by James Kiehle
The telescope no longer operated normally. It was stuck in one spot, keeping an eternal concave/convex eye on where the Bullet had been. The observatory was running on emergency power; they had calculated three days of juice left before it all just stopped running. As it was, they used no lights and only fired up the generator to run the computer once a day, just to see if anything worked in the outside world.
Nothing did.
•
Russ started the funeral fire at sunset, stoned beyond all imagining. Leo said a few bizarre words about all the victims. Standing in front of so many corpses was a memory they would like to purge but being torn to the tits on high-grade sativa made the surreal funeral pyre seem even stranger.
They used the diesel fuel to help ignite the blaze, then stood far back from it as the pile went up in a fireball so intense that they felt the heat and had to duck away, then realized the flame might be seen from miles away.
“I guess we were a might generous with the diesel,” Leo said, his face showing embarrassment. “My fault.”
Russell said, “It’ll go faster this way. More intense heat.”
Daria abruptly sat on the ground, her face buried in her knees, crying. Leo turned back to watch the fire.
“Tomorrow, what do you say we go scouting?” Russ said to him.
“Get the lay of the land?” Leo replied.
Perry nodded. His eyes were fixed on the fire. It gave off a lot of heat but the smell and the smoke were drifting south, away from them.
“We’ll make it a field trip,” Leo said, then lifted his nose, sniffed the foul air, then retched.
They watched the fire a long long time until it was puny enough to cover with dirt, which they did in tandem. The pyre had become a collection of bones, sure to drive off evil spirits. By the time they got to bed, it was after two in the morning.
When Russ awoke, he heard the rain and went to the window to watch it fall in liquid sheets as hard as he’d ever seen. When it struck the ground, every drop exploded on impact.
“I found something yesterday that might help us with this rain,” Leo said from the doorway. “It was in that park ranger’s truck.”
He held up a Geiger counter.
“How providential,” Russ said.
“Indubitably,” said Leo.
•
“If we could measure this, I’d guess that cloud is thirty-thousand-feet to the top,” Dutch said. “We could get a real supercell over our noggins.”
“We can’t bet on that. There’s no way to measure,” Dark said. “Look at this bitch.”
The three men went to the window, watched the valley far below become obscured by a line of black showers almost uninterrupted across the breadth of the horizon. The wind began to kick up and anything loose on the hillside was swirling in the gusts.
“Almost showtime,” Dutch said, glancing at his watch. “It’s been six minutes. Eddie, you are O-U-T. ”
“Don’t call me Eddie,” Dark said. “Edwin. E-D-W—”
“He can spell, for chrissakes,” Pinkie said. “Do you think his Ph.D. was in hotel management, you fucking twerp?”
“Bitch,” Edwin countered. “And only Cage is a real doctor. We haven’t yet gotten the seal of approval.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Pinkie said. “I’m going with doctor. It suits me.”
“Like spandex suits you? You look like you’re smuggling baby seals in your ass.”
Her eyes became thin slits. “Fuck you, Eddie.”
“It’s Edwin. E-D—”
“It’s almost here,” Dutch said. “Cover your butts.”
Ben saw Pinkie flip Dark the bird and grinned. He liked when she was mean, obstinate, demeaning. It suited her. Like when she made racial comments designed to rile him, which they never did because, despite his skin color, he felt whiter than her.
Still, he couldn’t deny that Pinkie had such weird style—what with all the pinks and bows and Hello Kitty accessories—that she aroused him with an enigmatic quality he found hard to pin.
Pinkie saw him notice her.
“Want my camera, Benny? A picture’ll last longer than a stare,” she said and he laughed. To his surprise, she smiled back, then chewed her gum and popped a bubble, all while looking at him with a curious gaze.
“Okay, it’s almost here. Hear that wind? But it will be more than my nine minutes,” Sparks said. “It looks like you’ll win again, Cage.”
“I can die happy,” Ben said, watching Pinkie pop her Double Bubble.
