Ash Land

The world had shrunk to the alternating whine and thrum of the engine, the endlessly scrolling road illuminated by the bouncing cone of light ahead. Now it showed smoother dirt and gravel to the right, deep rocky ruts to the left. On the margins shrubs and Douglas-fir branches were growing thicker with every mile. The press of cover to hide their fleeing pool of light felt reassuring, no matter how unlikely they were still being followed. Not since they had veered off Dead Indian Memorial Highway onto the gravel of Shale City Road and the battered Dodge had continued straight with a Doppler-shifting descent to the horn's blare. The flag whipping behind its cab matched one of three Loni had stashed in various hidden pockets in the forward frame bags, in the unlikely event whichever nation they ran afoul of next might be so easily appeased.

Loni downshifted, then carefully slipped the clutch and revved the throttle to make the steeper climb, keeping to the right. She had practiced with the full weight of the bug out supplies, but still everything felt different with a passenger. The sudden grab of Sylvia’s arms around her waist and jarring knocking of helmets whenever the rear tire danced a bit through the gravel weren’t helping. When they stopped she might remind the girl that they were not at the edge of disaster with every little slip… but what reassurance was that? The edge of disaster was exactly where they were.

She had worried she might drive right by the rendezvous point in the dark, but the wide, level expanse stretching to the left was immediately evident, and the headlight swept across the empty wooden frame of the old sign kiosk for verification as she turned in to pull up to the remaining section of low rock wall. She stomped the kickstand down and stood on the left footpeg to awkwardly haul her right leg across the tank and hop down before assisting Sylvia with her fumbling disentanglement from luggage surrounding the passenger seat.

They removed helmets and earplugs with long exhalations, pulling fingers through hair sweat-plastered to foreheads to let the breeze through. Sylvia broke the silence flooding into the space so long occupied by the engine’s din with, "I'm switching to Dad's bike when he gets here."

There was some logic to that - Ryan’s CB500x was better suited to carrying a passenger than Loni’s Himalayan - but faith was the real message. Her dad was going to make it. He would be here soon. They both peered back down the pale ribbon of road snaking through the darkness behind them and listened intently, but there was nothing yet. Loni took Sylvia’s helmet and tucked it with her own to the back of the passenger seat, then threw her arm over the girl’s shoulders to lead her over to the viewpoint. Those shoulders were getting high - she might be taller than Loni by the time she hit high school. Loni realized with a twinge that there was faith in that thought, too.

There were stars directly above but the sky still glowed a deep blue where the sun had set behind Mount Ashland to the west. On both sides of the valley, bare slopes and ridges showed almost bright below the darker forested hilltops. They scanned northward and saw it at the same time - towards Ashland itself - strange low clouds glowing orange.

“Are they burning the city?” Sylvia gasped.

“I don’t know. I mean, something’s burning. Something big.”

“Mom, they wouldn’t burn the Elizabethan Theatre, would they?”

Loni winced. “I really hope not, honey.”

“Why are they burning things? Why here? We’re nobody!”

“I know… but I guess it’s that whole ‘Capitol of Cascadia’ thing. They want everyone to know they destroyed the Capitol.”

“Ashland’s not a real Capitol of anything! Capitol of Cascadia is just crap for the tourists!”

“I know. It doesn’t matter what’s true, though. It only matters what people believe.”

They watched in silence for a moment before Sylvia said, "It's just so… unfair!! We were right!"

"Being right doesn't matter either. No different than it's always been: the ones with the guns win." Loni regretted saying that out loud. She usually tried to keep her darker thoughts to herself. The pang of regret sharpened when she glanced down and noticed Chester stuffed inside Sylvia's half-unzipped motorcycle jacket. Chester was a chipmunk stuffie from the Crater Lake Visitor's Center that had been Sylvia's favorite through elementary school. Loni hadn’t seen it in years. She was almost jealous of it now - the nylon and polyester trinket doing a better job than her at comforting her child.

Before Loni could muster a plausible positive statement, Sylvia spun back around to the left. "Dad!" Sure enough, there was a distant sound of a motorcycle engine.

