by E S Richards
“But we can’t just leave,” another man—Tom—started to speak, having not even bothered to cover his mouth. “We have families here. Young children and old people. Not everyone is able to travel.”
“That may be the case,” Mia dipped her head slightly in what she hoped was an apologetic motion. “But if you stay here, your odds of survival are low. The body needs clean air and water to survive. Without it our internal organs cannot function for longer than a few days. Drinking dirty water does nothing more than prolong the inevitable. Your organs will keep functioning for longer, but you are likely to contract disease, and when that happens, you’ll wish you hadn’t drunk the water in the first place. Trust me.”
Mia had seen children who were infected after drinking dirty water in various corners of the world. When she visited South Africa to record measurements following a large earthquake, she happened across a group of orphaned children who had become immensely sick from drinking polluted water. Their skin was inflamed and their eyes bulging from their faces. There was no telling what sort of toxins were mixed in with the water when you looked at it, but the after-effects were impossible to avoid. It was devastating—likely the biggest unspoken killer around the world.
“Where will we go?” Deb asked, her small dog now wrapped up in the folds of her coat as Deb tried to stop it from breathing in the contaminated air as well.
“My group will continue to head west to Washington,” Mia answered. “You’re welcome to join us. Or, if any of you have family or friends closer by, I would recommend seeking refuge with them.”
“This is ridiculous,” Brady mumbled off to Mia’s left. “We can’t just evacuate the town on this random woman’s word. None of us even know who she is!”
“Yeah!” Tom agreed, “I don’t want to take orders from some stranger!”
“You can trust Mia,” Michael cut in, doing his best to maintain the peace and stop a riot from breaking out. “She saved us at the airport. She’s only trying to do the same here.”
“So what are you going to do, Mike? Are you going to go with her and leave your mom behind?”
Silence descended on the group at the question, Michael’s face falling. He knew he could never leave his mother behind, but by staying with her in the village was he only condemning both himself and her to death? He did have a family out there that he wanted to see again. He had children that he wanted to watch grow up and a relationship that deep down he’d never completely given up on. But to side with them was to abandon his mother, a choice he hadn’t been able to make all those years ago.
“I’ll do what I think is right for my family,” Michael eventually replied quietly. “I suggest everyone else does the same. I can’t promise you that if we leave this place life will get any easier, but I can promise you that we’ll at least have a chance. Everyone can make his or her own decision. That’s what I will be doing too.”
At the end of his statement, Michael pushed his way out of the center of the crowd and started walking away. Mia presumed he was going back to his mother’s house to check on her and share the news, a horrible burden to carry. She wondered what he would do. Abandoning his mother or saving himself was an impossible decision to make, and one Mia was immensely glad she didn’t have to play any part in.
Following Michael’s departure, other people began to sidle away from the group. The original inhabitants of the town all wandered back to their own homes—or at least the ones that hadn’t been destroyed by the lahars—whispering among themselves about what had happened. Five minutes later, only Mia’s group from the airport with the addition of Stuart, Lizzie, Deb, and Ethan remained standing out in the open. The silence hung between them with an increasing amount of pressure woven into it.
“This is a nightmare,” Ethan shook his head, his voice muffled underneath his large coat. “We need to leave—we need to leave now!”
“Slow down, Ethan.” Deb rested a hand on his shoulder. “It’s getting too late to be going anywhere else tonight, don’t you think?”
“But we’re all getting infected,” Ethan’s voice rose a notch, fear obviously consuming him. “Nothing here is safe.”
“That’s not strictly true,” Mia interjected. “We can still spend the night here; I think that’s a good idea. Then we can move on in the morning.”
“Are you sure?” Ethan asked, placing a hand on his son’s shoulder. Everyone could see his father’s reaction was increasingly worrying to Miles too and Mia needed to calm things down. Yes, they were all in danger, but so long as they didn’t do anything stupid, they could easily spend the night there. Hopefully the other people within the village would come to their decisions overnight as well, and then they could all get an early start the next morning.
