RUNAWAY MOON

by Howard Brian Edgar

  Through closed eyes he imagines a grateful dog licking his face.

  When he opens them, he sees Samson standing in front of him, covered from head to tail in dried earth and spruce needles very much alive. He throws his arms around the shepherd’s neck and hugs him tightly.

  “Damn, Samson, I thought I lost you again.”

  Sam and Julia have decided to check out the sea level themselves. They talk quietly, intensely as they walk right past the spruce, right past Deuce and Samson without noticing them, intent on reaching the trail.

  Deuce thinks better of warning them. It wouldn’t change their minds, anyway. They do not share Deuce’s fear of the ocean, nor his paranoid delusions about it’s malevolent intentions.

  The low cloud cover is just beginning to move off the mountain as Sam and Julia reach the midway point between mountain peak and ocean, making the trail much easier to navigate than it was for the boys. Visibility has improved one hundred-fold. Sam makes a mental note of each mountain stream below the fading cloud cover.

  “You sure this is safe?”

  “We’re just hiking, Jules. Why wouldn’t it be safe?”

  “The boys were just hiking, too.”

  “That’s so sad about the dog,” says Sam as if reading her mind.

  “You think he’ll make it?”

  “Anything is possible, Jules.”

  “Well, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not go near the water.”

  “No need, I just want to mark the sea level. You can help me place the markers.”

  They continue down the trail in silence until they break through the last remnants of the cloud cover. Seeing the Pacific Ocean for the first time since they left Palo Alto just before The Crash, Julia gasps sharply.

  “Sweet Lord of Mercy!”

  The four rafts and remains of the kayak are still there, bobbing like corks. Some of the lashings have been eaten away and the logs are floating loosely about, rocking lazily against one another.

  When Sam and Julia reach the bottom, Julia stops nearly a hundred feet from the water’s edge then watches her father carefully take a pH reading, shake his head in disbelief and pile the first few rocks a few inches above the current waterline. With no downed trees nearby, he cannot use branches as markers. So he places the last stone and steps back to admire his handiwork.

  “This water’s practically like battery acid. We need to repeat what I just did right where you’re standing,” hollers Sam. He counts his steps until he reaches Julia.

  “Thirty-five.”

  He helps her collect and pile stones, methodically moving back up the trail, stepping off another thirty-five paces and repeating the process. They build a dozen little rock piles that reach several hundred feet above the current sea level.

  “I think twelve is enough for today,” says Sam. “We’ll come back tomorrow to see if there’s any change.” Satisfied, he leads Julia back up the trail.

  “Frankly, Dad, I’m scared to death. What if it reaches the summit?”

  “Let’s hope it carries what’s left of our rafts up with it,” says Sam.

  “I don’t know. They look pretty dilapidated.”

  “Then we’ll refurbish or build new ones.”

  Deuce has not moved from his chosen spot beneath the spruce. He is content to watch the others go about their business while Alex and Jessa bring him food and water. He is content to be alone and share everything with Samson.

  Ankur approaches him, looking worried. “Have you seen Sam and Julia?”

  “They went down the trail early this morning. Didn’t even notice me.”

  “They totally forgot me.” Ankur is feeling slighted. As the resident geologist, he feels he should have been invited on a scientific mission such as this.

  “I wouldn’t read too much into it. Maybe they just wanted some quality father-daughter alone time. There’s zero privacy up here.”

  “You’re right,” says Ankur. “How are you holding up?”

  “As long as I stay here with Samson, I’m good.”

  “I never told you, but I had a dog once. I was six years old and my dad brought home a stray puppy for me. He was a cute little mutt. I named him Peetie.”

  “What happened?”

  “My mother was OCD about housekeeping.”

  “OCD?”

  “Obsessive-compulsive disorder… she was obsessed with keeping our house clean and a compulsive germophobe. So it didn’t go over too well when Peetie peed on her new Persian carpet.”

  Deuce laughs at the thought. “What did she do?”

  “She sent Peetie packing.”

