rachelolivier

I was looking forward to that first night alone in the woods, to the smell of pine and fir and the spongy feel of needles and turf beneath my feet. The car had made it, despite threatening its imminent demise. After setting up camp, I had spent the day hiking with Jake, my four-year old chocolate lab, enjoying the solitude. A couple of deer strayed in our path before bounding off. One chipmunk stopped climbing a tree long enough to bawl us out for being in his territory. Squirrels paused in their hunt for food before moving on to something more promising than a woman and her dog. After five years of being my mother’s sole caretaker, I was more than ready for this break.

No radios or stereos marred the quiet evening song of insects and birds. Dark settled like a mantle over the mountains, the moon and stars the only light gleaming down past branches of trees, black in the indigo dark. Breathing deep and stretching to the sky, I realized I didn’t have to check on Mother tonight. As Jake and I tucked into my little tent, I let go a sigh of relief, releasing tension into the night air.

#

Hot. Heat. Mom. Where was Mom? It was dark. It was light. I couldn’t see. Fire was everywhere. Light was everywhere, blinding me as I called out for her.
“Mom!” I awoke in a sweat, heart pounding. Jake looked up at me and licked my face. My hands shook as I unzipped my sleeping bag and crawled out of the tent.   I shivered from the remembered nightmare, chills rushing over my skin despite the sweat, but I needed the fresh air. Ever since I’d moved back home from Los Angeles to care for my mom, it had been one thing after another, and my first night away I awoke from imagined horrors. I was too used to the real deal. Holding Jake for comfort, I remembered the morning before.

#

    “I’ll put this here, and that there. No, no. Can’t do that. We’ll put that in this over there.” Mom’s soft voice puzzled aloud the maze going through her head. I looked down at the soiled tissue she had so carefully placed in my hand. Tears tried to push through, but I had been through this before. I took a deep breath, dumped the tissue in the trash bin and washed my hands.

    “C’mon, Mom. We have to go to the center, now.” I checked my watch; half an hour to take her to the adult day care center before I went to work. I followed her into the living room and felt the familiar tension in my stomach as I found the room empty.

    “Mom! We have to go now.” I started a circuit of the house, living room to dining room to kitchen to bathroom to bedroom. Jake followed me from room to room, thinking it was a game. I gave him an absentminded pat, trying to swallow my tension. Mom was not here. This was not good.

“Think you lost someone here.” Tom, our neighbor, knocked on the screen, standing on the front step and holding Mother by the arm. Relieved, the most I could give him was a plastered on smile. In the few minutes I’d lost track of her, she’d decided to take off her shoes and dress and had gone outside in her slip. Her child-like baby blue eyes belied the aging wrinkled body that I pulled in through the screen door. I noticed Jake sniffing her. She’d soiled herself again. When between taking her potty this morning and getting her dressed for the center had she had to go again? I glanced at the clock on the mantel and felt my throat tighten, pinpricks in my eyes. It was going to take longer than five minutes to get her cleaned up, dressed, and safely in the car. I was going to have to call in late, again. I felt my world constricting around me.

    Crack. An animal snuffling nearby brought me back to the present, birds singing in the trees and the dark velvet sky just before false dawn. The moisture in the air was cooling to my flushed skin. I sensed Jake beside me, sniffing out the nocturnal smells. The breath I was holding expelled in a second as a bright light pierced the darkness on the horizon.

Incandescence crawled across the skyline, streams of light in varying colors coruscating between land and space as far as I could see in either direction. Intensely brilliant, glorious, and utterly horrifying, it traveled over the mountains. Heart in throat, I wondered if this be the last thing I ever saw.

Creatures of light soared overhead, showing up trees, rocks, and the glowing eyes of nighttime animals. Everything was shadowless in the eerie, harsh radiance. A great roar as if from a myriad throats belted forth and I found myself saying prayers I had forgotten. In a rush, the light swept over me. Hot and piercing, it was bright and blinding. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, I fell to my knees, quaking in fear as I wondered what god had come to pull me apart and look over every facet of my being. I felt the creatures sizing me up, judging me.

Then they were gone.

By the time I was able to see again, the light had traveled over the mountain, the residual glow fading slowly. I began to breathe as the beating of my heart slowed down to a normal rate. I had grabbed Jake’s collar and could barely pry my fingers off, I held him so tight. Overcome with chills, I cowered, holding Jake as he licked my face in confusion. Shivering back into my sleeping bag, the light waited behind my eyes every time I closed them. Was this how people felt at the end of the world? Jake recovered faster, laying his head on my stomach to comfort me as we waited. As soon as the sun snuck a look over the eastern horizon I was packing up my tent and supplies. I wanted to go home.