“I can probably squeeze three of you into my place,” Stuart cut in, joining Mia in trying to calm down Ethan and his son. He turned to look at them both, standing beside Lizzie and Deb. “Do you guys have space at yours for the rest?”
“Not a lot of space at mine I’m afraid,” Lizzie quickly interjected. “I can probably only house one.” She smiled at Jorge wryly at the end of her sentence, the Spaniard barely having time to agree before he was whisked away and back into Lizzie’s house.
“I should be able to get you three boys in my place,” Ethan offered, indicating Jadon, Jesse, and Marcus. His voice was still shaking but he sounded less deranged and had a much less worried look on his face. “If you can put Miles up at your place overnight, Deb?”
“Sure thing,” Deb answered. “That makes life easier.”
“Thank you,” Mia smiled. “And I’m sorry about all of this. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble earlier.”
“Oh don’t worry about it,” Stuart smiled. “Everyone’s emotions are pretty high right now.”
Mia laughed. Stuart calmed her; he was a good asset to have around. Aside from him and, to an extent Deb, Mia could see how scared everyone else was. She worried about Tom and Brady and whether they planned to come with the group when they left tomorrow. She wanted to save everyone, but she also wasn’t willing to risk staying in the village any longer than she needed to. Yes, she wanted to help everyone, but not to the detriment of her own health.
“Make yourselves at home,” Stuart smiled as he held open the door to his house, letting Mia, Patrick, and Allie walk inside first. “It’s not much, but it should suffice for the night.”
“It’s more than enough.” As he entered, encouraging Allie to walk forward, Patrick shook Stuart’s hand for the second time since meeting him. “Thank you so much for letting us stay here. I had hoped that what happened at the airport would be the worst of it, but after seeing what’s happened here, we can only be grateful for how considerate you’ve all been. I’m so sorry for everyone you’ve lost.”
“Thank you,” Stuart smiled, closing the door behind the four of them. “That means a lot. I can’t really believe what happened. It’s horrible.”
“Did you have any warning?” Mia asked, curious to know whether people were able to prepare or not. “Did you know it was coming?”
“We didn’t have a clue,” Stuart replied with a shake of his head. “The way the valley is cut, we can’t always see what’s going on. The water literally came out of nowhere. It was terrifying.”
“Did you lose anyone beforehand?” Mia questioned, still trying to figure out how bad the damage was in the area. She needed to know more about whether people were struggling before the lahars swept the place. The scientist inside her wanted answers.
Stuart’s head dropped, the man remembering everything. It had only been a matter of hours since it all started. Everything was likely too fresh in his memory. “A few,” he nodded. “Belinda down the road was coughing up blood, and Jackson complained of not being able to breathe properly. I don’t understand it. Is our air poisonous now?”
“Not poisonous,” Mia replied, discrediting that idea before it had a chance to take hold. “But dangerous. Ash particles are floating a
round in it now; in the right light you can even see them. They can lacerate our lungs if we’re not careful. That’s why it’s important to cover your mouth and nose when you go outside. Something I guess you hadn’t been doing before?”
Stuart shook his head again in dismay. “We didn’t have a clue. We literally didn’t have a clue.”
The mood in the house was awkward and somber. Mia didn’t know what to say, Patrick and Allie also standing silently at her side as they waited for Stuart to gather himself. The man appeared to be taking a moment to himself, processing what had happened and trying to fight against his emotions. Mia could see it in his face. The panic, the fear, and the sorrow. They were all dangerous feelings to have and she felt incredibly sorry for the man.
