“You okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s this old body of mine that’s the problem.” Sam settles against one of the larger rocks, wipes the perspiration from his brow with the back of his hand. “Thanks for catching me. Last thing I need is a broken bone at my age.”
“Hey, no worries. Hannibal knows how to set broken bones and Satin’s arm seems to be doing pretty well.” Deuce eyes the stream below. “Have you tested the water up here, yet?”
“I was about to when you popped up,” says Sam. “Come on…” Sam crosses the plateau and heads down one of the minor trails toward the nearest stream a thousand feet below. Deuce navigates the rocky terrain like a mountain goat while Sam barely keeps up beside him. By the time they reach the stream, Sam has the pH tester out and ready. He sets the tip into the running stream and holds it in place for several seconds before pressing the readout button. He turns it slightly so Deuce can read it, too.
“Seven point eight.” Deuce grins. Of course, alkaline pH is good for drinking water. He learned that in fifth-grade science. “That’s a relief.”
Sam pockets the tester and drinks a few handfuls of water before settling back against the nearest boulder. “How old are you now?”
“Sixteen.”
“Well, that explains how you can zip around up here like a mountain goat and I feel like a second-hand scarecrow. Try not to let your body get this old if you can help it, Deuce. Always keep moving.”
“Come on, you’re not that old.”
“Tell that to my knees.”
Deuce bends down as if talking to Sam’s knees. “You’re not that old.”
Sam smiles at Deuce’s boyish charm.
For the next few days, the survivors go about their business gathering nuts, seeds, edible plants and freshwater. Julia and Rachel stay close to Meg and the two girls. The five of them spend hours together collecting supplies while the little girls chatter away innocently.
“I like living in the clouds,” says Lily.
“I like living with the lucky tree,” says Mia.
“I hope we can stay here.”
“Me, too.”
“It kind of feels like home.”
“It does.”
Alex joins Jessa to work on their shelter for the rest of the Day while the light is good. As they work, they notice the gradual appearance of intermittent cumulus clouds directly overhead. Cumulus clouds are nice, but they really want rain clouds to clear the air and replenish the streams.
May 23
As Dawn arrives, Ankur awakens Deuce, Eric and Donnie to accompany him on an expedition down to the base of Monument Peak. He’s grown curious about conditions on the ground, hidden from them by thick clouds. The low-hanging clouds have obscured their view of the landscape down near the base ever since they arrived at the summit.
For days, Deuce’s fear of the ocean has taken a back seat to his daily chores and making the most of their environment. Exploring the rest of the mountain and facing his fears might do him good. So he joins Eric, Donnie and Ankur at the trail entrance and, with Samson at his side, they start down the trail.
“Are we looking for anything special?” Donnie asks Ankur.
“If you consider the sea level special,” says Ankur.
Deuce studies the terrain ahead and on both sides of the trail as they reach the midway point, approaching the thick layer of clouds that has blocked their view of the mountain base. They instinctively slow their pace to a near crawl as they enter the mass of dark grey fog.
So this is what walking in the clouds feels like. Deuce feels suddenly light-headed and disoriented. The ground below disappears in the fog.
“Dude, this is way creepy.” Donnie crouches low so he can see the ground more clearly. They have less than a couple feet of visibility in every direction. Samson barks at the fog as if trying to scare it away. Yet the clouds, thick, heavy and ominous, fearlessly hold their ground.
Deuce inches forward at a snail’s pace along the invisible trail followed by Ankur, Eric and Donnie who are bunched together in a tight group right behind him. Samson barks occasionally, leads the way. They are careful to avoid stepping on each other’s toes as they follow closely behind the shepherd’s wagging tail.
“Okay, I need to stop for a minute.” Deuce is suddenly overcome by dizziness, sweating profusely as he drops to the ground, wipes his brow on his shirtsleeve. He feels suffocated by the water vapor in the cloud. Samson’s head appears out of the fog and nuzzles his chest. The others drop to their knees and stare at Deuce, looking more than a little concerned.
“You don’t look so good,” says Ankur.
“I’m dizzy and a little nauseous. I just want to sit here a while.”