At eleven minutes and ten seconds their picture window view was obliterated by thick clouds and rain that fell in hard sheets, buffeted by winds in excess of sixty, gusting higher.
The entire room abruptly fell dark as the power failed. Ben could see nothing in the blackness, aside from Pinkie’s Pepto-Bismal-colored hair bow. He was certain that, to her, unless he smiled, he was invisible.
“Don’t tornados lose power when they hit a mountain range?” Ben asked, but no one heard him.
Now the wind picked up harder and it seemed every loose pebble and stick in the county was slamming against the building, making popping and cracking sounds against the thick glass of the picture window.
“Lower the blind,” Ben called out, as another larger gust whistled loudly and the rain slapped sideways against the glass. Huge rumbles of thunder and flashes of lightning danced around them. Only within the brief frame of the lightning did Ben see the others in the dark.
Dutch Sparks was standing close to the window, lowering the blind, while Edwin Dark crouched under a table in the middle of the room. Pinkie Moreland hadn’t budged, still reclined on the couch, feet up, casual, as though she was watching a B-movie on TV.
The wind, unfettered, sliced through every opening and slip in the structure. Doors flew open, windows in the back exploded as a freight train barreled across the sky, the sounds terrifying.
As Dutch moved to the nearest enclosed space, the entire building began to shake; parts of it collapsed and fell inside. The wind sucking through the room picked up every loose sheet of paper, every small object, and tossed it around and around. A book almost smacked Ben in the face.
The glass window, triple-pane thick, suddenly shattered as the top of a tree smacked into it. Cage tried to hold his balance against the wind and grabbed onto an open pipe and almost lost it, then felt the wind press him against the wall as he caught hold.
“It’s a tornado,” Edwin said.
Ben happened to look out just in time to see the tree top sail inside, impaling Dutch Sparks, almost cutting him in half as it killed him—the top half pressed into the room until it stopped just inches from Edwin Dark’s face.
Ben called out. No one answered.
Pinkie was nowhere to be seen.
Darkness. No sounds.
And then the wind was gone. Fizzled out, became a hard breeze, and moved on.
Only the rain continued unimpeded, swamping the room, mixing with Dutch Sparks’s blood, which spread a floating stain towards a shaking, panicked Edwin.
Ben called over, “You okay?”
“Soiled my pants,” Dark replied.
•
At Temple Lodge, the rain died down and Daria joined the men on the front porch. They stood where no rain had fallen and Leo crouched down and clicked on the Geiger counter.
There was a reading, but neither Daria nor Russ knew if it was a measurement they should fear. Tabor told them, “It’s low, about what you get from a microwave oven. There’s some radiation but it’s dissipated. This water is probably safe for consumption.”
“I don’t know what choice we’d have anyway,” Leo said. “Our water supply is almost finished.”
“Do you trust the lake water?” Russ wondered.
“It gave me the trots for two days, so no,” Leo said.
“I’ll get some buckets,” Daria said, and ran off.
They collected as much water from murky puddles as they could. The water was light br
own, but the contamination levels stayed steady and lowered as the volume increased.
Leo and Daria rigged up a filter, using funnels, brown paper bags, kitchen sieves, drainers, and a bed of charcoal briquettes, then watched eagerly as the first batch of chocolate-colored water went through the contraption and came out kind of a gray color. After a change of paper, they ran it through again and, while the water was still grayish, it might be about as good as they would get.
“Not attractive, I know, but it will have to do,” Daria said. “I’d drink it.”
Unconvinced, Russ worked on a second filter, this time crunching half the fresh charcoal into smaller pieces, and then crushing about half of that until it was like black dirt. He mixed in some pebbles and household bleach. “I had to do that when I stayed in Mexico,” Russ said. After he ran their gray water through his second filter, the liquid was almost opaque.
“Who’s going to taste this?” Daria asked.
Russ and Leo looked at each other.
“You go,” Russ said.
“No, age and beauty,” Leo said. “I insist.”
Daria finally handed a ladleful of the water to Russ.