My car was hot to the touch, laced with strange, sooty markings. Reaching to open it up, I felt a barrier holding me back. Jake refused to come near, his dark eyes pleading with me to come away from the big metal beast. He needn’t have worried. The car wasn’t turning over, not even clicking. The soot markings rubbed off easily, but they were so strange, so alien, it was almost as if they crawled across the surface of my old Ford, making me hesitant to even open the hood. Dad would’ve been proud as I forced myself to check hoses, fluids, carburetor, and the battery, my fingertips feeling burns and shocks at every touch. I reached over to the glove box to take my cell phone out from where I’d hidden it, but the box had melted shut. Once I shattered the now brittle plastic, I found the phone as fried as the rest of the car.

They say that if something happens and you get in a jam to stay where you are and wait for help to come to you. But what if you’re in the middle of a vortex of nothing? No cars, no signal, no people, no way of letting anyone know you need help. Best to start walking, at least, to my way of thinking. I began loading up my pack with as much as I could carry from the car, scrabbling in the back for the leash I knew was in there but seemed to be scurrying from my hands like a live snake. Jake looked at me forlornly.

“I know you don’t like your leash, boy, but it’s just until we get home, okay?” Almost, it seemed as if I could hear him say it was.

The hike through the campground to the main road was almost like any other day hike, except for the preternatural quiet. Too deserted even for the middle of the week in the off-season. Once we hit the highway, it was worse. Not a living soul on the road, though I felt the constant fear of someone watching me, of the predator just over the horizon.

The air was hot and thick, the sun a large, angry orange ball glowering in the sky burning through opaque cloud cover that had crept over the sky while we were still beneath the trees. The wind blowing up the highway carried a sharp, skunky smell of something that had been dead several days. I wrinkled my nose and noticed Jake doing the same.

I trudged along on the side, barely keeping from slipping into the ditch but not wanting to walk in the middle of the road either, too conditioned to the fear of a car zooming over the road too fast to stop, driver zoning out to whatever they had blaring on their stereo, under the hypnotic trance of the road and the music. As my shoe slipped on the damp verge, I felt a twist in my ankle. I stopped to retie my boot extra tight, gritting my teeth and trying to “walk it off,” as much as I could with a full pack on my back and Jake pulling on his leash.

“I am not going to be one of those girls in the horror movies who succumbs to twisted ankles,” I lectured Jake. Thoughtfully, he gave my hand a lick before continuing down the road..

The temperature had dropped, the wind picking up, the clouds getting darker. I wondered how much longer it would be before we hit Jackson, the last small town before the campgrounds. Resting only occasionally, I shared water with Jake, feeding him bits of kibble while I nibbled on a nutrition bar. I finally stopped when I realized the sun had gone down and I’d been stumbling in my sleep. Jake had lain down on the verge behind me and refused to go another step. Finding a small turn out, I pulled out my sleeping bag and as I hit the ground I realized we had not seen another soul all day long.

My muscles ached the next morning, ankle swollen, feet throbbing. It had drizzled sometime that night and Jake had crawled into the sleeping bag with me. He was licking his paws and I did my best to massage them for him; neither one of us was used to so much exercise. By now, the road was beginning to level off, no longer all downhill. The wind and the birds sounded hollow to my ears, as if something were missing. I hoped to hit the gas station and mini-mart on the outskirts of Jackson soon, find out what had happened and maybe use a phone and get home.

All around me were rocky hillsides of pine and fir, and ahead I could see a line of cottonwoods sticking up, smoke lazily rising from the other side, birds circling in the air. As the wind changed it was apparent that the rank odor I’d smelled earlier came from there.   It seemed to take forever to get down to that line of trees, but my nose told me it was getting closer. I hoped that wasn’t where the remembered mini-mart and gas station were, but that was the only place to go, so I kept walking. Shoulders hunched, hands in pocket, jacket zipped up against the unnatural cold, I found myself humming and eventually singing whatever I could remember of whatever lyrics were floating in my head. Camp tunes, show tunes, tunes I’d lip-synched in junior high while dancing in front of the mirror. Eventually, all the songs became hymns.

Finally, as dusk began to grow in earnest, I got down to the level of the trees. They were within 200 yards, in high school a distance I had run in a couple of minutes, and now felt like the longest walk on earth. My blisters were getting blisters from the wet socks inside my boots. My sprain was beginning to wear on me, and though I thought I had grown used to the smell of dead things, it still did not prepare me for the assault once I reached the cottonwoods and saw what was there.

