Journey By Fire Read online

  The sun was burning and stifling outside of the river. He felt that they had cooled off and had gathered enough water for several days, but that they were driving into the unknowns and closer to the core of the fires.

  CHAPTER 11

  They'd decided to spend the night by the Arkansas River. They made a small fire out of an old crate from the truck, and some scrappy desert growth. They boiled potatoes and mixed it with the kidney beans and the rice.

  The sun went down behind the cliffs; it was abrupt, shifting from bright sunshine to a sudden mauve dusk. It cooled off. The stars came out while they ate and sat by the fire beneath the truck. The vehicle was a dumb and metallic object sitting silently above the river, and it was almost easy to forget about it. The stars were incredibly bright in a velvety black sky. The winds must have blown the ash clouds in another direction, he thought.

  Wade sat with the pistol in his lap and he put his metal plate and fork onto the ground beside him. Wiley had left to fuss with the truck and keep watch. He might sleep in the truck, Wade figured. The Santiagos were getting their campsite put together and were using the horse blankets they'd found. Everyone transitioned to sleep as the sun went down; it was as if they lived in an earlier era, when people didn't stay up to all hours watching cable TV and staring at computers.

  Phoebe was sitting across from him. She had combed her hair, and let the yellow head-band fall to around her neck like a scarf.

  "What happened to your parents?"

  "We lived in Shasta, California. We lived off the grid when I was a kid. My dad hunted and planted and did odd jobs and sold skins, and I learned the magic-rock jewelry trade from my mom. But we couldn't exactly make ends meet so…" She brushed the hair out of her eyes and Wade could see the sadness in her eyes, glinting in the firelight.

  "…My daddy had to go work the tar sands in Canada, and he got something in his lungs and died pretty young, and my mom died I think of grief."

  The fire crackled and the starlit darkness settled around the desert. She uncrossed her legs.

  "That must have been hard."

  "Goodness," she sighed. "I don't think about it much anymore. I went out into the desert and spent some time chillin' and searched for my precious rocks and my mom would have liked that. She would have done it, too."

  "Got any siblings?"

  "An older brother but he went bumming and surfing in Bali and Thailand and I haven't heard from him since. I think we have the wandering gene in our blood. What's your wife like?"

  "Beautiful, maybe like your mom was because you got it from somewhere. She's loyal, and sane. It takes rock hard patience to live with me, and she's got it."

  "You're not so bad."

  "Think so?"

  "I feel safe with you. You guys are my saviors. Latte and Machiatto."

  "Hey, I'm so glad we ran into you."

  "I hope you find your daughter soon. I want to meet her. Somehow I think we should be best friends."

  "I hope you get the chance." The fire they'd built collapsed onto a brittle structure of ashen sticks and a whippet of embers blew off toward the river.

  "Why do you carry that pistol all the time? I mean, I know, but everywhere?"

  "You never know who's going to show up."

  "You weren't always like this, were you."

  "No."

  "What happened in Chicago?"

  He put the gun next to his plate on the ground and picked up a stick and began fidgeting with the embers again.

  "I brought the handgun as an absolute, you know, last resort. Never had been a gun guy; I'd shot it on two occasions in the woods to see how it worked."

  "Chicago was just supposed to be a connection; stop, pick up some people, go on with the train to Denver. I was asleep when we pulled in. I'd left my hand on my gun; I was nervous. It was lying beneath my coat next to me. We'd passed a lot of burnt-out towns in Pennsylvania and Ohio and some of the gangs were waiting in the stations to see if the train would stop, and they looked very bad, but the train never did, and one time the train blasted through some old railroad ties that someone had piled up to derail us, and anyways the whole trip to Chicago was very dicey. I didn't want to stop there long.

  "Then I heard a woman crying, hysterically. I woke up. The train was pulling into the Chicago station. A woman outside the window was standing on the platform with a baby in her arms. A toddler was holding her hand." He cleared his throat and he looked up and he saw Phoebe looking at him raptly in the shadows.

