Meg’s girls use Meg as their pillow, resting their little heads in the crooks of her arms like bookends, finding welcome sleep at last. The only two survivors still awake are Deuce and Ankur, who manage to find each other in the darkness.
“I can’t stop thinking about the lake,” says Ankur.
Deuce sighs. “What happened to the lake, anyway?”
“That wet spot you found at Sugar Pine must have burst, or a second fissure opened up somewhere along the lake wall below the surface.”
“How do you know?”
“I tasted the lake water just before we landed. It was salty and bitter, quite acidic.”
“Best lake in the West ruined. Life as we know it ruined.”
“Dude, don’t be so negative. You made the right decision for us to leave Emerald Bay when we did. You saved our lives.”
“Maybe,” Deuce gazes up at the million stars above them, feeling as if he can almost touch them. Maybe he did save their lives. Maybe Monument Peak is their best chance for survival.
“I once read about a black hole right in the middle of the Milky Way swallowing up anything that gets close. What are the chances it swallows Earth?”
“What are the chances you stop worrying about things that will probably never happen? Did you ask Sam?”
“Why would I ask Sam?”
“Because he’s an astrophysicist who knows more about that stuff than any of us. He knows about black holes and dark matter and shooting stars. He’ll tell you that they’re not really shooting ‘stars’.”
“Of course, they’re not stars, they’re meteorites,” says Deuce, “If they were real stars like our sun we’d be in a crap load of trouble.”
Ankur changes the subject. “So what do you think of the tree?”
Deuce shrugs. “I don’t know what to think. It defies all logic.”
“Maybe the only logical explanation is pure dumb luck. The same dumb luck that helped the fourteen of us and your dog survive this far.”
The next morning, Mia and Meg are the first to awaken to bright sunlight. If not for the persistent itching, they might have stayed asleep.
“I’m really itchy, Meg,” says Mia. She sits bolt upright, scratching mindlessly at her face and feet.
It’s the worst kind of itch one can imagine and Meg fights the urge to rake her own face and feet using fingernails grown long, jagged and sharp from neglect, more like talons. Instead of scratching, she taps the itchy spots rhythmically using only the soft pads of her fingertips, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat. It helps a little.
“Don’t scratch, Mia, tap. Like this.” Meg taps the back of Mia’s hand in the same pattern.
Mia mimics her. She starts tapping her own face. “Yeah, that’s much better.”
Meg quickly checks on Lily, still sound asleep, unblemished, right beside her. The others are all sleeping peacefully. She replays last night’s events and their trek up the mountain. No way they might have inadvertently touched poison sumac along the trail. The trail is wide, dirt-and-rock-covered and utterly devoid of plant life. Unlike the others, Meg and Mia had briefly submerged in the rising lake, the lake where Ankur tasted salt and acid.
Meg studies the angry red-orange blotches on Mia’s face and the backs of her hands. They match perfectly with the ones on Meg’s hands. She keeps tapping, fighting an increasingly persistent urge to scratch. Mia has already lost that battle and is scratching again.
“You must try really hard not to scratch, honey,” Meg notices Ankur sound asleep only five feet away, crawls to his side for help.
“Ankur, wake up.” Her voice is barely louder than a whisper. “Wake up, Ankur.” She wants to poke him but fearing her rash might be contagious, withdraws her hand at the last possible second.
Ankur opens one eye, squints up at Meg’s creepy rash-covered face. Alarmed, he opens his other eye and studies her intensely as if she is a fresh lab experiment. “There’s a nasty-looking rash all over your face.”
“Mia has it, too.”
They crawl to Mia’s side. Ankur notices the same blotches on her face, hands and feet. He has seen that bright red-orange, badly burned appearance before, on students back in the lab, working with different acids.
“I think we got it from the lake,” says Meg. “You tasted salt, right?”
“Salt and the bitterness of acid. We need to get you both rinsed off, pronto.” He scans everyone’s limited water supplies then listens for the telltale trickle of a nearby stream.
“I can’t take it, I have to scratch,” says Mia.