As I rounded the corner on the far end I saw the gas station. Closer was the mini-mart. Both had cars parked around them, and yet were dark in the growing gloom. A sense of foreboding, not helped by the source of the stench, crawled up my spine. A bonfire was going in the clearing between the mini-mart and the line of cottonwoods, roaring like a waterfall in the Cascades. Someone had dug a safety trench around the bonfire and built an earthen ramp up the side so refuse could be lugged up to dump on the fire.

But the fire.

I pulled my sweat jacket up over my nose and mouth as I gazed in horror at the hideous make up of that bonfire, eyes watering in grief as well as from the smell. Birds picked at smoldering lumps of flesh that had not caught in the blaze. I heard Jake whimper as he pulled on the leash to get away. I backed away, not wanting to be touched by any of the flakes floating in the air.

Bonfire. Bonefire. That’s what was before me now. A real live bonefire. Several feet tall, it had apparently been burning for a while by what I could see, though there were also fresh bodies on the top.   Gagging, I found myself thanking a god I no longer believed in that I wasn’t close enough to make out any features. A strong gust of wind blew ashes and smoke towards us, my stomach roiling in disgust.

The cars around the mini-mart were empty, all of them covered with the writhing sooty sigils that had covered my own car. Yet, the door to the mini-mart opened easily, when I went in to investigate. By the smell, it was obvious the power had been out for at least a day or two. No one was around. If I had still lived in Los Angeles, I would have found this place looted by now, but back here on the mountain, there wasn’t a soul; the food in the refrigeration units left to perish. Ice cream had melted into the butter and whipping cream. Warm beer sat next to warm sodas and water. All untouched except for the strange markings on the refrigeration units and across the cash register. Looking more closely behind the counter I also saw burn marks, eerily reminiscent of a human body. I shivered, jaw locked as I could feel bile come back up my throat.

I didn’t want to touch anything with those markings, but practically speaking, I needed food and water and now wasn’t the time to be picky. Whoever had piled those bodies into their funeral pyre still had to be around somewhere. Not knowing how or why those people were there, I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet whoever put them there. Best to take what I needed and leave while I could.
Outside I stopped to use the public phone, until I noticed the strange markings. Jake was pulling at his leash again, desperate to get away. I considered wiping the phone off and using it anyway, but the markings frightened me with the deep visceral fear that an animal might have for fire or death. Pushing past that, I attempted to pick up the handset. Burning hot, I could smell the bakelite and cooking flesh as it singed my hand. Dropping the hand set, I waved my hand in the air and wiped it on my jeans trying to get rid of the burning pain.

“Okay, Jake. Next time I’ll listen to you.”

I wasn’t sure how far I was going to get on a sprained foot with a backpack full of water and packaged food. But I wanted to find some place to stay for the night before dark fell again. Jake and I both needed a place to eat and to rest and I wasn’t sure how long it would be before there was another drizzle, or even rain. The gas station was just as deserted as the mini-mart. Just beyond the gas station, however, there was a mailbox and a dirt road leading away and back into the trees, hopefully leading somewhere. At this point, I didn’t care, as long as it gave Jake and I shelter for the night away from the burning pile of bodies.
Fading rapidly, me, Jake, the light. As the trees closed overhead, Jake and I moved at a snail’s pace, inching along. I tried humming, whistling, singing to keep myself occupied, but in the end I was just plodding along muttering to Jake and myself. I wondered if this was why Mom muttered so much. Maybe, she was just bone-tired. I thought of the grisly “bonefire” and kept walking.

It was almost full dark before we reached the house. Of the square white variety with a wrap around porch and a big picture window to one side of the front door, it was the kind of house that had a basement as well as the two stories I saw before me.

Walking up the steps to the porch I bumped into something; a lantern sitting on the porch in easy reach of the door. The owners must have been true country folk – always prepared. Pulling out matches I lit the lantern and continued on.
The door was ajar, and the wood splintered around the doorknob and on the doorjamb told me it had been forced before I got there; but there was no ominous creak of the porch step or ghostly wind slamming the screen door. If I had been in a movie, there would have been music to tell me if the bad guy or a dead body was on the other side of that door, but this wasn’t a movie and all I heard was Jake panting next to me wondering why I was taking so long to go in.   All the scary movies I had ever seen said not to go into the dark, scary house. Yet here I was contemplating going into the dark, scary house.

