RUNAWAY MOON

by Howard Brian Edgar

  Using his long legs and quick strides, he reaches the ridge well ahead of them. The first thing that hits him is the change in the air. It’s gone from clear and crisp to salty, damp and ominous. From here he can smell the ocean. It almost makes him forget why he came, the garden. He closes his eyes briefly to fight back the nausea that hits him simultaneously with the salt air.

  Deuce opens his eyes and spots the clearing and their makeshift rectangular garden, where tiny sprouts of deep green have erupted from the moist soil at two-foot intervals. To his utter surprise, the potatoes, spinach, kale and green beans – have all taken. So has the weed.

  “Guys, check this out!” Deuce yells, points toward the garden.

  Eric and Donnie reach him first. The three of them stare together, slack-jawed, at the sturdy little buds poking from the soil, barely a few inches tall and pushing skyward. They have defied the odds after being planted in tainted soil with little sunlight and scant hope for success. Yet, here they are looking strong and healthy and succulent in their neat little rows. Against nearly impossible odds, they appear to be thriving.

  “This is epic,” says Eric. “We should thank Mateo for tending it.”

  “We should thank Mother Nature for her survival skills,” says Donnie, “especially that last row.” He refers to the marijuana row.

  Just then, Alex and Jessa reach them, breathless.

  “We just saw Mateo and his family loading their raft. Looks like they’re leaving tonight,” says Alex. Then he spots the garden.

  “I can’t believe this.” Alex turns to Jessa shaking his head. “I can’t believe he planted my weed, too, and we have to leave it all behind.”

  Jessa reaches into her thigh pocket, removes a large see-through plastic zip-lock bag, which she holds up proudly. “Not all of it.” She walks over to the garden and squats over it like a seasoned rice picker. She opens the bag, sets it on the ground, then begins gently uprooting the sprouts one at a time and placing them, with their roots and small clumps of attached dirt, into the bag.

  Alex and the three boys watch her fill the zip-lock bag with two or three sprouts each of kale, spinach, green beans, potatoes and marijuana. She zips it closed to seal in the moisture and stands with a self-satisfied smirk. “Must replant in a few days or they die.”

  “Way to go, Mrs. Jacks,” says Eric. “They’ll do well up on Monument and we’re only one day away.”

  “Yeah, way to go, Mrs. Jacks,” mimics Alex.

  Deuce is too nauseated to speak, afraid if he opens his mouth, he will vomit.

  By the time they return to the beach, the Guerrero families have already shoved off and disappeared from Emerald Bay. Deuce imagines them crossing miles of South Lake Tahoe on their raft and wonders if he will ever see his friend, Mateo, again.

  Deuce had grown to like Mateo’s family. Even Diego, who had once aimed a loaded gun at Samson and threatened to kill him, had grown on Deuce, mostly since the four Jakes burned at the funeral pyre. Diego’s anger seemed to evaporate after that. Now, the Guerreros are gone. His friend, Mateo, is gone.

  Much to Deuce’s relief, his nausea is gone, too. The salt air has not yet descended from the ridge and the air at lake level is not assaulting his senses. His nausea turns into an overwhelming sense of sadness and loss. How much more bad news or impending doom can he take?

  He busies himself helping Alex, Jessa, Eric and Donnie, his last remaining friends, load the raft with food and supplies, whatever the five of them think they can haul up a ten thousand-foot mountain. Whatever they can fit inside two backpacks and a sports duffle bag taken from the community supply dump will have to suffice for their trek across the lake and a two-mile hike up to Monument Peak.

  By Dusk, all four of the remaining rafts are loaded with provisions. Alex divides his remaining seeds among the four groups while Jessa shows them the plastic bag filled with seedlings. Samson follows her closely as she goes from raft to raft with Alex and Deuce showing everyone proof that the seeds work.

  “Kale, spinach, potatoes and green beans,” says Jessa.

  “We can try growing our own wherever we settle,” says Alex.

  “Turn and loosen the dirt before you plant, then keep them lightly watered.” Deuce can’t help thinking that some of those seeds will never get planted. Worse, that some of the survivors will never reach their destination. Sam Hayden interrupts Deuce’s thoughts, approaching with his right hand extended. Even in the diminishing light, Deuce can see the redness and tears in Sam’s eyes. Deuce accepts his hand and gives it a firm shake.

