“Maybe he had his share of losses? I still think there are more than just us who survived…and they can’t all be the bad guys,” Gina said.
“That could be true, but how do we tell the difference? We’re liable to run into other groups as we go south and what if they think we’re the bad guys? Do we need to carry a banner or wear white hats?” At the blank looks on Gina and Sam’s faces, Andy felt the need to explain, “You know, like in the old westerns on TV? The good guys always had on white hats?”
Gina shook her head, “You watched too much television,” she pulled on the lead ropes, “Come on guys lets go find some mature adults.”
“Wait! I haven’t told you the rest of it.”
Gina rolled her eyes at Sam, “I can’t wait to hear, but can’t we talk as we’re walking? I’m ready to sit and relax for five minutes.”
Andy shrugged, “Okay. I just wanted to prepare you for the new faces.”
Sam and Gina stopped. Sham bumped into Gina and nuzzled her forward. She put a hand on his nose to halt him. “What new faces?”
“Three days ago, we ran into a woman and two kids.” He let his words sink in for a few seconds. “The woman and little girl are really nice, but the little boy doesn’t speak and is hell on wheels. You have to watch your back with that one. He’s already given Joe a knot on his noggin and a black eye. Jesse thinks he’s protecting them, but I think the little shit has just got something against Joe.” Andy laughed and didn’t realize that Sam and Gina had both stopped. When Joe realized they weren’t beside him, he turned around, walking backward a few steps. “What?”
“Jesse’s here? He managed to…”
“Aw Geez Gina, sorry, I forgot you didn’t know. Not the same Jesse. Jessica is the woman’s name, but get this, she knew Jesse. They went to school together and were sweethearts at one time when they were really young.”
Gina let the breath she hadn’t known she was holding out, “I thought we had experienced another miracle. How’s Charlie handling the name association? That’s got to be hard on him being reminded every day.”
“It’s actually kind of weird because her and Charlie seem to be drawn together. The same with Joe and Kenny. It’s like somehow, she’s filled a gap in their family. She and Sierra act more like you would expect sisters to act, not two women who have just met a few days ago.” He shook his head, “Darnedest thing you ever saw, Joe keeps tripping over himself trying to help her, and it’s almost comical to watch.”
“Any ideas on the boy? Autistic maybe?”
“You’d have to talk to Journey, but according to Jesse, that little guy saw some bad shit. She said she remembered him talking when they first brought him and his folks in and doesn’t know when he quit. We try to keep one of the older boys with him at all times because we’re not sure anyone would be safe if he took it into his head to attack. Sometimes it’s the little things that set him off. And I’ll warn you if you see him with that slingshot out, be ready to duck.”
“How old did you say this kid is?” Sam had listened to Andy yammer away, and he felt like his ears needed a break. The thing he loved about Gina, is that she knew what he was thinking most of the time and they got by with minimal conversation. She was a person of few words, and he used even less unless the circumstances warranted more. Usually, Andy was the strong silent type, or he had been. Sam couldn’t imagine what had changed him. Sam wondered if post-apocalyptic survival was his new caffeine because something sure had him wound up, and Sam didn’t think the addition of a little kid could have done it.
“Everyone else is okay?” She had been thinking about Lucy and wondered how Journey was doing. They hadn’t had a chance to talk before she and Sam left, and she was sure that Journey would be feeling the loss. Lucy and Journey had always shared something special that went far beyond nurse and patient. The two had made a connection that Lucy and Gina hadn’t shared. They had been friends in every essence of the word, but there had been something missing. Gina had always wondered if she and Journey had not been as close as they were if she and Lucy would ever have been friends or just acquaintances.
“Everyone’s good for now, but I swear someone needs to take that kid down a notch before he really hurts someone.”
Sam laughed, “I can’t believe you’re letting a kid get to you. Maybe you need to turn him over your knee?”
