Journey By Fire Read online

  She'd slept on her booth in the falling-down restaurant. She came out with her hair tied back with a yellow bandanna and the same denim shirt, which she'd just pulled over her head, and the Saint Michael medal dangling between the open shirt buttons. "Bless your heart," she said, when Wade handed her a mug of still warm coffee. Then she climbed up into the cab.

  The farm was located at the end of a long dirt road. They spent about fifteen minutes on Route 50 until the turn-off. The two-lane highway was cracked with weeds growing through the fissures and covered with dislodged lumps of tar. Scorched subdivisions wound through the parched yellow foothills above; it was as if the homes, some large, had been dropped from the sky. Many of the hillsides had swaths of black ash.

  They passed one empty and windblown Shell station. Its windows were smashed and the walls burned and it had a black scar on the concrete where fire had spread from the gasoline tanks to the building. It didn't seem worth stopping; it was apparent that scavengers had stripped away anything usable.

  They turned off on the dirt road, which was dry and dusty, and after about a half-mile they saw the horses. They stood in a field feeding on grasses that were still long and green. Some grass actually grew better in the deposited ash, due to the nutrients, Wade thought, and if it rained, which it did once in a while, the grass grew well.

  The three horses had white or brown coats and grazed against the horizon. Like the campfire the night before, the scene was like things used to be.

  Wiley slowed down the truck; the horses raised their heads nonchalantly to watch them pass. Then they went back to nibbling the grasses in the breeze over the fields.

  "They're wild horses now," Javi said.

  "They're beautiful," Phoebe said. "Oh, can we take them with us, if we find some saddles?"

  Wade shook his head, and Wiley said, "If the truck broke down or stopped running on garbage, we'd have to. Yeah, a horse is really worth something again."

  They drove past the horses and they could see the farm buildings in a distance; a large house, a paddock, a barn.

  "Where are the folks I wonder?" Carmen said.

  "They must be lying low," Wade said. "What's their names?"

  "Corsair," Javi said. "This is the Corsair Farm."

  A wooden gate was open. A bicycle and an upturned kid's wagon lay beside the road. "Do they have kids?" Wade asked.

  "Yes."

  "How many?"

  "Two," Carmen said. "Like the age of Pepe."

  The truck didn't fit through the gate so Wade jumped down from the cab onto the road and opened the slatted gate all the way. It creaked and swung to the side. He looked around the grounds. He listened. Nothing, just the hot wind across the baked ground. No other vehicles were around, save for a tractor parked in a field. He waved the truck in past the gate.

  It parked in a cleared-out area, then everyone got out of the cab and began walking toward the house.

  "No one's here," Wade said. "They would have heard the truck."

  "We'll knock on the door–you see, they weren't expecting us," Carmen said. She had Pepe by the hand and he was looking very alertly all around him. It was weirdly quiet, Wade thought. Wiley shrugged his shoulders.

  "Maybe they're out in the fields, cuttin' wood or herding the cows."

  "I don't know…I don't know. I'll check the barn," Wade said, and walked over toward the paddock. "Maybe you should stay with the truck."

  Wiley seemed disappointed. "If we find some eggs in the kitchen, and milk, maybe we can take some and leave some crates of potatoes and a note–promise to come back and do some work."

  Wade walked over to the paddock. The wind was on his back. It was hot; he took off his hat and rubbed the sweat from his forehead. He headed for a screen door that opened onto a middle section between a barn and the paddock. When he got close, he smelled manure, and something else, rotten and fetid. He stuck his head through the screen door and yelled, "Anyone? Hello!"

  The room contained a large, stainless steel tank and had a cement floor with a drain. A fridge stood in the room with a sign that read "Eggs," but he opened it and found it empty. The steel tank had a nozzle at the floor level; a white trickle of liquid led from below the nozzle to the drain. A plastic cup sat on top of the tank, like a cup from a thermos, and he held the cup beneath the nozzle and used a lever to open the valve on the tank. The metal screw-cap for the nozzle lay discarded next to the tank. A trickle of milk went into the cup but stopped when it was filled halfway. Empty.

