The Last Trail

Essay for my Fiction Writing class this term, first draft. Have a gander.

The Last Trail

Justin felt his knees buckle, and knew he was going down. As he fell, he tried to keep Dakota’s head from striking the ground. He couldn’t see well enough any longer to tell how successful he’d been. He lay in the hot ash that looked like snow for a long moment, and then rolled far enough to vomit without choking.

He weakly spat out the residual vomit, and tried to rise to his knees. Finding he didn’t even have the strength for that, he rolled over to check on his friend. She hadn’t stirred. He weakly shook her shoulder, gasping, “Dakota, are you OK?”

She didn’t respond. He pulled off his leather glove and reached for her exposed neck with shaking fingers, brushing aside thick raven hair. He found the notch to the side of her trachea that contained the carotid artery, and pressed gently, expecting to feel a pulse against his fingers.

There was nothing.

“’Koda,” he whimpered. “No….”

Ninety-seven minutes earlier.

“Ok, you win,” Dakota said, dropping her small backpack on the rock outcrop with a thump. She shaded her brown eyes with a long, thin hand and said “The view was worth it.”

Justin divested himself of his larger pack a bit more carefully and sat down, looking out at the city spread out before them. “Oh, ye of little faith.” He said, as he scratched at his blond crew cut.

Dakota laughed and stretched before settling beside her friend. “You have anything to eat in that monster pack of yours?”

“Yes, but that’s my food,” Justin said before digging out a Snickers bar and handing it over. “Here, lord knows you need the calories.”

“Fast metabolism,” Dakota replied, tearing into the wrapper. “Doctor has me on four thousand calories a day just to maintain my weight.”

“What weight?” Justin asked, laughing. “You must not weigh more than my 12-year-old niece.”

“It’s a curse,” Dakota said, making the candy bar vanish.

“Tell that to one of us normal folk who has to work out to keep weight off.”

“I never would have believed there’s a pine forest in the Sandia Mountains, of all places,” she said.

“Funny thing for a desert, isn’t it?” Justin gestured generally to the terrain. “A few places in Afghanistan were like this. Steeper, no trails, but similar climate.”

“Jeez,” Dakota said, draining a water bottle. “I was sucking wind just walking up the trail. I’d hate to try it with as much gear as you guys probably had.”

“Not to mention when some raghead decides to take you under fire,” Justin said.

“No, thanks.”

“Sorry I missed the wedding. Got a job interview that I really couldn’t afford to turn down,” Justin said, changing the subject.

“No worries. Stuff happens. Who was the interview with?” Dakota asked, twisting the shiny new gold band around her finger.

“Office Depot.” Justin said.

She laughed. “Somehow I can’t see you slinging office supplies.”

“Yeah, well, need the money.”

“Fair enough. Hey, John wants to have you over sometime, y’all can roll in the dirt and talk cars or something…” she trailed off and pointed into the sky. “What’s that?”

Overhead, something was falling from the sky, a black speck trailing smoke. It looked a little like a falling meteor from a movie.

“Missile!” Justin barked. Training kicked in and he grabbed his friend, intending to make for a nearby rock as cover.

Before they even managed to turn away, it was too late for any such measures. The distant speck struck the cityscape thousands of feet below with a flash of light like the birth of another sun. There was a thunderous crack, followed by a roaring rumble. As Justin’s vision slowly cleared, he made out a slowly rising cloud of ash in a distinctive mushroom shape, with a collar of still-glowing debris around the “stalk.” The cloud sucked ash into the bottom and spewed it back out the top as it rolled up through the breathtakingly clear blue sky. 

Better than half of the city had vanished under a blanket of ash and smoke, and as they looked on in horror, buildings began to fall in an expanding ring as the shock wave from the blast moved outward.

There was a long, long moment of stunned silence between the two friends, punctuated by the continuing ominous rumble from below. Justin shook off the shock first; what had just happened was unbelievable, but he’d work on believing it later. He turned to Dakota. “Get up. We have to move.”

