The ground shook, a deep grumble vibrating over the land. Animals rushed away, deer, squirrels, and all species of birds fleeing. Dragons of ash and fire tore from Mt. St. Helens, exploding towards the atmosphere which it struck and pooled, prowling over the sky. The smoke billowed black. Rocks, magma, and ash cascaded, the blood of the earth coursed in rivers from the mount. Storm clouds of ash blotted out the sun and turned the blue of the sky to grey.

He stood transfixed, the wood pyre of a potential fire at his feet, feeling each vibration, hearing the eruption. “Honey, come out of there.”

She emerged from the tent. “What’s happening?” Rubbing her eyes, a fox ran past them, and she turned to the chaos forming in the air.

He stood still, his eyes on the destructive scene. “Put your shoes on.”

“I’m wearing them.” Her voice was faint and she fidgeted, shifting her weight back and forth.

He grabbed her hand and they ran. The flood of lava and smoke and ash, the black and grey spread over the land. Trees toppled or burned where they stood. They struggled over the terrain through bramble, rocks, hills, and vegetation. They ran as fast as she could go, never turning back, leaving all that they brought to be swept up in the flood. The wind blew with them and carried the smoke, raging over the landscape. The stench of sulfur and fire enveloped them and they were caught in a black cloud. He tripped and his nose broke on a tree. She still held his hand, but she coughed and wheezed and begged for him to get up. He took her in his arms and ran, directionless and lost, without sight and without sound, for all that was audible was the raging current of hell that chased.

Gasping and heaving through the fire in his chest and the blood in his nose, he carried her and they carried on through the blackness. The heat bit at his heels and he screamed so she could hear, “I love you.”

She heard them a thousand miles away and two weeks later. Her eyes, always out the window, praying for word from him. She held Anthony in her arms and wondered if he would ever remember his father and sister. He cooed sleepily, but she could no longer let him leave her arms. He was all the world now, all that mattered, every last bit of what she lost and needed to hold onto.

At night, she cried into her rosary until her knees bruised. Her mother told her it was no good, that she needed to accept and mourn and try to move on. That she needed to keep on living, if only for Anthony.
’
“But what if we all die?”

“You mustn’t think like that,” she would say.

***

The night was clear and beautiful and the water was glass, each star visible above and below. She tried to make out the coast of France, but it was never easy at night. The sand was cool on her feet and she buried them to stay warm. Pulling her sweater tight, her mind became as full as the sky. She was sixteen and had never been kissed or even spent more than a few moments alone with a boy. Every star was a name and every name brought a face, but every face washed away in the lapping waves.

She sighed and leaned back on her elbows. Closing her eyes, the sky was still visible, every star like a diamond scratching her cornea. She opened them again and felt her stomach. Thin and firm and hard, but still no one wanted her. Sand ran through her fingers and she imagined each particle was a human and how easy it was to never see this one or that. How simple it was for them to slip away unnoticed forever.

Her eye caught a star brighter than the rest above her. A shooting star or a satellite or a plane, because it moved steadily. The skyscape was unbroken in all directions and transatlantic travel by ship made no sense, how a man could judge where they were out in that infinite body of water just by looking at the stars. A bunch of lucky fools with too much bravado and not enough common sense to admit they were lost plunderers.

The stars dimmed and the satellite or plane was brighter and closer and larger. It never flickered and it grew and accelerated. She stood, a weight dropped in her stomach. The lapping waves of the tide remained, but there was no other sound, no other person around. It raced across the sky leaving a streak of dark blue, like photons fell off and were caught adrift in the air. Her heart picked up speed, and she tried to breathe easy.

The light grew and she heard it ripping through atmosphere and burning, a fallen star or a meteor or something worse. She wanted to run, to scream, but she stood with her feet buried in sand with the waves lapping gently towards her.

Fire enveloped the sky and night disappeared behind a collapsing sun. The shadows grew long and bright struck her eyes. Covered in sweat, she wanted to bury herself in the sand, bunker up and hide, but she remained standing, immobile with tears in her eyes.

It passed overhead, crashing through the sky, knocking her to her back. It burned her eyes and silenced the night, but she followed it across the channel. It disappeared out of view and was followed by an eruption at the horizon, dawning destruction.

***

He left camp to find something, anything. A chance for help, for hope, a shelter with power and food to last. He traveled south, or believed he did. The snow had been falling for weeks and the temperature plummeted. When he left, the thermometer read -29° C.

