by Julia Shupe
“Seth, move! Go!”
He reached over and pushed the back of Seth’s bike. The sound of the fire was deafening. The smoke had blotted out the sun so completely that it seemed like they were on a different planet. Walls of flames rose high on both sides and Jeremy suddenly worried for the integrity of their rubber tires.
Ahead a sudden explosion threw debris into the air. A stalled car, Jeremy realized with dismay. There must have been remnants of oil or gas still left in the tank. Sam and Seth were leaning over their handlebars and pedaling as fast as they could.
We’re in hell, Jeremy thought. This must be what hell is like. Can we never catch a break?
The air was becoming nearly too hot to breath and Jeremy began to pant beneath the wet shirt. This was it. They were dead. They’d been in this thing far too long. Wildly he slapped at cinders that flew around his head. His fingers began to burn against the handlebars. Susan, he thought. Please Susan. Can you help us? We’re so damn close. How far can this thing go on?
As if in answer, he lifted his head and spotted a patch of sun through the black smoke. He put on a burst of speed, heard a pop, and knew his tire had blown out.
“Sam!” he called out. “Look. We’re almost through!”
His bicycle seemed to hobble on a broken leg as he pushed it from a roaring inferno into a clear blue sky. He took them nearly a half-mile from the blaze before he let his bike fall beneath him. He rolled onto the pavement then leapt to his feet and ran to the children.
Seth was suffering from a fit of dry heaves and Sam was practically coughing a lung onto the street. But they were alive. Thank God. They were alive.
“Dad,” Sam choked. “Your pants!”
Smoke was curling from the cuff of his left pant leg. He slapped it, patted it, then moved to inspect a red spot on her arm. He pushed back her sleeve and winced. Second-degree burn. Not third-degree but definitely past the first few layers of skin.
“Does it hurt?” he asked as he turned her body around in circles.
“No more than this one,” she grumbled and pointed a swollen area at the side of her neck. With a shake of her head she pointed at Seth. “Never mind me. Check him.”
He moved for the boy, but Seth held up a hand. “I’m okay.”
Several more moments he coughed into his fist then the three of them stood and turned to look at the destruction they’d somehow made a path through. The breadth of the fire was astounding. It consumed the brush and grasses like a rogue shark feeding in a school of salmon. It must have started in the south, Jeremy figured, but crawled steadily north as it swept across the east.
“Wow,” Seth breathed, and touched a finger to a patch of tender scalp. “Think it’ll just go on forever? Maybe it’ll keep burning till it burns everything up.”
Jeremy rubbed the soot from his pants. “No. Not forever. But a very long time for sure.” He walked over to his bike and crouched to examine the split tire. The places where the rubber had melted had cooled in lumps.
“Use your sombrero,” Seth pointed out smugly. “Told you it was a good idea.”
Jeremy sat down hard on the pavement and laughed from his belly. “My sombrero. Right. Thank God for my sombrero.” He swung the tire necklace from his back and began to remove the melted tire from the clamps. “So how was that for sucking it up, Seth?”
The boy’s smile was stark white against ash and grime. “Not bad I guess. But I’m done sucking it up for the day. Now can we please find a place to sleep?”
Sam stretched out across the pavement. “I’m not sleeping till we’re at least another ten miles away from that thing.”
“Agreed,” Jeremy said. “And I wouldn’t mind a bath either. I stink.”
Sam raised herself on an elbow. “Speaking of a bath, can I get a sip of water?”
With a final flick of his wrist, Jeremy fit the new tire to the frame. He pulled his backpack closer to his feet, and with belly clenched, peered inside. If they were running low on water before, they were getting close to desperate now. He raised his face to the sky. The sun had lowered. It must be closer to two or three in the afternoon. He’d take them as far as the next town; find a place to sleep and hopefully a good place to forage. He’d let them have the water, wouldn’t tell them how much he’d spilled over their shirts.
