Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright page

  Disclaimer

  Ash Deposition Zones

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  URL

  More Fiction

  To The North: Desert Of Ash And Bones

  Book 4

  Bruce W. Perry

  Text copyright © 2018 Bruce W. Perry

  All Rights Reserved

  Author Goodreads page:

  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/ 1012941.Bruce_W_Perry

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Image credit: Science News; https://www.sciencenews.org/article/supervolcano-blast-would-blanket-us-ash

  CHAPTER 43

  Brad Garner paid a visit to the Red Cross tent, erected amidst a vast desert refugee camp in Southern California. He was banged up and badly bruised from his journey, and he wasn't sure he was healing fast enough. It wasn't a question of where he was gouged; there weren't too many places on his body where he wasn't gashed.

  He stood in a long line to get re-patched by a nurse. Zeke Sanchez waited for him outside the tent.

  When he finally reached the nurse, he sat down in a chair and took his shirt off and rolled up his pants. You could still see his ribs, but the nature and exertion of the ordeal had left his body taut and muscular. Unlike the U.S. continent, blasted and polluted by a super volcano, he felt in better shape than he was a year ago, as long as he could get fully healed. When he looked around the tent, he noted that the same could be said for the other refugees. The population had lost weight due to the closure of so many markets and food franchises, and the forced marches so many people had undertaken.

  What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, he thought, noting the truth behind the cliche.

  The nurse had an accent. She was pretty, with shoulder length brown hair and a tired look. Her eyes carried a warm mystery.

  "Tch-tch, this knee contusion needs to be drained, as it has a small infection. And stitches…just a few…" she said.

  "Go ahead and do it. I really appreciate it."

  "Right now? We can wait for the doctor."

  "No, you can do it."

  She looked at him warily, wondering if he was quite real.

  "Where are you from?" he asked.

  "Italy, originally."

  "How did you end up here?"

  "I was working for a hospital in Los Angeles. Then I came here to help."

  "That was really nice of you."

  "I'm going to give you one round of antibiotics."

  "Thanks. Can you spare some extra bandages and tape for my kit?"

  "Of course."

  "What's your name?"

  "Giovanna."

  "I'm Brad."

  "Okay Brad." She wasn't in the mood for new friends or flirting, even though that wasn't his intention. She bent over to the task. First, she made a small adjacent incision and squeezed the wound on his knee, which emitted a pussy, diluted red fluid. She wiped it off his skin with a gauze, wrinkling her nose and tossing the pad into a medical waste bin.

  The wound was a bit smelly. It lay on the side of his knee, with pink flesh open to the air and looking angry. He couldn't even tell her how he'd gotten it.

  It could have been grappling with the thug Bobby. It could have been falling to his knees in the desert. This stuff just happens.

  "You ready?" she said, getting out her antiseptic stitching tools.

  "As much as I'll ever be." It felt good to be repaired and administered to. She was low-key and capable. Giovanna inserted the needle and made the first few stitches.

  She looked up. "How're you doing?"

  "Just fine. Keep going. You're doing great." He only felt a slight sting with each insertion, then the tug of the black stitch thread. Either his ordeal had toughened him, or his body had gone partly numb, he thought. She ended up putting in six stitches. At least he hadn't been shot, he mused, during the exchange with Trig and Bobby back in Idaho.

  She taped bandages to wounds on his ribcage and arms and back.

  "What happened to you!" she said, putting the finishing touches to one of the dressings. It was meant to be a light-hearted question.

  "What didn't happen to me."

  "Did you fall out of a car?"

  "No, I fell onto the desert. Over and over again."

  "Okay, well, you should have the dressings looked at again, and the stitches out in a few days."

  "Much obliged," he said. "Is there anything I can do to help here?"

  "Not right now." Another man waited in line behind Garner; the man was shivering and gaunt and had a yellowish pallor. Garner stood up and stepped aside.

  "I'll check back later. Thanks again, I'm grateful for your help."

  "I hope you feel better," she said, already shoving a thermometer under the other man's tongue.

  He walked slowly to the exit of the tent and stepped outside. It was like coming out of a quiet theater into a bustling city street. Crowds of people mingled or hurried past, raising a dust. Seemingly stray kids played and ran, as if being a refugee was the best thing that had happened to them lately. It probably was, Garner thought, given that their bellies were full and they didn't have to go to school. Yet.

  He looked around and took in the full extent of the refugee camp; white tents in orderly, war-encampment emplacements, and everywhere on the flat desert basin, thousands of people milling about in the dust and the piercing sunlight.

  The 800,000 or so people took up a big space nearby Thousand Palms, California. In the distance, he could see hundreds of wind turbines in the San Gorgonio Pass, going about their lazy rotations as if nothing had happened to the western region during the last three months.

  He found Zeke loitering outside the tent, shooting the breeze with people. He was wearing a tan Stetson Garner hadn't seen before, and sunglasses.

  "Where did you get that hat?"

  "Bartered for it."

  "What did you have to give up?"

  "Some of my weed."

  "Well at least it's been legal here in California for quite some time."

