The Snow (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) Read online

  THE SNOW

  A Post-Apocalyptic Story by Joseph A. Turkot

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  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  It’s been two days since Russell and Clemmy left us. Right out into a lead of the brown sea. The sea was angry the morning they left. And I never got my chance to say goodbye. And as calm as Ernest is, sticking to his original claim, that they’ll be back any time, I can tell he’s starting to get it too. They’re gone.

  As fast as everything happened, it all feels stuck now. Like time is refusing to pass. The prospect of getting to Leadville, even when it’s so close, gives me no feeling. Just a dead coldness, the same as the rain. And I’ve seen Ernest looking more and more at the sky these past few days. Like he’s watching for a sign. One of his God friends to come down, and let him know the cold will ease up. Or the steady rocking we’ve had from the swells, up and down, as the Resilience’s sea anchor holds her up into the wind. He’s on the edge of a decision. I see it in his eyes. Something has to be done. He just hasn’t admitted it yet.

  With Russell and Clemmy gone, taken by the brown kingdom of the Rockies, and Clint floating his way back to Blue City, a blue-skinned package courtesy of Russell, there is only us four. Ernest, Voley, Dusty and me.

  We wait in strange silence much of the time, looking out into the stretch of sea. It turns white every now and then, reminding us that if we push in after them with the Resilience, we’re likely to wreck on a shoal. And if we wreck far out on the water, there’s no getting to shore. Not when the waves drag you under hard, break you against the granite jags that lay hidden, as Ernest says they do. They’re all around us. And there’s no hope for a sure route with a ship this big.

  Dusty and I double-check the storage crates one more time, because Ernest swears he had new batteries. Brought them all the way down from Montana, he says. We look high and low, the same piles of shit we’ve been through six times already. We find nothing.

  Ernest feels like the weather is calm enough to go below deck for a meal. His usual smile, and the confidence it alludes to, is all but gone. In its place is a grim hesitancy, pregnant with the thought of what we must decide to do. He tells us our options over fish. And for the first time since we’ve been on board, the smell and taste of the fish make me sick. I don’t want another bite.

  Ernest begins to voice our silent fears. Voley comes close to me, as if to comfort the blow. It’s just us now, he says. And we’ve got a choice—not an easy one. I love Clemmy. He’s a true friend of mine. An old friend. And there aren’t many such things left to be had for any man. Or woman. He studies our faces, reading us, and then he looks at me. And I know Russell was one to you. I look away, to Dusty for a moment, and put my hand on his leg. I know he has no old friends left. Russell and I cannot count. But Dusty looks away too, and I realize he does have an old friend—even while Ernest and I are stripped of ours—he looks at Voley. Voley’s eyes are bright. He’s calm and cheerful, filled up with love and nothing more. He looks back at Dusty, and then at all of us, happy to oblige whatever it is we want from him. And he lets Dusty know by kissing his hand.

  The choice is, Ernest goes on, to leave them and head south. Or, to risk wrecking, and follow them in. It’s a tiny lead, he says. But it might widen. Even if it does, the sea is strange here, around these mountains. Something isn’t right with them. And it’s not radiation. Radiation doesn’t cause wind to hang around like this. And the cold. It’s getting worse. I don’t trust the weather to work on our behalf. Not for one minute. It may be what…

  He doesn’t have to say what he thinks may have happened to the motorboat. The wind and the cold have been on our mind for forty-eight hours. The endless rocking. It’s the only thing to notice when I’m not thinking about where Russell is. We’ve entered some kind of vortex, cut off from the weather of the rest of the world. The seas are ten feet, says Ernest. He calls the wind Beaufort 6. Twenty-five knots. I don’t take the meaning of it, but he says that this kind of weather usually passes. Only it isn’t. The whitecaps are getting nastier by the mountain banks he says, or at least he thinks they are. It’s hard to tell because we’re so far. He’s been using his binoculars.

