March 14, 2012

Carrie’s coughing woke me up. In the murk of the cabin, I swallowed hard, and grit crunched on my teeth. Carrie coughed again. My tongue felt as though I’d just licked some (clean) toilet paper.

I could make out Andy’s dark form by the front window. “We better get moving,” he said, freaking me out because without eyes in the back of his head, there could be no way he knew I was awake.

“Aye,” Kenneth said from across the cabin. “Oy! Oy! Let’s get movin’ you lot!” He bellowed.

Carrie bolted upright, nearly knocking me senseless with her shoulder. She coughed again.

The air was becoming thick with particulate, fallout from the massive eruption.

“If we were down wind of that bastard, we’d be in a right mess,” Kenneth said. He was standing beside Andy, who had been amusing himself by watching the periodic glow to the east. Clouds of ash and dust would drift over the glow, tamping it down, and like a fire renewed by a gust of wind, the glow would return and this, to Andy, was fine television. He never caught onto the human love of television. Seemed a terrible and disturbing waste of time and he exploited people around it whenever he could, coining them “ego spazs.”

It was as if a light snow had fallen in the three hours we’d been tossing and turning. No one really slept well, and Andy and Kenneth had spent the entire time awake and trying to ignore one another.

There was about eight to 10 inches of fine particulate on the ground and covering the Wagoneer. Carrie was having difficulty breathing and Stacy was moving in slow motion, her wound still causing a great deal of distress.

A talcy powder billowed around the vehicle as we clambered aboard. The air inside the Jeep was just as crummy as in the cabin, thanks to Andy’s modifications, which sacrificed the machine’s already badly compromised atmospheric controls.

Kenneth steered us down narrow roads, like a mad bug skittering across the top of a dusty table top. He had about 20 feet visibility, max, and I must admit that I was damned impressed at how he could maintain such a high rate of speed, running at about 50 mp/h, and drive through steady ash fallout.

Had we been 500 miles to the east of Yellowstone when it exploded, we’d all be dead by now. I couldn’t even imagine how Kenneth and Andy could remain immortal, as they still needed to breathe. Our lungs would be stuffed full of the abrasive crud by now and we would have died horrible deaths. I thought briefly about the horrors awaiting so many evil souls, and the blunt ends so many within the blast and fallout zone experienced.

It was 4:44 a.m. when we crossed into Northern California and entered Surprise Valley and a grotty little ‘old west’ spot called Cedarville.

There must have been a foot of ash as we rolled through the small town.

“Everyone keep their eyes open,” Kenneth said as we rolled past quaint western store fronts. I imagined how this town would have been an oasis when the west was just being opened. It reminded me a bit of the Columbia Valley where I once lived – as it appeared to be a noteable divider of distrinct geographical regions.

It was now slowly being buried in volcanic fallout.

Half an hour later we crept into a larger town, Alturas. It’s bronze-topped county seat building was covered in a mixture of milky and grey particulate.

As we crept out of the town on Highway 299, Stacy began soaking strips of towel with water and we wrapped them over our mouths and noses to cut down on the grit and grind. Within minutes, light coverings of early cement formed on the strips of towel, creating greater alarm among the mortals in the vehicle.

Carrie’s coughing was getting worse and Stacy was starting to join her. With lungs a fair bit more damaged and used to rough going, I was, so far, not being too badly impacted by the declining quality in air. Even Kenneth was beginning to cough and splutter.

The sky to the east began to glow dark orange and deep red when the sun started to rise as we entered Adin Pass. At Adin, Andy leaned forward and asked Kenneth, “Shouldn’t we be going south? Long Valley is south, not west.”

Kenneth stared ahead and ignored him.

Carrie’s hand, which had been squeezing mine since we left the cabin, let go. I looked at her and she smiled. My heart was always susceptible to that beautiful smile, which seemed to somehow pump more luminous blue into her eyes. She mouthed “I love you” and her hand once again found mine. I mouthed back, “I love you, too,” and she smiled again, before resting her head on my shoulder.

