Tears of the River

by Gordon L. Rottman

  “Good idea,” Johnny said cheerfully. “To check on our patients.”

  The road was like a washboard, corrugated by crossways streamlets.

  Ahead was the bridge. They stopped and Johnny and Cris got out for their inspection.

  “Holy cow!” said Johnny peering into the gorge.

  Karen climbed out and trudged through the mud. The gorge didn’t look as deep. That was because the water was higher. It gushed through tumbling over itself, mud-brown carrying branches, logs, and clumps of brush as it plunged downward toward the flatlands.

  It was a freestanding bridge without any water-battered pilings supporting it. It rested on timber abutments on both ends with bracing logs angling up to the center span.

  Johnny and Cris were prone on either side of the bridge, hanging their heads over to examine the abutments when Karen looked over. Mud oozed from between the horizontal retaining wall logs. These abutments supported the bridge ends. They looked at each other and stood.

  Standing, Johnny said, “Looks solid enough.”

  Cris nodded. They got back into the van, and as before, Karen didn’t re-buckle her seatbelt.

  Jennifer and Jay hadn’t gotten out. Jennifer looked back at Karen with an apprehensive look.

  Karen returned a stony glare, wondering why Jennifer was frowning at her. Jay was busy mangling screaming disembodied creatures on his Notebook’s screen.

  “Slow,” said Cris.

  The wheels eased onto the deck and Johnny slowed; then moved forward slower.

  A sudden sharp crack was followed by a rapid string of pops and thumps, then a sickening lunge forward and downward, a jolting stop that slung everyone into the dashboard or seatbacks.

  Karen pushed herself back up after slamming into Johnny’s seatback and tasted blood. There was noise, but she didn’t know what it was. It was a combination of sounds she’d never heard before. Karen felt her insides turn liquid and a vortex of panic gushed through her. The bridge swung downward like a drawbridge going the wrong way. Planks flew off the descending deck in slow motion.

  The van hung over the four-story deep crevasse, suspended in space and time. It might as well have been the Cracks of Doom, its raging waters replaced by a flaming inferno. Karen was looking into Hell and saw her own end.

  She knew Johnny and Jennifer were in the seats in front of her, but she was unaware of them, as though they were already lost.

  “Out! Out the back!” shouted Johnny, suddenly re-materializing in Karen’s distorted world.

  Her head booming, Karen spun around, gripped her seatback and pulled herself onto the last seat. Jay was there, white-faced with panic. She sensed people behind her. There was no time for panic, dread, or fear. She had to move fast. She pulled herself up again and plunged into the cargo compartment atop the disarrayed packs and bags. Jay tumbled in and reached up for the door handle. The van hung at such a steep angle they were standing on the seatback.

  More cracking pops as abutment logs snapped. Someone screamed shrilly. Karen didn’t know who, didn’t care who, she couldn’t help.

  Jay pushed up on the left rear door and Karen threw her shoulder into it. The rear doors weren’t designed to open this way, having to push upward. It slowly rose. She pulled herself up gripping the threshold, pushing and kicking against the shifting bags. Jay pushed her up. She wanted the screaming to stop.

  Karen saw the door dropping shut. If it slammed onto her hands she was doomed. She threw herself up as the door smacked into her shoulder and head. Her shoulder took most of the blow sending a lightning bolt though her body. Dazed, she pushed with everything she had, grabbed the bumper, pulled again, got her knees up on it, and pushed herself off doing a back-flip into the mud to drive the breath from her.

  She scrambled up and tried to suck in air, caught the door as it again flew open and was peering into Jay’s wide eyes. Where was Cris? The screaming was maddening. She frantically clutched Jay’s wrist as he grabbed for hers and pulled for all she was worth. His gripping hand slipped. He was clutching, grasping. She tugged and threw her weight back. She knew she could drag him out of the van. Jay’s other hand flailed wildly, then caught her forearm. He was gripping so tight it felt like her elbow joint would pop. There were creaking sounds. She pulled on Jay, her shoes sliding in the mud toward the van, but they caught on the decking’s first plank. She could do it! His eyes said it all; he saw she’d save him. His hands slipped from her muddy arm and she pitched backward. Jay and the van simply vanished. There were crumpling crashing sounds and then only the hollow reverberation of rushing water from the hungry gorge. The screaming finally stopped.