The wind shifted at that point, coming from the pyre once more, bringing with it the ashy refuse and leftover smell of charred and burning bodies. Finally, it was the putrid smell of death that chased me in, Jake at my heels whining for his dinner.

That night I did little more than feed Jake, gnaw on my own nutrition bars, sip on some water, pull out my sleeping bag and camp out on the sofa. There was some wood next to the fireplace, so I did my best to make a small fire to cheer us up. It was cold and dark. My feet hurt and I was tired. I figured there was nothing more I could do that night. I had propped a chair in front of the door for some semblance of security, and blowing out the lantern, I watched the shadows play on the ceiling.

I’d had another life once upon a time. Kicked off the traces of the po-dunk town I was from and moved to Los Angeles. Wanting to be an actress, I’d worked easily replaceable service jobs, taken acting classes, and wormed my way into auditions. Life was a string of gym memberships, hairstylists, salon visits, dental work, and dance classes. Then came the name changes, lies about my age, updates to my resume, and the constant recycling of friends as everyone who was anyone flaked out, screwed over those they knew, or went back home.
I’d gotten my fair share of work as one of the city’s many drones in its driving film industry. One day as I stood before the mirror noting the persistent gray hairs and wrinkles from the sun despite my SPF 30 lotion, I realized that after over ten years of this I didn’t have a savings account or retirement fund, I wasn’t getting gigs, and I couldn’t lie about my age anymore. Whether or not I believed in myself as an actor, I was a failure. I knew Mom had been getting forgetful, but it was getting worse. In typical LA fashion, I figured all I needed was a month break from LALA Land. Head back to the Pacific Northwest, solve Mom’s problem, recharge my batteries and come back with more energy.

That was five years ago.

#

A face distorted by fear, screaming and melting, faded away. Warm, moist breath panting into my face finally roused me to the caw of crows outside carrying on with their morning. Jake’s weight on my bladder reminded me I needed to carry on with my own morning.   After years of living in Hollywood, I had forgotten about country quiet. Even living in a small town and looking after my mother there had always been cars, sirens, people. It was rarely completely quiet, not like it was now. No stereo or TV. No electrical hum from clock or computer. Just quiet.

A creak of wood sounded nearby. Jake tensed. Jumping off me he moved to the door and stood staring at it. The knock cracked like a shot in the quiet, starting me off the couch as well, heart pounding.

“Hello!” A gruff voice called. I watched the door being pushed back slightly against the chair.   I held my breath waiting. In this new strange landscape of the world, I wasn’t sure if this intrusion was help or threat. Walking up to the door, I put a hand on Jake’s head not sure if I was comforting him or myself with the touch.

“Hello.” My voice sounded rough as well. Clearing it, I tried again.

“Hi.” I waved, looking through the window curtains. I was relieved and suspicious at once to see another human. He had moved back from the door to a safe distance. What was safe anymore? He waved, grim smile on his bearded mouth. He resembled a bear with his brown shaggy hair and big coat, his eyes a muddy hazel in the dappled sunlight of the morning.

If I’d been in the movies, I’d know he was good or bad by the music, by the script – but this wasn’t the movies or a book or a video or a song. This was real life. I felt my own mouth grimace in return.

Opening the door reminded me again of the pyre as I caught a whiff of the burning dead on the wind. My distaste and unease must’ve shown on my face as I walked out on the porch.

“April.” I stuck my hand out.

“Dan.” The hand that grabbed mine was calloused and rough. He was bigger, taller up close. The awkwardness stretched, not relieved by the social ritual.

“I thought I was the only one alive here.”

“Me, too.” It sounded inane, but what more I could say?

I wasn’t sure about inviting him in, but it wasn’t my home. I looked down at Jake, who after smelling Dan’s hand, gave it a lick and sat down.

“I suppose you should come in.” I stood aside, waving Dan in. “I hiked down the mountain and this was the first place I found where I could crash. No one was here when I got here and—“

I shrugged, unsure how to go on.

“They were here yesterday and they’re on the pyre outside now.” Dan shouldered himself in, moving to the kitchen in the back and the fridge in the corner. Opening the door, he pulled out a six-pack of beer, not even pausing over the sooty sigils covering the door. I felt my stomach churn. Didn’t he even feel the wrongness that the black marks signaled? Dan passed me a beer, catching the look on my face.

“It’s warm. You get used to it.”

“I don’t do beer for breakfast.”

