Mike ~ March 15th
It’s been a very long day in more ways than one. We are five now. Lydia is gone. It’s crazy, but true. Tom is in bad shape, sitting by the fire reading Lydia’s diary.
We buried her today in Huntingtonville, a little place outside of the city. There’s a cemetery there right by the river. Tom's parents are buried there. Now Lydia is too. It took a lot of work; the ground is still frozen a few feet down. It could’ve been worse. If everything wasn’t melting, we would’ve had a much harder time digging the hole. Tom couldn’t bring himself to do it. Bob and I did it.
To make the explanation short, we were ambushed. I shouldn’t say we. I wasn’t even there. Neither was Jan. We were left behind to watch the cave.
It started in the night; these kids came and stole one of our trucks. We didn’t know they were kids of course. It turned into mess. Three kids are dead. Young kids. What a waste. We don’t even know why they did it, why they chose to shoot at the others. None of it.
Everyone is messed up, me included. Jan too, because we weren’t there. But it’s over. This part’s over, but really it’s not over at all. I don’t know what’s next. None of us do. The day has already lasted fifteen hours so far. The sun doesn’t seem to be moving at all. We don’t know what to make of it. Everyone just wants to get past this day, for it to be over.
Lydia ~ March 15th
Lydia is gone. They took her. I can’t believe it, it’s like a nightmare. I can’t deal with it. I won’t forget it. Tom.
~Huntingtonville~
The moon rode high in the sky. Frost gleamed from the freshly turned dirt that lay scattered across the gravel of the road that lead into the cemetery. Silence held, and then a scraping came from the ground, muffled, deep.
At the edge of the woods, eyes flashed dully in the over-bright moonlight. Shapes shifted among the trees and then emerged from the shadows onto the gravel roadway. One dragged a leg as he walked, clothes already rotted and hanging in tatters. A second seemed almost untouched, a young woman, maybe a little too pale in the wash of moonlight. She walked as easily as any woman, stepping lightly as she went. The third and fourth moved slower, purposefully, as they made their way to the freshly turned soil. They stopped beside the grave, and silence once again took the night, no sounds of breathing, no puffs of steam on the cold night air.
“Do you think...?” The young woman asked in a whisper.
“Shut up,” the one with the dragging leg rasped. His words were almost unintelligible. His vocal cords rotted and stringy. The noises came once again from the earth and the four fell silent... waiting...
Her hand broke through into the moonlight. A few minutes later her head pushed up, and then she levered her arms upward and began to strain to pull herself up and out of the hole. She noticed the four and stopped, her pale skin nearly translucent, her blond hair tangled and matted against her face and neck. Her lips parted, a question seeming to ride on them.
“It's okay,” the young woman whispered, “it's okay.” She and one of the older ones moved forward, fell to their knees and began to scoop the dirt away from her with their hands.
“It'll be okay,” Lydia mumbled through her too cold lips.
“It will. It will,” the young woman repeated.
CHAPTER FOUR
More Is More
~ March 16th ~
Mike sat quietly on a small pile of brick outside of the cave entrance and watched the sun come up. Forty three hours from sunrise to sunrise. It made no sense at all, at least not to him.
The air was warm, not warming, but warm, and a heavy haze hung on the horizon where the sun was beginning to rise. Northwest still, but it didn’t seem as far to the west as it had been just a few days before.
We need something to track that, he thought. And then, maybe not. After all, what good would it do to know if it was a little more to the East or the West or whatever?
His thoughts were broken by a soft step beside him. He turned as Kate came up beside him carrying two mugs of hot coffee. She handed him one of the mugs and then settled beside him.
“Thank you,” Mike said. She smiled back and then blew lightly at the hot coffee in her mug. Steam lifted off the rim of the cup as she did.
“How long?” She asked finally, and then took a small sip.
“Forty three… Give or take a few minutes.” He kissed her lightly on one cheek.
“What was that for?” She asked with a smile.
“Because I wanted to,” Mike told her. He blew on his own coffee and then took a small sip.
“You okay?” she asked in a more serious tone. Her eyes met his.
“Yeah. It… I don’t think it’s sunk in yet.” She nodded.
“It’s like,” he continued, “when my parents were killed. I knew it. I accepted it as well as I could, but there was really no time to process it… or, maybe I refused to process it. Anyway, it was years later before I ever really dealt with it. That’s what this reminds me of. Someday, once this all settles down, we’ll process it. Until then, I think we’re just on cruise control.”
“What was it?” She asked softly.
“Car accident. It was fast... for them anyway.” He seemed sad thinking about it.
“My mother died a few years ago. My dad right after her. They were older when they had me. Hard life… Bad genes. Heart attacks for both of them,” she finished quietly.
“I’m sorry,” Mike said. “It must have been hard.”
Kate nodded. “So I know about the taking the time to process it later thing. I don’t think I’ve dealt with all of it yet. And this,” She lifted her eyes and swept them across the sky, the river, the rocks, the road that ran past the cave and the cliffs that rose on the other side of the river. Her eyes settled on the sunrise. “This isn’t over by a long shot. Who knows how or when it will end? I guess we’ll deal with what we can and keep the rest moving, you know?”
