Beyond the New Horizon (Book 3): Living on the Edge

by Conaway, Christine

  “We need to take them down below and wash both of them off. There’s no telling what chemicals are in that water and it looks like you have a few scalded places too.”

  They both looked at the building. A fountain of water and steam sprayed out from the half of the building that was still upright. As they watched it slowly began to taper off as if valve had been turned, settling back into the crevasse.

  Gina stared at the ruined building. “All of our stuff and our clothes. They’re all gone.”

  “Come on. Don’t worry about that stuff now. We need to get this water washed off us.”

  Gina looked up at Sam’s face and saw how the skin on his cheeks and forehead was already starting to blister. That was when she felt the tightness on her face. Gingerly she ran her fingers over it and felt the round boils of burned flesh. Her hair dripped the foul smelling water down the front of her. She was still touching her face when Sam took her arm.

  Apparently when the ground started to shake, Andy, Journey, and Ben had run away from it. Journey rushed toward them and stopped in front of Gina, “Oh my God. We need to get that shit washed off of you.”

  Journey led Gina away. She looked behind and saw that Ben and Andy had the two horses. She saw Sam at the end of the shed. She saw him grab something and to her, it looked like one of the chickens. Journey didn’t let her stop long enough to see what he was going to do with it. All she could think about was if she hadn’t turned the horses all loose, they would have been parboiled alive.

  “Did they all escape?” She hadn’t realized that she was still crying until the salt from her tears stung her cheeks.

  Journey wasn’t slowing down nor letting go of Gina’s arm. “That was a damn stupid stunt you pulled back there. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t. I just knew I had to turn them loose.”

  “Well, it was damn stupid. Jesus Gina, you could have died in there.”

  “I could die if I trip and fall too. Can you just slow down and why are you swearing at me?”

  Journey stopped, and Gina slammed into her. Journey wrapped her arms around Gina and sobbed, “Because you scared the hell out of all of us. If you had of been one minute slower…”

  “But I wasn’t. Other than a couple of little burns, I'm all right.”

  Journey pulled her head away from Gina’s chest and looked up at her, “More than a couple. We need to get you taken care of right now.”

  “Sam has more than I do and I don’t see you blubbering all over him.”

  Journey’s mouth dropped open, “Oh shut the hell up for a change. Think about yourself for once. Hell, think about Lucy and me.”

  “I’m sorry, but you need to stop swearing. It doesn’t become you, and you can’t even do it well.” She pulled away from Journey and looked to see where Sam was. He was standing beside Sailor and Andy. Ben had Bess and was leading her toward them.

  “Is she okay?” Gina called.

  Ben nodded, “She has a few scald marks that probably need looking at, but Sailor took the brunt of it.

  “Sailor?”Gina turned away from Journey and saw Sam pulling her saddle off of Sailor. He dropped it there on the ground. He touched the geldings brown hide and rubbed him gently on his neck. Sailor looked dazed as if the quake had scared him quiet. Head down, Sailor followed Sam to where Gina stood.

  “We need to treat the scalded areas with clean water. Let’s get him down to the trailer.”

  Gina was tall, but Sailor was taller, even on her tip toes she couldn’t see the top of his rump. She saw where one of his eyes had already begun to swell shut, and felt sick inside.

  Gina wanted to take the reins from Sam and run as fast and far away as she could. The valley that had seemed so beautiful and peaceful; postcard perfect, four months ago was disintegrating. Most of the trees leaned drunkenly, the mountains on the horizon had changed shape and once beautiful and green, were now scary looking, burned and black. A huge monster lay to the north looking down on them ominously, and now they had a geyser that had destroyed the last of their safety and almost killed all of their horses.

  Gina felt a cool touch on her arm and turned to see Lucy. Gina felt immediate shame. She was crying about losing inanimate objects, and Lucy was standing there smiling at her.

  All Gina could think of to say, “It’s all gone. Everything is gone.”

  “It’s okay Gina. We can replace things. We can’t replace you. When Ben told me what you did, I had to come up here and see for myself.”

