Cancer can't tear us apart, at least not yet. So let's make a date. I'll ride the gelding, you the steed, and we'll aim for beyond the sunset. Forever yours, in love,
Gwen.
"Lovely letter," Beatrice said, standing nearby in the fire's dying light.
"It's sad, and now I feel bad about opening up and reading it," Mikaela said. "I feel like a Peeping Tom. Now we know we should keep an eye out for Drake. He owns the horse."
"What a shame," Beatrice added. "He's out there somewhere. Where, I wonder? You sure you hadn't missed him on the way back?"
"Believe me," Cooper said. "There wasn't a living being on that hardpan out there, for miles." Everybody out in this shitstorm has a backstory, and left someone behind, he thought. There's not a thing I can do about it, or to make it go away. "It's all buried; trees, buildings, cars, from here to Tacoma. Just lahar, and floodwaters. Can't say what's beyond a few miles; we'll find out soon enough."
"I feel bad about opening up the bottle," Mikaela said, looking at it somewhat regretfully.
It's calories, and lots, Cooper thought, more desperate airs occupying his mind. "When we run into Drake, if we do, we'll repay him with a hundred honey bottles. Meanwhile, we can't turn anything down or throw anything out. Can't afford to."
"Alright. Pass me your cups."
Each cup she held under the lid…
They warmed up some of the powdered milk in a pan over the fire, then added the warm milk to the honey, which sat sweet and viscous at the bottom of each glass. It was a treat beyond imagining, along with the roasted meat, considering the maw that was Cooper's stomach beforehand, the hole at the bottom of the hazy sponge of his brain.
No one said anything right away–complements and adjectives would have been hopelessly inadequate.
"Land of milk and honey," Beatrice murmured, from beneath a blanket she'd tossed around her shoulders, cupping the warm tin cup with both hands.
"Anything but," Luca whispered. "But it still tastes great. I could drink a gallon of it."
"A thousand thousand thousand gallons," Amy said. "Napoleon wants some!"
"Right," Mikaela said, slapping both thighs and getting to her feet. "Then I hit the sack. I have to. I'm wiped out."
"Here here," Beatrice said.
They poured another cup of the sweet mixture, then with Amy's help, Beatrice held it beneath the horse's snout. Instantly a tongue appeared between thick lips and incisors and sloppily lapped up the honeyed milk. Both Beatrice and Amy laughed as the cup emptied and clattered to the ground.
They followed Mikaela inside, until only Cooper, Luca, and Turk were left beside a pile of pulsating embers and cooked venison. Luca reached in, fetched a bone that still had some cooked meat on it, and tossed it to Turk. The dog caught it in his teeth, collapsed onto his haunches with the bone between his front paws, and gnawed on it.
Luca smiled and watched him distantly.
They could hear the water gushing westward in the darkness. The breeze carried its muddy scents.
Luca picked up his empty cup and the bottle, which still had about two inches of wine.
"Best not to waste this, either. Want some?"
Cooper waved him off, then reconsidered. "Oh, alright." He held his cup out.
"You wouldn't make a man drink alone, right?" Luca said, pouring the wine. "One time I had the notion to stop altogether."
"Well, did you?"
"Yeah, I went cold turkey for a couple of months."
"Me too, for less time."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Why?"
Cooper shrugged. "No particular reason. Maybe it was because I had too many friends drinking too much beer and whiskey. I didn't want to go where they were going. Fights, DUIs, swearing and cussing out their girlfriends. Drinking as though it wasn't an option."
"I drank thinking it would improve my morale," Luca said. "When I was having a crap day. When you have a crap day, that's when you shouldn't drink."
"Drinking isn't all it's cracked up to be…"
"But the wine sure tastes good night…"
"Damn straight, it does."
"You feeling better?"
"I am, oddly enough. Who thunk it?"
They were quiet awhile. Then they both finished the wine and put their cups on the ground.
"I have to sleep," Cooper said. Luca nodded, and Cooper stood up and left him by the fire and Turk, who was laying by the fire. When he was inside, Cooper heard Luca saying something to Turk. Then he heard him crying.