  Deuce bursts into gales of laughter. “You know you have a gift for alliteration.”

  “Poor Peetie only lasted three days at our house. She made my dad take him to the pound. Broke my heart, but I got over it. Be glad you don’t have to go through that. Now I really need to check on the sea level. If Rachel comes looking for me...”

  “I’ll let her know,” says Deuce.

  Ankur gives a quick wave and walks away, disappearing down the trail. He almost bumps into Sam and Julia on their way back to the top.

  “I hope you remembered your pH tester.” Ankur still feels slighted.

  “Of course,” says Sam. “I would have invited you, but we needed some time for ourselves.”

  Instead of continuing down the trail, Ankur turns and follows them back toward the top.

  “What was your reading? Do you think my ringwoodite hypothesis holds water?” Ankur asks facetiously.

  “The pH was slightly above zero. Ate away half my tester. Yes, I think your theory holds oceans of water.”

  “What’s ringwoodite?” asks Julia.

  “You don’t want to know,” says Sam.

  They return to find the other survivors somber and introspective as they go about their chores silently, yet with grim determination. Hannibal and Satin return from their latest hike looking far more relaxed and satisfied than Stone Age survivors.

  Having explored half the mountain, they already know about the rising ocean. They immediately set about collecting materials to build a new raft. Unless the old rafts wash ashore by themselves, there is no safe way to retrieve them. They are likely waterlogged and half eaten by acid, anyway.

  “Where have you two been hiding?” Rachel asks as she watches them assemble the logs and twine for their new raft.”

  “Around,” says Hannibal with a smirk.

  “Tell her the truth, Hannibal,” says Satin with a wry grin and a quick glance around to make sure the children are out of earshot, “that we’ve screwed our way up and down this stupid mountain hoping to carry on the human race.”

  “I keep telling her it’s a bad idea. Not much hope for a future under present circumstances, unless she gives birth to a jellyfish or a sea slug.”

  Rachel eyes Satin. “Afraid I have to agree with him. We already have Lily and Mia. The last thing we need now is a helpless infant to worry about.”

  “Tell that to my baby-mama hormones,” says Satin.

  “Tell your baby-mama hormones to get real… we don’t live in a baby-mama-friendly world anymore. There are no doctors or hospitals to help you.” Rachel changes the subject. “So you heard about Samson?”

  “What about him?” Hannibal looks up from his work making twine for lashing the logs together.

  “He almost died. The boys took him down to the bottom of the trail and Samson decided to play hero again. He fetched Meg’s backpack from her raft. The acid water nearly ate him alive. He and Deuce haven’t left the tree since they got back.”

  Hannibal drops the twine. “Poor Samson. Deuce must have been scared shitless.”

  “He’s been sitting with Samson since early this morning, refusing to leave. Alex and Jessa have been feeding him.”

  “No wonder it’s so damned quiet and gloomy up here.”

  “How sad to survive a bullet but almost get killed by water,” Satin says.

  “If we don�
��t get some new rafts built, fast, we may all get killed by water,” snaps Hannibal trying to remain focused on the task at hand. The only tools salvaged from Emerald Bay are a hacksaw and a claw hammer, not much help for raft building, but better than bare hands. Instead of picking up his twine, he grabs the hacksaw and begins cutting logs feverishly.

  “If any of you hope to stay alive, you’d better start building new rafts!” Hannibal yells loudly enough to attract everyone’s attention, including Deuce. “We’ve been watching the sea level since the day after we got here. It’s still rising, people!”

  As this latest harsh reality sinks in, Eric and Donnie stop idly throwing rocks into the abyss. What they hoped would be a safe haven on top of Monument Peak is now under siege. The only difference between Emerald Bay and here is that they have eight fewer people and nowhere else to go. The only good news is that those who are left are experienced raft-builders. Eric and Donnie join the others, collecting logs and working twine, taking turns with Hannibal and Alex at cutting logs with the hacksaw.

  “Are we going to die, Han?” Lily asks the question that’s on every survivor’s mind.