  "She was saying, what was it?…I won't give them up. I won't give them up. One of the regime's uniformed guards had a gun to her head. She was standing there on the platform, with the little boy looking up at her and she clutching the baby to her chest. Then the guard took the gun away from her head and I couldn't quite see them completely through my window, so I got up in the aisle and walked down to the exit door and stood on the top steps to see what was going on. And the lady screamed No! And just as the train starts moving forward…he grabs the baby with both hands and she's fighting for her child and he rips the baby out of her arms and turns…and in this one casual motion, heaves it like you would a shovel-full of sand under the train, and the lady collapsed on the concrete and I shot him…I don't remember thinking…I shot him from the steps, two, three times…might have missed once…then he's lying there crawling and the train gets going and I shot him a couple more times as we pull away…"

  "My word," Phoebe said, but in a murmur that expressed sympathy for him.

  "The lady got to her feet, still hysterical, understandably, and ran away with the boy. I used up most of my ammo then. That's why it was good that I found that box back at the farm."

  CHAPTER 12

  The next day they climbed to the continental divide. The truck could only muster about ten m.p.h., but they made it. It snowed at first, cold wet snowflakes spitting onto the concrete road and frozen ground, then the clouds opened up, proffering a view.

  Wiley was so relieved they made it that he stopped the truck at the old tourist turn-off. They were at eleven thousand feet. Phoebe got out and, using a spray can she'd scavenged from the Corsair farm, she wrote "Nicaragua or Bust" on the side of the truck. Everyone hugged themselves in the sudden cold, but it felt good to get out of the truck, breath the chilly but clear air, and let Phoebe's high spirits enliven them.

  Cirrus clouds composed of smoke from the burning forests trailed off most of the mountainsides. The San Juans, he thought. Some of them had snow on the peaks but there was remarkably little snow at the high elevations. The warming had given the Rockies a minimal, almost nonexistent snowpack.

  He didn't like not knowing what they were going to do after Grand Junction; it felt like they were being pursued, rather than actively seeking out a destination. They were making things up will-nilly. He still had about 700 miles to Sierra Vista. Then came the fire.

  ###

  Just outside of Montrose the forest erupted on both sides of them. At first they drove through drifting smoke and the woody smell in the truck cab almost clogged their nostrils. Wiley, who'd been flooring it once they'd seen fire evidence ahead, had to slow down. They couldn't see. The headlights stabbed into the fog of wood smoke.

  "Jesus," Wade said, looking out the window. "Speed up. Speed up if you can, now." Beyond a small meadow and a band of trees, on the righthand side, an ominous wall of black, billowing smoke, sitting on top of a whorl of vicious yellow flame, rose up. It hung above the trees like a towering wave. A hellacious red glow pulsated in the forest. Just ahead of the truck, they could see flames leap the road and light up the other side of the highway.

  The sun went down at the same time and everything went black. Wiley turned on the headlights, and the glowing cinders stretched to the tops of the trees.

  Carmen whispered her prayers in the backseat. Wade could feel the heat on the window; he feared that the truck's gas tanks could explode or its tires melt. They would surely be dead then. The fire seemed to suck the oxygen
from the air. "All we can do is outrun it," Wiley mumbled grimly, steering the wheel with both arms like a besieged ship captain. The trees sparkled all around, as though the branches were encased in yellow ice.

  Blazing homes and buildings reared up in the darkness, and the power lines lay limply about the road like dead, melted snakes.

  Now to the left the monstrous flames were traveling and scouring the land. Then they were out of it, as one could drive out of the periphery of a tornado's swirling winds. The flames died down as suddenly as they appeared, even as the conflagration flared in Wade's sideview mirror. He saw Carmen cross herself. They drove through the blackened landscape with wisps of gray smoke trailing off the embers.

  They crested a hill and began to descend the road to a valley. Behind him, Carmen smiled, calm and beatific. The valley brimmed with a lake of clouds.

  ###

  They saw a man standing on the side of the road. He had a big dark blanket over his head, then the blanket came down and he waved his arms at the truck. Wiley looked at Wade, who nodded. "We could get some information off of him."

