Speaker 1: This program is intended for mature audiences only.
Speaker 2: You are now listening to Observable Radio.
Speaker 1: Hi there, it's Cameron Siuey. We've got another story for
Speaker 1: you this month, as the year winds to a close,
Speaker 1: something like a Western turned inside out. We hope you're
Speaker 1: finding the time to spend your holidays exactly how you wish,
Speaker 1: and we hope to have some good news about our
Speaker 1: upcoming season very soon. In the meantime, swing by our
Speaker 1: Patreon for more behind the scenes information and upcoming news.
Speaker 1: We'd love to see you there. And now here's tonight's story.
Speaker 2: East. It's been a long time since I've seen the storm.
Speaker 2: It's always been there behind us, whispering through the shuddering ground,
Speaker 2: a background roar behind the wind. We'd been ahead for
Speaker 2: so long, moving faster than its clockwork crawl until the mountains. Then,
Speaker 2: as we ground ourselves upward against these slopes, we heard
Speaker 2: it rumbling closer, a rising quake in the earth. But
Speaker 2: it's been a while since I turned around and actually
Speaker 2: saw it. Sitting here on the side of the mountain
Speaker 2: in the fridgid morning, it fills my vision and stings
Speaker 2: my eyes with the monstrous unreality of it. It rises
Speaker 2: like an unbroken wall into the sky, obscured only by
Speaker 2: the limits of my sight, fading into the clear blue
Speaker 2: and stretching away north and south, curving away with the earth.
Speaker 2: The sunlight doesn't touch it. Nothing does. At the ground,
Speaker 2: where the churning wall of sickly blue lightning and black
Speaker 2: clouds grinds against the earth, I can see the unmaking,
Speaker 2: the lower peaks already shaking apart, burst, and a blate away.
Speaker 2: At the event horizon of the storm, the land dips
Speaker 2: before the onslaught, as if shying away from the kiss
Speaker 2: of the boiling wall. I can feel the violence beneath
Speaker 2: my feet as millions of tons of ancient mountain falls
Speaker 2: away into its infinite maw. It's going to be on
Speaker 2: me in a few hours. I wonder if I'll die
Speaker 2: when the peak caves away, crushed in a free fall
Speaker 2: of slate and stone, or whether I'll be alive when
Speaker 2: the storm touches me, shredded and atomized, erased and unmade.
Speaker 2: I wonder again what it might feel like. My joints
Speaker 2: wail as I stand up from the sharp rocks, and
Speaker 2: my left ankle cries in agony as the bruised bones. Click.
Speaker 2: I turn my back on the storm and look forward,
Speaker 2: the last mile of road curving up into the pass.
Speaker 2: I walk, moving east along the weathered pavement, feeling the
Speaker 2: rising vibrations of the storm in each step, trying not
Speaker 2: to dwell on the pain of my grinding ankle. I
Speaker 2: think about the State Fair, a sweltering summer a decade ago,
Speaker 2: and a machine with a footplate that vibrated for a corridor.
Speaker 2: I think about the wonderful, almost unpleasant intensity of the sensation.
Speaker 2: I hold on to this memory, working it in my
Speaker 2: mind like a lump of sugar until I have savored
Speaker 2: all I can from it. The wind is on my face,
Speaker 2: even the air seems to be rushing away toward the wall.
Speaker 2: I will be walking when it comes, still moving, just
Speaker 2: not quite fast enough in the end, but I can
Speaker 2: make it to the top. Not for the first time.
Speaker 2: It staggers me to think it's only been a month
Speaker 2: since the lights first went out. Nearly a month ago.
Speaker 2: I was riding a bus, a bus on a Wednesday night,
Speaker 2: back when such a thing mattered. Remember the feel of
Speaker 2: it as the end passed over us, quiet sigh rippling
Speaker 2: through the air, the engine stalled. The lights flickered out,
Speaker 2: but there was no panic. My fellow passengers remained quiet,
Speaker 2: and we waited for the inevitable restart of the engine
Speaker 2: that never came. I stared out the windows, and after
Speaker 2: too long a moment, it dawned on me that every
Speaker 2: light across the street was out as well. Then came
Speaker 2: the explosions, popping in the distance like far away fireworks.
