The phone went dead. Silence.
I frantically dialed his number.
Nothing. No ring, no busy signal. Not a goddamn thing.
****
Will remained asleep as I hurried about the room gathering our stuff. Reid leapt into the room with my commotion.
“What happened? Are you okay?” His voice was spiked with unmasked worry. He tossed a glance to Will, who lightly snored in his bed.
“It was my brother, Brandon. He called! H-He…” I stopped, rubbed my head, which hurt like hell, and continued with my tossing random things into bags. Will’s Lego bricks, marbles, and clothes lay strewn about on the carpet. I chucked them all into his backpack, crawling on the floor and feeling with fingers in the dimness.
“Brandon? Your brother? That’s great! What did he say?”
I sat against the bed, knees bent. “Nothing. I heard him say my name, and he said ‘I’m’ and that’s it. We got cut off.” I faced Reid.
He crouched beside me.
Tingles raced along my arms to my fingertips. I dropped Lego bricks into the backpack. “He’s okay,” I whispered to myself. “He has to be okay. But why did he call so early?”
I stared at the dead phone on the floor. I quickly plugged it in, and the screen reillumined. I dialed Brandon again. Nothing. Okay, maybe it wasn’t my phone that had cut us off.
I locked eyes with Reid. The bitter taste of adrenaline dribbled down my throat. I swallowed. My body shook from lack of sleep, lack of nutritious food, and from whatever virus I may have had on top of the withdrawal symptoms. God, I wanted a white pill right now.
“My Finn, though, Reid. I don’t know if—”
Reid clutched my hand. “He’s okay. He’s going to be okay. Brandon’s alive, and so is your Finn. Maybe Brandon was calling you every hour or so, like what you’ve been doing?”
I pursed my lips, determined, trying to convince myself. “Okay. Yes. He’s going to be okay. Brandon is with him. He got through to me. God, I don’t know where they are!”
“Stick to the original plan? Colorado?” Reid asked, standing, pulling me with him.
“Yes.”
Will woke up. “Mom?” his sleepy voice said from beneath the covers. He yawned and stretched. “Is it seven o’clock yet?”
Close enough.
“Let’s get the hell out of Dodge,” Reid said with a sideways look and uplifted dark eyebrow.
Despite my angst, a sliver of a smile emerged at Reid’s iconic saying. “Yes, let’s.”
“I’ve always wanted to say that.” He squeezed my hand before letting go. “Let’s find your son.”
****
When they stepped outside, Will was excited to see the gray ash that covered everything! It was unmistakable. They’d gone to bed with an overcast evening, and then a thunderstorm passed through during the night. He wondered if it was the same dark cloudy front they had been trying to avoid in Wichita. Had it traveled even farther south while they were sleeping?
It woke him up once. He hated the sound of it. It made his body shake.
Now they were on another planet! It was like the gray debris inside Mom’s vacuum canister.
“Ash!” he said, running toward the car.
A thin coat covered everything. This was week-old ash, carried by the wind and storm fronts from the fallout zones closer to Yellowstone. Trapped in clouds, then rained down.
Mom muttered a few curses. He heard the “F” one.
He drew a finger along one side of the car, making a zig zag trail, causing the ash to drip to the ground in its wake. He rubbed the ash between his fingers. “Oh, it feels cool! It’s not light and fluffy like I thought! Hmmm.” He coughed, feeling a painful scratch in his throat, but he continued exploring.
It was heavier than he’d expected, too. He lifted a wet, gritty fingertip. Upon closer inspection, it was no longer like the vacuum collection chamber innards. Now it was reminiscent of wet dryer lint.
Wow. Pulverized rock, volcanic glass, and minerals: it was the essence of the earth!
“Let’s go,” Mom said as she wiped off the car with a snow brush. It fell in plops.
“I’ll drive,” Reid said. He squeezed Mom’s hand.