  "I'm not sure about federal camps, though," Zeke said, clutching the hat in a stiff breeze. A door flap started striking the tent violently. Dust devils blew around the camp. They could have been on the Arabian peninsula, among Bedouins.

  "When do you want to go?" Zeke asked.

  "Are you bored here?"

  "A little restless. That's all."

  "We'll leave soon." He thought he'd get his bandages changed one more time, and do some more shifts at the mess tent. He hoped he could have Giovanna for the nurse.

  "You can help some more at the mess tent. We only have about half a million more mouths to feed."

  The strong sunlight suddenly dimmed, and a dark, unnatural shadow passed over them.

  CHAPTER 44

  The sun had been steady up till then, and Garner had spent many an idle moment basking in it in a folding chair. But now he looked to the horizon at a black, roiling bank of clouds, approaching from the east.

  "That doesn't look too promising," Zeke said, removing his sunglasses.

  "I thought it never rained here." The clouds boiled and contorted, as if something giant and black grew inside them and was trying to break out.

  "It rains in the desert, and when it comes down hard, it flash floods. You have to stay away from the canyons and arroyos then. It's like hitting concrete, instead of a sponge." Then he looked around warily at their flat terrain.

  "They couldn't site this place on higher ground," he said almost as an afterthought. "They didn't have the space or the time."

  The black weather system reminded Garner of the thunderheads of his eastern youth, but more darkly, of the Yellowstone ash clouds. The camp suddenly went dark. Without the sun, people began to disperse and scurry around for cover. Scanning the vast, restive camp, Garner couldn't help but be reminded of an ant colony someone has stepped on.

  The wind picked up. "I'm going back to the tent and get my stuff together. Do you want to come?"

  Zeke shook his head. "I've got my bike parked over there. I'm gonna move it. I know where you are."

  Garner walked fast toward his own tent. It looked like there had been another giant explosion in the east, given the clouds, but the western horizon was placid and blue. It offered a delusive promise.

  Garner knew it was a weather system, because the Yellowstone calderas had mercifully gone dormant.

  A shadowy curtain crept across the camp, then he heard thunder. It wasn't that he distrusted everyone around his belongings; the refugees had been on their best behavior, as if they had a common understanding of the shared plight. But Garner couldn't afford to lose what little he had.

  All he had, other than a few changes of clothes, were: a first-aid kit, the Swiss Army knife, empty water bottles and tucked away, non-perishable food like jerky and nuts; his cellphone (not charged), handgun ammo he'd taken from Bobby's body, and his own pistol which he still kept on his person. He also still had a wallet with IDs and a small amount of cash: U.S. and Canadian.



  He heard the rumble from the sky again. Then shouting. He went inside the tent and seized his backpack and stepped outside. He saw curtains of hard rain traversing the desert, driven by high winds. They moved closer to the camp. Black clouds obscured the tops of the San Jacinto mountains; flashes of lightening struck the forests, followed by loud claps of thunder.

  People fled inside the tents and tied the door flaps shut, then the rain struck all at once, a violent patter against the canvas walls. He stood under a small canvas patio roof. He noticed that fast moving rivulets of water had already formed at his feet.

  Just moments before, it had been sunny, hot, and the sky as empty, blue, and calm as a distilled sea.

  Objects began to float past him; sticks and cardboard trash and plastic bottles. He looked up and through the sheets of rain he could see Zeke struggling in the wind to park his motorcycle, put the kickstand down, and shelter it to the side of a tent.

  Then he heard screams and saw a woman clinging to the trunk of one of the few palm trees, as knee-high water, and growing, flowed on either side of it like a rapids. A man waded through the water to help, reached out, seized her hand, and they both stumbled and fell into the fast-moving run-off. The camp was being flooded.

  He cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled. "Zeke, we've got to get higher up! Fast!" People were already forming long chains by holding hands and frantically trying to scramble on top of tables and solid containers piled next to the tents, as well as onto the roofs and hoods of the few vehicles.

  The rain drummed with a loud and hollow sound on the metal surfaces, muffling the shouts and screams. Hoisting his backpack, he waded through floodwaters past his knees, to the entrance of the Red Cross tent. He had in the back of his mind, not everyone can be saved. There are more than 800,000 people in this camp. They can't all be rescued. We do what we can, with what we have.

  He opened the tent flap; the tent was filling with water, and the sick and injured were huddled in groups. He saw Giovanna trying to fight the rising waters and wade through the current and shove a box full of medical supplies to the top of a shelf. He yelled to her, "Giovanna!" She turned her head. She was already soaked up to her waist.

  "We have to get to higher ground! The tents aren't going to hold!"

  Maybe the floodwaters won't rise anymore. Maybe the rain is abating already, and we've seen the worst. Maybe not…

  "I can't leave these people!"

  "But you can't stay! It won't hold!" The tents seemed flimsy and temporary, under the hard rain's assault.

