Sunbursts

Stolen sunbursts in
Tiny gloved hands explode and
Scatter in the wind.
The child squeals as leaves fly for
Others to gather them next.

Ain't no one here

Smoke plumed up from the eastern horizon as we drove north along Goose Lake's western shores. Josiah fretted upon seeing it, sticking his head clean out the window and screaming back at me over the roaring wind as we clipped along, yelling whether the town had gone up. I told him to tuck his damn fool head back in the car and stop his worrying. From the angle, the smoke originated from somewhere deep over the hills and into the brush flats that rolled out into far eastern Oregon.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Damn sure I'm sure. Now get back in here and sit tight," I said.

The dirt roads up from the lake wound through the countryside. Not once did we see another living soul, neither driving along nor toiling in the fields along farms that were either abandoned or whose owners cowered out of sight. I had never seen anything like it before and neither had Josiah, because when I glanced over his head was back out of the window, whipping front to back, staring as long as he could at the driveways and small tracks between fields to prove to himself that things had truly gone quiet.

When we left the farmland and hit Highway 140 it only got worse. Road was never exceptionally busy, but you could expect a steady trickle since it was the main line through the woods between Lakeview and Klamath Falls. But empty? I flipped on the radio and turned through, but was met by silence across the dial. I cranked the volume until the car's stereo hummed and popped with static, but there was still nothing so I switched it off.

"Ain't no one here," Josiah muttered.

"I'm starting to see that," I said.

The family shrine

I rode my bicycle up the hill in a low gear, hauling my life in the attached carrier behind me. The journey was all the more arduous through the carpet of leaves, a crimson and bright yellow blur that obscured the road's cracking concrete and lined the entire way into Sengokuhara. Rain began to fall as I hit a small flat, and I stripped off my shirt and pushed on, enjoying the cool drops on my back and the slight autumn breeze that shook the trees and brought even more leaves to the ground.

By the time I crested the final rise and came into town my lungs burned and head swam. I walked my bike the first few blocks past rusted tour buses and cars abandoned this same season ten years before, when the leaves fell, people came to watch, and the world ended. Abandoned storefronts lined with shattered windows were long picked-over, and I didn't even bother stopping to wade through overturned shelves in the rotting carcass of what once was.

About a mile into town I crossed a bride over a small creek, only to stop short when I reached the other side. Behind me, leaves spread wildly and swirled in the wind. Ahead, they formed orderly piles along the road's edge. Not far ahead, a frail, hunched woman holding a long push-broom beckoned to me.

"Did you do all this?" I asked.

"It wasn't so hard," she said in slow, halting English. "Little bit every day. Keeps up the strength."

She held out her and I took it. Her skin was thin like paper, but the strength of her grip startled me as she squeezed my hand. I squeezed back.

"Come with me," she said, letting go of my hand. "You must be tired."

I pulled my shirt back on and we walked along the road. Decaying houses collapsing under trees and seasons of neglect rose high into the hills to our left. Opposite, streets still covered with leaves led the way to massive temples of stone that gave way to rolling hills that led to the base of Mt. Fuji.

"Stopped at the bridge, but I still have a ways to go to get to the cemetery and my family's shrine," she said.

Wishing wood

Brittle wood between
Tears and laughter, hung on thin
String. Tiny hands clutch
Physical dreams, all that's
Left of fading memory.

Out by Goose Lake

We loaded up our gear and cut out from the Big Sage in the Taurus, driving north from the reservoir on the rocky dirt roads in the pre-dawn light until we couldn't go no more and then east over till we came down off the plateau and hit old Goose Lake. Pushing on, we soon were upon the green sign signaling the California border.

"Think they're really gonna be there?" Josiah asked.

"One way or another," I said.

"What's you meaning by that?"

I looked at Josiah and shook my head. Out the window to his right low scrub trees passed in a blur and the sun climbed up over Goose Lake and reflected off the exposed white rock where the water receded in the summertime. Josiah grunted and turned away from me.

"Oh come on now don't be that way," I said.

"I ain't being any way," he said in a pout.

I pulled off the road just short of a driveway leading up to a farmhouse and barn.

"Get out," I said.

"What you gonna leave me now after all this?" There was genuine concern in his voice. I laughed.

"Of course not you damned fool." I hopped out and banged on the roof. "Come on now."

He followed me along the road and up the driveway. The farmhouse looked abandoned, with the front door open wide and a small pile of discarded clothes and broken-looking camping supplies next to the ruts in the road where a car used to sit. We went around the house and walked between two dried-up and browning alfalfa fields, where I stopped and swung my arms wide.

"Where are all the people," I said.

"I dunno," Josiah said. "Aren't you worried about the car?"

"Nope. Think about it. No one came to the Big Sage. Empty roads coming down. No one here tending crops."

Josiah kicked dirt and looked back at the farm. He scrunched his face together and bit his lip like was fighting tears.

"Hey, that ain't important man. We're going into Lakeview looking for the girls like I promised, but you need to keep it together. We could find them holed up just fine," I said.

He nodded and I clapped him on the shoulder and squeezed. "Then again we might not, and you need to be ready for that."

