Ashes, Ashes aa-1

by Jo Treggiari

  She realized that she was looking at fish flopping on the beach, thousands of silver bodies leaping like dancers. The tide was out so far, she could see nothing but the fish and the brown sugary sand, the water drained away as if someone had pulled a giant bath plug. Far beyond, reflecting flickers and flashes of sun, she could see the ocean. It was retreating, the waters drawing back like a tide in reverse.

  She turned and began to run. Panic spilled into her mouth like bile. The waterlogged sand tugged at her feet, slowing her down and threatening to trip her. She pushed on, forcing her knees higher. No time to bend and tie her laces. Only two thoughts yammered in Lucy’s brain and she grabbed hold of them: Get my stuff. Get to the highest ground I can find.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SEA

  After the first disasters, they’d had emergency drills at school: what to do in case of earthquake, cyclone, and flash flood. They’d watched countless hours of video footage, of Maui engulfed by lava and the devastating eruptions of Mount St. Helens and Mount Vesuvius, massive explosions that buried all of Portland, Oregon, in ash and molten rock, and tilted the city of Naples into a boiling sea. Even the youngest kids knew to find a doorway or a desk, a cellar or the highest ground.

  So before the thought had hit her brain, Lucy had turned and started running. She had twenty minutes if she was lucky, ten if she was not, and considering how things usually played out in her life, she’d better not count on having enough time.

  She had to abandon her home. The thought of it was a physical pain in her chest. Lucy was past the sands now, resisting the urge to turn around and look behind her, fearing the sight of that wave building as it rolled back in. She’d seen films of tsunamis towering a thousand feet, waters so high and fierce you expected to see Godzilla charging through them with tiny destroyers and navy boats bobbing around his leathery ankles. And she’d seen the footage of what was left behind: miles of wreckage, houses splintered, buildings mowed down and crushed, and the drowned bodies of humans and animals flung on the shore like driftwood.

  Time seemed to slow down and then speed up again. Lucy felt like she was watching herself in a movie. Short, flickering scenes, as if the film were old and missing frames, the whole thing spliced together badly. She found herself in the salt marsh with no idea how long it had taken her to get there. It seemed mere moments. The ground was firm under her feet; she ran faster, and then the bristly grasses gave way to low shrubs and spindly bushes, and she skirted some and leapt over others, letting the panic take the lead. Ahead of her was the clump of supple trees that marked her camp. And the ground was wetter, slippery as oil, where it had flooded from the rains. She dodged hummocks of greasy grass, her breath coming in heaving gasps. Sweat trickled down her back. Just before the entrance she slid in a foot of water, but was up on her feet again before she felt the wet soak through her jeans. Lucy pulled the screen aside, hurled it from her, ducked down, and was in, casting her eyes around.

  What should she take? No time to think. She unbuckled her backpack, pulled at the laces until it gaped open, stuffed the shawl inside, and jammed her arms into the sleeves of her leather jacket. Her brain was taking snapshots of each corner of her camp. Sleeping bag; the survival manual from the table; her clothes from yesterday, a damp, dirty pile on the ground. She shoved everything in, pushing it down as much as she could, feeling to make sure her journal was there, and then the bag was buckled and slung over her shoulder. She paused to kick dirt over the smoldering fire, then berated herself for wasting time. Tons of water were about to crash down on her, but it was a habit learned during the Long Dry when a wayward spark could destroy everything. One last look around. She didn’t have much. The pots and pans were an unnecessary weight. What food stores she had left were not worth taking. She grabbed a half-full water bottle, not sure if she’d find a stream or a spring safe to drink from. She hung her spoon and fork around her neck. The hammer of her heart seemed to be counting off the seconds. Was there anything else? She turned to leave, then suddenly remembered and ran to the place where her sleeping bag had been spread on a flattened pile of dried grasses, shoved her hand against the wall, and pulled out her yearbook. She clasped it to her chest, took one last look around, and ducked outside.

