Julia hugs the pillow tightly and starts to cry. She never imagined she would experience this kind of devastation or loss in her lifetime. She cries for her mother’s passing and for the death of her old life, her job and her few carefully cultivated friends. The little blue needlepoint pillow is the only frivolous possession Julia has left in the world. Everything else she has ever known has changed or perished overnight. She tries to grasp the fact that her life will never be even remotely the same again.
Julia stares out beyond what was once a stand of pine trees and has a straight, clear view down to America’s sixth-largest lake. It holds thirty-nine trillion gallons of water reputed to be nearly as pure as distilled water. Despite the destruction all around it, the lake itself is remarkably placid, blue and largely intact, except for random groups of fallen trees and bits of debris from the collapsed docks, cabins and homes that dot the shoreline. There is nothing moving, no one else around. Julia heads straight for the water.
The strong downward pressure created by repeated shockwaves has pushed the lake up along its banks and made it muddier than usual around its edges. It will take several days without further catastrophe for the lake level to return to normal.
Julia stands at the edge and scans the second-deepest mountain lake in America. She wades out beyond the downed treetops, past the layer of dust where the water is clear, reaches down and dips her finger in for a quick taste. It tastes dramatically better than her usual bottled water. So she cups her hand and scoops herself a full gulp. One good mouthful and she smiles for the first time in days.
Dana Point, September 7
It has been a few hours since Deuce and Alex left the bomb shelter to forage around Dana Point looking for survivors and supplies. They have seen bodies and parts of bodies and smelled the stench of death everywhere in town. All those early birds who had been out getting gas and running errands were crushed inside their cars and trucks while pumping gas and traipsing through parking lots. Everything in Dana Point has been crushed. There are downed power lines and uprooted palm trees along the streets.
Deuce spots it first.
“Look, Dad, it’s the A and J Market!”
Alex turns and sees that the small neighborhood grocery store has been mostly demolished except for the right front corner where the entrance is. The doors have been blown out and there is just enough room for Alex and Deuce to duck inside under the massive doorframe. The owner of the “A & J Market” had once boasted to Alex that he constructed that doorframe to withstand a magnitude 10.5 earthquake. If he were still alive, he would be happy to know that his design had worked. That doorframe was the only part of the store that remained completely undamaged.
Sudden fierce growling just ahead of them stops them in their tracks. They freeze, but the growling, threatening warnings continue. Alex gestures to Deuce to back out of the doorway. They back out together very slowly but the growling follows them.
As they slink quietly away from the entrance, two dogs they do not recognize appear in the open doorway. As the dogs reach daylight, they withdraw back into the shadows.
“There’s food in there. They’re guarding it for themselves.” Alex and Deuce back all the way out to what’s left of the parking lot.
“Where are all the people, Dad? Is everyone but us dead? Because I’m having trouble believing it’s just you, me, Mom and Samson – and those two mongrels.”
“So am I, Deuce, but there’s a whole big world outside Dana Point. There must be survivors in other places and we’re going to find them.”
“But what if there aren’t any other survivors? What if they’ve all turned into zombies?” Deuce is only half kidding. “What if we turn into zombies?”
“You’ve seen too many zombie movies,” says Alex.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
Alex manages a chuckle. “Yeah, lots we don’t have to worry about anymore. Because we’re survivors and survivors only worry about five things.”
“I know, air, water, food, fire and shelter. You’ve said it a zillion times.”
“Now you know why.” Alex had devoted many hours of introspection to considering what life might be like if it were ever reduced to its simplest, most basic terms. He had frequent premonitions about a major catastrophe like this one occurring in his lifetime, and now here it was. He had wondered how most humans would fare if all of our material possessions were suddenly stripped from us. Would we lose our will to live over the loss of our worldly comforts, or would we find some way to make a new beginning, learning to enjoy our newfound freedom from all the stuff, the excess baggage of our former lives?
Alex was most definitely the new beginning type. He had a printed sign over his desk that read, “There are only six things you really need in life: air, water, food, fire, shelter and love. If you say you need anything else, you are either lying or ignorant about the true meaning of need.”
Alex thought about some of the people he had known during his forty-five years of life on planet Earth, about their bizarre attachments to stuff. When he was in his twenties, he dated a woman named Jane who owned one hundred twenty-two pairs of shoes and an imposingly vast collection of over five hundred salt and pepper shakers she gathered during her worldly travels as a cosmetics mogul. She kept them stored in ornate curio cabinets around the perimeter of her equally imposing formal dining room. That was the least of it. Alex was more disturbed by the fact that Jane owned enough clothes to fill a retail store. Every closet, every storage room, half of her two-car garage and every spare corner of her home was filled with clothes. She had dresses, skirts and slacks hanging from rolling racks, a colorful assortment of bras draped over bathroom and closet doors, panties and lingerie heaped in piles on the floor.
“How can any sane person not feel overwhelmed by this?” Alex thought. He even watched a few episodes of Hoarders in an attempt to understand the psychology of Jane’s addiction. His takeaway was that Jane, like the subjects often featured on Hoarders, had irrational desires to fill empty spaces, not just in her home, but in her cold heart.
