To the North Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Disclaimer

  Ash Deposition Zones

  Southern Map

  More Fiction

  CHAPTER 1: NOVEMBER 2025

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3: OCTOBER 10, 2025

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  To The North

  Bruce W. Perry

  Text copyright © 2017-8 Bruce W. Perry

  All Rights Reserved

  Email the author: [email protected]

  If you liked this book, kindly consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads, even a brief rating. This helps writers reach a larger audience and gain recognition for their work.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Image credit: Science News; https://www.sciencenews.org/article/supervolcano-blast-would-blanket-us-ash

  Image credit: Google Earth

  The northern route of Brad Garner from Las Cruces, New Mexico, as he begins his journey.

  More Fiction Books Published by Bruce W. Perry:

  Ascent (An adventure story of survival and redemption)

  Barbarous Coasts (The first book in the Karl Standt crime thriller series)

  Gone On Kauai (The second book in the Karl Standt crime thriller series–Hawaii noir. "The plot...eventually provides a thrilling revelation." Kirkus Reviews, 2013)

  Compulsion (The third book in the Karl Standt crime thriller series. Two detectives pursue a serial killer working through a dating agency. "The book's great strength is its characters." Crime Fiction Lover)

  Journey By Fire (Armed with a crossbow, Mike Wade roams the dystopian USA deserts in search of his captive daughter Kara. This "tautly told tale turns out to be a vibrant addition to the genre... an effective odyssey through a burned, blighted future America." Kirkus Reviews, 2017)

  Guilt, A Novella (A sinister mystique seems to haunt three American businessmen when they hire a guide to take them into the Swiss Alps. "A fast-paced and engaging novella with an intriguingly dramatic twist." Self Publishing Review, 2017)

  Devastated Lands (Young people fight to survive an eruption of Mt. Rainier. "A thrilling story set in an unforgiving landscape, as well as a personal drama of Shane Cooper, who is torn between his purely selfish need for survival and equally strong need to help others...an entertaining post-apocalyptic adventure pitting man versus nature." IndieReader review, 2017 )

  Lost Young Love (Coming back from a devastating injury, a man reflects back on the peaks and troughs of his younger affairs. "This uniquely themed work will make you blush, laugh, and … remember your own early stumbles and triumphs in the realm of young love." Self Publishing Review, Aug. 2017)

  Chapter 1: NOVEMBER 2025

  Ash gathered on an empty road that ran through the desert. It fell silently, like heavy, dense snow. They did their best to plow and shovel it to the side of the roads in dirty, ashen piles. The men and women wore masks and the falling ash filled the sky and choked out the sunlight. Then after days and days, the storm finally stopped.

  The ash covered the mountains, too, like an ungodly layer of gray dirt. On account of what it did to engines and machinery, even a centimeter of it was enough to shut everything down, including the airports, factories, farms, utilities, and most of the major highways.

  Brad Garner had crashed in a roadside motel called La Casa Grande just south of Las Cruces, New Mexico, outside the boundary of the worst ash deposition. He'd sleep on the narrow hard bed, fitfully, then wake up with the pale sun gushing through a tawdry set of shades. He'd been there for a couple of weeks. He hadn't bothered fleeing farther south into Mexico, or still deeper into Latin America. He couldn't force himself to take that last step. His family was still somewhere in America. They, like millions of others, were presumed dead. He had friends who had left, anyone with means, after the eruption. They went to places like Costa Rica, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Terra Del Fuego.

  Those were presumptuous moves; few regions were expected to escape the fierce winter, of the nature of an impending ice age, or the destruction and disruption caused by vast amounts of piled-up volcanic debris.

  Garner would throw his shade open, make two cups of watery Mr. Coffee, and stand outside in the parking lot watching the pink light gather in the desert. There would always be one or two other people in the motel, but he hardly ever saw them.

  In the distance were dim outlines of grayish brown mountains, an empty highway, and a desert that was like a lunar landscape.

  He'd go back inside his threadbare room where a stuffed backpack and a duffel bag lay on the floor, grab his keys, and walk down the road to the Raw Frontier diner. It was a merciful place, an always-open, familiar spot where he could get breakfast and talk. He didn't mind the walk; it was long but calmed him. He wore a yellow kerchief over his face to prevent the ash from getting into his nose and lungs, when it was still coming down.

  A pickup truck would stop once in a while, he knew he appeared desolate and anonymous to other people. Most of the time, save one when it rained sulfurous mud, he would wave it on.

  The diner was all but run by Julie, who was the only waitress. She lived in a trailer out nearby in the desert. It had an old black horse tied in the back of it; she drove a banged-up Ford Bronco. He was curious but not altogether unbelieving about why she still lived alone. He found her friendly, kind, and cute. Like him, she had sailed up to the line of middle age, and what had happened before spoke in the lines on her face.

  He didn't ask her yet about her alone status or brought it up in a flirtatious way, because everyone's situation was skewed or warped back then.

  "Hey Brad," she'd say when he walked in, the diner usually empty. "Hungry?"

  "As a horse. What'd you got?"

