by E S Richards
Marcus continued to drive toward the incident at a slower pace than usual, still extremely confused about what he was heading toward. It was like the road just disappeared. The pavement was crumpled and torn apart, giving way to rubble and dirt, and ahead of that, nothingness. There wasn’t much to look at on the drive from Harrisburg to Philly, but there was normally more than this. Everything appeared to be wiped out, the landscape stripped bare and coated with a dusty layer of ash.
“What happened on here?” Jadon wondered out loud, leaning forward into the front half of the car. “Where’s the road?”
“I have no idea.” Marcus shook his head, pulling the vehicle over to the side somewhat and slowing to a halt. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
Pulling on filtration masks, all three boys cautiously got out of the car and walked over to where the road just disappeared. The asphalt was cracked and splintered and then sort of just torn away, like a piece of paper ripped in half and discarded in the wind. Except it wasn’t paper. Reaching down and picking up a chunk of the damaged road, even Jadon struggled to lift it. The material weighed a ton; whatever had done this must have been incredibly powerful.
“I don’t get it,” Jadon huffed, dropping the lump of pavement in a cloud of dust. “How has this happened? What do we do now?”
“Do you think a bomb was dropped or something?” Jesse asked, grasping at straws to try and come up with an explanation for the ruined road. After everything they had seen so far, he didn’t think anything sounded too farfetched to be reality.
Marcus shook his head in response, looking around where they stood a bit further. “There isn’t like a crater or anything,” he commented. “Wouldn’t a bomb leave that behind?”
“I guess,” Jesse murmured. “What else could it be? How could the volcano have caused this?”
“I bet Mia would know,” Jadon sighed, missing the woman and wishing that she was still with them on their journey. He knew it had never been an option, but ever since they had left the farmhouse it had sort of felt like their group was incomplete. It was the not knowing that made it more difficult to deal with. Jadon couldn’t know whether he would ever see the volcanologist again. After spending so much time with her and laying his life practically in her hands, knowing he might never see her again was a very strange thing to feel.
“Do you think it’s like this all the way into Philly?” Jesse piped up again, questions still thick in his mind.
“No idea,” Marcus shrugged. “We’ll find out though. Haven’t really got another choice—we need to keep going.”
Jesse and Jadon both half nodded in agreement, aware that Marcus was right. There wasn’t anything more the three of them could achieve by standing by the end of the broken road, staring down at it and wondering what could’ve caused such a thing. They were all aware there had been many side effects of the eruption, but they had all been explained away in some sense, through the fracking or the ash cloud or the particles that were blocking out the sun. This incident just didn’t compute and like most things, the fact it was unknown made it even more frightening.
Still, they were forced to drive on. Marcus got back behind the wheel and the other two climbed in silently, all holding their breath as they rolled off of the paved road and onto the gravelly dirt that left in its wake. They didn’t talk because none of them knew what to talk about. Their situation had very quickly become a lot more dangerous, each of them now questioning what they were going to find around the next bend and whether things would return to normal.
The farther Marcus drove, the less he believed that normal was ever going to be seen again. He had never driven through a desert before; he imagined it was exactly like where he was now. There was just nothing to look at. No road, no trees, no buildings, and no wildlife. There weren’t even birds in the sky or the sound of insects on the ground. As his car kicked up dust and left tire tracks in the rubble, it created the only signs of life for as far as the eye could see. The state of Pennsylvania had become a wasteland, destroyed by some unknown force.
Reality started to hit even harder for the three young men as they entered what should’ve been the suburbs of the city, streets normally lined with houses and people going about their daily business. Instead, the only thing that made the three of them aware of where they should have been was how long they’d been driving for. There wasn’t a single street to identify, nor a standing house. A few rocks and the occasional pile of rubble told them something had been there in the past, but nothing more. For how developed the area had once been, there should’ve been more signs. They found instead of a clearly ruined street there was just a continuation of the wasteland; a terrifying lack of evidence.
“Dude, this is freaky,” Jesse muttered, breaking the silence that encapsulated the car as all three of them looked around with wide eyes, searching for some kind of explanation. “What has happened here?”
“I don’t get it,” Marcus shook his head. “Where has everything gone?”
They were questions that no one had an answer for, the boys unable to do anything except keep driving, waiting for something to appear and tell them that they were home. Marcus’s mouth grew dry and his lips started to crack from his constant licking of them. It was a nervous tic that he often did when studying or before a big game. As his eyes darted from side to side it got worse and worse, fear wrapping itself firmly around his thoughts as the wasteland continued.
Looking down at the speedometer in the car and calculating how long he’d been driving for, Marcus felt a lump form in his throat. “We should be in Philly by now,” he whispered, going over the math once more in his head. For the speed he’d been driving at and the amount of time since Harrisburg, he knew he was correct. The city should be right in front of them, but instead there was nothing. No landmarks, no buildings, no people. Nothing save for the open expanse of the country, gray matter giving way to more gray matter.