“The winds must have carried it here. It dipped more south than they thought!” Will said as he climbed into his seat. “The volcano only erupted for thirteen hours, so all the ash was already in the air and the fatter particles fell first. That was like…” He counted the days since the beginning of their trip. “Ten days ago…all the ash got stuck in the atmosphere, and now it’s traveling around the globe. I wonder how far it will go? With the El Niño effect, it could travel farther. And we’ll have more rain!”
He quietly mused over all the statistics he’d heard on the news.
“Mom? Mom? Did you hear me?”
“Yes, honey.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“What is it?”
“Did you pack my goggles and face mask? The protective goggles Daddy got us last year? You know, for all of Finn’s digging in the backyard and the geology stuff we do? Did you pack them? They were on my list.”
“Yes, Will, I did. And the face masks.”
“Good, because we’ll need them.” He coughed and couldn’t stop for a long minute. His ribs hurt from it. Mom then turned around to watch him. She stared at him, frowning. “I’m okay,” he said, coughing, and then reaching for his water bottle.
“Just a tickle?” she asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Could he have a pop?” Reid asked.
“You can suck on it, and not bite or chew. It will help soothe your throat,” Mom said.
“Okay.”
Reid held two pops out. “Orange or cherry?”
“Orange.”
Reid handed him the orange one and then smiled at Mom.
Will’s coughing subsided as he sucked on the pop, and he returned his gaze to the gray landscape around them. He ran through a list in his mind, a comparison between the supervolcano and Mount St. Helens.
Mom was quiet. Reid was quiet. Instead, he took in the happenings outside. Reid drove slowly through Dodge City, and then got onto the highway. There was ash everywhere. Everywhere!
It flew off cars that drove ahead of them.
An hour passed.
Mom still hadn’t said anything. He tried to understand her feelings. Susie was always working on that with him. He looked at faces on cards and talked about what to do in certain situations. He didn’t know what was bothering his mom. They were getting close to Finn. She should be happy! She always got quiet when she was upset. Or she swore. A lot.
“I love you,” he said, as he always did. It helped cheer her up.
“Love you, too, Will,” she responded.
Outside, the cornfields disappeared and were now replaced by grasslands and high plains of rolling hills. The road was long and straight. Brown and green grass covered in gray, grimy ash…rocks…long farms. It was ashy everywhere. No mountains. The Rockies were west. No cool rivers or anything. It was just a long boring stretch. It reminded him of Idaho. A few white and yellow star-shaped flowers poked their noses from the spiky green plants that looked like fans. Well, those were kind of interesting.
His throat was scratchy, and he was tired today. The thunderstorms last night had given him nightmares. His eyelids kept closing. He didn’t like to nap in the car, but maybe this one time, he would rest a little because his head also hurt…
****
I replayed the phone call repeatedly in my head. It became a distortion of whirring sounds and static.
No amount of obsessing could bring me to Finn sooner. Brandon was alive. But where? What about Finn?
Reid drove slowly but not by choice. Bumper-to-bumper cars blew trails of ash and dirt into the windshields of the vehicles behind them, the ash the consistency of mud. It was gray sludge, clogging the wipers and splattering everywhere. As the sun rose and we traveled away from the storms that ha
d beset Dodge City and Wichita, the ash transformed. It was drier, dustier, and scarier. There were a few scratch marks on the windshield from the larger particles that cars kicked up from the road. At least it had stopped raining. Nothing was directly falling out of the overcast sky. I was going to count that as a plus.
Shit, it covered everything. One vast gray blur.
I crossed and uncrossed my legs. Flipped through the glove box. Nibbled on my nails. Drank water. I did everything I could to not think about Finn or the what-ifs. The ash had driven my worry to a new level. Before I’d embarked on this trip, my coping mechanism had been to work myself into a catastrophic tizzy and then relax and let reality settle in. Harrison used to sit and read a magazine, the mail, a scientific paper—anything—and say “uh-huh” and nod through my episodes. He knew I was a tornado with my emotions and that I’d also recover.