“I’m sorry,” Stuart apologized, wiping a few stray tears from his face. “I’m not normally like this—let me start over.” He tried to shake his bad mood away like an annoying fly, wafting his arms around for a second and squeezing his eyes shut. When he opened them again, Stuart had a much cheerier disposition. There was a smile on his face—though it didn’t really reach his eyes—and he was holding his posture a lot straighter, though his breathing was still heavy and sad. “Now,” he started again, refusing to give in to the pain that was trying to control him. “What can I fix you guys to eat? I’ve got chicken, leftover pizza, mac n’ cheese…”
Making herself comfortable in Stuart’s house, Mia helped him prepare a relative feast for the four of them. Stuart was adamant that he would be leaving the village with them in the morning and so had no need to save food or make anything keep. He maintained his falsely cheerful mood the entire time they cooked and ate, the smile unable to completely fool Mia no matter what he said or what he pulled from the pantry.
As a result, they gorged themselves on everything from cold pasta and pizza to fresh bread, cooked venison, and a rather obscene amount of mostly melted ice cream. Anything that Stuart deemed perishable was eaten, and especially when it came to the ice cream, he received no complaints.
Once they’d finished eating, the adults moved on to Stuart’s large leather couch to talk, while Allie retired to bed upstairs. As Stuart only had two bedrooms, Mia made absolutely sure that Stuart could remain in his, and Patrick and Allie could share the other. She refused to let Stuart spend the night on the couch any more than she would allow Patrick and Allie to not sleep in the same room. The two of them had been through too much to be separated, and she didn’t want to inconvenience Stuart any further.
“So,” Mia proposed as they all let themselves relax into the couch and the day’s worries fade away slightly. “You really think some people will refuse to leave?”
“I do,” Stuart nodded. They’d discussed leaving the village at length while eating, Allie perfectly happy to ignore the conversation and just listen in. To Mia’s surprise, Stuart believed that some of the people who lived there would refuse to leave, despite what they had been told about the air and the water supply.
“Like I said,” he explained after taking another long swig from the bottle of rum in his hand. “Pretty much everyone here has lived in the same house their entire lives. People don’t travel or go away to college then come back.” He paused to hiccup, a sound that morphed itself into a half-sob as Stuart’s façade started to crumble. “They grew up here, met their partner here and stick around or leave completely. It’s a simple life, but one that works for the most part.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Stuart,” Patrick spoke up slowly, carefully choosing his words as both he and Mia had noticed their host getting increasingly intoxicated and losing his cover of cheerfulness during their conversation. “But you don’t seem like most of the people who live here. Neither did Michael once I got to know him. How come you’ve stuck around for so long? And how come you’re so ready to leave now?”
Mia was a little taken aback. It was quite a personal question and not one she’d expected Patrick to ask. Watching Stuart cautiously, she waited for his response. Although it wasn’t a question she would’ve asked herself, she was very intrigued by what the man’s answer would be.
“Let’s just say there’s nothing left for me here,” Stuart replied with a sad face. “There used to be,” he sniffed. “That’s why I’m still here, but there isn’t any more so I’m ready to move out.”
Mia looked at Patrick, watching his face fall. She could tell that hadn’t been the answer that he wanted, a feeling she shared. They both knew it was rude to try and push for an answer though, especially if Stuart didn’t want to give one. Their host was breaking down, sinking back into the leather couch as he drained more and more of the bottle of rum in his hand. Pretty soon, Mia doubted whether he’d be able to tackle the stairs. Perhaps it was time they all called it a night, the conversation between the three of them completely fizzled out.
Sprawling her body out on the couch and trying to get comfortable no more than twenty minutes later, Mia wondered just how right Stuart was about everyone and whether the man himself was okay. She could hear heavy sobs coming from upstairs where he slept, the kind that sounded like someone was trying to hide them, but was simply unable to do properly. She wondered about Stuart and what he was hiding, a story that would undoubtedly start to unravel if he joined her on their journey.
