The Journal: Ash Fall (19 page)

* * *

I stopped in town to see Anna. It was very
slow going on the main road with so much water running across the
asphalt. I’d never seen it this bad, not even the year we had six
inches of rain that mixed with feet of melting snow during spring
meltdown.

“The rain was hell on my garden,” I commented
as I sat down across from her. “How’s Bradley’s Backyard doing?”
The community garden had quickly adopted the nickname.

Anna frowned. “It’s ruined. At least it looks
it right now. A lot of sunny days will help dry it out. And
everyone is praying that our fast draining sandy soil will come
through for us. So basically, it’s too early to tell, but it looks
bad,” she replied with exasperation. “You’re the gardener, why
don’t you stop and take a look?”

“I’ll do that, though there isn’t anything I
can do to help, Anna. Everyone who has a garden is in the same
boat. It’s going to be another lean winter, I’m afraid.” I sat back
in my chair. “You know, this is why our grandparents and
great-grandparents stocked up for a year or two. They knew there
might be a lost crop at some point. There was always, or should
always, be enough to get a family through a bad season.”

This was a harsh reality that had been lost
over the generations. It had been too easy to go to the grocery
stores and get whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. Since the
New Madrid earthquake last November, all that had changed and most
people were having a hard time adjusting to this new life.

JOURNAL ENTRY: June 30

The recent batch of eggs has now started hatching. I
don’t have high hopes of a good outcome, considering the five days
without power during the beginning of incubation. Although I was
careful to roll the eggs every morning and every night just like
the egg turner would do, the heat was inconsistent and may have
damaged the growth, in spite of the blanket I kept over it. So far
there are six new baby chicks. The next few days will tell us a
lot.

* * *

July 1

The hatching was complete, however, there
were only fifteen baby chicks. A very poor outcome for all the
work, but it was better than nothing.

The news for the past week had glossed over
the swarms of earthquakes along the Caribbean rift. Experts,
though, when one could find a station that would air the
commentary, say the swarms verify that the mantle is shifting.
Nothing to be concerned about they say, as it might take decades or
millennium to move enough to be a problem.

July 3

“I’m glad to see you today, Joshua. How is
Martha doing?”

“She’s doing very well, thank you, Miss
Allexa. Here’s your milk. I’ll have more cheese next week, and I
have a surprise for you,” he said, producing a small bowl.

I lifted the cover to find butter!

“This is wonderful, Joshua! Was it very
difficult?”

“Not really. That book you lent me was great
help. I thought you should have some of the first batch. Martha
insisted we used some on her biscuits. It came out real good, even
if I do say so myself.” He beamed with pride.

“Well thank you and I have a surprise for
you, too. How would you like to take your chicks home today?”

His face lit up. “Are they big enough
already?”

“They’re almost a month old, so yes. They
will still need to be kept warm, especially at night, but they’re
ready to go.”

I found a small cardboard box in the barn
while Joshua picked six chicks. He had a good eye as he selected
all hens. I looked over the brood and gently grabbed two more that
I was fairly certain were roosters.

“Miss Allexa, our agreement was for seven,
not eight,” he protested.

“I know, this extra one is insurance.
Besides, I just hatched more,” I told him. “If this extra one is a
rooster, then in two months you can have a fresh chicken dinner.” I
could tell that appealed to him.

* * *

During dinner of scrambled eggs on toast with
some of Joshua’s fresh butter, I watched the news, dumbstruck that
no one had said anything. Maybe no one in Moose Creek knew that the
Turks and Caicos Islands were hit by a 9.2 earthquake during the
night and were now – gone!

The Islands covered one hundred seventy
square miles with a population in excess of thirty thousand people
and it was now all under water. The Caribbean Mantle that was
slipping slid, and quickly. Details were still few. So far it was
known that the quakes struck at around two o’clock in the morning
while most of the population was asleep and consequently were
crushed in the collapsing buildings that were shaken to rubble.
Within a half hour a second quake hit; an aftershock of 9.2, which
was the mantle sliding, taking the small islands underwater. The
people didn’t stand a chance. If they weren’t crushed, they were
drowned.