White lightning

Down the red rock road at the Big Sage the huge and hot sun cooked our skin and pulled the spit out of our mouths until we were dry and desperate for the soupy, swampy water down in the reservoir. We built a fire and drank boiled, still-hot water and white lightning and watched the sun set through big dust kicked up on the distant road by the cattle that passed on the reservoir's other side.

We kept the fire low and huddled close for warmth against the beating wind that ripped across the plateau and watched for the headlights of any approaching cars in case we needed to douse things with a bucket full of sand. Although the last signs of life passed us by nearly a week ago.

I added another juniper branch and a handful of twigs and needles to the fire and it roared back from coals.

"Careful now," Josiah said.

"Careful nothing," I said and drank a big pull of the clear whiskey from my metal cup and felt a powerful tingling shoot from my throat to my stomach and out to my fingertips. "I'm fucking freezing."

"Ain't no one coming tonight, are they?" Josiah pondered the whiskey that sloshed around in his cup.

"Doubtful."

The old Taurus struggled and wheezed mightily out of Alturas, up the steep grades from the valley floor to the Big Sage when we first came. But we made it, and we set up on the sloping banks near the reservoir, tents and fishing gear and a little steel picnic table where we played cards and drank.

"What about Kristy and the girls?" Josiah asked. We'd waited just as said in the note we left for them on the doors of each of our trailers, hoping they'd return from Kristy's folks' place in Lakeview on time and join us at the Big Sage.

I didn't respond, instead drinking my cup dry and refilling it from the bottle that sat between us. Josiah wore a sour and uncertain frown.

"Benji?"

"I don't know man. I wish I did. Just don't."

Sap

I can't overcome
Wind and wine and small airplanes
Grasping for the sun
With sick and sweet words, thick sap
Bubbling slowly off my tongue.

Old Jules

The room was sealed from all light by blackout curtains covering sloppily-welded metal bars. I opened the door and terror did pour out like a dropped and cracked water jug.

Shit boy you smell that foul, Daggett said.

Poor bastard, I said, barely suppressing a gag.

Pungence oozed, kind of thickness that sticks to your tongue and won't break through spit or dirt or fire-hot scalding water. I arced the lantern's light across the room to the back corner, where a big pile like a nest was pushed up against a wardrobe with no doors. Daggett grinned large through gapped teeth just as rotted as the room.

After you sweetness, he said.

I told him to eat a dick and shoved him hard in the chest. Daggett just laughed with a sputter and lit a cigarette. Holding the lantern ahead of me, I clapped a rag to my face and moved into the room. Daggett followed, with that sawed-off shotgun scanning the room for signs of life.

Lucky bastard rightly, Daggett said. Imagine what I'd to do him with my big boy here. He stroked the gun like a small animal.

Shut the fuck up and keep your eyes open, I said.

Rot was pervasive. Moldy and maggoty-pocked meat littered the floor, but mostly concentrated near a makeshift hearth and piping chimney carved into a the far wall opposite the wardrobe. Tattered remnants of clothing were equally strewn and in a similar state of deterioration. Even the standing water in big pots on a table in the middle of the room was covered in a thin layer of muck.

The pile in the corner loomed and seemed to grow larger as I approached it. My lantern was my shield, and I stretched it out until my arm reached its maximum distance from my body and my shoulder strained and ached. It was an amalgam of everything else in the room, food, clothing, animal pelts, and even straw, seemingly glued together into a thickly-packed hive.

I prodded the pile and turned over pieces with my booted foot, uncovering bit by bit until I found Old Jules toward the bottom.

Over here Dags, I said.

There wasn't much left of Old Jules. His skin was bloated and brown in the lantern's amber light, split open where my boot nicked it. Half-eaten, glossy eyes had maggots for pupils, and they moved as he did and gave him sort of a sad look, like he couldn't focus or was lost in bad thoughts. A big line was raggedly drawn across his throat where they did him in, cut ear-to-ear with a ripping knife in a big, brick-colored smile.

Well shit who did this little piece of work, Daggett said as he moved to my side, crooked the shotgun under his arm, and blew smoke.

I have no idea, I said, and kicked the top of the pile to cover up Old Jules' face.

Salt

Cerulean wisps
By the shore. Acid drops kiss
Bleeding lips. Salt burns
My eyes, floods fresh in my mouth:
Memories I can't forget.

The lake

The bottom of the flat used to be a lake. After a long winter when the snows pack hard and the spring sun melts, the water rushes strong down the carve-outs and creeks and refills part of the basin. The nearbys peek out to gather water alongside all the rest, deer, elk, little red foxes, even some bears.

Still is, I suppose, if you define things by what they are. I like to think that it's not about all that, but about what things do. In the days before, the lake was a lake. Snow melted, and it began. People and animals took fish like before. Water gave life indiscriminately. Oppressive heat faded away as people forgot their cares for brief moments.

But then people disappeared. Survivors camped by the lake, pitching hopeful tents while casting fearful eyes toward the horizon, watching and wondering if they'd also be seized by the fever. Yet hints of the past remained. Everyone had these wry smiles plastered up and the men clapped each other hard on the back. Maybe we made it, they said. Here we are. Children laughed and ran along the shore, wondering what the big fuss was all about and why did we have to leave and when can we go back home.