  She bent and tied her laces, fumbling for a moment and finally settling for two tight knots which would be impossible to undo later. She stowed her yearbook in the bag and shrugged it back over her shoulders. The beach was still empty, the fish a thin layer of throbbing silver at this distance, with the deep blues of water and sky above. Choosing which way to go was a nonissue. West was the sea. East and south ended in water as well. North would take her up a slope and eventually to the Great Hill, and from there she could make a decision. A small voice in her head piped up and reminded her that the Hell Gate, Aidan’s camp, also lay in that direction, but she pushed it down. From the Great Hill she could journey on for a few days and cross the Geo Wash Bridge if she wanted or loop back around. Maybe come home in a day or two and try to salvage something, rebuild. She told herself she could completely avoid the Hell Gate if she wanted to.

  Lucy hurried along the narrow track—a muddy animal trail worn into the grass by sharp deer hooves when they came down from the heights to drink from the lake. Beyond the scrublands the ground rose sharply. She went straight up, taking it at a run, her backpack bouncing with every step, reaching forward with her hands, low to the ground, ready to catch herself if she fell. The terrain became loose, crumbling earth and pebbles, spiked with rocky outcrops and straggling trees. Stones rolled under her feet, threatening to bring her down. She pulled herself up, grabbing at slender branches and roots to keep her balance. A few hundred yards up, she paused for breath. Her sprained ankle was a hot ball of pain. Her throat was raw. Her ribs hurt. Her fingers were scratched and bleeding. The wound on her palm had opened again. She’d left a trail of blood on the stones. The thought crossed her mind that the dogs would have no trouble tracking her this time. Lucy felt a jolt of fear and suppressed it. Drowning in a monstrous wave would fix that problem. Just ahead was a thicket of wind-twisted fir and pine clinging tenaciously to the slope, and beyond, she knew, was a bare cap of gray rock at the summit of the hill. And surely that would be high enough. She ran on, limping now, her leg muscles trembling with exhaustion. There were pine needles underfoot; it smelled mossy, pleasant. Dappled light filtered down. She paused, her breath hitching in her throat, and drank the water in her bottle in a few, panicked gulps. She felt safe under the canopy of trees, but her fear pushed her onward. She had just reached the far edge of the wood when she heard a roar like a subway train hurtling through a tunnel. It seemed frighteningly close.

  Lucy broke through the line of trees, clawed her way up to a rocky ledge, and looked down from the height. She had a panoramic view of the drained beach, so peaceful at this distance. The thin slice of land where she’d lived for more than a year fell away beneath her only a mile or two from where she stood. She could see the green dome of her camp, the line of grass hummock sentinels, the black trunks of salt-burned trees by the shore, the wide swathe of sand. And then the wave came. Suddenly there was water everywhere, rushing in as fast as a jet plane. The waves jostled to fill every available space. The bowl where her home nestled was an upended snow globe shaken with a ferocity that robbed the breath from her lungs. Trees were uprooted and flung into the air; bushes and slabs of earth were ripped loose, rolled and tossed into the seething mass of water. The stone needle was completely submerged. The wave grew higher as it came, a cataclysmic wall of water dwarfing everything before it, taller than her father’s office building. It smashed against the hill like a massive fist, and she felt the tremor vibrate through her body. It broke less than a quarter mile from where she stood. A quarter mile was only 1,320 feet, she remembered from some math class long ago, and yet it seemed closer. If she hadn’t forced herself to take more than 1,320 steps, it would have caught up to her. She looked into the wave, a dizzying swirl of stormy blue
and emerald green, darkening to purple at the depths and exploding with foam at the crest. It was near enough that Lucy felt the soaring spray hit her face and her nose filled with the smell of salt. Her eye was caught by a splash of bright orange within the brown swampy swirl of pulverized tree and bush and earth, and she recognized the tarp from her camp. When the wave rolled back out with a sucking sound that she felt as a pressure around her throat, it left nothing behind but a thick sludge. The ground steamed in the morning sun. It was quiet and nothing moved.