Soon they were flooded in light, noise, and dust but glad of it, as the familiar Honda arrived and tipped to its stand by Loni’s bike. Ryan killed the engine and jumped off to get swept up into a group hug before even pulling off his helmet. He shed his gear as they watched the flickering clouds somberly. Loni caught the faint scent of his aftershave under fresh sweat, evidence of the striking contrast between the reality he had risen to and the one on display below them now. They caught each other's eye but said nothing at a distant crackling that might have been gunfire.

There was no sense in continuing on tonight, so they assigned Sylvia the task of setting up the tent by lantern light while the adults talked quietly. Ryan recounted how his coworkers at The Awning Place had gone home to defend their property. Most of Loni’s at Department of Ecology had talked of bugging out. Austin was the touchstone on everyone’s minds. Those staying either held that it wouldn’t get that bad here or that they were better prepared for the fight than the Austin casualties had been. Loni and Ryan had both had some scary moments getting out, but avoiding the main routes had generally worked well, and the bikes did appear to attract less unwanted attention than their electric car would have. All that seemingly hyper-paranoid planning was paying off.

“How are you feeling now, about north or east?” Ryan asked.

“North. Winthrop New Community. I’m still not desperate enough to run to pops.”

“Yeah, uh…” Ryan evidently disagreed, but thought better of trying to hash it out now. “Well, Biggs Junction is the next leg either way, right?”

“Mm-hmm, I still think that’s our best bet for a safe crossing.”

"OK, Biggs by tomorrow evening," said Ryan. Then louder, "The Columbia Gorge is beautiful, Sylz, you're going to love it!"

****

The riding was slow on logging roads through forests of Douglas-fir then up into dense lodgepole pine and more open bluish spruce. Loni felt she was gaining proficiency quickly, cruising through steep loose patches where Ryan was sometimes struggling ahead. But he was riding with a passenger, where she was now free to work on standing on the pegs to lower the center of gravity and let the bike move around beneath her. Best to let it respond to the trail and correct itself back, rather than muscling it around in disagreement.

By mid-morning they were traveling through more burned areas than live stands - vast rolling slopes of stark white and black toothpick stems over bright green regenerating trees, shrubs, grasses, and fireweed. Then clearcuts where burned trees had been logged, with precisely straight boundaries in alien contrast to the natural warp and weft of the landscape.

They stopped for lunch in a valley where a patch of live trees stood just upslope from a creek, the trees and shrubs along the creek riotously green in the burned landscape. There were some cut tree rounds for stools and smooth log for a table by a rock-circled fire pit with ashes and brittle gray shell of a half-burned beer can within. Sylvia and Loni ventured down towards the creek while Ryan worked on boiling water to pour into their pouches of freeze-dried chana masala.

They navigated warily through piled branches and around vigorously sprouting shrubs, spying shiny patches of standing water among willows ahead. A frog called. Loni pointed out a gnawed branch just as the culprit confirmed its identity with a loud slap of tail on water. “Beaver!” she shouted. They both caught a glimpse of a sleek dark back as one swam and dove under.

Over lunch, Loni chattered on about beavers with a near-manic intensity. Their obsessive need to stop the sound of flowing water, how they shaped the streams of the continent into fertile, pungent pools teaming with life, how they were coming back from the brink of extinction to number over 10 million now. And more in the years to come. They had a long way to go to come anywhere near their historic numbers, but they were stubborn and resilient. The rodent mascot the little clan resting a moment in this little oasis needed. They all felt a little lighter as they packed their trash away and geared back up for the next leg.

***

The math said they should have been able to make it to the Sinclair station in Crescent Lake Junction on the gas in their tanks and Rotopax containers, but between the extra weight and work of navigating the undulating terrain, fuel efficiency had dropped to near 50 mpg and they were falling short. Full travel day one and they were already resorting to the absurdly risky measure of siphoning gas.

There were houses scattered throughout this area of checkerboard Forest Service and private lands, but none of them felt like a place where knocking to offer to buy a couple of gallons of gas was likely to end well. Several flew Confederate flags or an American flag with a small red cross embedded among the stars to symbolize the United Christian States of America.

It was hard to say if this particular property was an intentional scrapyard or just a hoarder’s residence, but at least no flag was posted. The old pickup sat near the main road, alongside the curving dirt driveway leading to a dilapidated 2-story house with blue tarp anchored over half the roof with bricks.