“Yeah. They were just kids though… even Lydia,” Mike
said.
Kate nodded. “But they weren’t sweet little innocent kids. I’ve seen gang bangers all of my life. I grew up with that. It’s really a way of life. Sometimes, for some kids, it’s the only way of life there is. I ran myself for awhile.” She frowned.
“All I’m saying is, they weren’t sweet little innocent kids. And, believe me, nothing you could’ve said, had you been there, would’ve changed anything. Believe me. I tried to talk to one of them. No good. And the other one I shot didn’t even bother to try talking.”
Mike nodded, took an experimental sip from his mug, then a longer satisfying drink. “I see it,” he said. “This city has a lot of drug trade what with the base so close by. I’ve never been in a gang or knew what one was really about until I was introduced to that life in Rochester as a kid. When I came back here, I saw more and more of it. Now it’s everywhere you look.” He seemed startled for a moment. “Was... Was everywhere you looked,” he added thoughtfully.
“There is still good in the world. This didn’t just take the good people and leave the bad,” Kate said. She took another long sip from her coffee. Her eyes met Mike's own; he leaned over and kissed her lips softly. She smiled and took the coffee mug from his hands, set it down, took his hands and pulled him to his feet.
"Come on,” she said and kissed him once more. Mike kissed her back and pulled her body closer to him. His hands encircled her waist and rested on her hips. Her tongue probed gently as her own hands found the back of his head. She drew back, giggled and then pulled him toward the river and the screening growth of trees and bushes farther down the road.
~
March sixteenth, Mike thought, would always be remembered as the day that didn’t quite happen. The sun never really rose. A half light lit the sky for the next forty two hours, but the sun itself never made an appearance through the thick, black clouds that blocked off the sky from horizon to horizon, dark and moving swiftly across the skies.
The sun seemed to creep around
the perimeter of the horizon from the West where it first appeared, to the East where it finally sank, setting the sky on fire with it’s pink-red light only to fade away without ever actually rising.
The air became warmer throughout the day, and what little snow remained melted away. Everyone noticed a queasy feeling in their stomachs, and a few commented on feeling something similar a few weeks back right after the first earthquakes had hit.
As the day wore on, a fine gray ash began to fall from the skies. The skies grew even darker as the ash fell down faster, like dirty snow.
After several hours, the landscape around the cave looked as though everything was covered with a thick coat of dust. Everyone fashioned cloths around their mouths to avoid breathing in the thick haze of ash.
The ash was followed by a slow dirty rain that turned the piles of ash into a slushy, runny kind of mud, and just before the sun finally fell in the East, the rain began to fall harder, the air turned cold, then colder still, and lightening began to stab at the gray and sullen skies above the cave.
~
Everyone huddled around the fire in the cave, talking very little. They shared a meal of canned beef stew and crackers. The stew was hot and drove away the cold that had returned, but it did nothing to lift their spirits.
Bob offered to take the first watch, Mike volunteered for the next and Tom offered to take it from there if the sun wasn’t up.
Mike held Kate in his arms and drifted off to sleep, thinking about what the day might mean and what the morning down by the river with her had been like.
Tom ~ March 16th
I’ve never kept anything like this in my entire life. I don’t know why I am, really, because when the rest go I’ll be staying.
I can’t even give a good reason for staying, except that there’s shelter here, and I know there are other people here also.
I know that all the others are going. They’ll follow Mike. What can I say or do about that?
I feel so responsible about what happened to Lydia. She was just a kid. A kid, Jesus. I can’t really think rationally about it. I can’t deal with it. I can’t believe how fast and how deep my feelings went. I’ve heard about things like that, but I had never experienced something like that before Lydia. I’ve heard that can happen in relationships that are formed in situations like this. Crisis… What else could be like this? Nothing. Anyway, I didn’t believe it could work like that, but it did.
I thought she would be here with me. They could go, she would be here. I could deal with that. This has almost made me cave in and say yes to going. But I can’t do it. Something inside of me won’t let me do it. It’s not that I don’t respect Mike, or like him. I was a little jealous, maybe still am, a little. I had a thing for Kate, and I still do. That’s another reason I can’t go. I would end up hating him. Her too. But, it’s not really any of that. I have to run my own railroad. That’s all. Very lame. Probably very dangerous in this new world also.
Maybe I can change. I’m open to that. What I’m really hopeful for is other people. When the other four leave, I don’t want to be alone. I spent the first few days of this alone. I didn’t like that. I don’t want to go back to that.
How do you develop such deep feelings for someone so fast? Right now I’m trying to get past that. I guess what I need to do is freeze everything else out for now.
I don’t know what to say about how I felt about Kate, or how I still feel. And I can’t explain how I could feel that way about her and still feel the way I did about Lydia. Am I kidding myself? Was Kate just temptation and Lydia the real thing? No. That’s hard to say, but true. I would have walked away from Lydia for Kate in a heartbeat. That makes me feel even worse about things. Even so, I loved her… Love her.