An hour later we stopped outside an old gas station near the little hamlet of Cassel. Kenneth said nothing as he went about procuring gas. We all piled out of the Jeepster and gaped in awe at the sky to the east – a hellish mixture of fire colours and dark abyss. A strong western wind was pushing the ash cloud down and to the northeast and by the time we were re-fueled, the air was relatively clear of debris.

“Do we head south now?” Andy asked, stepping toward the door of the gas station.

“Get in,” Kenneth barked. Carrie, Stacy and I stumbled into one another and then something hard pushed into the side of my head as I was about to push through the door. Kenneth held a shotgun to my temple. “Not you,” he snarled and clubbed me with the barrel, knocking me backward.

Andy appeared in the door of the gas station, smiling and shaking his head. Kenneth fired a shot and Andy fell backwards.

Carrie screamed and Kenneth plunged into the Jeepster. I scrambled to my feet and was sprayed by flying gravel and dust as they screeched onto the highway and disappeared to the west. Andy swore from inside the gas station.

Tears filled my eyes and then rage tore through me like a wildfire over a windy long grass prairie.

“That fucking old prick Scotsman!” I screamed. “I am really, truly fucking sick and tired of his horseshit!”

Andy appeared beside me. His chest was covered with a thick reddish-grey patch and a whistle accompanied his voice when he asked me if I was okay. He pounded at his chest with an open hand and laughed.

“I knew he was up to something,” he said, sounding impressed. “I knew he was going to do something like that. Have to give him credit.”

I spat and winced as the crunching grit in my mouth found a crack in a molar filling. Only the grace of the prevailing wind was sparing, me at least, further despair from the volcano-sullied air.

A mile up the road, Kenneth turned the Jeepster, skidding on the fallout, onto Highway 89 south.

Carrie was still shouting at him but he expertly tuned her out. Stacy finally put her strong hand on Carrie’s shoulder and politely asked her to “stop screaming, you’re giving me a headache.”

Carrie fell to her side and her head bashed against the side of Andy’s rigged M60. She slapped her hands to her face and shouted, “I am so sick of this!”

Stacy let go and leaned toward the front seat. “I guess I know why but why now?” She said, sounding disappointed. “I mean, c’mon Kenneth. Hasn’t she been through enough of that? Hasn’t he?”

After a few minutes of silence, Kenneth said, “It’s no easy feat fooling the one who is the greatest at fooling. When he went inside, I had to seize the opportunity. And it worked out nicely.”

Stacy sat back and sighed. A greyish green world whisked by frame-by-frame.

As they approached Old Station, at the junction of Highways 44 and 89, Andy was whooping with glee. The first garage he looked in contained a battered 1972 Ford F-150.

Half an hour later, Kenneth stopped at the entrance to Lassen Volcanic National Park and announced, “We’re here.”

“What – we stopping for the night already,” Stacy said, adding she thought Long Valley was “still a few hours to the south.”

Kenneth said she was correct. “About a day’s drive in this,” he said.

“So what’s the deal, then?”

Kenneth smiled. “We’re not going to Long Valley. Never have been. This is the spot – this is my eye.” He smiled again and Stacy felt a jolt of uneasiness. “You devious old soul,” she said finally.

Kenneth turned the Jeepster into the park and crept up into the high country. Lassen Peak, the largest plug dome volcano in the world, loomed ahead.

“This is where you begin your journey,” he said softly to Stacy.

Carrie sat up. Her face was the same colour as the ash passing by outside and dark lines coursed down the grit that had been sticking to everyone’s faces. She’d been listening to Kenneth and had actually begun to sort through ideas all revolving around stealing the Wagoneer and heading back to me.

 

At that moment, two old partially armored panel vans loaded with rascals, deviants and killers – numbering 13 in total – were barreling up Highway 44. They were a patrol attached to the Reno Army and they were freaking right out.

They were unaware that Yellowstone had exploded and, due to the number of active volcanoes in California, they assumed that one or more had gone off around them – and dangerous panic had seized them all.

The lead vehicle, driven by Willis Odem, a four-time convicted armed robber and  murderer, was setting a dizzying pace. The vans slashed through the swirling grey upwards of 75 mp/h.

