Footprints of Thunder

by James F. David

  The masturbator was nothing like Madame Sylvia or Mr. Love. Mr. Gauthier did not seem to take himself, or anything else, seriously. He was a short pudgy man, with a round cherubic face, a ready grin, and long wisps of golden hair combed across a balding head.

  “I understand you predicted the end of the world.” As soon as Nick said it Mr. Gauthier began to laugh.

  “That’s good. That’s good. I pre-dick-ted it all right. Right there on the Capitol steps.”

  Nick flushed as he pressed on. “I mean you anticipated that something was going to happen to the world.”

  “I never said the world was going to end. I jerked off to symbolize what is happening.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “We’re all getting screwed by the government. Here, let me show you.”

  Mr. Gauthier unzipped his pants and began fumbling inside.

  “I get the point, Mr. Gauthier, you don’t have to show me. Thanks for coming.”

  Mr. Gauthier looked up and chuckled again.

  “Well, I haven’t come yet but just give me a minute.”

  He was laughing and masturbating when Nick left the room. After closing the door Nick turned to the marine guard.

  “Tell Elizabeth Hawthorne she needs to see Mr. Gauthier immediately.”

  25. Cubby and John

  So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

  —Genesis 11:8-9

  Forest, former site of Portland, Oregon

  PostQuilt: Sunday, 4:40 P.M. PST

  Cubby and John backtracked until they came to the spot where Ripman disappeared. They called out softly, afraid to shout. They searched fruitlessly until they found themselves deep in a darkening forest.

  “Cubby, you think the dinosaurs got him?”

  “No way! Not Ripman. Besides, they were following us.”

  “Then where did he go? Wouldn’t he be looking for us?”

  Cubby didn’t answer, he just flopped down on a clump of grass and took off his pack and bow. John thought Cubby, like him, was worried about Ripman.

  “What’s going on, Cubby? Those were dinosaurs … I mean I’ve never seen one … a real one, but I know that’s what those were. What else could they have been?”

  “Noah’s Ravens,” Cubby answered. “That’s what they used to be called, that’s what a lot of people in our church still call them. It’s an old name. It used to be all the evidence of dinosaurs they had were footprints. They make a three-toed track that looks like the footprint of a big bird. Since there were no birds around that make a track like that people thought Noah’s flood had killed off all the giant birds, so they called them Noah’s Ravens. Even when they started finding bones, many believers refused to accept the idea of dinosaurs. A lot of people still don’t accept the idea. Man, what are they gonna say now?”

  Cubby picked up a stick and broke it into pieces, flicking them into the grass, lost in his own thoughts. John’s mind jumped from the impossibility of the dinosaurs, to his family, to his missing friend.

  “I’m gonna go on, John,” Cubby said finally. “I don’t know what happened to Ripman, maybe he made it to Portland already, but I’ve got to find my mom and dad. My dad will know what’s happened … he can explain this … Noah’s Ravens … everything. He has the gift of discernment.”

  At that moment John realized that if Ripman had wanted to go on, John would have gone with him right away. But when Cubby said the same thing, John lacked confidence, and suddenly Ripman’s idea of heading to the cabin sounded better— especially since the incident with the dinosaur.

  He didn’t exactly understand what Cubby meant by the “gift of discernment,” but John already knew what Cubby’s dad would say—using words like judgment, sin, and repentance, he’d spiritualize what had happened and Cubby would come away feeling better. But it wouldn’t do anything for John, who was betting that Cubby was wrong and that God didn’t have anything to do with this. John didn’t need his parents in the same way Cubby needed his, John simply wanted them.

  In the end the prospect of walking through the forest by himself led John to decide to stay with Cubby. Besides, John’s confusion about reality scared him. Despite all the evidence of a new, dramatically changed world, John couldn’t help but think that just over the next hill, or through the next stand of trees, they would run into a Burger King or a McDonald’s, and there would be Ripman with a Big Mac in his hand asking what kept them.