CHAPTER 39
Cooper stood barefoot in the morning sun. He was nearby the ashes of the night, a black and gray stain on the ground. The floodwaters were nearly a miracle to behold; if they weren't so treacherous and fatal. He could hear a tremendous roar, like a waterfall. It was good they were leaving that morning, heading a ways southwest.
He and Mikaela restarted the fire with the last pieces of splintered wood, so they could heat up coffee and leftover food. They were down to a pocketful of matches, one being a paper matchbook he'd found discarded on the back of a shelf inside. It read, Fran's Hideaway Restaurant, which probably existed 30 feet or more beneath an epic dried mud pile, he thought. The matches were already a sad relic to a place that had thrived perhaps two weeks ago.
Mikaela opened the back door, held it for Amy, who clutched both her dolls. They stepped out into the sunshine, a calm breeze amidst the white noise.
"Morning," Cooper said.
"Good morning."
Amy looked half asleep, and thoughtful.
"Where are we going today?"
"To the ocean," Cooper said. Then with hope in his tone, "And home after that."
Then Amy said, with the wise bluntness that would emerge from her, "Where's home? For me?"
Mikaela knelt down next to her. "You know we're going to take care of you, don't you?" She hugged her.
"Yes."
Mikaela stood back up. "How do you feel?"
"You know, I feel much better. It's uncanny…"
"It's the honey, honey," Mikaela said. He'd had a big blob of honey on a soup spoon, before he went to bed. "It's a powerful natural antibiotic."
"That. And sleep. And fresh venison." The harvested deer had been a gift, like the honey. He had some strength back, enough to travel, possibly enough to fight and defend them against whatever roamed the blighted region between the buried valley and the sea.
A mixture of cloud and ash drifted by like torn threads, then beams of sunlight came out and lit up Rainier. The mountain was still bright white but deformed and collapsed around the sides, like a giant sand castle struck by a wave.
Standing in the sunlight, Cooper imagined himself on a beach or a wharf by the Pacific Ocean, full of guarded optimism.
"It's been more than two weeks now since all this started. In one day, at most two, I think we're going to be alright."
Mikaela looked up at him as a flame leapt up from the kindling they had started. One more fire for breakfast; coffee. "Those days that you spent before Amy, and me, it seems so long ago. What happened to you? You never told me about that, beyond losing your friends in a van."
He thought it was good to talk about those memories that had haunted his dreams lately.
"I went down to this house; a woman was having a baby. They were on the second floor. I heard her moans; the baby squall, all the way back in the woods. She was alone, upstairs. No one was helping her. There was a man, horribly mutilated, on the first floor. She kept saying, 'Get my husband! Get my husband!' I went out and found him hiding in a barn out back. He was hurt. I guess he'd run away from whatever had done that to the first body. But he wasn't that badly injured. He refused to go to his wife. I said, 'Go help her. Just do it!'
He said 'I can't! Can't you see? Help me! I need help!' He was lying on the floor of the barn, in the dirt. He'd lost his nerve. I guess I had, too. I left them. I left all three of them, including the child. I got out of that town as soon as I
could. It was a nightmare, that place. I felt terrible about it. I still do."
"You've been helping all of us ever since," Mikaela said. "Look what you did for Amy. You've done everything you could, and more. You're not Superman. No one is."
They were quiet for moment. Cooper picked up a piece of wood that burned like a torch. He held the flame from the stick against a tin cup to heat some instant coffee.
"We need all this to be over," Mikaela said.
She stood up and crossed her arms. She looked westward, contemplating their path ahead, fretful creases appearing in the corners of her green eyes. She never complained, Cooper thought. She was some kind of pillar of strength. She had a soft side, too.
The lahar looked like the most desolate of deserts. Nothing was on the flat horizon but clouds building over Tacoma and Seattle. They looked like they could be plumes of smoke.
Napoleon stood like a statue by the swing. He shuffled around, snorted once, tossed his head against the reins. "How do you want to do this?" Mikaela said, breaking a silence. "With the bike, the horse…everything."