The rear vehicle, controlled by Rafael Murgula, vice-president of a firm that sold pharmaceuticals by day and an addicted sexual predator by night, struggled to keep up due to swirling clouds of obscurity.

Heavily armed, more heavily dosed with sundry drugs and booze and nerve-frayed, the baker’s dozen of demi-demons were racing northwest of Susanville, instead of the prefered southeast, as they were initially aiming for Reno.

Noises and throat-clogging fallout spurred their flight. The noises they heard was a murder of corvids turning on itself – roughly 200 birds in total.

By the time they were reaching the Old Station junction, Andy was whistling and steering our newly revived F-150 alongside Hat Creek, just south of the same-named village. Andy had his trusty blade and a shotgun in a back holster and I had my trusty Glock. Otherwise, that old bastard had left us unarmed. We also only had enough ammo for a couple of re-loads and were now on the hunt for more firepower.

Willis stopped at the junction and shouted for his men to “be on the alert – we’ve got tracks here.”

Standard operating procedure called for them to stop, assume a defensive formation, as best as they could, and determine the threat level.

They were just disbanding from being alert and clambering aboard their vehicles to follow the tracks into the park when Andy rounded a corner and charged toward them.

“You better get down,” he said to me. “Right down onto the floor if you can.” Looking at the vans rapidly approaching, I didn’t wait to be told again, and scrunched myself into a tight ball, my right temple pressed against the glove-box.

Pings and whistles and ‘thunks’ began filing past and into us and Andy slammed on the brakes. The old Ford skidded forward in the ash and came to a stop about 100 feet from the vans, where 13 terrified maniacs were huddled, pouring led at our truck. I couldn’t help myself and tried to take peeks to see if one of those vehicles was our former Jeepster. My throat was clogged with dust and emotion as I feared the worst. I cursed Kenneth and swore that if he harmed Carrie because he left us… at least Andy… behind, I’d saw his old bean off.

Andy yelled at me to keep my head down and disappeared out the door.

With a grunt, from a bullet that hit him in just below his heart, he disappeared into the chaos of ash, dust and gun powder.

Willis spotted a dark figure race, inhumanly fast, into the treeline on the other side of a narrow ditch and shouted at the three men beside him to “deal with that mother!” The men trotted into the ditch and took up a firing line along the edge of the woods.

Bullets continued to ‘ting’ and ‘zing’ and ‘ping’ into the old Ford and with each one I grew increasingly more agitated.

Noting the lack of gunfire coming from the truck, Rafael tapped two men and grunted, “Follow me. Let’s flank that truck” and he led them on a wide arc across the junction and into the ditch on the other side.

Andy hit the three men sent to dispatch him like an osprey striking a fat trout.

The first man to die, Hank Peaworthy, a step-father of the worst ilk who, thanks to a good lawyer, was spared jail time for repeatedly abusing his three step-daughters over a 14-year period, was the only one to actually see Andy, who gleefully tore into them. His millennias of murder and mayhem were coming to an end and this was not lost on Andy. He was making the most of every kill.

The third man he hestitated with, just long enough to illicit an ear-piercing shriek from, the aim being to spook the rest. It worked beautifully. Willis and the six men left in the firing line at the vans scattered into the vehicles. Their panic caused Rafael to step out from his cover – 40 feet to the right of the F-150. I was trying to catch a glimpse of the action when I saw him step out. I pushed the Glock out the window and fired a shot. I ducked down and winced hard. My shot hit Rafael in his right shin and screamed in agony. His two compatriots were too stunned to react. I peeked out again and, seeing only one man on the ground, I sat up and steadied my aim. My second shot missed but the third hit Rafael in his lower back, causing him to spin 180 degrees, screaming.

Willis started his van and peered toward the F-150. The other van sat quiet, the three men inside it shouting madly: “where the hell are the keys?”

Rafael’s two hunting buddies returned to vans, making Willis stop, Panting and shouting they announced that Rafael was dead. Lying in agony not far away, Rafael shouted, “No! ¡Hijo de puta! Help me!”

As Willis was turning his van around to flee, the men hopped aboard and Andy hit Rafael’s idle vehicle.