  He drained the cup of the delicious milk, including a blob of cream at the end. Then he heard a cow's bellow from the paddock, and the clubbing of its hooves on a wooden floor. He wanted to look at the barn first, so he opened that door and found an empty office. "Mr. Corsair!" he yelled. "Mrs. Corsair!" Still nothing.

  He crossed the office to another door and opened it upon a small barn or stable, where he figured the horses lived, because he found two saddles hanging from hooks, and it smelled of hay and manure and the stalls contained the kind of wool blankets you might use with a horse. He walked across the stable's wood floor to another sliding door that was partly open and saw no sign of the Corsairs, but he saw the others walking toward him from the house.

  "Where's Pepe?" Carmen cried out. She approached at a half run and Javi and Wiley were on either side of her.

  "He got away from us, temporarily, curious little bugger," Wiley said.

  Wade walked back through the stable and the tank room and he noticed the door to the paddock ajar. A foul odor met him when he went through the door and off to the side of the large open space lay a slaughtered cow. It lay in a huge pool of blood and a blizzard of flies, with its eyes open and big tongue lolling out on to the floor. Gouges of flesh had been cut away from its haunches, shoulder, and thighs. Another cow stood over the carcass dumbly, and when it saw Wade it vigorously wagged and nodded its big head.

  The stinking paddock was dim, dusty, and airless, and when he looked up he saw Pepe standing at the very end of it. "Pepe!" he yelled, and ran down past the empty stalls to where Pepe stood shivering on the wooden floor and staring into the last stall.

  "God almighty," Wade muttered. He picked Pepe up into his arms, kicked open the last door to the paddock, and stepped out into the sunshine. Pepe's little jaw trembled and he was silent.

  "They were just sleeping, Pepe, you understand me? Only sleeping." He put the child down and leaned down to his level and said, "Don't ever run away like that, okay? Don't do that again. Stay with us."

  Finally Pepe nodded. Carmen ran around the paddock and grabbed him; she hugged him and ran her hands through his black hair, but Wade thought Pepe had a thousand-yard stare. "You didn't see that," he said, more to himself.

  Wiley and Javi came through the paddock door; Javi looked stricken.

  "We gotta scavenge whatever we can and get the fuck outta here," Wiley said, then he spat on the hard ground.

  "Is that the Corsairs?"

  "Even the children," Javi said, with a bitter Spanish accent. "Even the children…" Flies buzzed furiously by the open door.

  "You didn't see, dear boy," Carmen said, gently rocking him. Wade saw Phoebe carrying a stack of two boxes and she put them down and came running across the yard.

  "Just sleeping…" Pepe muttered, catatonically.

  "Yes."

  Wade walked quickly through the paddock past the stalls and the cow carcass and the tank room to the barn, where he took one of the saddles down off the wall and brought it to the truck.

  "Best to get anything we want that's left in the house," he said to Javi. "I saw a water pump back there."

  "It's dry; I tried it."

  "What were the Corsairs using?"

  "The horses and cows are drinking something. Maybe there's a little pond or stream back there."

  "We don't have time."

  Carmen stayed with Pepe. Wiley gathered some tools he found in the paddock: a scythe, a pitchfork, and two axes. They'd opened the trailer door
and he put them back there where Wade had heaved the saddle. Wade also took the blankets from the stalls, folded them, and piled them in the truck cab. The whole time he kept his eye on the road.

  "Fuckin' savages," Wiley said, then he slammed the trailer door shut. He looked at Wade forthright. "This is a damned fucked up world we're in."

  "That's why it's better to keep moving."

  He wanted to look in the office one more time. He walked there quickly as the others made their way back to the truck. Phoebe had found a stuffed horse in one of the rooms in the house, and she'd given it to Pepe, who clutched it to his chest. She knelt beside the boy and used her fingers to comb the hair out of his eyes, which still mirrored an awful aftermath.

  She took the Saint Michael medal and draped it around Pepe's neck.

  Phoebe had found a cardboard box and loaded it up with some old unopened cans of kidney beans, two bags of brown rice, and some cups and dishes.