“Keep driving,” Jadon urged from the backseat, not ready for Marcus to stop the car just yet. When he did, they would all have to accept that their home was gone. If they kept driving, they could still believe they just hadn’t made it yet. He could make himself believe that they’d taken a wrong turn somehow and weren’t in the right place. He needed to believe that. This couldn’t be what his home had become.
Marcus did as he was told. He didn’t want to believe it either. Thoughts of Harper crept into his head again and he tried to block them out, unable to see his girlfriend’s face without knowing that it could one day be a reality again. He couldn’t do it to himself. It was too painful. Tightening his grip on the steering wheel, Marcus focused only on the road ahead of him and nothing else. He blocked out their surroundings and narrowed his gaze, speeding forward with the hope that something—anything—would appear.
Fifteen minutes later he was finally forced to stop the car and instantly, he broke down in tears. Ahead of the three boys was the Delaware River. They had crossed Philadelphia and reached the end of the city. The end of the state. On the other side lay New Jersey, a place that meant nothing and had nothing for them. Philadelphia was gone.
“I don’t understand,” Jesse murmured, his voice wavering as he spoke through the sound of Marcus’s tears. “Where is everything?”
“It’s gone,” Jadon whispered from behind him, his heart hammering in his chest as he saw everything for reality at last. “It’s all gone.”
“It can’t be gone,” Jesse replied, his voice quiet and absent, like it wasn’t really coming from him. He felt like he was in a dream or a trance, like what he was witnessing wasn’t real and that everything would change if he just gave it some time. “This can’t just be it.”
“It is,” Marcus announced, the tears still sliding silently down his cheeks. “The city is gone, and the people are dead. And soon,” he paused, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. “Soon we will be too.”
Chapter 21
Just over a week had passed since Jadon, Marcus, and Jess
e left the farmhouse, leaving the Clarke family behind to fend for themselves entirely. Aside from that, nothing had changed. The dirty, gray snow still fell outside, and the darkness surrounded them every waking hour. There was no respite from the effects of Yellowstone. The eruption had changed the world forever and it wasn’t going to let up any time soon.
Mia sat in the kitchen by herself with her head in her hands. She had just finished yet another count of the remaining food they had in the pantry and things didn’t look good. If they didn’t go out and find some food somewhere, then her family wasn’t going to survive for much more than another couple of weeks. Everyone had known this day would come eventually, but she hadn’t imagined it being so soon. Mia felt like she had only just gotten her family back and now at least one of them was going to have to leave the farmhouse in search of food. Without a vehicle it was an almost impossible task, but if they wanted to stand any chance of surviving, she knew it needed to be done. The only question was when and who would be the one to do it, though she already knew she couldn’t bring herself to ask anyone else to go.
“Hey Mia, you all right?”
Looking up, Mia smiled as her nephew Chase strolled into the kitchen with his grandmother’s favorite coffee mug in his hands. “Yeah,” she replied with a nod, “just going over our supplies.”
Chase gave Mia a concerned look, well aware what would be going through her mind. “You know,” he half grinned, “counting the cans over and over again isn’t going to make any more of them appear.”
Mia rolled her eyes at the attempt at humor, though she knew there was some truth behind what Chase was saying. Maybe she was losing her mind; after all, her go-to definition of crazy was someone who did the same thing over and over again expecting different results. She couldn’t lose herself in the what ifs and maybes; she had to stay strong and keep searching for a solution. Because there had to be one. No matter how bleak the situation looked, Mia refused to give up hope. She’d faced worse worries than an empty pantry over the past few weeks. This was nothing she and her family couldn’t handle.
“Very funny,” she indulged the teenage boy. “I take it you’ll be the first to volunteer to eat plain rice every day?”
Chase screwed up his face and stuck his tongue out, showing Mia how unappealing he found her suggestion. “Things aren’t really that bad, are they?” he then asked seriously, setting down Linda’s coffee mug on the side and leaning over to look at the page where Mia had been scribbling down her calculations. Everything was there: each type of food and the number they had left, alongside how many days total Mia thought it would last split between the four of them. “Hmm,” Chase mused sadly. No matter which way he looked at it, the figures weren’t good. They were going to run out of food, and it didn’t take him long to reach the same conclusion his aunt had come to.
“We’re going to have to go out and try to find more food, aren’t we?”
Mia nodded. “I don’t think there’s any way around it,” she sighed. “I just didn’t think this would happen so quickly.”
Looking at his aunt, Chase could tell how much this troubled her. The last thing that any of them wanted was to have to split up and go outside again. The weather wasn’t exactly worsening anymore, but it was still horrific. The frost found its way into almost everything, the farmhouse never quite warm despite the fire burning almost constantly. That was yet another thing that they had been forced to start rationing though, the supply of firewood wearing thin and all of them reluctant to start destroying the furniture just to have something to burn.
“It’ll be okay,” Chase tried to comfort Mia, putting an arm around her and squeezing tight. “We’ll figure this out. Do you want me to go and get some maps so we can try and decide where to look?”
Mia let the warmth from Chase’s body comfort her for a moment before replying, nodding her head against his shoulder. “Sure,” she confirmed. “Thanks, Chase.”