  It was our original plan to head farther south, and I think we’ll do just fine if we go that way, he says. I expect the weather to clear up in the south. That’s what we believed, anyway. And then he stops talking, takes out his pipe, and while he lights it, he studies our faces again. He’s waiting to see our reaction to that choice. Maybe because he thinks we won’t give him a straight answer—or maybe he knows I’m not going to say anything at all, and he needs to figure me out from my eyes. I can’t leave Russell. And I never will. Not when he’s out there by himself. From the sound of his sigh, I can tell he picks all that up in one glance.

  If we go in, well…there’s something else. I noticed it yesterday, but I didn’t want to tell you, he says. Not when I was sure they’d come back. And there still is a chance they might, Ernest goes on. And that means we have three options, really. We can stay put and wait. But not much longer. I don’t trust the sky here anymore. He smokes and I can’t help but think the sky god has taken up a war with Poseidon. He’s only as all-powerful as his sky mother lets him be. And I look at Ernest’s strong face, his black beard, the experience in his lined cheeks. Suddenly, and with more than a little terror, I think he may be plain human.

  “What didn’t you tell us?” says Dusty. He’s paying attention while I slip into daydreams. My eyes wander to the crates—the giant Y marking them. It came to me last night for the first time—a strong desire. To take some of it. Kill the mind that reminds me I can’t do anything to help. But it’s absurd. I can’t take it. I think of Clint, and the daydream vanishes. Ernest had admitted that he’d caught Clint stealing from the drug stash—and the night he’d tried to rape me, he’d broken into it again. Soul-killer drug.

  Voley snaps to attention as Ernest stands up from his chair. From his look, and the fact that it’s the same look he was wearing a moment ago when talking of the strange weather, I know it can’t be a good thing, whatever it is he hasn’t told us. You’ll have to come look for yourselves. It might help you make up your mind. And then he leaves us, heading into the rain. The soft rain. With the cold, and the waves, I’ve hardly noticed the softening. But it’s lighter. As light as I’ve ever felt it. Which God controls the rain? I wonder as we follow Ernest up. Is it the sky God? or Ernest? Or do they work together. Certainly not right now they’re not. And for all its softness, it is colder than I’ve ever felt it before.

  He pulls us into the wheelhouse and fetches a black metal pair of binoculars. The rain’s eroded the edges, and the lens is scratched. When he hands them to me I can barely see anything through them. He tells me where to look, and I try to. I strain, and I look for what he’s saying I should see. Look in the back, between those peaks—the ones shaped like a W, he says. Look between them. White. Real white.

  I tell him I can’t see it. The lens is screwed up or something. It’s all blurry. But he doesn’t take them back. He says to look harder, and then he says what I’m looking for—look for the snow. And all at once it’s there, and I’m struck with confusion as to how I could have missed it. A white splotch, very small, but obvious enough against the gray and the brown surrounding it. Just a dot.

  Are you sure? I ask, and already Dusty is peeling the binoculars away from me. He starts to search for it, and he finds it all on his own and exclaims, Snow! Ernest doesn’t say anything, and it hits me—it is snow. I’ve never seen
snow before. Somehow, the idea that there is real snow out there, just ahead of us, deep in the mountain range, gives me a tremendous flood of hope. I can’t explain why because it shouldn’t mean anything. It’s like the white, the untouched color itself, is a sign of hope. Life. I think all these things for only a moment until Ernest crushes my enthusiasm. Rainless Land is right, he says. But if that’s what they went into, if that’s what the Rainless Land means, then I know why they haven’t come back.

  I understand that we aren’t prepared to go into snow. Though I’ve never seen it before, I heard Russell tell me enough about the old weathers. And I know it’s colder than the rain. But part of me thinks it has to be easier than the rain. I ask Ernest if snow is wet, and Ernest says it is sometimes, and sometimes it isn’t. It all depends on the temperature. My feelings must be right because the rain is always wet.