  Finally, he just nodded to Cubby and suggested they rest until morning. It was getting dark, so they began looking for a safe place to spend the night. Because of the big tree lizards they were afraid of sleeping in the trees, and besides, they doubted they could climb high enough to elude the big dinosaur. Instead they walked until they found an area where several trees had fallen together and left a hollow underneath. After digging the hollow a little deeper and wider, they wedged themselves inside it, pulled some smaller branches over the opening to hide themselves, and wrapped themselves up in their stolen space blankets.

  Cubby muttered urgent prayers for a long time while John listened respectfully. But finally John needed to talk,

  “Hey, Cubby, did you ever see that show about those guys who dug down to the center of the earth?”

  “I read the Jules Verne book.”

  “That’s different. In the Verne book they, climbed down into a cave to get there. In this movie some scientist builds a digging machine that’s supposed to be used for mining or tunneling, or something, but once they start digging with it they can’t stop it. They end up digging all the way to the center of the earth, and it turns out it’s hollow inside.”

  “I’ve seen a couple like that.”

  “Me too. I think they made a couple of sequels. Anyway, I read once there’s a bunch of people that really believe the earth is hollow and that there may be a whole civilization inside. Some of them even think that’s where flying saucers come from.”

  “The saucers come from the middle of the earth? How do they get in and out?”

  “Caves at the poles. Anyway, in the movie they got down inside the middle of the earth and there were dinosaurs inside and cave people, and stuff. Maybe Ripman was right, maybe there was a volcanic eruption or something. Maybe this place used to be inside the earth and somehow it got blasted up to the surface.”

  “Jeez, John. Do you really believe that? This isn’t some dumb science-fiction movie. Besides, why are you so hot on this idea but you don’t believe me when I tell you it’s the second coming of Christ? Why is a hollow earth turned inside out more believable than God’s judgment?”

  John didn’t answer right away. He didn’t know how. Ever since he could remember he had always preferred to believe in things he could sense. John had always described ESP, and all that paranormal stuff, as crap. He stopped short of calling God’s judgment crap, but he still had trouble believing. The forest around him was physical, and that meant real—according to John.

  Cubby was different. The supernatural came easy for him. Divine intervention, God, the Holy Spirit, sanctification, all fit together like so many pieces of the same puzzle. Together they made a picture of a spiritual realm that was as real to Cubby as the forest was to John. To Cubby the forest was physical proof of a spiritual truth. It was as easy for Cubby to believe that the forest was an act of God as it was for John to believe that it came from the center of the earth.

  “Hey, Ripman disproved your theory,” John argued. “We didn’t find the topless joint, remember. Besides, I thought God was going to use fire or something to destroy the earth. Where in the Bible does it say people are going to be eaten by dinosaurs?”

  “Scripture isn’t easy to interpret. If you’d ever read any you would know that.” Cubby spoke thoughtfully, not in a mean way. After a few minutes Cubby talked
again.

  “Maybe God did do something like this once before. A couple of months ago my father did a series for his radio show on the Tower of Babel. You remember that story? The people of earth had become arrogant and were trying to build a tower to reach God. To punish the people, and stop them, God gave them all different languages; they couldn’t talk to each other anymore.”

  “Cubby, I can still understand you. I mean I know what your words mean, it’s the combination that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Yeah, but if we meet some dude hunting dinosaurs, wearing a skin and carrying a spear, I bet you can’t understand him.”

  “Your theory’s thin, Cubby.”

  “Thinner than UFOs from the center of the earth?”

  Because John didn’t quite believe his own theory, he couldn’t argue it seriously, so he changed the subject. “Cubby, did those dinosaurs look right to you? I mean, they didn’t look like any dinosaurs I’d ever seen before.”

  “Jeez, John, you’ve never seen a dinosaur before, only pictures.”

  “You know what I mean. That little one that was being chased, its head was too small and too pointy, and its legs were too big for the rest of its body. And the big one didn’t have much of a tail. I thought they fought each other with their tails and stuff.”