“No problem,” he smiled at her. “I better take Grandma her coffee first, she’ll be wondering where I’ve gone to.”
“Okay,” Mia returned the smile, then frowned as yet another concern crossed her mind. “Maybe don’t mention any of this to your grandma just yet, eh? I don’t really want her stressing about anything else.”
Chase nodded in agreement. “Sure. Don’t worry, Mia; we’ve all been through worse things than this. We’ll figure it out, we always do.”
Appreciative of the kind words, Mia went back to making calculations on her scrap paper while Chase poured a mug of coffee for his grandma—leaving plenty in the pot for him and Mia to enjoy as well—and went back upstairs. Linda and Riley were snuggled together in the den reading. There wasn’t a great deal else to do in the farmhouse now. They couldn’t go outside, and they couldn’t do anything that required power. That sort of limited them to reading or obsessing over their supplies and survival, as Mia was.
“Okay, hit me,” Chase announced as he returned to the kitchen a couple of minutes later. “Let’s find a solution to all of this chaos.”
Mia couldn’t help but smile at her nephew, thankful for his positive attitude and disposition. It certainly stopped her from feeling like they were dealing with a life-or-death situation. She had been incredibly lucky from the moment Yellowstone erupted to have a support system working alongside her. Sure, parts of that had broken down along the journey as a result of people either going their own way or—in Jorge’s case—changing as a person, yet throughout it all she had never been alone.
Looking back on the experience, Mia knew just how different it would’ve been by herself and she was grateful she had never had to find it out firsthand. She wished she could’ve been with her family since day one, but all things considered, she knew she had been lucky with the group she’d ended up with. Her only real regret was not making it home in time to see her father one last time. While she’d caught up with her mom and the kids on everything else in detail, Jerry’s death was the one thing Mia hadn’t wanted to know much more about. It was bad enough that she had arrived so shortly after—any other details that might make her feel worse had just been ignored.
All things considered, it was one of the reasons why Mia was so worried about the next step of going out to find more supplies. She was terrified she would have to leave and come back to another family member dead. No matter how much she rationalized with herself that it wasn’t going to happen, it still haunted her and made her value every last second she was able to spend in the farmhouse with her loved ones.
“So, this is the nearest store,” Chase announced, focusing Mia’s attention back on him and the maps that he was poring over. “I reckon it’ll have been ransacked already though, don’t you?”
“Almost definitely,” Mia agreed immediately. She remembered the store that she had found with Jadon, Jesse, and Marcus and the trap they had walked into there. They’d been lucky to get away with their lives that day; it wasn’t a process she wanted to repeat any time soon. Following that, they had broken into abandoned homes in search of food, which had worked much better for them. Telling Chase that, he nodded along, listening carefully to what his aunt was saying and scanning the maps on the table as she spoke.
“Okay,” he replied after a pause. “So what about these houses here?” He pointed to an area on the local map, a place where a friend of his used to live. “Or here?” He identified another possible area, this time in the opposite direction.
Mia consulted Chase’s suggestions and hummed under her breath, weighing up the pros and cons for each of them. Both would take the best part of a day to walk to, the remote location of the farmhouse not doing them any favors in that sense, but there was absolutely nothing they could do about that. It was a shame they were so far apart—the farmhouse pretty much smack in the middle of them—as it meant both locations couldn’t be checked out at the same time. Mia could only imagine what a disaster it would be if they picked the wrong one and went all that way for nothing.
“M
ikey used to live here,” Chase commented, pointing again to the first place he’d identified. “His parents kept horses and had loads of ATVs too—you remember it was where I did a dirt rally once?”
“Ahh, yes.” Mia recalled the weekend. It was before Brogan and Lauren had died, but she had gone along to watch anyway, always a part of the family events. Chase and several of his friends had all made a track through the fields, forming a little racetrack that they then invited everyone down to so they could speed around on ATVs and basically have an absolute riot. There were maybe six or seven large houses in that area that would have all had large pantries and full cupboards. The fact they had that snippet of information gave it the advantage and that was enough for Mia to decide to try there first. Now all she had to do was get there.
“I remember,” she replied to Chase. “That sounds like a good place to start, then. I’ll try and get out in a couple of days. There should be enough food to last here for another week or so. That said, I’d like to get out there before it’s too late.”
Chase snapped his head up in Mia’s direction, catching on to what she was suggesting. “Hang on a minute,” he exclaimed. “When did we agree that you’d be going?”
“Come on, Chase,” Mia replied straightening up slightly in her seat and looking at her nephew. “You don’t really think I’m going to let you go out there again, do you?”
“You can’t do it alone,” Chase immediately argued back, making sure to keep his voice level and rational, while conveying how serious he was. It wasn’t safe out there for anyone and he didn’t want Mia going alone. She might be the adult in the house, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t susceptible to the effects of the volcano. Everyone needed to be careful and that included her. “Let me come with you.”
“You can’t, Chase,” Mia shook her head. “One of us needs to be here to look after Riley and your grandma. As much as I’d love to have you with me, we both know that can’t happen. I need to go out and do this, and you have to stay behind and look after the family.”