Alex stopped seeing her after tripping over one too many clothing piles and convincing himself that poor Jane was far beyond his help. He couldn’t convince her that she didn’t need so many shoes, clothes or salt-and-pepper shakers, and he didn’t have several billion dollars to help fill the empty space in her heart.
He thought about a former coworker, a bearded fat guy named Henry who owned every Grateful Dead live and studio recording ever made, including the rare collectible and autographed CD remix editions. Henry had convinced himself that he needed every piece of Grateful Dead music in existence and used two terabytes of computer storage to hold it all.
People like Jane and Henry were lying to themselves, Alex thought. They wanted far more than they ever needed. By contrast, Alex favored a more Spartan, minimalist lifestyle that was infinitely better suited to their Stone Age existence. He had tried converting Deuce and Jessa to minimalism, with minimal success. Jessa was quite set in her ways and Deuce was in many respects his mother’s son.
Stone Age life did not sit well at all with Deuce. He had grown up with computers and the Internet. His cellphone had become an extension of his left hand, his computer directly linked to his eyeballs and the pleasure centers in his fifteen-year-old brain. Now his cellphone is useless and the Internet is gone, along with his online friends, and he feels deeply lost without them.
“This really sucks, Dad.”
“I know. Don’t count on it getting better any time soon.”
By the time they return to the shelter, Jessa has built a fire in the shadow of their house’s remains using the splintered wood framing as firewood. She cooks canned chili and beans and they each get a plastic plate full of it, including Samson, who eats as if it’s his last meal, the same way he eats every meal.
“Find anything good?” Jessa is stoic.
“Part of the A and J Market. Dad and I tried to get in, but ther
e are two mongrels lording over what’s left of the entrance.”
“Bring them some chili. Maybe they’ll let you pass.” Jessa winks at Deuce.
“Maybe in a few days,” says Alex. “We still have plenty of other places to check out. Who knows what we’ll find?”
“A Gameboy with batteries would be cool.”
“That’s the old cool, Deuce. The new cool is survival. Get used to it,” says Alex.
“You should take Samson on your next trip. He needs exercise,” says Jessa.
“Then he’ll need to eat more. I’d rather keep him here to protect you.”
“I don’t need protection.”
“Okay, but you need a companion.”
“I don’t mind being alone.” Jessa had been alone most of her life. Raised in Southeast Asia by a single mom, she was left to fend for herself from the time she was five years old. By age eight she was selling rice from a makeshift roadside stand near Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam, to help support her mom and younger sister. Jessa could handle being alone. Jessa could handle anything that came her way. That’s why Alex affectionately referred to her as his “Swiss Army knife of a wife.”
Lake Tahoe, September 8
It seems as if they have been hiking narrow mountain roads for hours, but Hannibal and Satin keep up a slow, steady pace. Hannibal has reset her broken arm and fashioned a compression bandage and sling from parts of an old motel sheet. He’s also found her a hickory walking stick she uses with her good arm.
They push onward until they crest a hill and the lake comes into view. This is not some quaint out-of-the-way mountain lake. Lake Tahoe stretches over twenty miles long and nearly twelve miles wide. It is clear blue and majestic and nestled into the mountain surroundings unlike anything they have ever seen.
Hannibal whistles at the sight, “Now that’s a fucking lake.”
Despite her pain, Satin grins at Hannibal. He grins back and shakes his head.
“I once read an article about this place. There are thousands of fish here, and that water is like ninety-nine point nine percent pure. We can drink and fish forever if we want.”
They stand there a long time staring at the lake and surrounding mountains in childlike wonderment. Even with all the trees down and the debris around its edges, it is still incredibly beautiful and scenic. Yet, despite all that beauty, the grim reality of their circumstances is not lost on them.
“God, Hannibal, where the fuck is everybody? Are we the only survivors? Check your cellphone again.”
Hannibal pulls out his phone and swipes the power button. Nothing happens, not even a flicker.
“It’s deader than dead, an expensive paperweight.”
“Mine is useless, too.” Satin frowns at her iPhone.
They continue their lakeside hike heading north along the western edge at the California side. Hannibal knows from his maps that the eastern edge of Lake Tahoe is in Nevada, and they refuse to leave California. Hannibal and Satin would rather die in California than live in either New York or Nevada.
Until now, they have been so focused on the scenery that they haven’t noticed the big change in the sky overhead. Satin looks up first. The sky has cleared and Earth’s derelict moon, now more than a million miles away, is still visible. It appears less than a quarter of its usual size and bears only a faint resemblance to its former shape. It looks like an apple with a huge bite taken out of it.
“Holy shit, Hannibal! What the fuck happened to the moon?”
Hannibal gazes upward. What’s left of the moon is now well above the horizon as early evening settles in. Much of it has been blasted away by the collision so it looks more like a giant circular blob of dust and debris. Many of the smaller chunks of ejecta have coalesced into broken irregular rings where the moon used to be, too small to be attracted by Earth’s gravitational field. Our constant companion, the former subject of poetry and song, as reliable as the sun for more than four billion years, now appears to be leaving us for good.