Ankur, Donnie and Eric sit, too, knee-to-knee, close enough to see one another in the narrow slice of space separating clouds from earth.
“It’s okay if you’re afraid of the ocean,” says Eric, “We’re all afraid of something.”
“I’m afraid Rachel will never find me attractive,” Ankur volunteers.
“I’m afraid I’ll never play pro ball,” adds Donnie.
“I’m afraid I’ll never get laid again.” Eric smirks.
“Oh yeah, that’s all pretty scary stuff.” Deuce won’t say what he’s thinking, that their fears are petty and insignificant. On second thought, maybe they are just trying to humor him.
Deuce wipes his face on his sleeve again. His long hair is matted to his forehead by condensation and sweat. The dizziness passes, but not the disorientation. Despite that, he forces himself to stand upright, holding onto Samson and Eric for support, trying to regain his bearings on the trail.
“Feeling any better?”
“Yeah,” mutters Deuce. He takes a few steps downhill.
Ankur and Donnie stand and follow closely. They press onward through the thick cloak of invisibility, hearing the white-noise trickle of a stream nearby but unable to see more than a few feet in front of them.
They continue advancing slowly until they see a clearing ahead. Visibility improves to ten feet, then twenty as they approach the bottom of the cloud, picking up their pace. A few more minutes and they will be in the clear again, having passed through several hundred feet of cloud cover. The moisture in the air thins considerably. Deuce’s breathing eases, his perspiration diminishes.
Samson races ahead of them and reaches the clearing first then stops suddenly. He tenses his haunches and barks wildly at something in front of him. Moments later the boys reach the clearing.
From four thousand feet up, they can see clear to the base of Monument Peak. Only it’s not the rocky brown, fallen tree strewn ground cover they expect. Instead, it’s Deuce’s worst nightmare. It’s nothing but blue-green water as far as they can see in every direction. Lake Tahoe is no more. Deuce is instantly petrified.
They stop and stare in disbelief. In the few days since they settled at the summit, the ocean has overtaken and inundated everything around them. Now only the mountains poke upward from the surface. There is no ground below.
“Not so heavenly anymore, is it?” Eric glances at Donnie. Indeed, the skier’s paradise once known as Heavenly Resort is now in imminent danger of succumbing to the spreading floodwater.
Deuce is in imminent danger of succumbing to nausea again. He gulps hard and presses forward tentatively, sticking to the trail, fighting his mounting fear.
“There used to be a stream here.” Donnie stares off to their right then leaves the trail headed toward the spot where a stream ran just days earlier. He finds the stream has completely dried up. The running water sounds they heard from inside the cloud have evaporated, too. Donnie returns to the trail shaking his head as they continue moving cautiously downhill.
“Nothing?” Eric looks at Donnie, surprised.
“Not a drop,” says Donnie. “We need rain.”
“I wonder if the water level has reached the trailhead,” says Ankur as he anxiously takes the lead, picks up the pace. Samson continues bark
ing madly at the ocean below as they follow Ankur downhill.
“It’s okay, boy it’s only water.” Deuce nearly chokes on his own words. Only water. That is the understatement of the century. He pets Samson reassuringly but the dog refuses to calm, continues barking at the waterscape below.
As they approach Monument Peak’s base, they spot the real reason for Samson’s excitement. There, bobbing lazily on the surface not far from the mountain slope, are their four abandoned rafts still floating bunched together as if they are invisibly tethered.
“Hey, it’s our rafts!” hollers Ankur.
They come to a halt finally just twenty feet above the ocean surface. The trailhead is underwater, but the rafts are right there less than thirty feet from the mountainside, one still carrying Meg’s abandoned supplies. There’s something else, too. The remains of Marcus’s kayak, its back half eaten away by acid or a shark attack, with only the bow left. Shark attack? Deuce wonders if that’s even possible.
“Damn. Do you think Marcus survived?”
“Good chance he crossed the lake and abandoned the kayak,” says Ankur. “He probably headed east following the Guerreros.”
“Probably, and these rafts could have drifted anywhere, but they followed us here, instead,” says Eric.
Ankur approaches the water’s edge, kneels, gingerly dips in one fingertip and sniffs it, being careful not to touch his nose.