  “I didn’t see much of the big one, but the little one did look funny. All those pictures of dinosaurs in books are just guesses. Maybe when they tried covering those dinosaur skeletons with skin they got it wrong? Or maybe the dinosaurs that were chasing us were different from the ones in the museums. They were around for millions and millions of years. Maybe we don’t have any bones of ones like these.”

  John and Cubby didn’t sleep or talk” much after that. Cubby mumbled prayers most of the night, sometimes loud enough for John to pick out names and words. Cubby was praying not only for his family but also for John’s and Ripman’s. John wanted to thank him for his prayers. But, reluctant to disturb his friend, instead, John lay silent listening to the sounds of the forest and worrying about his parents.

  26. Streets Of The New World

  Never was there a thunderbolt to match that to come. Italy, Spain, and the English will tremble. And the whole world will never be the some.

  —Nostradamus

  The disasters came in three waves. The immediate losses of land, crops, buddings, and people were the beginning. Shortly thereafter came the secondary effects. With roads and bridges gone, and sections of track missing, cars and train wrecks piled up all over the country. Along foggy Highway 1 in California thirty two cars drove off a cliff before a slow-moving Winnebago stopped in time. In other parts of the country dams that had disappeared into the night released their waters, and towns and villages were washed away in unprecedented deluges. Fires spread in some areas, growing into firestorms that the survivors were ill equipped to fight. Numerous avalanches of rock, snow, and mud poured down from the hills and mountains, some onto people and houses.

  The third wave of destruction was the most frightening. The breakdown of civilization came slowly, but inevitably. Those regions without power were the most dangerous. With no lights, no burglar alarms, and the police needed everywhere, the professionals went right to work, breaking and entering at will. But soon the looters appeared common folk who blended anonymously into crowds and began to help themselves to the luxuries of life that had eluded them. Other less-noticed tragedies took place with increasing frequency. People died waiting for transplants that never came, or for surgical teams that no longer existed. Blood, at first ample, quickly became precious as those suffering from the disasters were ministered to. Medicines too quickly became as rare as blood. Some pharmaceutical companies were gone, others lost stock or couldn’t get supplies. Those that could deliver found the interstate system shredded with precious few alternatives. Deaths from formerly curable diseases began to mount.

  Unlike a drought, or storm damage, people were more affected than crops. Concentrated in cities, people were lost by the millions. Some canned and preserved foods were lost with warehouses, but more problematic was distribution. Food shortages, unheard of in the United States, became common as panicky citizens stockpiled. Those with much had to make do with little. Those with little soon faced hunger. Those with nothing faced famine.

  New York City

  PostQuilt: Sunday, 8:10 P.M. EST

  Luis watched his kids sleep. He was using a candle for light, and its flickering gave the room an eerie look. Everything in the room was normal though. His kids were doubled up with their cousins. Ramon was in with Randy. Just the same size, the five-year-olds had giggled for an hour before falling asleep. Jose was on the floor in a sleeping bag. Though the nine-year-old went to bed with a worried face, he slept soundly now on the floor next to his cousin Nicky. Luis went next door to check on Charlotte, who was in a trundle bed next to her favorite cousin, Mindy. They were still awake and talking about boys. At eleven and ten they were each other’s best friend at family gatherings. Katrina was in a sleeping bag near the far wall. She had no cousin to match her three years, but she’d gone to sleep easily enough, listening to her sister and cousin. That left only Cinda, who was asleep in a dresser drawer in the room Luis and Melinda would share.

  Luis returned to Melinda in the living room, assuring her about the children with a nod. Placing his candle with the others, he flopped down on the couch beside her, his head on her shoulder. Melinda began stroking his head. They sat silently like that until Melinda’s brother and his wife came in with coffee heated on a propane stove and homemade zucchini bread.

  “Sounds quiet in there,” Steve said.