  It had been her.

  Karen sat in the mud for long minutes, her mind blank, refusing to admit to what she had just seen—Jay’s wild green eyes, gaping mouth, and then nothing, nothing. There was no sound other than the breeze and hurried water. She felt stone cold. Emotions tumbled around, but none emerged to take charge of her. Jay, Cris, Johnny, Jennifer—gone—like a passing scream.

  She finally had to breathe. Breathing was a good thing. She gasped and something clutched in her stomach, like a hard fist trying to punch out of her.

  Her mind couldn’t grasp what had happened. It had been there, a big white eight-passenger van. And now it was gone, and there were people in it. People she knew. She was alive! Something was telling her to shriek with joy, but she couldn’t. There was nothing there. They were all gone.

  Through the impossibility of it all, a tiny voice inside her head told her she had to look.

  I don’t want to look.

  But you have to, the voice said.

  No, I can’t.

  You must. The bottom’s mud, maybe it cushioned the plunge. They may be alive and hurt and need your help.

  May be alive? That means they may be dead too. I don’t want to look.

  Look. They need you.

  She was sitting with her legs stretched before her, her arms holding her up out of the mud.

  After long moments, I’ll look, she decided.

  She started to stand, her head spun. She touched fingers to her nose. That hurt, and they came away bloody. Her left shoulder ached and pain shot through the fuzziness in her head. She crawled on hands and knees, slowly, to the edge. She held her eyes shut tight at first, then opened them and edged closer peering at the far side. Then she looked down.

  There was the van, forty feet down resting on a wide ledge lapped by surging water, lying at an angle on its left side, front downward. It wasn’t white any longer, but mud-brown and beat-up. The top back right corner was smashed in. Water flooded against its front foaming and splashing. Most of the windows were smashed out. Other than the leaping water there was no movement. Planks and timbers lay all about, some speared into the mud, others tumbling downstream.

  “Johnny. Johnny! Jay?” She had to stop shouting for fear it would turn into shrieking.

  She only heard the water laughing, mocking her.

  After a long time, she crab-crawled from the edge.

  “They’re gone,” she said.

  She knew she couldn’t go down there. But to leave them there, she couldn’t do that either. Dread was gnawing at her.

  “I have to go down there,” she said. “The farmers will help. We helped them, they’ll help us.”

  Standing and realizing she was covered head-to-toe in mud, and surprisingly, still wearing her baseball cap, she started walking up the lonely road, her eyes on the tire tracks.

  It wasn’t much over a mile, no more than five laps around the school running track.

  Karen walked, tried to keep from running in panic, and didn’t look back. She felt a lump on her head and dabbed at her nose with her sleeve.

  She rounded the curve in the road and realized the farmstead was farther than she thought. The houses weren’t there. She stopped. The road ended up ahead, a dead end. Was this a side road she had blundered onto? No, there were water-filled tire tracks. Ahead were only tangled trees and brush
in a slanting sea of mud.

  It didn’t look natural. She saw a chicken in the road. She walked on. Another chicken appeared. She heard a goat bleat from somewhere. Among the crookedly leaning trees she saw part of a thatch roof. It too was at an odd angle and partly covered with mud. How did mud get on the roof?

  The trees and ridge rushed at her. Everything blurred and then crawled back into focus.

  The houses, animal pens, outhouses, pigs, donkeys, dogs, the people, all those kids, they were all gone. The ridge side had simply slid over the entire community. Everything in its path was taken with it, buried, covered, and swept downhill. Some force decided the ridge needed to be moved and it simply moved, changing the shape of the world here.

  Other than a few chickens and treetops softly swaying in the breeze, there was no movement.

  “Hola,” she shouted several times. There was no answer. They had vanished like her friends and the van.