  A boy stood by the door in the sloshing waters, grasping himself, his teeth chattering and chin and exposed boney legs trembling uncontrollably. Garner grabbed his arm, just as Giovanna yelled "Everyone out!" The tent swayed and its wooden support structure creaked like snapping hardwoods in a gail. Tight as a drum, the canvas walls vibrated violently.

  When Garner opened the flap door to the outside, it was like standing next to a fast-running, shallow river. Boxes, chairs, sticks, branches, and other debris swept past. Crowds of terrified people waded through the rising flood, clinging desperately to each other, some falling and thrashing in the water as they were carried away, then struggling to stand up again.

  Tents had collapsed. They looked like the sails and masts of a crushed marina after a hurricane's storm surge. It was as dark as early evening.

  Through the sheets of rain, Garner saw a Land Rover with a big Red Cross insignia slowly moving through the floodwater, which rose to its headlights. It looked almost amphibious. At the wheel was Zeke.

  CHAPTER 45

  Garner pushed the skinny boy toward the vehicle, still with his gear on his back. Other people were crying for help, but at that moment, he had to ignore them.

  The sagging tent redirected the floodwaters somewhat, but he knew he had to step into the current with the boy.

  "What's your name!" he yelled into the storm.

  "Sam!" the boy said, pronouncing carefully and straining to be heard.

  "Okay Sam, one two three…and we're going to walk toward that Jeep," he screamed into the trembling boy's ear. The kid just nodded, gripping Garner's hand. He hadn't held a boy's hand since Jake when he was little. Garner held onto one skinny arm, which felt like the slim end of a small baseball bat.

  He took one quick look behind him at Giovanna and the other frantic patients. It was regretful, but the tent was going to collapse at any moment, and it was every man for himself and whomever he can carry.

  Realizing the kid wasn't going to make it in the current, he picked him up and slung him over his shoulder.

  "Follow me!" he called over his shoulder to Giovanna, who'd reached the tent exit. In truth, he thought he'd never see her again. As he entered the flood waters he felt his stitched knee buckle with the weight and he fell in with the kid gripping him around his neck and they were instantly carried into the center of the cold stream. The tent leaned over and crashed in a heap behind him.

  He saw arms and legs and a shock of Giovanna's hair go into the churning waters. The flood swept past like a swollen river.

  It was chin deep already, which shocked him, and they were both carried swiftly along in the flotsam and jetsam of debris. Sticks and chunks of furniture and people's clothes; even an oil-and-gas slick rushed by, pungent and odorous.

  The froth had a chop on the top as the water moved swiftly along, and some of it went into his mouth. The kid was ragged-dolled in the current beside him; he saw the little head go in, then break the surface again gagging and coughing. He still had the kid by the arm so desperately and he thought he had to be separating the shoulder but he wouldn't let go and he was haphazardly rolled over on his side with an awkward sidestroke, when netting flew down and slapped on the water ahead and beside him.

  He'd forgotten about the Land Rover, but there it was. Idling in the waters about five meters away, and Zeke had tossed one of those ladders made of cargo-net material into the flood. Garner grabbed at one of the rungs and held tight. Zeke tried to reel them in.

  The current was intense and forceful, and now Garner and the boy dangled at the end of the net, the waters rushing past their feet. He kicked furiously with his legs to get them closer to the Rover; he had a vague, sickening sensation of the bandages peeling off of his legs and the stitches pulling loose like a broken zipper.

  Zeke made a desperate grab for the boy. Garner grabbed onto the metal handle of the Rover's passenger door, hung on, and laboriously hauled himself aboard. Zeke took the boy into the front seat and yelled at Garner to close the front passenger door, or they'd flood and sink the Rover.

  Garner threw his backpack into the backseat and shut the front door.

  Large pieces of the tent were now floating by. Through the clouded car window, he saw Giovanna clinging to one of them.

  Garner shoved open the back door and lunged for a piece of canvas, so he could pull her to safety, but he only managed to plunge face first into the flood waters, where he caught up to Giovanna and her own island of flotsam.

  As he maneuvered up beside her, she rolled her eyeballs at him, as if the destruction of the camp was simply one more of the super volcano's inconvenient side effects.

  It now appeared that they were floating through a fast-moving lake, such as one receiving run-off from a waterfall or river. The rains had passed over. The desert appeared to be covered by a mirror, but the glass was pierced by floating tents and even car rooftops. You could see the sky reflected in it, and a thousand heads, with accompanying arms, bobbing along the surface.

  The rain curtains fled to the west, as ragged tears appeared in the black clouds, with sunlight streaming through the cracks.

  He heard helicopters overhead, and saw a few canoes and dinghies with their occupants pulling flood victims aboard. Once again, he floated past the Rover, which plowed at about 10 m.p.h. through the soiled, murky waters.

  The passenger window came down, and he saw Zeke, still gripping the steering wheel, gesture for them to swim over.

  "Get on the roof!" he yelled.

  CHAPTER 46

  Garner climbed aboard first by stepping on the back bumper and trailer hitch, which was underwater. Once he had hauled himself onto the roof, he gave Giovanna a boost by offering his hand. Then they both were out of the water as the Rover motored along like an old fishing boat through a bayou.

 

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