Dec. 8, 2011

The San Francisco gang was rooting for lunch in Coos Bay, and the Sacramento boys, along with some fresh recruits from Pelican Bay State Prison who had been hanging out in Eureka, were closing in. The small band had pulled off the highway at Bandon to see about obtaining a fresh fish feast at the Oregon Wildlife Fish Hatchery.

I was rocking to Five Minutes Alone, which once signaled an incoming call on my cell phone before the disappearance, when I came upon Humbug Mountain State Park. A mad craving overcame me and I pulled into the park, seizing upon a hunch. A few of the picnic sites were occupied by abandoned vehicles, one being a smart-looking camper van with California plates. Reacquainted with the fact that my world was now a swirling frying pan of angry madmen and women romping about on the drying peel of an apocalyptic society, I kept the truck running and held my trusty Glock as I began to root through the van.

My nose for the seedy side of life was, thankfully, working at full power and I found what I was looking for — a big bag of weed, or a tobacco tin, to be more accurate, in the passenger door side panel.

“Yes, thank you God!” I shouted. Next to the tin, holding about a half ounce of dry cannabis, was a package of rolling papers. “Yes! Yes, thank you God times two!” I pronounced once again, and howled like a hockey fan witnessing his/her team score an overtime goal in game seven of a championship series.

And just like that, I rolled a couple of nice big fatties and set back out on the road — uncaring of what or whom I would run into. Bring it on, I thought, enjoying the warm, giggly surge of uncaring overtake me with each puff.

Pantera never sounded sweeter. After that, as I rolled through Denmark, I slotted Boston-Boston into the tune system and air guitared my way toward Bandon, only recently abandoned by the Sacramento gang. Further on up the road, the Frisco baddies were rolling past the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. At the fish hatchery, the small band was selecting the juiciest trout for their meal, which they intended to cook at Bullard’s Beach State Park, just north of Bandon. It was a great place to cook a nice campfire meal, the tall, dark haired man told his followers, who heard his words with the acceptance that it was his grace alone that let them live. Besides, he knew how to find fresh fish to eat. It hadn’t dawned on anyone to consider that fish might still be around. Explains the cat thing, one can suppose.

At that moment, Carrie was seated in an old Ford F-150 that rattled into the frozen chaotic strip area of Newport. Kenneth was searching for supplies and, like the smug, ancient old angel he was, they were completely unarmed.

It was just “a dangle into town to get some food and warm clothing, because it will be cold in Baker City” where they were headed the next day, Kenneth informed the girls.

Carrie’s thoughts were of me — and she glumly nodded at the task at hand. Despite her better knowledge, she left her Glock in the Cessna. Even Stacy, she of the snap-to, aim and fire disposition, was unarmed. She was also thinking about me and had even argued with Kenneth about the choice to leave me behind again that morning.

“Aye, I know it’s a rotten thing ta’do but we must and you know that. He is what he is, lass and we don’t have the room in the plane for him. Simple as that. I have got ta get ye two to Jackson and up to Yellowstone. Simple as that,” he said. “And I haven’t got to this point just to feck up plans that have been centuries in the making.

Outside Lakeside, Oregon, motorcycle-riding monsters riddled a private roadside sign with bullets as they passed by. The sign proclaimed “1 Thessalonians 4:13-17. The end is nigh.”

If only the sundry group of killers, rapists, mutilators and violators of the other worst means realized the symbolism of their actions.

What they shot was the biblical passages that state: “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will bring God with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we, which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall ever be with the Lord.”

It was 1:11 p.m. when I pulled into Coos Bay.

I’d been through this picturesque city many years earlier and delighted in a visit to its lovely, sprawling seaside garden. It must have been the weed leading me on, because I soon found myself strolling through the gate to the garden — mostly inert from the onset of winter. I also found myself wishing I had a camera. I hadn’t used a camera since the disappearance began. It was more about ‘what’s the point?’ than anything else but a stroll through a garden, even if in December, begged me clutching a camera. So I made a mental note to try to find a good digital camera in Coos Bay or North Bend. A few crows cawed in the tree line as I sauntered around, lost in my thoughts — mostly centred on Carrie. I fired up the second fattie and took long, lung-damaging pulls on it as I wandered around. I came to a spot that allowed views of a small bay down below and remembered seeing seals down there before. The ocean slopped and lapped ashore and I wondered what creatures might be left in its vastness. At that same moment a tall, dark figure pushed a fork-full of trout into his mouth.