"What do you want to ride, the bike or the horse?"
She hesitated a moment. He was going to give her the choice, but secretly wished for her to say "horse."
"The bike."
"Okay." Cooper wasn't much of a rider, a horseman. But he'd make do.
All the provisions were packed in the canoe under a ripped up old tarp. A space had been kept open for Amy to ride in.
"What about Luca?" Mikaela said. "He looks strong enough. He could help with the bike."
"He could. He's walking, for now."
Cooper got dressed. He gave the horse another cup of sweetened milk, as much of a peace offering as more meagre food to fuel the beast. Napoleon was going to get antsy without more food in his belly. He made a note to get him at least some more of that old crappy flour. Behind him, Amy, Beatrice, and Luca munched on some leftovers from the night before, and got ready to leave.
###
They took it slow. They didn't have much choice except to slog it over the lahar; it had buried almost everything in the Puyallup Valley. The plan to go southwest was scrapped, as the lahar filled everything, and in its implacable destruction, led the way to the coast.
From the saddle, Cooper prayed for the floodwaters to hold off. He could her the thunderous roar, and see the spray soar into the air like a fountain. It was a stormy sea crashing against a rugged coast.
The whole thing, the millions of cubic feet of lakes and rivers that Rainier's eruption had dammed, was cutting loose, he thought. Water has to go somewhere; it finds a way.
He had the old wide-brimmed camouflage hat pulled down tight over his forehead, his crossbow strapped to the saddle, the reins in his right hand. No galloping, at all. Napoleon clip-clopped along, passively for now.
A few yards away from them, Mikaela rode the heavy mountain bike, dragging hundreds of pounds of canoe, provisions, and Amy. She'd shifted the bike into its lowest gears, but she still had to stand up on the peddles and push down laboriously over the scaly, rugged ground.
One time the canoe tipped over and they all had to stop and right it.
Soon enough, they realized that this set-up wasn't going to work, so Amy came out of the canoe and joined Cooper on the back of Napoleon. She sat on the part of the hard-leather saddle that sloped upward; she held Cooper around the waist. She loved it; at least someone was having fun, Cooper thought.
"Giddy-up, horsey!" she cried. "Yee-haw! Go faster! Faster!" She cried, kicking her legs around.
"Be still back there," Cooper said. "Chill out, girl. I don't want to scare Napoleon. You'll spook 'im." He wanted to make the coast by evening. He pictured in his mind expansive beaches and a quiet ocean; a feeling of hopeful safety and relief washed over him.
They quickly put distance between themselves and the tiny white home with the swing-set. From far away, it looked lonely and doomed, like a Depression-era house in a dusty plains. It was just a matter of time before it disappeared under the floodwaters, wiping out any trace that they or anyone else had ever been there, or used it as a priceless refuge.
They'd gone about four miles, almost two hours, when the horse abruptly stopped, raised his head. Cooper heard a sound like the fluttering of thousands of wings, the scampering of tiny feet. Not far away, across their path, flowed an awful river of gray. The movement rippled grotesquely, like insects clustered on a carcass. He could see a multitude of skinny black tails whipping in the wind.
"Good God," Mikaela exclaimed, stepping off the bike pedals. "Holy Jesus. Everyone stop."
"Hold on to Turk!" Cooper yelled out. Luca was on foot with the dog, and Beatrice.
"What's that?" Amy said, whispering into his ear.
Fucking rats, he thought. Thousands of 'em. Maybe a million. "Animals, escaping the floodwaters. Running away to somewhere. Don't pay 'em no mind."
"Animals? What kind of animals," she said in his ear. "They look like rats! I'm scared!"
"Just don't pay 'em no mind. No mind at all. They'll be gone soon. Don't worry."
It must have taken them five minutes, but it seemed longer, to swarm across their path, heading south, toward Oregon. Some of them pealed off from the swarm and stood on their hind legs, as if having second thoughts, their noses twitching and testing the air in Cooper's direction. Smaller rivulets of scurrying rats broke off from the main swarm. He held his breath; they couldn't possibly defend themselves against this vermin army, that many of them. The little creatures stood like prairie dogs, watching, then finally fell back on their tiny forepaws and kept running.