  Her touch turned into pressure as her fingers closed on Gina’s arm. She pulled, “Come on. Let’s get your face fixed up. A couple of weeks from now you’ll never know you got burned.”

  Gina frowned. She felt how tight the skin on her face was, and it hurt to talk, but she had to ask, “Is it that bad?” She put her hand on her face and lightly felt around. She felt the bubbles of skin across her forehead and one cheek. Her mouth was puffy at the corner, and her hair was soaked. Her scalp did feel like it was on fire, but it didn’t hurt.

  “Come on,” Lucy told her. With Lucy on one side and Journey on the other, Gina went with them to the trailer she still thought of as belonging to Carlos. With all the changes to the mountains and the valley, the small trailer hadn’t budged from where it had sat for years.

  Once Journey had done what she could for Gina’s scalded face and head, she told Lucy to call for Sam. She had caught a glimpse of his face and knew he had his share of burns. If nothing else, he had to let them wash the areas clean and apply some of the juice from the Aloe plant Carlos had sitting by the window. The way that the leaves were cropped around the bottom of the plant, Journey was sure he had used the plant to treat cuts and scrapes in the past. Right then, the plant was the only medicine they had for treating the burns. Journey knew something about burns, but the soldiers they had seen were usually healing and already past the blister stage by the time she saw them. She did know that unless a blister was causing immense pain, it was better to leave it alone. Gina had several on her cheek and one on her forehead that would probably get to the popping stage quickly. She hoped that Gina would leave them alone and not pick at it because getting an infection was out of the question.

  Sam startled them when he pulled the door open. “You wanted me?” His hair was wet and standing on end as if he’d poured a bucket of water over his head. He’d removed his outer shirt, and his tee shirt was wet from his shoulders up. One side of his face was bright red with small blisters, and he had a thin red line forming above his eyebrows.

  “Get in here and lets clean up your face,” Journey told him.

  “I already rinsed it. What more can you do? We don’t even have butter or grease to put on them.”

  “We don’t do that anymore and haven’t for quite a while. Anything greasy traps in the heat and makes the burn worse. Now come in here and let me have a look. Thank God that Carlos believed in the old ways. His aloe vera plant is priceless. We’ll have to take good care of it and maybe start some new ones.

  On further inspection, Sam’s face wasn’t burned as badly as Gina’s, but the back of his neck was one solid blister as if he had kept his face pointed down, exposing his neck to the hot water. Gina’s long hair had saved her, but Journey was still worried because Gina had burns on her scalp. Sam’s ball cap had kept his scalp and most of his forehead from being scalded. She thought that she might have to cut Gina's hair off to get to the blistered scalp, but Gina had put her foot down with a firm ‘NO!’

  “If those blisters break, don’t pick at them, and don’t wipe at them. Come and see me and I’ll fix you up. We can’t take the chance that they’ll become contaminated. If you have any that need to be popped, let me do it so I can treat it and bandage it. For right now, the skin will protect what’s under it.”

  Gina saw the look of pity that Sam was giving her and she wondered how bad she looked. Journey hadn’t let her look in the mirror and told her it looked worse than it was. All she had thought about
was getting the animals out from under the roof, which contained the direction of the spray and would have soaked all of them. “How’s Sailor? Did the other horses get away and what were you doing with the chicken? I saw you pick one of them up.”

  Sam’s eyes watered, “I had to put it out of its misery. The feathers fell off in my hands, and I couldn’t stand to see it suffer.”

  “Oh crap! Did the rest get far enough away? Wait, did any of them make it? Please tell me I didn’t go to all that work getting them here to lose them now?”

  “I swear you worry more about those chickens and horses than you do about yourself or Sam. We can replace the chickens and horses if we have to, but you two…I don’t think are replaceable.”