  Luis sat up taking a cup of coffee from Tanya. “The little ones are asleep. I know ours were exhausted by the walk. It’s funny, I thought Charlotte and Mindy would be scared the most, but you know I think Jose was. He hardly said a word after we saw the dinosaur.”

  “I still can’t believe it,” Tanya said. “I mean, I believe you, but I can’t believe it happened. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

  Melinda smiled at her sister-in-law. “Yes. We can’t believe it either. You should have seen it, though. First the city out our window was gone and then this huge monster came walking through the grass. It was bigger than any animal I’ve ever seen. And more terrible-looking than any dinosaur I’ve ever seen. I mean seen in movies and books.”

  Steve began munching on a piece of the zucchini bread, then started talking with his mouth full.

  “You know, it’s almost worth going back over to see it,” he said. “If we had some power I could probably see it on TV by now. The only thing we’re picking up on the radio is there’s been a blackout. Nothing about a big chunk of the city disappearing and especially nothing about dinosaurs.”

  “If you really want to go, you can come with me,” Luis said. “I’ve got to go back.”

  “No,” Melinda said immediately. “You can’t. It’s too dangerous. You saw what the streets looked like.”

  “You know I’ve got to. Mrs. Weatherby is there. She’s got to get out.”

  “No. You asked her. You tried to help her. You’ve got no reason to feel guilty. Did Mr. Moreno offer to help? Did the McGregors? No. You did, Luis. God will love you for it. Now God wants you to think only of your family.”

  “God wants or you want?”

  “Luis—”

  “Mrs. Weatherby is a nice old lady who is defenseless. How can I leave her there? I’ll go, I’ll get her … carry her out by force if I have to … and then I’ll come back. Can I bring her here, Tanya? Only until we find her family.”

  Tanya started to answer yes but Melinda talked over her.

  “Luis, you’re scaring me. Don’t leave me and the kids alone. What if you don’t come back? What would we do? Cinda would never remember her dada.”

  “It’ll be okay, Melinda. I’ll be extra careful. Just right there and back, I promise nothing will happen to me.”

  Luis was only stubborn when it came to his ho
nor, and somehow this was the honorable thing for him to do. But she managed one last concession.

  “You’ll wait till morning? Not in the dark, Luis, it’s just too crazy out there.”

  “Not until morning,” he conceded.

  Then they snuggled together, both secretly worrying it could be their last night together. Then Steve put out the candles and opened the curtains a little. The street below was empty but in the distance they could see fires,

  “Don’t go, Luis,” Melinda whispered, then took his hand and squeezed it.

  Luis put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. He never answered. He didn’t have to.

  Luis left the next morning by himself. The street was sprinkled with abandoned cars, the streetlights off. There were no cars moving on the street but Luis could hear the sound of traffic somewhere in the distance. He didn’t bother to try the subway, they’d discovered the day before the trains weren’t running.

  He walked the streets, watching the shadows and avoiding the alleys and dark doorways, but he made good time. The apartment building’s doors were closed and curtains drawn. The corner groceries, video stores, and delis were locked up but intact. The only businesses open were the two bars he passed. Luis gained confidence with each step through the quiet streets until he turned a corner to face unbelievable destruction.

  The street was filled with broken glass, pieces of concrete, and goods looted from the stores. In the distance Luis could see a smoldering overturned car. A few people were milling around, looking through the loot in the street or shop windows. Luis thought of finding another way to Mrs. Weatherby’s but whatever had happened here was over, and the people in the streets looked anything but dangerous. Besides, he reasoned, he knew what was in these streets but he had no idea what he would find on the side streets.

  The wreckage in the streets prevented car traffic, so Luis walked down the middle of the street. The debris in the streets changed according to the stores. In front of the looted appliance store was a toaster with its sides smashed in, a smashed boom box, and two TVs with shattered screens. Before the grocery lay smashed eggs, vegetables, squashed loaves of bread and various snack foods. The furniture store had produced broken lamps and mattresses, more TVs and crushed stereos. Luis wasn’t surprised to find little or nothing in front of the liquor store; its stock was precious.