"What?"
"Do you have to take a pee?"
"Maybe. When are we going to have breakfast? Do you think that man back there is dead?"
"I don't know, and no."
He'd thought of turning and heading east again–they'll never find this kid's parents at this pace–but the thought of heading back into Rogue Cop Land made him think twice. He pulled the squad car over and parked in some trees. The lahar had passed only about 100 meters to their north; he could see the tangle of wreckage and debris through remaining trees: skeletal piles of twisted metal, uprooted trunks, and crushed homes, all pulverized into an amalgam the color of dead skin. It smelled like a moldy grave.
He stood by a tree and relieved himself as Turk and the girl wandered nearby.
"Don't go far; only where I can see you."
"I'm not going to do it in front of you!" she yelled back with prudish disgust.
He saw her wander down a little draw and behind some trees, with Turk in tow. Then he zipped up his pants and followed them.
It looked like the earth had spit up bile to ooze across the countryside; in fact, that's close to what had happened, as good a characterization as any. The lahar filled the narrow valley, beginning at what was left of a riverbank, on their side.
The calamity wasn't the fault of humans this time, or man-made; their sin was complacency.
The sky was quiet, bird-less; they'd all fled the Rainier region, leaving an eerie silence in their wake.
Fifteen days ago, Cooper had been asked to help guide a big climb on 14,410 ft. Rainier. He'd jumped at the opportunity. Great pay for only four days, roped to clients, mostly high-wage earners from L.A. and Seattle, looking for adventure and bragging rights. The outfit had paid for his flight, Denver to Seattle, then they'd picked him up in a van and drove to Mount Rainier National Park.
They started the climb the next day and spent the night at Muir Camp at 10,000 feet, then they were up cooking breakfast for the climbers in the mess tent, when all hell broke loose. Tremors shook the mountain, sending avalanches down all four flanks of the non-longer dormant volcano. One of them wiped out the tents at Camp Muir, sparing only a small wooden shelter and the mess tent, and when it became obvious that an organized rescue was impossible during an eruption, Cooper fled. It was every man for himself.
He left injured guides and clients behind which made him guilt-ridden, but there wasn't enough time for either transporting bodies on sleds or helicopter evacuations. He sat on his rucksack and rode it downslope most of the way to the lodge at the trailhead, just as columns of super-heated, high-pressure gases shot from Rainier's frozen summit, melting tons of ice, snow, and permafrost, and forming the first of many lahars.
He hitched a ride in a van that drove 70 down a mountain road that was designed for 40. It felt like the end of the world, with ash and smoke blocking the sun, and panicked, desperate people fleeing in all directions; the first major full-on eruption hadn't even happened yet. If it had, he would have been vaporized on his way down Rainier.
Although he didn't know it at the time, a lahar was coming up behind them at 50 m.p.h., covering in hot sludge and incinerating everything in its 400 meter-wide path. This event was the "big one" they'd been warned about in the Seattle-Tacoma metro area for decades, so much so that few people cared or pondered it anymore. When the van ran into gridlock on the highway between Mount Rainier National Park and the big cities, Cooper had leapt from the vehicle and ran to higher ground. That's what had saved his life; no one in the van had followed.
When he topped a ridge by the highway, after going all out non-stop, he watched the white-hot lahar approach, boiling furiously and huge and implacable, making a tremendous roar. It plowed into the traffic; cars, trucks, and buses seized, toppled, riding the roiled lahar surface like so much flotsam and jetsam in a flood, until they blew up or were consumed, wiping out perhaps thousands of people.
Like giant, apocalyptic fingers, multiple lahars jetted down Rainier's flanks and all the surrounding valleys, east and west, destroying towns, utilities, buildings, dams, poisoning water supplies and submerging rivers, knocking out airports, military or otherwise (aircraft couldn't fly through the dense ash anyways).
It was midnight at noon. He wandered the blasted landscape for days until he found any green vegetation, or anything more to eat. Civility lasted about that long; help was not going to arrive. It was Katrina, times about 100. The same devastation, although he didn't know it at the time, was taking place in California along its various fault-lines.