She didn’t react, just stared down at what used to be her hometown. Justin grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go.”

Dakota stood when Justin pulled her up, but continued staring into the distance. Justin growled something unflattering under his breath, grabbed the woman’s pack, and shoved it into her hands. Justin then donned his own rucksack and then grabbed Dakota’s arm with a thickly calloused hand, none-too-gently shepherding her down the trail they’d come up.

Dakota was still lucid enough to make her way down the trail, but she seemed to have mentally gone elsewhere. Justin shoved her out in front and stayed on his heels, doing his best to get her to pick up the pace. Rock and gravel quickly gave way to packed dirt and exposed roots as they left the ridge and dove back into the pines, headed east, away from the horrible destruction they’d just witnessed.

After fifteen minutes of scrambling down the trail, Justin called a halt and pulled out two water bottles, shoving one into Dakota’s hands and drinking greedily from the other. He’d gotten out of shape since Afghanistan. He downed half the bottle and went to tuck it away, then noticed that Dakota hadn’t drunk any of hers. He growled in exasperation, snatched the bottle, opened it, and threw half the water in his companion’s face.

She sputtered and gasped, and Justin shoved the bottle back into her hands. “Drink,” he commanded.

Dakota complied, and then looked at Justin with wide eyes. “They…it…the city….”

“I know, ‘Koda.” Justin replied. “We need to get moving.”

“But…why?”

Justin just turned and kept walking. Not long after that, it began to snow.

It wasn’t really snow, Justin realized after a moment. He swore, dropped his pack, and pulled out a poncho, spreading it over himself and pulling Dakota under cover with him.

“What is it? It’s hot,” Dakota said.

“Ash from the explosion,” Justin replied. “Probably radioactive.”

“What? Radioactive? You mean…?”

“Yeah, I think it was a nuke,” he said. “Try not to let the ash touch your skin.”

“Ok.”

With that, the continued down the trail, moving as fast as they could while staying under the shared poncho. Every time Justin began to speculate about what had happened, he sternly wrenched his thoughts back to surviving. There would be time later to wonder what had happened and why.

They made it back to the trailhead without further incident. Jason had just begun to feel relieved when sudden nausea overcame him and he bent over, puking up what seemed like everything he’d eaten all week.

“Are you all right?” Dakota asked, throwing the poncho back over him.

“No,” he said, fumbling his keys out of his pocket and hitting the unlock button. “Get in the jeep.”

They climbed in, and he threw the poncho in the backseat, along with their packs. Almost as soon as they got in, Dakota threw her door open to add her own contribution to the pool of vomit on the ground. She lay back in the seat, panting. “What the hell is wrong with us?”

“You getting a headache?” he asked. “Feeling hot? Feel like that hike was more work than it should have been?”

She nodded mutely.

“Radiation poisoning,” he said. “You look like you’ve got a bad sunburn, and I doubt I’m any better. From the gamma rays.”

 She closed her eyes, and a single tear traced a path down her cheek. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

 She let out a low moan, and then opened her eyes. “We have to go down there, Justin.”

“No, we have to get out of here.”

“But I have to go find John. Make sure he’s okay. Let him know we’re okay.”

Justin hung his head and sighed. “John’s gone.”

“You don’t know that.” She said, resolutely staring out the windshield.

“You saw it just the same as I did.” Justin said. “Your house isn’t far from where the bomb hit.”

She turned toward him, screaming “You don’t know!”

He turned away. “I’m sorry, ‘Koda. He’s dead.”

“I have to go find him…” she whimpered.

Justin reached out and took her hand, not gently. “Dakota, listen to me. He. Is. Dead. You can’t help him, and unless you want to join him, we have to get out of here.”

“But where are we going to go?”

“Anywhere but here,” He said, gesturing to the ash accumulating on the windshield. “The wind is blowing this way; we’ll be catching fallout as long as we stay. If we get on 165 north to Placitas, maybe we can get out of the worst of it.”

