"What the hell is this place?" Cooper said, to himself. "A moonscape…nothing more than that."
Turk looked back at Cooper. The dog seemed to relax and wag his tail slowly. Then he turned to look at the house again. He walked toward it, delicately choosing where he placed his paws over sharp, uneven ground. Mikaela followed, knowing that Cooper and Beatrice were right behind. The ground reminded her of a rugged coastline, in Maine or Hawaii.
Then it occurred to her that they may be walking on the huge lahar itself. It covered most of the valley, so it followed…but was it even possible? Wouldn't it still be hot?
The walk to the house was about a mile.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she said. They were bathed in low-angled sunlight; the ground beneath gleamed and crunched underfoot. It did seem an impossible, gross mishmash. Like the bottom of an industrial river that cities have dumped refuse in, then the river dries up and reveals its ugly contents. Everything was torn up and pressed together like a puzzle; pulverized stones and trees and chunks of tar and odd wedges of metal, ripped from buildings. Lots of machined wood; the debris from destroyed homes and buildings and roofs. She thought she walked over a storage tank. All of it glued together with mud.
"Um, is this the lahar?"
"Yeah, I think you got that right," Cooper said. He led Beatrice carefully.
"You've got to be kidding," Beatrice said, good-naturedly, as if aware of the burden of being held by hands on this rough surface. "We're walking, on that thing? From the mountain?" They were all fascinated, in a way, with being free of bondage, alive, and thrust feet first, as it were, into an oddity of Mother Nature.
"As bizarre as it sounds," Cooper added.
"I thought these things were steaming, molten?"
"Apparently they cool pretty fast. The lahars usually don't have red-hot lava; that comes at another time. They're mud and melt-water and rocks and all the junk they pick up. We're walking, basically, on a big garbage pile, from hell. Watch where you put your hands and feet."
Cooper caught up to Turk, reached down, scratched him behind the ear, which induced the dog to sit down gratefully. Then Cooper took the lead in their march toward the house. He looked quickly behind him toward the woods; nothing, but the river. They were alone.
He remembered what he'd seen in the house when he'd first dropped into the wreckage of the Puyallup Valley, days ago, but it seemed like a month. He was alone, he'd lost his friends in the van, the first lahar had roared through. He was still scared shitless, uncertain of his chances, and thinking Rainier would go nuclear at any moment, or another lahar would take out the rest of the valley.
All he'd wanted was some food, provisions, maybe a rest. A breather, given what he'd gone through. This little house in the distance brought it all back to him. To the point where he didn't want to go there.
In fact, he was beginning to feel sick, the hot rim of a headache, an irritable indigestion. He figured it was lack of sleep; he tried to shrug it off.
That's when he heard a sound in the distance. Something in the wind, like that flagpole clanging back in Orting. But this was a regular high-pitched screechy sound, like "reek…reek…reek…." They kept on walking, until they reached a point where the edge of the lahar stopped and tumbled down to what used to be the grassy lawn of a home.
The house had white flaking clapboards, a few falling down shutters, and a black shingled roof. It was a modest Cape in design, with an unpaved driveway going off to nowhere; a brick chimney stained with soot stuck up in the air. The vast majority of this rural neighborhood had been destroyed.
Turk stood stoically on the corniced edge of the lahar, nose in the air, as if searching for scents that weren't foul or redolent of death. Then he made his way carefully down.
In the breezy silence, Cooper could still hear, "reek…reek…reek." But not a bird could be seen.
CHAPTER 29
They reached the ground, after about 30 feet of a careful climb down over jumbled debris. The lawn was scorched grass and bare dirt. They faced the back of the house; a plastic child's tricycle, a fallen-down fence, a tipped-over grill. They all gathered at the bottom of the lahar, Cooper extending his hand for Mikaela and Beatrice. Turk began to walk to the front of the house, his thirsty tongue lolling out.
Cooper really wasn't feeling good; something foreign and viral coursed through his system. He began to feel irritated; he tended to get mad at himself when he fell ill. It was another thing that felt like failure, as in allowing himself to be seized by Gladys.