The men inside assumed it was their driver returning and could only look on in brief, nerve-shredding terror as Andy proceeded to disembowel and behead them.

Scattered, Willis raced toward the national park, instead of turning around and fleeing back the way they had come.

Andy sprinted after them and pumped two shots from his shotgun into the backdoors of the van. A few pellets found their way through and bored white hot holes into the babbling, cursing, weeping pile of men.

As always happened when Andy let loose, a vibe of indescribable terror, like a scent, seized the men in the van who rounded a corner and out of sight of the battle.

Andy turned his attention to Rafael, who fired three shots, all missing, at him as he sauntered up, his blade glinting in the scattered rays of sunlight that found cracks in the thick chaos.

I peeked out again and almost fired at Andy, who was now standing over Rafael, one of his feet pinning his shooting hand to the ground. Rafael screamed for his angels to help him and Andy laughed at him. With a wink he said, “I think you just missed him.”

I walked up to the badly wounded man and looked down at him with sadness while Andy extracted information from him by jabbing his index finger into his hip.

In a minute, Andy gleaned where they had come from, where there forward posts were located, with Susanville being the closest, which they had abandoned before getting disoriented and lost.

Willis was too scared to notice that he was following tracks, until they veered off into the national park. He slammed on the brakes. “Shit! There’s more of them.”

Not thinking clearly, a product of the heavy volume of pharmaceuticals Rafael had been dispensing, he shouted at the men in the van to “suck it up boys, we’re going back. No telling what is waiting up there.”

Once Rafael had told Andy all he needed to know, he pulled his finger out of the wound and said, “There, that’s a good fellow. No more pain.” His blade then jolted forward into his chest, ending Rafael’s time in hell.

Our F-150 was riddled with bullets and its front tires were torn to shreds. We had no choice but to drag the bodies out of the van, entrails and heads and all. Rafael had offered the keys up in an attempt to have Andy spare his life; poor fool.

Willis rounded the corner near the junction and took his foot off the gas. The van stopped about 50 feet from us. The surreal lighting hid our presence inside the van, though Willis and his men could feel Andy.

“What do we do?” One of the men bellowed. “Let’s get out of here!”

Andy suggested I buckle up and “grab some ammo and one of those rifles.” I did as I was asked.

Willis noticed our van creep forward and he stepped on the gas. Andy pushed his shotgun out his window and fired. The van jerked rapidly away, back down Highway 44 toward Susanville.

Andy looked at me and smiled. There’s a place to stay for the night up the road – but we better take care of this guys first.” He was so calm… together, as if he had just buttered some toast.

He turned the van, smelling of blood and excrement, around, and we slowly rolled away from the junction – Willis’ crazed earlier flight obscuring the Wagoneer’s tracks.

As if we were on a Sunday drive, Andy putted down the road, whistling Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven.

 

Now in the heart of the national park, Kenneth stopped the Wagoneer in a campsite, beside a cooking hut.

He led Carrie and Stacy into the hut and stated, “We’ll stay here for the night and tomorrow we head on in.”

Carrie shuffled into the hut, numb and as close to suicidal as she’d even been in her life.

A nearby waterpump provided much-needed fresh water, even if it was pee yellow. The water’s colour made Kenneth pause and he grew doubtful – something he never felt. He smelled the water and a sharp sulphur note made him state, “It’s getting too close to call.”

Stacy, her good arm around Carrie who was slouched on a picnic table, asked, “How long do we have?”

Kenneth admitted he wasn’t positive “but all the signs tell me it is not very long .”

What he didn’t tell the women was that it didn’t matter where exactly they were. They were well within the blast zone and the holy eye would present itself.

Kenneth returned outside and reappeared a few minutes later with bedding and other supplies. Silently, he nipped back outside and began chopping firewood which was stacked outside the cooking hut.

He took a deep breath of the cedar, freshly split and took another. Kenneth paused over the chopping block and realized his long journey was coming to an end. With visions of his many lives coursing through his mind, he inhaled the fresh cedar once more and stepped back inside the hut for his final night on Earth.

Ian Cobb/e-KNOW

---

Article Share

---