Speaker 2: We pushed our way out of the back doors of
Speaker 2: the bus and poured out into a mercifully cool July evening.
Speaker 2: The stars were shining with an intensity that scared me
Speaker 2: more than the explosions. Bitter and cold, we all spent
Speaker 2: a moment intent on phones and handsets that didn't work
Speaker 2: wouldn't turn back on, before sliding them away to be
Speaker 2: forgotten forever. Something streaked overhead towards the west, silent, leaving
Speaker 2: a smoking trail thrown into sharp relief by its brilliance.
Speaker 2: The blazing meteor passed over us and disappeared beyond the horizon.
Speaker 2: A few moments later, a tinny rumble rolled back across
Speaker 2: the valley. The bus driver stopped trying to restart the
Speaker 2: engine and joined the knot of riders. We gathered close,
Speaker 2: struck mute by the strange way that the world had changed.
Speaker 2: Shooting stars streaked above a meteor shower come too early
Speaker 2: in the year. For ten minutes, we stood silent, when
Speaker 2: the only sound left was our nervous breath and the
Speaker 2: baying of dogs. Someone made a joke I don't now recall,
Speaker 2: but we laughed like children passing a graveyard. Nervous and harsh.
Speaker 2: We walked home, strangers sharing names we hadn't bothered to
Speaker 2: on the bus, names I could not remember. The next day,
Speaker 2: I turned away towards my apartment and I never saw
Speaker 2: any of them again. I imagine in suburbs across the
Speaker 2: small town, neighbors were standing on their porches and front lawns,
Speaker 2: and robes and slippers, dead flashlights in hand, trading theories
Speaker 2: and comforting each other. But the apartment complex I'd landed
Speaker 2: in when I'd moved out of Gale's house was quiet
Speaker 2: and dark. Not even the emergency lights were on, and
Speaker 2: I took my time fumbling through the dark halls and
Speaker 2: into the cave of my studio. They desperately wanted to
Speaker 2: talk to someone, to share information and try to make
Speaker 2: sense of what happened. The completely loss of electronics pointed
Speaker 2: to a nuclear detonation, but the explosion seemed so distant
Speaker 2: and too small to be the boogeyman of my parents' generation.
Speaker 2: In the light of the day, it was stranger. Still.
Speaker 2: There was an almost pleasant shift in the community as
Speaker 2: Walker's faried information from neighborhood to neighborhood. Certainly, much of
Speaker 2: it distorted, but much of it unmistakably true. Batteries didn't
Speaker 2: have a charge anywhere, pacemakers had stopped dragging down their owners.
Speaker 2: Everything with an electric current had failed. Fire had trouble starting.
Speaker 2: It wasn't colder, but nothing wanted to burn. Lighters worked
Speaker 2: only rarely, and their flames were weak and anemic. We
Speaker 2: made great bonfires to test this strange new truth, and
Speaker 2: with some effort they lit, flickering low and blue but
Speaker 2: fundamentally wrong. On the second day, from a man on
Speaker 2: a bicycle, we got the explanation for the first night's explosions.
Speaker 2: Airplanes gliding downward, dead and dark had impacted across the
Speaker 2: valley and beyond. The falling stars had been satellites, he said,
Speaker 2: a whole network simply dropping from the sky. It was
Speaker 2: like some essential measure of energy had been withdrawn from
Speaker 2: the world. Some internal engine of the universe was winding down.
Speaker 2: It scared me far more than nukes. None of us
Speaker 2: knew what to do. We ate the food we had
Speaker 2: before it spoiled, and stores were empty. By the second day,
Speaker 2: everything sold for cash only in some last defiant show
Speaker 2: of togetherness, prices stayed flat in almost all the stores,
Speaker 2: and I traded what little currency I had several crates
Speaker 2: of bottled water. We planned on waiting it out. We
Speaker 2: didn't understand that this was not an interruption, but a terminus.
Speaker 2: There were rumors at first. By the end of the
Speaker 2: first week, ragged and tired people drifting through town in
Speaker 2: search of water and food, and bearing wide eyed apocalyptic warnings.