Sylvia stayed by the motorcycles on the road shoulder, geared up and ready to hop on to go at a moment’s notice. Ryan knelt by the pickup, holding the black bulb of a hand siphon with one long clear tube inserted in one of their red rotopax containers, while feeding the other end into the truck’s gas tank. Loni kept watch by him, brain frantically attempting to sort through the visual chaos to mark any potential threat. Only a fraction could be sorted into discernible objects: dismantled trucks, a riding lawn mower, appliances, furniture, barbecue grills, fishing poles, exercise equipment, dirt bikes, televisions, tattered netting walls collapsing onto a mossy plastic playhouse on a trampoline, cardboard boxes bearing crisp idealized photos of many of the aforementioned items, and scattered throughout, No Trespassing signs (because who could resist such a cornucopia of riches?). Some boxes were rain-warped but still taped, entombing their contents. Steadfastly protecting metal and plastic surfaces untouched since the last hands - or machine grips? - nestled them into their styrofoam forms and slipped them into these boxes in China.

She swallowed against an upwelling of emotion, flashes of clearing out her mother's house after the funeral. Sifting through one piece of evidence after another of someone endlessly striving to fill a black hole, to only succeed in feeding it.

There was a sharp crack, followed by another. “Shit!” yelled Ryan. “Don’t shoot! We have a little girl!”

Crack!

Ryan shot his hands up over the side of the truck bed. “We’re leaving, we swear!”

Two long blasts of a truck horn sounded from behind them. Adrenaline screamed yet louder in Loni’s veins as she spun around.

“Lay off, Eddie!” the driver bellowed. Leaning out the window of the huge black Dodge, sunlight caught on short hair that graded from salt and pepper on top to almost white in the beard and mustache. “I’ll get ‘em outta here!”

Loni could just make out Sylvia on the ground behind the motorcycles and in front of the Dodge, tucked into a tight ball with her arms over her helmet, just like she had once shown them they practiced in active shooter drills in school.

Finally a voice called back from a second floor window. “Fine! But I got every right, John! This is my property!”

“Damn straight, Eddie!” John yelled back. He gestured them over and Ryan quickly gathered up the siphon and Rotopax and they jogged to the road, shooting glances back over their shoulders.

“You know that truck is a diesel, right?” said John, muttering something else under his breath. “All right, look. I live just up here. Follow me and I’ll fix you up with a few gallons of gas. But you can’t pull that shit around here. For real.”

“I’m sorry, we just-” but John rolled up his window before Ryan could finish. They hugged Sylvia and loaded up as fast as they could and followed John onward.

John’s home was a placid oasis compared to Eddie’s. They dropped down through a gap in the trees where the gravel driveway curved into a sunny opening with patchy brown and green lawn, and a large vegetable garden behind a tall deer fence, with chickens pecking between rows of dense greens and bare long mounds that looked freshly planted. A blonde teen-aged girl in shorts and t-shirt with a flannel shirt tied around her waist paused in tying tall stakes into bean tepees to watch them curiously. Sylvia waved from behind Ryan and the girl grinned and waved back. A wide ranch-style house lay just beyond, with wide dark windows in the white swath between brick base and overhanging eaves. A United Christian States of America flag waved over the front door.

What began as John generously splitting a 5-gallon gas container between the 2 bikes evolved into introductions with his wife Cheryl and daughters - Sarah, the younger daughter from the garden, and young-adult Amy - then into an invitation to stay for dinner and camp in the yard. Cheryl seemed a bit flustered at the unexpected company, repeatedly fussing with her perfectly presentable brown hair, but the dinner invite was more her initiative than John's.

Sarah helped them set up the tent as Sylvia remarked on the rare luxury of camping on soft grass with access to running water and such, building her cred as a hardened adventurer with the older girl, who seemed suitably impressed. Sylvia had camped twice before this outing.

***

There was a moment of awkwardness at the beginning of dinner, when Sylvia picked up her fork just as their hosts all reached to hold hands around the table for grace, but after that the energy improved. John started strong, with compliments to his wife on the food and random complaints about the wet spring and high gas prices, then Loni and Cheryl carried much of the conversation, sticking to safe topics - gardening, chicken care, cooking down cherry tomatoes to make the delicious pasta sauce. Ryan, Sylvia, and Sarah jumped in here and there, Amy sat quietly, generally avoiding eye contact. John's mood appeared to be tanking rapidly. Perhaps it was related to his brisk rate of beer consumption (Ryan finally accepted the offer of a second one when his host's ire at repeated refusals became evident), or regret at sharing food, judging from the way he glowered at the near-empty serving bowls before them. Probably a little of both. Conversation continued with escalating forced cheer around him. Ryan noticed Loni darting glances at John and draping her arm over Sylvia, keeping her close.