“Seawater,” he announces. It’s more than salt. The unusually high acid content tastes sour, stronger than bitter lemon. His finger begins tingling. Remembering Meg and Mia’s burns, he quickly wipes it firmly in the dirt to neutralize the acid.
Deuce, unable to suppress his insistent nausea, retches. Samson sniffs at the puddle of vomit at his feet.
“Samson, no!” Deuce startles Samson. He jumps away from the vomit, eyes Deuce briefly before turning back toward the water and the rafts, his gaze fixed on Meg’s raft and the abandoned backpack. Then, without warning, the shepherd takes off, launching himself headlong into the water toward Meg’s raft.
“Samson, NO!” Deuce watches helplessly as the German shepherd leaps into the rising ocean, dog paddles quickly toward the raft less than thirty feet away.
Samson’s barking turns into a pained yelp as the acid water begins eating away his fur. A mass of tiny bubbles ascends to the surface all around him, like a basket of French fries being lowered into a tub of boiling oil at Burger King.
“Samson!” Deuce turns away, unable to watch, even as Samson reaches Meg’s raft, drags himself aboard, grabs the backpack in his powerful jaws and dives back into the acid water, yelping and whimpering as he paddles frantically toward them. Eric, Donnie and Ankur scream encouragements.
“Come on, Samson, you can do it!”
“Swim Samson, damn it, swim!”
“You can make it, boy. Come on!”
The acid water is slowly dissolving his outer coat. Just a matter of time before it reaches his inner coat and then his bare skin. Samson is only ten feet from land when he gives one last mighty dog paddle push. Deuce turns around just in time to see the dog emerge from the acid seawater and drop the backpack onto the dirt at his feet.
Crying loudly from the pain of his corrosive acid bath, Samson plops to the ground and begins barrel rolling and side twitching his way through the dirt in a desperate attempt to cover his entire body from snout to tail.
“Quick, guys, get as much dirt on him as you can,” shouts Ankur. “Rub it all through his fur down to his skin. Maybe we can neutralize the acid.” He demonstrates, cupping the dirt, pressing it straight against the dog’s bare skin, massages it through his wet fur.
Better to have Samson dirty and alive, the way Alex found him. Using his hands like shovels, Deuce scoops big clumps of dirt and rubs it all over the dog’s body and head, being careful to avoid getting dirt in Samson’s eyes. The only thing that’s worse than a dirty, acid-eaten dog is a dirty, acid-eaten dead dog.
With enough dirt on him to fill a child’s sandbox, Samson falls completely still, resting his chin on the ground, closing his eyes, whimpering.
“Shit, I’m afraid he’s not going to make it,” Eric shakes his head. “He’s really looking weak.”
“Don’t even say that. We’ve got to carry him home now.” Deuce longs to see Samson just as he was the day they met, the day after The Crash when everything had been flattened and Samson’s original owners had perished. He longs to relive the moment Samson raced down the short steps into their bomb shelter, ran straight to Deuce and licked his face. He misses that lively, joyous Samson finding a new home and new human companions to love him. The only option now is to get Samson back to the summit, back to the shadow of the spruce tree and its healing needles.
Deuce lifts Samson into his arms and plows up the trail, unable to bear his proximity to the deadly sea for another second. Nothing will stop him from reaching the summit now, not the thick clouds and certainly not his anguish. He plants one foot in front of the other determinedly, pushing himself uphill. Eric catches up.
“Dude, he’s got to weigh eighty pounds. Let me help you.” Eric places his hands under Samson’s back end.
Together, they march right through the clouds without slowing, propelling themselves forward even faster once they pass through the gray. By the time they reach the plateau, Donnie and Ankur are well behind them, carrying Meg’s backpack.
Alex and Jessa spot Deuce first, see his distress and run to his side.
“What happened to him?”
“The ocean happened.”
Deuce and Eric push right past them, headed for the tree with the limp, unconscious Samson cradled in their arms.
“The ocean?” Alex and Jessa follow them.
“I couldn’t stop him, Dad. He just bolted and jumped in.”
“Into the ocean?”