  She looked up at Wiley. "I feel bad taking this."

  "Don't."

  Wade went through the shelves and drawers of the office as quickly as he could. Lo and behold, tucked into the back of a shelf, he found a small box of bullets he could load into his pistol. He strode back to the truck and stepped up into the cab. Then he removed the pistol from the pocket of his backpack, opened the bullet box, and one-by-one slipped a new bullet into the empty chambers. He knew he needed a loaded gun for the days ahead.

  Wiley got back into the driver's seat.

  "Don't you think we should bury the dead?" Wade said. "Give them a decent burial."

  Wiley thought for a moment, then looked down regretfully, as if addressing his knees. "Yeah, I do." He looked at Wade and his face was sweating around the scraggly beard, his eyes bloodshot. "That would be the decent thing. But we don't have shovels, and whoever did that is probably nearby, and we have to think about Pepe and the Santiagos and just get the hell out of here." Then he looked away and started up the truck.

  They drove back through the gate and out onto the dirt road. Wade could see the farm buildings recede in the sideview mirror, through a cloud of yellow dust. When they drove past the fields where the horses had grazed the animals were gone.

  CHAPTER 10

  They got back out on the two-lane Route 50 and headed west, towards Salida. They passed through the outskirts of Canon City, Colorado pretty quickly, and it was empty and abandoned, the old town in shambles. Wiley floored the gas pedal and never took his eyes off the highway, as though he was afraid the engine would fail if he did. Wade, who sat in the passenger seat, got out his maps and studied their route.

  The sun baked him through the window, so he pulled the boony hat down over his forehead. Once semi-arid range land and developed suburbia, the landscape outside had rapidly given over to a rocky desert, littered with shells of buildings, vehicles, and falling-down signs. He unfolded and draped the plastic map on his lap.

  In the old days, he was wedded to maps and it was his career, but he never had to plot his survival using one. He used to consult the U.S. Drought Monitor map every week on Thursdays, when the government renewed it. Orange regions meant severe drought, red was "extreme," and very dark red signaled "exceptional," rather, apocalyptic. California, week by week, was covered in dark red, and the seeming contagion spread like a blood stain across Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and the rest of the west. It was obvious that the data indicated a longterm, implacable trend. There was nothing to be done; it was like geology and history playing itself out. The drought then the fires resisted human engineering, and when the wildfires exploded this had been predicted but only on a scale measured in centuries, not a few years.

  Wade traced his finger from Salida on Route 50 into the mountains–over the continental divide and then on to Montrose and Grand Junction. Beyond that was only unknowns–he would still lay hundreds of miles from Kara and Sierra Vista, Arizona. Was she even still there?

  He looked back and Phoebe had opened one of the side windows and she sat looking thoughtfully out at the rocky flatlands that filled the valley, the wind blowing through her reddish blond hair. He found her presence comforting, for more than one reason.

  "It's about 180 miles from here to Grand Junction," Wade said, talking over the engine. "Think we have enough fuel?" It was only waste grease, but "fuel" sounded at least like they had a chance.

  Wiley took his hand off the wheel and scratched his head. "Maybe. We could head south at Poncha Springs, instead. Avoid the continental divide. That would save on mileage, and get us south."

  "But there's nothing down there but desert." And roving bands of hungry crazies, Wade thought.

  "Probably."

  "What kind of mileage do you think we're getting?"

  "I'm lucky to be getting five m.p.g. with this garbage."

  "So we need at least thirty gallons to get to Grand Junction."

  "Yeah, and what's there when we get to Grand Junction? A pile of rubble, with desperadoes making some home out of it. And we're a truck full of food and provisions. By the way, keep your weapon handy. Don't forget…"

  "The Colorado River is in Grand Junction." Phoebe had been listening in.

  "Fine," Wiley said. "Why don't we put on our best duds and buy six tickets for a trip on the River Queen. Dammit, all I want to do is do my job. Get this truck and my load down to Arizona." It was weird that he was talking about his job, under these circumstances, Wade thought. Wiley just wanted normal back.

