by Noah Mann
“The town has a supply,” I reminded him. “Four weeks.”
“If everybody conserves,” he said.
“And they will. They’ll do what’s necessary.”
“You sound awful certain,” Genesee said, no agreement at all in his words.
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ve come too far to be beaten by this,” I said, gesturing with a nod to Mother Nature’s fury outside the vehicle. “No way. Not by this.”
Genesee regarded my statement with silent skepticism, but there was no hyperbole in what I’d professed. We would reach our friends. We would return. The winds would shift. The mountain would quiet. I knew this.
Because we’d earned a future.
Five
Paper maps ruled the day.
“Right here there was an avalanche,” Mike DeSantis told us as we stood in the abandoned outpost across the highway from the town’s houses. “It cut the road to Camas Valley.”
Behind him, Nick Withers was leading a crew readying the old general store for immediate habitation. An endeavor of necessity.
“Ash has already taken down one roof,” Mike said. “Another is on the verge.”
“Anyone hurt?” Genesee asked.
Mike shook his head, thankful to be able to offer that bit of good news.
“Let’s keep it that way,” I told the man.
He was one of the settlers who had split from Bandon to form their own community forty miles inland. Up the road fifteen miles was the survivor colony at Camas Valley, parties to a formal alliance which Schiavo had envisioned and brought to fruition over doubts and difficulties.
“We have roof crews clearing any ash accumulation,” Mike said. “Rebecca’s supervising that.”
Rebecca Vance, a woman who hid a soft humanity within a hard shell of grief, would see that any such task was completed. Or she’d do it herself.
“How bad is the highway blocked?” I asked Mike. “We have to get through to Camas Valley and over to the Five.”
Interstate 5 cut through the western part of Oregon, heading north from California and continuing on through Washington to the Canadian border. It was our best shot to reach our friends north of Eugene in the least amount of time. Or so we’d thought.
Just getting to Remote had taken six hours of maneuvering around drifts of ash and fallen trees. The clogged flow of one creek had backed up over the roadway near a bridge whose concrete supports were in danger of being undermined should the dammed water let loose. But we’d made it, with some light left in the day, though that was a misnomer at best. There was no light. At three in the afternoon it was as dark as midnight. And we still had far to go.
“We can’t get through with the vehicles we have here,” Mike said, pointing to the slide’s location on the old topographic map spread out on the counter. “I tried to head up there in my four-by, to see how they were holding up, but I couldn’t get through it. In the Humvee...maybe.”
“Maybe is all we’ve got,” I said.
Genesee, though, wasn’t so sure about that.
“Unless we backtrack and head up the coast,” he suggested. “Follow the route they took.”
We’d already considered that before departing. At least Lorenzen and I had.
“Too many bridges,” I told the Navy man. “Just like that creek we passed, a backed up flow that breaks through a blockage could wipe out any crossing. We just have to get inland to the Five.”
My explanation didn’t fully clear any doubt that Genesee held, but he wasn’t going to protest. This wasn’t his arena, out here, dealing with situations of daunting odds against survival. He knew that. I was glad about that, because I didn’t have time on this trek we were undertaking to educate the man about the ways of this world we’d been plunged into. As much as I, myself, could, that was. What we were facing, the violence of Mother Nature on full display, was unlike anything I’d been faced with. I had to trust that my instincts, honed by hours and days and weeks fighting to stay alive in other hellish places, would be enough to get us to our friends, and then back home again.
“Fletch...”
“Yeah, Mike?”
“Does anybody have any idea how long this will last? I mean, is it gonna clear soon?”
I shook my head. We were at the mercy of geology and weather. Wind could push the ash cloud east, and the mountain could go quiet, ending its release of choking gas and pulverized pumice.
“It’ll pass,” I said. “This will all pass.”
Mike nodded, but I could see it in his eyes. The same thing I was wondering.
When?
* * *
We reached the avalanche site an hour after leaving Remote. We weren’t the first to do so.
“We’ve got company,” Genesee said from the passenger seat.
I could see what he’d noticed through the falling ash. A light, sweeping back and forth. Just barely, beyond the beam, silhouettes of people stood out, as did the hulking shape of a large vehicle. A vehicle I recognized.
“It’s their tow truck,” I said, recalling the wrecker that had been dispatched to haul our damaged Humvee into Camas Valley after the ambush we’d survived.
I pulled as close to the avalanche as I could, the mound of ash and earth and rock four feet high, a snapped tree protruding from the pile. Genesee and I climbed out, the engine off but headlights burning. We scrambled slowly up the blockage and over to the far side, the dark shapes in the darkened landscape that I’d seen now quantifiable as two people, one of whom I recognized.
“Lo.”
The man who’d led the mission to save us from the ambush on this very road offered me a gloved hand, and I shook it. He lowered the bandana wrapped around his face.
“Fletch.”
I looked to his companion, a face I recognized from our brief time in Camas Valley, and from supply runs between there and Remote during my stay in the settlement, but whose name I could not recall.
