by C.L. Bevill
Chapter 3
Not Alone…Exactly…
The fog lasted until the next day, or so I thought. When I woke up the next day in my very own bed, I still had my parents’ wedding rings clasped in my hand. I was hungry, and my body ached from the miles of bike riding. At the same time I realized that I smelled bad. I even discovered something interesting. The water faucets still worked. I knew the electric water heater was as dead as everything else, but cold water did just fine. Did I take advantage of it? Oh yes I did. I was ripe.
I had a bath in a dark interior bathroom with only a candle for a companion. I even used a little bubble bath. It wasn’t the same in cold water, but I smelled like freesia instead of body odor. Then I dressed in my own clothing and dried my hair with my own towel. It was strange. I was at home, by myself, not for the first time, but I thought perhaps for the last time.
I had hard thinking to do. I could live, or I could die. I was alone, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. There were animals, and there might be other humans like me, but I had yet to see them. I had to…hope. But hope was a fleeting emotion, and I didn’t know how slender the strand was that I was hanging on by.
I stayed at my home for three days. I thought about the new world I was living in now. I had no electricity and no ability to make any for myself. The only food I had was canned and the fruits that were yet unspoiled in the local supermarket. It turned out that apples and oranges were really long-lasting. The winter was coming, and I wasn’t sure if I was prepared to rough it.
I thought there was only one thing to do. I needed to head south. Just like the birds. South, where winter wasn’t so strenuous, and I could survive without excess stress. Maybe Los Angeles or San Diego. But the thing was that I was going to have to hoof it the entire way. That, or I could go retrieve that Schwinn. Of course, there was a bicycle shop not a mile away, and the prices seemed to be right lately. (Big fire sale! Low demand! Stacked inventory!)
I checked my friends’ house and found what I dismally expected. There was a neat row of stud earrings in Cherie’s bed along with an oversized Grateful Dead t-shirt and Hello Kitty underwear. Kady left her charm bracelet and flannel jammies that seemed too warm for late summer. I decided against riding the bicycle to see about my uncle and my cousin. In my heart of hearts I knew that it was just as likely that they were gone like everyone else. The utter disappointment that would have blasted over me when I saw what few items were left that represented their lives, would have killed what was left of me.
I was numb. I thought the fog had lifted, but I didn’t have a clue how wrong I was. I packed for a trip. I checked the map and decided that San Diego sounded like a nice place to spend the winter. It was about 900 miles on a bike that I would have to pedal every inch of the way. I left Springfield one sunny morning in August, not even knowing what day it was. I had lost count and had no way of figuring out what date it was.
I took some of my clothes and my parents’ wedding rings which I hung on a necklace around my neck. I stopped by a gun shop and bought bullets for the rifle. Then I set up coke cans in the lot beside the gun store to practice. It was a good thing that I did that because I couldn’t get the gun to shoot. I went back into the store and got more bullets. Same result. I went back into the shop and got a pistol, a Glock by its name, and the correct ammunition for it. After awkwardly loading the unfamiliar weapon, I tried to fire it and found that it didn’t work either. I tried a shotgun next, but I wasn’t really surprised at the outcome. Nada.
So I went back into the gun shop again and went low tech. I got a crossbow and a box of bolts. It took me a solid hour to get a good handle on how to use the weapon. Pulling the draw of the crossbow took more effort than I was prepared to give. In the end, my shoulders hurt and my fingers burned with repeated snaps of the string. I did manage to hit within a few feet of my targets though. Despite the fact that it was only worth one shot before I would have to struggle to reload it, it was better than nothing. Then I decided I should have something else.
With that I went back into the gun shop and got several knives. One hunting knife was attached to my waist. One was fixed to my boot. A third went into my backpack. I was starting to feel like a female Rambo, but I didn’t have a war to fight. (And no, I didn’t have any baby oil to smear over my nonexistent bulging muscles.)
I stopped to look around the shop for something else and didn’t even realize that I was specifically looking for it until I thought of my dream. The dream I’d had where I was fighting with a sword and searching for my father. But this shop didn’t have swords, and I pushed the thought away.
