Shaking

His eyes popped open as his body shook. He swung a limp hand down to feel the cold smooth ground. It was shaking. No surprise – it was always shaking. He liberated his weary legs from the tangled hammock as he sat up. A quick, blinking scan of the landscape told the same story as it had for 17 years.

Flat. Dry. But on the move. Even in the early light, he could see the rocks, dirt, and detritus, shifting, undulating, scattered slowly as if carried a million different directions on separate conveyors. A familiar low rumble, like a lion’s growl, rang in the air.

He stared down through his crossed legs, through the hammock to the ground below. Pebbles danced in the dust. His body bobbed up and down. He sat, not wanting to move. But needing to move.

This moment in the day – when his feet first touched the shaking earth – he hated more than any other.

Damn shaking.

He rubbed sad eyes. Grabbed at unkept whiskers. Massaged lean, muscular quads beneath his ancient blue jeans. Then leapt. In a different world he might have edged toward being contemplative. Someone prone to idle introspection.

But in a world that moved, you had to move. This was about as close to guiding philosophy as anything rattling around in his brain. Moving meant surviving.

Landing that first step was a trick, a bit like stepping onto a moving train. But for whatever reason he’d developed a feel for it quickly. Adapted better than most. Now he was about the only one left. Him and the old woman.

His lead foot hit the ground first and vibrations touched every joint immediately. He ground his boot heel, secured balance and planted his second foot behind, pushing the hammock aside. Distributing his weight evenly on each leg.

He paused, bent at the waist. Acclimating to the movement. Slowly straitened as his legs recoiled repeatedly, absorbing shocks of the attacking earth. He spun masterfully and surveyed his gear. A quick kick to the underbelly joint on his hammock stand collapsed it onto the rollicking ground. In a singular move, he scooped it up along with his pack, steadied himself, then began taking short, quick measured steps.

The sun crested and revealed the same tortured, quaking landscape he’d walked the day before. Now he was retracing his steps. He cursed. Activity without purpose – he hated it. There wasn’t the room for it. But for the old woman he’d do about anything. Even walk the same path three times for her silly nostalgia.

Damn sentimentality.

The walk was slow. The shaking was stronger than normal. He’d put it at high fours on the scale, but who could know for sure anymore? Seventeen years ago when it first started, mostly it was quick short quakes. The frequency increased. The intensity increased. Turned everything upside down. Everything collapsed – buildings, trees, infrastructure. Lots of things were built to last through a single quake. Even a big one. But nothing lasted through one that didn’t end.

Science never made much sense to him. But to those it did he gave most of the blame. As it got told before everything went silent, a coordinated effort to harness geothermal heat was supposed to solve all our energy problems. Most countries got sold on it. Thousands of teams across every continent went deep through the earth’s crust trying to access what they called “a limitless, clean source of life-giving energy.”

Somewhere along the way something got broken. Too much all at once. Hasn’t that always been our story? Don’t know when to stop. The plates under the earth got destabilized. No one expected that did they? All their great ideas caused the continents to start shaking 17 years ago. And they’ve never stopped.

Damn scientists.

Simple things kept him going. Pride of being among the few who could still live on land was one. He’d learned to scrounge. He could spot food others would overlook. Most had moved out to the water on huge floating city states. The water buffered the shaking.

The old woman also kept him going. She was the only other land liver he’d seen in years. At least a long-termer. That alone was enough to respect. It was hard living.

She also calmed him. And she remembered things. He forgot things. He wanted to. The next step was a complete enough reality for him. But not for her. She wrote things down. Collected objects. Cared about history. Asked him questions that made him feel things.

It embarrassed him, but he liked it. The tenderness of the old woman and her attachment to things was double edged. Never was that more clear than now, as he walked painfully back across the arid landscape toward her broken down hut.

Small, quick steps. The hot sun grew higher over broken rocks as the ground grumbled and shook. His hand pawed absently at his pocket for the object of his scorn, and was greeted there by a small lump.

Damn locket.

The pack felt heavier today than yesterday. He paused to rest – striking a shock-absorbing pose not unlike a surfer balancing on a board – and raised two middle-aged arms for a stretch. Had to do it at an angle so as not to dislodge his wide-brimmed straw hat.

A deep breath. Swig of water from his old army canteen. He ground in his boot heel and started back up. Small, quick steps.

Morning cool bled away and the sun beat down. It felt hotter today than yesterday. One hand whipped off his hat as the other mopped the corner of his poncho across a tanned brow.

He marched past the crumpled, shuddering ruins of a building. An old gas station. Small weeds struggled to find their way through the cracks between broken glass, twisted sheet metal and decaying plywood. He didn’t stop. There was no food there. He’d combed through this familiar wreckage many times on his monthly treks to visit the old woman.

