Kent Kelly - Gray Rain Exodus

I told Silas and he said only, “I know.”

It might be under the front hood as well, I don’t even know where the fuel lines are. But the hood won’t open easily with the damage from the cave, and even if I pry it open, there’s no certainty that I can latch it closed again. And what if it jammed itself up then? We’d be driving blind. I could kill us by opening it. Such a ridiculous thing, little things are fatal now. As is everything.

Silas has little faith in “new” vehicles and there is nothing else we can do. But we’ll need to find fuel, to fill the tank with fresh gas if at all possible, to keep us going.

Despite all, we have to keep going.

An RV in the ditch that looked almost intact. Wearing the second helmet, I went out to search it, but Silas called out through the windows, he smelled that many bodies were inside.

I didn’t go in but still, this was a treasure trove.

Siphoning fuel off from the wreckage. There was even a motorcycle latched to the back, more gas there. Back to three-quarters.

Impure, mixed fuel.

The gas needle is wavering between a quarter and half. We’re leaking, but not that much. The gauge can no longer be trusted. Something is very wrong.

The burn between my fingers is much worse, the tendrils are connecting, the yellow is turning to scarlet and it is gathering in my palm. The other hand, spreading there as well.

I itch so.

(Later)

Sleepless.

I yelled at Silas once, when he cried out in his sleep and terrified me.

I’m so sorry. I cannot do this.

( Lacuna:It appears another full sheet, at least two pages, has again been torn from the diary. The missing pages were written in a heavy hand. Pen pressure analysis is underway in the hope that some of the imprints in the ancient paper can be detected, perhaps even decrypted to tell more of Sophie’s story and her travails.)

(The next surviving entry hereafter, at the top of the following page, is numbered 579.)

(Day 5 continued? Day 6?)

Backtracking, hiding, resting, healing, re-planning, bandaging, scavenging.

The journey has been longer than either of us could have ever imagined. Silas says it is time to go down out of the mountains now.

I am so afraid.

We need to get to Kersey, yes. But what about Fort Morgan, Chris and the others on the radio? How many soldiers are still alive? Why are they shooting people, why were they saying they cannot admit Asian personnel even if they are wearing US Army or Air Force uniforms?

Still enough men out there to wage a war.

Silas says it was North Korea, China. Alliance. Is that possible?

I cannot fathom how we will ever survive the storms without the mountains. I cannot go down out of the mountains and onto the interstates, I cannot lose the hope the trees now give to me, the cabins. I can’t. Silas says we must.

Oh Lacie, I am trying. I have sworn. Mommy is trying to be strong for you.

Stopped for fifteen minutes and practiced with the HK submachine gun, and then the sniper rifle (which I never had a chance to properly calibrate in the nil-horizon shelter). The assault rifle I’m still too wary of, especially with its magazine floor-plate catch and the trigger guard, my gloves…

Silas saw the radiation burn on my hand when I stripped off a glove to unload a clip — I mean magazine — for the sniper. He saw, but he knew I needed the fire practice. He understood. I needed to be certain that I could be ready to fight, if he might be too weak to help me.

My right hand still itches, but now it is almost numb.

He says we need to get out of the mountains “tonight” if we’re ever to get down to Kersey before the next great storm, and I know he is right. The winds are silent but to the west, all is black. It’s moving slowly.

We are going to need our guns, I fear, and very soon.

When I sleep, I hear the voices of the bold. I feel Patrice is watching over me.

Tommy,

(The remainder of this page has been left unwritten upon. This is the sole “white space” extant in the diary.)

Down. Highway 72 at last came to an end. It was like losing an old friend; we never would have survived if we had gone east or west, I’m certain of it.

A moment’s chill when we saw a roadblock, painted with a symbol that made me think of the hostile men from Peaceful Valley Ranch; but no. Would those men have journeyed so far from the tow-shelter? I do not think so.

But something had smashed through it (the roadblock), and no one was to be seen at the ash-dune crossroads where 72 ends on 7.

We had another argument, Silas and I. But logical this one, parrying and calculating. Which way should we go? Toward the cities, now that we knew there were other survivors still alive?

I myself thought west toward Allenspark, he thought east and down from there might be safer. Too tired to make a careful decision. We pulled off into an unnamed loop, past a burned-out house and into the woods there and hid, and Silas watched over me.

I slept for what felt like a very long time.

Silas seems a little better in spirit, much worse in body. I need to get him farther away from the Rocky Mountains, I can see him haunted by memories of holidays, camping, army leave, his grandchildren, his wife.

He doesn’t want to die up here among the ghosts.

(Later)

We shared so much. He wants to meet Lacie before he passes.

East and down 7, following Silas’ judgment against my own. He has yet to guide me wrong.

Vietnam indeed. His survival instinct is uncanny; something speaks through him and I truly believe I am in the presence of someone whose ancestors were angelic . He is guided, as am I.

(Later)

Ever down. It is taking a great deal of time to descend through the curves and wreckage, and the farther down we go, the more the trees are lost and burned away.

Where there once were valleys, there now are entire sheets of obsidian glass casting reflections of darkness upon the fog. The rainy air is no better, and visibility is much worse as we descend.

I fear the coming storm. I fear everything.

(Day 6?)

Supplies are growing low; I am going to need to stop and ransack another vehicle soon while Silas covers me with the LCP. Days have passed in our descent, but I do not know how many.

(Later)

Below the mountains now. Eternal darkness. The Archangel is no more, on high and lost to us.

We have never again seen the sun, and I believe now that we never will. We passed last “night” through the ruins of Lyons, and there were literally mounds of rotting bodies at 5th and Broadway where we made our way onto 36 East for the long journey toward Kersey.

Sandbags, barbed wire, pillboxes, half-torn-apart military trucks turned into pathetic mobile fortresses. So much death, so much misery and torture. Dead people hanging in chains from lampposts with smeared “LOOTER” signs dangling from their throats, (And where are the flags, the symbols? Who was the authority here who ordered execution?), a few stray cats feeding upon the soft flesh of the damned.

And so much more, Lyons . I cannot say all that I have seen.

We believe some hundreds of people survived here, there was martial law of some kind, rationing, detainment, work unit selection and then the looting, killings and then somehow everything collapsed.