The Zona (13 page)

The highways were rendered useless in both directions, loaded with cars first used and then abandoned by people who too late realized they could not navigate through standing water.  People left their cars and walked in the rain, blank and confused, numb with tragedy.  Terence opened his car door against the force of winds.  He ran in ankle deep water towards San Diego, towards home.  The horizon held funnels of tornadoes which ripped and tore and broke that which the waves hadn’t.  Terence ran towards the horizon and tornadoes and destruction.  He ran against the crowds fleeing and panicked.  Blue bolts of lightning arced across the sky, illuminating clouds that would always remain.  Terence broke from the crowds and waded through a runoff ditch. Somewhere in the sludge he lost a shoe.  None of it mattered, Terence was going home.

“My neighborhood was wet rubble, unrecognizable.  Buildings, landmarks, shopping centers, everything was ripped apart by waves and winds.  The roads were choked with pieces of buildings, and overturned cars, and corpses.  I found my home late in the night using street signs as the only remaining landmarks.  I used my cell phone like a flashlight. The signal towers were not broadcasting anymore, but I kept my phone in false hope.

There was almost nothing left of my apartment complex.  The top two floors were ripped clean away, like they’d been uprooted by the hand of God.  I waded into my living room, which was open to the elements.  Everything had washed out except my bed.  In all that destruction, in all that devastation, my bed stood in its room, my last material object; a monument.  I laid on it. Of course it was soaked but that didn’t matter.  I waited for my family.  I waited for Christine and Johnny to come home so we could leave together.  I watched the sun peek through rain clouds.  A rainbow formed overhead.  The water rose to mattress level. I rolled to a sit and let my legs dangle in the water.  From under the bed, a tiny hand reached for me.”

Johnny lay under the bed, peaceful, unmoving.  In the panic of the tidal wave, he hid in the safest place he knew, under the bed of his parents.  The wave struck and carried his mother and his home away and yet he remained, trapped under the bed in the water.  Terence touched the hand.  It was real.  Terence’s chest clenched, his heart beat frantically.  He pulled the boy out.  Johnny was wearing his pajamas and blue galoshes.  His skin was a similar hue of blue.  Terence felt the boy’s necks and wrists.  He shook Johnny and screamed and moaned at the boy and God in equal parts.  Terence grasped the boy to his chest and rocked him, tried to force warm life from his own body to that of the child.  His mind groped for direction, explanation, anything sane and rational.  He lay down with the boy and closed his eyes.  He whimpered, lacking words.  

“I awoke to thunder and wind whipping itself back to life.  Rain pelted my face.  I looked to the body of my boy and knew for the first time, truly knew, that he was never coming back.  I knew that he was gone, and Christine was gone, and my home was gone and the park and zoo and museums and all parts of a life I had lived within and loved.”

Terence rubbed has hands together.

“I was done with my beautiful life.  I waded to what was left of my neighborhood market and scavenged cans of soup and bottled water.  The shelves that stood were plentiful, there wasn’t enough life left in that part of the city to support looting.  I packed a bag of supplies for Chris and Johnny and left it on the bed, like coins for the ferryman.  I was that crazy with grief.”

Terence walked back into the bedroom.  The water sloshed at knee level.  He set the shopping bag next to Johnny’s body and touched his face for the last time.  Terence slung his pack over his shoulders.  He had planned to order pizza when he got home from work the night before.  On pizza nights they usually played checkers.  Johnny was old enough to play by the rules, though he showed no aptitude for the game.  Terence stopped himself from thinking about it.  He knew he should be crying but he couldn’t do it.

Terence wadded through downtown San Diego in the early morning light.  

“The day before, when I left for work, I knew the storms weren’t right, that things were wrong with the Earth.  I knew the world was ailing and we needed to move east, away from the ocean. It was in my head.  I don’t know why I did nothing.  A man’s job is to protect his family.  He’s supposed to follow the right voice in his head, the one that tells him what’s wrong, what’s dangerous.  I went to work like it was a regular day, like the wind and Hell of the Earth wasn’t blowing down the coasts.  I ignored what was obvious.  Before leaving, Chris asked me if I could take some time off, if we could go visit her relations in Arizona ‘til the storms stopped.  I told her it wasn’t necessary. That the storms had to break up sometime.”

Terence turned away.

“I killed Chris and John.  Nothing is right after that.”

Terence pushed the toe of his boot into the sand.

“You ever love anyone?”

Lead thought about it.  “Jesus…my mother too I guess,” he replied.

“What about real women, not relation?”  Terence asked.

“The ones at the fugee camp were older.  Young ones were removed earlier on.  Only ladies at Flagstaff camp were Marys or Goodwives.  Preacher ain’t supposed to take a wife anyway; doesn’t fit the life and purity.”

Lead closed his eyes.  He listened to the wind scour the tarp with sand.

“You didn’t kill your kinfolk,” Lead said.  “It was the Storms.  Storms killed lots of folk…”

Terence interrupted Lead.  “A day later, walking the mountain roads to Julian town, seeking higher elevation, I killed a man with my hands.”

Terence looked to his clenched fists.

“He was middle-aged, simple-minded by the sound of his speech.  He was scared, and desperate, and hungry.  He wanted the food in my pack.  I beat him with my fists until he stopped moving and breathing.  I broke two of my fingers punching his face over and over and over.  I beat on that man until he stopped moving and twitching and long past when he went over.  I threw his body into a flood stream.  I assumed I would feel bad about it, but at the time I didn’t.  It didn’t matter.  It was all part of my new tragic, empty life.”

Terence shifted.

“I hiked to Calexico where I met a group of guards tasked to hold the border against Mexican fugees.  The Mexicans had it way worse than us with the Storms.  The guards needed manpower to push back the hordes of men migrating north.  I was young and able-bodied and American.  I volunteered and that was that.”

Lead listened to the wind.  He waited for Terence to say more, but Terence was finished.  Lead drifted to sleep imagining cities filled with water.  

They woke in the early evening.  Terence folded his reflective tarp and placed it back into his knapsack.  He pulled the jars from the water traps and handed one to Lead.

“It’s not going to taste right and it might hurt your stomach a little.  The important part is to not let it out.  Keep the water in you because that’s the only thing that is going keep you alive out here.”

Lead looked at the cloudy inch of water at the bottom of the jar.  It smelled like cut plants.  It tasted bitter and wrong.  Lead held his breath in his nose and swallowed the rest. He handed the jar back to Terence.

Lead gagged and clenched his stomach until the nausea passed.  Terence drank from his jar, gritted his teeth and sucked wind against the bitterness.  Terence put the jars back in his knapsack.  They began their nightly journey.