Speaker 2: They told of mass exodus, a mad flood of people
Speaker 2: streaming away from the western coastline. Conflicted, terrifying stories told
Speaker 2: in whispers spoke of a storm. None of the refugees
Speaker 2: had seen it firsthand, but what they had learned had
Speaker 2: scared them bad enough to start heading inland. In those
Speaker 2: first days of flight, the human tide followed the major
Speaker 2: highways in our small town received only the odd stragglers.
Speaker 2: Those fleeing not only the fabled storm, but the rivers
Speaker 2: of atrocity that the refugee march had become. We had
Speaker 2: no way of knowing if it was just amplification of
Speaker 2: nightmare rumors, or if the interstates heading east really had
Speaker 2: become a vast trampling ground where urban populations surged inland
Speaker 2: without plan or recourse, shredding and churning against one another.
Speaker 2: Fleeing the storm, people started to disappear in the next
Speaker 2: few days, spooked enough by the mad tales to start
Speaker 2: their own exodus and to avoid the main highways. My
Speaker 2: own feet felt light, but I waited, held off until
Speaker 2: the last wave. They were wild and glassy eyed. The
Speaker 2: last refugees, the ones who had waited like me in
Speaker 2: small towns further west. They had seen the surging sea
Speaker 2: of refugees, seen the corpse trails they left, had heard
Speaker 2: of the storm that had made landfall at last. But
Speaker 2: they had waited, holding out hope that this was only
Speaker 2: a temporary insanity. But then they saw the storm with
Speaker 2: their own eyes, and it was a testament to the
Speaker 2: madness of it all that the eyewitness stories were more
Speaker 2: fevered and impossible than the second hand rumors that preceded them.
Speaker 2: I was packed ready to go, and the last of
Speaker 2: my water, tucked in with a camp stove and a
Speaker 2: sleeping bag and a backpack when the last wave came,
Speaker 2: but I didn't leave yet. I waited one more day
Speaker 2: until I saw it for myself. I came up over
Speaker 2: the western horizon with the dawn as if rising to
Speaker 2: challenge the sun in the east, swallowing all light. Over
Speaker 2: the course of three hours, I watched it unmake the foothills,
Speaker 2: swallowing earth, forest, and river. The world rose up and away,
Speaker 2: seeking oblivion, like a lover, vanishing forever into the churning
Speaker 2: wall of impossible madness, leaving only bursts of blue lightning
Speaker 2: arcing between the black clouds. Lightning, clouds, storm. These are
Speaker 2: imperfect metaphors. The storm of the Unmaking isn't a storm.
Speaker 2: It isn't made up of the things storms are made
Speaker 2: up of. There are no clouds, no lightning, only seething
Speaker 2: darkness and jagged energy. I'm not even sure now, as
Speaker 2: it polishes the earth away behind me, if I can
Speaker 2: even see it. Maybe our brains fill in the ghosts
Speaker 2: of recognizable structures. Maybe it only looks like the nothing
Speaker 2: that it is, and our eyes simply cannot accept this.
Speaker 2: Tucker used to say to his followers, when the lines
Speaker 2: began to be drawn, that it was the mouth of
Speaker 2: God that someday we could accept it, and we would
Speaker 2: see through the black veil of the storm and see
Speaker 2: the divine feast for what it really was. When there
Speaker 2: was only the open valley between me and the storm,
Speaker 2: I fled my home heels, pounding country roads until I
Speaker 2: reached the refugees of the last wave somewhere in the
Speaker 2: central valley. And it was with that small band of
Speaker 2: stubborn fools, the ones who had waited until they two
Speaker 2: had seen the storm, that I traveled for the last
Speaker 2: three weeks. Tucker was there quiet at first, shaken by
Speaker 2: the loss of someone he loved in the Charnel highways.
Speaker 2: But then there were no leaders, and all of us
Speaker 2: were scared. We shared supplies, gathering canned goods at country
Speaker 2: gas stations and parceling them out. We outpaced the storm
Speaker 2: in the day, spent short quiet nights laughing around a
Speaker 2: pitiful campfire, awakening always with the storm on the horizon.
Speaker 2: Each day we pulled ahead of it, following the entrails
Speaker 2: of the refugees ahead of us, turning always away from
Speaker 2: the spoor of abandoned belongings and the fly choked corpses.
