A Cold Black Wave (15 page)

Grey clouds rolled in and a cool rain started to fall.  As he waded through the grass the long blades wobbled and bent away with every swat of his arm and hack of his machete, parting through it and leaving a trampled wake behind him.  After seemingly getting lost in the morass, he broke through to open ground and the road appeared in front of him.  Josh kneeled down at the edge of the grass line to rest his ankle and examine his new surroundings.

The road was a four lane highway.  The asphalt was in complete disrepair.  Pot holes were everywhere, and entire chunks had cracked and broken away from the years of waxing and waning temperatures of heat and cold.  Thick weeds stuck out from a million crevices.  Nobody had traveled this road in years, probably decades.  Directly across from him on the other side of the road was an off ramp that led past three buildings lined up next to each other and in varying states of blackened decay.

From where he was, Josh spotted four vehicles abandoned in or on the side of the highway.  He decided it was safe to stand and with much pain, followed the road left and towards the closest vehicle to him.  As he approached the weathered vehicle it amazed him how old it appeared.  The rubber on the tires and rotted entirely away, exposing a disease-like rust all over the metal rims.  The paint had faded or been worn away by the years.

The glass was surprisingly still intact on all of the windows.  The engine was under the hood in the trunk, which was propped slightly ajar.  He lifted it with the barrel of his gun until it swung open.  The engine had an odd, circular and minimalist design.  Whatever liquid had been inside of it had leaked out and corroded the ground.  A large hole had developed underneath the engine some two feet deep.

He closed the hood and looked through the driver side window.  A skeletal driver was slumped over entirely into the passenger seat.  The encased interior of the vehicle happened to preserve him fairly well, but the body was so old the clothing had nearly turned to dust.  Wiry hair stuck out of the exposed skull and mummified skin stretched across its face.  The eyes had shriveled away and the rotted teeth exposed.

It was clear to Josh now that it no longer mattered which planet they were on.  Something catastrophic happened here and he worried that there wasn’t anyone left around to tell its story.  If there was a government operating nearby, there would have been reconstruction.  Roads repaired, debris cleared.  Everything had been left as it was when it had all ended.  He left the car and hobbled across the highway and to the abandoned buildings.

He had little hope of finding anything in there, and he was correct.  What appeared to be a refueling station as the spouts, which looked as though they would have gushed forth gasoline on earth, were shaped like batons that had a conical tip and a simple button that was in easy reach of his thumb.  Josh pressed it but nothing happened.  The other two buildings were entirely empty, but one had been what looked like a general store from earth and the other a small convenience store of sorts.  Food had been in there once, anyway.  Josh didn’t fail to realize the places had been looted.

Someone may have survived after all.

Josh rested and drank his water and listened to the melancholy breeze.  A metal sign dangling from the overhang of the general store, hung by a single metal chain, tapped lightly against a shard of broken glass that jutted out of the side of the storefront window.

Josh circled around the back and followed the off ramp further as it rose in height with the hillside.  He couldn’t see what was on the other side and dedicated his last task of this short exploration to getting to the apex and surveying the land around it.  He didn’t want to leave Leah alone for much longer.

He labored along the pock marked road, careful not to twist his ankle further in some unseen hole.  The energy bars were sustaining him but his stomach growled for real food, and it hit him all at once how close they were to running out.  He could use the machete to perform a hack job on the bear and get a fire started to roast it, maybe even dry and smoke some of the meat to take with them.  His thoughts turned away from food as he reached th
e top of the hill and saw something that dropped into the pit of his stomach.

There, in the foggy distance, the signs of a metropolis stood out as the tops of skyscrapers pointed towards the heavens.  Josh pulled out his binoculars to get a better look.  His heart sank.  The skyscrapers were nothing but steel bones.  The steel beams were still standing but nothing else.  Below, smaller buildings were either in piles of debris or in various states of decay.  Josh couldn’t believe what he was seeing.  If a city this large had been annihilated, the entire planet could have met the same fate.

Josh had seen enough and hiked back to Leah, his slim grasp for hope dissipating with every step.  He couldn’t shake the loneliness inside of him that was like a cancerous black hole, as if his mind was racing ahead to the day when Leah was no longer here and he was wandering the empty cities of some dead civilization with no purpose left in life except to die.

Josh limped back to camp and as he approached, Leah heard footsteps and called out, "Josh?"

"It's me," he expelled with exhaustion, lifting the tent flap
 
as drops of rain pattered against it.
 
He peeked in with heavy, tired eyes.  "You okay?"

She was huddled under the blankets again, "Comes and goes, but I'm hanging in there.
 
Why don't you get out of the rain?"

"No, its okay, I don't want to bother you."

"You're not,
 
I promise.
 
Please come in ... you're going to get sick!"

He ducked under and sat across from her, his head dripping water.
 
Leah lay with her hands under her head and looked at Josh with concern.
 
Bags hung under his eyes and his thousand yard stare spoke to her.
 
"Don't worry," she whispered through the sound of the rain.
 
"We'll get through this.
 
Everything happens for a reason."

He took his gloves off and wiped his nose, "Is that what your book tells you?"