“Now I’m not saying you’re expendable, but I can cook and Leo here can fix the generator and you can’t,” she said.
“Reason enough,” Russ said, and then cautiously lifted the ladle to his lips, closed his eyes and swallowed as they studied Perry’s face.
“Well, how is it?” Daria asked, cautiously excited.
Russell smiled, then his expression turned to mild alarm, his eyes rolled skyward and, all at once, he fell to the ground, hacking and coughing.
“Oh, my God,” Daria cried, crouching beside him, eyes wide. “Are you alright? Are you okay?”
Leo looked down at Russ with his arms crossed and a tiny smile at the edges of his mouth.
“Tastes like water, don’t it, Russ?” Leo said.
Russell’s right eyelid opened. “Houston water.”
Daria slapped his arm. “You jerk,” she said, then stood up and stormed off.
“What got into her?” Russ said.
“Who knows?” Leo shrugged. “You maybe?”
•
Dawn arrived and the observatory survivors sat on the peak of Mt. Cochiti in the same spot where’d they’d watched the nukes go off.
“Twenty feet,” Ben said. “You flew twenty feet.”
“Pretty surreal,” Pinkie nodded. “Lifted me up, tossed me across the room. Thank Christ there was a vending machine to stop me.”
“Dutch. Man. At least he went quick,” Dark said.
“He never knew what hit him,” Ben agreed.
Edwin seemed moved somehow. “The man knew his math. Impeccable calculations. I’ll give him that. Otherwise, I didn’t know shit about him.”
“What do you think his real name was?” Ben asked Pinkie. “I’d bet Dutch wasn’t it.”
“He’d take that bet, too,” Pinkie said. “It was Holland. Holland John Sparks. Trust fund baby from the Hamptons. An IQ to rival mine. Smart sonofabitch. Had everything but, well, me.”
Surprised, Ben said, “I thought you two were—”
“Nah,” she cut him off. “He was all systems go and I was hold the launch.”
“I’ll miss him,” Edwin said. “Impeccable calculations.”
“You won’t miss him,” Pinkie said. “You thought he was a jerk, a bigger bully than I am.”
Dark wheeled on her. “Why is it always about you, Pinkie?”
“Because I’m the queen of fucking everything, Edwin.”
Pinkie was on her knees, fists clenched, eyes on fire. Ben thought now she just looked comical, wearing that pink tutu and the Tommy Hilfiger combat boots, fingerless gloves, and spandex leggings. Here was the Tooth Fairy itching for a street brawl.
This loud parlay went on for awhile and Ben tuned them out. He began to face the facts. Dutch’s body was still where he’d died. Betsy was broken in two. All their sophisticated equipment was sent to the next zip code, and everything else had been damaged or destroyed.
They had no food, water, or coffee. Not having coffee was the worst.
As far as Ben was concerned, it was time to cut bait.
He stood up, stretched, shook gravel from his pant cuffs, then began to walk away. He made it pretty far before the other two noticed.
“Where do you think you’re going, studly butt?” Pinkie called after him. “Hot date at the Malt Shop?”
Ben stopped, turned back, stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged, “I’m going to the store. Peet’s. I have to pick up the Major’s blend. We’re out of coffee.”
The other two stood up, too, looking at each other, questioning.
“Where’s Peet’s?” Edwin asked.
“Beaverton, Oregon,” Ben replied over his shoulder.
Pinkie and Edwin wore identical confused expressions.
“How far is that?” Dark asked.
“Thirteen, fourteen hundred miles.”
“Hang on,” Pinkie said, “I’ll get my purse.”
34. Lay of the Land
It was too late in the day to survey the entire area, but Russ, Daria and Leo thought they could first concentrate on the southern and western regions, so they set off down the road, passed all the tossed around vehicles, and down towards where highway 217 had been.
The big throughway was nowhere to be seen. Instead they looked out on what appeared to be a lake. To the left of them, though, Daria spotted the top of a sign and pointed to it. Perry realized it was the entrance sign at the junction of the Temple Lodge road and the big highway. They could see the back end of it, only the tops of wooden letters visible.