He said he was off to find help, that they could not survive out there with nothing, that it was only ten miles to town, that they needed to do something because there was no telling when the storm would end.

“You’ll die out there.”

He said they would all die here if he didn’t try. They gave him any extra clothes they could spare, gloves, hats, trousers, shirts, sweaters, all of it piled on him, covering every inch of skin, because an hour out there without could mean death.

“Good luck.” Sonia kissed him goodbye with tears streaking her ruddy face.

He stopped then, wondered if it would be just as well to die there with them, with her by his side. He kissed her again and held her and said thank you to everyone and walked out into the white.

He knew they were praying for him because he was all the hope they had. He went alone because Sonia and Vlad could not make it, and they needed Viktor to make sure the equipment kept running.

His hands and feet were clubs, and his veins froze, his heart filled with ice, but he trudged on, with each step weighing him down. Everywhere was white, endless and consuming. The snow fell thick and visibility was an arm’s reach away. A ditch could mean a broken leg, which meant death, so he took his time, what little he knew was available. He rubbed himself and tried to keep his limbs moving, but he felt stagnation, his molecules shutting down and his breath labored. The trek back was gone, blotted out like the trek forward. The howling wind battered his mind numb and thoughtless and it cut through him, trapping his every heartbeat, his every breath, his every movement in ice.

There was no stopping or slowing down. His mind raced through a desert, but Sonia, the word, the S-O-N-I-A glimmered like a mirage before him. He trudged on, reaching for her always disintegrating hand or her voice swept away.

The tears froze to his face and melted again to freeze on the cloth of his scarf. He lost awareness of his arms and legs, no longer certain that he moved. The avalanche of the sky buried his sense of place and self. His mind opened and the without bound to the within. If he still lived, he knew he still moved, but he could not shake death and wondered if he dreamt of the living.

Her voice whispered love through the blizzard. He took off his mask, exposing his face and screamed for her, running through the blindness, reaching for her phantom everywhere.

***

It was the worst flood seen since, well, since ever, I reckon. Mississippi flooded like I never have heard of before. Likely won’t hear much of it again.

I’m not much one for the news, so I was late to this whole end of the world business, and even what I did hear, I just chalked it up to fearmongering and rabblerousing. Louie came down to the shop one day and asked me what I thought of this whole end of the world bit.

“What you mean?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Well, shit, Carter, you live in a cave? Mt. St. Helens blew up and it took damn near the whole pacific north. They figure Yellowstone’s fitting to blow anytime now.”

“Never blew before, had it?”

“Well, yeah, long time ago, probably, so they all figure it’s come time.”

I didn’t put much thought to it. Louie was the type to worry and fidget and all that just never did suit me. I set about my business the same as I always did, though I did start listening to the radio. We don’t have a television, so it was the best I could do. Besides, it was already talk of the town, likely talk of every town if this place is something to judge by.

Over the next couple weeks, you heard all sorts. Siberia had a blizzard like you just wouldn’t believe, might still even be going on. Wildfires took spark all over the north and the west of America. Then there were all these earthquakes in the west. We lost California, so I knew there’d be no movie to follow all this, and that might just make it real. Bout that time, too, there was mention of a meteor or the like hitting France and a few days later we lost track of Europe. People got their own problems everywhere, so I reckon they neednt’ve told us things were bad. Just about everyone already guessed as much.

Never got much word of Asia, but if the rest of the world’s to judge by, things weren’t easy for them neither. We did hear about these sandstorms in the Mideast that took down a few of our bases. That was the last of that, though, and I don’t figure I’ll ever know what happened to Tim Dolier or his brother John, seeing as they were in Baghdad or Afghanistan or some such place.

Yeah, things been rough, but we figured since we were middle of the road America, we’d be the last to see it. That’s when the water started.

It rained for days, like knives falling from the sky. It was scary and most lost their heads. Looters, riots, all that, and it was just rain. Preachers started shouting at the top of their lungs from the soapbox corners saying, “This is the end! Get down and grab your rosary!”

Back then the radio still played and there was all sorts of talk. People blamed the Right and the Fundamentalists, all signs pointed to the climate change we’d been worried about. It sped up and, because of them, there was naught to be done, but it could’ve been changed, had we only had the foresight and listened to the scientists. They blamed the weakness of the governments of the world in enforcing the climate laws.

