LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (9 page)

“Do we want to?” she asked, glancing to the wall that separated us from the street. Taking one more bite of a salty cracker from one of the meals, I stared at the cloudy sky through the narrow gap between the ceiling and the vent hood above.
 

Depending on what that herd outside decided to do, it could be useful to be able to move with more light. With the roads completely destroyed in some areas, it was going to take us twice as long at night, picking our way through the broken roads and around washed out bridges. We weren’t even sure if we could take the truck most of the way. The land could be entirely submerged in some areas, and totally impassable by car. Every mile was borrowed distance now—with the condition of the countryside after the quake, we constantly risked having to ditch our wheels at a moment’s notice to be able to continue north.
 

Then again, we were visible in the daylight, and even the zeds could see a moving truck. We had the advantage over other things in the night—just not over the earth. And the earth had just upped the ante.
 

“How far does this ash go?” asked Ky, slightly bewildered by the swirling dark powder, and staring at the vent. “Is it going to stop?”

“It’s probably covering a large part of the Northwest right now,” said Kate, eyes closed as she leaned back against the cement block wall. Above her head, a sign warned kitchen staff to always wash their hands, in English and Spanish. The bright colors were vivid against the grimy off-white wall.

“When a volcano erupts, the ash and smoke and steam all get pushed up into the atmosphere. Wind currents pull it into a pattern and it spreads throughout the region. Some of it is heavy, like the ash, so it comes down to earth. Some of it gets pulled further into the atmosphere, and pushed around by high-level winds so that it becomes something like a permanent cloud. Depending on the strength of the eruption, it could last months or even years.” Her voice was flat, but I knew she was thinking what I was.

With winter coming, this eruption could cause the temperatures to drop dramatically in the northern hemisphere. If it were big enough, or if a chain of mountains joined the party and continued to spew ash into the atmosphere, it could start a chain reaction of events that could lead to a long, cold, stretch of trouble.
 

“Wait, didn’t something like this kill the dinosaurs?” Ky was a little concerned now.

“It was an asteroid that did them in,” I said, but Kate interrupted.

“Actually, it was similar. An asteroid that impacted the earth so hard that the it vaporized billions of gallons of seawater, and put so much vaporized debris into the atmosphere that the sun’s rays couldn’t get to the earth. Volcanoes erupting added to the mix, and the lack of sunlight and heat killed the plants and animals that relied on them, destroyed entire ecosystems, and caused a new ice age. So, in a way, it’s similar.”

The kid was scared now. Kate’s eyes were still closed, and it was like she was reciting from a science textbook.

“But this is much smaller, no need to get scared,” I emphasized, and one of her eyes flicked open, recognizing the hint.
 

“I’m not scared,” Ky prickled, voice defensive. “I’m just … curious.”
 

“Yeah … this is just a freak thing, kid. Nothing to worry about,” Kate said lamely, and I groaned softly to myself.
 

“Get some rest,” I mumbled, and moved to Kate’s side of the kitchen. “We’re going to go double check the door.” Nodding my head toward the main entrance, I caught Kate’s eye and she nodded.

“I’m not scared,” Ky called out again, scratching Romeo’s ears absently as she leaned back and tried to make herself comfortable in the dank kitchen. “Just curious.”
 

Her voice trailed off and I opened the door into the main bar area.
 

Kate followed, and whispered to me as soon as the swinging door shut behind us.

“I’m sorry, I just zoned out. I remember learning about this shit in college, and I started thinking about it yesterday when the earthquake hit, and …” She took a deep breath.
 

“Anyway, I’m sorry. I’m the one with a kid and I can’t keep my mouth shut. I should know better…” She stopped talking, and looked up to the ceiling, her hand coming to her face as a tear escaped her eye.

I reached out and hugged her, knowing that she was thinking about her daughter and how our odds of even getting to Vancouver had just dropped precipitously.
 

She held me close for a full minute before pushing back and wiping her face again. I stayed silent, knowing myself well enough to predict that I could say the wrong thing here.
 

Self-awareness, folks. Self-awareness.

“The ash. It could help us, but …” She shrugged. “Not that it really matters in a world that is owned by the dead, but if that eruption is severe enough, or if it triggers other mountains to erupt…”

I nodded, understanding her frustration.
 

I unconsciously looked to the south, as if hoping to see through the velvet-lined walls, past the moldy bar, to the towering inferno of molten rock beyond.
 

“We could be sitting on the edge of a new ice age,” she said bluntly, staring absently at the oily stripper pole in the middle of the protruding island in the center of the stage.
 

I wondered whether the nude zombie had gravitated toward that pole when she had wandered the premises.
 

“You said it yourself. If all of these mountains are volcanoes on this fault line you were talking about, this is some serious shit. There are more variables involved, but even with just one erupting for long enough, this could be the end of the climate as we know it. Shit, Mt. Rainier might already be enough. Add Hood and St. Helens … It all depends on a lot of factors. Air currents, reactivity, ocean temperatures … there are a lot of moving parts. But we’re sitting on the cusp of winter, the earthquake we felt was huge, and the tidal wave and the resulting waterline indicate that the shelf we’re sitting on may have shifted, indicating that we also might be in store for more volcanic activity…”
 

“Okay, enough. I get it.” I took a deep breath. “Deep doodoo and all that.”
 

She took a deep breath, then shrugged. Her eyes were getting moist, and a hand went to her cheek to stop the tear that had emerged. I took her hand briefly, but didn’t say a word. A moment passed as she stared beyond me, taking in the posters and overturned chairs and broken mirrors laying shattered on the floor.
 

“I’m going to check the street,” I said, and she nodded, sniffing once and giving me a brief smile.

“We’ll get there,” I promised, and turned toward the front hallway. But I wasn’t as sure as I had been.
 