“You do now, or you will by the time I’m done. “ Dan reached into his pocket, pulling out a “churchkey” attached to his key ring. “I got here – lessee – day before yesterday? I was up on the mountain, too, tryin’ to get away.” The pop of the lid on the bottle sounded. Dan shoved the key ring with the bottle opener on it across the table at me. “My truck wouldn’t start. Had the same markings on them that’s on everything else.” He gestured to the appliances in the kitchen, taking a pull on his beer. “But when I got here—“ his eyes watered, and he took a huge gulp of beer. Abruptly he put it down.

“Open your beer.” It was an order. He watched until I reached over and grabbed the bottle opener, opening the beer and politely taking a sip. Warm, it tasted sour on my tongue, but felt a little better going down.

“They were all dead.” Dan said flatly. He stared at the label on his bottle, obsessively picking at the edges.   Sighing, he drained it and reached for another from the six-pack. I found I had been gripping my own bottle and took another drink, gulping it down.

“Everyone of’em. Mike at the gas station. Annie at the mini-mart. People in the store, at the pumps. Kids in the cars. All dead.” Dan looked over and I could see there was more. “Tom who lives here was out back and his wife, Ellen, in bed. Twenty-four souls all told. Probably more. When I was walking around Jackson there were at least two houses that were up in flames that I couldn’t do anything about.” Dan stopped and reached over to give Jake a pet. “Only other person I found alive was ol’ Lee Henderson. He told me if I was one of them aliens he was going to shoot me where I stood and if I wasn’t one of the aliens, he’d shoot me anyway.”

I could tell he was trying to make a joke. My throat grew tight and dry as I thought of the pile of burning bodies out by the mini-mart.

“So you –“

“Didn’t know what else to do. I used to work disaster areas when I was in the military. When you leave dead bodies around you’re just askin’ for trouble. I took whatever would ID them for later, for their families. Built the pyre you saw. Siphoned gas from the cars to get it going. Pumps weren’t working of course.” His eyes were red. I couldn’t swallow and suddenly the beer did seem like a better idea.

“What killed them?” My voice came out a rough whisper.

“Your guess is as good as mine. Anyone even remotely near an electrical appliance was dead, all covered with these same marks.” Dan waved towards the fridge and the stove. One beer wasn’t enough to take in what he was saying. I finished the bottle in hand and pulled the six-pack across the table to me and wondered morbidly if this was the beginning of a nuclear winter. How soon it would be before my hair started falling out. Was I already bleeding internally? A dark abyss yawned before me and I wondered if I should jump in. A wet nose on my bare feet brought me back to myself as Jake sniffed my toes, reminding me he was hungry. I scratched Jake’s ears and liquid brown eyes looked up at me. Finding kibble in my pack and letting Jake out as I got his food and water ready helped bring me back from the teetering edge.

“Why?”

Dan looked a question at me.

“Why them and not us?”

Dan shrugged, a helpless gesture I found infuriating.

“Well – you’ve been here longer. Did you check the emergency radio stations? You’ve worked disaster areas you said? What about calling emergency personnel? Anybody?”

“Nothing is working. Even battery operated stuff got fried. I tried every phone, radio and TV I could find.”

I looked over at the wall phone hanging in the kitchen, just like the phone that hung in the kitchen at home. Walking over I fought the urge to gag as I reached for it. There was a resistance and heat as my hand got closer to the handset, a magnetic force pushing against me. Gingerly I picked it up and held it to my ear. It was warm, but not hot like the public phone had been.

Silence, but not the silence of a dead phone. It was the silence of a live phone that led to nowhere. Hisses and crackles popped on an open end. As I listened I could here them coming closer, crawling through the lines and calling out to me. My breath was coming faster and I could smell burnt flesh. I dropped the handset in its rest and went back to the table, a residual tingle going through my body. I needed to quit trying to use the phone.

I noticed Dan’s hands shaking, finger tips blackened.

“What happened?” I nodded at his hands.

“I dunno. Whatever it is, it’s live and it’s hot. I got a little fried handling all those dead. Found some gloves but they kept getting cooked as well.”

Bile was crawling up my throat and my bladder was reminding me it needed attention. Whirling, I ran into the bathroom I had seen that opened out onto the kitchen.

“Wait—“

I slammed the door, cutting off Dan’s voice. It was too much. I spat into the sink trying to calm my reflux, watching the saliva ooze down the drain as I tried to force down nutrition bars and beer that wanted to come back up.   Peeing helped, until I tried to flush the toilet. Of course.