The earthquake warning system sent out a
tsunami warning, however, with it being in the middle of the night,
very few were made aware. With that much displacement of land into
the ocean the circular tsunami was monstrous. With nothing in its
way, a wall of blue-green seawater one hundred feet high bashed the
shores of Haiti and the Dominican Republic first, obliterating the
northern shoreline of those two tropical countries. The same wall
took longer to hit Cuba so had more distance to grow and it
swallowed the southeastern end of that island, devouring Guantanamo
and the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Station along with several small
villages inland.

To the north of the epicenter the devastation
was just as bad. Although the tsunami wasn’t quite as high, a
ninety foot wall was enough to wipe clean some of those very small
islands, carrying the debris of buildings and bodies onward to the
Florida Keys assaulting Key West with a fast moving twenty-five
foot high putrid wave of destruction.

It had been eighteen hours since the first
quake struck and news footage was just starting to come in. In the
past I had found that the early coverage was the most complete and
accurate, since the government controlled media hadn’t had time to
filter the information yet.

As daylight was breaking, the news
helicopters had taken to the air, hoping to out-scoop each other.
Rather than the usual running commentary, some of the footage was
accompanied by reverent silence, punctuated occasionally with an
audible intake of breath or a heartfelt sob. Bodies by the
thousands floated in the churning muddy waters, pushed and pulled
by lumber and walls that were once homes and businesses, symbols of
lost life. Occasionally there would be a small animal, a dog or a
parrot perched on a floating mattress, otherwise, no life was
visible. The destruction was complete.

The worse was seeing the telltale fins of the
circling sharks; blue sharks, Great White and tiger, mako and
hammerhead, they’d all come to feast at the expense of mankind.
They showed a scene where the shark opened its gapping mouth to
claim a foot or an arm, only to find it wasn’t attached to anything
more, a small prize. More than once that fin emerged within the
wreckage only to take something unidentifiable below the surface.
I’d no doubt those scenes would be cut from the official news
releases.

I sat back, my mind reeling from this latest
catastrophe, the balance of my sandwich forgotten. What was going
on with our world? It was no longer local issues, or even national
ones. It was becoming worldwide. A whole Earth calamity.

July 4

In years past, Moose Creek had put on a small
Fourth of July parade. The parade would begin with a Color Guard,
consisting of local representatives of the Army, Navy, Air Force
and National Guard, retired or active, in full uniform, proudly
displaying the American Flag.

There would be the usual fire department
truck, showing off the newest pumper or hook and ladder truck, and
last year the EMS was proudly driving its new state of the art
ambulance. One year Keith Kay put a dozen whole logs on his logging
truck and had a few of the local women dressed in jeans and
matching red plaid shirts sit on the cut trees and wave to the
watching masses, calling them his “Lumber Jills”.

For many years, Kathy and I would host a
“pirate ship”, which was really just a flatbed trailer with a pole
sporting a tattered bed sheet. We dressed up as pirates and had a
grand time tossing out candy and Mardi Gras beads to the eagerly
waiting hands of the little kids.

We would all slowly drive around the two
square blocks of town, entertaining the hundreds of people who
would come to watch. I never did figure out where they came from or
why, and it was a fun afternoon that ended with us having a potluck
dinner back at Bob and Kathy’s lakeside house, and perhaps an
evening cruise around Lake Meade on their pontoon boat.

No pirate ship this year; no throngs of
visitors; no parade.

CHAPTER 22

July 6

I was just finishing my afternoon weeding
when a Green Way truck pulled into the driveway and Steve got
out.

“Hey, Allexa,” he said way too softly.

“What’s wrong, Steve?” I asked, my heart
starting to race. He rarely stopped to visit and he never, ever
came in a company truck. I was immediately alarmed.