“Hey! Gina and Sam are back,” Olivia said loud enough for everyone in the next county to hear. She came galloping toward Gina with her arms held wide.
Gina braced for impact and laughed when Olivia reached her. The girl threw her arms around her for only an instant and as if realizing she was making a spectacle of herself stepped back, but her grin remained firmly in place.
Over Olivia’s shoulder, she saw the new woman sitting beside the small fire and smiled at her. When the woman smiled back, her face wore a slight frown. Gina almost turned her head away when the woman scrutinized her every feature. Gina realized that Andy was right. The woman was beautiful, there was no denying that and Gina felt disfigured and ugly under her gaze. She could see why, as Andy had said, that Joe was falling all over her. Gina could understand her appeal. High cheek-bones, blue-black hair that hung down over her shoulder, and eyes a chocolate brown. The rest of her was hidden under a patched men’s jacket.
The little girl lay cuddled up beside Jessica and smiled shyly at Gina and grinned hugely as Sam walked up which made the woman laugh. Sam’s height and blue eyes had the same effect on women no matter what their age.
Gina looked around for the boy but didn’t see him, but did notice that Joe kept looking around. He had a goose egg right between his eyes, but higher on his forehead. When his eyes met Gina’s, she grimaced in sympathy. It looked like when the swelling went down, that he would still have the mark.
Self-consciously, Gina touched her own face. The burns from the hot steam had healed but left her cheek and forehead an angry red. Gina had never looked in a mirror, only using her reflection in the water to see how bad it looked. Sam assured her more than once it wasn’t bad at all, but seeing the sympathetic look from Jessica, Gina doubted he had told the truth.
“Glad you two made it back safely,” Willy told them when he and Matt changed guard shifts. “I guess there’s nothing exciting that you want to tell us?”
Sam shook his head, “We didn’t see anyone alive if that’s what you mean. We found a pickup mostly buried in a slide we managed to scavenge some MRE’s from as well as some other provisions. Not sure what happened, but when we got the truck uncovered enough to see inside, both of the occupants were still there. It looked like they maybe died in the crash, or so we thought at the time, but the canopy was still intact, and their provisions were untouched. It almost looked as if no one else had been through there. Heck, the vending machines were all still full at the visitor center.”
“Tell them what we found.” Gina laughed, “Or I guess what we didn’t find would be more correct.”
Sam leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. Rubbing his hands together, “Gina’s right. In fact, unless you see it, you’re never going to believe me. It looks like the whole dang mountain range is gone. When you look to the west, its rolling hills and not much else. If you look east, that’s where the mountains are, and they don’t look like any mountains we’ve ever seen around here.”
“Impossible,” Charlie said, his voice filled with disbelief, “Where would they have gone?”
“I don’t know the answer, but look around you. Do you recognize the land around you? I don’t. We could be smack in the middle of the prairies, and Lolo Pass is what, umpteen feet high? It’s no longer more than a bump in the landscape. From here all the way to the visitor’s center looks just like this.” Sam waved his arms around for emphasis. The further south we went, the more grass we found. If I didn’t know how impossible it sounds, I’d say that the mini-ice-age we experienced, didn’t extend south of here, but the ground is so torn up most of the big trees are down.
”
Sam looked around for Abby, “When you and Matt took care of the horses, where did you put the saddlebags?”
“You want them?” She asked.
“No, inside is a folded-up map. Can you get it for me?”
When Abby returned with the map, Sam carefully unfolded it. It wasn’t a typical road map, with its pre-folded creases, but one that had been meant to hang on a wall. He smoothed it out on the ground in front of him.
“This is where I think we are right now,” he tapped an area on the map. It’s hard to judge the distance because nothing out there looks like this map, but I’m guessing it’s only twenty miles to the center. We stayed alongside the river the whole way, and which as you can see, isn’t on the map at all.”