“Don’t use your nails, Mia.”
Frustrated, Mia looks for something else to scratch with, grabs a handful of spruce needles and dirt from the ground and rubs it all over her bare feet and ankles before Meg and Ankur can stop her.
“Mia! What are you doing?”
Mia silently counts to three then, to Meg’s horror, hastily rubs another handful of spruce needles and dirt all over her face. She grins at Meg through the sticky coating of spruce needles. “Ooh, that feels good, Meg. You try it.”
“The alkaline soil and spruce needles can’t hurt,” says Ankur.
“It doesn’t hurt,” says Mia. “It makes the itch go away.”
Without a second thought, Meg smears her own face and the backs of her hands with the spruce needles and dirt. The relief is almost immediate on each part of her burned skin that the sticky concoction touches.
“So the Brewer’s spruce brews up a cure for acid burns. That’s not magic. It’s medicine,” says Ankur looking up through the pronated branches of the cone-shaped evergreen. Meg follows his gaze upward.
“It’s a miracle this thing is still standing.”
Neither Ankur nor Sam has a logical scientific explanation for it. One tree stands alone among the tens of millions laid flat, all exterminated by The Crash.
“It must be luck, the same luck that saved us,” says Ankur. “Of course, that’s the only conclusion one can reach in these circumstances.”
“It’s a lucky miracle, then.” Meg can hardly contain her joy over the healing relief of the spruce needles. Instead of waking the others for water, they can leisurely look for a stream where they can rinse off the needles along with any residue remaining from the acid lake. Before they go off in search of a stream, Meg awakens Lily.
“Lily, honey, we’re going to find a stream. You stay here and tell the others when they wake up. Okay?”
“Okay.” Lily, half asleep, is content to remain in the protective shade of the tree.
Meg remembers hearing what sounded like a stream not far from the summit. She carries Mia, leads Ankur straight to a brook not far off the main trail. She sets Mia down beside it, dips her hands and feet into the water and begins brushing off the spruce needles. Mia is reluctant to rinse them away.
“Don’t worry, we can put fresh ones on after we rinse.” Meg dips her hands into the stream and brushes away Mia’s needles, too, letting the freshwater cleanse her exposed skin.
When Deuce awakens, he notices straightaway that Meg, Ankur and Mia are missing and that Lily is sleeping by herself in their place. He stands, turns slowly, taking in the entire three hundred sixty degrees of mountaintop view, shielding his eyes from the bright sun they rarely glimpsed at Emerald Bay. There is still the ubiquitous cloud cover halfway up Monument Peak, completely blocking his view of the ground below. The clouds remind Deuce of an ocean made of grey cotton. He walks over to Lily and nudges her with his foot.
“Hey, where’s your sister? Where are Meg and Ankur?” He stands over her to block the bright sun from her face as she awakens.
“They went to take a bath,” says Lily.
“Okay. Sorry to wake you. I was just a little worried about them.”
“That’s good,” says Lily and dozes off again.
Judging by the sun directly overhead, Deuce thinks it must be near noon. Around him, the others begin to stir. One by one they awaken to the bright sunshine welcoming them to their new home. Les
s than ten miles from Emerald Bay now, they might as well be halfway around the world. Nowhere in sight is the lake or the flattened forest that once dominated their view. All they can see now is a sunny sky and one incredibly fortuitous living tree.
“Can someone please identify that big yellow circle in the sky?” asks Hannibal, his voice tinged with sarcasm. He points toward the sun. It’s been months since they last saw it.
“It’s the sun, silly,” says Lily looking up at him with her hand on her hip.
Meanwhile, Meg, Mia and Ankur return to the sun-drenched plateau, Mia walking on her own now, holding Meg’s hand. Their rashes have faded so much that they can pass for mild sunburns. Mia breaks free and runs to Lily under the tree, immediately scoops handfuls of spruce needles from the ground, smears them over what’s left of her rashes.
“What’s she doing?” Hannibal eyes the little girl curiously.