“You’ll need this,” Dan called through the door. Opening it, I picked up the bucket of water he handed to me and sluiced the waste down the toilet. There was no way my mother would be able to cope in a world like this. I went back into the living room, spurred on by my need to get back to her.

Methodically I went through my pack to check for everything, rolling up my sleeping bag, checking the ties and compartments.

“I have some wipes if you need any.” I pulled out a packet for me and handed one to Dan, like my mother, focusing on the mundane in an emergency.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Dan and Jake both curiously watched my packing process.

“My mother would never be able to deal with this, even if she weren’t – well she just wouldn’t. I have to go back to Barrington.”

“It’s been two days. It will be another two days walking there –“

“I have to go.” I swung my bag onto my back, wobbling on my ankle as I did, and calling Jake over to me. I hoped there’d be soft places along the road for him to walk on.

“At least let me go with you. You don’t know who’s out there.”

“I don’t know you.”

In a world where there were suddenly no people, another person was strange comfort.

We stopped at the mini-mart to raid it once more for packaged foods to carry with us. Jake gamboled about, refreshed from a full night of sleep and wondering at this new picnic we were going on. At first that’s what it felt like as we walked in the morning sun down the road. Like my hike down the mountain, it wasn’t difficult going since we were simply following an asphalt highway to Barrington, but it was long, 60 miles away. If we’d been driving, it would have taken an hour. Relegated to walking, it was going to take a couple of days.   Two days before I had to face up to my failures once again.

“You live in Barrington?” Dan and I’d been walking most of the late morning and early afternoon in silence, broken only occasionally when Jake inevitably found a body thrown from some of the wrecks we came upon. The sun had held, but the clouds looked like they were returning. Occasionally, we saw a car that had fallen in a ditch, or crashed into another car. Most of them had burned into smoldering husks.   Any bodies we found that hadn’t already burned up, we laid out and cremated, pulling aside IDs and hiding them under rocks for later. It was a gruesome duty, but one we felt compelled to do. We’d finally stopped late afternoon to rest, eat what we could, and assess how much further we’d go.
I shrugged and nodded. I wasn’t sure I wanted to explain that I was one more fatality of LA’s movie industry. Home with tail between my legs and nothing but looking after my mother to look forward to for the rest of my life. I fumbled trying to change the subject and reached for an explanation.

“Tried to run away and find my dreams and found nightmares instead. How about you? You from around here? You said something about being in the military?”

“Ran away from home and into the military and my own set of nightmares. Ended up here. Jackson is a lot quieter than other places in the world. I like quiet.”

“It’s quiet now.” I dug the last few chips out of a bag and then wondered what to do with it.   Automatically I crumpled it up and stuck it back in my backpack. Hopeful of a garbage pail somewhere in this new old wilderness we were in, not that there would be anyone to come by and pick it up later.

Brushing myself off, I got up. There was still daylight left and it seemed a good idea to keep going. Jake and Dan both looked at me with doleful eyes.

“Sun’s going to go down soon.”

“No it’s not. Plenty of time.”

“Plenty of time to put up a tent and set up camp before it gets dark since we won’t want to do it in the dark.”

Dan was right, of course, not that I wanted to admit it.

“You really want to get to Barrington that bad?”

“Well, it’s my mother.” I slammed my backpack on the ground more forcefully than I needed to, pulling the tent out and beginning to set it out.   The poles and material kept shifting in the breeze that had come up and I felt my face grow red with frustration.

“It’s already been two or three days. A few more hours won’t make a difference.”

“You could help, you know.” I glared over at him. Nothing felt right. I seethed from the wrongness.

“I’ll feed Jake.” Dan moved over to his pack where he’d stored Jake’s food and then set about making a fire by the side of the road.

An hour later, red, angry, and finally done with the tent, I went to the fire, sitting next to Jake and accepting a nutrition bar crunched up in hot water in a tin mug.

“Cheers.” Dan clinked my mug.

“Nice.” I made a face. I didn’t mean to be so difficult, but I just didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be home, watching TV with my mother, or better yet, in LA, doing my exercises and obsessing over whether or not I’d be getting a call back for a part. I wanted to be young and hopeful again. I took a breath and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t come out a snarl.

“My mother isn’t so good at taking care of herself.” I sipped on the made up stew, not looking at Dan. “What about that guy you ran into yesterday.” It was a grumble, but was the best I could do.

“Who? Lee?”

“Yeah – he chased you off with a gun?”

“Lee lives in his own world most of the time. He’s a Vietnam Vet. Once he moved back home, he decided he didn’t need to go anywhere else ever again.”