Any food he found he shared with her. She told him her stories. That became the unspoken arrangement. It kept him coming back. And he had to assume it kept her alive.

He felt at his pocket again and remembered the last story she’d told him just two nights ago. He cursed. Just careless of him. Now he was headed back to her hut. A day’s walk with shaking registering at a high four. Occasionally maybe topping five. Wasting life like that made him feel like a damn fool.

Aggravation needled him so much he forced his mind other directions. Told himself her last story. She’d held out the old tarnished locket as if she half expected it to shatter into a million pieces if another set of eyes fell on it.

He took it from her trembling hand and held it up by its slender chain to the candle. It bobbed from the shaking. It was light. Cheap, but well loved. He could tell by the way the ornamental engraving had worn away.

The heart-shaped token maybe once had some gold overlay, but that had all long since given way to cheaper metal underneath.

She invited him to open the locket. As he did he got the uncomfortable sense he might be the only one other than her to have ever done so. Inside, maybe an inch in diameter, was a photo. The unmistakable image of a tree. Not one of the scrubby ones scratching to survive these days. Huge and sprawling. Like before the shaking.

Trees that size were all gone now. Root systems got completely eviscerated by grinding underground plates in constant movement. But he remembered them.

He looked at her for explanation. Best he could remember from her telling, that tree was from her home. Not her home now. But from before. Long before. When things grew. She had a man. They’d had kids. There had been happiness. She remembered it. And the locket helped her remember.

The open locket in his hand seemed to open the door to a hundred stories. He listened to her tell them all night.

When he awoke the next morning he left a package of dried meat next to the old slumbering woman – as was their unspoken arrangement – and crept out into the black rumbling darkness.

It was only after twelve hours of perilous walking that he reached into his pocket for his compass and found the locket instead. He’d absent mindedly stuck it there as she carried him through her stories.

He was a strong man. Rarely felt much that he didn’t decide he wanted to. But this discovery left him cold. Devastated. He had taken her locket. And he was afraid its absence would kill her.

He came to an immediate stop in the surfer pose. The ground shook. His weary legs absorbed. And he considered. No chance of making it back tonight. He was spent. He’d have to start out first thing. He cursed. Unfolded his hammock stand. Cursed again. Flopped down and angrily forced his eyes shut.

Six hours now he’d walked back toward the woman’s hut. Shaking felt stronger. His pack felt heavier. Sun felt hotter. All that meant it’d be at least another eight before he’d arrive.

Damn locket.

As he did these calculations in his brain and internally audited his stores, he felt a terrifying sensation. At first he couldn’t place it. It wasn’t exhaustion, though he definitely felt that. Not fear or hunger or aggravation or violence. It was stillness. The shaking had tapered and then disappeared.

It’d been 17 years since the shaking started. And 15 since he’d felt stillness. In all that time he’d stopped hoping for it. Kept himself from wanting it. Just focused on the next step. Even if it was on shaking ground.

Disoriented, he slumped to the suddenly calm dust. Seconds passed as he tried to formulate his thoughts. His organs protested the change. His muscles, long trained to absorb vibrations, now spasmed with unfamiliarity.

Two minutes passed. He felt another sensation. An uncomfortably loud choking outburst of a sob escaped his throat. About two minutes for emotion to catch up with his body, it looks like.

As he sat awkwardly, he slowly rubbed his calloused hand across the ground. Sliding his fingers under the dust and gripping handfuls of it. He lowered his ear, laying on his cheek, listening. Nothing. Silence. Stillness.

Three minutes. He felt fear, but also exhilaration. He started to chuckle, although he also had tears, so maybe it was a cry. He couldn’t tell which. It had been a long time since he’d done either. He’d thought maybe the shaking had buried those types of things. The things that make you feel human.

But stillness had brought them back. Like when you catch a whiff of a smell that resurrects a cherished but forgotten memory.

The absence of shaking brought him more joy than he thought he was capable. He wanted it more than anything. He stood up unsteadily on ground that was still going on five minutes now. He spun and stomped and laughed. Yes, he was sure now that it was laughter.

In the middle of these damned fool acts he felt a shudder. It froze him. Another. And another. He begged it not to. But it did. A low rumble filled the air. And it started to shake. Maybe a 3.5 on the scale.

He waited around for several minutes. Perhaps to see if the stillness would return. But more likely to pack things back up and put them away. The hope. The despair. All that.

The familiar rut was easy enough to find. In a world that moves, you have to move.

He wiped the tears, sweat and dirt from his cheek. Ground in his heel. And started forward. Eight hours to go. Small, quick steps. One after the other.