Time flitted past and it was almost 3 p.m. when I clambered back into the Dodge, aiming to roll another fattie and head to downtown Coos Bay to search for supplies, like a digital camera, food, music and perhaps more weaponry and ammunition. I had been ambling about – enjoying the afternoon and not caring about who or what I might run into.

The drive into the quaint downtown was slow and required a few bouts of lawn and sidewalk traversing to get around the carnage of abandoned human detritus.

After parking, I locked the truck with a beep of the fob. Old habits. And with the 10-guage over my right shoulder, I strolled along Coos Bay’s economic heart, poking into shops here and there and despite all that had happened, marveled at the carnage that took place after God-alien-whatever swooped in and scooped up the vast majority of mankind.

I wished I had asked Kenneth, that smartass old punk-ass Scotsman, why bodies disappeared along with souls. Love to hear his smug answer to that one.

Chewing on that thought, I came upon a department store and noticed with some alarm that a bicycle with a child-carrier behind had been thrown through the front window. As I wandered inside, a series of foul smells twacked at my nose and I pulled the shotgun off my shoulder and chambered a slug.

In a few minutes I found what I was searching for and, using the butt of the gun, smashed the glass counter to allow access to a series of digital cameras. I settled on a Nikon — old habits — and set about looking for an auto-charger for the battery and a memory card.

With those supplies secured, I headed to the sporting goods department and found, to my sudden horror, that every single form of weapon and ammo had been relieved.

It was what I needed — a solid reminder that I wasn’t alone and that those who were left with me were fundamentally evil. For a brief moment I felt safer because Kenneth said I was evil. So that should mean I am just as bad as the rest, right?

I knew that wasn’t the case. There would be many semi-evil people like me, but they would be either mowed down by the truly evil or operating in disguise to avoid such a fate.

Rather than find weapons, I did find some dry goods and water and bagged them.

A few minutes later I was rolling back up to Highway 101 and angling toward North Bend. I passed signs riddled with bullet holes. What I didn’t know is that those holes were put there a few short hours earlier.

I rambled north out of the bay area a few miles later and pulled into an Oregon Dunes parking area.

A glance at the clock in the truck told me I only had another hour of light, so I decided to sit tight for the night. The parking area was out of sight from the highway and I felt reasonably secure, so I lit a small fire and cooked a tin of baked beans and canned mushrooms, while sipping beer and puffing ganja. The lack of seagulls squawking was like being at a hockey game and not hearing anyone honk on a plastic horn or scream out that the ref is blind.

At that same time, Carrie, Stacy and Kenneth were rooting through the Target in Newport, selecting warm clothes and scratching together a shopping cart full of foodstuffs.

Down the coast a spell, the Frisco gang was rolling across the beautiful old bridge spanning the small river mouth at Waldport. And just north of Florence, the Sacramento gang was pulling into the parking lot at the Sea Lion Caves. A few of the misguided dolts uttered dismay and disgust at the lack of sea lions in the caves. To make a statement and have a giggle, they piled several sticks of dynamite in the elevator that once led visitors down to the caves, which were home to one of the largest colonies of Steller’s sea lions, and ordered the conveyance to the bottom floor, sat back and waited.

The rumble, shake and concussive thud of the explosion sent them across the highway back to their vehicles and bikes chuckling like children emerging from a theatre on a Saturday afternoon, reminiscing about funny scenes in the film they just watched.

The small band pulled back onto the highway on their dirt bikes, their tummies stuffed full of fresh fish, and began throttling north toward Coos Bay. Slumped over the handle bars of his dirt bike, the dark figure shook his head at his band’s latest shenanigans. Black smoke rose from behind the tourist trap.