“This is Paula,” Lo said, introducing the woman.
“Good to meet you,” I said, taking the opportunity to make sure both knew the man I was travelling with.
Then, the reality of our reason for being on the road took over the conversation, and I quickly explained what we had set out to do.
“The road to Winston is passable,” Lo told us.
“How recent is that report?” I asked.
“I rode it myself this morning,” Paula said.
Rode...
The inhabitants of Camas Valley, in addition to manufacturing batteries and supplying them to Bandon as part of our alliance agreement, had constructed a number of all electric motorcycles which would have wowed even in the old world. That the nimble vehicles required no air pulled through a filter which could clog was a major plus in this environment, but riding one through the ash fall, on roads coated with the fine, hot grit, could not have been easy.
“That must have been a sporty trip,” I told the woman.
“It’ll be easier for you with four wheels under you,” she said.
“You all are holding up okay?” I asked.
“For now,” Lo said. “I can’t say we thought a volcanic eruption was in our initial events to prepare for, but there’s overlap, I suppose.”
The Camas Valley survivor colony had begun before the blight had even been the twinkle in some mad scientist’s eye, a collection of individuals who’d expected some event to trigger the collapse of society. They planned accordingly, training and supplying themselves to survive a grid-crippling EMP attack, or economic meltdown, a surprise nuclear attack, or coordinated terrorist operations which would bring down water, power, and communications. In essence, they’d hardened themselves against a myriad of ways society could crumble, not knowing that they would face the literal end of the world.
And, now, a violent earth making its supremacy known.
“We were about to clear this when you pulled up,” Lo said.
I glanced past him
to the tow truck, its headlights burning and engine idling.
“Does that have a dozer blade I can’t see?” I asked, unsure of how the beefy vehicle could clear the road without one.
Paula pointed past us to the thick tree trunk sticking upward from the avalanche.
“That could act like an anchor if it slid with soil,” she explained. “We’re going to attach the tow cable to it and pull.”
I was understanding now, and the idea was simple, as well as inspired.
“You could clear a path through the debris just by yanking it out,” I said, seeing how the trunk and root system of the dead tree could act like a rake, sweeping enough away to allow passage through.
“Let’s see if it works,” Lo said.
It took him and Paula just a few minutes to turn the tow truck around and extend a cable from its rear winch, which was then secured low around the tree. Genesee and I stood aside, clear of any danger should the cable snap. With Paula at the wheel and Lo guiding her with shouts and flashlight signals, the engine revved and the cable went taut. The tip of the tree leaned toward the wrecker, and debris at its base began to shift, small avalanches to either side opening a crack in the blockage, then a gully, and finally a valley as the remains of the old, dead pine slid free, dragging soil and ash up the road as Paula pulled the tow truck to the shoulder and stopped.
“That should get you through,” Lo said.
I nodded, looking to the man as Genesee jogged back to the Humvee to drive it through the opening. Something had suddenly struck me. A wondering and a realization all in one.
“Lo, why were you two here?” I asked. “With the truck?”
That both of us would have shown up at the avalanche almost simultaneously was not something any odds would point to. Unless one looked deeper, I was about to learn.
“Dalton sent a patrol out early on to check on Remote,” he explained. “They reported the slide and we came out to clear it.”
The alliance, it appeared, was solid. More solid than even the formalities had suggested. What I’d just witnessed was one group of people looking out for another. That spoke to a connection beyond agreements. That spoke to growth, and to a belief that we were all in this together.
“I’m glad you were here,” I told the man.
Genesee pulled the Humvee through the breach and stopped alongside me. Just ahead, vaguely visible in the filtered glow of the headlights, Paula had unhooked the cable from the tree and was winching it back to the truck.
“You want to follow us back to Camas Valley?” Lo asked.
“Lead the way,” I said, and climbed in next to Genesee.
“You okay with me driving?” the Navy commander asked.
“Just stay on their tail,” I said.
That was precisely what he did as we made our way along the highway, his attention focused forward. Most of the time.
“Fletch...”
“What is it?”
Genesee looked to the mirror on his side of the Humvee, then pointed past me to the one on my side.
“I see daylight behind us,” he said.
I looked, and just as he’d said, there it was. A real sliver of sunlight cutting through the seemingly constant fall of ash behind us. It was thin and faint, a line of muted brightness just above the top of the dead woods, but it was there. It was real.
“That’s due west,” I said.
Genesee nodded and glanced to me as we neared Camas Valley.
“It might be clearing at the coast,” he said.
A few minutes later, as we stopped in front of the old school building that was the center of the survivor colony led by Dalton, I stepped from the Humvee and felt the most wonderful thing I could imagine. Wind. Coming from the west.
“Do you feel that?” I asked Genesee as he climbed from the vehicle.
“It’s blowing east,” he said, looking to me, the smile upon his face plain even beneath the dust mask he’d just donned.
“Someone up there likes us...”
I looked toward the voice and saw Dalton approaching from the building. Beyond him, the tow truck was pulling into its shed up the street. Already the air seemed clearer, if only by a bit.