“And he thought a gun would help with that?”

“He’s convinced everyone is out to get him. Lives as simple as he can. Chases people off as soon as they cross his property line. I just wanted to check on him yesterday, but he decided I was an alien.”

“Think he saw that light?”

“Might have. He never sleeps anymore, just sits on his porch, gun in his lap.”

“Did you see that light? I suppose aliens could be one way to explain it.”

“I suppose. Or sunspots. Really. Big. Sunspots.” Dan looked over at me hands up wide, trying to joke again.

“You’re trying to get me in a better mood.”

“Is it working?”

I snorted, munching on my nutrition bar stew, giving Jake a little.

“Hey, I worked hard on that, he has his own food.”

“Call this food?”

Dan shrugged.

“Your mother—“

“I’m going to sleep.” I gave the rest of the goop to Jake and slipped into my sleeping bag in the tent. The tent was only meant for one, but could accommodate two. Comfortable or not, I was going to be bunking with Dan and Jake. I wanted to be long asleep before they crawled in beside me.   Instead of sleeping, though, I kept thinking about the light and the creatures that had moved in it like sentient beings. I had felt bright, hot fingers poking and prodding me. What had they found?

#

Late the next afternoon we crested the road that led into Barrington and a smell, similar to the one in Jackson, only worse, wafted over us. Barrington was in a valley surrounded by hills that had at one time been planted with orchards and berry fields. Over the years they had been replaced by housing developments and shopping centers so that now the valley had become a bowl of buildings, half of which were now in flame. The toxic smells of burnt rubber, metal, plastic mixed with scorched flesh, hair and bone hit us full on as we finally looked down into town. Smoke covered the city as fires dotted the landscape.

“Sure you want to do this?” Dan’s hesitation was palpable. More than his hesitation, it felt like an invisible membrane held us back from the town.   Pulsing with negative life, dark light appeared over whole sections of Barrington. My mother couldn’t be alive in that, could she? I felt Jake’s head come under my hand and looked down into his trusting eyes. I wasn’t sure I should take him down into the maelstrom of chaos that spread out before our feet. But, I needed to be there for my mother, make sure that there was at least one thing in my life I hadn’t failed at.

“Anyone down there you might want to check on?” Dan had been awfully concerned about the people in Jackson, but none of them had been family.

“Anyone I cared for I lost a long time ago.”

“You don’t have to come with me.”

He shrugged. On impulse I reached out and grabbed Dan’s hand and together the three of us pushed passed the barrier and walked into the valley.

#

Flames licked every side of mom’s home. The fire had passed to all the houses along the block. Further down I could see that though mostly burned out, some of the houses were still smoldering. I watched the flames flickering over the rubble, feeling like an idiot for even trying. Mom, Aunty Jean, Tom, everyone was just – gone.

I need another life. That was what I had thought last time I was here, last time I had seen my mother, when I had had to call in late again because of Mom. Jerry was kind enough to give me back the grocery checker job I’d had in high school and college. Union, with benefits, I couldn’t afford to lose it. Aunty Jean was going to care for Mom while I took Jake and headed for the hills, literally. The camping trip was supposed help me get my head straight. That morning after getting Mother ready, calling in late, and wheedling the old Ford Comet Caliente into starting, the last real thing I’d done for my own mother was distract her with an underwear ad. She’d nattered happily at it as I drove her to the adult day care center.

Aunty Jean must have been cooking when the light had come over the town, or maybe Mom had remembered briefly that at one time she had cooked and having put a pot on the stove, had left the gas jets open and the building vulnerable to sparks. Logically, I worked it out while my knees buckled, my body reacting while my brain couldn’t. I’d certainly got another life, though not the one I had hoped for. Dan grabbed my elbow, pulling me back.

“C’mon Jake, help me pull April back.”

Once again I had failed.

“April, we have to get out of here. Get up. Let’s go.”

I looked at Dan. Numb.

“We’re dead,” I said flatly.

“No we’re not. Not yet. The fumes here are toxic. We have to leave.”

I could feel him pull me up, grasping my arm and yanking me back along the roads into a jog that would get us out of town more quickly then we had come in. By now many of the buildings had become gutted, though not all. Some stood untouched, tombs to those who were dead inside. Next to us, Jake ran, panting, animal sense overwhelmed by the danger in the smoke and smells of the dead.
The smoke was getting to me, my body still reacting in shock, aching from my pack hitting my shoulders and hips with each jarring step.