With their cart loaded and warm clothes secured, the girls and Kenneth headed to the truck and, thanks to the warm late afternoon sun, decided they should head down to Newport’s charming quay area to search for some fresh food and try to catch the sunset through the Yaquina Bay Bridge. The always-striking bridge arching across the bay was even more dramatic with a semi-trailer — a fuel tanker —hanging precariously by a few strands of bent and ripped bridge steel and other black shapes, vehicles that rolled to final resting places and ran out of fuel.

What strange symphonies that must have played out around the world when the disappearance happened, with each urban area idling down to a thick, all-encompassing silence, occasionally broken by the caws of corvids or yowls of cats. With each final, once-fully-fueled vehicle gulping quiet realized all around the world, came a rise of hungry evil, freeing itself to set fire to mankind’s remains — finally.

With this apocalyptic backdrop in place and drinks in their hands, Kenneth came clean with Carrie — and Stacy.

“So Carrie,” he began, “I know this has been difficult for ya and I commend ya for your good behaviour. Y’been adequately established and selected, I do say. I know it is impossible for ya to grasp right now but y’are what y’are. Ye have been chosen to maintain the balance in a new world, just as I was chosen so many years ago and just as wee Stacy was selected. Ye are mortal now but when you pass through the holy eye, ye’ll be converted, as it is — to immortal angels.

Carrie asked him about the holy eye, her voice lousy with sarcasm. Her eyes, filled with the light of the setting sun, gazed balefully between Kenneth and Stacy and the frozen horror on the Yaquina Bay Bridge.

“It is where we will be going tomorrow,” Kenneth said. “At each of the holy eyes there are keepers such as I, and we are charged with gathering the angels to them. Time is at a premium now because there are… and I know this may sound like it is too much for you, but where there are angels, there are fallen angels and they know about the holy eyes. They’re not keen about this mortal life, I can tell you,” he said with a snort. “Ye’ll know what I mean one day. Any rate, that is why we had to just rip you from Bob, as nasty as that was. There is something about your Bob, lassie. He isn’t as he seems. I don’t why that is and that is what scared me about him. I saw it immediately – in his aura – and I heard it in his voice.”

Carrie stared at Kenneth with growing menace in her eyes.

“Couldn’t he have helped us get to where we need to go? If there is good in the world, couldn’t we have helped him… I don’t know… convert or repent or whatever the hell he’d have to do?”

Kenneth shook his head sadly. Stacy smiled weakly at her.

“No lassie. There is no grey area when it comes to the holy eye. When the time came and human souls were whisked to the bardo — the waiting room, if you will, they had to be truly pure of heart and soul. Believe me, there are many millions of people left wandering this world who truly believe they’ve never done a thing of ill but they have. Rob is one of them.

“The evil must remain behind to sort through their sins.”

Stacy interjected, “It is the purification… a necessary aspect of the change in worlds.”

Kenneth nodded. “Aye, but evil will find its way into the hearts of men again. Evil does live in the hidden nook of all souls.”

Carrie closed her eyes and shrugged animatedly. “Ah whatever.” She stood, set her drink down and walked away from her companions… her captors. Her heart felt like a hot stone in her chest.

Kenneth’s voice, soft but firm, forced her eyes back open. She felt his hand on her shoulder, gentle but firm.

“Lass, when ye pass through the eye, ye’ll no remember Rob. Ye’ll be a child born unto a new world but ye’ll be an old soul who will lead and influence and guard this race, as well as connect souls between points in space and time.”

Carrie spun and pushed her face into Kenneth’s chest, more as a pseudo head butt than an embrace. He slowly, awkwardly wrapped one arm, and then the other, around her and whispered, “We have a long journey yet and we have much work to do before all this can be left behind. I need ye w’me, lass.”

She pulled back and her angel blue eyes channeled directly into Kenneth’s soul, making him acutely aware of the powers she was oblivious to possessing.

She briskly stepped away from him and crossed the planked decking of the one-time bay-front promenade to where she left her empty glass of wine.

Silently but purposefully she topped her glass to the rim and said, “I’m going for a walk.”

Stacy asked her if she had her gun.

“What do I need a gun for if I am so high and fucking mighty?” She asked, realizing how much she sounded like me, and marched away in defiance.

“She’s coming around,” Kenneth said lightly. “She’s a good lass.”