John interjected suddenly, cutting Cheryl off mid-sentence. “Look, I want to make one thing clear.” He was looking at Ryan, then swept his gaze around to encompass everyone. “Because you all need to understand this!”

“I did NOT take you in because you have a child. I took you in in spite of that fact. This is something I want my girls to understand, and it’s something you all need to understand, too. You can’t just go trusting people because they got kids.” John looked hard at his daughters. “Those are the people you got to watch out for the most!” Back at Ryan, “The people with kids are the ones that are going to rob you blind, take your food, your car, shoot you dead. And they walk away feeling like they all right. They did what they had to to take care of their kids. Righteous as saints.

“All those people who came up from the South, from the Southwest? The ones that decided they couldn’t just live in the refugee shelters, eating all that food our tax money went to pile up for when we knew damned well they’d be coming - no, they had to go and conquer the goddamned place like we’re fucking Afghanistan up here!? Those are parents and grandparents. Those are the ones building their “New Confederacy” bullshit up here so their kids and grandkids can have the lion’s share of what’s left.

“Single dudes, they’re still sitting there in Phoenix, still swearing up and down that this is all some conspiracy. Weather ain’t that bad, water’s coming back, power’s coming back. They gonna just sit there and fucking mummify trying to show the libs they ain’t buying it. It’s the family men that led that charge to just go and ‘take back Cascadia’.

“And I never even bought into that Cascadia bullshit. We’re America, not Cascadia or New Confederacy, or Navajo Plains Alliance, or none of that. Fuck them a hundred times over if they think I’m New Confederacy….” John petered out, having strayed a little too far from his point to tie it all up with a ribbon now.

Ryan thought better of pointing out that the red cross taped into the corner of John's flag wasn't straight up "American" either. Quite the contrary, he lifted his beer in salute. "To the true Americans!"

John looked up with a glare. There was a moment of tension before he cracked a smile and raised his beer in return. “True Americans!”

***

As Loni pulled the bungee straps tight over the dry bag in the crisp morning air, she noted that Amy was talking to Sylvia very intently, as the girl listened and nodded politely. Loni was about to call Sylvia over, but John appeared in the doorway and Amy glanced his way and hustled away.

Ryan had noticed as well and came over to pretend to make a last adjustment on the Honda by Loni as Sylvia trotted up.

“What was that about?” asked Loni.

“Random stuff. About religion.” Sylvia replied, stuffing Chester lower in her jacket as she zipped it up. Her parents’ continued stares pressed her to elaborate further. “She said be careful about Christians, because their whole religion is about trying to live forever. But they’re STILL super afraid of dying. But Buddhists, they say the most important thing is to understand that it's ok that everything dies.”

“Huh,” said Ryan, shaking his head. “Just our luck to have the world’s only evangelical Buddhist all over our kid right out of the gate.”

Loni’s limbs buzzed with the need to get safely back in motion. She handed Sylvia her helmet. “OK on to the Gorge, kiddo!”

***

Ben Riordan leaned into the monitor and maximized the north rooftop pool feed. It displayed a line of three young women - one blonde, two brunettes - lying on lounge chairs reading books. Their bikinis were small, body fat percentages low, skin evenly tan. There was an odd quality of light from the wildfire smoke, but the courtyard dome kept the air clean and if anything, the orange cast of the light just made the girls look healthier.

Walton Riordan cleared his throat loudly from the doorway.

Ben’s finger snapped to minimize the window and he swiveled around.

“Didn’t know you handled security yourself, Pops,” said Walton. “Money must be tight.”

Ben raked his fingers through thinning gray hair, grinning. “Attention to detail son. I’m all about attention to detail.” He gestured to the chair across the desk from him. Walton hesitated, then sank into it. Heavily padded leather on a tippy chrome swiveling base that squeaked with every movement. He smirked at how very Ben Riordan it was. Style over substance.

Ben switched to serious and went straight to business. “You’re sure your sister and her family made it well clear of Ashland?”