  Ernest finishes by saying that if that’s why they haven’t come back, they may be caught in it. A blizzard. Especially if this sea wind is on those mountains too. Snow has a way of moving like the waves, he says. So then. What do you think we should do? he says, acting as if he’s open to any suggestion we give him. Like he’s here to guide us, whatever we do. I sense it. It feels like what I sense in Dusty and Voley. But it’s so hard to voice my gut. I wait for Dusty to say something first, to have some opinion. He doesn’t say anything. I feel like his silence is saying that he wants us to move south. He can’t say it though. He’s afraid of me. What I’ll do. I know somehow that our situation is reversed from what it was in Blue City. And maybe he thinks it’s my turn now—my turn to leave the one who’s taken care of me my whole life. Pay the sacrifice he’s had to make. But I’m not going to.

  “Let’s go after them,” I say. It just comes out. And I have no idea what we’re in for, or how dangerous it might be. I haven’t even given the radiation a thought. I just feel like every hour that passes with the motorboat gone is another hour closer to losing him forever. And I know he’d come for me. There’s no question. So I can’t leave him. I think I’ll jump into the swells and swim if they don’t decide to go in with me. But Ernest must sense my desperation, and he’s not willing to lose me for some reason. He looks to me and only me—studying the qualities of my resolve. The gray above us has a single band of brightness, near to the center and top of the sky. It’s noon, he says. We’ll have another six or seven hours with a little light. I don’t think we can make it in there tonight, not with a good chance of seeing where we’re going. Once we get to the thickest bit, we’ll lose our visibility. And these seas get worse when you hug against the land like we’ll have to. Much worse.

  I almost think he’s saying no without really saying it, that we can’t go in after them. That all his talk of daylight and weather means it’s foolish to attempt a rescue, and our best chance is to sail south. But then he says that we’ll leave at first light in the morning. Dusty’s face is blank and I don’t look at it too long—I don’t want to see the disappointment crawl over it, come out from its hiding in the back of his mind. Ernest smiles again, happy at least to have made a decision, and to no longer be idle. And maybe they’ll be back tonight, he says. Who’s to say they won’t? His smile stays with him for the rest of the night. I realize now he is a man of action, and how painful it has been for him to sit and bob in the sea. He truly didn’t mind the choice—whatever Dusty and I decided to do: it had been the waiting.

  We trade watches like we’ve been doing. I serve mine in quiet thought. Dusty visits me a few times, but I don’t say much of anything. I’m not in a mood to talk. I’m glued to the binoculars now. I watch the sky darken, turn to black, and the patch of white disappear with it. I wonder if it will still be there tomorrow. My vision on the lead of water that Russell went down, right into the valley of the table mountains, is lost with the night. The last time I see it, it’s the same as it’s been all day—no sign of a boat. Where are you? I say, as if my thought can travel like the radio broadcasts. As if he’ll pick it up somewhere and know I’m asking. He’ll know I’m here, dying to know why he hasn’t come back yet. I listen in silence, hoping for a reply. Or a sign of anything. Just let me know he’s alright. I don’t know if it’s prayer, what I’m doing. But it’s no use. There is just the monster of one more night’s sleep before we start off. I would leave now if it were up to me, and have us all crushed in darkness against a reef. But I’m relieved from watch by Ernest and head down to the bunks, hoping I’ll be able to fall asleep.

  When I get downstairs, I see Dusty and Voley. They’re both on the floor near the stove, huddled around the map. Dusty’s trying to learn the elevation levels so he can help Ernest navigate tomorrow, so we don’t split the hull. Ernest has already told us there are no life rafts, no boats to carry us on if we go down. It’s all or nothing. But he hadn’t said it hoping that I’d reconsider my choice. He said it as a matter of fact, as a pep talk, so that we’d be all there tomorrow, fully prepared and alive for what’s coming.

  I walk over and sit down next to Dusty. The heat pacifies my careening thoughts, dulls my fear of not being able to fall asleep tonight. I need to sleep so I can help. I’m no good without sleep. But I’m racked with thoughts of the snow. I see Russell trapped, alone, and freezing to death. Part of me sees him lifeless on the bottom of the ocean valley, but I have to stop that thought. The only thing I can do to stop it is to touch Dusty. I put my head against his arm. He runs his hands through my hair but doesn’t look up from the map. He’s fixated.