Stacy felt like following her. She was worried for her new friend and her heart ached for her loss. But she was better schooled, having met Kenneth years before. Stacy gave up on her life several years before the disappearance and when it happened, she felt a surge of relief to know that her inner voices, and Kenneth’s, were right all along.

It must be much harder to accept the truth and her calling when love cast such a tall shadow over it.

“She’ll be alright,” Kenneth said, as if reading Stacy’s mind. “I’m not sensing what I sensed at Yosemite.”

What Carrie didn’t stick around to hear, was that Kenneth’s ‘eye,’ the long valley terminal at Yosemite National Park, a place he fought for as best he could, over a century earlier, without risking losing his status and being cast down, had to be kept “tamped down and silent” because he had detected a fallen angel’s presence when he flew there right after the disappearance.

What Kenneth hadn’t told Stacy was the disappearance happened much sooner than anticipated. He found his terminal packed full of souls and secure, but a desperate, sinister presence filled the pine-scented air. He also found a dozen angels hanging out in a disheveled downtown Mammoth Lakes. They were inexplicably drawn to Yosemite, as dozens of other ‘new’ angels were drawn to the other six holy eyes, at the sites of the Earth’s six land-based super volcanoes: Yellowstone; Valles Caldera (New Mexico); Lake Toba in North Sumatra, Indonesia; Taupo Volcano, North Island, New Zealand and Aira Caldera, at Kagoshima Prefecture, Kyushu, Japan.

Each holy eye had a keeper, like Kenneth. And each holy eye required at least 180 angels to help enable the transition. Even Kenneth didn’t understand the mechanics of the entire process. He just knew what it was he had to do. He’d been training for this moment for thousands of years.

Angels come and go. Some die and become replaced in the natural order of things. Others failed and were cast out, and still others would ‘quit’ and would also be cast out — lost to the chance at freedom and life on the new world.

The numerical value of 1,111 angels was also lost to Kenneth and to all the keepers and angels. Kenneth had long believed it was a safe water mark to aim for and as the final process moved along, he was growing more convinced that was the case.

He wanted to shout at Stacy and have her come back so he could tell her that she also had to be careful. Fledgling angels can die, m’girls, he said to himself.  Then he quieted down within, knowing that Stacy was always well armed and, thanks to his perseverance, highly capable in any aspects of defence and strategy.

When Kenneth left Long Valley, he left the angels he’d come upon in charge and under orders to protect “at all costs” the precious cargo contained within. It was a fairly safe order as they had no idea how to find the souls. Kenneth was the only person who could lead them to their departure gate.

Interestingly, both Stacy and Carrie had to be at Yellowstone ‘when the time came.’ Kenneth often chuckled at how he had only come upon a couple of his Long Valley angels in all his days aboard Earth and how two from the relatively nearby Yellowstone terminal had become so indelibly stamped as his responsibility.

But that’s how it was with keepers of the holy eyes.

And so it was, Kenneth — who had also been, over the past few thousand years, a variety of personalities, including John Muir, a cover that became too famous and powerful, had to shepherd two important angels to Yellowstone, a place packaged with far too much acclaim and attention for his liking. One had to be a team player when charged with such demigod responsibility.

It was that focus and a stern demeanor that so easily guided him to cast me aside.

A pair of crows had been circling overhead, occasionally cawing some corvid communication and Kenneth discerned a new sound in the distance.

The vague buzz of motorcycles interspersed with gusts of wind from the Pacific. In a few minutes the buzz grew to a low growl as the Frisco gang approached the grand arch of the Yaquina Bay Bridge. The Oregon Coast Aquarium and a nearby brewpub gathered the sundry sickos and filthy freaks off the highway, buying Kenneth some time. He trotted off after the girls.

The leader of the Frisco gang, numbering about 25 members, was riding in a sidecar, with a machine gun mounted in a makeshift stand. Like many with him, he had been freed from San Quentin State Prison, where he was on death row, convicted of 11 murders in the mid 1980s.  Along with his late ‘friend’ Leonard Lake, the Hong Kong-born Charles Ng had taken great delights in raping, torturing and eventually murdering between 11 and 25 young victims.

His ‘legend’ made him a natural leader in this time of evil and he didn’t have to search far to find willing accomplices to aid him in his quest — a search for women.