  “We’re not going to die,” says Meg with little conviction.

  Lily shoots Meg her seven-year-old version of the stink-eye. “You don’t sound too confident, Meg.”

  “It’s hard to feel confident about anything anymore,” says Meg. “So we just have to work harder to give ourselves a fighting chance.”

  “Well, let’s get to work then,” orders Lily. “Because I’m too young to die.” She takes Mia’s hand and leads her off toward one of the fallen pines. “C’mon, Mia, we can work hard too, just like the grown-ups.” She and Mia begin stripping bark and pulling the softest branches from the pine tree.

  Alex approaches Deuce. “We could really use your help, son.”

  “Okay, but I’m not leaving this plateau, no matter what.” Deuce is adamant. Being above the water with his dog next to him is the only thing keeping him sane. Reluctantly, he helps Alex gather logs for their new raft, careful to stay as close to Samson as he can and still make himself useful. He cannot ignore the feeling in his gut that raft building may be futile this time. How will they possibly survive or keep their rafts together on an endless ocean of battery acid?

  Later, as Dusk turns to Dark, Deuce musters enough courage to join Eric and Donnie at their favorite hangout among the big rocks at the edge of the plateau. It’s less than fifty yards from the tree where Samson is now sleeping comfortably, his chest rising and falling steadily with each breath.

  “This is insane, man,” complains Eric.

  “I can’t take much more of it. The Stone Age lifestyle is definitely not what I’ve always dreamed about,” says Donnie.

  “I keep hoping this is all just a bad dream,” says Deuce. “We’ll just wake up one morning in our own homes, in our own beds with our own families and friends around us, you know, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.”

  “Like my health teacher once said while discussing ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, hope is not a strategy,” offers Eric.

  “Well right now, it’s a necessity.” Deuce can’t take his eyes off Samson.

  “I never thought I’d miss baseball practice or homework so much.”

  “Please, not homework,” whines Donnie.

  “What are you talking about? You hardly ever did homework,” says Eric. “You got easy ‘A’s by hitting more home runs than anyone in school history.”

  “Oh, like you had it rough, ace? If it wasn’t for all those cute girls ‘supporting’ the star pitcher, you wouldn’t have completed your homework, either.”

  “You let girls do your homework?” Deuce eyes Eric incredulously.

  “Yeah, they helped him out with his homework, he helped them out of their bras and panties,” says Donnie, grinning.

  Eric shares a brief private joke with himself. “Yeah, that was paradise, dude. I should have appreciated it more.”

  Donnie leans close to Deuce and whispers, “He rarely struck out.” In the months since they met, this is the first mention of Eric’s experience with girls.

  Deuce is a late-bloomer with no interest in girls. He gets far more pleasure from his memories. Careening down his favorite hill in Dana Point perched low on his skateboard with the wind in his hair; watching sunsets and stargazing with Alex from the deck over their garage. Weekend pillow fights with Alex and Jessa, movie nights and taco parties. Of course, there was Mindcraft, Call of Duty and Clash of Clans online with his friends, too.

  “Damn, I miss those days,” says Eric wistfully.

  He is in mid-sigh when all hell breaks loose.

  Their pleasant dreams and fond memories are obliterated as the entire mountain suddenly lifts straight up with stomach-churning speed and gets slammed back down again with a thunderous crash just before the violent shaking begins. Earthquake! The first big one they have felt in months since The Crash. Only this one feels like they are sitting directly over its epicenter, dangerously close to the plateau’s edge.

  The three boys dive away from the rocks toward more stable ground in the middle of the plateau. Deuce looks for a safe path, a way to reach Samson, knowing that he can barely crawl while the shaking is this bad. Eric and Donnie both attempt standing only to be toppled to the ground again and again. All they can do is stay flat, remain still and hope that it ends soon.

  Deuce ticks off the seconds in his head, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, one minute. The quake continues unabated for a minute and fifty-three seconds, though it seems much longer.

