From the Fire V (6 page)

Backtracking, hiding, resting, healing, re-planning, bandaging,
scavenging.

The journey has been longer than either of us could have ever
imagined.  Silas says it is time to go down out of the mountains now.

I am so afraid.

We need to get to Kersey, yes.  But what about Fort Morgan, Chris
and the others on the radio?  How many soldiers are still alive?  Why are they
shooting people, why were they saying they cannot admit Asian personnel even if
they are wearing US Army or Air Force uniforms?

Still enough men out there to wage a war.

Silas says it was North Korea, China.  Alliance.  Is that
possible?

I cannot fathom how we will ever survive the storms without the
mountains.  I cannot go down out of the mountains and onto the interstates, I
cannot lose the hope the trees now give to me, the cabins.  
I can’t.
 
Silas says we must.

Oh Lacie, I am trying.  I have sworn.  Mommy is trying to be
strong for you.

~

[580.]

Stopped for fifteen minutes and practiced with the HK submachine
gun, and then the sniper rifle (which I never had a chance to properly
calibrate in the nil-horizon shelter).  The assault rifle I’m still too wary
of, especially with its magazine floor-plate catch and the trigger guard, my
gloves ...

Silas saw the radiation burn on my hand when I stripped off a
glove to unload a clip — I mean
magazine
— for the sniper.  He saw, but
he knew I needed the fire practice.  He understood.  I needed to be certain
that I could be ready to fight, if he might be too weak to help me.

My right hand still itches, but now it is almost numb.

He says we need to get out of the mountains “tonight” if we’re
ever to get down to Kersey before the next great storm, and I know he is right. 
The winds are silent but to the west, all is black.  It’s moving slowly.

We are going to need our guns, I fear, and very soon.

When I sleep, I hear the voices of the bold.  I feel Patrice is
watching over me.

~

[581.]

Tommy,

(The remainder of this page has been left unwritten upon.  This is
the sole “white space” extant in the diary.)

~

[582.]

Down.  Highway 72 at last came to an end.  It was like losing an
old friend; we never would have survived if we had gone east or west, I’m
certain of it.

A moment’s chill when we saw a roadblock, painted with a symbol
that made me think of the hostile men from Peaceful Valley Ranch; but no. 
Would those men have journeyed so far from the tow-shelter?  I do not think so.

But something had smashed through it (the roadblock), and no one
was to be seen at the ash-dune crossroads where 72 ends on 7.

We had another argument, Silas and I.  But logical this one,
parrying and calculating.  Which way should we go?  Toward the cities, now that
we knew there were other survivors still alive?

I myself thought west toward Allenspark, he thought east and down
from there might be safer.  Too tired to make a careful decision.  We pulled
off into an unnamed loop, past a burned-out house and into the woods there and
hid, and Silas watched over me.

I slept for what felt like a very long time.

Silas seems a little better in spirit, much worse in body.  I need
to get him farther away from the Rocky Mountains, I can see him haunted by
memories of holidays, camping, army leave, his grandchildren, his wife.

He doesn’t want to die up here among the ghosts.

(Later)

We shared so much.  He wants to meet Lacie before he passes.

~

[583.]

East and down 7, following Silas’ judgment against my own.  He has
yet to guide me wrong.

Vietnam indeed.  His survival instinct is uncanny; something
speaks
through
him and I truly believe I am in the presence of someone
whose ancestors were
angelic
.  He is guided, as am I.

(Later)

Ever down.  It is taking a great deal of time to descend through
the curves and wreckage, and the farther down we go, the more the trees are
lost and burned away.

Where there once were valleys, there now are entire sheets of
obsidian glass casting reflections of darkness upon the fog.  The rainy air is
no better, and visibility is much worse as we descend.

I fear the coming storm.  I fear everything.

~

(Day 6?)

[584.]

Supplies are growing low; I am going to need to stop and ransack another
vehicle soon while Silas covers me with the LCP.  Days have passed in our
descent, but I do not know how many.

(Later)

Below the mountains now.  Eternal darkness.  The Archangel is no
more, on high and lost to us.

We have never again seen the sun, and I believe now that we never
will.  We passed last “night” through the ruins of Lyons, and there were
literally
mounds
of rotting bodies at 5th and Broadway where we made our
way onto 36 East for the long journey toward Kersey.

Sandbags, barbed wire, pillboxes, half-torn-apart military trucks
turned into pathetic mobile fortresses.  So much death, so much misery and
torture.  Dead people hanging in chains from lampposts with smeared “LOOTER”
signs dangling from their throats, (And where are the flags, the symbols?  Who
was the authority here who ordered execution?), a few stray cats feeding upon
the soft flesh of the damned.

And so much more,
Lyons
.  I cannot say all that I have
seen.

We believe some hundreds of people survived here, there was
martial law of some kind, rationing, detainment, work unit selection and then
the looting, killings and then somehow everything collapsed.

I do not understand, I only know that the bodies piled were not all
burned.  Many more were machine gunned and left to lie.  All of those unburned
bodies that I could see, even the children, they must have been charging at the
fortress-trucks when they died.

~

[585.]

36, Ute East.  Just past Foothills Highway Junction, a sight that
brought my heart into my throat — an Armored Personnel Carrier of some kind. 
Silas thinks it was American, it reminded him of an M113, but it was pulverized
and too burned out to ever be sure.  There was most of a uniformed body shorn
off in the back hatch.