Not completely surprising is the fact that the balance between men and women had been completely thrown out of whack since the disappearance. Stuck on death row since 1999 and behind bars since 1985, Ng had an unquenchable thirst.

Since the disappearance, he had polished off eight vile street she-rats in entirely new and horrific ways but had found little enjoyment in the killings, or the rapings. Even the torture seemed forced and clichéd.

So with a budding conflagration sparking in the Greater San Francisco area, Ng seized upon the idea to go on a road trip — to check out the cities of the north and maybe even head back to Canada, from where he’d been extradited in 1991. He enjoyed his time visiting Banff and the Rockies and wished he’d been able to sample the local treats.

He didn’t want anything to do with the power struggles that were growing and becoming isolated examples of everything wrong with humankind, so along with numerous fellow San Quentinites and other gullible vermin, they struck out north along Highway 101.

Ng had been finding the going arduous, as he disliked motorcycles, but once he fashioned the M60 machine gun onto the sidecar of ‘Very Scary’ Perry Mansfield’s Harley Davidson, and began to use it at every chance he could, he settled down and was even joking and friendly, much to the shock and relief of his companions.

It was Ng who wanted to see the aquarium. He sauntered through the eerie emptiness of the facility and delighted at the near-death condition of many of its occupants. Most of the aquarium’s denizen was already dead and a brutal stench caused Ng to gag now and then. He was fascinated out of his mind.

The rest of his pals bashed their way into the brew pub and howled with delight when they found a vast array of ready-to-drink beer.

As they settled down for a good old-fashioned piss up, Ng was firing a handgun at the windows of a seal enclosure. The fourth shot made the thick glass explode and water, as well as dead fish, gushed into viewing area. Ng scrambled to avoid being splashed by the bacteria-laden water and took his leave from the aquarium. He would have to let his friends have their fill of beer or there would be a leadership debate that he didn’t feel like becoming engaged in. Thus far his name had carried him to the top of this sullied pack. While still a dangerous creature, Ng was outnumbered by bikers and thugs who’d snap him in two if they turned on him. He wasn’t as agile as he once was. He needed them, so it was down time in Newport — a town he’d never heard of before this day.

As he walked toward the brewpub, located a block north of the aquarium, he could hear the raucous din from his companions as they tripped out on limitless beer.

Across the bay, Kenneth caught up with Stacy and Carrie and informed them about what he heard.

“Are you sure?” Stacy asked. “What should we do?”

Kenneth said they needed to retreat to an unassuming apartment or home that afforded views of the bay bridge and would allow them views of the north side of the bridge, so they could determine if the bikers were passing through or staying.

“How do you know they are evil?” Carrie asked. “Because they are bikers? I have… had friends who were bikers and they were wonderful people.”

Kenneth said he could sense evil.

Carrie snorted a rip of scoffing toward him. “Whatever,” she muttered.

They then traipsed back to their vehicle and within a few minutes found a plain looking apartment on the hill above Newport’s quay area. Kenneth parked the truck on an angle over the curb across from the apartment and they hustled inside. A large window provided a beautiful view of the bay bridge and a window in the bathroom, at the back of the apartment, allowed one to see portions of Highway 101 as it rolled off the bridge and curved along the coast and through Newport.

“This’ll do just fine,” Kenneth said.

Just as the Frisco gang had found a nice bar to trash, so too had the Sacramento crew, numbering about 20, who had settled into a bayside bar at Waldport 16 miles south of Newport.

This crew didn’t have a leader, really. Porter Vender, convicted of two counts of manslaughter but actually responsible for the deaths of seven people in his 40 years of vile life, was leader by default. He had been ‘ordered’ by the head of the ‘Sacramento Army,’ a well-organized group of cutthroats who were planning to conquer the Bay Area, to head north to Portland and Seattle to recruit soldiers.

What they didn’t know is that by now most of the recruiting had been done, as far as volunteering went.  Porter and his men were essentially sent out as a reconnaissance force to gauge what was going on up north and to send a message.

The small band of six was taking refuge for the night at the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, not far from where I was stopped.

Night fell fast and heavy.

Ian Cobb/e-KNOW

---

Article Share

---