“That was the sign I passed when I made my turn,” Russ said. “That means highway two-seventeen is just probably a few feet under the water.”
“Let’s go on our walkabout,” Leo suggested. “We’ll straddle the edge of the lake.”
It was hard going just to walk the edge on the slippery mud. At one point, the three almost slipped into the water when the ground gave way beneath their feet, but managed to climb back to safety.
They walked for over an hour and finally reached what would turn out to be the western end of their land. They still didn’t know if they were on a peninsula or an island. From where they stood, the waters in front of them stretched to the horizon, trapped on either side by high rolling hilltops. There appeared to be about six small islands between them and the main ground.
They walked around the edge of the lake until Leo spotted footprints.
“Someone was here.”
The others came over. In the soil below were deep shoe prints, next to which was a long snaking groove left in the mud.
“Wonder what this was?” Daria asked.
“I’d know that impression anywhere,” Leo replied. “It was made by a boat. See, it goes down into the water.”
“It might have been Glen Paden,” Russ agreed. Then he explained to Leo how he’d sent Paden on his way, using his father’s unloaded forty-five in a bluff.
“Your gun wasn’t loaded?” Leo said after hearing the story.
“I never told Daria.”
Daria had a faraway look, eyes trained to the south.
“Something I said?” Russ joked.
“People coming,” she told them, pointing.
“What?”
“In that boat over there. I think one of them is Paden.”
•
Paden barely slept. He kept thinking the others would kill him in his sleep, though he knew he was just being paranoid. Still, the next morning, Glen was exhausted, hardly had any energy at all, and was barely up for the boat ride. Fortunately for Paden, Bolt and Calderon did all of the paddling. Good thing, too, because they made it across the water in well under an hour.
As they approached the shore, the cons saw three people standing on the sand, then ran off into the woods.
“Know those assholes?” Bolt asked.
&nbs
p; Paden looked closely. “The taller one is named Russ. Russ Perry, I think. The girl’s Daria. I don’t know the other guy. He wasn’t around that night.”
“I wonder if there are any more over there?” Calderon asked rhetorically.
“I don’t give a fuck,” Bolt told him. “I’m gonna kill them all after I do myself a little raping.”
Calderon laughed.
Paden felt sick to his stomach. If anyone was going to rape Daria, he would, but the idea of either of these two getting near her made him ill.
“Which one you gonna take?” Calderon asked.
“Oh, I get that Perry fella,” Bolt answered. “He looks like my type.”
“I take the bearded short one,” Calderon said. Then, to Paden, he said, “You have to take the girl.”
Paden looked at him blankly, then managed, “Of all the rotten luck.”
•
Russ, Daria, and Leo made it back to the lodge, breathless and afraid. When they reached the main gate, Perry locked it back up. They knew that Paden wasn’t bringing the Rose Society to the Temple Lodge to have tea. Even if the others weren’t bad guys, they were carrying rifles. They all could see that.
“What can we do?” Daria asked, pacing, as she always did when she was nervous. “We have no way to defend ourselves.”
“Have we checked around here for weapons?” Leo asked.
“Of course, we have,” Daria said. “You think I’m a fool?”
“I didn’t mean that...” Tabor started to reply, but Russ interrupted.
“I didn’t say anything before, because I don’t like guns,” Perry said. “But I found a cabinet, the place where I put the cocaine. Inside was a rifle and a handgun. I also found a thirty-eight when I first arrived, but no bullets. There are about ten shells for the rifle, maybe two dozen for the other pistol.”
Daria beamed when he handed it to herl. Leo looked relieved.
“Are you a good shot?” Leo asked.
“I’ve never fired a gun in my life,” Russ answered. “Well, paintball.”
“Good thing I have,” Leo said.
“Me, too,” Daria added, chambering a round. “Pretty sure.”
•
Bolt told Paden and Calderon to row the boat close to shore while he set out on foot, following the tracks of the people they’d seen on the beach.