  When it finally stops, Deuce is afraid to move, afraid of aftershocks that could be almost as severe as the initial quake. He counts again. At two minutes, he jumps to his feet and sprints toward Samson. The other survivors are now awake, gesturing wildly at the boys, hollering.

  “Hurry!”

  “Come on, Deuce!”

  “You can make it!”

  Deuce makes it halfway to the tree when the first aftershock knocks him clean off his feet. This time, he refuses to let the shaking stop him. He pushes himself forward on his elbows and knees, half crawling, half rolling toward Samson. As soon as he is in range, Alex reaches out to him, locks hands and pulls him by his extended arms across the last few feet. He and Jessa throw themselves protectively over their son.

  The first aftershock, powerful enough to level a small city, lasts less than a minute. Deuce lays motionless, hidden beneath the spreading warmth of his parents’ bodies, feeling his mother’s heartbeat through their clothing. He hears the raucous shuffling as Hannibal and Ankur pull Donnie and Eric under the tree just before the second aftershock strikes, this time a fifteen-second shaker.

  The survivors are badly rattled, on the edge of total panic as they huddle close to the last tree standing. To everyone’s surprise, Sam announces that he and Julia will venture down the mountain at Dawn to check the sea level again.

  “Bad idea, Professor,” snaps Alex. “You’re safer here.”

  “The aftershocks should be over by then. Good Lord, Alex, we’re only walking downhill. Should be quite manageable,” Sam says impatiently.

  Deuce leans back against the tree trunk between Eric, Donnie, Samson and his parents. Donnie has a three-inch gash on his thigh just above the knee. Eric’s arms are crisscrossed with scrapes and cuts. Jessa, Rachel and Alex are doing their best to wash off the blood and dirt and cover them in spruce needles. Deuce turns to Alex.

  “You think it’s over?”

  “Why don’t you ask the geologist?” Alex nods toward Ankur, who is pacing purposefully, careful to avoid Hannibal and Sam, who are also upright, marching back and forth over the bed of spruce needles nervously like battle-weary soldiers.

  “It’s not over,” answers Ankur.

  “What are we supposed to do?” Donnie shifts his bandaged leg.

  “Grab something solid and hold on tight?” Ankur forces a grin.

  The women and children cling to each othe
r, Rachel and Meg sitting cross-legged holding Lily and Mia close to them like mother hens protecting helpless hatchlings. No one sleeps. A series of progressively smaller, progressively less frequent aftershocks jangles their nerves just enough to keep them awake the final few hours until Dawn.

  Even subdued daylight is better than near-total darkness, as far as Deuce is concerned. The danger he cannot see is infinitely more frightening to him than the danger he can see.

  At first light, despite Alex’s warning, Sam and Julia dust themselves off and quietly head off toward the trail. No one tries to stop them. Not even Deuce, who is still propped against the tree flanked by his parents, his dog and his new best friends, Eric and Donnie. Against his better judgment, he quietly watches Sam and Julia as they leave the relative safety of the plateau without a word.

  Deuce is perilously close to all-out panic. Mulling the earthquake and aftershocks and any possible effect they may have had on the sea level has completely unraveled his nerves. Like everyone else, he waits on tenterhooks for Sam and Julia to return, hoping desperately for some good news to restore his sense of safety and security at the Monument Peak summit. He can’t help feeling that the survivors are hanging on by the very thinnest of threads. Their lives now depend entirely on the sea level, how the earthquake and aftershocks affected it, and whether it continues its relentless climb up the mountain, their mountain.

  Part of Monument Peak is still obscured by grey clouds as Sam and Julia make their way down the trail slowly, cautiously, memorizing each landmark along the way. A big rock here, seven dead pine trees there, all forming a perfect “V” on the mountainside. They stop for a moment to marvel at the formation.

  “Tell me, Jules, is that an arrow pointing downward or the international symbol for victory?” Sam studies the ground just ahead of them, a topographic map of the terrain forming in his mind.

  “I’ll take the V for victory. In economic terms, a down arrow is never a good sign,” says Julia.