“There’s…there’s been an accident at the
mine.”

I think my heart actually stopped beating for
a moment. I swayed, seeing white spots before my eyes. I don’t know
where the term “blacked out” came from; the few times I’ve been
close, everything went bright white first. Steve grabbed my arm to
keep me from falling.

“There’s been a cave in, Allexa. John is on
the inside,” there was a definite catch in his voice. John was well
liked by all the local workers for Green Way, not just me.

“Is he …” I just couldn’t say the word…
dead.

“No one knows the condition of any of the
men. The cave-in happened about two hours ago, and it’s bad,
Allexa, really bad.” Steve turned away from me and looked up at the
azure sky, taking a couple of deep breaths. “Your emergency
management territory covers the mine,” he said, turning back to me,
having collected himself. “They want you there. Simon was sent to
get you. I came along because we’re friends and because of
John.”

“How soon can you be ready to leave, ma’am?”
Simon, a seasoned miner and the Green Way liaison, asked. I hadn’t
even seen him get out of the truck.

“Give me five minutes,” I replied, wiping my
muddy hands on my already dirty jeans.

I grabbed an empty backpack from the bedroom
closet and started to fill it: two pairs of socks, underwear, two
t-shirts, one dark green and the other pale beige. I could wear the
same jeans for a week if I had to. I looked down at that thought
and changed into clean clothes. I have small emergency kits already
made up with soap, toothpaste, a toothbrush, deodorant and a comb.
I grabbed one from the pantry, and let out a sob remembering the
last time I needed one and that was for John when he first came to
me last December. I washed my hands and splashed cold water on my
face, trying to calm myself.

My cellphone went in a pocket and the charger
went into the backpack. I had to call Eric about watching the
house, however, I could do that on the way. I slipped into the
leather shoulder holster and secured the Kel Tec, putting on a
lightweight jacket to conceal the weapon. Having done that, I went
back to the closet and selected a heavier jacket for later. It
might be July, but the nights were still cool, especially up on the
Plains where the mine was.

I gave Tufts a quick ear scratch, plus a pet
down his silky black head, and I was out the door. I tossed the
pack to Steve and headed to the barn.

On one of the large wooden storage shelves
behind another box, was a small box with a new pair of jungle
boots. I could put them on in the truck.

Out of the back seat in my car, I got my pink
hard hat that said “Emergency Manager – Moose Creek Twp.”

I was ready. It took me six minutes.

* * *

I’ve been to the mine before for introduction
tours. We all had to wear the provided ill-fitting hard hats and
ridiculous, but effective, steel toed caps over our shoes that
clattered like tap shoes with every step. My jungle boots had built
in steel toes, and my pink hard hat would make me highly visible.
They weren’t going to keep me safely somewhere else.

The ride up to the mine seemed to take an
extra-long amount of time, although I knew it was still only
twenty-five minutes.

The huge metal gates rolled open as the white
and green truck drove up to the manned guard shack. Security was
very tight around the mine, and always had been, considering the
controversy from the onset. Many people just did not want this kind
of a mine in our community. Simon spoke quickly to the guard on
duty, and we passed through in seconds.

When I was there before, we were required to
park in a certain area, where chocks were provided for each
vehicle, a safety procedure. This time however, Simon bypassed the
near empty parking area and drove straight to the portal, a yawning
maw that was the entrance to the mine itself.

Overhead, the sky was a deep blue and the sun
beat down hot, the beauty of the day cloaking the tragedy that was
unfolding somewhere beneath our feet. Waves of heat pulsed from the
new asphalt road, releasing a sick stench of petroleum tar. I
grabbed my pink hard hat and slid out of the truck, following Simon
into the mine entrance.

Simon made the introduction. “Allexa Smeth,
this is Roger Boyle, the mine supervisor.” I extended my hand and
returned Roger’s firm handshake. He glanced at my hard hat and
offered a suppressed grin.

“At least you won’t be hard to find,” he
said, turning back to what he’d been doing.