“Stop.” I fell to my knees, scraping my hands against the rough asphalt and coughing up smoke and phlegm.

“We have to get out of here.” Dan’s face was strained.

I felt it, too. The same charge that had repelled us from touching anything electrical and that had created a barrier outside of town was building up. Jake was yapping frantically, seeming to sense it more than Dan and I did. I heard a pitch building in the upper registers of my hearing. Survival instinct kicked in. Pushing myself up, I loped behind Dan and Jake, huffing and limping.

My feet felt like stumps of lead; breath coming in ragged gasps before I felt us pass through the membrane that snapped like a rubber band at our passing. Only then did we stop, collapsing on the road where we stood. Jake’s tongue was hanging out. Dan was leaning over, grasping his side, wheezing like an old man. Deep coughs came out of my chest. As we looked back the whole of Barrington was covered in eerie light, suffusing the landscape around it with greens and yellows that were hard to look at. Creatures were crawling in that light, calling to each other with the sound of flames.

Then it was gone, the last of the fires slowly burning out. Once again, we’d been passed over. The corners of my eyes threatened to overflow again, emotions warring inside me.

“God, I hated her!” I blurted out. “And I loved her. It was only supposed to be a few months – get things settled before going back to my acting, my life.”

Dan glanced at me as he pulled his pack off, rummaging around in it.

“I used to tell everyone that I hated people – that I preferred nothing more than the comfort of my own company. Now I wish those people were here.” Dan spoke into his pack, not looking at me.

I heard a pop and hiss of liquid. Looking over, I saw Dan had pulled out a couple of bottles of beer. Streams of suds ran down his hands as he handed me one.

“I brought some in case we might need it.”

Though I needed water more than this, the liquid felt good coursing down my throat. Remembering Jake, I reached around and dug in my own bag to find a bottle of water and a mug, though maybe he’d like the beer as much as we did.

“Com’ere Jake.” Jake looked over at me, eyes red and tongue still hanging out, panting. I wondered what shape his paws were in as I crawled over the tarmac to where he sat, and poured some water in the mug for him. He seemed to give me a grateful look before drinking. Almost, I could hear him say thank you. I scratched behind his ears, glad he was still with me.

“I know we should find a place to camp, but I just don’t see moving very far right now.” I looked over at Dan, who appeared to be systematically going through his pack again while sipping on his beer.

“There’s that turn out just a little ways up the road, remember? We can camp there, rest up before we get back home.”

Home. What was home?

“I mean Jackson.”

Had he heard me?

“Here, you might need this.” Dan handed over a slim object. I got up and stumbled over to take it from him. Light, slim, white paper with something rolled in it.

“A joint.” I was nonplussed. “We’re sitting here watching Rome burn, the end of world as we know it, and you’re handing me a joint.”

Dan’s raised eyebrow was his only acknowledgment to my R.E.M. reference. He shrugged as he lit up, passing me matches, and taking a deep drag.

“If not now, when?”

A bubble rose up my throat. My mouth moving uncontrollably, lips twitching wildly and out it burst.

“Ha!” Laughter sang through my throat. Big, bright belly laughs, small giggles, followed by extremely unseemly snorts. Pain released in a volley of feral glee.

“Gonna smoke that?” Dan chuckled at me.

That night we did more than talk.

#

Some of us survived. The odd person passes through, and like Lee, Dan, and I, they’re a peculiar bunch. Lee sometimes comes by the old mini-mart, rails at the aliens and then goes home. We all have our theories: nuclear explosion, aliens, sunspots, God. I remember that light, the beings I saw and what I felt.

Sometimes I think the ones who died are the lucky ones.

Nothing electrical has worked since that day – not in the conventional sense. We’ve figured out different ways of doing things, adapting ourselves to this new world we now inhabit.

A brown curly head popped up over the kitchen table, brown eyes peering at me, wooden toys clutched in eight-year-old hands. Under the table, an old chocolate lab lay keeping the boy company.

“Jake says you’re thinking too loud, Mom.”

I smiled as I finished slicing the pickles onto the old kitchen plates. The square white house had become our home after all.

“Tell your father supper is ready, Mark.”

A distant look came into my son’s eyes as he passed the message to Dan. A radio was something that my son had never heard of, though he could communicate like one over distances like this. I watched Mark’s face change as he began to receive a message back.

“He said he’s coming.”

I remembered the tail end of a Rolling Stone song, one I hadn’t heard in over ten years.

“You can't always get what you want
    But if you try sometimes you just might find
    You get what you need.”

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