And then a turn in the path, and he waited for her. He did. He was panting, at least. But his face was not lined with mischief, and the sun that made him squint, he was letting it all fall fully upon his face there in its waves of gold. And the pool, Hanging Lake, it was turquoise, emerald, cerulean. Grassed-over and fallen trees slumbered in its shallows, waterfalls poured in silver freshets into the purest of Rocky Mountain waters.
And she had stared in disbelief, and she had been close to tears. When was the last time that she had been able to cry? Had it been over Patrice? Had it been that long?
And he had taken her in his arms, and whispered, “Someday. Someday, I’d like to build a home under a waterfall. You know? Something just for you. For you with me.”
As she backed the H4 out all the way, she caught a tear-crested glimpse at Silas in the rearview mirror, shivering there in the back seat. Duct-taped racks of munitions boxes and water bottles and MRE packs were piled all around him. And he, blessed angel in defiance of all reality, he was smiling at her.
He gave her a little wave.
Sophie backed the H4 slowly and deliberately into the canyon wall. There was a thud, a firmness there. She cranked the wheel and shifted into four-wheel and low gear. The drive began with a crawl over rubble, a jolting bobble back and forth as the vehicle began to prowl and find its way. The piles of boulders and shattered stones were painted with un-light, fire-light pouring down from the seam of canyon-rimmed clouds so high above. Sophie bent in her seat, peered up out of a strip left in the taped-over windshield.
She gazed up into the sky, and she felt her fingers on the wheel trembling against her will. She beheld the black and crimson Archangel, the four-limbed cyclone still tumbling and burning, a coiled hollow upon the sky. An endless storm was seething there deep inside. Crimson whirlwinds wheeled about in blindness, the limbs of some titanic and emaciated angel, a burning spirit of all ending enthroned upon the sky.
“We’re coming, Lacie,” she whispered. She arced her right arm out of her unzipped suit, back behind her, taking Silas’s fingers in her own.
“Damn right,” he said, and he gripped her fingers tighter. He was shivering. “You just drive, Sophie, ’til we need the gas can. I guide the way. Leave the all else to me. Give me your HK there. Got this laser-sight pistol figured out, best as I can see. But that one, you give that back here, if it please?”
And she let his hand go. She pulled the submachine gun off the passenger seat, checked the safety, and passed it back to him.
“Let’s get moving,” she said. The H4 tumbled forward over the ruin. And so they went. And the dead and shattered world, it embraced them.
The remnant of Kersey-town, by highway and trial and horror and endless circuit of wreckage and wasteland, was less than a month away. They never returned to the shelter, they never had any need to. They had each other.
“Mother of God,” Silas whispered. He was looking out again up to the Archangel in the sky.
Sophie rubbed at her eyes, unbelieving of the canyon’s ruin. Entire trees had fallen to the road from high above and burned to ash. She plowed the H4 through drifts of blackest flurry. The windshield wipers purred, three of the four headlights came on.
“We’re coming, Lacie love. Feel me sing this. Feel. Tell Uncle Mitch we’re coming soon,” she intoned serenely.
They drove on.
To Be Continued
(The saga of Sophie St.-Germain continues, as she and Silas name themselves as guardian to one another and traverse the mountains of the burning and revelation in FROM THE FIRE, EPISODE V: GRAY RAIN EXODUS, also available from Wonderland Imprints.)
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Kent David Kelly
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the copyright holder, Kent David Kelly.