  Do you think we’ll find them? I ask. I think we’ll get in, he says. There’s a channel big enough. We just have to go in carefully. He never answers my question though. At last he turns away from the map and looks directly at me. I’m up next, he says. I better get some sleep. Me too, I say. He rises and goes to the bed. I feel his sadness as he goes. Like he’s upset with everything. Too much hope crushed too soon. I don’t want him to feel that way, but there’s nothing I can do. I want to tell him about his dad. With Russell gone, I feel like I can get away with it.

  I rise and follow him over to his bunk and just stand there in front of it, looking down at him. He’s lying down, head on his pillow, facing the hull. The boat rocks and we hear the waves slap against her. What is it? he says, somehow sensing I’m still there. He rolls over, watches me hovering over him. A wildness comes into me. It’s an urge to crush my spiraling fears. I can’t control it and I fall onto him. The contact turns off all my other thoughts. As if he’s been faking it all along, he suddenly slips out of his mood and matches my own—uncontrollable reaching after something real in the face of the abyss. Tomorrow.

  We roll deep into the bunk and Voley hops away, quietly finding a warm spot to curl up next to the stove on the other side of the room.

  At first I keep my eyes open, and as we kiss, I see his eyes. They are open too. We’re looking at each other. His eyes are deep and innocent. He can’t have known about the cellar in Blue City. It’s the last thing I know in my head as he rips away my clothes. I can’t think, I just have to strip his off too. I unwrap him. He wants to move on top of me but I can’t let him. I press him down.

  He murmurs, almost words, but nothing I can understand. What is it? I ask, and for a moment we’re paused, the realization that we must continue to think after this is all over pulling me back to gloom. It lasts forever, and he never says anything. Whatever it was, it wasn’t allowed to come up. But he leans up and kisses my nose, and then my cheek, and my lips. The time to speak has passed. We fall into each other’s single-minded desire. Each others’ flesh. We are the face eaters in a ship under a deck during the gray storm.

  Time stops. We nurse each other through the night with soft touches and warm voices. When reality resumes for me, I’m alone. Ernest shouts down to me that it’s time to sail into the mountains.

  Chapter 2

  The wind is behind us as we motor into the lead that separates two wide slabs of the Rockies. I’m outside, refusing to stay in the wheelhouse. I won’t last long
out here, because it’s colder than when we first hit Wyoming. And the nose of the ship is more falling into the troughs now than dipping into them. Each time we drop, the spray vaults up, lashing my face, numbing it further. My foot has started to go numb again too—just like when we left Rapid City. I push it out of my mind, like it’s nothing, and keep my eyes trained on the valley of water that’s narrowing each minute. Everyone else is in the wheelhouse—the whole crew. I look back to make sure they’re all really there, still with me, and I see Ernest’s glare—he’s staring down the weather. Angry at it. Keeping his ship in a delicate line as Dusty looks up and down in a fever. He’s checking the elevation map, trying to give Ernest his opinion about which side of the water valley to turn toward. Ernest doesn’t need help. I think he’s been up all night, studying that damned map.

  He told me not to stay out too long, that there will be plenty of time to search for Russell once we get in a bit, deeper into the maze. That there’s no sense in freezing here because we can only see the same stuff we already saw from the sea anchoring. But I don’t care. I’m sure Russell will pop out over a wave at any moment, but if I stop looking, we’ll miss him. Just like I couldn’t see the snow. It was there—plain as day, the only thing white. But I missed it. And it could be Russell that I miss next time. I let myself freeze.

  I felt a drizzle when I was eight. I remember it. It was like the rain had sputtered, turned into spurts. And now, as we fight the stomach-turning inlet, I think it’s happening again. The rain is so light that I almost don’t notice it. The sky looks the same—the same dull lifeless gray that it always is. But the drops are smaller. Softer. Almost Rainless Land.