  Karen plopped down in the mud in the middle of the road. All those people they’d helped, the children, Carlos and Yuli, and the little girl with the stunning eyes. Her stomach turned over, nausea flooding through her.

  Her first coherent thought after the realization that the Earth had changed here was selfish. I’m alone. The Earth has swallowed up everyone to trap me here alone.

  She sat and gazed. A chicken came close to her, as if seeking human company. But it wandered on. She stood and walked as fast as she could back to the bridge. She wanted to fly away from this place of death. Was there someplace she could cross the gorge? It would be a long walk, but if she could cross she could walk back to Concepción and her mom and dad. She wanted to see them more than anything in the world.

  She didn’t get close enough to the gorge to see into it. She was looking down the long curve of the green ridgeline the road followed, hidden in the trees. Concepción’s tiny white church steeple should have been peeking up out of the trees many miles away.

  It was not to be seen.

  She remembered they had crossed four other bridges on their way here. Were they gone too?

  She was truly alone. She supposed she should be grateful to be alive. She wasn’t.

  If there was anyone alive in Concepción, would they come looking for her? Her mom and dad would, but what if they were lost? And why shouldn’t they be dead? Everyone else was. Would anyone even look for survivors here, so far away? They’d have their own troubles.

  A sense of coherent reality emerged. She turned and walked back to the mudslide. She would look for survivors and for food. It was maddening to know food was buried here, but out of reach. She was already thinking of what it would take to stay alive out here.

  It smelled…smelled awful. She was thinking about a documentary she’d seen on snow avalanches—she’d have to search down-slope. That’s where everything would have been carried by the flood of mud. Everything looked so lifeless.

  Her fingertips suddenly felt tingly, then numb. She looked frantically around as dread welled up. Her eyes darted side to side and she ran toward the mud pile and wreckage. There had to be someone there. Someone had to be alive. She didn’t want to be alone, so far from anyone. She pushed her way through the twisted tangled trees, broken limbs thrusting upward, boards, posts with mangled wire fencing, and clumps of roof thatching. She clutched at limbs and boards and anything else pulling herself on. It was muddy, but solid, compacted. She grabbed at a tree limb, shouted “Hola?” again and again, and grabbed another branch. It was different. She stopped and stared. Its distorted form assumed a shape; it was a mud-slavered hand and forearm. She fell back repulsed, stomach churning and bile burning her throat. She saw a shoeless foot jutting from the mud, twisted in an unnatural way, broken at the ankle.

  “Somebody help me!” she screamed and sat down hard on the packed mud in the land of the dead.

  She cried, deep racking sobs, gasping for air, crying with more anguish than she had ever imagined possible. The agony in her wailing frightened her even more and poured more pain into her voice.

  Through her tears and crying she heard the anguished keening of a lamb, begging to be helped. Karen stopped crying. She was out of tears and breath and voice, but her pain and fear were still there.

  Chapter Five

  Where is the lamb? She could save something, her mind told her. Even if I saved only a dumb animal, it would be worth something, right? She wanted to believe that. It was irrational, but a life saved, well, that had to be worth something. Maybe it would redeem her. Her mind was telling her she had done something wrong. She was being punished. Why should she be the only thing left alive in this shifted, changed world? If she saved another life, any life, maybe she’d be judged worthy and someone would come for her.

  She listened. It was so faint, but close.

  She got on her hands and knees not trusting herself to stand, her head cocked to the side, listening.

  There it was again.

  She crept forward. Silence.

  “Come on little guy,” she said, pleading. “Sound off, tell me where you are.”

  And there it was, right before her. There, in a puddle of muddy water beneath a clump of thatching.

  She pulled up the thatching and was staring into the darkest eyes she’d ever seen.

  “Oh-my-gosh!”

  Karen dug frantically sending mud flying. She pulled the girl out of the mud, none too gently. The girl was crying hard now, probably more frightened of Karen than anything else. She pressed the child to her holding her tight, patting her back. “Te tengo, niña. Ya estas a salvo.” —I have you, child. You are safe now.