Even with aching limbs, I wanted to leave Springfield, so I did. I pedaled past empty cars and emptier parking lots. I passed a mall that looked like a haunted castle; a single security car had plowed into a light pole in the middle of the front parking lot. By the time I got on Highway 126, I was sweating and not just from the exercise.
It was that the world was so empty. It was so the same as it was before, but it was so different. The normal noises were gone. I could hear birds and sometimes insects, but little else. Even the wind had vanished on this hot, desolate day. By the time I got to Fern Ridge Reservoir, I was panting with exertion. I wanted so desperately to be rid of the city. I wanted to be away from what should have been normal but was no longer.
Then, of course, something else happened. The reservoir was on the north side of the highway. In a few months the Army Corps of Engineers would have been draining it for winter. Not that that was going to happen any longer. At the moment, its greenish-blue fingers still reached almost to the highway. The marshes that surrounded its edges were still bountiful with flora. I even saw a loon.
Then I saw the Loch Ness Monster. The loon saw it too and took off for friendlier climates. Pretty smart bird.
I stopped my bicycle and let it fall to the highway as I stared. I was so frozen with amazement that it didn’t occur to me to hide. I’m not sure how big she was, and I assumed it was a she because she had two little baby Loch Ness Monsters with her. Monsterettes? They played in the shallows of the reservoir, and I saw them catch a few fish. The larger one bellowed happily when one of her babies made a successful catch.
I knew that they weren’t really Loch Ness Monsters. My mind struggled to remember the name of the most logical conjecture of the origin of lake monsters. The popular theory was that it was a dinosaur holdover that managed to elude all of mankind’s scientific endeavors. A plesiosaur or something like it. It was an extinct ocean reptile with paddle-like limbs, a long flattened body, and the classic tail out of a hundred blurry photographs. That is how I would have described the animals in front of me.
This one wasn’t extinct. Neither were her two babies. If there were people about, I supposed they would have called her Fernie for Fern Ridge Reservoir. But what the heck did I know?
They weren’t interested in me, and later, I discovered I was grateful because the crossbow probably would have affected them like a buzzing mosquito. The mommy, at forty-some feet in length, would have swatted me like an annoying insect. After a while, they waddled into the deeper portions of the lake and vanished from my view.
I got back on the bike and rode even harder than I did before. Fourteen miles later, I was still shivering. Once I had read an account of a pioneer exploring the wilds of North America. The account said that a man was just as likely to be killed by a bear, mountain lion, or a pack of wolves as by hostile Native Americans. In that age, bears, mountain lions, and wolves were prolific. I wondered what the explorer would have made of Fernie and her two offspring.
I stopped to consult my map, and according to the mile marker I had passed, I was supposed to be in the middle of a small town. I looked up and found that the town was gone. Absolutely, undefinedly, incomprehensively gone. Instead, an emerald green swamp bordered the edge of the road, and the asphalt of the road was ragged as if something had torn it away in great chunks. I didn’t see any sign of human population. Nor did I see any
sign of animal population. Abruptly, there was a strange haunting call that echoed through the moss-laden trees and crept through the murky, lily pad-filled waters. It repeated twice and then went silent.
It sent a shiver of emotion down the entire length of my spine, and I sped through the area, working the pedals of the Schwinn as hard as I could. By the time I crossed the Siuslaw River long miles later, the road had returned to normal, and I started to pass the odd home again. Homes became more frequent; most had docks on the river. Twilight was settling on the world, and I picked a house at random in which to spend the night. I kept dreaming of that peculiar lingering cry, and it seemed to circle the house I slept in as if it were searching for me.
I had found an interior room without windows and laid out my sleeping bag there, blocking the door with a chair against the doorknob. In the morning, I exited the house hesitantly and discovered strange three-toed footprints that circled my bicycle and then led away. I kept the crossbow across my shoulder where I could reach it easily.
By the end of that day, I had reached the Pacific Ocean where I planned to turn south. I could have kept on I-5 from Springfield, but I loved the ocean, and if I had to ride my bicycle the entire length of California, then I was going to have something pretty to look upon. Besides, I didn’t have anything better to do. (Did I want to mention that something was drawing me to go that way? Something that made me feel both excited and dismayed. No. I didn’t want to mention that.)
