In the pitch darkness, Deuce blindly holds Alex, Jessa and Samson close to him. With the last of his fears, anxieties and options finally gone, he has no other choice but to keep his eyes shut and wait calmly for the end to come, grateful to be with his parents and his amazing dog yet hoping for one last miracle.
Dawn breaks gently over the plateau. Having kept her nightlong vigil near the perimeter, Rachel is the first to notice the thick blanket of deep gray that covers them like a shroud. She glances toward the rafts where the others sleep peacefully then back at the receding ocean. Her eyes widen at this sudden realization, an inexplicable twist of fate. Is it possible after so many months of steady advance that the ocean is actually retreating?
She watches in amazement as the mountainside slowly reappears beneath her. As the sea recedes it washes most of the loose debris and fallen trees from the slope. It’s cleansing itself. Rachel takes it as a good sign. She turns to go tell the others and nearly collides with the last person she expected to see this close to the edge, Deuce.
“Am I dreaming? Are we in heaven? What happened to the flood?”
“It’s over, Deuce. Check it out.”
Slowly, tentatively, Deuce leans out over the abyss. By some miracle, the Pacific is already halfway down Monument Peak, draining steadily like some gargantuan bathtub with its stopper pulled. Maybe Ankur’s theory about ringwoodite was wrong after all. Maybe Sam was right about the cracked Pacific plate, and maybe the water is receding the same way a tsunami or tidal wave washes back out to sea after a flood.
Staring hard at the receding sea level, Deuce feels the instant rush of an overwhelming sense of relief. He throws his arms around Rachel, gleefully jumping up and down and yelling toward the rafts.
“Mom, Dad, wake up! Everyone! The ocean is retreating!
The rest of the survivors gather at the plateau’s edge, marveling at the diminishing floodwater, spontaneously whooping, hollering and cheering loudly, like victors in the war to end all wars, as the sea continues its steady descent.
It is already Dusk when the survivors finally settle, exhausted, around their first campfire in days.
“I think I know how this tree survived,” says Ankur eyeing the rocky peak that rises on the northwest side just over a hundred feet above the plateau, a solid backdrop for the spruce. I think this tor protected it from the shockwaves.”
“What’s a tor?” asks Lily.
“It’s a rocky peak,” says Ankur.
“You could have just said that.”
“Either way, it’s a lucky tree, Lily.”
“And we’re lucky people,” adds Meg.
“And Samson’s a lucky dog.”
“Let’s not get too complacent,” warns Alex. “It could be months or years before we see the sun again. Winter is coming and we’ve got to protect ourselves. These nanotech jumpsuits will only keep us warm above zero degrees Celsius.”
“How do you propose we do that out here in the open?” Hannibal asks.
Alex fixes his gaze on one spot along the base of the tor where the dirt is thicker, the rocks smaller. “We might be able to excavate just far enough to make a cave.”
“We could search for real caves farther down the mountain,” says Ankur.
“No way I’m living down there,” says Deuce. “I vote we start digging at Dawn.”
“I’m with you guys,” says Rachel.
The others nod in agreement.
With the ocean still receding and no new earthquakes to rattle their nerves, they sleep comfortably through the night and begin hacking and chipping away into the tor at first light. With so few tools left, they are forced to dig using one claw hammer, their bare hands and whatever loose rocks they find scattered across the plateau.
Day after day they follow the same relentless, single-minded routine, ten adults poking, prodding, hammering and boring into the tor, moving piles of dirt and rock away until a jagged cave mouth begins taking shape. Samson watches them work from the relative safety of his dried needle bed near the base of the spruce tree as a cold wind kicks up from the north, the first harbinger of nuclear winter’s approach.
After weeks of tedious excavation the cave is barely large enough for the survivors to cram together inside and build fires. The freezing wind forces them to take more frequent breaks and sleep huddled together like Eskimos in the unfinished cave during Dark, slowing their progress during Day.
Since most of the streams have dried up, drinking water is suddenly in short supply. They have no choice but to begin rationing water and collecting urine in their one big pot, just in case. It’s one more obstacle to overcome and one more problem to solve. They have overcome and survived much worse.
Deuce, on the other hand, has replaced his fear of drowning in a flood with a fear of dying from thirst. He has to remind himself that water reserves are low but he’s not yet in imminent danger of succumbing. He can almost hear Sam Hayden reminding him how intelligence trumps emotion and manages to calm himself enough to fall asleep between Samson, Alex and Jessa closest to the cave mouth.
Deuce is the first to awaken at Dawn, peering outside at the windswept plateau. Nearly a foot of snow has fallen during the night and it’s still coming down as he reaches outside, scoops a clump of packed white powder and licks it.
Fresh water! That’s what the snow tastes like as it melts cleanly on his palate. Excited by this unexpected new turn of events, he wakens Alex and Jessa.
“Look, it’s snowing!”
Alex and Jessa taste the snow, too, and waken the others. One by one they duck through the four-foot cave opening and venture out onto the plateau to taste the wondrous white powder and feel the new sensations of snowflakes gently falling to rest and melting on their warm faces.
Eric and Donnie immediately enlist Lily and Mia in the construction of their first-ever snowman. Within minutes, Meg, Ankur, Rachel, Alex and Jessa are rolling three tightly packed and growing snowballs around the plateau to create the necessary body segments. The little girls find round rocks and a pointy stick for the snowman’s eyes and nose.
For the moment, Deuce is content to stay with Samson just inside the cave and watch his parents and his two fun-loving, adventurously opportunistic best friends lead the merriment. He finds himself grinning as a snowball fight erupts between Alex, Jessa, Donnie, Eric, Rachel and Ankur, who run around, laughing like children and turning their mountain plateau into a spirited winter wonderland.
Hannibal and Satin stand side-by-side against the wind and snow, holding hands, observing the frolics from a safe distance. Satin, now four months pregnant, absentmindedly rubs the palm of her hand in slow circles around her swollen belly, flashing her most contented Madonna smile. Hannibal places his free hand over hers, tracing her circles, wondering what new challenges or catastrophes await them and whether any of them will survive long enough to witness the first new baby’s arrival on this badly battered, severely scarred, mortally wounded planet.
“You know, maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea.”
“As long as there is life, there’s hope, Hannibal.”
“And without hope, there is no life.”
Deuce watches as their first official parents-to-be kiss each other long and deeply, and he smiles at Samson. “Maybe something to look forward to after all, buddy.” He turns, hugs Samson then ducks outside the cave into the whiteness. Samson stands, shakes the dirt and spruce needles from his clumped, matted fur and obediently follows Deuce across the snow-covered plateau to join the remaining survivors.
The End
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RUNAWAY MOON Page 33