Kent Kelly - Gray Rain Exodus

No gas pumps yet. Sophie shivered. God, where are the buildings? The fuel bays? We need to get out of here.

She turned her head and took a sip of salty water from her gnawed straw, her eyes never leaving the blackened spectacle of trucks streaming in the H4’s lights, concrete-metal-tire-glass. And what if some of the men here are still walking, Sophie? What if you need to fight for fuel?

Then she would need Silas, there at the end of all things.

She wanted to check her own gun again, but she dared not take her hands off of the wheel. The corridor created by the trailers and welded plates to either side was getting narrower, constricted as she edged out deeper into the open concrete valley, the Eye .

Shapes flew by, plastic bags and shadows. Her senses were uncertain, amped and haunted and conflicted. Unbidden, she remembered a grim and claustrophobic book of elegies Tom had once encouraged her to read, the Alighieri, the Inferno of Virgil and Dante and his descent into the Iron City of Dis, the spiral labyrinth of lovely Lucifer himself.

Farther in, coasting. Ruins loomed at last upon the left. The long and roofed gas island for passenger cars had tilted and collapsed, a wildly angled scarp of roofing, bent girders and melted plastic letters dripping and frozen down the signs. Bulky mounds of roofing showed where crushed cars and SUVs lay beneath it. Further to the right loomed a pile of molten tires, ringed around with the bodies of dead pigeons and crumpled aluminum siding.

Farther into the Eye.

There’s nothing to help you here. No fuel. Hopeless. Get out, get —

There were three sledge-hammered vending machines beyond the end of the gas island, their gaping glass-shrapnel faces open, their backs shoved at precarious angles against a burned-out RV. One was half-filled with shattered bottles, the other two were completely emptied.

The headlights’ illumination rebounded back as she coasted nearer. A reflection? Was that a window?

Beyond the machines, shrouding by blowing obsidian dust and dunes of wreckage, appeared the massive diner facility. Its signs were blown apart, its doors covered by plywood, its windows choked off behind splintered jumbles of nail and lumber. This registered with Sophie for a moment as an icy thrill, battling with her insistence to find the fuel, to find her Lacie: … Did someone have time to repair things? To cover shattered windows?… And then the thought was gone, suppressed and shunted, held down deep to drown away in silence.

She drove by the last of the huge low building, its half-collapsed lobby and blown-out ducting. A wall of tires, all chained together, was piled along the wall of its farther side. There in the gaps were lodged sandbags, feedbags, even mailbags and Fed Ex gurneys, steel carts piled high with bricks. Movable walls. There were narrow gaps at intervals in the not-quite-disarrayed vertical piles. View holes? Gun ports?

Silas let in a rattling breath, as if had not been breathing for many seconds. He exhaled words: “Soph get us out of here, get us out of here, right now.”

She looked down again at the bobbing needle. “I thought I was your private. Is this my decision?”

“You’re promoted to equal. I say out now. You decide.”

He’s certain we’re going to see someone. Is there any other way? She eased her jaw, wetted her upper lip, pushed her tongue against her teeth. No. We need this.

“You know we need this,” she said, wanting to close her eyes. The last edge of the restaurant building hovered off to the left, away. “We have no choice. Protect me, Silas.”

“All right, we look a little longer.” He sighed. “Protect you to the death. Swear to God and all his demons,” he said to her. “Damn them all.”

She thought she could see the farthest edge of the concrete clearing up ahead, another wall of trailers. Wanting to be as far away from the ruined building as she could, she drifted the H4 to the right.

More ruins, more denied gasoline. They drove past the almost-intact diesel islands, the meadow-gold signs warning “CLEARAN—” and “— NGAGE BRAKE HE—” and “— AIT FOR SIGNA —,” the drive-ups for the CAT scales, the squarish wreck of a crumpled forklift on its side.

“We can do this,” she said. Her voice sounded rattling, frail. Perhaps if she said it again, she could mean it.

“I’m covering you, Soph.”

Another long, rectangular building arose in darkness. There. That must be it. Please.

Opposite the diesel islands, she could see brick walls and a slate gray roof. Downed gutters and tilted signage showed the way. Closer.

“That’s it. That’s it! Leave the engine on while you fuel,” Silas was saying. “God’s sake, you know how dangerous this is going to be even if we’re alone. No choice but to leave the engine on, never get it going again.” He was stuttering his words, slurring, trying to slow himself. “Make, you, you make one hundred and fifteen percent sure you ground yourself, you hear me true. No static electric, no?”

“I’ll make certain. Just aim out the window and watch out for me.”

“Like a hawk,” he continued, “damned hawk on vigil like the night and mercy, none at all. And Soph?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t smoke. Clean the windows.”

She tittered a little, hysterically.

He’s trying to keep me from screaming.

“Can I carry my own gun, Silas?”

“While you fueling, engine on? Hell no, Soph. You got to trust me, I cover you.”

“Okay.”

“Right, then. Go.”

She edged the H4 around a pile of formless tires. There were the fuel bays, looming up as merged silhouettes of dark from out of the twilit streamers, the dust devils of the darkening storm. Conjoined, the damaged hollows of the cavernous fuel bays formed the mockery of a sturdy and steadfast building, tall and somehow askew.

The bays themselves looked like immense drive-in car washes, greased brick hollows framed by scorched aluminum and crumbled brick. They were huge, big enough to drive any size of truck through. Precarious dunes of garbage were piled in the first and nearest bay, but the other four seemed unobstructed. Some of the hoses had been crushed or severed, some were on the ground, their metal snouts jammed under a single manhole cover held down by an anvil. An anvil? The other hoses, still racked and intact, did not seem to be made of rubber. They looked like weathered leather, almost scintillant like snakeskin, like old-fashioned fire hoses which had been looped out from the steam carriages parked in some turn-of-the-century museum.

These somehow sinister hoses looked coiled, waiting in infinite patience for their prey. They almost seemed alive.

Each bay had an aluminum side door, ribbed rectangles of armor. The trash bay was half-open. Two were down, padlocked. One was wide open. Above this last, a burnt and shredded remnant of an American flag whipped on the wind, dangling from a fused girder and tire chain instead of from a flagpole.

Sophie killed the lights. She pulled the H4 into the open hollow, this last bay in the line. Once she was certain the wind was mostly becalmed there in the Eye, she opened the driver’s door and got out.

She almost fell out of her open suit. She zipped up, slowly, knowing Silas was watching over her. No friction, her mind was chanting to itself. Engine has to stay on. Get grounded. No static electricity. She wished she had secured her helmet, but it was too late for that. She breathed into her moistened rag.