  “I miss you already, Professor Jacks.”

  “Miss you, too, Professor Hayden.” Deuce tears up thinking about Professor Hayden being seventy years old, the only senior citizen at Emerald Bay, not to mention his dad’s hero and the grandfather figure Deuce never had. Now he might never see him again. Just like Mateo and his family. Just like Deuce’s buddies from school back in Dana Point.

  Sam turns to Alex, extends his hand again. “Quite the boy you’ve got, Alex. Keep him close to you, away from the ocean, and he’ll do great things.”

  “You know something I don’t know?” Alex shakes his hand.

  “It’s just a feeling. Call it scientific intuition,” says Sam.

  “I wish you’d reconsider Monument Peak. Two miles up, life in the clouds, closer to the stars, you and Julia would probably love it.”

  Sam takes Alex aside, practically whispers. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t think my old legs could make the climb. So we’re going east to Artesia Lake. Maybe Walker Lake beyond that if I can negotiate the mountain passes.”

  The doubt, resignation and sadness in Sam’s voice are unmistakable.

  Alex cannot let a friend and his only living hero go without a fight. If Sam has an intuition about Deuce, he should stick around to see if he’s right.

  “We’ll help you, Sam. Deuce and I will be your crutches. Eric and Donnie said the climb is long but not steep. It’s about an hour from base to peak if we take it slow. You can make that. We’ll do it together, Sam. Rachel and Julia will help, too.”

  There’s a sudden commotion nearby. Deuce jumps up and down, waving his arms to get everyone’s attention while Samson leaps about, barks at Deuce’s side.

  “Everyone! Listen! We’ve already lost eight people. If we all go our separate ways now, then there’s no community. Without each other, we’ll lose everything we have left to live for. Ankur? Hannibal? Sam? Think about it.”

  Eric and Donnie stand beside Deuce nodding in agreement. “Donnie and I grew up in the shadow of Monument Peak. We know every rock, bush and stream on that mountain. It’s over ten thousand feet above sea level. We know the easiest way to the top.”

  “Enough resources to support all fourteen of us,” adds Donnie.

  “Seriously, it’s our best chance to survive,” implores Deuce. “I know it is.”

  Ankur turns to Meg. “So, what do you think?”

  Meg scans the faces of the others then sets her chin. “I think the boys are right. We’re going to Monument Peak. Julia? Rachel? Satin? What do you say?”

  “What time does this armada leave?” asks Satin.

  Deuce looks from Alex to Jessa, expecting them to answer for him. Instead they just smile back at him and say nothing. It’s his decision.

  “We leave tonight.” Deuce already knows there is no way he will sleep peacefully one more night in Emerald Bay. He doubts the others will either, now that they know the ocean could break through the fissure and flood the lake at any moment. If they wait until morning, he will lie awake all night waiting for that sickening odor of salty sea air to reach him like an invisible tidal wave creeping down from the ridge, or that telltale roar of the Pacific Ocean gushing out into Emerald Bay and poisoning the lake with acidified saltwater.

  “We’ll cross the lake together then dump the rafts and walk the remaining two miles to the Monument trail base,” announces Eric confidently.

  “Count me in,” says R
achel with a supportive nod from Julia.

  “Us too,” adds Hannibal.

  “So what the hell are we waiting for?” asks Satin.

  It’s just before Dark when they shove off into the chilly water of Emerald Bay. Alex, Jessa, Deuce, Eric and Donnie take the lead. They’re in luck. The bay is remarkably calm, almost glasslike except for the occasional ripples when a trout breaks the surface. Rachel, Julia and Sam are right behind them followed by Hannibal and Satin on the tiniest raft.

  Meg, Ankur and Lily and Mia bring up the rear, with Samson guarding the little girls protectively. It takes several tries before Ankur and Meg synchronize their oars well enough to propel the raft forward. They fall behind the others.

  “I’m glad you decided to come with us,” says Meg.

  “Hard enough rowing this thing straight with two adults,” says Ankur.