“Yes, the ocean,” snaps Deuce.
“Why would he do that?”
“He saw Meg’s backpack on her raft. He just dove in to retrieve it before we could stop him.”
Sam, Julia, Rachel, Meg and the girls gather around, peppering Deuce and Eric with questions.
“What happened to Samson?”
“How did he get so dirty?”
“Where’s Donnie?”
“Where’s Ankur?”
Deuce wants no part of this. He just wants to get Samson to the bed of spruce needles and dirt and hope for the same therapeutic effect that helped Meg and Mia. Jessa starts toward him but Alex stops her.
“Let him be, Jess.” Alex turns to the others, his eyes red with tears. “I’m afraid we may have lost Samson to the rising ocean.”
The fourteen last known human survivors are suddenly overcome with grief at the possibility of losing Samson. He’s their only pet, possibly the last dog on Earth. A heroic dog wounded trying to protect them in battle, now wounded again trying to help them in crisis.
“The ocean hurt Samson.” Lily blurts out as Meg pulls her and Mia closer.
“Yes, Samson is very sick, Lily.”
By the time Ankur and Donnie arrive with Meg’s backpack, everyone is crowded together over Samson’s body. Deuce uses both hands, grabbing piles of pine needles.
“Nastiest thing I’ve ever seen,” says Eric, shaking his head.
Rachel spots Ankur, rushes to his side.
“Are you okay?” She hugs him tightly.
“No, none of this is okay.” He takes her hand and leads her to the gathering under the spruce tree, now a vigil.
One by one, the other survivors join Deuce and Samson in the shadow of the tree. First Rachel, Ankur and Donnie, then Sam and Julia, followed by Meg, Lily and Mia. They share the same thought. They want the tree to take away their fear, pain and sadness and save Samson’s life. It’s the only hope they have left.
Chapter 20
May 28
The meadow is broad, lush and verdant as Samson races across the grass to fetch a foot-long stick Deuce has thrown. On the north side of the meadow, a
stand of pine trees forms a sturdy backdrop for Samson’s favorite pastime. On the south side, a mountain looms from the earth like a towering sentinel blocking the sun and casting an enormous protective shadow over the landscape. To the East lies a small, clean freshwater lake full of mallards and Canada geese with their goslings swimming in straight, unbroken lines behind them. To the West, a straight shot over rolling green hills, is a championship golf course bordering the beautiful blue Pacific Ocean.
Deuce yanks the stick from Samson’s jaws, and rears back to hurl it again. He starts forward as if to make the throw then halts just as Samson starts to break for the chase.
“Fetch, Samson, fetch!” Deuce rears back again, hurls the stick as far as he can out over the meadow. Samson spins around and launches toward the stick as it tumbles through the air end over end and lands in the soft grass. Two seconds later, Samson reaches it, scoops it into his powerful jaws then races back to Deuce. Instead of yanking the stick from Samson’s jaws, he leans down next to him and gives him a huge hug. It’s a picture-perfect moment.
Yet, when Deuce opens his eyes, there’s a whole different picture in front of him. He’s inside their lean-to on his bedroll right next to his sleeping parents, staring at the makeshift roof. This is not a picture. This is real. His idyllic dream is over. Samson might be dead, the acid sea level is still rising and there is nothing left for Deuce to feel except sheer unbridled terror.
He pokes his head outside and sniffs fully expecting to be sickened by salt air. Instead, the morning air smells clean and crisp, untainted. Deuce takes little comfort knowing that his worst fear is still more than a mile below. The sea level is still rising, coming for him like some monstrous, creeping, demonic creature. He wonders how he ever managed to sleep having such dark thoughts. He remembers leaving Samson next to the tree on the bed of spruce needles at his parents’ insistence.
He remembers Alex and Jessa saying, “There’s nothing more you can do for him now.” He hopes they are wrong.
Deuce creeps out of the lean-to without a sound and tiptoes back to the spruce. He sits next to Samson on the bed of needles, notices that the dog is still breathing, then leans back against the tree and closes his eyes. For the moment, his instincts tell him that staying close to Samson and far from the ocean will keep him safe, alive.
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