But now, now it was real.
“What did you go to college for, AJ?” Reid asked.
“Huh?” I shifted in my seat and readjusted the seatbelt. “Oh, college.”
“What’s your background? Did you study journalism?”
“Nope.”
The traffic ahead slowed to a near stop, and Reid took that moment to survey me.
I supposed talking could distract me, at least for a little while. Surmounting worry wasn’t going to help me. I took a sip of water and cleared my mind. Nausea and dizziness gnawed at my frayed edges. So much for feeling better…
“Botany?” he said.
“Close.”
“You mentioned working in a lab and doing research. My guess is something else that ends in ‘ology’?”
I scratched my head. “I did?”
“Yeah, the campfire game, remember? Aubert and your eyes?”
Embarrassment filled my cheeks. “Yeah.” I licked my lips, remembering Reid’s touches just hours before. No regret. I felt only affection when I thought of it. I pulled my gaze from him and stared ahead.
Will chimed in, “Her and Daddy both went to college to be scientists!”
“A scientist? Not botany…hmmm,” he said rubbing his chin.
“They study germs!” Will interjected. “Well, not anymore. Mom’s home, and Dad’s gone.”
Gone.
The word was a rock falling into my stomach. Maybe one day it would be more like a pebble instead of a rock.
Reid laid a hand on my knee and squeezed.
Feeling my vibe, he withdrew his hand but not without a subtle smile.
“Germs? Like viruses, micro stuff?” Reid continued.
I smiled. “Yup. Microbiology and immunology. Believe it or not, my first love, after writing, was sharks. I get seasick though. Microbes also fascinated me, and I went that route instead. Harrison and I met in grad school.”
“Very interesting.”
“I worked at a clinical research organization while Harrison finished his post-doctoral research. When Will was born, I switched to part-time with science writing, and when that work stopped, I had Finn, and I took the job at a magazine writing local stories. I dropped that this year. Here I am.”
“And here you are, taking care of your family. You also write novels,” Reid added.
“Yeah, well, that was a dream of mine since before science.”
“La autora,” he said in Spanish.
Lord, it sounded sexy when he said it that way. I found myself blushing, reminded of our night. “Maybe I’ll toss a handsome Latino into one of my books.”
He chuckled.
I rubbed my lips subtly.
Silence fell over us. I’d seen too much of this country for my liking. I was done.
We drove several hours without much conversation, the traffic easing here and there, and I snoozed.
When I awoke, a black and orange transportation department sign on the roadside blinked the disheartening words “No road travel beyond Lamar. Seek alternate routes.”
Travel ban. We were here. I straightened in my seat.
Chapter Sixteen
Heartbreak
A few minutes later, we reached the city limits of Lamar, Colorado. The amount of ash that covered everything was dumbfounding. This wasn’t ash caught in winds and rain. This was it. Ground zero. Well, ground one or two—the outer ring of ash fall.
“Oh, my God,” I said.
Reid clicked the door locks as we approached a cluster of cars on the side of the road involved in an accident. People were out of their cars and yelling. Fighting. Pushing. Crying.
Reid weaved around the stranded, bewildered people.
“It’s been over a week. Shouldn’t they have already left the area? Isn’t the Red Cross here? FEMA? National Guard? Clean up crews? Where’s the help? The news said…” My wheels were turning too fast. There was no need to finish the sentence. Well, I knew where Finn got it from. Finn was me incarnate.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re people like us, either fleeing belatedly or coming to find loved ones?”
Cars lined the shoulders and clogged traffic in both directions. Our car slowed further, nearly to a stop. I flipped through my handy atlas. We were on Route 50 and about halfway to Pueblo from Dodge City. Theoretically, we’d be in the Colorado Springs and Denver area in a few hours. So close…
Panic seeped in, and I banished it with unspoken curses. At least Will wouldn’t scold me.
“There’s got to be shelters and emergency FEMA stations. We’ll find some info,” Reid encouraged.
