I could not believe it.
Opening a window, stifling, the stench. Hard to breathe.
But fewer ashes in the air up here, visibility perhaps even 200 feet. Horrible burned-out wrecks and roadside suicides, almost worse to be able to see so much more.
But it is clearer up here. If there are more survivors, they are near. I can feel it.
Away from Calvary Chapel, beneath the mountain. A glimpse of hope outside ourselves. Survivors!
I will not say precisely where. They want to be left alone.
They were well-stocked, they may even last a year. Kind hearts, and brave enough to speak to us despite our weapons. Four people, a young girl who would not speak, a younger man, an elderly man and a blinded woman with lovely hands.
The younger man came to me when I stopped, and he said to us, Go. Let us die in peace and be with our beloved.
I hope to honor him, this memory. I leave these words of his here forever, as an epitaph to faith.
And we gave them some little supplies, some food, and they gave us gasoline they no longer had a use for.
It is possible for love to be again. It is.
(Later)
Beautiful here, in the mist after darkness falls. I so miss my Tom.
Grassy Top, Swiss Meadows. The nearest I have seen to a normal and healthy forest, high here in the mountains.
But there is no one.
Silas lapsed into a babbling for a very long time. I stopped, he was feverish and shivering. I changed him, and threw away the blanket he had soiled, used another to keep him dry.
He whispered of many things.
I learned more of his journey up here. Much more. Too much of what he saw, the death of his beloved. One young boy he found on the way up from Littleton, a boy he did not speak of earlier and for good reason.
If it was never meant for me to hear, how can I not forgive him?
Is it merciful to choose to kill?
I cannot judge him. These things shall be secret, forever. There is no sin without a God. I will not record them here.
Town of Ward. There’s nothing left. It looks like a line of propane tanks leaked, neglected, or perhaps over-pressurized in the heat.
I do not know. The entire town was burned down.
On the north side, a clustered pile of unburned bodies hugging one another. They were forced out of somewhere, out of shelter, and then they died. Radiation poisoning, perhaps? Or something in their food?
I could not look away. The gray rain was coming down upon them, the rain was pooling in open hands and into open mouths.
Millsite Inn, one of Tom’s old favorite’s, burned down in the Ward fire I believe. I still recognized it from the slanting, tumbledown remains of its green-timbered roof.
(Later)
Perhaps a mile out, a traffic jam. I think some dozens of people had made it out of the fire and tried to flee. How many cars were working after the EMP? There was a Greyhound bus, with chains wrapped around its front and dead bodies wrapped in the chain-coils out in front of it, as if a dozen men had tried to haul it out of the road. Others, men and women crushed up against the bus by the other wrecks. I don’t quite understand what happened here. They escaped the fire, but not the fire’s nightmare.
Where were they going? What had they to hope for?
Be at peace, souls. Please now be at peace.
Mount Meeker, a second vision of the distant world. One glimpse and then another. And then, a gale of wind, the darkening of the Archangel up above, and a horrible black storm, sweeping like an avalanche down the distant mountain’s slopes. Piling ashes, piling plastic and gore and filth.
I pulled over behind a demolished shack and sheltered us in the back seat as best I could. Silas and I held one another, cried together. The storm lasted for hours. When we could drive again, it was in inches of greasy ash.
Exhausted. Changed Silas, changed into the other suit. This one’s valves are better and I can even drive for awhile with the helmet on.
(Later)
I changed my own bandages and found some kind of tenuous, yellowing infection in the webs between the fingers of my right hand. Treating it as best I can.
Reading one of the binders, searching. Not an infection. Radiation.
I’ve been driving at times with only the gloves, not the over-mitts. Now I’m wearing the mitts again despite the difficulty. Going much slower now as a result. Silas has not said anything.
(Later)
The ash is deepening.
Morgan Ranch is gone.
Silver Spruce. Cannot see the reservoir. And beyond, a third vision in clearing sky: the lordship of Sawtooth Mountain, with black tornadoes pouring down its sides. Racing this new storm now, I need to wear only the gloves again to go faster around the wrecks and through the ash.
The radiation burns are clean, but getting worse.
(Later)
It seems to be spreading through my hand. And now, my other fingertips.
(Here there is a break in the chronicle, a torn out page.)
Peaceful Valley Ranch. We’ve lost them, we’re hidden so I can write again. Not much, need to get farther before we’re fully safe again.
The second storm had lessened. We were passing a parking lot filled with burnt-out charter buses, I tried not to look. But Silas cried out a warning so I did. There was a tow truck…
(Later, continued)
…at the end of the row with its windows shattered out and replaced by ply-board, ply-board with view slits sawed out of it. As we were a little past, the truck’s engine started up, its headlights flashed and a rifle poked out from the passenger side as it moved out onto the frontage road and then out to the main to block us off.
They almost managed.
I floored it in the H4, clipped the tow truck’s bumper — a dear mistake and one that almost cost us everything.
The truck greatly outweighed our H4 and we rebounded off in the collision, and nearly went into the median guard rail. Rifle shots, two of them. Neither hit in full, but I heard the second spang off a yield sign just to the right of us. The ricochet hit somewhere in the bottom right body of the H4 and Silas cried out a curse. I swerved, overcorrected, both Silas and I heard one of the roof bungees snap.
I had time to think, Please God not the water bottles, and felt the H4 tilt to the left as weight released. Our two largest fuel barrels, the ones I’d barely been able to get out of the shelter, rolled off the Hummer’s roof and banged out into the street. A mixed blessing; the tow truck slammed on its brakes and four armed and hobbling men got out, three of them corralling the barrels and one of them with his rifle leveled straight at my side mirror.
Staring me down. He looked to be about sixty years old, Hispanic, well-built and lean in hunter’s flannels. A high leather collar sheltering his face, shadowing his mouth. He never took the shot, but he very well could have. I saw the radiance of his eyes.
He saw me. Saw me crying, my mouth moving. He let us go.
(Later amended, in a spidery aged version of Sophie’s hand:)