  By the time they reach the mouth of Lake Tahoe, they find a good rowing rhythm and catch up with Hannibal’s raft. As they pull even, they notice that Alex and Sam have also pulled even, leading them in a tight cluster of two pairs. They are so focused on guiding their rafts toward the eastern shore of South Lake Tahoe that they fail to notice the lake level rising beneath them.

  Chapter 18

  Lake Tahoe

  Sam Hayden is the first to notice. As they approach the eastern shore, he spots several smaller felled trees bobbing gently on the surface of the lake. Even in the dim starlight, he can see that the beach has disappeared. The water is lapping at the top of the embankment. The scene looks nothing like it did during their first voyage when they circumnavigated the lake, checked water levels and confirmed that the lake must have been tilted by a major tectonic plate shift.

  The shoreline in front of him now looks completely different. Sam squints into the darkness trying to gauge the water level rise when a sudden rapid upwelling beneath their raft throws him off balance, nearly toppling him overboard. He catches himself just in time.

  Deuce feels it, too, drops to his knees to maintain his balance. The sensation is like being on a liquid elevator rising rapidly through a twenty-story building. It’s not the only thing that’s rising. Deuce’s nausea is back with a vengeance. He lies facedown, holding firmly onto the raft’s timbers, and closes his eyes for just a few seconds, hoping the sick sensation will pass. It’s too late. Unable to stop the heaving contents of his stomach, he vomits over the side of the raft.

  “You feel that?” Alex yells to the others, realizing that everyone has suddenly stopped paddling and that a strong invisible current is pushing all four rafts swiftly upward and forward. They are being driven straight toward the embankment.

  There’s hardly enough time to react. They lay down their oars, stay low and cling to their rafts to avoid falling overboard as the current drives them relentlessly forward toward land.

  “What’s happening?” Meg sits cross-legged in the center of her raft holding Mia and Lily tightly to her chest with Samson at her side.

  Ankur lies facedown near the side of the raft and dips his forefinger into the lake. He licks his finger, tastes the salt. The answer is painfully obvious as he spits it out and wipes his finger dry on his nanotech clothing.

  “The lake is filling with ocean water.” Ankur suspects a submerged fissure under the lake or a burst from the seepage area Deuce found on his way down Sugar Pine.

  There’s less than a hundred yards separating them from land as the water level continues rising unabated. Fourteen survivors face forward and steel themselves for the sudden jolt when their rafts hit the embankment.

  Deuce, grateful that he followed his gut instinct to leave Emerald Bay so quickly, is still heaving over the side of the raft. When there’s nothing left in his stomach to come up, the dry heaves take over, feeling every bit as nasty.

  “Brace yourselves!” Alex spider-crawls backward away from the front of the raft, grabs the large duffle bag filled with provisions and hugs it like a body pillow while Jessa slides to the other side and follows suit. Donnie and Eric maintain death grips on either side of the raft and their backpacks.

  They are only seconds from crashing when a sudden upwelling lifts the first two rafts completely up and over the embankment. Deuce feels as if he’s surfing a giant invisible wave that’s about to come crashing down on dry land. Instead of the sudden jolt they expect, their rafts glide gently to a halt on the receding water just as they reach land.

  “Let’s move it!” Alex pulls Jessa to her feet, grabs the duffle and jumps quickly off the front of the raft. Donnie and Eric, wearing backpacks, and Deuce are right behind them. They hit the ground running. The raft carrying Rachel, Julia and Sam lands a few feet away. Sam stumbles badly as he steps off the raft. Julia and Rachel catch him just in time to help him regain his balance.

  Hannibal and Ankur have it far less easy as their rafts slam headlong into the backs of the first two. The sudden stop sends little Mia hurtling from Meg’s grasp head first into the cold water. She surfaces briefly, gulping air, fighting to stay afloat, but she cannot swim. As she slips back into the murky depth, Meg pushes Lily into Ankur’s waiting arms and hits the water like a human torpedo. With two powerful strokes, she reaches Mia and pulls her quickly to the surface. She holds the little girl in her left arm and strokes hard with her right until they reach land just a few feet from Alex’s raft.