Well, the Christians fought back and blamed the government, too. Because, really, when shit hits the fan, you can all always point the same direction if it’s easy. They said it was their godlessness, the abortions and the stem-cells. They blamed the evolutionists for killing God in the hearts of man, blamed Hollywood for pornography and debauchery and all sorts, and used its destruction as a new Sodom and Gomorrah.

Others blamed the Jews or the Mexicans or the Blacks or the Communists, while still others blamed not a soul and just took it all the best they could.

I reckon I fall into that last group. Wasn’t much to be done. If the world was set to blow, couldn’t Jesus nor Science nor anybody else stop it.

The rain kept coming and in a week, nobody had a basement without fish. Bout that time, I stopped listening to the radio and I reckon there was naught to listen to anyway. There were two kinds of people then: those with boats and those without. If you were lucky, you had a boat, if you were unlucky, you had nothing, and if you were real unlucky, you had a huge boat.

I fall into that first category. Just a regular fishing boat. Hadn’t even taken it out in a few years. Vacations weren’t easy and Joanne didn’t much like water or fish. She learned fast, though.

Noah was given a whole year or so and God done told him how it’d all happen, even gave instructions. We were given less than a month, though depending on who you ask, the signs were there hundreds of years in advance. I never read no signs, so I left them to those who cared.

Me and Joanne were ready, though. We had no kids yet, so we were lucky in that regard, too. We packed as much food and blankets and clothes as we could into our boat and set off down the Mississippi. I told her things’d be better down south and off to the west.

“Think so?”

I told her it had to be better somewhere.

“What if it ain’t?”

“Won’t hurt to get a look.”

She kissed me and we set out. The current took us, so we saved our gas for when we’d need it, which I figured’d be the Gulf. Fish were easy to come by, spooked as all hell I guess, so they was near hopping in the boat at times. Joanne got used to eating them and we spent our nights on the deck, smoking and drinking and staring. The water stretched about as far as I could see.

We watched the sun go down outside of Arkansas

Joanne held my hand. “What if it don’t come up again?”

She was serious. I could tell by her knit brow and the way her lip quivered. It did the same thing when she got mad or when she wanted me to believe something as much as she. “It’s gotta.”

“What if it don’t, Carter?”

I took her in my arms then and set with her awhile. “It’ll rise somewhere. Sides, I got you, and you’re all the light this world needs.”

She rested her head on my shoulder and I damn near cried, but I choked it on down. Wouldn’t be fitting to fall apart so close to the edge of the world.

The sun didn’t rise that morning and I knew because we didn’t sleep. I loved her that night, like I never loved her before. The darkness was everywhere, even the stars were going out, but she was there, her eyes lit by something from inside, something that glowed whenever I needed, because she was all the light in the world that mattered. There’s no one like her and never has been far as I’m concerned. She’s magnetic and electric, and it’s because she’s so well lit. But it ain’t from out here like the rest of us, but from inside, somewhere deep and eternal, like the finger of god or some angel touched her before she was born and let her loose upon us mortals to give us something to smile about. She smells the same as she did when she was
fourteen, when I first laid my eyes upon her, running through fields with a flower tucked in her hair, the gold of the sun making a halo around her curly, black hair. The smell of daffodils and honey surrounded us and we pushed through the night, sometime she below and sometimes the other way. And that night, she glowed brightest and I wept when we was done and she held me, stroking my hair, and pouring all she had into me.

The nights are cold now and it’s always night. I tell her it’ll be warmer south of here, somewhere even past Mexico, and I think she only half believes me and fully knows I’m lying. She’s smart, smarter than me, even if she don’t show it. She lets me believe she believes me for my benefit, not for her own, because she knows I’m terrified and can’t do this without her.

It’s been a few weeks since all of this happened, maybe longer, now that it’s hard to tell when a day is a day, the days don’t mean so much, but we keep on south, or as south as I can figure.

She’s all that matters these days and I’m glad she’s with me. I need her likely more than she needs me.

She told me yesterday that she was pregnant. I kissed her then and cried. Weren’t tears of sadness for having a child past the death of the day, but because I love her so goddamn much. She gives me hope and she gives me light, the only sun I ever needed is right beside me. She can make the water flow and the flowers bloom and she can make this child live. She can give this child a life and a light, even if the sun don’t rise. We got him and I reckon every bit of light inside her is for him, has always been. And she ain’t scared. She just rubs her tummy and smiles like she knows already what’s ahead of us. And I believe she does.