  Lucy realized that she had bitten her lip. Blood trickled down her chin. She rubbed it away, staring at the bright red smear on her fingers before wiping them on her jeans. She looked down at the devastation, trying to will her brain to comprehend it. The splintered trees, the slick layer of mud and pools of water. Nothing remained of her shelter. Even the tarp had been dragged back to sea. There were shapes left sprawled in the mud. Rabbits, groundhogs, other small animals, drowned in their burrows. Bile flooded her mouth and she vomited. Turtle soup. And that brought on more heaving until her stomach was empty.

  After some minutes she got up, moved away from the steaming pile of puke, and sat down with her back to the wreckage. She peeled her sock back from her ankle. It was soft and puffy to the touch, but she could rotate her foot and flex her toes. She stripped the sock off and tied it around her ankle and then put her boot back on. The sole and heel of her foot were covered in calluses about a centimeter thick—she could walk without a sock for a while. Next, the wound on her palm, split open again and weeping a little blood. She wrapped it with the only bandanna she now owned, pulling the ends tight and securing them with a knot. Lucy’s fingers were shredded from the rocks and the tips throbbed, but at least it was a distraction from the pain in her ankle. She leaned back against her backpack, listening to the thud of her heart. The slope ahead was a gentler rise topped with cracked and weathered gray stone. Tiny pink-flowered plants anchored themselves in the crannies. In the sky, so brilliant a blue that it seemed unreal, a hawk climbed in ever-tightening circles. It must be wonderful to be so free, she thought, to be able to travel away from everything.

  It was the yucky taste in her mouth more than anything else that propelled her to her feet eventually. She walked up to the crest of the hill, favoring her ankle and working the stiffness out of her legs, and scanned the area in front of her, wondering if she could find a spring or a small stream where she could refill her bottle, maybe soak her ankle. The hill dropped off into a gorge, but it was not so deep that she couldn’t scramble down into it and up the other side. It was what lay beyond it that made her pause and begin chewing on her thumbnail: a long expanse of buckled highway, driven up into a series of concrete ridges by the powerful earthquake that had collapsed the Empire State Building three years ago and pulverized most of Midtown. Strewn with rubble, the road dropped twelve feet in places and climbed twenty feet in others. The concrete was crumbling and pierced with weeds. Dandelions bobbed their yellow heads from every crack. She’d always liked dandelions. They seemed like free spirits, growing wherever they wanted, and springing back no matter how often her mother dug them up. Lucy started walking toward the first crevasse.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE HELL GATE

  Lucy wiped her mouth. After three hours of steady hiking, climbing, and risking severe bodily injury crawling in and out of crevasses, she’d found a puddle of rainwater that tasted of tarmac but wasn’t too gritty. The water made her stomach cramp and she realized how hungry she was. The sun climbed in the sky. It looked huge and more orange than yellow. She guessed the time must be close to noon. She wanted to be off the ridge before night fell. She felt exposed and vulnerable with no foliage above her, and although the sky was cloudless, Lucy knew that a vicious storm could move in with unnatural speed. The day had become humid, still, as if the tsunami had driven out most of the oxygen when it took the trees. Her bangs hung in limp ringlets over her eyes, and she could tell by touch that her hair had frizzed up. She wished for an elastic band or a piece of string to tie it back with, but she had nothing. She touched the hilt of her knife, rubbing her thumb over the smooth bone. She could hack off the mass of hair, cutting it close to the nape of her neck, but then she’d have the same problem in another month or two, and in the meantime she would look like a freak, or a boy. She wasn’t sure which was worse, but she did know that she didn’t want Aidan to see her looking like a head-injury victim.

  Aidan was an uncomfortable thought. Lucy pushed it away. She wasn’t going to see Aidan. She was going to stock up, rest, and figure out where she would live now. Aidan was where people were, and where food was, that was all. She cupped her hands, scooped up more lukewarm water, and dribbled it over her head and neck, then smoothed her hair down as best she could. The road was flat for a few hundred yards. Beyond that it dropped off again, but she couldn’t tell how far. She walked, watching out for loose rubble. In places the mangled tarmac was marked with a broken white line, but it was no longer straight. It deviated from the middle and twisted suddenly and disappeared. She estimated that she was around Second Avenue and 92nd Street, although acres of road and earth had been shifted in the big quake, the landscape completely reconfigured. Sometimes she thought it looked as if a toddler had built a city out of blocks and then knocked them all down in a rage.