“Gives a whole new meaning to that dumb phrase ‘over the moon’.” grunts Hannibal.
Chapter 5
Washington, DC, September 8
It’s been five days since The Crash. The President of the United States and everyone in the situation room just before the impact are hunkered down in an underground bunker. The bunker had been built during the Cold War in the 1960s. The Nixon Administration had it reinforced to withstand a nuclear attack. Thanks to more recent upgrades, the bunker can generate its own power and sustain them for up to sixty days, if necessary. Yet it can’t tell them what is happening right outside the White House gates because none of their advanced communications, security or satellite tracking systems have worked since the generator got fried.
The only link to the outside world comes courtesy of two portable shortwave radios. They are based on hundred-year-old technology, but they work like the little engines that could. One is a newer hand-cranked model that needs no electricity and the other is battery-powered. At least the portable batteries still work.
NSA’s Jack Charron and Cyrus T. Levine, of FEMA, both wear headsets and scan the airwaves continuously in search of other shortwave radio operators while the President waits expectantly. The news so far is not good. They had talked to Sam Hayden by shortwave and confirmed that the power grid and satellite communications are down worldwide.
In the hours immediately after The Crash, Charron, Levine and Hayden received sporadic reports of widespread rock storms and powerful earthquakes destroying entire cities, killing tens of millions. Mexico City is gone. So are Hong Kong, Tokyo, Melbourne, Australia and Lima, Peru.
The massive rock storm that hammered the Pacific Rim was never felt on the other side of the world. A few shortwave reports from survivors confirmed only small clusters of humans remaining in Europe and Africa after a series of earthquakes in the 9.5 to 10.5 range leveled most of their cities. Western North America and western South America, along with eastern Asia and eastern Australia, have been completely crushed by an explosive one-two punch from the rock storm shockwaves and resulting fault ruptures.
The pressure wave was followed several hours later by a larger rock storm that rained down lunar chunks along an eight-thousand-mile stretch of the Atlantic Ocean between the southern tip of South America and South Africa. The resulting tsunamis were over eight hundred feet high when they slammed into the South American and African coastlines at six hundred miles per hour and spread destruction and death hundreds of miles inland. Without the early warning systems usually in place, no one saw the monster waves coming except for one lone shortwave operator on the South African coast, who reported on it right up until the end.
It’s been two billion years since Earth has taken so much punishment. The planet’s dominant species for more than two hundred thousand years, Homo sapiens, is in the final throes of its first mass extinction. Despite the draconian measures taken by China and India to curb human population growth, Earth still gained over one billion new mouths to feed in a decade. Now, in just seventy-two hours, all animal, plant and fish populations have suffered almost complete annihilation. It is the grand finale of Earth’s sixth mass extinction. Only this time, to make matters even worse, Earth is losing its moon, as well.
Diablo has knocked what used to be the moon well out of its Earth’s orbit and sent it on a new trajectory, pushing it farther and farther into space with each passing day. The ghost moon’s rings have now coalesced into a short tail that makes it look more like a sickly comet, a tapered grey cotton ball.
It is no longer the steady, reliable, pockmarked companion we have known and gazed at all of our lives. It is no longer the moon we have written countless love songs about and explored up close in 1969. It is no longer controlling our tides or stabilizing the tilt of our axis or acting like a brake on our rotation speed, though it will take at least several hundred thousand years for our speed or rotation to show any effect. Earth’s only moon has been mercilessly hammered and reconfigured
into a ringed, rapidly receding rocky derelict, a ghost of its former self.
Mankind’s only remaining communications link is the handful of shortwave radio operators who briefly become overnight rock stars, though no one will ever see them on TV, read about them on Google, follow them on Twitter or like them on Facebook. Those twenty-first century technological comforts and human social networks have all gone extinct, too, along with billions of users.
Theo Robinson stares grimly at the President. “Still no word from our immediate families, Madame President. Cellular communication is dead.”
“You know what, Theo? Let’s drop protocol and all the head-of-state bullshit. The only thing I’m president of right now is this bunker. Time to focus on finding our families and surviving. Time we venture out to search for our loved ones and see what’s left of the nation’s Capitol.”
Thirty minutes later, President Harrison and her top advisors emerge from the bunker just in time to watch the fading moonrise in stunned silence, surrounded by the rubble left in the wake of the Capitol’s most powerful earthquake ever. The White House is demolished. The once iconic structure, one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, is now nothing but broken gray rubble.
America’s most powerful elected officials and top public servants suddenly look utterly impotent. There are no Presidential motorcades or Secret Service agents to hide behind and no bulletproof limousines to whisk them home. Not a single vehicle is running on Pennsylvania Avenue or anywhere else in the city.
The President and her small band of bunker survivors are forced to split up and search for their families on foot. Jack Charron lives more than a mile away in the Georgetown suburbs and Cyrus Levine has to walk over three miles to Arlington, Virginia. Meanwhile, Washington, DC plunges into complete darkness as the sun disappears below the horizon.
Lake Tahoe
RUNAWAY MOON Page 7
