overtake us, but we didn’t. We’ve kept them at bay. But now they’re gone. Russell thinks they drowned. But I haven’t seen any bodies floating by.

I think the canoe has about had it—it’s made out of some kind of manmade stuff, fiberglass, I think. He says that it will make the trip to Colorado. How long will we have to be on the water, I asked him. A week he said. We’ve never been on water for more than a day, and we stop when we can, so a whole day is a lie. A day with rest stops.

The exposure is worse than the face eaters. It’s creeping down again today, I can feel it. Cold wet sickness. And this is the longest we’ve been without a fire. Russell says he’ll find what we need for one tomorrow, but I don’t see how. All the trees are ripped away or waterlogged up here. And now, while the sun’s showing behind the gray, he’s sleeping. Sleeping during the day is a waste, he says. So I adopted his attitude. Looking at him, it’s a waste to me, because he’s breaking his own rule. But he needs it after all the rowing. I let him be.

            The numbness in my left foot is getting a little bit worse. It comes and goes. He says at these altitudes in Wyoming we’re too far north, so we can’t stay here long, and winter’s coming. Going south to Colorado won’t be much better. If the winter comes early, we won’t have a chance. It used to be that we could camp on rooftops for months at a time, keep a fire throughout the winter. Back in Philadelphia we did that. And Pittsburg. Then again in Chicago. Indianapolis. Sioux Falls. Rapid City. But Wyoming is like no man’s land. To the east, like a high island, is Yellowstone. But Russell says we can’t go that way. There’s nothing on those mountains. To me they look like rescue. And when I look south, I don’t see any more peaks. Just the canvas of water. Little dancing splashes all over it, letting me know the rain is at medium. When it’s on high, there is a mist that rises up, like a low-lying cloud that kisses the surface. The rain never goes to low anymore. The last time I saw a drizzle I was six.

If the skin is left out, it prunes at first. Then it becomes rubbery. Eventually, the skin slides off. It’s like it’s been all filled up, like it absorbed all the rain, the constant sloshing, and there is no other way for the body to expel the moisture. So the skin slides right off.

            It happened to part of Russell’s left leg. He keeps the plastic on that leg real tight. But the infection comes and goes. He says he’s never seen the rain this bad. He thinks it’s getting worse.

I wear plastic gloves, but there are a few small holes in them now, as always come with shitty plastic gear. My fingers are constantly wrinkled, and when we’re in the rain for too long, I start to think of Russell’s leg. Sometimes I worry that when I take off the gloves, my hand will slip off with it.

            He showed it to me once. Normally I just look away when he changes plastic. It looked like a dark red hump, as if it was still swelling up after all the years. Only the skin is gone. And the hump is something else. I don’t know if it’s muscle or tendons or what. I never really asked for the science on it, and he’s never volunteered.

Although Russell hasn’t said anything, I know we’re almost out of food. Our last major pickup, a high rise apartment near Rapid City, had a crate full of hardtack. That and some cans of beans, rice, lentils, and some kind of powder soup. A survivalist’s den. But we lost half the hardtack. The canoe tipped over. I can’t believe Russell managed to get the pack on the hull in time to save any of it.