Once I got on Highway 101, there was the little problem of the Siuslaw River Bridge. Pedaling through the tidy little coastal city of Florence kept me occupied enough until I reached the river again and the old bridge that once spanned it. Well, put frankly, half of it was gone. I rode to the edge and examined the end. It looked as though it had been sheared away with a very sharp knife. I looked out to sea and thought, Or a very large sea animal with very sharp teeth who thought an old art deco bridge was just the thing to eat on a newly born day.
In any case, in order to head south, I had to find a way across. There was a plethora of boats in the area near the bridge. I borrowed a rowboat, pointedly ignoring the little outboard engine, loaded the Schwinn, and did it the hard way. Rowing a third of a mile might sound easy but it wasn’t. In addition to the rowing, I kept looking around the water to make sure I didn’t look like a tasty treat to the local, new marine life. Of course, I didn’t know what I was planning to do if something did take an undesired interest in me. Blow a raspberry and row like my tail was on fire? Shoot a bolt in their general direction and tell them about Fernie? Either sounded good.
I sighed with relief when I got safely to the other side. I sighed even more when I got my bike up to where the road started up again.
As I continued my journey, the days slipped a little into the fog that surrounded me. I longed to hear a human voice. I longed to see something that gave me a sign that I wasn’t alone any longer, that I couldn’t be the only one who was left in a world that threatened to kill me well before I could understand what had happened.
Some days I only rode a little ways; I kept finding my way onto the beach. The sands that varied from white to gold and the sharp smell of the sea spray had a healing power that held sway over me. Although I was alone, on the beach I wasn’t lonely. I spent one night in Reedsport. The next night I slept among the regal sands of the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. The wind kept me company and lulled me to sleep.
I think I was waiting for the weird to happen again. That’s what I called it. Unicorns, Fernie, disappearing human beings, vanished towns and bridges, swamps that were probably not there before. It was the weird. It had happened, and I fully expected it to happen again. To be perfectly precise, there was a feeling I had as if I knew something was about to happen again. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
The third day from Florence, I was almost to North Bend riding industriously on the Schwinn. My butt had developed calluses, and I had a profound respect for people who had rode long marathons on bikes. I was still in that fog, half in shock, not able to think about more than getting my legs to keep moving the way they were supposed to move, and the fact that there wouldn’t be any more bike races didn’t faze me the way it should have. The sun was high above me and slightly to the rear when I saw a shadow cross over me. It moved swiftly, there one second and gone the next.
In that moment I thought, Airplane. It’s the shadow of an airplane. Oh, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even have time to stop. I leaned slightly forward and something raked my back as it tipped me upside down on the asphalt. I hit the hard surface with a grunt and a scream. The crossbow skittered across pavement. Then without hesitating, I scrambled for the side of the road and the protection of the thicket of scrub pine.
I didn’t stop until I was so deep into the thicket someone would need a treasure map to find me. One knife was in my hand, and I couldn’t remember reaching for it. My back burned, and the cry of something angry filled the day. Even through the thicket I saw the movement of something as it swooped past. It circled twice and then flew away. I saw its indistinct shape and trembled.
My first stop in North Bend was to a pharmacy. I had to find a mirror to look at the scratches on my back. Four parallel marks raked down between my shoulder blades, and despite their ragged appearance, they didn’t seem to need stitches. There was no way I could have done anything about that. I practically took a bath in hydrogen peroxide and used a length of two-inch white gauze to wrap around my body several times before gingerly pulling on a new t-shirt.
My second stop in North Bend was to the library. Unfortunately, the library was all computerized, and it took me a while to find the book I wanted. It was in the fantasy section. It was a book on mythological creatures. After searching through the pages of the book, I came to the conclusion that the critter that had taken a swipe at me was a gryphon. Traditionally, the gryphon had the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. I didn’t get a great look because I had been too busy fleeing for my life, but the lean new version seemed a lot creepier. The wings seemed a mile wide and the streamlined body half the size of a modern lion. The sharpened beak appeared as though it could cut through a full suckling pig without effort.