Especially on our guard now, I drive one-handed with the SMG at
the ready.  Despite the gas waste I am in four-wheel once again in case we need
to go off the highway on a moment’s notice, to hide from anyone approaching.

(Later)

I saw silhouettes of men walking near Burch Lake, and they were
dragging someone behind them, some woman roped inside a sleeping bag.  They
leveled weapons at us, scoped us, but did not fire.

I raised my own gun, as did Silas.  We never stopped.

Whoever she was, the dragged one?  I know it was too late for her.

~

[586.]

Past Lake McIntosh.  A few ruins there somehow standing, a grain
silo, part of a house, a windmill.

Hid near the burned-out park.  Slept briefly off road in hiding,
but woke to Silas shouting to me that he heard voices once again.  Yelling. 
Back on the road and drove out quickly.

(Later)

Stopping in at a gas station …

… fuel pumps don’t work without electricity.  Silas told me this,
but I know he was wishing it would not be true, even more strongly than I was.

The interior of the store was somehow perfectly intact.  Stink of
spoiled dairy.  Unshattered windows, no tilted shelving, even the cashier’s
glazed “bunker” door was ajar.  Some ashes from the vents, but no footprints.

I brought in two duffel bags.  I packed motor oil, WD-40, foods
with as many preservatives as possible (candies mostly), bandages, scissors, flashlights,
batteries.

How had the store been left there unlocked, untouched?  It is as
if one person had been on duty, listening to the radio, and simply heard the
news, tottered over their stool, unlocked their own cashier’s door and then the
outer, and walked away.

~

[587.]

Longmont at last.

Desolation, incredible.

My skin is still tingling.  Went thirty, sometimes even fifty
through the wreckage, driving away as quickly as we could.

The radiation from the impact, prickling my cheeks.  Like needles,
invisible pins with sleeting, phantom tips.  The second helmet is helping, I
think.  Silas held the other damaged helmet to his face.

Geiger counter ticking madly.  Far too dangerous to stop to siphon
gas.

Crossing 287, the full horror of the thermonuclear strike.  What
we could see down there of the edge of the crater ... so huge it was edged with
cliffs, cut through with cascades of blurry air and black tornadoes imprisoned down
inside of it.

The suits were never designed to handle all of this.

~

[588.]

Passing more of Longmont.  The concussion rings of wreckage.  What
I have seen, oh, Hell has ascended and is upon us.

There is no way the world will ever recover from this.  Not ever.

~

[588
(mis-numbered)
.]

We had no choice but to go that close.  There was no other way.

I’m suffering from mild radiation poisoning throughout my body. 
I’m certain of it.

The spinach is running out and I can barely eat half a can without
vomiting.  Silas knows I am ill and despite his own health — he has made me
promise that I will not write of it here again, and for now I will not — he is
holding on to life for me.  To protect me, to watch over me.

He is cleaning the guns again.  He refuses to sleep.

~

[589.]

Bonfires, flicker of smoke and cinder.

Past Union Reservoir, some kind of ramshackle, tiered encampment had
been built up there, but it was mostly blown down.  Silas had the binoculars,
he had forced himself up into a hunched posture which clearly cost him much. 
Having seen out the view slot, he urged me to drive faster ...

He said he thought he saw people feasting on some kind of meat,
stripped from the bone.  I did not ask him what he meant.

(Later)

We saw parachutes, dangling from the ruin of the trees.  Some of
them still had uniformed bodies strapped inside their risers.

(Later)

Engagement?  At Cartwheel Airport a little further on, some kind
of battle had taken place.  There were several destroyed tanks (clearly Abrams
M1s), many suited infantrymen’s bodies torn out of box-wall bunkers, and the
planes themselves had been draped in some kind of red flags that were flapping
in tatters as a black whirlwind rose and slithered over the cratered runways.

American and Chinese.  There is no doubt now.

I dare not go any nearer to Fort Morgan.  Whatever war is still
being fought, I cannot bear to have any part of it.

Oh, Tom.  How I wish you were with me, so near to the end of all.

~

[590.]

No more sleep.

We keep our firearms high in shifts, scanning the shunted-off
horizon of the gray.  Watching for anyone, for anything.

My entire right arm is burning.

From 66 East onto 87 North, I-25. 
I-25!
  Exit 243, I
believe.  I told Silas we had officially rejoined Colorado’s civilization, next
destination tourist bureau.  He barely smiled.

On Interstate 25, bridges and overpasses are blessedly still
intact.  And there are mile markers still at times.  Something else to count
the ages now.

The true horror begins here.  The endless traffic jam of the dead. 
I can see it, the thousands of dead melted in their cars.  The buses, the
devastated military convoys.  The piles and parts of people.

(Later)

Daddy, if you can truly speak to me beyond the shelter, in my
dreams, please do so now.  I need you.

Please?

(Later)

So many people, families.  Oh, I cannot even tell you what remains
here, all along the interstate.

I need you, daddy.   I forgive you now.  Please speak to me.

~

(Hereafter, the diary was rewritten by Sophie several times over
the years, in order to exhaustively chronicle the foreboding events which she
and Silas suffered through upon I-25 and in the siege-hold of “Gehinnom,” Pearson’s
Corner.  My attempt at a provisional narration now continues. ~ A. S.G.-C.)