Food supplies were quickly exhausted. Desperate stragglers wandered the countryside, looking for anything to eat. Anything.
The sky was empty, ashen; once, the clouds rained black, the sinister puddles running the color of ink. A few people drove on the roads not already smothered in cement-like goo, using only the gas left in their tanks.
They hadn't seen the last of Rainier's massive upheavals, and even he realized that. He'd spent a few days that were like the calm before the storm.
He wandered down the draw and found the girl standing with Turk, seated loyally next to her by a tree. They watched something, across the lahar, which had partially dried and allowed a creek to form from what had once been a river. It was a deer, a doe, with two fawns, drinking from the creek. She saw him watching; the deer dipped their heads into the water then looked back up, twitched their ears, shy and alert.
"Please don't kill them!" she said after a pause. "They didn't do anything to us! They're just trying to get a drink. They're so innocent…don't kill them!"
"I won't," he said, along with a sinking feeling that it would be a while before they saw any game, any at all. "We might get some water though." They watched until the deer turned away from the stream, made their boney-legged way back up the riverbank, and disappeared into the woods.
They had time to get water and filter it. They would be taking a risk, Cooper thought, as the water could be contaminated; he only had a filter and tablets that would kill bacteria or parasites like giardia–he was afraid heavy metals like arsenic and cyanide, from the lahar, had contaminated the stream. But they had no other options–they had to drink. They could go several days, at least he could, without a big meal. But water was different.
They went down to the lahar to where river water was still making its way along the sides of what looked like another, gray, lumpy cement waterway. The running water was clear (never a guarantee of safety). He dipped the palm of his hand into the cold water to taste it, then he filled the container from his rucksack that contained the filter. He added a disinfectant tablet. He filled the liter bottle and they all drank from it, Turk lapping the water from the palm of his hand. Then he repeated the process; it was enough to prevent severe dehydration, but nothing more. After three liters they wandered back to the car; it was nearly noon and they were about five miles outside of Orting, Washington, or what was left of it.
CHAPTER 7
He drove with the window down; pale, warm sunlight leaked through the clouds. For once the wind smelled clean, swept of dust. He thought it must be coming from the water, Puget Sound.
They passed a few people on the road, refugees like themselves. Sometimes the forlorn people waved, thinking that Cooper was a real policeman. He'd opened the girl's window; she looked thoughtfully outside and let the wind blow through her hair. He wondered if he'd ever have a daughter, if he'd get back with Alexis, marry, have kids.
She looked over at him. "You have muscles," the girl said. He laughed. She reached over and touched his bicep, a balled up muscle, and his forearm, which was like a steel worker's or a ballplayer's.
"I do a little climbing. Your arms get like that."
"Like Superman." She sighed. "I'm hungry."
He looked in the rear-view mirror and the dog was panting heavily, looking out one window and then the other. He recalled Turk's look when they watched the deer, almost seeking Cooper's permission to chase them.
"That's what
we're going to do next, look for food."
They hadn't driven much longer, just when he was getting his hopes up they might reach the coast, when the cooled lahar's path swung in a southerly direction and covered up the road. He slowed and braked the squad car in front of the looming obstacle. It looked like a hardened sculpture designed to depict abject catastrophe.
The front ends of vehicles stuck up out of it, a gasoline truck's trailer with the tires dripping with brown, dried glop; a human arm and leg. They couldn't go any farther. The sun was going down. He looked over his shoulder and he could see the monumental cloud billowing from Rainier's summit, like another mountain growing off the top of it.
He could turn east again, but they'd just run out of gas, confront further eruptions, and be back to square one. If they survived it.
"What do we do now is start walking guys. There's a town up ahead."
The girl started crying. Tears flowed down her cheeks and she sobbed heavily. "I want Millie and Tom," she cried mournfully. "I'm hungry!"