Putting on a plastic smile he handed her one of their last few bottles.
“Drink up. We’ve almost reached the California border. So how about I do all the ‘sucking it up’ from here.”
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
―Ernest Hemingway
Chapter 24
December 11th, 2176
Yuma, Arizona
172 Miles to San Diego
That’s the thing about a desert landscape. For a long time it’s simplicity is comforting. For a while it’s purity is cleansing to the soul. Until it becomes nothing short of a bore. The monotony begins to tug at the imagination. While beautiful at first, it eventually leaves one wanting more. It’s a question that begs an answer. What lies beyond the miles and miles of sandy dunes? How much farther must we go?
Where can we find more water?
That was the question that played on Jeremy’s parched lips. Though his initial plan had temporarily staved off the inevitable, their short supply of water had quickly dwindled after their encounter with the fire. And bicycling at night presented it’s own unique set of challenges. It was actually much harder than Jeremy expected. Perhaps it was the body’s resistance to the demands of physical exertion when it expected sleep. Or perhaps it was the depth of the silence or lack of ambient light. Jeremy hadn’t considered that. He’d never been alive when cities had grown and thrived, but in all the pictures he’d seen in books, there was light. Plenty of light. “Light pollution” he’d once heard it called. The darkness of a midnight desert was something he hadn’t expected. Stars reflected off shiny pieces of sand, but when the moon slid behind a cloud, they were barely able to see at all. And at those times, Jeremy led with his thin flashlight clenched between his teeth.
It was dangerous. They were unable to see anything until it was nearly upon them: pockets of sand that curtained the road, or thick tumbleweeds that had come to rest against a scrap of curled rubber. The road was a never-ending peril of spectral accidents waiting to happen. But the alternative was worse. Jeremy knew if they continued to travel by day they would run out of water much faster, and though November had come and gone in the blink of an eye, December had proven just as hot. This was the new weather, Jeremy groaned inwardly. Cold and snow were now relegated to the highest peaks of the Colorado Mountains, or possibly to Canada, Alaska, or Siberia. Not here.
He licked his lips with the small amount of moisture he was able to muster. These past few days he’d begun to ration himself harshly. Now he was paying the price. His lips had cracked and begun to scale, and his urine was a dark, concentrated yellow. He knew he was playing at a knife’s edge with this. These were the beginning stages of severe dehydration and he couldn’t allow himself to get much worse. Minor discomforts were the early symptoms. Confusion and fatigue would come next. Unconsciousness and unresponsiveness would be the last.
As he pulled his bike to a stop, his tongue was thick against the roof of his mouth. He’d taken the last exit and traveled as far as an old apartment complex about three miles down the road. He swung his leg over the seat.
“That’s it for tonight guys,” he rasped.
He peered up at the building ahead. There had to be at least seventy units in this complex—if not more. Maybe they could find a few bottles of water hidden inside. Sam and Seth were thirsty, but not nearly as bad as Jeremy. Sam stepped forward, peered up at him, and frowned.
“Dad, this is bullshit.” She pulled a bottle from her pack and handed it to him. “It’s not that bad yet. We still have water. Just drink it. If we have to stay here for a day or two we will. There’s bound to be some type of water around here, ev
en if it’s an old reclamation plant. We’ll just double boil it and strain it. At least it’ll get us to San Diego.”
“We can’t.” He pointed to her belly. “What’s the meter say?”
She hesitated. She probably already knew and was just trying to spare Seth. Scowling, she lifted her shirt and thrust out a defiant hip. “Two percent, okay? But you have pills right? So let’s not get carried away.”
He couldn’t help but hear the false bravado in her voice. Was that a spark of fear in her eyes? Uncapping the bottle she’d handed him, he sipped and sighed with relief. The cool water was a slice of heaven that splashed down his throat. He stopped himself at a few sips and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Yup. I’ve got pills. But a single bottle is all that’s got left.”