Ignoring the burning pain that continued in my back, I found a notebook in a librarian’s desk. Detailing my experiences, starting with the unicorns and where I had seen them, seemed important at the moment. I included the swamp with the funny three-toed thing that had trailed me to the house on the river. Fernie was put in there and her two babies. The last entry was the gryphon. I drew rough pictures and indicated what the situation had been.
I was just like Captain Cook and his ship, the Endeavour, except I didn’t have a ship. I had a Schwinn, and I wasn’t sure if anyone was left in the world who would appreciate my meager efforts. But it gave me something to think about.
Hoping that the gryphon had a limited hunting area, I left North Bend quickly. Highway 101 moved away from the coast for a few miles as it passed through Coos Bay, Millington, and a few wide spots in the road. I looked over my shoulder often, scanning the skies, but I never saw the gryphon again.
Further down the road, Bandon was a nice little coastal town even if its population had vanished. The bridge that crossed over the Coquille River was whole even if little dragon like critters the size of pigeons flew over the tallest supports. They didn’t seem interested in me. I think I was too big. They were after the fish in the river.
On the edge of collapse, I found a bed and breakfast inn on the south side of the river that overlooked the old and new lighthouses. I ate about three bites of a cold canned meal and drank a little bottled water. For some reason I wasn’t hungry, and my stomach rolled at the thought of eating more. When I was done I went out onto a wide veranda that looked out over the Pacific Ocean and marveled at the incredible sunset. Mentally documenting all the colors of the clouds above the setting sun, I didn’t realize something else was happening.
Off to th
e south were a series of ancient sea stacks that jutted from the turbulent waters. The rock was being slowly eroded away by the endless ocean. Further down the beach were the shapes of more rocky outcroppings that protruded from the ocean floor. On the highest hill that overlooked the outcroppings, was a bonfire.
It took me a moment to realize that I was looking at a bonfire. It was a controlled fire contained in some kind of pit. I couldn’t see if there was anyone there, but the fire itself was the indicator that called to me. I believe that my heart ceased to beat for a count of ten seconds before it roared back to life.
My first instinct was to run for it, to find the person who had created the fire before they slipped away. My second instinct was to check to see if I was seeing things. I rubbed my eyes, blinked several times, and found that the bonfire was still there. My third instinct was to question whether one of the new animals might have made this thing.
And there was that feeling inside me. In my excitement to see another living human being, I ignored it completely. It said something bad was about to happen, but I shoved it down inside of me where I didn’t have to listen to it.
But I collected my crossbow and loaded it with a bolt. I checked to make sure my knives were accessible. Then I went for an evening stroll on the beach. So to speak.
The fireflies came next. As soon as my foot touched the sand, they whirled up and around me, a great cloud of little bright lights that glowed brilliantly. They circled me and buzzed past me, a seemingly organized group of relentless animals. Fireflies? They were and they weren’t, and they jittered incessantly at me. I swiped at them, but they didn’t seem to want to bite me. They swirled about for a long minute and then shot off to the east in a line of bright twinkles. One last one buzzed directly at my face, and it sounded as if it were scolding me. Then it blasted off after its comrades.
I looked at the bonfire longingly, suddenly shaking in my Skechers. I was afraid of disappointment. The closer I got, the more I was certain it was manmade. I climbed the bluff following a well-worn trail and breathed heavily with exertion. I felt hot and anxious as if something was pulling at me.
Twenty feet from the fire a shrieking let go as if a thousand people started to simultaneously cry out at my presence. I twirled around, but I could only see the shadows created by the fire. I yelled, “Who’s there?” and winced at the sound of my voice. The shrieking died away, and there was only the crackling of burning wood.
I held the crossbow up, ready to aim at whatever menace would appear to me next. The man who had built the fire yelled horribly as he launched himself at me from out of the darkness. I had an impression of tangled blonde hair and scorching blue eyes that had no amount of humanity left within them. He knocked the crossbow from my hand with one of his. I was trying to twist away when his other hand, knotted into a grim fist, connected with my jaw and made the world go away.