He got out of the squad car, opened the passenger door behind him, and removed the rucksack. He strapped it on. He called for Turk, who stepped down carefully onto the road. Then he went around to the other side and opened the girl's door; she sat inside pouting, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.
"C'mon, we can't stay here."
"Why?"
"Because this is where the road stops."
She looked around the darkening, broken barrens that stretched in all directions from the car.
"There's nothing out there, but cold, and night, and mean, terrible men, and monsters!" She looked at him with wet eyes and a beseeching expression that broke his heart.
"Here, that's okay." He held out his hand and she gripped it. He pulled her gently out of the car, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. He picked her up by her legs and hugged her to his chest.
"We'll find your parents. It'll be soon, sooner than you think." In the back of his mind he thought there would be refugee centers closer to Tacoma and Seattle. If luck would have it, they'd run into her father and mother.
He carried her away from the car. He already had a rucksack on his back with about 30 pounds of stuff, including his crossbow, knife, matches, a flint, a few layers, and a medical kit, but this was the way it would have to be from now on.
He called for Turk, who sniffed warily at the monstrous presence of the lahar. It stunk to high heaven, like the inside of a sewage tank, filled with wet mud. Reluctantly, they walked slowly towards some woods about 50 meters away across an empty field, as dusk gathered.
CHAPTER 8
When night fell, they saw a pool of light through the woods. It wavered amidst the impenetrable darkness, the charred air. He figured it was either a bonfire or possibly a house. Everything was silent but an audible, metrical knocking, like iron on wood.
They walked toward the light; when they got closer, Cooper put the girl down then said, "You stay here with Turk. I have to check this out; make sure it's safe. Maybe they have food. I'll be right back. Just pet Turk, right boy?"
Turk sat down, licked his chops eagerly, as though anticipating a movement toward better tidings, rather than this fruitless march through the dark forest.
"That'a boy," he said.
The girl squatted down beside the dog and put her arm around him. He left the rucksack with the other two, including a flashlight. He unsheathed the knife and gripped it tight and crept toward the wavering light. He could hear the ponderous sound of his boots on dry leaves and twigs. As he got closer, he saw the shimmer and lick of flames; it was a tall fire. No one seemed around. The knocking of metal on wood had stopped.
Still clutching the knife, he crept closer until he stood behind a thick tree. He saw the shell of an enclosure, with the outer walls burned away. The structure contained a stone fireplace, in which the fire roared. The stump of a tree sat off to the side, with an axe embedded in it. All he could hear was the crackling flame; he decided to scout out the periphery, after standing stock still to detect any sign of movement.
He moved away from the tree and took about four steps, when a booted leg flew out and smashed the hand containing the knife, which tumbled into the pine needles. Seconds later, he took a tremendous hit from behind. The force of the blow threw him onto the hard ground; this muscular person, he was nearly overwhelmed, had legs tightly wrapped around his waste and had got him in a choke hold.
"Don't move, or I'll snap your neck." He was shocked to hear a female voice close to his ear.
"Let go…I mean no harm," he choked out in a muffled voice as they writhed on the ground. "Really!"
She had him completely immobilized. It felt like she could rip his head off. But after the longest minute the hold relaxed. He rolled away to catch his breath.
"What the fuck?"
"What are you doing here?" she demanded. She leapt to her feet and stood in the shadows, a compact lady with thick muscular legs, wearing a ski cap.
"I'm with a small girl," he grunted. Leaning on an elbow, he ran his hand over his disheveled hair, then looked at it, searching for blood. He was sore in different spots. "We're looking for food."
"Where is she?"
"If I can get up, we'll go get her."
"What were you doing with that knife? Why were you sneaking up on me?"
"As a precaution. Things aren't so safe around here, in case you haven't noticed." He stood on his feet unsteadily and yelled out for Turk. Twice, then he heard a bark and commotion off in the woods.
"Mind if I go?" he said.
"I'll follow." She had his knife in her hand.
"Over here!" he yelled out as they walked back into the woods. The flashlight appeared and they saw the circle of light, bobbing around.
"You living in that house?" he said.