  "I have fresh eggs today, grapefruit, rye toast…"

  "Any hash?"

  "You know I have corn beef hash. You don't have to ask."

  "Okay, I'll have eggs, hash, fruit with coffee. Say, can you put cheese on the eggs?"

  "Of course."

  "Whatever cheese there is. How was last night? Quiet?" he said.

  She'd been complaining of coyotes. Packs of them feeding off the animal carcasses that littered the still polluted desert. Her family had stayed in eastern Idaho, near the Tetons, on the same ranch as her parents. They were all gone now, like his.

  "It was a full moon. For a moment, I saw the stars… I didn't hear a thing. No coyotes."

  "Good. The mangy dogs forgot about you."

  Garner settled onto an old swivel stool at the counter. He could taste the bourbon whiskey from the night before, a coarse patch on the top of his mouth. A couple of guys who drove cattle trucks took up another booth. They wore wide-brimmed hats but set the hats on the table. They had dirt and ash on their leather boots.

  Another man walked in as Julie set a cup of coffee in front of Garner. He sat at the counter and took his own hat off.

  "Got any jobs for me?" Garner asked her.

  "A screen door in back needs fixing, and the Bronco is making another sound. A new one. There's always pots and pans."

  "I can't make any promises about the Bronco, but the rest of that stuff is done."

  She continued wiping the counter. He thought she had really black, beautiful hair, like a bear's fur. But longer of course. She looked up at him, smiled.

  "Wonderful. Thanks."

  The old man who did the cooking, Ross, moved around silently in the back. He had white grizzle on his cheeks, looked like he shaved about once per month, and wore a cooking smock over a yellowed t-shirt. He was always there, starting before 5 a.m., and Garner would see him drive away in a pickup after the diner closed at 8 p.m.

  Garner thought of working at the diner, but he didn't want to do any cooking and he didn't want to make a commitment. He'd have to do it, or something else, if he encountered problems paying his motel bill.

  He smelled the aromatic cooking–eggs, butter, bacon and sausage. He heard the old man scraping at the griddle with a spatula. Garner sipped his coffee. The two guys in the booth seemed deep in conversation. The man at the end of the counter took out a cell phone and placed it on the counter.

  Then Garner's food arrived. He dived into the pile of eggs first. Julie lingered for a moment.

  "This is delicious. Thanks so much." People used that expression all the time–Thanks so much–but in his case the gratefulness was genuine.

  "I'll give you seconds. There's plenty left over."

  He'd only known her for a few weeks, and had begun to wonder why they couldn't have dinner at her trailer. He hadn't even seen it yet. Then again, he was no different than anyone else; not really making plans. Living hour by hour.

  "All I do is work," she said, looking away, in a making conversation kind of way. She left the comment out there dangling.

  "Why don't we have dinner some time?"

  "Really? I don't know."

  "Have a whiskey. There's still some around. Watch that sunset."

  "When you put it that way…"

  She was real pretty, Garner thought, and the way the world and the years had put some miles on her had made
her more attractive. It was okay to have friends, in his circumstance. That was called survival.

  "I don't want to drink alone. I don't want to start in on that."

  "I know what you mean. You still staying at La Casa?"

  "Yeah," he said, a bit embarrassed. "Temporarily…"

  "I used to like the pub they had, when it was still open."

  "I wouldn't know." She'd known that part of New Mexico longer than he had. She'd lived in Tucson and her husband and kids had been on a holiday in Idaho, at the parent's ranch, when it had happened. When she'd heard, she had just gotten in her car and driven with desperation across Arizona, with no destination in mind. The area was familiar to her because she was New Mexican born.

  The old man put two plates of ready food up on the counter for her. He scowled at her from the kitchen, then went on with the cooking.

  "I better go," she said. "I'll let you know, though."

  It gave him some hopefulness. Yet she was right; he wouldn't want them to drift into a misery-loves-company type situation. Two lonely hearts getting sloshed on pointless evenings and cheaper whiskey, talking about their misfortunes.

  When he scraped his plate clean, he turned to the man next to him.

  "What are you doing with a cell phone these days? I thought there was no service."

  "I went down to southern Texas, got service, and called some relatives back east."

  "Did you get good reception?"

  "Fine. The east is getting ash storms, but they're holding up. I got some news about what's happening up north. What the military and the feds are planning to do. They're sending a bunch of probes up there. This shit is for real; it's like a dead planet up north."

  Everyone in the diner was listening, including the cook, who stepped out of the kitchen wiping his hands with a towel.

  "They're putting things in the region that don't have to breath, like drones. They want to find out how things are, beyond flying jets overhead, which of course they did."

  Only the planes originating from airports that weren't choked with ash, Garner thought. He was quiet for a minute, taking it all in.

  "Any reports yet, of what they found?"

  "No. Don't know whether it's started yet. They don't tell the public anything; this is all leaked stuff that finds its way on Twitter and Facebook." The internet was agile enough to survive a calamity that affected two-thirds of the country. In New Mexico, a web connection came and went.