"It tells me," she paused, fingering the pages in thought.
 
"It tells me that you and I have a great purpose.
 
Together."

He took a deep breath, "I’ve been thinking.” He said, staring away at nothing. “About how we came to this.  What ever made them believe we wouldn’t destroy it all again Leah?  If we were given another chance?  To ... to, what?  People never learned from their mistakes.  A generation would pass, that’s it, and they’d forget everything.  Everything!  The academy made us believe we had a chance at saving ourselves, that we could ... do it all over again, differently.
 
Better."

Leah worried over his countenance which had overtaken him with brooding and dark landscapes, “What did you see out there Josh?”

The look of sorrow on his face gave away his emotions to her.  He felt terrible having to relate what he had just witnessed and couldn’t bring himself to tell her.  He cast his eyes down, “Not much.  There’s a road we’ll be able to follow, but you need your rest first.”

Leah erupted into a coughing fit.  A gargling sound rasped from her chest as phlegm collected in her lungs.  “That doesn’t sound good does it?” she wheezed sardonically once the coughs had been suppressed. 

Leah reached over and interlaced her fingers with his, pulling his hand closer to kiss it.

They sat together in comfortable silence listening to the rain dance on the thermal wrap.  For a moment everything was at peace and Josh felt good being with her.  Her touch alone quickened his heart and injected into his blood a mystical energy that gave him hope and energy.  Her grave situation tempered those emotions though and he gave way to sadness, gripping her hand even more as if to keep her from slipping away.

Leah eventually dozed off again and Josh put the back of his hand against her forehead.  Still hot.  Not as bad as the first night though.  The antiviral were buying her time, but now that they were gone...

Josh sat with her awhile longer to admire her so at peace with the world despite the death that flowed through her veins.  He brushed her hair back behind her ear and tucked the blanket around her neck.  Once she was in a deep sleep he left the tent.  The storm clouds had receded and only a small drizzle fell now, interspersed with rays from the sun.  Josh eyed the soaked bear lying in a pathetic, crumpled posture.  It was a beautiful creature that didn’t deserve to die and he felt remorse for having been in its path, and being forced to kill it.  Had they not been here it would still be alive.

As he stood, reflecting and listening to the trickle of water near him, it dawned on him that the stream had changed.  The water had risen at least a foot and was already lapping up against the bears corpse.
 
The color of the water had turned cloudy and full of thick, swirling dark sediments.  The flow had increased as the water rushed by faster than usual.
 
He looked to the mountains in the west, and which provided the supply of water to this low creek, now were surrounded by voluminous blackish clouds.  Lightning flashed underneath them like white, jagged wounds opening in the sky.  Moments later, thunder claps so loud he swore he could feel the shock wave pass over him.

The water was only five feet from their tent now.
 
Josh hurried over to start gathering loose items left inside, a half-eaten energy bar, Leah's water, gloves and parka.  “Leah,” he said as he grabbed things.  “Let’s go, get up, get your gear.”  She moaned and pulled the blanket over her face.

Not wasting any time, he slung his pack and his gun and jogged for a sandy berm that he had found earlier.  It wasn’t the best spot to climb but it was the quickest way up.  Once he made it up to the ridge he slid the pack off and dropped his things and started back down.
 
Then there was the distant rumbling again, but this time it wasn’t thunder.  A sustained commotion shook the earth and the air, and the roar of what sounded like a thousand crumbling mountains grew louder.

Josh threw his gun next to his pack and slid down the berm, "Leah! Get up!
 
Get up!"
 
He ran, not caring of his ankle, and dove into the tent, pulling her out by the arm.
 
She screamed in terror and flailed as he dragged her out of her blankets.  She screamed, "What are you doing?”

“Come on!”  She was on her feet and stumbling alongside him.  He exhorted her forward, “Keep moving!”

“My book!”
 
She broke free and scrambled back to search for it.

He ran after her and flailed to grab a hold of her before she got away, “Leah!”

She threw the tent flap open and turned the blankets inside out looking for the book but it wasn’t anywhere.

“Where is it?”  She
screamed.

Her hands groped wildly, searching for it in the blankets and even as Josh seized her she found the strength to push him back.  Once he had a solid grip on her shoulder, he yanked her backwards and dragged her in the opposite direction as she gained her feet and kept pace.  The oncoming sound had become so loud that it filled the air as if some rapidly expanding firestorm was rolling towards them.

Josh had a death grip on her arm and ran.  She looked back, "My pack!"

"Run!”

She could barely follow along as he pulled her, and then the flood waters came.
 
A destructive
 
brown and black wall of water
 
burst from
 
around the bend and crashed
 
towards them
 
with blinding speed.
 
Josh didn’t hesitate.  He grabbed her diminutive frame with both hands and with every ounce of strength his body could muster, heaved her with a violent thrust nearly ten feet up onto the ridge.  Leah screamed in horror as the powerful wave instantly swept him away, her arm outstretched in a vain attempt to summon him back.  Waves gushed
 
high and splashed against her at the edge of the ridge, so she
rolled away into the grass.