  Gina started to laugh and realized that she couldn’t. Just opening her mouth to talk made her realize how tight the skin on her face had become. She knew the dangers of breaking the blisters and didn’t want to break them accidently. She couldn’t frown or roll her eyes, and for Gina, that was going to be a problem. For her, frowning and eye rolling were sometimes her best form of communication. Her simple eye roll could say so many things such as, “Oh my gosh, I’m so silly,” or, “Are you ever a dumb shit, or Can you really be that stupid?”

  “Just sit here for a minute, and I’ll tell you what you what everyone else knows.” He stayed seated on the chair that Journey had doctored his face on. Journey joined Gina by sitting on the recliner arm.

  “As far as we know we only lost the one chicken, Bess has a couple of spots on her rump that Ben is taking care of, Sailor got the worst of it, but he’ll survive. His right eye is the worst of it, and I’ll use some of the aloe vera to doctor it. We did sponge them both off. The hay shed is gone or at least un-useable. We have a vent hole in the middle of the slab, and Andy seems to think it might erupt again in the future. Right now we have no way of knowing. Everything in my room is a loss unless we can get in there to salvage, but right now we’re not taking any chances.”

  “The food? Your cart? What about the mare? I saw her break free.” Gina sank back into her seat, waiting for Sam to answer. She remembered the tractor was parked up there and their trailer with all the hay. They were in worse shape now than when they started.

  Sam shook his head and sighed. Until we’re sure that thing isn’t going to go off again, we have no way of knowing about anything. The way the slab broke apart first and then lifted up in the middle, the stove and tent went down inside the opening. Anything that was in the tent is gone. I couldn’t believe the destruction and the power of that thing. That’s why we built the building out of steel, but it folded just like it was made out of tinfoil.”

  They sat in silence for several minutes thinking about what Sam had said until someone rapped on the door.

  “Come on in Andy. Or maybe we should all go outside. It’s getting too crowded in here, and I’m pretty sure we need a conference.”

  Andy stood in the open doorway and stepped back outside after hearing Journey speak. “That’s what I was doing. I was coming to get you guys. John and the others are by the fire pit.”

  Chapter Six; Turncoat!

  Gina let Sam help her into one of the few empty chairs. She felt like she had a big boil on her face and could see something in her peripheral vision. She gently touched the area by her right eye and realized that is exactly what she had. Olivia came and sat at her feet and leaned against Gina’s legs.

  No one said anything about the way that she and Sam looked, but Gina caught Abby looking. Abby flushed and glanced away. Gina understood the way Lucy must have felt at first and decided that before John got going with his meeting, to deal with the subtle looks and pity, she saw on the three girls faces.

  “I’d like to say something before we start. I’m pretty sure that I look awful right now, scary even, but if you want to see it close up, now is your chance. They’re just burns. Yes, they hurt, but only a little bit and they’ll probably look worse before they get any better.” Gina looked around taking the time to give everyone a full face look. She wasn’t going to hide or pity herself. They had things that needed to get done, and if everyone tried avoiding her, they would accomplish nothing.

  “On that note, thank you, Gina and Sam. They saved all of our horses without a thought about injuring themselves and as you can see both of them received burns rescuing our livestock. We owe them our thanks. Without the horses, we would be in serious trouble. Now, our plans through necessity have changed. I don’t think that Sam or Gina is in any shape to go traipsing off to St. Regis, so, we need to begin our move out of here. Andy just told me after all the work that went into building the cart it is gone. We have no more wheels to fix it with.”

  Evelyn held up her hand, “I want to borrow a horse. I need to go see if Mark and Mary are okay.”

  “I’m sorry, that should have already been done. Ben, would you and Lucas ride over and see that everything is okay over there. Tell Mark what happened here and see what you can do to help him pack. Lucas, tell your Mom, I’m sorry, but she needs to help as much as she can. There’ll be time to mourn once we get moved. Say we’ll be over either this evening or first thing in the morning.”

  Ben and Lucas went to catch and saddle their horses. John watched them for a couple of minutes, but it was apparent that he was gathering his thoughts.

  “Okay, we had planned on the trip to Olivia’s to lay claim to anything that we can use. Now we have no way to bring it home. So we’ll leave that for another time. Our first order of business is to gather up everything here and load our trailer. Sam, do you think there’s enough diesel to get the tractor where we’re going?”