"Reek…reek" he heard in the wind, picturing an old twisted weather vane.
Then Mikaela called out.
"It's Millie!" She ran to a spot on the lawn and seized the doll off it. She embraced it, clutching the doll to her chest like Amy would have. "My God!" Then she ran full tilt, and they all followed to the front of the house.
When Cooper turned the corner, he saw the old swing-set, with two swings attached by metallic chains, and the little girl sitting on one of the swings, kicking her legs up around the tattered dress, her blond hair blowing in the wind.
"Oh Amy!" Mikaela said, suddenly angry, and taking long strides.
Amy acted as if they weren't there at first. Then she began talking in between kicking her legs out, with the slim dirty sneakers she wore aimed toward blotches of blue sky.
"You…didn't…come…back…like…you…said…."
"So…I…went…"
Mikaela had reached her now. She couldn't stay mad. She was crying. She caught Amy on the back swing, stopped her swinging, and held on.
"Why did you leave me like that? Why? I told you to stay. Oh Amy, we thought we lost you!" Tears soaked her cheeks, which she tried to wipe away with the sleeves around her wrists. She hugged her tight and Cooper couldn't hear what she was saying anymore, murmurs into Amy's hair, with the little girl submitting passively to the embraces.
A salty wetness rose in his own eyes; he always got emotional when he got sick.
Then Amy said, out of the blue, "There's food in the kitchen. Inside…you should see it. I had some…" Cooper noticed that Beatrice had sat down on the grass. She hugged her knees and smiled beatifically. Her experiences, of existing on the edge of survival, and not seeing, seemed to have distilled in her an internal grace.
Turk wandered over to Amy and Mikaela, lazily wagging his tail, then when either of them leaned into his range, he'd give them a lick.
"It was you Turk. You found Amy. And Amy, I can't believe you just wandered off like that. Do me a favor, a big one," Cooper said. "Don't do that again. Ever."
Then, as he walked over to pet Turk, the sandy ground around the swing-set began to whirl. Moments later, he was groveling in the dirt, soaked in sweat, and he could hear Amy in the background, hollowly, say "You look white as a ghost!"
###
They led him into the house, through a broken, unlocked door, a cluttered kitchen, then onto a small, stiff couch. He collapsed on it and thrust his face into a throw pillow. How it all had come over him was shocking; he was weak as a kitten, sweating buckets. Then as soon as he closed his eyes he passed out.
He heard the voices of Mikaela and Beatrice; Amy's, temporarily complaining and crying, then nothing.
He was going down to that house again in the Puyallup Valley. He could feel his feet strike the ground on the hillside, gravity urging him downward; the palpable heft of his rucksack. He could see the bereft cluster of wooden homes spared from the first lahar, now in his dream, obscured by wisps of fog. He made his way down the hill, toward one of them.
He could hear, again, the woman's lusty cries from the second floor. The tone and volume was like working through labor pains. Against his will, the dream led him through that empty yard again, into the back screen door toward the woman's cries; up the dark stairwell, and then woozily along a hallway.
He paused at an open door. A bed, a woman lay in soaked, bloody sheets. She'd just given birth, she held a slimy mewling bab
y, very much alive, but still connected with the umbilical cord. The cord lay heavy, messily, and inapt on the sheets next to her.
"Get my husband!" she screamed.
"Where is he?"
"Downstairs…Get him! Now! Please!" He heard a deep, terrible voice from the floor below. He spun, then he woke up. He had a blanket over him, on the couch, and it was like emerging from an airless, pitch-black basement into sunlight.
CHAPTER 30
His tongue felt like a piece of velcro; it stuck to and pealed away from other parts of his mouth. He'd slept off at least some of this virus or bacteria that had swarmed his insides. He put one foot on the floor and steadied himself, a hand clinging to the couch's armrest. He draped the blanket over his shoulders like a shawl, and shuffled into the kitchen.
Mikaela was standing by the window. Sunshine filled the panes.