As far as this journal goes, I can’t share it. I don’t think I can write deep, personal things about myself and then share them with anyone. I never could… I won’t begin now. But I can write them here. I can see where this can help me to work through things, help me deal with this. This can bring me through this, just writing it out. So I’ll do it for that reason
and no other.
~ March 17th ~
The storm kept up through the longer than usual night. Twelve hours into the night the first quaking of the Earth shook the ground. Everyone was up at the same time. They stood outside in the cold, pouring rain just moments later, huddled under a blue plastic tarp while the lightening split the sky and the ground continued to shake and tremble.
Everyone was sick. Every movement seemed exaggerated, uncoordinated. Between the tremors and the sickness it was nearly impossible to remain standing, but Mike, Tom and Bob held the outer edges while Kate knelt in the center holding Janet Dove who seemed to be having a harder time with the light-headedness and the sickness than anyone else.
The first large Earthquake came a few hours later. Some sounds were off in the distance, the sounds of buildings collapsing. Other sounds were closer and came to them over the sounds of the storm, wood snapping and cracking, brick and concrete, already loosened by the previous quakes, crashing to the ground, the Earth itself trembling and moving.
The three men finally gave up the fight to remain upright and sank to the ground with Kate and Jan, all of them huddled close together in the cold rain, hanging on as best they could to the moving ground beneath them.
The night dragged on. Aftershocks came and went. It was hard to tell which were the main shocks and which were the aftershocks. The light-headedness and queasy stomachs became intolerable, yet they had no choice but to endure the sickness. The cold rain continued to fall.
Occasionally someone would thrust an arm out into the light of a lightening flash to catch a glimpse of the time, but somewhere in the night the wind up watches even stopped working. The second hands seemed to shake and shudder back and forth. Not actually ticking the time away any longer.
Mike watched as the Suburban began to shake and skitter sideways during one of the Earthquakes. It caught the unprotected edge of the road and then crashed through the brushy trees that fronted the cliffs and skated off the edge into the river below. Shortly after that, the sounds of destruction in the distance began to taper off.
Sometime later on, the sun appeared about to rise once again. A dull, pink glow lit up the horizon in the North, but for the second day in a row, the sun itself never rose. Once again, the light seemed to skate around the very edge of the horizon and then disappeared back into blackness. Shortly after that, Bob told everyone that his watch seemed to be working once again. Everyone quickly checked their own watches to find them working also.
Twenty five hours into the darkness something changed.
It came on slowly, but eventually they all noticed that the light-headedness was abating. The queasiness was letting up as well. No one felt like jumping up and running around, but after so many hours living with the sickness, it felt good to have it going in the other direction. Janet slipped in to a light sleep in spite of the relentless, cold rain.
Everyone was soaked, but the tarp did provide some protection. Shortly after the strange sickness had passed, another series of Earthquakes, or aftershocks, hit. Not as strong as any of the ones that had come before, but one of them caused some nearby damage they could only hear. Something, it sounded like part of the cliff side close down by the river, split away. The sound came to them clearly, and the roar of the rushing Black increased in intensity for several minutes before it slipped back into its previous roar. Buildings continued to crash in the distance, lightening stabbed at the rain flooded ground and the small, tired group huddled beneath the tarp, sleeping when they could.
“What if the sun never comes back up?” Bob whispered.
Mike glanced at his own watch during a brief flash of lightening, thirty hours had passed. Not counting however long the watches had not been working.
“It will,” Kate whispered.
“Yeah,” Tom echoed tiredly.
~
When the sun finally did
rise, it rose from the South and slowly made its way across the sky on a ponderous course that saw it slipping back down into the horizon several times and then seeming to hang dead in the sky for long periods of time.
The rains stopped, the temperatures began to rise rapidly and soon the tarp was discarded. Steam began to rise from the wet asphalt and the roadside vegetation surrounding the cave. Mike found himself looking around as everyone else was.
A large section of the bank that had held the old road was gone, and the Black's waters churned muddy brown, coming closer to the upper roadway where the cave stood.
All three vehicles were gone. Over the edge, and presumably washed away, Mike thought. The sun continued on its unsteady, drunken course, seeming to be desperately angling for a sinking somewhere in the northwest, but it was hard to tell. A few minutes later, it once again stopped and seemed to hang in the sky, a huge, swollen, yellow-red orb shimmering in the hazy sky.
“We should eat, or at least drink something,” Kate said.
“No way. I can’t even think of food,” Tom said.
“I know. Me too, but we’ll get dehydrated, possibly already are, and that’s very dangerous. I’m going to see how the cave is… Get some bottled water, maybe some of those energy bars. Did anyone think to bring a flashlight with them?” she finished.
Everyone shook their heads. Kate stood on shaky legs, and the dizziness returned quickly. She squatted down to the ground as everyone else struggled to their feet and also sank back down to the ground. She took several deep breaths and then stood again, slowly, taking deep breaths as she did.
“It’s okay,” she told the others with a shaky lopsided smile, “Just do it slowly.”
The men made it back to their feet, standing, shaking, but Janet remained sitting, her head in her hands. Bob sank back down and circled her shoulders with one arm, pulling her to
his chest.
“I’ll wait here with Jan,” he said quietly.
The Rising of the Dead Page 9