“So, how do you explain the changes all around us? Some mountains have disappeared, others have popped up out of nowhere, river and creeks dry up and others…” Charlie let his words trail off. He stared at the map, “It took thousands of years to make it the way it was, and a few earthquakes did all this in a few months? Seems kind of impossible, doesn’t it?”
“Not if you really think about it. I remember back in the 70’s scientists wanted to blow up Yellowstone, because they thought it would be better to have a controlled implosion than to have it erupt on its own. I don’t think they did it, at least not then while it was fresh in everyone’s mind, but what if they finally did it on one of the other super volcanoes and it backfired?” Willy looked around at his friends, “What if, now keep in mind this is all hypothetical, but what if someone set off a charge to let off the pressure on one of the other volcanoes and a chain reaction took place? What if they collapsed the dome sealing off the vent and the pressure was great enough to cause an eruption elsewhere?”
“But, I thought that if Yellowstone were ever to blow, it would completely decimate the surrounding states?”
Gina rolled her eyes and laughed, “what do you call this?”
“I’m not saying that Yellowstone blew, I’m saying it could have been any one of the super-volcanoes. Look at the one that popped up on John and Mary’s ranch. It could be that was the point of least resistance. Trust me, I think if Yellowstone did blow, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking about it. We wouldn’t have had time to think about leaving.”
Sam cleared his throat. He’d listened to all the speculation he wanted to, and if there was even a remote chance that their local celebrity could erupt, he wanted his friends and family as far south as they could get. “Is anyone ready to hear about what we found and plan our next step?”
As a group, they gave Sam their full attention and Willy nodded at him to continue. “Go ahead,” he said, “Like they used to tell me, you have the stage.”
“When we found the visitor center where the top of Lolo should have been, we found the whole building had settled down into the earth, and if not for part of the roof sticking up, we wouldn’t have found it or known we had reached the summit. Gina literally stumbled over the building while she was…well, never mind that.”
Gina shoved him on his shoulder, “You might as well say it rather than leave everyone hanging. I was going pee, and we all do it, so it’s no big secret. But I sure didn’t expect to get tripped up by a roof. It was dark, so we had to wait until morning to see what I’d found.”
“As I was saying, as soon as it was light enough to see, I started digging because it looked like we’d found the roof peak. As we uncovered it one of the vents came into view. I kicked it in, and we could see the attic.” Sam held up his right hand, “I swear it was like a hole had opened up and swallowed the building whole. The attic wasn’t crushed or broken in any way, and I suspect that was because of the way it was built. Whole tree trunks would withstand a lot of weight. Anyway, I could see the hatch and climbed in. Long story short is that was the creepiest experience I’ve ever had. Nothing inside was broken or destroyed in any way. With the use of Gina’s lighter, I was able to salvage the food from the vending machines and grab the map off the wall, and we came back here.”
“Well, not quite then. We unearthed a pickup truck and found a wealth of supplies inside the canopy. Now that was creepy. The passenger still had their seatbelt on. It looked to me like the driver shot the passenger and committed suicide. They probably didn’t realize how shallowly they were buried or they could have broken out a window and dug their way to the surface. Both bodies were mummified.” Gina shivered at the memory, “I guess he did what he thought was best for the both of them.”
“As I was saying,” Sam looked at Gina, “From the visitor center, you can almost follow the river, straight south. If we didn’t have a need for the animals, we could build a raft and ride it down, but we do need them. So, we’ll be moving at their speed.”
“Any idea where you want to end up?” Sam asked while looking at Willy.
“Me?”
“You’re still our duly elected leader. Of course, we all have a say in this, but as the elder, I’m sure we’d all like your input.”
“Don’t lay this on me, but I guess we go far enough south to feel safe. The abundance of food for the animals and wildlife would be a good start. Somewhere we can grow our own food and housing would be the crucial requirements. We should avoid any cities and towns along the way and…I guess that’s about it.”
“We did notice the grass is beginning to sprout and the trees that are still standing are beginning to bud. So, finding feed for the horses shouldn’t be a problem, and they have the river for water. With the supplies in the back of that truck, we should be okay for a while.”
