From the Fire V (5 page)

I know this.

~

[551.]

Seven telephone poles, still unblackened and perfectly strung,
winding their way up through a somber clutch of aspens.  Even a little almost-pure
rain, gray and soft to swathe our Exodus.

Beautiful things out here, in the nowhere.  Haunting and
terrible.  And I did see another living thing, the silhouette of a lone horse
limping off in the distant fields, I am certain of it.

I could not believe it.

~

[552.]

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.

~

[553.]

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.

~

[554.]

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.

~

[555.]

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.

~

[556.]

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.

~

[557.]

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.

~

[558.]

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.

~

[559.]

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.

~

[560.]

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.

~

[561.]

Morgan Ranch is gone.

~

[562.]

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.)

~

[563. (
Re-numbered
at some point, as are all entries hereafter.
)]

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:)

The one who allowed us all to
be.

Did the others punish him for
his mercy?  He let us go, we had so much food, so much unique knowledge in the
binders, so much medicine.  He could have killed me had he chosen.  Silas might
have taken him in turn, but by then it would not have mattered.

I wonder if he was taken down for
judgment, to the Valley of Weeping.  I still dream about him sometimes.

(Later)

Well-hidden.

Mother, sweet Patrice.  Dreams, so full of shame.  And yet you
sing to me.

Father was silent on this night.

~

(Day 4 or 5?)

[Unnumbered entry.]

So slow, so many re-circlings,
lost ways.

Losing gas.  Stopping to
siphon.  We need fuel, and desperately.

~

[564.]

Feel we are safe now, much farther along the Peak to Peak Highway. 
Fewer wrecks now.  I fear anyone else who passed through here did not make it
past Peaceful, without being stopped and taken by the tow-men.

I wonder if the mercy shown to me by that man was a culmination, a
weighting of other guilts upon that wise man’s soul.  Had he killed others?  How
many others tried to pass, and did not make it through?

~

[Unnumbered entry.]

Siphoning isn’t going to be
enough.  Something is wrong with the H4, gas consumption is way up.  I didn’t
see the bullet hole and even with the flashlight underneath I saw no leaks.  I
refuse to get under, to risk a rip in the suit.  And if I found a leak, what
then?

But the engine is louder,
almost gurgling, and there’s a whining sound I can’t place.

I told Silas and he said only, “I
know.”

It might be under the front
hood as well, I don’t even know where the fuel lines are.  But the hood won’t
open easily with the damage from the cave, and even if I pry it open, there’s
no certainty that I can latch it closed again.  And what if it jammed itself up
then?  We’d be driving blind.  I could kill us by opening it.  Such a
ridiculous thing,
little
things are fatal now.  As is everything.

Silas has little faith in “new”
vehicles and there is nothing else we can do.  But we’ll need to find fuel, to
fill the tank with fresh gas if at all possible, to keep us going.

Despite all, we have to keep
going.

~

[564
(again,
mis-numbered).
]

An RV in the ditch that looked almost intact.  Wearing the second helmet,
I went out to search it, but Silas called out through the windows, he smelled
that many bodies were inside.

I didn’t go in but still, this was a treasure trove.

Siphoning fuel off from the wreckage.  There was even a motorcycle
latched to the back, more gas there.  Back to three-quarters.

~

[565.]

Impure, mixed fuel.

The gas needle is wavering
between a quarter and half.  We’re leaking, but not that much.  The gauge can
no longer be trusted.  Something is very wrong.

~

[566.]

The burn between my fingers is much worse, the tendrils are
connecting, the yellow is turning to scarlet and it is gathering in my palm. 
The other hand, spreading there as well.

I
itch
so.

(Later)

Sleepless.

I yelled at Silas once, when he cried out in his sleep and
terrified me.

I’m so sorry.  I cannot do this.

~

(
Lacuna: 
It appears another full sheet, at least two
pages, has again been torn from the diary.  The missing pages were written in a
heavy hand.  Pen pressure analysis is underway in the hope that some of the
imprints in the ancient paper can be detected, perhaps even decrypted to tell
more of Sophie’s story and her travails.)

(The next surviving entry hereafter, at the top of the following
page, is numbered 579.)

~

(Day 5 continued?  Day 6?)

[579.]