Darla’s eyes scanned the landscape and then she checked the watch on her wrist.
“No time for heartfelt goodbyes you two. Here,” she reached into her waistband and pulled out one of the handguns. She reached up and handed it to Lucy. “And Grant’s already got one of the guns packed. Be wise.”
“For a world mostly empty…there sure are a lot of dangers,” Lucy said.
“Curb the philosophizing for when you’re flying,” Darla suggested. “The world’s no different than it’s always been. Maybe you just never saw the danger before, but it was always there. Now go you two.”
Grant climbed into the basket next.
Lucy looked at Darla, who started to work on releasing the lines. “Darla—”
“I got it kiddo,” Darla answered. “I’ll take care of him. I promise.”
“Thank you,” Lucy said to her and she put her hand over her heart.
Then Darla let the last line free and Grant blasted the burner. Up they rose, straight over the barn and the house and into the mild morning wind. Lucy had never been afraid of heights, so she peered over the edge, her hands gripping the basket and watched as Darla’s shape shrank. The phhhhsssshhh of the burner carried them upward and upward and Lucy’s mind drifted to a particularly imbedded memory from her childhood: Losing a birthday balloon into the sky and begging her parents to follow it.
“We’ll catch it when it lands,” she had begged.
Her mother stroked her hair. “Baby girl…when it lands, the balloon will be all out of helium. It won’t be the balloon you want anymore. We’ll get you another one.” But she hadn’t wanted another one, she wanted that one and she couldn’t quite understand why that wasn’t possible.
As the hot air balloon rose, Lucy had the feeling that they were staying still, rooted in one place and that the world pulling away from them. The revelation dizzied her and she pushed back a bit from the edge.
“You okay with flying?” Grant asked, not taking his eyes off of the gas tanks, watching their height.
“Uh-huh,” she said and nodded. When she had regained her composure, she peered down again and let out a small gasp.
The world below was marked with the evidence of its destruction.
Fires still smoldered in the distance. The roads were littered with abandoned cars with open doors. Small lumps and shapes dotted the landscape and Lucy could only assume they were bodies. As they had walked along the roads and parks and backyards, she had seen the devastation, but to look down on it from the sky was different. Here were miles of bodies. Not just snapshots of a scene, but a full picture of an entire city laid waste.
“How high will we go?” she asked and Grant closed the burner lid, reached into his pack and pulled out a bottle of shaving cream. Leaning over the edge, he sprayed the cream and watched as it traveled in the wind. Then he surveyed the landmarks and he clicked his tongue.
“Southeast.”
“That’s the way the wind is blowing?”
“Yes.”
“How far will we go?”
“Until I can’t fly it any longer or until we run out of fuel. I’m determined to get us as far as I can.” He paused. “You ask a lot of questions.”
Lucy took another look out over her beloved city. The buildings of Portland were off in the distance. She could recognize their distinct, postcard-worthy shapes. The city itself was quiet, abandoned, but it was still there—a picturesque skyline, the west hills in the distance, the river bifurcating the east from the west. If Lucy wanted to, she could’ve tried to convince herself that her fellow Portland residents were slow to wake, that they were just bumbling along sleepy-eyed, half-awake, shuffling through another day. From above the ground, it was hard to notice the difference between a slumbering city and an annihilated one.
But then she gasped.
“All the bridges are gone,” she whispered.
“Are you sure?” Grant asked and he walked over to her side.
“Yes. Look.”
He boosted them up higher with a blast of propane to give them a clearer look.
“My God.”
Wreckage jutted out of the lapping waves of the river. Submerged cars bounced and bobbed. Up and down the waterway were mounds of twisted metal and each and every bridge was gone—only remnants remained. Portland was a city known for its bridges and now there was nothing to look at but rubble.
“The bombs we heard. They were taking out the bridges. What does that mean?”
Grant stared at the debris, the absence of something they had taken for granted as they journeyed from one section of the city to the other. “To trap people, I suppose. Isolate the neighborhoods. Contain a virus that was uncontainable. Or maybe…just to destroy.”
It was only then that Lucy noticed the full extent of their city’s devastation. She could see the marina and capsized boats and the other vessels adrift on the Willamette River without a captain, unmoored and unanchored. Her eyes traveled to the tram—a bullet shaped vehicle that transported patients, doctors, and tourists to Oregon Health Sciences University. It was suspended above the trees, stopped midway up the track, and it swayed gently with the wind. Someone had written HELP in lipstick on the windows and a crack on one of the windows indicated someone had tried to break through the glass.
She looked away. With the horrors of the school still fresh in her memory, Lucy’s hand shook with the understanding that her own personal terrors were only one small glimpse, one small moment.
The ethereal quality of their ride, combined the visual confirmation of the mass genocide was overwhelming.
“This is like floating…up here,” Lucy whispered as they turned around 360-degrees, slowly, and her eyes surveyed the blue on the horizon and the glory of Mt. Hood in the distance. “All this beauty. Our world is so amazing…and yet…”
“I’m going to concentrate,” Grant interrupted and brushed by her back to the center of the basket. But he only stood there, his eyes outward, his arms by his side, his right hand clutching the bottle of shaving cream.
Lucy watched him and she bit the inside of her lip. “Can you imagine? If you’re a survivor and you look up in the sky today and see a hot air balloon floating past? It would be dreamlike, I suppose. Surreal.”
Grant didn’t answer.
“Grant?”
He didn’t turn toward her, but he lowered his head. “Survivors?” he called back. “This was done to us so there wouldn’t be any survivors. We aren’t meant to be here.” Then after a moment, he added. “No, well. Maybe I’m just not meant to be here.”
“Don’t say that,” Lucy said.
“It’s true, though,” he replied. Then after a moment, “What do you think we’ll find in Brixton, Nebraska?”
“Nothing, maybe.” She waited, then added “or everything.”
The balloon spun and drifted and Grant boosted them higher up. They followed the path of the river and at this height, the tragedies beneath them were easier to ignore.
“Thank you,” Lucy said after they had ridden in silence. He raised an eyebrow. “For coming with me.”
Grant set the shaving cream on the floor of the basket and rubbed his eyes with both hands. Then he smiled, his single-dimple appearing for a brief second. He reached his hand out and Lucy grabbed it. It was an awkward, sideways grab, and she felt how cold and clammy his hand was and the small tremors from his fingers vibrated against her palm. She gave his hand a squeeze and he squeezed back, pinching her fingers down upon each other.
“Together,” he said and his eyes scanned the horizon. “Whatever happens now…we’re together. You’re not alone. You need to know that, Lucy.”
She nodded, biting back tears. “Together,” she repeated. Then she closed her eyes and realized that she could not feel the wind or hear anything beside the hum of the balloon drifting effortlessly into the vast unknown. Lucy thought of her sister and her brothers and she saw their faces as she left them that fateful morning, poised and ready for adventure. Then she thought of her mother.