He squeezed my restless tapping hand. I squeezed back. I didn’t know what this was, but I would take it.
We made our way through downtown Lamar by way of side roads. Others had the same idea. The going was slow. If the response in Dodge City had been worrisome, then the sights in Lamar were disheartening. Everything was closed, windows covered with wooden planks. Nobody was cleaning off cars. Instead, all the cars idled in the street with impatient drivers and passengers eager to get out of town. Or into town—to travel west like us.
“There, see.” Reid pointed ahead. A large stone church had been transformed into an emergency hospital. Bright orange traffic barricades lined the front lawn of a towering old cathedral-style building. Medical workers, patients, family, police, and military buzzed across the grassy lawn in and out of a patchwork of open-sided tents. Humvees, ambulances, and fire trucks lined the front like a valet service.
“They must be taking the injured to mobile hospitals in towns outside the blast zone,” Reid said, echoing my unspoken thoughts.
The sight of relief of any kind fostered my dwindling hope. “I want to check here first, okay? I know it’s impossible for me to check all emergency mobile stations, or know where they all are, but I must start somewhere. I have to do something.”
“Of course. What’s your brother’s full name?”
“Brandon Monahan. Do you think they have checklists?” I leaned forward and surveyed the mobs of people for any chance of seeing Finn or my brother. Was Finn wearing the same clothes or had he changed? It’d been well over a week. He might not have had access to his luggage.
“Yeah. It’s a long shot. There’s bound to be dozens of mobile hospitals.”
“Let’s check. We can at least gather info, right?” My hand danced on the door handle.
Reid made several circles around the block before he found a suitable parking area.
If it weren’t for Will’s slow pace, I would have run to the church.
“Mom, I’m okay. I’ll walk with Reid.”
I took his hand. “I really want you with me, honey.” I wasn’t going to lose him again. As we drew closer, realization hit me. Blood, wounded, and dead awaited us here. Like other natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes, the injured could dribble in days after the initial impact. “Will, listen, you may see yucky things here. Just keep your eyes open for Finn and Uncle Brandon, okay? Can you help me, honey?”
Will did a thumbs-up. “Got it.” Gross stuff usually didn’t daunt him. He and
Finn loved the gore of Halloween. That was fake. This was real. However, Will had been the kid on the sofa also unaffected by the destruction of tornadoes and weather disasters. He always took things at face value.
“What do they look like?” Reid asked.
“Huh?”
“Finn and Brandon.”
I shook my head, chastising myself. God, for the briefest of moments, I’d forgotten Reid was there. I’d thought he was Harrison. I clicked through photos of Finn on my phone.
“Adorable kid. Looks like Will.”
“Yeah, more than one person has said they look like twins.”
“Got it. What about Brandon?”
“He looks like the male version of me, shorter hair. About your height and build. He always wears a ballcap.” I scratched my head. “It’s orange and blue with a ski logo.”
Reid was already scanning the crowd. “Should we locate a registration or information tent?”
Again, I chewed my lip. “Do you think they have one?”
“Probably.”
The place whirred with activity. Stretchers, nurses, doctors, National Guard soldiers, police officers…they all moved around like a well-oiled machine, maintaining a careful balance of activity and control. It’d been a week, and the ad hoc hospital appeared to run fluidly. At least it wasn’t like an ER, with blood and chaos. Everyone had a job, and they were doing it.
“Excuse me? Where is the registration tent?” I asked a nearby attendant in scrubs.
“Over there,” she said, pointing her chin toward another tent. She blew an exasperated breath as she wrapped a bandage around a young woman’s arm.
“Do all people go through that tent? The injured, I mean?”
“All people coming in are registered. Name, gender, age, discerning descriptors if needed. Even for the deceased, if we have it,” she said.
“My brother’s not dead,” Will said.
The woman stopped and passed me a painful, pitying glance.
Will Rise from Ashes Page 25