  “Nope. I dipped the tank after we used it last and there’s less than a quarter of a tank,” Andy told him.

  John’s shoulders sank, at hearing Sam’s reply and Gina wondered if John had thought there should be more diesel? To Gina, it made it more important than ever that they go. Someone should have diesel, or maybe there were still semi trucks parked along the roadway somewhere. They had no way of knowing if the whole interstate had been destroyed like their section, or if there were in-ground tanks that had survived. She thought there had to be a way to find diesel and bring it back.

  “There’s some at my place still, if this last quake or whatever it was didn’t destroy the tank. Not a lot, but probably twenty or thirty gallons. That should help some.”

  John nodded, acknowledging Charlie. Sam, do you feel up to riding over to Charlies and bringing back the fuel?”

  “My face got a few blisters, but they’re not on my ass. Of course, I’ll go, and if Journey lets me borrow Gus, we can use Carlos’s pack saddle and bring all of it in one trip.”

  “You better get going before it gets dark. Andy, will you go with him?”

  Before Gina could protest, Andy agreed. John spoke to Gina, “I know you think that you should go too, but, and I’m sure Journey agrees with me, you need to be careful for a few days. Those blisters look painful, and we don’t have time to waste here. We need the fuel, and we need to start gathering up what we can salvage.”

  Gina nodded because this was one time she would have elected to stay behind. Her face was starting to get some of the feelings back, and she wished she had some ice to cool it. When Gina looked up, she could see the shadow from the blister over her eyes. She had never considered herself beautiful before, and she could imagine how she must look now. If she jiggled her head at all, she would swear she felt the liquid in the blister sloshing. Gina knew the dangers of having the thing break and no way to look after it, and if it got any bigger, she would have Journey pop it with a needle and cover it up. Whenever she had gotten blisters on her hands, which seemed to happen every time she chopped wood, she would slide a needle under the edge and let them drain. Many times the skin never did fall off but adhered back in place. At least by staying behind, Sam would have his attention on the task rather than worrying about her.

  “There’s still a little room at the end of my wagon if you want
to load it fully.”

  “Thanks, Charlie. Maybe, Journey or Lucy can get those girls to start packing up the root cellar. I’d like to see what we can salvage from up top. Journey, you and Lucy can pack everything that’s in the trailer. Carlos had stuff stored under it too. Don’t know what’s there, but whatever he thought was of value to him, I am sure will be valuable to us too. Sam, what about the other travel trailer? Are we going to be able to pull it?”

  Sam laughed, “Well, I guess if we can get it back up on its wheels we can. When that concrete lifted, it flipped the trailer onto its side. You might want to check it out.” He stood up, “We’re going to get the fuel. Come on Andy. We’re burning daylight.”

  Gina was surprised when Sam rode away with Gus trotting by his side. Usually, Gus only ever wanted to be with Sailor. He didn’t even bother to look back at his friend who stood ground tied in front of a pile of fresh hay. “Turncoat!” Sailor looked miserable, and Gina was grateful he never received more severe burns than he had. Bess hadn’t gotten it as much as he had, and she thanked God they both had their saddles on. The fact that they were still saddled had probably saved them from a more severe scalding.

  One look up at the mountain told her it was leaking steam again. She had no idea if letting off steam was good or not, but when she thought about it, there hadn’t been anything out the top of it until the geyser under the hay shed had erupted. She wondered if there was a direct correlation between the two. It wouldn’t be that hard to put two and two together.

  “I wonder if that’s the last we’ve heard from it?”

  “Excuse me?” Lucy asked. “I’m not sure if you were talking to yourself or me.”

  “I was thinking out loud, but I wonder if that geyser will be like the ones in Yellowstone? I hate to think of anyone else getting burned.”

  “Maybe we should say something to John? He and Charlie went up to see what they’d have to do to get the trailer turned back up. Charlie thinks he can do it with his team.”