  Lucy had reached a gorge that was as big as a canyon. It went down about forty feet and then climbed back up nearly the same distance in a series of trenches like giant steps. There was no way around it—it crossed the entire width of the ridge. When she finally pulled herself up the last craggy slope, bruising her knees in the process, she found herself on top of a plateau. Straight ahead of her was a deep, wide ravine, and stretched across it, ridiculously fragile, a suspension bridge. It swung in a gentle rhythm, although there was no breeze. This must be the Grand Canal. For a minute or two Lucy looked across the chasm. She chewed on her lip. Sweat trickled down her back and her heart thumped painfully against her breast bone. It was so high. The bridge was anchored on her side by several loops of rough-looking braided rope attached to an outcrop of rock. Lucy tugged on it and then stepped onto the bridge, which dipped with her weight. Each step created vibrations that traveled the length of the bridge and then bounced back, throwing her off balance. She crept forward, holding on to the rope supports with both hands, her arms outstretched to their full length. She tried to keep her eyes on the far side, but she couldn’t control her gaze. It was drawn to the ground far below. The channel bed was almost completely dry. The two downpours they’d had at the beginning of the Long Wet were not enough to flood it yet. Sharp rocks and rubble were strewn on the bottom, along with mounds of garbage. She saw a baby stroller, a dented refrigerator with its door hanging loose, wads of rain-soaked paper, tattered clothes and blankets, the twisted wreck of an old metal bed—the kind they used to have in hospitals, with wheels and coiled springs.

  The rung she shuffled onto snapped with a sharp crack, half of the wood breaking off jaggedly and spinning out into the air. Her already weakened ankle twisted. Her foot went through the hole; the weight of her body threw her forward onto her knees, and the bridge swung crazily from side to side, tilting so that she was no longer on a level surface. Now one edge was vertical. She was being tipped off. She grabbed at the ropes, burning red stripes across her hands, and halted the fall. For several minutes she didn’t move. She lay there sideways with her head hanging over the edge, waiting for the bridge to stop swaying and right itself again. Lucy squeezed her eyes shut, trying to erase the image of the rocks sticking up like spearheads at the bottom of the canal. Slowly she shifted her weight toward the middle. The bridge leveled out. Once her heart had stopped pounding, she pulled her foot from the hole. Like a bear trap, splinters of wood had pierced her jeans and the sock she’d tied as a bandage over the bone. Her ankle was ringed with scrapes like tooth marks. She moved from her knees to her feet and began to inch her way forward again. Her teeth chattered so hard, her
skull hurt and her jaw ached. By the time she got halfway across there was a sheen of sweat across her face, which she dared not wipe off, and her legs were trembling. She forced herself to keep moving. When she stepped off the bridge onto firm ground, her legs gave way beneath her.

  After a few long moments with her head down around her knees, Lucy got up again. Her hair was plastered to the back of her neck with sweat and her damp arms clung to the lining of her leather jacket. Her throat was parched and her stomach growled with hunger. In the forefront of her brain was the fervent hope that wherever Aidan was, it would be straight ahead and not across any more suspension bridges. She looked around at the dilapidated buildings, the mountains of pulverized concrete and twisted girders. This may have been a neighborhood before, but now it was just the shell of one. A path, barely discernible, snaked through the rubble, disappearing a dozen yards ahead between the remnants of two brownstones, their roofs missing, their foundations sagging so that they almost touched at the top. The Hell Gate. The question was, were you entering hell going in or coming out? As far as she was concerned, the jury was still out on that one.

  The terrain was unpredictable, and in most places sharply inclined on crumbling slopes made up of equal parts soil and man-made materials. Cinder blocks, sandbags, and planks of wood shored up the various levels like a humongous ladder. She followed the track—so narrow a goat would have had a problem with it. She went slowly, testing the ground, which was loose and studded with rocks. She kept her eyes open for people. Scavengers. Bands of roaming thieves who scoured the streets for anything that could be reused or resold. Rumor was they stole the fillings out of the mouths of corpses.