Speaker 2: This way we found the untapped stores and cashes, the
Speaker 2: things people left behind. We were frightfully inefficient in those
Speaker 2: first days, but we did more than just survive, and
Speaker 2: it gave us hope. Then we washed into the foothills,
Speaker 2: and we slowed. We had built up a lead on
Speaker 2: the storm, had a few warnings where we hadn't seen
Speaker 2: it on the horizon, only felt the low base notes
Speaker 2: of its presence. That little hope and good cheer we'd
Speaker 2: built up in our advance evaporated. Two nights into the
Speaker 2: steady uphill climb, a dented can of soup made three
Speaker 2: of our number ill. We lingered for too long in
Speaker 2: the morning, as they emptied their guts, and the storm
Speaker 2: crested the edge of the world. A quiet sort of
Speaker 2: panic gripped us all, and we took to the county
Speaker 2: back roads again, driven by the fresh reminder of the
Speaker 2: encroaching end. Tucker took the shepherd's mantle and drove us on,
Speaker 2: moving faster than before, and when the three sickened members
Speaker 2: of our troop lagged behind. Tucker called to them that
Speaker 2: we would go ahead, they should take their time, and
Speaker 2: we would make camp for them up ahead and wait
Speaker 2: before leaving. No one believed the lie, but we all
Speaker 2: played our part, even the dead men, with patient nods
Speaker 2: and glassy eyes. They never arrived that night, and we
Speaker 2: left even earlier than before. Tucker kept us moving, and
Speaker 2: the group turned their shipwrecked faces toward him. We all
Speaker 2: wanted to leave the sick men behind, but Tucker had
Speaker 2: done it. In this passive act of consensual murder. We
Speaker 2: turned our fate over to him willingly. By the end
Speaker 2: of another week, as we reached the base of the
Speaker 2: jagged mountains, Tucker began to carry less and less and
Speaker 2: ate more and more. The mountains broke us, Our speed halved,
Speaker 2: The roads wound away from our direction, away from the
Speaker 2: rising sun, and no one had a map or remembered
Speaker 2: which passed through the mountains was the most direct. We
Speaker 2: were forced into the footsteps of the first great waves
Speaker 2: of refugees, and now the roadsides were choked with the
Speaker 2: sick and the dead. Rows and rows of naked, blackened feet,
Speaker 2: picked clean of socks and shoes stuck out from the
Speaker 2: roadside grass I scavenged there, pulling a pair of boots
Speaker 2: from the feet of a prone man about my height,
Speaker 2: trying first to ignore his feeble dying groans, then whispering
Speaker 2: my apologies to him as he rasped for breath. It
Speaker 2: was impossible to tell how many of the original refugees
Speaker 2: had made it this far or had gone on up
Speaker 2: the mountains, but there was no food to be had
Speaker 2: in their trail, little water to be plundered. Tucker drove
Speaker 2: us on, and soon he began to preach simple, little
Speaker 2: sermons of necessity and absolution for what we'd done and
Speaker 2: would do. And it drove the jagged wedge at last
Speaker 2: between the group. From a loose band of strangers with
Speaker 2: a common goal, we became Tucker's people and the others,
Speaker 2: and that divide grew cold and icy. I suppose the
Speaker 2: line was the same as the night we left the
Speaker 2: three sick men behind. There were those that couldn't sleep
Speaker 2: that night and those that could. It would be easy
Speaker 2: and a fill lie to draw a moral line in
Speaker 2: that split. We were all good men once we all
Speaker 2: left them behind. No one objected the divide between Tucker's
Speaker 2: people and the rest of us was a matter of
Speaker 2: who still had energy to feel guilt and who had
Speaker 2: just enough to follow what they saw as their best
Speaker 2: and only hope. It was Tucker who was in charge
Speaker 2: of the supplies of the nightly division of food. Before
Speaker 2: I realized what had happened, it was too late. Tucker's
Speaker 2: people held stubbornly to their health, and the rest of
Speaker 2: us began to wane, a little less water, a few
Speaker 2: less crucial calories, as the cold and the altitude made
Speaker 2: the journey harder. Tucker tightened his control on our bodies,
Speaker 2: and we withered. We were all so profoundly tired that
Speaker 2: we couldn't even communicate our nascent paranoia to one another
Speaker 2: other until we began to drop away, falling behind well,
Speaker 2: no one had the strength to look back one by one,
Speaker 2: until near the top of the pass there was only
Speaker 2: Tucker's folk and I. They had already started sleeping apart
Speaker 2: from us, striking camp earlier and quieter. Two nights ago,
Speaker 2: I awoke to find them one hundred meters down the road,
Speaker 2: none of them looking back. I caught up with them
Speaker 2: and no words were exchanged. But Tucker caught my eye
Speaker 2: from the front, his body unladen free and frighteningly healthy.