She still couldn’t decide whether she wanted more people in her group or not. On the one hand, she knew it would help more people to survive and she would be doing the right thing; on the other, she knew it would also slow her down. Though she tried not to be selfish, the latter was the issue that she deemed more important. Considering her survival and that of her family in Texas, Mia knew she needed to start cutting a few more corners and taking a few more risks if she was going to see them again any time soon.
Chapter 11
“This is weird, man,” Jesse remarked, looking at Jadon and Marcus with a nervous expression. None of them were certain what to make of the village they found themselves in, but it appeared to have become their home for the night. They were all crammed into what could only be described as a pre-teen bedroom. It belonged to Miles, Ethan’s son—who had been moved out for the night so the three of them could occupy it. They weren’t ungrateful at all for a place to sleep—it sure beat the floor of the airport—but the whole situation was just a bit strange.
“I know,” Marcus agreed. “This place feels kind of spooky, doesn’t it?”
“It’s practically a ghost town. There’s hardly anyone left.”
“Yeah, but we can’t really blame them for that,” Jadon interjected, worried his two friends were going to start making up horror stories about the place they were staying. “Imagine what could’ve happened at the airport if Mia hadn’t warned all of us what was about to come.”
“True,” Marcus nodded. “Man, that was crazy.”
“It was beyond crazy,” Jesse huffed. “Do you think everywhere is like this? What about back home?”
Jadon opened his mouth to answer, usually the rational and calm one amongst the group. But even he couldn’t say for certain that he knew their home was safe. His mouth closed slowly when he realized that, the reality of everything hitting him. His parents and little sister still lived out there; how had their world been affected? Surely, they would know something had happened. He was supposed to be back home with them by now—why hadn’t he got on that earlier flight as planned? They’d all rearranged their plans so they could attend the final party of the semester. Right now, looking back, that felt like the stupidest idea ever.
“I have no idea,” Jadon finally replied with a shake of his head. “But Mia seems to think she can make it back to Texas and things will be okay there. If that’s the case, everything should still be all right in Philly as well.”
Rearranging his makeshift bed, Marcus sank down into it, the superhero sheets crumpling under his weight. “I hope you’re right, man. We’ve gotta make it back there eventually.”
Looking at one another, each of the boys knew they had
their own reasons for going back home. They all had families in Philadelphia and lives that they wanted to live out. Marcus’s girlfriend still lived there, and both Jesse and Jadon could tell that was who he was thinking about as his head hit the pillow. Jadon thought of his parents and younger sister while Jesse, too, thought of his family. He lived farther away from the center of Philly compared to Jadon and Marcus, in a less well-off area. It was just him and his mom out there and it worried him to think about how she was coping on her own. They had a strong network of friends, but Jesse knew how independent she was and how reluctant she would be to ask for help.
She was like him in that way, a fact that always reminded Jesse of how he, Jadon, and Marcus had become such good friends. For three boys of the same age who were all from the same city, it had taken traveling across the country and attending college for them all to finally meet and form a brotherhood that each of them knew would last forever.
Jesse had won a football scholarship from the University of Montana, giving him the chance to make something of his life. He knew that without it, he would’ve never gone to college or amounted to anything much. Football was his chance to achieve something. To make his mom proud and to give her the better life that she truly deserved.
That was where the three of them had met: in the locker room on the first day. Jadon and Marcus were both on partial scholarships, Jadon majoring in philosophy and Marcus taking a few foreign language classes to get by. Jesse didn’t have any interest in anything other than football, but he had picked up a few classes just to meet the requirements set by the school. Philosophy just happened to be one of them, opening the door for a relationship with Jadon to begin.
The other two hit it off immediately. Jadon was an incredibly friendly guy and Marcus was just the right mix of confident and brash. They came head-to-head on the field a couple of times and by the end of the first training session, they were bumping shoulders like old friends. Jesse had watched them slightly enviously in the locker room, jealous that some had been able to make friends so easily. Because of his background, he felt like he was out of place at the school. He had never been afforded much in the way of education and you didn’t have to speak to him long to figure that out.