The day after: An apocalyptic morning (7 page)

              It was about an hour after lunch when they first heard the roar coming from the direction of the canyon. It was a low, bass rumble, similar to thunder, that grew louder and louder the closer they came to it. By the time they reached the rim of the canyon it was so loud that they could barely hear each other.

              The Auburn Ravine was a deep cut across the Sierra Nevada mountains and its foothills that had been formed by the north fork of the American River. From where they stood on the rim, the bottom of the canyon was about five hundred feet below them, down a steep cliff. Ordinarily the river at the canyon bottom was a mere trickle during the autumn months, slow enough and shallow enough to walk across. Now, it was not so much a river as a raging torrent of floodwaters draining down from higher in the mountains. The entire bottom third of the ravine was filled, wall to wall, with turbulent brown water rushing at high speed towards the Sacramento Valley and the sea that had formed there. Thousands of uprooted pine and sequoia trees were propelled along in this flood, bashing into each other and sometimes smashing against the rock walls hard enough to snap them like twigs.

              "We can't get across that!" Christine yelled over the roar, her eyes staring in fearful awe.

              "No," he agreed. "I never thought that we would. But maybe there's still a bridge intact. There was one at Auburn and one at Garden Hill a little further up the hill. Both are high enough above the bottom of the canyon so the floodwaters can't reach them. If they survived the earthquake then there's a good chance they're still intact."

              "Which one should we head for?" Jack wanted to know.

              "The Auburn bridge is closer," he answered, having already thought this through, "but the Garden Hill one is newer. They only built it a few years ago. It's probably a lot more likely to still be there. Garden Hill is also a lot more likely to be intact itself. It's on high ground and there are no rivers running through it."

              "Will there be people there, you think?"

              "It's possible," he allowed. "Garden Hill was mostly a bedroom community for people who worked in Sacramento but liked to say they lived in the mountains. It was kind of a ritzy place. I don't know how welcoming they'd be to strangers, but it's worth a look anyway."

              "How far?" Christine asked.

              "I don't know exactly because I don't know exactly where we are. All my maps got buried with my friend. But I think we're probably about twenty miles southwest of it, give or take a few."

              "How long will that take?"

              "A week or so at this pace," he told them. "We should have enough rations to last us until then."

              "And if there's nothing there?"

              "Then we come up with a plan B," he said.

              They seemed to accept this.

              "C'mon," he said, waving them away from the canyon. "Let's backtrack a little until we can hear again. I don't like being deaf."

              They trudged back the way they had come until the roar of the water in the canyon was nothing more than white noise. They then began to parallel the rim of the ravine.

              As dark approached Skip taught the kids how to build the lean-to shelter, instructing them in everything from how to pick out the proper spot to how to pick out the right branches to use. The end result of their efforts was fairly respectable. It didn't leak very much, mostly due to it's positioning rather than its construction and, most important of all, it was extremely difficult to see as anything other than a naturally occurring deadfall against some rocks.

              Jack, after eating his portion of dinner, went directly to bed, obviously quite exhausted from his second day of lugging a pack. He had them turn their heads while he stripped off his wet clothing and then he climbed into his thick, arctic sleeping bag. He placed his coveted rifle next to it, positioning it exactly as Skip had the night before. He gave them a quick "good-night" and less than five minutes later he was snoring away.

              Skip stayed up a little longer, watching the night conquer the landscape and drinking one of the cans of beer he had taken from the trailer. Christine, though she looked, if anything, even more tired than her brother, stayed up with him. She sat beside him near the edge of the shelter, her legs crossed Indian-fashion.

              "Can I have one of those?" she asked timidly after watching him take a few swigs.

              He looked over at her pointedly, giving her a parental stare.

              "Oh come on," she said, rolling her pretty blue eyes at him. "It's not like I haven't drank a beer before. I'm sixteen for God's sake."

              "I'm sure you're a woman of the world," he said sarcastically. Nevertheless, he reached into his supply and pulled out a can for her. Who was he to dictate what she could and couldn't do? He wasn't her father. Besides, what was the harm? If she lived long enough to develop a drinking problem that would be a blessing, wouldn't it?

              "Thanks," she said, taking the can from his hand. Their fingers touched for an instant as the transfer was made and Skip was jolted a little by the contact. Even that brief, innocent touch of fingertip to fingertip seemed to stir something within him. He fought the sensation down, forcing it to the back of his mind.

              They drank in silence for a few minutes, not looking at each other, only staring out towards the distant roar of the canyon, watching the rain. It was a companionable silence, not the least bit awkward.

              "It's funny," Christine said at last, after having drunk most of her warm beer, "how overwhelming all of this is, isn't it?"

              He looked at her, seeing that she had taken her hat off, letting her blond hair spill free. "What do you mean?"

              "I mean everything that we've lost," she said. "It's not just my parents that are gone, it's everything. My whole life, all of my plans, everything I liked to do. I won't ever go to school and see my friends again. They're probably all dead. I won't get to go to the junior prom this year. I had a bitchin' dress all picked out and everything. I even had an idea that Tommy Morgan was going to ask me to it." She shook her head a little. "Just a week ago, that was the most important thing in my life. That was all I thought about, that and the cheerleading routines we were working on. And look at me now. I'm up on a mountain with half the world destroyed, carrying a gun and wondering if I'm even going to be alive next week, worrying that some biker gang will kidnap me and rape me like that last ones tried to do."