“Yeah. They had a good plan. They’re on motorcycles, heading north on backroads.”

Ben chuckled. “That’s Eloni. Damn fine planner.”

“Stop calling her that, Dad - it’s Loni.” Walton had always been grateful he hadn’t been born a few years later, or he would have been saddled with the even worse name of Elon. In that fleeting moment in time when it evoked a visionary rather than a privileged nutjob.

“Where are they headed?” Ben asked. His carefully casual tone in asking for information he knew he wasn’t privy to was pure Ben Riordan as well.

“Not here.”

Ben sighed. “She knows this is the safest place for them. Look, talk to her. Explain to her why you brought Roger here. This is about family. Not everything has to be so damned political!”

“Political??” Walton hated rising to his father’s bait, but he had his limits. “The world is fucking burning, Dad, is that just ‘politics’?” Ben’s lack of response only fanned the flames. “It’s about family now? Our kids’ futures have gone to shit thanks to you!”

“Oh come on!” Ben had flipped to full rage in an instant. Walton suppressed an urge to flinch away. He was too big to slap now. “This is all my fault now? I had that kind of power? Bullshit!”

“Not JUST you, but you were right in there, Dad, every time it looked like enough congressmen might finally grow backbones and actually DO SOMETHING, there you and your buddies were whispering around about ‘no consensus’ and ‘common sense’ and popular opinion!”

“What, and you never drove a car or flew or ate a burger? This was all of us buck-o! You think I was some genius Rasputin pulling the strings? It wasn’t like that. Congressmen knew which side their bread was buttered on, and keeping the voters… pro-butter was stupid easy. By the time I was playing the game, 90% of content on those platforms I dabbled in was basically about throwing zingers like monkey poop. I have a goddamned Master’s in Communications and Media from Stanford, and you know what kind of quality content I was producing? ‘Plants like carbon’. ‘They can’t decide if it’s supposed to get colder or hotter’. We could just send one of those gems out on a few hundred comment threads, and actual non-bot humans snatched it up and multiplied it exponentially. Is it my fault it was so stupid easy?

"And you know I tried to stop it. When Roger was born in a summer where manatees were cooking alive in the oceans and hurricanes were making it to fucking Idaho, I finally realized we had waited too long. I swear to God I thought we’d have more time to keep the machine running until we could dominate nuclear or solar. I saw that we had pushed too long, but there was no stopping it then. The golem was lumbering off. You could yell all you wanted then about how what you’d told them was wrong. They didn’t care anymore. Not believing was… was part of their freaking skin! And there wasn’t a damned thing anyone could do to make them admit it was real.”

Ben stared down at his desk. He tossed back a glass of amber-colored liquid that had been tucked among the photo frames, laptop, and headset.

“Do you think this is the world I wanted for my grandkids? It’s not! And the best I can do now is use some of this ‘dirty money’ as you two always called it to keep my family safe!”

Walton was taken aback by the tightness in his father’s voice. Was he legitimately choking up? “Dad,” he sighed. “She’s not coming. She has a plan, and it doesn’t involve you. She thinks there’s a good place for them.”

Ben shook his head, ran his fingers through thin grey strands again. “There is. Right here. THIS is where they can be safe, and Sylvia and Roger can finish high school together and live normal lives.” He stared down a finger pointed at Walton with practiced authority. “If you can’t talk her into it over the phone, you need to go find them. You need to bring them here.”

“Dad, that’s… I mean, they’re 6, maybe 700 miles away! Who knows how long we’ll be able to connect by cell, and if we lose that I’ll have no idea exactly where they are. And if I find them, what am I going to do, kidnap them?”

Ben was in an authoritative mode beyond all reach of reason. “Be the man, Walton!”

Walton seethed a moment, thinking of snarky replies to the testosterone-driven stupidity of the directive, but part of him was hanging back. It was seriously considering the idea - perhaps even excited at the prospect. It would be something… real. It would be living.

And the picture that formed in his mind’s eye of the journey was him and Roger, driving out on this mission together. That didn’t make much sense, did it? Bringing a teenager into senseless danger? Except maybe… maybe they would get Loni’s family and come back here. Or maybe they’d find Loni had been right. Maybe they never had to come back.

When he finally issued an answer, it was simply. “All right, then. We’ll go.”