  They slowed down and Wade cranked down his window.

  The man's face was bearded and covered with black ash. He had dirty jeans and work boots and the kind of t-shirt that Wade recognized worn by the work crews he'd seen from the train.

  "Howdy folks!" he called up to Wade's open window. "Thank God you stopped! I almost didn't make it back there, when the fires came. I lay in a brook and soaked the blanket and pulled it over my head. Presto! It worked! The flames go by, I feel my arms, my legs, I'm alive. I got a buddy down the road and he's injured. Can you help us? What do ya got in that truck there? Can you pull down the road a piece and pick up my buddy?"

  Wade looked at Wiley and shook his head. Then he opened the door and hopped down. He looked all around the truck and didn't see any signs of anyone else; or an ambush. He noticed the outside of the truck was covered in white and black ash.

  "Where'd you come from?" he asked, looking over the t-shirt again.

  "I ain't gonna lie. We escaped the regime crew and stole a motorcycle. Been driving non-stop. Ran out 'a gas. We came from out in eastern Colorado. Once you get away, they forget about ya, at least it seems so. Can we get a ride, to Grand Junction at least?"

  The man unfolded the blanket, letting it dry in the arid air, and Wade noticed a big "C" logo sewn into it.

  "Where'd you get that blanket?"

  "Oh, down the road, back before the continental divide."

  "Was it a farm? Did you get it at a farm?"

  "Yeah, that was it. It was a small farm, real nice people, and they let us borr'a some food and this here blanket. Then we moved on."

  "Was it the Corsair farm?"

  "Yeah. Think so."

  "Did they have any kids?"

  "No didn't see any kids." Wade looked at him for a moment silently.

  "Maybe we should be gettin' off to Gee-Jay, 'fore it gets too dark and the fires get over here."

  "What do you know about Grand Junction?"

  "They say somethin's happening there. A small society; a community. They have food, beds, work, maybe fuel for that truck. No regime groups there. Sounds promising. Can we get a ride?"

  "You can get a ride. But you'll have to ride in the trailer. We're not picking anyone else up."

  "You gonna leave 'im?"

  Wade glanced up at the cab; Wiley had an impatient expression.

  "Yes. Now turn around."

  "Turn around…okay. No problem." Wade patted him down, top to bottom. No weapons. The other guy, in waiting, must have those, he thought.

  Then Wade walked over and unhitched the trailer door, and held it open. The man had a mopey look. "Alright, if that's all you got," he said. He jumped up into the back of the trailer and dragged the blanket after him.

  "This place have air in it?"

  "There's plenty of ventilation. It might get a little hot. But we're stopping soon." Then Wade shut the trailer door and hitched it.

  CHAPTER 13

  "You put him in the back of the truck?" Phoebe asked.

  "Yeah."

  "He seemed like he was in trouble." Now they were about five miles out of Grand Junction. It was the river Wade was looking forward to; the Arkansas had seemed like a lifeline. The Colorado River.

  "He had one of the Corsair's blankets."

  "No kidding?" Wiley scratched his beard and kept driving.

  "What did he say?" Phoebe said, leaning her head forward into the front seat.

  "He said they gave him the blanket. He admitted it came from the Corsair's farm. It's awful fishy. He said they didn't have any kids. I think his friend was going to ambush us."

  "So what are we going to do with him?" Phoebe said. She seemed to partly, but only partially, concur with Wade. "We're going to let him off at G.J., and be done with him. Probably…" Wade was truly undecided on that matter.

  They could see the semblance of a town ahead. Route 50 ended abruptly at a makeshift wooden gate, and two men stood on either side of it.

  Rather than being ruinous, Grand Junction had sprouted a busy, if rickety, shanty town. The heat shimmered throughout a broad plateau where the town, once burned down and raked for its valuables, had been partly rebuilt. Horses and carts and bicycles plied the flat streets, a scene from a bygone era. Wade saw lots of people milling around and huddling in tents and under canopies, a rare sight. It's the Colorado River, he thought. You can rebuild life around it.