They walked their bikes across the parking lot and Jeremy swore he could hear her mind spinning.
“Carp,” she asked tentatively, “you’ve put a lot of faith in San Diego. What if we don’t find what you’re hoping to find? Shouldn’t we slow down and start looking for more pills?”
Though he shook his head, his belly clenched at her words. Was he? Was he putting too much faith in this? He quickly discarded the disquieting thoughts, shook his head, and voiced his opinion with as much confidence as he could manage.
“We’re 172 miles from San Diego. If we push ourselves, that’s only four day’s time—three if we really push ourselves. The fire wore us out guys, but at least it forced us to move faster than we normally would have. We’re almost there and I seem to remember someone advising us to suck it up?”
Sam stopped suddenly and leaned her bike against the kickstand. Jeremy turned to her, brows arched, and she met his gaze with challenging eyes.
“Dad. I’m afraid. I’m afraid you’ve put all your eggs in one basket. I’m afraid you’ve set us up for disappointment. What if it’s all for nothing? What if we’ve exhausted ourselves with this journey, and there’s nothing waiting at the end of it?” She scratched at a burnt patch of skin on the palm of her hand. “What if we should have taken our time and explored each city along the way? I mean how many disks have we passed in the thousand or so miles we’ve traveled?” When he didn’t answer, she pulled Seth against her hip and hugged him without giving the act a second thought. “Dad, that’s it. I’m done. I won’t travel another mile till you tell me what you’ve banked my future on.”
Jeremy was suddenly angry. “Banked your future on? Is that a joke? Is that what you think of me? That I would risk your life on a whim?” When she didn’t respond he thrust his hand in his pocket and flipped her the empty disk case. He’d carried it in his pocket for months, since the moment he decided to move forward with the idea. It was like a lucky coin or bottle cap, a talisman one might hang around his neck on a piece of yarn. The absence of its weight against his thigh was strangely uncomfortable. She held it up to the wan light and squinted.
“And? So what?”
“Turn it over,” he demanded.
She did and peered at the faint lettering. “Bigeye Pharmaceuticals,” she said aloud, regarding him through narrowed eyes. “That’s the maker of the product?” Confused, she looked closer. “Okay. And?”
He sighed. “God, Sam. You’re impossible. Look what’s printed below.”
“I can’t see it.”
Seth pulled her arm closer to his face and scrunched his eyes in the darkness. He fished his small flashlight from his pocket and shined it across the plastic.
“San Diego,” he murmured.
“What?” Her breath was soft. Her head snapped up and her voice trembled with excitement. “The manufacturer of the disks is in San Diego.” She hadn’t phrased it as a question. “Dad, do you really think they’ll still have disks?”
He enjoyed another small sip from the bottle then gave in to his desires and swallowed a larger one. “I do. And you need to understand something, Sam. This technology was introduced when the world was already in the process of collapsing. There were very few people who were fortunate enough to receive the implants. Your mother and I researched the subject extensively. Don’t you remember all that time we spent at the library? At the time of the dying, the science of nanotechnology was used for many things, but this idea was still fairly new. So the answer to your question is no. I don’t think we’ve passed a string of disks in multiple cities along the way. I think the manufacturers never had time to market or sell a product they spent millions of dollars to research and produce. Your mother and I had to go to great lengths to obtain the ones we did. We had to meet with dangerous contacts, and broker and trade many valuable things. The disks were very hard to come by. So that begs the question, Sam. Where did they all go? If they were produced and never shipped, then where now might that surplus be?”
She blinked. “Okay, so maybe we haven’t passed any secret hoards of disks, but I’m sure we passed many bottles of pills.”
Jeremy nodded. “I’m sure we have. But therein lies the other problem. Over the years the pills have lost their potency. Though a similar encapsulation technology was used to manufacture them, it was in no way as effective as it was with the disks. If we took the time to stop at each place along the way, it would have been similar to walking on a treadmill. We would be gathering pills—yes—but losing precious time with the disks in your implant. I thought it would be best for us to get to San Diego as fast as possible. If my plan for the disks fails then we’ll just search for pills once we get there.”