  The man started to chew on a piece of toast. "They expect to find nothing alive, maybe a peep here and there, in the worst hit states. Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, most parts of Colorado, Utah, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota. Eastern Washington and Oregon. Places that got really buried with ash…and still are…"

  The diner went silent.

  "These drones and probes will be taking readings and gathering data and stuff," the man added.

  "Good that'll do," grunted one of the two men in the booth. "These places got three, six, even 10 feet of ash. Won't be able to live, grow anything, find clean water, for 10, maybe 20 years. 'Data and readings.' I could'a told 'em that. Don't bother. Over 13 million lived in those states–no one knows how many are dead."

  "Could you be quiet please? Please!" someone cried out. They all looked up. At the end of the diner, sitting in one of the booths, was a younger woman, a little girl, and a grandmother type. They'd been eating quietly up till now.

  "You're scaring our daughter. We don't need to hear anymore of this! Isn't it bad enough?" The young lady fought back tears. "Look what we've already gone through! How many of you, with all your flippant comments and tough talk, lost family members?"

  "Why, we all sure did, Ma'm," the man in the booth said. "Everyone knows someone."

  "We have to leave. C'mon Becca. Willie. The bill?" Flustered, she stepped out of the booth and hurriedly gathered her things.

  "The meal's on us today," Julie said, not moving from the counter.

  "No, I insist," the woman said, reaching into her purse. It seemed to be a point of pride.

  "You can get us next time," Julie said.

  "Oh alright." She took the hand of the young girl, and looked up at the men. "You'd think you'd have…more restraint, or respect! We're just the fortunate ones, that's it! Let's go."

  Then the three of them left the diner, the screen door closing hard behind them.

  There was only about 20 seconds of silence, before the men spoke up again.

  CHAPTER 2

  "They won't know anything until something, or somebody, a kind of team, goes in there to see what the real damage is."

  "All them bodies up there," the second booth occupant said. "It's just awful. Tragic. No one's comin' out; that's what I hear. That didn't escape the ash clouds and pyroclastic flows, right away. Can't wrap my head around more than a million dead. It's like those historical reports you read about. Extinctions, and things."

  "Well, we're still here," Garner said. "And billions more of us."

  The other man in the booth was looking down and pushing his coffee cup across the formica of the table.

  "Air's not breathable up there. You have to wear a hazmat mask. It'll be like that until the eruption's completely stopped, and it hasn't."

  They were about 1,100 miles, depending on the route, from Yellowstone Park, the epicenter of the super volcano. Yet it seemed much closer, since it influenced everything, and every life, in one way or another.

  Julie wandered around refilling people's coffee cups.

  "People in underground bunkers could survive," she commented. "With weeks worth of food and water."

  "And a fresh source of oxygen, as in oxygen tanks," the first booth guy said. "You'd have to be seriously prepped. I suppose, the best prepared could survive. Time's runnin' out even for them."

  "Ought to send an Army of masked suited men in there, pronto," his partner said. "An Army of HazMat responders."

  "I heard they were planning something like that," the man at the counter said. "But they're starting with the drones and the robotics."

  "Goddammed Mars Explorers," one of the booth guys said. "Only the machines can cope. Drones and 'bots. Otherwise, you'd have to send 100,000 men or more in there with space suits."

  "Bet they have the equipment," the man across from him said. "The government? They stockpile all kinds of survival gear and technology, vast warehouses full of it. In secret. For themselves and their families, only. You'll see, the ones who survive this will be all them down in Washington."

  "Hell," his friend said. "Look what we're going through after just a dusting of that shit. We're gonna run out of bottled water, unless they ship some up from Mexico. No airports or shipping going on, anywhere. You can't plan for a catastrophe like this. FEMA–are you kidding me? I'll tell you what I'm going to do; head for Argentina, Chile."

  "They won't take you," the other man said. "Millions of American refugees? Nah! It's already causing a problem with the Mexican border. Think you're going to be able to drive across all them borders? And they welcome you with open arms? Forget about it."

  "Drive? No way, I'll fly. I'll drive down to Mexico, or Panama, or Nicaragua, and fly south. I'm selling my house."

  "Who'll buy it?"

  The man at the counter laughed. "I'd say we're all just going to have to sit tight. Clean up the ash, inventory the food and water, and sit tight. Hope we don't get any more ash clouds."

  "Hope is cheap," one of the booth men said, bitterly.

  Julie and Brad had gone silent, listening to the men trill. Julie dropped a bill on their table.

  "When you get a chance…"

  "Waiting isn't an option," the man said, reaching into jeans for a bill fold. "We've had massive crop damage. The livestock is all dead, millions of them, lying in the desert and fields out there. And the winter's going to be hell."

  "Maybe not as bad here," Garner said. "This is the desert. We're closer to the equator."

  "Not close enough. And deserts can get cold, too." They all, by instinct, looked outside, to the Organ Mountains in the distance, with the shimmering heat of the desert and the pallid sun smeared by drifting ash clouds. The mountains looked grayish white now.

  All the talk had forced Garner's mind back to October 10, 2025.