Sam picked up and folded the map with a section of it showing. He turned it to face his family, “What do you guys think?” He moved the part of the map for everyone to see. “I used to spend the winter down here roping and rode a few bulls to keep myself fit. I have friends there, and I’m sure we’d all be welcome.”
“Well, damn. I did a couple of impromptu concerts at the rodeo grounds when I was passing through. I’ll admit to having a couple of friends there too. There’s not much but desert between here and there and it’s a long damn way to go, but, I’m game.”
Journey and Andy leaned in close to see their destination, and Andy grinned, “I have a friend just north of there in Congress and an old girlfriend who lives in Prescott,” when Journey turned to glare at him he added, “with her husband and seven kids.”
“Charlie, Evelyn? The two of you haven’t said much. What do you guys think? You game to try for Wickenburg?”
Charlie looked at his two boys and the women who sat beside each of them, at the row of nodding heads, “Sounds good to me.”
“Evelyn?”
“Seeing as the good Lord, for whatever reason, has seen fit to leave me behind, I’ll stick with you guys. You’re the only family I have left. Besides that, I can’t trust you all to feed yourselves properly, and I always did want to learn to make cactus jelly.”
Gina and Journey exchanged glances wearing the same expression. Both of their top lips were rolled back, and the corners of their mouths turned down. “Eww!” They said in unison.
“What about me? Don’t I have a say in where we go?” Ben sat up and wiped the sleep from his eyes. After his exhausting day on the quad, he had fallen asleep and been forgotten.
“I’m going where my Dad goes,” Abby said, moving from the fire to sit beside him.
“And I’m going with Abby,” Lucas said moving to stand behind her.
Ben looked up at him and saw the determination on Lucas’s face and then across at his daughter. She was staring back at him with her mouth set in a line that reminded Ben so much of her mother. He knew there would be no talking her out of it. He turned his gaze back to where Willy, Sam, and Charlie sat, “Then I guess we’re all going to Arizona.”
“Wickenburg, it is then. Now, who’s got the first watch?”
THE END
Thank you for reading, The Last Sun. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it. With the end of this n
ovel, there have been some changes that no one could have foreseen, but in the real world, we all don’t make it or have the strength to survive. I always put myself into the different roles my characters portray and wonder how strong I would have to be or what I would do in similar circumstances. Each of us, at some point in our lives have to decide if we are willing to do what it takes to persevere. Do we give in easily or do we dig a little deeper and go on?
I have included the first chapter of book six, Nomads for your enjoyment. There are some surprises in store and I keep asking myself, “How do you find an ending for the apocalypse?”
I think that you can’t. You keep moving, relying only on your wits and your family. You trust no one and you look after your own. You take nothing for granted, not even tomorrow.
Beyond the New Horizon;
Nomads
Chapter One
Sam sat by the fire, thinking long after the others had rolled up in whatever blankets and bags they had. The discovery of the pickup had yielded several more sleeping bags and light space blankets. With the changes in their weather, the cold soon wouldn’t be a problem, but Sam couldn’t help but worry what lay in store for them. The frigid weather that had dropped in on them with the blink of an eye had been like no winter that he could ever remember experiencing during his life. He had lived in Montana his whole life and never had they had winter hit with such vengeance, and never had they experienced sub-zero temperatures in May. “Or maybe it was June. Sad when I can’t remember what month it is,” he said, with a shake of his head.
“What’s that?” Willy asked as he passed behind Sam. He and Kenny were on watch and Sam had been speaking out loud. When Sam jumped as if startled, “Sorry. Thought you were talking to me. You know, talking to oneself is the first sign of senility.”
“Naw, answering yourself is. Can you believe I don’t know what month it is? I don’t know the date or the day of the week anymore. Hell, I can’t even be sure of the time of day.”
Beyond the New Horizon: The Last Sun, Page 24