  The truck entered a canyon on Route 50; it had crumbly, beige rock walls rising on either side of the highway. Flinty rockfalls littered the roadway, and the large river ran below it, not deep but rapid and boiling over rocks in the sunshine.

  "We need more water," Javi said, watching the river from the backseat, like they all were. "We should stop here. We're all out of water."

  "Yeah," Wiley said, looking from side to side. He slowed the truck down to about twenty; the engine coughed and sputtered and the pipe pumped black smoke into the arid, shimmering air.

  "That's the Arkansas," Wade said, looking off to the side, away from his map, and the sight of water, not only the ruins of scorched towns and hillsides, gave him cause for hope.

  They approached a dirt turn-off on the left above the river, and Wiley geared down and steered the truck into it. They just fit, then he shut the engine off. All they could hear was the white noise of the river below.

  "Let's pour the rest of that grease into the tank," Wade said. "And we'll get some water."

  The road had been completely empty, not a soul came by in either direction. The people might be on I-70, Wade thought, which intersected with Grand Junction north of there, but that area, including Vail and Aspen, had been engulfed in flames.

  They all got out onto the roadside, including the Santiagos. Wiley walked to the back of the truck and unlatched the door and started taking down the plastic buckets of grease. Wade helped him. Javi, Phoebe, and Carmen took all the plastic bottles and canteens they'd brought with them and climbed carefully over the embankment down to the river.

  "I need a bath," Phoebe said.

  "A wash will be nice," Carmen said. "The water looks good. Pepe needs one." Wade held the bucket steady and Wiley poured the grease into a filter they'd stuck into the truck's fuel tank.

  "How big's the tank?"

  "Hundred-fifty gallons," Wiley said. "Plenty of room for as much garbage as we can find." Wade thought that they were lucky to find Phoebe and the calm, generous family, and that he and Wiley alone would have probably run out of gas somewhere on Route 25 near the New Mexican border. The old priest was right, about people depending on each other. About not going it alone.

  The grease had an almost savory aroma; it left solids in the filter that they flung onto the roadside. Then they put the empty, dirty plastic buckets back into the truck and latched the door.

  Wade looked up and saw a hawk or an eagle hovering in the sky above the cliffs of the canyon.

  "Think someone sho
uld stay with the truck?"

  "No," Wiley said. "But bring your pistol."

  They both climbed sideways through steep, loose dirt down to the riverbank. Wade took his hat, shirt, shoes, and pistol and left them in the weeds by the river. He stepped into the water, and it was cold and refreshing. It ran quickly over his ankles and numbed them. He used to swim in cold rivers in Vermont with Kara; he thought of the chilly river and of Kara dog paddling and smiling through a calm shallow current, as just a tiny girl.

  The Arkansas River bed was mostly flat rocks smoothed over by decades of water flows, and it had sections of sandy bottoms he stepped through amongst the stones. He rolled up his pants and waded in and cupped his hand and started drinking. Carmen filled a bottle by dipping it in the river, and Pepe made a little pile of rocks by the riverside, lost in play. That made Wade smile. He realized he hadn't been smiling much.

  He was so hot he just went all the way in, soaking his pants, and let the cold current take him down river. It wasn't fast or deep because of the epic drought or lack of snowmelt, but it still moved. The water lapped around his neck and numbed his body. He submerged his head and opened his eyes and it was miraculously clear. Nature had a way of renewing itself, he thought, amidst the inferno it had become.

  He came to the surface and steadied his bare feet and legs on the rocks, and he could see Phoebe bathing. She was back to him and her back was smooth, brown, and freckled. He long hair was wet and plastered on her back. She gathered the hair behind her head and smiled in the sunshine. The sun shone brightly on the flawless, moving water.

  He submerged himself and drank some more and returned to the embankment.

  ###

  All the bottles were filled and lined up by some rocks. Wiley had a floppy hat on and was standing knee-deep in the river and staring off into the distance. Javi lay back and slept by the river. Wade wanted to make sure they weren't vulnerable, getting complacent, but he still understood what everyone was doing. He went over and fetched his pistol and sat on a rock in the shade.