Kent Kelly - Gray Rain Exodus

I do not understand, I only know that the bodies piled were not all burned. Many more were machine gunned and left to lie. All of those unburned bodies that I could see, even the children, they must have been charging at the fortress-trucks when they died.

36, Ute East. Just past Foothills Highway Junction, a sight that brought my heart into my throat — an Armored Personnel Carrier of some kind. Silas thinks it was American, it reminded him of an M113, but it was pulverized and too burned out to ever be sure. There was most of a uniformed body shorn off in the back hatch.

Especially on our guard now, I drive one-handed with the SMG at the ready. Despite the gas waste I am in four-wheel once again in case we need to go off the highway on a moment’s notice, to hide from anyone approaching.

(Later)

I saw silhouettes of men walking near Burch Lake, and they were dragging someone behind them, some woman roped inside a sleeping bag. They leveled weapons at us, scoped us, but did not fire.

I raised my own gun, as did Silas. We never stopped.

Whoever she was, the dragged one? I know it was too late for her.

Past Lake McIntosh. A few ruins there somehow standing, a grain silo, part of a house, a windmill.

Hid near the burned-out park. Slept briefly off road in hiding, but woke to Silas shouting to me that he heard voices once again. Yelling. Back on the road and drove out quickly.

(Later)

Stopping in at a gas station…

…fuel pumps don’t work without electricity. Silas told me this, but I know he was wishing it would not be true, even more strongly than I was.

The interior of the store was somehow perfectly intact. Stink of spoiled dairy. Unshattered windows, no tilted shelving, even the cashier’s glazed “bunker” door was ajar. Some ashes from the vents, but no footprints.

I brought in two duffel bags. I packed motor oil, WD-40, foods with as many preservatives as possible (candies mostly), bandages, scissors, flashlights, batteries.

How had the store been left there unlocked, untouched? It is as if one person had been on duty, listening to the radio, and simply heard the news, tottered over their stool, unlocked their own cashier’s door and then the outer, and walked away.

Longmont at last.

Desolation, incredible.

My skin is still tingling. Went thirty, sometimes even fifty through the wreckage, driving away as quickly as we could.

The radiation from the impact, prickling my cheeks. Like needles, invisible pins with sleeting, phantom tips. The second helmet is helping, I think. Silas held the other damaged helmet to his face.

Geiger counter ticking madly. Far too dangerous to stop to siphon gas.

Crossing 287, the full horror of the thermonuclear strike. What we could see down there of the edge of the crater… so huge it was edged with cliffs, cut through with cascades of blurry air and black tornadoes imprisoned down inside of it.

The suits were never designed to handle all of this.

Passing more of Longmont. The concussion rings of wreckage. What I have seen, oh, Hell has ascended and is upon us.

There is no way the world will ever recover from this. Not ever.

We had no choice but to go that close. There was no other way.

I’m suffering from mild radiation poisoning throughout my body. I’m certain of it.

The spinach is running out and I can barely eat half a can without vomiting. Silas knows I am ill and despite his own health — he has made me promise that I will not write of it here again, and for now I will not — he is holding on to life for me. To protect me, to watch over me.

He is cleaning the guns again. He refuses to sleep.

Bonfires, flicker of smoke and cinder.

Past Union Reservoir, some kind of ramshackle, tiered encampment had been built up there, but it was mostly blown down. Silas had the binoculars, he had forced himself up into a hunched posture which clearly cost him much. Having seen out the view slot, he urged me to drive faster…

He said he thought he saw people feasting on some kind of meat, stripped from the bone. I did not ask him what he meant.

(Later)

We saw parachutes, dangling from the ruin of the trees. Some of them still had uniformed bodies strapped inside their risers.

(Later)

Engagement? At Cartwheel Airport a little further on, some kind of battle had taken place. There were several destroyed tanks (clearly Abrams M1s), many suited infantrymen’s bodies torn out of box-wall bunkers, and the planes themselves had been draped in some kind of red flags that were flapping in tatters as a black whirlwind rose and slithered over the cratered runways.

American and Chinese. There is no doubt now.

I dare not go any nearer to Fort Morgan. Whatever war is still being fought, I cannot bear to have any part of it.

Oh, Tom. How I wish you were with me, so near to the end of all.

No more sleep.

We keep our firearms high in shifts, scanning the shunted-off horizon of the gray. Watching for anyone, for anything.

My entire right arm is burning.

From 66 East onto 87 North, I-25. I-25! Exit 243, I believe. I told Silas we had officially rejoined Colorado’s civilization, next destination tourist bureau. He barely smiled.

On Interstate 25, bridges and overpasses are blessedly still intact. And there are mile markers still at times. Something else to count the ages now.

The true horror begins here. The endless traffic jam of the dead. I can see it, the thousands of dead melted in their cars. The buses, the devastated military convoys. The piles and parts of people.

(Later)

Daddy, if you can truly speak to me beyond the shelter, in my dreams, please do so now. I need you.

Please?

(Later)

So many people, families. Oh, I cannot even tell you what remains here, all along the interstate.

I need you, daddy. I forgive you now. Please speak to me.

(Hereafter, the diary was rewritten by Sophie several times over the years, in order to exhaustively chronicle the foreboding events which she and Silas suffered through upon I-25 and in the siege-hold of “Gehinnom,” Pearson’s Corner. My attempt at a provisional narration now continues. ~ A. S.G.-C.)

Dark greasy ash and bone chips swirled around the H4, scouring its windows, leaving streaks of oily filth across the glass and then scouring it all away. The Hummer shuddered as the black wind gripped it and shook it from side to side. Bodies and parts of bodies tumbled by. The Hummer crawled through endless wreckage, the eye of the endless storm, a mobile vault perfectly centered in a headlighted, almost blinded bubble of revelation.

The garbage-choked air whistled in through cracked panes of glass and found its way out again, flapping the duct-taped window seals like the wings of a diseased bird. The entire cabin reeked of spinach, urine, gas, smoke, body odor and the curdling of blood. Fuel was leaking, rags and diapers were in short supply, candy wrappers blew up in dizzy spirals from between the seats.

But to Sophie, none of this mattered. They were on I-25 at last, heading in the direction the elder world had christened North. The impossible dream of reaching Kersey, of finding Lacie, began for the first time to seem like a reflection of some oblique and future reality.

Halfway home.

And what of fuel? came a panicked voice in answer to this musing. Sophie, there’s nowhere else to stop to find more gas. You must use the last, the plastic cans. You must. Every car you’ve seen east of Loveland is a molten slagheap. Every —