  The truck rolled slowly up to the gate. A pot-bellied man with a beard and a boony hat like Wade's wandered up to Wiley's window. His bulbous cheek betrayed a chaw of tobacco.

  "Got any gas here?" Wiley asked. That was wishful, Wade thought, as if they could "fill up" and head on down to Arizona.

  The man sized up the truck with a proprietary once-over. "That's quite a rig. Where're you coming from?"

  "Wyoming and the Front Range."

  "Got any propane back in the trailer? We could really use some gas here. We're down to mostly wood, and a little hydropower."

  "No, only potatoes."

  "I was hoping you'd trucked in some natural gas, coming from Wyoming." He spat some tobacco juice onto the dry ground. "You won't find any diesel here, or anywhere else for that matter. How many people you got? We're welcome, but food here isn't infinite, you know."

  "Counting a guy we just picked up, seven. But we can haul our own weight. We've got the potatoes (what's left of them, he thought), and other food and water."

  "Well, come on in then. Welcome to River City. It's the same town, believe it or not, without the gas and sundry amenities. So you drove through those fires?"

  "We did."

  "Well you dodged a bullet. We always have our eyes on the horizon. We're lucky in that this is a plateau and not a woodsy town. Otherwise, we'd be done for. Come on in. If you have cash, silver, or some other kind of barter, we have a couple of stores, a boarding house, and a saloon."

  He spat some more of the tobacco juice and stuck his thumb up in the air, and the gate rose up. Wiley jerked the truck into a low gear, and he maneuvered it past the gate and into a vacant lot on the edge of town. Wade could see the Colorado, a deep blue ribbon winding through the sparse aridity, in the near distance. There were piers built along the sides, which indicated some river activity, at least.

  Wiley shut down the engine and stepped down from the truck on to the hard-packed earth. "What do we do now? The tank's almost dry." He looked at the truck sadly, as if it had already been abandoned.

  Wade could see the Mesa and the the ornate tracery of woodsmoke clouds threaded amongst the blackened hillsides. Their own prospects didn't stretch much beyond the ramshackle settlement and the river. He wondered if they'd all split up here. He'd gotten out his backpack; it was time to head south with the river, get closer to Kara.

  "Why don't we pack some things together. Have a look around. Maybe that fella back there is wrong about the fuel outlook."

&nbs
p; Wiley had unlatched the trailer door, and the man inside dropped down to the ground sheepishly, displaying an almost demented grin through his beard. "Obliged," he said, and took the blanket with the "C" on it and wandered off towards the town.

  Wiley set some of the tools and potato crates on the ground.

  "Do you want to come with me?" Wade said.

  "Yes." Phoebe followed him down a hill, toward the river.

  "I'll come back with some food," Wade said over his shoulder to the Santiagos, who had sat down wearily beside the truck on a pile of their luggage.

  The closest spot to the highway on the river already supported a thriving flotation trade. Both Wade and Phoebe had the same idea simultaneously.

  "We'll head south, on the river," she said excitedly, brushing the hair out of her eyes as a breeze came off the baked plains. "Yes siree. We'll catch one of those wooden boats and take it as far as the Colorado goes. Heck, maybe all the way to Mexico…I like Mexico. I love Mexico! Oh I can't wait–I love boats." Wade found her girlish glee infectious, a kind of pioneering happiness amid the stricken landscape.

  They sat down on a piece of grass on the riverbank.

  "There can't be much left of the Colorado in Mexico."

  "But you're going to Arizona."

  "I am."

  "The river will take you into the desert."

  "It flows south into Utah, and it ends up at Lake Powell and Lake Mead, or what's left of those places." Both once giant reservoirs were in an accelerated process of drying up, the last he read. He unfolded the map on the grass. Then a creeping fatigue came over him, and he put the map down and lay back in the grass and put his hat over his head and shut his eyes. Jagged pentagons of red regions sailed across the blackness behind his eyes.

  "You really going all the way to Mexico?"

  Phoebe paused. "Don't know for sure. I'll see what's down there first. Might stop in Arizona. If there's a community there, you know. It's divine, the desert."