“We got acid burns from the lake,” says Meg. “The dirt and spruce needles are healing our skin.” She joins Mia, applies a layer of needles to her own face and hands.
“The needles must be alkaline, too, to counteract the acid,” says Ankur.
“Something about that tree,” says Satin. “Proof there is a God.”
Deuce only hears two words of their conversation. Acid burns. The lake that kept them alive, fed and watered all these months has suddenly turned lethal. If the Pacific Ocean has acidified, then the coral reefs and most sea life must already be dead, too. Deuce slumps dejectedly under the spruce tree and runs his hands slowly along its coarse irregular bark.
Maybe Satin is right. Maybe the tree represents divine intervention, though Deuce is afraid to say it out loud; afraid the others will think he’s gone mad.
Deuce scrutinizes the grey bark carefully. It reminds him of prickly fish scales separated by rusty brown channels running through the pattern like brooklets. He pries one of the smaller scales loose with his finger, digs it away from the tree and slips it into his pocket so he can study it later in the hope of finding some clue to its remarkable survival.
Sam, Julia and Rachel are awake now, standing with Alex and Jessa, Hannibal and Satin, studying Meg and Mia’s rapidly fading rashes.
“No more itch,” says Mia, smiling.
“What a relief!” Meg forces a smile.
“You should have lost your skin by now,” announces Ankur.
Sam shakes his head in disbelief, watching their rashes disappear before his eyes. “I always thought the only treatment for acid burns was skin grafts.” Just then, Sam notices Deuce close to the tree trunk looking as if he is about to plant a kiss on the jagged spruce bark.
Sam drifts away from the group as they continue marveling over Meg and Mia’s miraculous recovery. Instead of permanent disfigurement, they have fresh new skin as rosy, pink and flawless as the day they found each other on the banks of Lake Tahoe, now a mere tributary of the mighty Pacific Ocean. Sam kneels next to Deuce.
“This is one very lucky tree.” Deuce drones as if daydreaming.
“Obviously, it’s still standing,” says Sam.
Deuce pries off another chunk of bark, hands it to Sam. “Keep this in your pocket.” He pats the tiny bulge in his own pocket. “I have one, too. Maybe we can figure out how it survived. Maybe it’ll bring us good luck.”
Samson lies nearby fully outstretched with his paws in front of him, sleeping peacefully on the bed of spruce needles in the shade directly beneath the tree. The others are busy working on their new shelters while Jessa and Alex plant the recovered spinach, kale, green bean and potato seedlings into a freshly turned patch of dirt in the midday shadow of the spruce tree. Not far away, Hannibal plants the three marijuana seedlings in a patch of their own close to full sunlight.
By Dusk, the shelters are complete, a semicircle of six basic lean-tos just outside the perimeter of the hanging spruce branches. Eric and Donnie, who have been missing for hours, return finally with a half-dozen large trout to be shared at the first community campfire in their new home. The others have collected vegetation, nuts and fresh drinking water from one of several streams cascading down the mountainside.
Hannibal starts the campfire as everyone gathers for the first communal dinner in several days. With Marcus and the Guerrero families gone, there are only five women, two female children, four men, three teenage boys and one German shepherd left from the original Emerald Bay Colony.
“Let’s be thankful we made it to this place, thankful to Eric, Donnie and Deuce for persuading us to follow them here and for the added shelter of this tree,” says Alex.
Hannibal rolls his eyes. Certainly, the tree is incredibly lucky to be alive and standing. Its needles and dirt clearly helped heal Meg and Mia’s acid burns, if that’s what they were. Yet, without a medical doctor or nurse among them, they cannot know for sure.
Sam never tested the lake water pH just before they made landfall, so it is possible that Ankur’s acid burn diagnosis is wrong. Bacteria or a shared allergy might just as easily have caused the rashes.
“I think we’re giving the tree way too much credit,” says Hannibal.
Satin turns to Hannibal. “Why do you have to be such a doubter? That freaking tree is a gift from God, a sign that there’s still hope for us.”