“I’ll take any help from anyone,” I said.
The man reached out and shook my hand.
“Commander Genesee,” Dalton said, offering his hand.
“Have we met?” Genesee asked, lowering his mask as he shook the man’s hand.
I laughed lightly, and saw a hint of smile on Dalton’s face. The extent to which Camas Valley had scouted our town and surveilled its residents had been troubling at first, but had quickly evolved into moments of amusement, triggered by what Genesee was experiencing now.
“I’ll explain later,” I told my companion, then turned my attention to Dalton. “We heard that the road to Winston is doable.”
“What’s in Winston that would bring you out in this?”
I explained the situation to Dalton, including the impetus for our sending a delegation to Portland.
“The president,” he said, any lightness in his mood gone as if never there.
“It looks that way,” I said.
“He snaps his finger and you all are ready to jump?”
Our communities had grown closer due to the alliance, but there was still a deep mistrust of the government that had, as the blight spread, let its people down. I was one of those people who’d held such feelings. Dalton was me times fifty.
“We don’t know what they want,” I said. “But Schiavo follows orders.”
“So do I,” Genesee said, quite unexpectedly, backing up the reasoning I was giving Dalton.
The man shook his head and looked upward, into the thinning ash, more of the day’s waning light bleeding through.
“That plane won’t be in Portland,” he said. “Not with this falling.”
“That’s not my concern right now,” I said. “Getting to our people is.”
Dalton seemed to accept at least that part of our effort.
“I wish our repeater tower hadn’t gone down in the initial quake,” he said. “You might be able to reach them. Get some more information.”
“I wish we could, too,” I said.
Once more he looked upward, and to the west, the slight clearing seeming to hold. For now.
“This won’t be the same the closer you get to the mountain,” Dalton cautioned us.
“I know,” I said.
There might be clearing here, if only slightly, but as we made our way north that was certain to lessen. In fact, we could expect the ash fall to intensify, even if the eruption had subsided, which we had no indication of. More tremors had shaken the earth since the large earthquake which signaled that Mt. Hood had exploded back to life after a lengthy slumber.
“Do you want to stay the night?” Dalton asked.
“Thanks, but no,” I answered. “We need to put some more miles behind us. At least just past Winston to Roseburg. That will put us on the interstate tomorrow.”
“Roseburg to Coburg,” Dalton said, mulling the challenge of that journey. “It’s been a while since we scouted up that way. Never made it past Eugene. But if nothing has damaged the roads and bridges, I’d say you can make that by tomorrow night.”
“That’s only, what, eighty miles?” Genesee asked, mildly doubting the estimation. “You think that will take us all day?”
Dalton eyed my companion, masking the hint of pity that I detected. He could tell that, even in the world as it had become since the blight, the Navy man was sheltered. This was his first true foray into an unknown beyond his comfort zone. In essence, he was facing a new reality for the very first time.
“You’re heading into the beast’s maw, Commander,” Dalton said, truth in his words despite the injection of drama. “Tomorrow’s not Sunday, so don’t expect a Sunday drive.”
Genesee chose not to respond, wisely. Dalton let that silent response linger for a moment before looking to me.
&nb
sp; “Do you need anything?” the leader of Camas Valley asked.
“We’re supplied well.”
Dalton nodded at my assurance.
“If it clears more, I’ll have Lo put a crew together to finish clearing the road to Remote.”
“I know they’ll feel better with that route open,” I told him, then looked to Genesee. “We should get moving again.”
“Yeah,” he said, his agreement subdued. “We should.”
“Dalton, thank you,” I said, offering my hand once more. “We’ll see you on the way back.”
He shook my hand and watched as I got behind the wheel, Genesee already in the passenger seat. I pulled slowly away, not wanting to kick a larger cloud of ash up as we left.
“He’s not the warm and fuzzy type,” Genesee said once we were back on the highway.
“Warm and fuzzy can get you killed,” I told him.
The man didn’t challenge my statement, or its truthfulness. He simply stared out the windshield as we cruised slowly along the two lane road, heading toward our friends.
And into another thing that could get us killed—the unknown.
Six
We woke to skies still hued black, the only hint of clearing now far to the west and south. Where we’d stopped for the night, in the front showroom of a looted used car dealership half a mile east of the interstate in Roseburg, darkness reigned. Any sunrise that might have warmed and buoyed us was solidly blocked by a rain of ash which, I had to admit, seemed to be increasing.
“Do you need a hand with that?” Genesee asked.
I stood at the front of the Humvee, just forward of the passenger door, my hands beneath the opened hood as I worked to replace the vehicle’s air filter. We’d brought an extra six of the parts, knowing that the choking atmosphere would wreak havoc on any engine. We couldn’t afford to not reach our friends, and had to ensure that every mechanical part functioned well enough to get us there, and then back.
“Isn’t there something about doctors needing to protect their hands?”
Genesee put the cup of orange drink he’d just mixed up down on the left fender and showed me his palms.