(As shall be seen, Sophie’s writings became far more terse and cryptic during her drive toward Kersey. She kept a scribbled compendium after leaving the High Shelter, continuing her numbering sequence from the earlier chronicle, somehow writing while she was driving.)
(We must conclude that such entries were written during the brief and exhausted sleep stops along the way. When we consider her care of Silas, the needs for fuel and debris removal and considerations of camouflage, this is likely all that she had time for. From these “bursts of revelation,” it appears to me that several sequential entries were written by her at any one time, a cascade of thoughts, in the hours or perhaps days following the original culmination of events.)
(It is sad and yet somehow immaculate, I believe, to say that the true moments and secrets she spent with Silas in these hours are forever lost to us, soul-filled ashes upon the wind. — A.)
(Assuming their earlier drive from the shelter down Fairburn Mountain as requiring nearly the entirety of Day 1, the chronicle resumes on what is likely Day 2 with entry 532.)
Timeless season, endless darkness. There now remain only blindness, wind, wreckage all in unison, the black and tumultuous Shadow of the Fire ever after. It may be almost May now, “spring,” but Silas and I can only guess.
Tom, I wish so much you were here to guide me. I do not understand how I can ever be forgiven for only loving you, a fool, for never fully believing in your dream or in your fears for Lacie and myself.
And without you, I can say this only in the silence of the page, we are nearly without hope of ever finding your brother Mitch and our sweet Lacie.
But I will die in trying.
Following the descent from Fairburn Mountain, I somehow headed south (how?) and west (why?) along frail and skeletal thicket-roads which I had never known, leading me far too near to the ruins of Central City. It was the stench of dead bodies, of festering and acrid decay leaking up through the air vents like some vaporous and rancid milk, which warned us further on into exile.
We realized my miscalculation, thank Fate. And at once, beholding next to nothing and fearing everything, we drove away.
(Later, a feebler hand)
Having been forced to backtrack once again, we are going north now on 119. The conditions are indescribably wretched. Fifteen miles an hour is high speed, fifty feet entail a straightaway. I can never see the slopes or cliffs of mountains toward the horizon, only cinder-blackened sky and occasionally, the fiery whorls in the clouds, the inverted whirlwinds devouring away the air, the un-presence forever burning in the clouds which we have come to christen: the Archangel.
Very wary of survivors, if any shall dare to be seen. Thinking always of Pete.
Pete. I hate myself for not having the backbone to try and save him. By necessity, I am a different person now.
My love, I don’t think you would recognize me.
There are no friends now beyond my Silas, nor even strangers. We hear and see hints of survivors, like the engine, but little else to betray their presence.
I believe that we are hunted.
It is as if the world is filled with the walking dead, and — lacking their prey of obligation, the living — they have begun to feed upon their own kind. Zombie myths are nothing compared to some of the horrors I have seen, the way people died in the ditches and SUVs, the things men did to women and women did to themselves to escape the agony.
No imagined horror could ever compare to the wasteland surround of Black Hawk. And yes, diary, even if I were to recognize someone… some strider of the nothing… I fear I would not stop for them.
(Later)
The world is filled with black shapes out of the blacker dark, silhouettes and spines. A few pathetic stumps of pine and aspens cluster here to the north of town, the only signs of life that Silas and I have seen.
Last hour, I slowed down alongside a two-truck wreck surrounded by dead burned deer, does and a stag, arrayed in misbegotten piles. Not even the flies, if they exist, would show themselves to feed from them. The indecipherable crash had been between a FedEx truck and a feed semi, and the semi had run straight over a compact, a Volkswagen I think, crushing the driver and spilling small hills of seed across the road.
The deer had died there, feeding. Feeding on what little they could find even as their burned flesh failed all around them.
I cannot stop thinking about that.
I slowed, to understand how they had died, I needed to see. Silas yelled at me.
And diary, they were ringed, ringed by beautiful dead birds, once ruby and cerulean and gold, feathers all blackened and covered by the greasy sheets of ash. Birds lying in heaps, sheltered only by the wreckage from the wind.
Shorter entries from now on. I cannot shelter-write like this, the way I used to. I cannot bear this.
Past Maryland Mountain, her bulk unseen, and back beneath the slopes of Fairburn once again. We crawled and four-wheeled over half-burned fallen trees, passing a clutter of wrecks and embracing corpses — men, women, children — outside the Cold Springs Lookout.
We are just passing East 46 and Golden Gate Canyon now (a deathtrap, Silas says, a way we will not ever take), despite its potential descent out from the mountains, because it could all too easily be a dead end. A tomb reach of collided cars. Too many dead to be down in there, said Silas. I agree. We cannot get down that way. No good way to die: crashing through smog, 30-foot visibility, straight into a corpse-thickened wall of wrecked cars, cars with all the rotting bodies poured out from their every shattered window.
No. Highways, this close to Denver, will not be the answer. We go on, north must be the passage.
(Later)
The mountains, here my beloved mountains are all burned and laid waste by the gray and poison rain. Mudslides uncountable, massive slime-peaks dried to crackled pyramids of waste.
Sludge.
Ashes.
Dust.
Amen.
So tired, Silas trying to help himself and he cannot. He insists on building braces for the guns, while he can’t even eat without me holding his head up. It’s as if he thinks I—
I ripped out a page. It was weak, it was shameful of me.
Can’t look back at whatever I’ve written. No more of Dory, the engine, the doll, Patrice, no more of mother. Can’t ever look back.
Did I write of the airport, the Athanasiou?
Runways were melted sheets of asphalt, buildings were all fused mounds of crumbled cinderblock, translucent jewels of glass. Once-wildflowers were all white fingers, dead and finch-pecked extremities sticking out of dirt-piles. At least some few of the birds survived, and even a badly-scarred gaunt and snuffling fox (!), I saw him, a fox whose creeping across the road caused me to brake and to almost scream.
But there are no living flowers here, no seeds.
Every bird and beast is now a carnivore.
I looked out there for survivors, only because of Silas’ longing for the girl. Amelia, the one who had offered herself to him, in return for solace from the airport ruin. The girl he had refused to violate, the one who had died along the rising way to the shelter.
I could tell, it pained him, whatever the secret, whatever truly happened to her.
I could ask it of him now. But no.
When we looped past the ruin of the airport, bodies blown about. There was no one left alive. And if there were, Sophie, what would you do?