It was like watching a freight train go by, waiting for it to endlessly finish. Finally, the dreadful migration had gone. It looked like gray smoke in the distance. They must of come from the cities, Cooper thought.
"Little bastards," Luca muttered under his breath. "Where're we going, anyways? Do you have a plan?"
"The sea. Tacoma. The lahar's headed in that direction."
"Tacoma? And then what?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. Hey, don't give me any shit, okay?" Cooper snapped, looking down on him from the saddle. "Why don't you take a shift on the bike?"
Luca looked at him and grimaced. "What are you? The ship's captain? Captain fuckin' Bligh?"
"Hey quiet down you two!" Mikaela said. "We're all a little unnerved. Right? I could use a break from the bike. What about it, Luca?"
"Fine enough," he said after a pause.
"Let's have some water; water the horse," Cooper said.
The little caravan kept going in a few minutes, for at least an hour. Cooper figured it was about noon, at least. It felt laborious and humid under the weak, filtered sun. They'd reached the outer edge of Tacoma's metropolitan region. It couldn't be much more than five miles to the coast.
The trail on the lahar tilted up, to a kind of plateau. He urged the horse up the awkward path of the brown-oatmeal like substance, dried to a cement consistency. The horse picked his way tentatively up the rocky incline, and when Cooper got to the top he raised his hand in the air.
He took his foot out of a stirrup and swung his leg over the saddle, stepped down, and led the horse towards the submerged wreckage of a huge fleet of ladder trucks, fire engines, and patrol cars.
CHAPTER 40
It was a metallic graveyard that included the burned hulks of ambulance vans. It looked like it had been bombed and strafed from above.
The lahar had hit them full on. He saw bodies strewn about, men and women who'd leapt from their vehicles at the last second, the time of collision. Some of the trucks were submerged and pointed straight up in the air, almost comically, as if planted by giant children, their tires drooping with muddy gob. Behind them, as far as you could see, were the motionless ruins of a traffic jam, frozen in time but twisted and burned; acres of charred, mangled cars and trucks, pushed up into smoking piles like a vast junkyard.
The bodies of the emergency responders were stripp
ed and left out in the sun to rot.
"What is it?" Beatrice murmured behind him.
"A graveyard, full of emergency units, buried in the lahar," Cooper said, tonelessly. "This is why it's been so quiet, why we haven't seen any rescue squads…They tried, but never made it."
He thought he saw the tail boom and rotor of a helicopter, protruding from the muck about 300 yards away. The Coast Guard, he thought, trying to pull someone from the wreckage.
The strident crack of a rifle shot broke the stillness.
He saw movement, scurrying. A group of men, with white painted faces. Three, four of them. Two of them were wearing thick firefighter's overcoats, hats, and boots, the paint smeared on their faces, giving them away.
Another shot rang out, ricocheted against metal. Cooper dropped the reins and brought the scope of the crossbow up to his eye. He scanned; saw the men, remnants of Gladys' thugs, hiding amongst the wreckage. They'd fanned out in separate directions.
"Get down!" he yelled to the others, swinging the scope to where he'd heard the rifle shots. "Take cover!"
He saw a tall man crouched down with a Winchester repeating rifle propped on the ruined chassis of a patrol car.
Napoleon reared, whinnied, and bolted. Rounds from a discharged handgun whizzed over Cooper's head. He heard Beatrice scream, and turned in time to see Luca drag a limp Amy behind the burnt shell of another rescue unit.
CHAPTER 41
Cooper watched the horse wander away amid the wreckage, not far from the raging floodwaters. Having no destination, Napoleon stopped, the reins dangling behind him. Cooper ran to the back of the smashed ladder truck. He found both Luca and Amy lying on the ground.
Luca held onto his upper shoulder, a small dark blood stain on his shirt. "I took one!" he said with a painful grimace. Amy was helped up unsteadily by Mikaela.
Devastated Lands: A Post-Apocalyptic Adventure Page 13