Things were definitely getting more complicated.

***

As Mike wandered off to check the perimeter again, Kate wiped her eyes and returned to Ky and Romeo, curling up next to the two and closing her eyes.
 

She fell into a fitful sleep with her mind clouded; with doubts, with fears and with facts. She knew that the odds against finding her daughter alive were slim. Each day they weren’t there, they decreased again. She also knew that nature had just thrown them a bitch-ass curveball. A massive, world-ending earthquake, a four story tsunami, and a series of weather-altering volcanic eruptions—enough to cause anyone to lose hope for the future. She knew that Vancouver likely didn’t exist anymore. Not in the way that they knew it, at least.
 

But she couldn’t release the hope. As she drifted off, her mind seized on random memories and feelings, her heart knowing what it wanted, despite the world’s insistence that she should be crushed.
 

The first day, when it had all started, began normally. There was nothing to recommend this day, of all days, as the end of the world. The weather was muggy, the traffic was heavy, and the clouds were thick and white in the sky.
 

And Kate, as always, was moving in six directions at once.
 

“The apartment dad found is awesome. It has a view of the ocean, and there’s a park right outside, and he said when we get there we can eat pizza every day for the first week…”
 

A male voice protested from somewhere in the background and the young girl giggled and shrugged in the screen, the connection wavering once and her voice going out briefly.
 

“…Maybe he didn’t say every day, but …”
 

Kate was nodding and smiling, inconspicuously reading the latest news in the bar to the side of the video chat screen, trying to shovel the last of her organic Greek yogurt into her mouth before she had to leave.
 

She was already running late, having stayed home until ten that morning just to make this video chat date. She tried to do it every other day, and tonight was out because of her group, and tomorrow would be sketchy because of her research, so she penciled Liz in for this morning. But she hadn’t realized how anxious and distracted it would make her to be late for work, and she cut her daughter off mid-sentence.
 

“Honey, I’m sorry but …”

“You have to go,” said Liz, eyes dropping slightly. “I’m sorry—we can talk about something else. I didn’t mean to talk so much about daddy. It’s just that we’re going to the visa interview today and that means he feels guilty for dragging me, and that means he’s trying to convince me how awesome the new place will be…”

“No,” Kate said, wiping her mouth and putting the bowl in the sink, adding it to the large pile. “It’s not about that,” she maintained, even though it was, in fact, a little bit about that.
 

She tried to be a big person, she truly did. But even though she was well acquainted with the inner workings of the human mind, she didn’t do well suppressing the urge to hear her daughter say that she hated living with her father and wanted to come home.
 

Shared custody was better than no custody, but a small part of her truly wished for her daughter to prefer her over her ex-husband.
 

“I’m sorry, babe. But I have a big day, and it’s late …”
 

From behind Liz, her father came into view briefly.

“Hi Kate. It’s okay—Liz and I have an appointment today and we don’t want to be late. Tomorrow normal time?”
 

Kate smiled tightly and shook her head.

“Sorry, no. I have … a thing.” How could she explain to an adolescent that she was choosing research over her video chat date? It didn’t happen that often, and Kate hated missing the dates, but it was necessary.
 

“Oh,” said Liz, looking down and disappointed. “Okay.”

“But we’ll talk this weekend, I promise. That’s only a few days away, right?”
 

Where had she put her keys? And her cell phone?
 

“Yeah, I guess,” the voice came back over the line. As Kate shuffled her things on the counter in front of her, she missed the disappointed look that her daughter gave the camera.
 

There they were, under the pile of bills and other outgoing mail. She needed to drop those off soon. And the dry-cleaning. It had been waiting for a week and she was down to her last blazer.
 

“Okay then, kiddo. I love you so much and miss you. Just a couple more months until you’re with me here, right?”
 

She stuck the keys and phone into her purse and looked up as she finished the sentence. But Liz had turned away from the screen and was putting her backpack on, undoubtedly full of books and magazines for the wait at the consulate, Kate suspected. Liz was always reading. Just like her mom. That last thought gave her pause and she took a deep breath.

“Honey, I’m sorry, okay? I promise that this weekend will be longer. You can tell me all about the new apartment and I’ll tell you about some of the crazy people from my work, okay? There’s a new woman there that tries to eat her own fist. Every. Single. Day.” Kate was often able to get a chuckle when she described her patients, and today was no exception.

Liz favored her with one half-smile before leaning forward into the screen and putting her finger on the trackpad.
 

“Okay, mom. I’ll talk to you this weekend. I love you.”
 

“Love you too, kid…” But the screen had already gone black.
 

Kate exhaled once, running a hand through her hair and flipping the screen down on the laptop a little too hard. She knew she was distracted but she couldn’t help it.
 

She was late, work had been a bitch lately, and she knew she’d sit in traffic on the way in. No help for it, she supposed. She’d catch up with Liz in a few days. That was all she could offer right now.
 

Rising quickly from the breakfast bar, she grabbed her purse and her suit jacket, draping them both over one arm and leaving the mail and dry-cleaning where they lay. Just one more day, she promised.
 

Her condo was on the tenth floor, and she made her way half way to the elevator before Mrs. Richards opened her door and stepped into the hall, trailed by her yappy little dog, Buster.
 

“Morning Mrs. Richards,” Kate offered, smiling quickly and brushing past her.
 

“Morning dear,” the woman said, raising her blue head up enough to call out as Kate passed. “Be careful out there—television said there’s some gang toughs out and about causing trouble. Something about a backup on the freeway and some fights downtown.” She shook her head, her carefully coiffed curls barely moving under a thick shellac of hairspray. “Hooligans. It’s all that commie president’s fault. No law and order anymore. No respect.”