              "You've been forced to grow up a little faster than what you were meant to," Skip said, reaching over and brushing a lock of her hair out of her eyes. "But you're doing a great job of it so far. Jack too. Most adults would have gone insane after what you've been through this last week, seeing your life destroyed, seeing your parents killed right in front of you, but you've hung in there. You should be proud of yourself."

              "Thanks," she said, sniffing a little. "Thanks for everything you've done for us. I'm so glad you found us and helped us. You make me feel safe."

              "Well, let's hope I'm not just creating an illusion for you. I'm trying to teach you guys to be able to carry on yourselves if anything happens to me. Remember what I said about this new world."

              "It's a Darwinian world now," she dutifully repeated. "And don't you go talking like that. We're not gonna let anything happen to you."

              He didn't bother pointing out the fallacy of her words. He could see that she realized it without being told.

              "Tell me about your family?" Christine asked him suddenly, changing the subject.

              He sighed, draining the last of his Budweiser. "I'd rather not," he told her. "It hasn't been long enough yet."

              "Talking about it helps," she said, scooting a little closer to him. "Really, it does."

              Another sigh. Christine, despite her age, was very insightful into Mickers of the heart it seemed. "My wife's name was Julie," he said quietly, not looking at her as he spoke. "She was a nurse at St. Joseph's Hospital in Stockton. She worked in the emergency room there. I met her about five years ago, just before they assigned me to the helicopter. I was working a day shift patrol car and I went to the hospital to go take an assault report from someone that had been taken there. Julie was the charge nurse. We started talking while I waited for the victim to come back from X-ray. After that, I made a point of always looking for her whenever I went to that hospital. It wasn't too long before we were dating."

              "A nurse huh?" she said. "Was she pretty?"

              "She was very pretty," he replied, able to see her face before him as clearly as if she were standing there. "And more important than that, she was able to relate to me, to what I did for a living. Cops have a really high divorce rate because our spouses usually have a hard time understanding the pressures we go through. But Julie was a nurse in a busy emergency room. She dealt with a lot of the same people that I did. We got along real well together. Maybe we weren't storybook soulmates or anything like that, but I loved her an awful lot." He wiped at a tear that was running down his face. "We had one daughter," he went on after a moment. "She was two years old, would've been three in about two more months."

              "What was her name?"

              "Summer."

              "I like that name," Christine said.

              "I didn't at first," he said, a few more tears running down. "I wanted a more traditional name like Susan or Cindy or Paula. But Julie liked Summer and she laid down the law with me. Women really are the rulers of the planet you know? So Summer she was and of course the name grew on me really fast until I couldn't even imagine her being named anything else. She was really a daddy's girl. I used to take her to the park every one of my days off when the weather was nice. I used to take her on the back of my bike when I went for rides. She used to tug on my shirt and giggle when we went down hills."

              He sniffed a little, wiping more tears from his face. "Julie was probably at work when the comet hit. St. Joseph's was right smack in the middle of downtown Stockton, more than forty miles from any high ground. Summer would have been at my parent's house in Lodi. They watched her on the days we were both at work or when I was on my hunting trips. Their house wasn't any closer to high ground. Carl and I saw the water come rushing into the valley from Castle Point. If there's a God up there, he's got a rather twisted sense of humor, having us be up there at that exact moment."

              Christine leaned over and put her arms around him, hugging him to her, resting her head on his shoulder. Instinctively, his arms came up in return, rubbing and patting her back. Though it was an innocent hug of comfort they shared, there was no denying that an undercurrent of sexuality was there as well. Skip felt the press of her breasts against his chest through their wet clothing. He felt her warm breath on his neck. Despite the haunting images of his wife and daughter he had just invoked, or perhaps because of them, his penis stiffened within his pants and he felt a wave of powerful lust for the teenage girl sweeping over him.

              He tried to fight this feeling down again but this time the battle was futile. Though his wife was less than a week dead, his daughter with her, though Christine was half his age, he was forced to admit to himself that he wanted her. He wanted to take her in his arms and make wild, passionate love to her. With that admission came a vow that he would never act upon these feelings. Despite the recent events that had pushed her maturity to a premature evolution, she was still a child. If he were to take advantage of her just because he could, wouldn't that put him in the same category as the men he had shot the previous day? Wouldn't he be abandoning his morality just because there was no penalty for doing so? He would not do that. He would not.

              As they broke apart from their embrace, Skip could see plainly, even in the rapidly diminishing light, that Christine had been as affected by it as he had. A blush had crept across her face and neck, raising goose bumps. Her eyes were shining at him in wanting and arousal. He knew that if he leaned in and kissed her at that moment, she would not pull away from him.

              He successfully resisted the urge and they returned to their previous positions next to each other. They talked of inconsequential things for a few more minutes, until the light was completely gone from the landscape, and then they went to bed.

              Like the night before, Skip was able to hear, though not actually see her undressing. He did not have to turn away from her this time though. The absence of any light made that an unnecessary precaution. He stared right at the spot, only two feet away, where the rustling of clothing and the jingling of a belt buckle were audible. He heard the whisper of wet cloth against her legs as she pulled off her pants. He heard her shiver a little as the pulled off her heavy shirt, her undershirt, and her bra. He discovered that he could smell her. It was a wet, musky odor of girlish sweat, very far from unpleasant. He wanted to reach out and put his hands on her body, to touch her, to feel her flesh against his hands.