  Hannibal and Satin grab their belongings and leap from the front of their raft onto the back of Rachel’s. A few more strides and they reach land just in time to pull Meg and Mia away from the water’s edge. Ankur holds Lily’s hand tightly, bends down until he’s eye level with her.

  “Follow me, Lily. If I say jump, you jump, okay? If I say run, you run.”

  “I can do that,” says Lily bravely.

  Ankur pulls her to the front of their raft. “Jump!”

  They jump together onto the back of Alex’s raft.

  “Now run!”

  With Ankur right on her heels, Lily races off the front of Alex’s raft onto dry ground. He scoops her up like a rag doll and breaks into a run with Lily clinging to his neck. Meg follows them, picking up Mia and running as fast as she can away from the rising lake, Samson right on her heels.

  In all the hasty commotion, they forget one backpack back on the raft. Ankur turns to go back for it, but Meg stops him.

  “It’s not worth it, Ankur. We need you more than we need that stuff.”

  The others are ahead of them, running like thieves toward the mountain. Except for Sam. Sam wills himself forward despite a pronounced limp and hot, stabbing pains from his arthritic hips. Before The Crash, he visited his doctor for periodic injections to relieve the pain. His only treatment protocol now is forward motion accompanied by frequent rest stops.

  Monument Peak looms large in the distance, an enormous black shadow on the landscape just a mile or so beyond US 50. They cross the blacktop with Donnie and Eric leading the way, leaving muddy footprints behind as they push ahead through the sagebrush past large boulders toward the mountain. With the encroaching shoreline well behind them, they slow just enough to help Sam along after briefly resting his gimpy legs.

  The air smells cleaner as they reach the trailhead. Deuce is grateful that he doesn’t feel like barfing anymore. His breathing has returned to normal. The moment his feet touched solid ground back at the lake, his nausea had subsided. Now, with the Monument Peak trail looming just ahead, he relieves Eric and Donnie of their backpacks so they can help Sam up the base path unencumbered. He slings one over each shoulder and follows them with Alex and Jessa and the others bunched together right behind.

  It’s a long, long way up, but the trail is clear and wide and much less steep than Deuce envisioned. He turns periodically and glances behind them just to be sure the ocean isn’t creeping up the trail.

  Even with frequent rest stops for Sam, they make great progress. They are halfway up the mountain already. Seeing rising water now would probably cause Deuce a heart attack, even at sixteen. That doesn’t sto
p him from compulsively checking anyway, periodically glancing back over his shoulder all the way to the top. He guesses it must be near midnight by the time they reach the plateau that makes up three-fourths of the summit. A rocky peak makes up the rest.

  There’s a collective gasp of shock and surprise as everyone except Eric and Donnie steps out onto the Monument Peak plateau for the first time. What they see there, standing in the middle of the plateau overshadowed by Monument Peak’s summit, is a sight no one expected, not even Eric and Donnie. It’s a forty-foot Brewer’s spruce tree with a fine sturdy trunk, the only tree left standing for two thousand miles in any direction. The sight of the lone standing tree stops them cold.

  “Holy crap,” says Satin, gaping at the spruce, noticing how its branches slope downward and form a natural umbrella that stops about six feet above the ground.

  “Oh, my God!” exclaims Meg.

  “That’s got to be some kind of miracle!” Rachel stares like the others.

  Eric and Donnie are just as surprised. They haven’t visited the summit since The Crash. Along with everyone else, they naturally assumed that every tree on this part of the planet had been flattened by the shockwaves. Yet this one lone spruce stands proudly in the cool mountain air against all odds, a newfound symbol of hope amid the utter devastation around them.

  “Welcome to Monument Peak, ladies and gentlemen,” says Donnie with a flourish, “where a lone spruce has miraculously survived.”

  “Clearly a sign of hope,” says Rachel.

  The survivors, exhausted from their ordeal, set their gear and provisions down at the base of the tree and have just enough energy left to fashion makeshift beds. They spread their blankets over the thick layer of spruce needles that covers the ground several inches deep in a near perfect circle around the base of the tree. The dead needles have turned from deep green to rusty brown and retained just enough softness to make decent bedding. The adults use their backpacks as pillows and drift off to sleep under the stars, under the miracle spruce’s protective branches.