Nathan Yocum - The Zona

Their apartment was a one-bedroom on the bottom floor of a three-story art deco building. The walls were painted white; the rooms furnished and trimmed in bamboo and sea green. Johnny slept on a racecar bed in the living room next to the kitchenette.

For work, Terence taught history at a charter school in El Cajon. The commuter traffic east on the Eight was always light; the serious commuters always came west from El Cajon to Downtown. Terence rode his morning commute for an hour each a day, five days a week, part of the inconvenience of city living.

Christine stopped working after Johnny was born. She had been a teacher. She preferred being a mother. Christine looked after the little one and kept house and planned the weekend trips her family lived for. They didn’t have much room at home, but it was enough. Terence worried about what they would do when John got older. They would have to find someplace bigger, further from the ocean and parks and zoo to stay in their price range. He did what he could. Teachers weren’t paid a lot. He worked, she didn’t. The concern lingered but was swept away in the good times.

The Storms started with rain. Talking faces on the television had argued about the weather for a long time, for decades. Some said it was getting too hot. Some said the heat was normal, that change in the weather was normal. They argued and argued and their voices became a steady drone that filtered into the background of all the other ambient noise of human existence. People stopped listening. Some never had.

The rain got worse and it brought winds and darkened days. The people of the coastal cities kept working, shopping, living. They watched their televisions and looked for answers, solutions, direction. With renewed attention they listened to experts argue about the cause of the weather and when it was going to end. The experts cried and moaned about God or science, some both. San Diego became less beautiful and buildings were damaged in petty floods. The beaches and parks closed. Many of the streets were closed, but people continued to live and to make the best of things, as the saying went.

Terence was at school when the first wave hit. It came as a wall of ocean pushed by Pacific earthquakes and what they later referred to as a sudden and unpredictable shift in the Earth’s polarity. The wave rode into the city of San Diego and broke the homes of man and creation and beauty. Klaxon alarms blared and radios and televisions switched to emergency messages, never to return to regular broadcasting. Terence abandoned his class. He ran out into the ceaseless deluge. He drove west, towards San Diego, towards the ocean and the waves.

The highways were rendered useless in both directions, loaded with cars first used and then abandoned by people who too late realized they could not navigate through standing water. People left their cars and walked in the rain, blank and confused, numb with tragedy. Terence opened his car door against the force of winds. He ran in ankle deep water towards San Diego, towards home. The horizon held funnels of tornadoes which ripped and tore and broke that which the waves hadn’t. Terence ran towards the horizon and tornadoes and destruction. He ran against the crowds fleeing and panicked. Blue bolts of lightning arced across the sky, illuminating clouds that would always remain. Terence broke from the crowds and waded through a runoff ditch. Somewhere in the sludge he lost a shoe. None of it mattered, Terence was going home.

“My neighborhood was wet rubble, unrecognizable. Buildings, landmarks, shopping centers, everything was ripped apart by waves and winds. The roads were choked with pieces of buildings, and overturned cars, and corpses. I found my home late in the night using street signs as the only remaining landmarks. I used my cell phone like a flashlight. The signal towers were not broadcasting anymore, but I kept my phone in false hope.

There was almost nothing left of my apartment complex. The top two floors were ripped clean away, like they’d been uprooted by the hand of God. I waded into my living room, which was open to the elements. Everything had washed out except my bed. In all that destruction, in all that devastation, my bed stood in its room, my last material object; a monument. I laid on it. Of course it was soaked but that didn’t matter. I waited for my family. I waited for Christine and Johnny to come home so we could leave together. I watched the sun peek through rain clouds. A rainbow formed overhead. The water rose to mattress level. I rolled to a sit and let my legs dangle in the water. From under the bed, a tiny hand reached for me.”

Johnny lay under the bed, peaceful, unmoving. In the panic of the tidal wave, he hid in the safest place he knew, under the bed of his parents. The wave struck and carried his mother and his home away and yet he remained, trapped under the bed in the water. Terence touched the hand. It was real. Terence’s chest clenched, his heart beat frantically. He pulled the boy out. Johnny was wearing his pajamas and blue galoshes. His skin was a similar hue of blue. Terence felt the boy’s necks and wrists. He shook Johnny and screamed and moaned at the boy and God in equal parts. Terence grasped the boy to his chest and rocked him, tried to force warm life from his own body to that of the child. His mind groped for direction, explanation, anything sane and rational. He lay down with the boy and closed his eyes. He whimpered, lacking words.

“I awoke to thunder and wind whipping itself back to life. Rain pelted my face. I looked to the body of my boy and knew for the first time, truly knew, that he was never coming back. I knew that he was gone, and Christine was gone, and my home was gone and the park and zoo and museums and all parts of a life I had lived within and loved.”

Terence rubbed has hands together.

“I was done with my beautiful life. I waded to what was left of my neighborhood market and scavenged cans of soup and bottled water. The shelves that stood were plentiful, there wasn’t enough life left in that part of the city to support looting. I packed a bag of supplies for Chris and Johnny and left it on the bed, like coins for the ferryman. I was that crazy with grief.”

Terence walked back into the bedroom. The water sloshed at knee level. He set the shopping bag next to Johnny’s body and touched his face for the last time. Terence slung his pack over his shoulders. He had planned to order pizza when he got home from work the night before. On pizza nights they usually played checkers. Johnny was old enough to play by the rules, though he showed no aptitude for the game. Terence stopped himself from thinking about it. He knew he should be crying but he couldn’t do it.

Terence wadded through downtown San Diego in the early morning light.

“The day before, when I left for work, I knew the storms weren’t right, that things were wrong with the Earth. I knew the world was ailing and we needed to move east, away from the ocean. It was in my head. I don’t know why I did nothing. A man’s job is to protect his family. He’s supposed to follow the right voice in his head, the one that tells him what’s wrong, what’s dangerous. I went to work like it was a regular day, like the wind and Hell of the Earth wasn’t blowing down the coasts. I ignored what was obvious. Before leaving, Chris asked me if I could take some time off, if we could go visit her relations in Arizona ‘til the storms stopped. I told her it wasn’t necessary. That the storms had to break up sometime.”