"I've been squatting there a bit."
They reached the girl, who shined the flashlight in their eyes. She handed it to Cooper; Turk padded over and sniffed the woman, who reached out and scratched his neck. She seemed to relax, having seen that there was more to Cooper than the grubby looking, knife-wielding stranger creeping through the forest.
"Who's that?" the girl said, pointing directly at his former assailant. Cooper shrugged.
"Mikaela," the woman said. "What's your name?"
"Ruff."
Mikaela laughed. They were walking back to the burnt-out house and the fire.
"That's a funny name."
"She got her name from the dog, Turk," Cooper said.
"We stole a police car," the girl said, proudly.
"That's exciting." Then she looked at Cooper, who shrugged again.
"We ran into a couple of bad cops. By the way, where'd you learn to take down a man like that?" At the same moment he thought, good thing you didn't decide to cold cock me with the axe first.
"I was a MMA fighter. It comes with the trade."
"No kidding? I guess I'm not surprised; it was a first-round knock-out with me. Are you alone?"
"Yes. We should get the fire going again." The flames had died down a bit; they settled down on two fallen trees beside the smoldering embers.
"Where did you come from?" she asked, throwing a few more wood pieces into the fire. The girl stood close to the rising flame, holding her hands out, transfixed.
"The debris blocked the road, about three miles from here. We left the car."
"I'm starved," the girl intoned, her little eyes blinking behind the wavering flames.
"I've got some junk food. Scavenged it from a 7 Eleven in town. Cans of spaghetti, and stuff. I'll cook up some more. Is this your daughter?"
"No. I found her on the road, with the dog."
"I'm looking for Millie and Tom," she chirped.
"Wow, you were lucky, to find this man."
"The other man she was with wasn't so," he said in a voice the girl couldn't hear.
"It's crazy out there," Mikaela said. "A lot of vicious manimals ro
aming about. I thought of not making a fire, on account of the attention, but I got cold, and lonely."
She had strong features, a small sharp nose, dark hair tucked beneath the cap, tight over her ears. She reminded Cooper of a female rapper he'd seen perform once in Portland, Oregon; a girl singer with a black wool cap pulled down tight. Sinewy dance moves, a daring voice.
"Do you have a vehicle?" he asked.
"No, I'm walking."
"I have guns, by the way. Two handguns, a little ammo. Might come in handy." He sensed she didn't mind; she had already displayed a practicality about violence. He could still feel it in his sore shoulder.
"Wow, really? Let me see one."
Having put the backpack on his shoulders, he placed it down again and removed one of the pistols. He handed it to her. She admired it for a moment, turning it over in her hands. She held it up and sighted it, clipped the safety switch on and off, then briskly unsnapped and snapped the ammo back into the magazine.
"Impressive," she said, as though inspecting a pure-bred horse. Wow this one's a firebrand he thought. Knows her way around guns.
"You can hang on to that," he said, already trusting her.
Turk lay down and put his head on his paws by the fire, which made loud cracks in the silent woods. All Cooper could see was thick darkness around him; a weariness set in. The long day. Mikaela stood up and tossed on more wood pieces in bursts of sparks. The little girl clapped for them.
"How long have you been here?" Cooper asked.
"Three days. There's a town about a mile from here; still intact, not burned, but ransacked. I found some food–lucky me. I'm just trying to get my bearings, stock up on supplies, before I move on."
"Seen any Guardsmen? Any other troops?"
"Nah, you kidding me?" Then she looked at the little girl, who was occupied with the box of scavenged food Mikaela had set off to the side; inspecting cans and bags of things. She was out of range of their voices.
"The other side of the coin," she whispered. "When I was out on the road, I saw an evil bunch, I hid from them in the woods. Some kind of militia; camouflage cowboy hats and black bandannas. Painted faces. They had a captive in chains inside of a cart they were dragging. Can you believe that? In this day and age? They were taking him along the road, somewhere. Poor devil. No, you're the first good guy I've encountered."
Devastated Lands: A Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Page 3