Her eyes filled with tears and he felt his throat constrict. He thought this news would make her happier.
“So you believe one day the pills will won’t work at all?”
He crouched in front of her and took her hands in his. “I don’t know, Sam. What I do know is the disks are better. The technology is wildly advanced.” A lock of stringy hair had loosed from her ponytail and he tucked it behind her ear and palmed the sides of her face with his hands. “We will figure this out,” he assured her softly. “I won’t let you down. Not while I’m alive and breathing. If there aren’t any disks in San Diego then we’ll brainstorm and figure out what to do next. Sam, up to this point, I’ve only done what I thought was best. That’s all a person can ever do. But, I will tell you this: Grandma was a genius at locating pills. I feel confident: if we need them, I can find them quickly.”
She dropped her gaze to her feet. “So that’s what happened to Grandpa, isn’t it? He stopped taking the pills so I could have more. That’s why he went to sleep and never woke up. I’m right aren’t I?”
“Yes. You’re right. That’s what he did. It was just something he wanted to do. None of us were able to change his mind. He loved you more than his own life. And think of all those pills we lost when we lit the cabin on fire. So let’s do this for Grandpa. Let’s do this for the sacrifice he made for you. Deal?”
She rounded her shoulders and sniffed. “Deal.”
Jeremy stood and watched as she dropped the small plastic case in her pocket. He lifted his gaze to the apartment complex in front of them. “What do you guys say we try to find some water in this old dump?”
They actually located quite a few bottles of water. This had once been a retirement village, and one thing Jeremy could always count on was the wisdom of elders. The elderly had tucked away all manner of things. It was a relief really—one less thing to worry about. So they drank their fill of water and gorged themselves on stale balance bars. The spoils were impressive. Sam read from her book and they struggled to find normalcy despite the ticking meter of her internal clock. They were careful with one another, tiptoed to avoid certain topics of conversation. They didn’t speak of her meter, or of the miles of road that still stretched ahead. There was a nervous energy in the air, an unspoken acceptance that they’d reached the end of their journey. But there was a sense of hope too, a shared conviction that what they needed would be waiting on the other side.
Jeremy fell asleep on his side. His eyes were fixed on Sam and her hand,
which had come to rest at the edge of his blanket. He reached out and set his fingers atop hers, and when sleep finally claimed him, the last sensation he remembered was the warmth of her fingers as they laced through his own.
The next morning her meter had fallen to zero and the three of them were silent as Jeremy passed her the last remaining bottle of pills. Was it the bottle he’d pilfered from Peter or the bottle he’d happened across as he stepped over Seth’s deceased mother? Who could tell? It was a thing as random as the scattering of molecules from the fluttering wings of a butterfly.
Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere—on water and land.
―Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Chapter 25
December 16th, 2176
San Diego, California
The San Diego hills rose majestically in front of them and simultaneously wreaked havoc on Jeremy’s thighs. They’d reached the city limits just as the first rays of sun were streaking across the sky. They were exhausted, Jeremy in particular. In the days that followed the expiration of her last disk, Sam had weakened considerably. The intensity of the physical exertion coupled with a poor diet and lack of proper sleep was too much for her battered body to handle. The night before, in a moment of sheer panic, Jeremy had watched her press the pedal of her bike and fail. She had wobbled precariously; sweat dotting her brow. Head fallen forward; she’d slumped across the handlebars in defeat. Seth had stifled a scream and Jeremy had lowered his bike and dashed to her side.
“Seth,” he’d called out, in a voice that sounded shrill in his ears, “I need your help, son.” Jeremy shrugged out of his pack and passed it to the boy. “You’re going to have to carry this while I carry her.”