  Karen knew inside the girl wasn’t safe, maybe for the moment, but she wasn’t really safe in the long run. Neither of them was. At this moment it didn’t matter. Karen felt a warmth rush through her. She was not alone!

  The child was covered in mud, nothing but her eyes, nostrils, and mouth showed. She was shaking in fear. Karen tried to clean the mud off her round face, but only succeeded in smearing it more.

  She sang an almost forgotten childhood jingle. “Down in the meadow in an itty-bitty brook…”

  She stood the girl on her feet, but she crumpled. Sitting her down, she saw that the girl was wearing only a pair shorts of undetermined color.

  “…swam three little fishies and a mama fish too.”

  Karen pulled off her own muddy tee, turned it inside out and began cleaning the child’s face.

  “Swim, said the mama fish, swim if you can…”

  The girl settled down to an occasional sniffling sob, but listened.

  “…and they swam and they swam right over the dam!”

  How’d I even remember that? Karen looked around for some half clean water, but the few puddles were only soupy mud.

  At least she could make out a face. The girl smiled at her once, or tried to. Karen recognized the face now. She had awakened this morning staring into the child’s eyes…the one who had run off giggling, only three hours before. She had indeed found a lost lamb. Their destinies, their coming ties, were decided when Karen awakened that morning and looked into those stunning eyes.

  Trying to wipe mud away from those stunning eyes, Karen asked, “¿Como te llamas?”

  “Lomara,” the little girl weakly replied.

  “Mi nombre es Karena. ¿Cuantos años tienes?” she asked.

  “Seis.”—Six.

  Lomara wanted her mama. All Karen could say was maybe they could find her. That made her feel worse. She’d have to suffer this girl’s grief too.

  She was a little thing, smaller than most six-year olds. She looked so sad.

  If the girl survived the mudslide, there could be others.

  Karen looked around at the devastation. She could search, but she couldn’t take Lomara with her. The child might see something horrible. Can I deal with that? I’ll have to. Karen didn’t want to simply leave her there alone. But these country kids can take care of themselves. They’re a hardy bunch. Karen beat her shirt against a tree to rid it
of dried mud and put it back on.

  She took Lomara out to the road and asked her if she could catch the chickens.

  “Es fácil,”—It is easy, she replied with a kind smile through caked mud.

  She set Lomara to catching the few chickens and tying their legs together with the looped figure strings she still had in her jean pocket. She’d given most away. She told Lomara to stay right there. Finding a passable walking stick, she took a deep breath, and stalked into the devastation.

  Having heard a goat before, maybe she could find it—food. Then she caught a chicken herself. Tying its legs together with a vine, she left it beside an easy to find splintered tree. The chickens must have taken flight when the mud careened through.

  Walking and stumbling through the wreckage, she found the goat. It was half-buried, had struggled to free itself, but had died. She dug it out with a stick and left it beside another tree.

  Farther down the ridge side it was harder going. There was more brush and tangled trees and it was steeper. She called occasionally, but only the rustling of the treetops answered. Karen zigzagged down the slope to cover more ground in the dense brush where a survivor could be hidden. It was hot and she remembered she’d neither eaten nor drank anything today other than a cup of coffee. She planned to treat herself to a granola bar once they’d crossed the bridge. They’d expected a late breakfast back at Concepción.

  The sound of rushing water grabbed her attention and frightened her for a moment. Below her a stream of water gushed out to the banked mud. She remembered a stone-lined spring among the houses and a stream coursing down the ridge. That was the reason the farmers had settled there. The spring, covered by the landslide, must have eroded its way down here creating a little tunnel.

  Karen rushed back to find Lomara. The girl had collected four chickens. Karen picked up her chicken and the goat on the way back. Leaving their food supply, they made their way to the stream and cleaned themselves up. They drank from where it geysered out. The air was a lot hotter. It was always clear, hot, and humid after a hurricane.

  Lomara played in the water, giggling as though nothing had happened. Karen marveled at the resiliency of children.