"Is there any water?"
"No, just some lukewarm O.J. We saved you some," she said to the window. She looked back at him. "How do you feel?"
"Like something Turk dragged in. I did sleep though."
"That's good."
He reached for the O.J. on the table and drained it. Flowing over his tongue, it tasted like the finest Champagne. The table was covered with the pickings of the kitchen. A bag of powdered milk, dry oatmeal, half-full cereal boxes; a Morton's salt container, moldy orange cheese hanging out of shrink wrap, caky peanut butter, open and with a butter knife lodged in the middle of it. There was an old can of Nescafe instant coffee, a cellophane cylinder of Saltines, and a few plastic packages of beef jerky.
He was famished. "Do you mind?" he said. He scooped some Wheaties out of one of the boxes and nibbled them slowly.
"Any milk?"
"No."
"Didn't think so."
Beatrice sat at the table nearby. "Give me your hand."
He held it out for her; his arm felt tremulous. Her grip was gentle, firm, and dry. "Your forehead…?"
He bent down a bit, she placed her hand on his forehead.
"Yup, you're feverish; 102.5, 103.5, somewhere in there. I was afraid you had a 104 and up. You should sit in the sun, out there on the porch. We all should."
"You found good food," he said, still unsteady. "Bra-voh."
He sat down in an empty chair. He ceased a handful of stale Saltines and sequentially ate them. They were so stale they dissolved without chewing in his mouth. Turk, who'd been sitting in the corner of the room, ambled over to him and sat down. Cooper ran his hand down the back, felt the bones and the crusty blood along the fur.
"How are yah boy?"
"He's OK," Mikaela said. "Believe it or not, I found an old dog-food can and opened it for him. I almost saved it for us."
"Hah." That reminded him of Max eating the dog food, from Mad Max. "How long was I out?"
"A few hours," Beatrice said.
Cooper reached over, grabbed one of the jerkies. He struggled pathetically with the plastic. He remembered his rucksack and crossbow; in a feverish panic, he stood up. Mikaela read his mind.
"They're leaning against the couch. Everything's there."
He went into the next room, rifled through the rucksack, and found his knife. Mikaela thinks of everything, he thought. She looks after me. He came back into the room and used the knife on the jerky, started chewing the leather-like piece. He sliced it in half and handed one half to Turk, who snapped at it then chewed vigorously.
Cooper poured a little salt from the Morton's on the jerky. He was starved, but the dry food was making him thirsty. He remembered he still had some aspirin in the med kit.
"We need to go back to the river," Mikaela said. "Fill some bottles."
"I can do that with you…where's Amy?"
"She's playing…upstairs," Mikaela said, rummaging under the sink.
"She found some little plastic people, and animals," Beatrice said.
"We're not letting her go outside, unless we're there," Mikaela added.
"Good idea." Cooper stood up and went to look out the window.
"I wonder where they went," he said. "The people who used to live here." He hadn't found any bodies in the house, but neither had he given it the complete once-over. The sun on his face, through the window pane, felt restorative, in a simple, natural way. The sky was egg shell blue, hazy, but less choked with ash.
He looked out upon a kind of stricken Great Plains; nothing stood, except for the choppy outlines of a few ruins. Nothing grew. Parts of the vast lahar gleamed wetly in the sun. The woods they had emerged from, he deliriously almost didn't remember that, were off the other side of the house.
He passed his hand over his forehead; it didn't feel quite so hot.
With the mild recovery came back his fear and concern. Gladys and her cadre of louts were within about two miles. They must have discovered the car by now. That was gone; they had no transportation. The house was a refuge; but it was too wide open and vulnerable. Soon it would be night.
"I'll go get some water. I feel better. You should stay, Mikaela." She interrupted him.
"No, we all go together. From now on, everything's together."
He didn't have the will to resist her; he wasn't so sure he ever had it, even without this virus. He pet Turk by the window, feeling his heartbeat slow. That, and the cereal, the O.J., the Saltines–a marginal recovery. Comparatively, he was still weak as a kitten. After getting another Saltine and gobbing a chunk of the paste-like peanut butter on it, he went to the door to step into the sun.
