Kent Kelly - Gray Rain Exodus

The grit in the vents, the smell of piss, the utter stink of bodies and defecation. Cannot roll the windows down. Pelting sands of glass, the stink of rot, the endless howling of the wind. A tire rolling from out of nowhere with a gust, strange mounds of moths and butterflies blowing apart in the evil wind.

(Later?)

Rudolph Ranch, and then the tombs of the drilling companies. Molten wreckage. No survivors.

I believe it may be twilight. I thought I saw the setting sun to what was once “west.”

Silas says it was the reflection of a wildfire. Perhaps he’s right. He’s quick, alert once the morphine is fringed away, he’s only old in some ways. His eyes are proving to be far better than mine. Sometimes, as I drive very slowly, he even lets me close my eyes, rest for some few feet before I need to turn the wheel.

So exhausted.

And what else “today” have I seen?

Hints of corpses, silhouettes in the edges of the smog. Barbed-wire fences with shirts and pant legs hanging off of them in greasy tatters, arms with fingers still outspread, scraps of once-people and their pathetic husks all blowing on the wind. Dead blackened and bloated cows in burned-out fields, and then the town of Gilpin.

Oh.

Sped through, mostly ruins but piles of bodies that had been burned , not by the White Fire, perhaps with gasoline.

By whom?

There are people out there. They do not want to be seen.

(Later)

Sour in my mouth. Sick to my stomach.

Siphoned gas from a wreck, Silas watching, coaching. The suit resisted spills, but I ruined a shirt and both gloves before I understood what I was doing. Helpless!

We didn’t need the fuel, not yet, but I needed to know how.

(Again later?)

First survivors seen.

Fired at by someone, no hits. Possibly warning shots. I almost wanted to fire back out the window, but at what? Oh, godless, Patrice. How dearly I wanted to.

Shouting something. I dared not roll the window down.

We fled away immediately, pushing vehicles aside.

I have promised not to kill myself. Yes, Silas forced this from me.

(Later)

Violent wind. A vision, nearly a mile before the smog closed in again. Sheltering mountain peaks near to Rollinsville, even some glacial stashes of snow unmelted upon them. After everything afire, sacred snow!

And mud, and filth, and torrents of umber ash. Gargantuan black streaks of brutal landslides. Fierce slices of the wind, hot-frozen, liquid fog and fire. These impossible entwinings of the elements, giving only a glimpse of mountain horizon and stealing it back again.

But I saw the mountains, the distance. I wish I had someone to pray too, I would pray not to see.

The world is Nihil, oblivion.

But only that one moment of the miles, the seeing , then vast sheets of gray and brown windstorms crashing back down and drowning it all away.

Yet somehow, the valley west of Rollinsville looks sheltered. Some trees, even buildings unburned. Someone might survive in there. We cannot search, we cannot stop.

We can’t.

Lacie, you are my only home and I am coming to you now.

Mommy loves you more than life.

Rollinsville, once a rainbow-haloed and bustling village of dirt roads. Now, there are hills of molten and cooling glass, all veined through with mud and upturned stumps of shattered trees. All turned to slag and taken by the fire, the firestorm after the strike, or perhaps later. There is something left of the wilderness, but wherever there were buildings (besides the few south I saw earlier), there are only these horrible mounds of bone and rubber and molten cars.

Infernal pyres, all burned out, seemingly long ago.

No survivors.

(Day 2 continued?)

Did I write of this?

Forced off 119 for some miles, onto Old Stagecoach.

North, Manchester Lake, shallow but still of water. There was a boat drifting out there bobbing up and down. But we could not see anyone. Pieces of wreckage and bed-sheets floating on a muddied scarlet pool.

A floating baby. I whispered this to Silas, he could not rise to see. He insisted a body would have sunk, it must have been another doll.

It must have been.

(Later)

On 119 again, navigating the piles of cars around the Sayle Road junction, a tire-puddled and scorched-out labyrinth of un-survival stories never to be told.

Soon after that oh Tom, my love, a moment you would have loved — a wild wind, then: the startling beauty of the faded and crimson Sun (!!) breaking through over the lake, and then lost again.

I never believed I would see the sun again.

Remembering love. Hiking, waterfalls.

Do you remember?

Memories and bittersweet.

Slowing, dozens upon dozens of wrecked and molten cars and I am trying my guilt-wracked best never to look inside them any longer. 15 mph. Finally past the fork of Shoshoni Road. Unburned trees over the slopes of Sayre Road, thank God at last, true forest which seems untouched.

I do not believe in you, God, I cannot. But still I am praying.

Trees and even some withered grass. Thank you, let not the poison take this land. Thank you.

Los Lagos Reservoirs, unreflecting mirrors all clouded over by the ashes. Stench of burning pork and plastic through the air vents. I’ve closed them tighter, but a greasy dust is somehow creeping in. Stopping, idling to re-tape Silas’ window, his “sniper-hole.” Yes, he again made certain I leave him wider view seams for gunfire.

“Naw, I just like the view,” he whispers.

He’s smiling, but will not often speak. He’s weakening. Where his joints peak through the bandages, his skin is coming off in strands.

(Later)

Found a hiding place off the road. One watching, the engine running, for some hours we are going to sleep!

(Day 3?)

Engine ragged. Gas a little over half, and the plastics in the back. The two spare barrels I could fit up top are still sealed, racked and ready to go.

Is it morning?

The sky a little brighter, black and then to crimson. The wind is ever-changing. Passed the turnoff onto East 72, Coal Creek Canyon. Fewer wrecks than I anticipated, even out to the west. Surely Aspen was destroyed?

Started exploring 72, east and down, but at Silas’ insistence — he had a terrible feeling about it, said he heard an echo of weeping on the wind — we turned around.

(Much later scrawl, chronologically, apparently in a much older Sophie’s hand:)

The Valley of Weeping, as told.

My beloved Silas.

He probably saved our lives.

(No elaboration upon this curious distinction is given in the diary.)

Magnolia Road crossing. In the scorched and rutted mud by another still-standing stop sign, three melted-paint SUVs were parked side by side, and around them circled a line of dead bodies all holding hands. At least a dozen of them, two were children. All shot, and I do not think that they were executed. They chose this, they let someone do this to them.

One or two weeks ago, is Silas’ guess. He is guessing by their decay.

And I was pining, sipping tea, I was in the shelter all along.

Sundance Stables, nearer in toward Nederland now.

(Later)

Past the city limit sign, elevation 8,236 feet above sea level: I couldn’t believe it. Our first true sighting of a loner. A walker! A lone woman with soulless eyes.