She didn’t reply, just stared out the window, rubbing her thumb against her new wedding ring. He shrugged and started the vehicle, backing out and taking off down the mountain. He took the curves faster than he’d ever done before, and before very long they arrived at the turn-off toward Placitas. He pulled into the empty parking lot, and looked around for a moment in confusion. He didn’t see the road he’d intended to take.

He was about to get out of the vehicle and check around on foot when he noticed a small break in the foliage off to the left. He’d thought it was a hiking trail, but when he drove over to it he found a narrow dirt road winding downward through the trees. He put the truck in gear and followed it, turning on his windshield wipers to clear the radioactive ash.

The trail wasn’t quite as bad as it had looked from the top, and he quickly picked up speed. He turned on the radio, hoping to find some sort of emergency broadcast, but there was nothing. Of course, the local radio towers mostly had line-of-sight to the city, and had likely been fired by the electromagnetic pulse released in the blast. He was lucky his truck had been behind the ridge. For her part, Dakota had begun rocking back and forth in her seat, tears cutting streaks through the ash on her cheeks.  

Halfway down he had to stop and pop open the door so he could vomit again without fouling the inside of his vehicle. He swore imaginatively and turned to check on Dakota. Her eyes were open, but she’d retreated within herself again and wasn’t responding to him at all. He threw the truck in gear and pressed on.

The trail continued down steeply, winding along the sides of a precipitous drop.  He pulled over and got out his GPS receiver, which was completely dead. He figured the EMP had gotten it, or something. He got out a paper map and figured out roughly where he was by counting turns from the turn-off to 165, and saw that a dry wash or creek was coming up at the bottom of this canyon. No matter; he’d done a lot of difficult fords in his jeep. He folded the map up and moved along.

The creek turned out to be a non-issue; the forest service had built a sturdy concrete bridge over it since his map had been published. He silently thanked God for small favors and turned to check on his companion again. She’d dropped into a restless sleep, despite the constant jostling from rocks and ruts in the road.

Just as Justin was starting to feel better about their odds, his headache tripled in intensity, his vision went grey and he lost sight of the road. A moment later, there was a thunderous wham-crunch sound as he was thrown forward against his restraints. There was an impact against his head and the world went black.

When he regained consciousness, Justin sat there for a long moment, trying to figure out where he was. It all came back to him in a rush, and he jerked back hard enough to hit his head. He swore and unbuckled his seatbelt, pushing aside the now-flaccid airbag. The door wouldn’t open.

The window had shattered, so he painfully hauled himself out. He managed to get into a sitting position on the sill and was trying to figure out how to get his legs out when he lost his grip and fell backward. His shoulders slammed into the ash-covered packed dirt road, followed by his head. He saw stars, and fought to stay awake.

When the feeling passed, he hauled himself upright and staggered around the front of the vehicle, noting the tree lodged in the engine. He felt he should have been more upset about that; he was still making payments on the damn jeep, after all. He shrugged to himself and continued around.

Dakota was slumped against her seat belt, not moving. He noted the rise and fall of her chest with relief, and tried her door. With some convincing, it popped open, and fell off the jeep entirely. She stirred groggily. “Justin? Wha’ happened?”

“I hit a tree,” Justin replied. “Can you walk?”

“I dunno,” she said, unbuckling her belt and swinging her legs out. She eased herself out and stood, immediately crying out in pain and clutching at him for support. “My leg, my leg,” she hissed.

“C’mon,” he said, crouching down and lifting her over his head and across his shoulders in the buddy-carry he’d done hundreds of times in training, and once or twice for real.  She gasped as he lifted her. “You okay?” he asked.

“I’ll…I’ll live,” she said. “You gonna be able to carry me?”

He laughed weakly, grabbing the poncho and draping it over both of them in an attempt to keep the ash off. “Compared to a guy in full gear, you weigh nothing. I’ve got you.”

“Mmmkay,” she murmured as he felt her relax in his grip. He started off down the trail, heading north, downhill. His legs shook with every step, but he kept putting one before the other, trying to escape the deadly ‘snow.’