"We have to gather everything we find here, that's usable, and bring it with us," Mikaela said, inspecting a collection of stuff she'd found under the sink. Cooper thought she was so exhausted she'd become robotic.
"Have you rested yet?"
"A bit…"
There were sponges, crusty powdered soap, a near-full bottle of propylene glycol. So she realizes we have to leave soon, too, he thought to himself.
"I'll look outside, see what I can find. Listen, you should crash, Mikaela. We have the time."
"Rest comes later."
Cooper returned to his pack, pulled out the med kit and an aspirin bottle, and chewed two on his way out. He still had the blanket around his shoulders. He carried the crossbow. He made a note to search the basement for anything they could use, including pistol ammo. That find, only if they were immensely lucky.
He was met with pleasant sunshine when he went out onto the wooden porch.
The swings on the swing-set moved lazily in a breeze. He heard Beatrice behind him, "I'm going to get Amy…she should come outside."
When he looked east, towards Rainier's gloomy, broken profile, he noticed a blue shimmer along the horizon. It resembled the contours of a coastline, where you can see the line of water reflecting the sun.
He sat down on the wooden slats of the porch and took the weight off. The horizon looked different than it did just hours before.
CHAPTER 31
He walked over to the window, where Mikaela still stood by the sink, like a mother. Through the window, he said, "Something's building out there. Did you see the horizon?"
"The water is backing up, where the lahar blocked the rivers. A lake is forming. I saw it from the car before." He nodded his head, then he walked around the corner and stared at the horizon again. Water has a way of going where it wants, he thought, like the way it can bore holes in and sculpt rock. Not far away was a brand-new river. At least they had a water source.
"Push me," he heard Amy command.
Beatrice came forward, found Amy from behind, gripped each side of the swing, and stepped back carefully, still holding on to the swing.
She gave the swing a gentle push, then stepped back a few more steps, one arm held forward to fend off the back-swing. Amy kicked up her legs, gripped the chains, looked back, smiled.
"Millie and Tom want to swing!"
"Where are they?" Cooper asked.
"Over there!" Both of the smudged and tattered dolls were perched, half seated, against the
wooden posts of the porch.
"Here?" Cooper held up the empty swing.
"No there! Silly!"
He walked over, picked up the dolls, and plopped them one on top of the other on the free swing, belly first.
"Give them a push. They want to swing!" She was insistent, as usual. Kids had a way of escaping into play. It worked.
Cooper gave the swing a nudge, and it moved awkwardly with the two dolls; "reek…reek."
"What do you miss?" Cooper said. He moved over and leaned against the swing-set's frame. The metal was warm in the sun. It felt good just to prop up his weight.
"Reading," Beatrice said.
"What's your liking?" he asked, thinking books written in braille?
"Audio books in the car. I listened to one about the life of George Washington. And books for the sight-impaired; I just read To Kill A Mockingbird. I have a copy of The Bible, King James version. I'll just pick it up and open it to a section. Yes, I know that sounds old-fashioned."
"No," Cooper said. "I heard there's good reading, great passages in the Bible. Great stories." He hadn't had any religion lately himself; since way back when before his father died. He pondered a distant memory of his father standing behind Shane and tying a necktie, before Cooper knew how to do it himself. Then his mother handing him a really stiff, uncomfortable sport-coat, with the tie already strangling him, before they all went off together to a Lutheran church in Vermont. Song-books and Bibles tucked into the back of wooden pews.
"I miss the radio. I listen to it every morning, in my pickup truck, and even over the Internet." That made him think of a D.J. he liked, on FM radio on the western slope of Colorado. One time the guy got drunk on screwdrivers on air, with a police chief and a fire chief sitting on either side of him, in order to draw attention to impairment while driving. It was the morning before New Year's Eve, and a date he had with Alexis.
"I find the Bible reassuring," Beatrice said.
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