Eventually survivors dwindled, either moving on or passing on. And the lake was abandoned. That's when it stopped being a lake and became just another unseen puddle that ebbed and flooded with the seasons.

The wrong place

Boy hell the fire was in his eyes when he stood over me and said son you ain't got a prayer left under god or heaven or all the stars in the sky so mark your time. Withering, that glare; rattled me to the core and left me wanting to jump up and run from that house and back down through the briar and out the gate into the open fields, away.

It wasn't just Old Jules, either. That rifle in his hands, it was the worse. Rusty and brutal, just to grip it risks too much. Half of you thinks it'll tear someone's face off, or it's just as likely to pop in your hands and send you back down where you came from. The rust on the barrel was an odd semi-circle, like the gun was smiling right down at me, both like it knew its fate and could all-too-well guess mine.

Who are you to come around here, he asked. I said my name. Came up through the briar looking for Old Jules.

Ain't ever seen you before, he said. But well you found him by sight, and you'd better get to explaining yourself all skulking and cowering or else this conversation's going to be awful quick.

There was a moment just clear of the path, in the yard between the bombed-out Ford and the empty dirt pitch where a dog used to be, where I hesitated. Took down my bag and opened it up, double-checking my supplies and surveying the house. It was corrugated metal, simple and sharp, drafty and cold, but it at least kept out the rain. Then out from behind the car springs the man. Cagey bastard and fast, but wouldn't guess it to look at him. Hit me on the head with the butt of his gun and down I went, black and flat.

Awoke to him over me, near pressing steel to my cheek.

Here for trade, I blurted.

Trade? He laughed, guttural and rolling, but that smiling rifle didn't flinch none. Son you come to the wrong place.

The next one

Ever see a someone just rot away?

Things puff up a little at first, and there's these little white specks everywhere, maggoty shits that slippy slide all through the softest of soft. Then the body colors something foul awful, brown and black and soupy. Smells too, boy ever, worse than you think too. You think dead horse along the road and that deep and sweet rot wafting up from the landfill's bad? Ain't the same. Judged it salty, and stingy-eyed, like some damn fool's gone and mixed bleach and ammonia.

Worst are the eyes. They turn all cloudy and just recede, leaving the body to gape at you like it knows its fate and ain't nothing to be done but just endure the horror. Course no way for the body to know. It's gone. And you're left to watch the sinking, stinking holes and think, damn, that used to be my brother or sister or best fucking friend in the whole world but now they're just a falling away bag of meat.

And you scratch your arms and check for marks, and you dig a hole like all the others before because that's what civilized folk do for each other. In they go, all easy. But the arms don't land quite right and the head cricks oddly when you push it in with your boot. Doesn't look a thing like Grandpa, rest him, in the pine box with gentle clumps of dirt tossed by weepy well-wishers. No it's just a mess in the ground and you shovel and shovel and shovel so fast because damn you need it to be done.

And then it is, and you move on to the next one.

Old ways

Day 7,650 (?)

I cannot guarantee whether the above date is accurate. While some try to maintain meticulous records, the first days after the fall were fraught with confusion. Survival trumped accurate record-keeping.

Salvaged documents are scarce and often damaged, but the universally agreed-upon time is December 24th, 2001. That date is also what my parents used to consider my birthday. But those sort of things doesn't carry a whole lot of weight anymore.

Snow coats the forests and plains. Animals go to ground. The corrugated steel walls of my shelter seep cold from early winter.

Seasons are one way to keep track of things. They allow for a discrete, concrete order. I lament for those living thousands of miles south, where warm days blur together and it's too easy to ignore if the sun's out a few minutes longer each day when more pressing concerns are at-hand. I suspect they don't begrudge me the deep freeze, however, and how we must scavenge for warmth wherever it exists.

This journal is an experiment. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I think the old ways aren't completely dead -- just forgotten, or perhaps dormant. Let's see if that's true.

Stitches

Thousands of thin wounds
Pull apart like weak stitches.
Hot dust burns my lungs.
I throw rough stones down yawning
Canyons and hope for the best.

Surprise

Derrick died in my arms.

Derrick died by my hand.

I first witnessed death before the end of days. My father was a drinker and a lout. We loved him desperately, but feared his rages and steeled hand. The heart attack made him seem so weak. Clutching his chest, he dropped to his knees and keeled over. The fear in his eyes was the fear in ours all those times before, and I remember the only thing I could think at that time was that it seemed utterly fair, and that there must be greater powers at play in the world than how individuals interact. He terrorized us, but something even greater laid him low.

Derrick died much in the same way.

He's always been greater than I am.

I smelled liquor and animal fat on his breath. His movements were sluggish, exaggerated. Warmth from his fire spread across the clearing, so much so that my icy touch nearly sizzled. Our shadows struggled against the Douglas Fir canopy above and aside.

Surprise was my friend. Surprise was my ally. Derrick was alone. I squeezed as hard as I could. Annoyance became terror. Airless lips begged.

The job was done.