Chapter 19
Monument Peak
Long after the others have gone to sleep, Deuce, Eric and Donnie remain awake, sitting on their new favorite hangout spot, a rocky outcropping at the edge of their plateau, staring into the abyss below.
Deuce finds a smooth round pebble, hurls it over the edge, watches it disappear into the thick cloud cover sitting motionless halfway down the mountain, still a mile beneath them. The sky is clear, bespangled with the twinkling lights of a million stars. Samson is curled comfortably at Deuce’s feet.
“You’ve got to admit the view is amazing up here,” says Eric.
“We used to come up on nights like this just to count shooting stars,” adds Donnie. “One night, we counted fifty-seven.”
“The Perseids meteor shower back in August right before The Crash,” adds Eric.
“I watched that with my dad,” says Deuce. “Compared to this, the view sucked, even with a good telescope and binoculars. Too much pollution from the surrounding lights, from the moon, from civilization.”
“Yeah, remember civilization?” Donnie chuckles to himself.
Images of life in Dana Point flash through Deuce’s mind like flipping pages in a photo album: The streets near home, the cars, the colorful boutique shops and the people walking their dogs past the marina and coffee shop on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Images of the Jacks family home within walking distance from Pacific Coast Highway. Of family picnics and road trips to Las Vegas and sky-watching parties over the garage. Deuce imagines riding all over town on his skateboard without a care in the world. All his most vivid memories of the lost civilization and the life he once had wash over him.
May 22
Deuce finds Sam Hayden early the next morning wandering back and forth around the perimeter of the plateau studying the streams below. Sam moves his six-foot-four-inch frame around slowly, carefully. Deuce falls in beside him.
“Looking for anything in particular?”
“I was hoping the clouds had dissipated so I could see ground level.”
“Oh,” says Deuce. The last thing he wants to think about is anything happening at ground level. Ruminating about anything beyond Monument Peak would force him to consider his friend, Mateo, and worry whether he and his family are still alive, still moving east with enough food and water to sustain them until they find more.
“So what do you think is happening?” asks Deuce.
“Happening where?”
“At ground level?”
“I don’t really care to speculate,” says Sam pointedly.
“Not even a wild guess?”
“In science we don’t make wild guesses. We look at data and evidence and form hypotheses. So tell me what you think
is happening.” Sam eyes him steadily.
“I think the ocean is still rising and we need to start building rafts again.”
“That sounds ominous,” says Sam, “But without any proof. It’s equally possible the ocean is either resting or receding and you have nothing whatsoever to fear.”
Deuce abruptly changes the subject. “Do you think there’s intelligent life somewhere else in the Universe, Sam, or are we really it?”
“I believe in the probability based on the sheer number of potentially life-supporting worlds. The big question: if there is such a high mathematical probability that intelligent life exists, as the Drake equation suggests, then where is it? That’s the Fermi paradox. In all our years of studying the heavens using increasingly powerful telescopes and radio wave technology to analyze electromagnetic emissions, we still don’t have conclusive proof of intelligent life. We studied the heck out of the Andromeda Galaxy, just two-point-two million light years away, and found nothing. You know how far a light year is, Deuce?”
“The distance light travels in a year, six trillion miles.”
“Excellent! Anyway, we have no conclusive proof.”
“Isn’t it possible that they’re too smart to be detected by our Earth instruments?
“Anything is possible, Deuce. We study what’s probable. There are four hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone and even more Earth-like planets, hundreds of billions of planets. How many of them can support life? Even if only one-tenth of one percent could support carbon-based life forms, there could be tens of millions of life-supporting planets in the Milky Way alone, with hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe."
“In purely mathematical terms, alien life is a near certainty,” insists Deuce. He considers the probabilities, decides that Sam knows far more than he does. A few more steps along the plateau and Sam slips on the rocks, nearly toppling over sideways before Deuce catches him just in time.
“Geez, Sam, be careful.”
Sam steadies himself, cursing his arthritic hips and knees under his breath.
RUNAWAY MOON Page 29