Speaker 2: Last night, near the top of the pass, I couldn't sleep,
Speaker 2: as the chill terror of what I had allowed to
Speaker 2: happen coursed through me, twirling with the bitter cold of
Speaker 2: the mountain night. Tucker was awake as well, and somewhere
Speaker 2: in the dark he walked over to where I sat,
Speaker 2: my ragged camping mattress, pressed to a rock in a
Speaker 2: crude chair. He said beside me, his cold eyes reflecting
Speaker 2: colder starlight, and we said nothing. We hadn't spoken in
Speaker 2: nearly a week, and in truth, I think only Tucker
Speaker 2: had spoken for the last few days. Above us, the
Speaker 2: night was silent, a sky devoid of planes, unblemished by
Speaker 2: the lights of man in the distance. The storm must
Speaker 2: have been visible, but I'd stopped trying to see it.
Speaker 2: After what felt like an hour, Tucker sighed and stood
Speaker 2: staring down at me, a black silhouette against a cobalt sky.
Speaker 2: I think he may have smiled, it was hard to tell.
Speaker 2: He raised his foot and brought the heel down hard
Speaker 2: on my ankle, once and then again. Before I had
Speaker 2: the chance to scream. My cries woke no one, and
Speaker 2: Tucker walked back to his place in the warm center
Speaker 2: of the sleeping people. I wanted to stand to bash
Speaker 2: his skull in, But as the sharps splinters of pain
Speaker 2: became a low, throbbing ache, I found no strength to stand,
Speaker 2: no will or capacity for murder, only the surrender of sleep.
Speaker 2: When I awoke this morning, they were gone far over
Speaker 2: the pass by my feet. Someone had left one bottle
Speaker 2: of water and one tin of meat, nothing to live
Speaker 2: off of. But this token gesture of mute apology was
Speaker 2: all that allowed me to stand, all that got me
Speaker 2: to face the storm with any sort of dignity. And
Speaker 2: now I walk towards the top of the pass to
Speaker 2: look down over the other side before I die. In
Speaker 2: one hand is the water, and the other the tin
Speaker 2: of meat my backpack left somewhere below. I carry them
Speaker 2: like little talismans, one last reminder that we're not all tucker,
Speaker 2: that we are all ourselves, even if none of that matters.
Speaker 2: I reach the top of the pass and start looking
Speaker 2: for a good place to die. I find something else,
Speaker 2: something that proves better than death. A trail of blood
Speaker 2: droplets on the pavement leading to or from an alpine
Speaker 2: field of boulders on either side of the blood droplets,
Speaker 2: I see faint tire tracks in the stony gravel. The
Speaker 2: trail leads to a tableau of bodies and blood spattered
Speaker 2: under the clear sky. It's not what happened here that
Speaker 2: fills me with black joy, but what was left behind
Speaker 2: in the morning sunlight is an honest to God truck
Speaker 2: and old yellow dots and more rust than metal. Three
Speaker 2: of the tires are flattened, mere shreds of graying rubber around,
Speaker 2: bent and pitted rims at the front, lashed of the bumper,
Speaker 2: or the remains of a harness where a team of
Speaker 2: horses were once hitched. Three of the horses are a
Speaker 2: few yards away, dragged from the truck to be butchered.
Speaker 2: Their carcasses are stripped clean, first by men and then
Speaker 2: by the vultures that dot the sky above every road.
Speaker 2: In the back of the truck are what remains of
Speaker 2: a cache of water and food. All that remains are
Speaker 2: a few torn and cracked plastic bladders, whatever invaluable liquid
Speaker 2: they once held, long ago abandoned to the arid sky.
Speaker 2: The truck bears many small wounds, as well, evidence of
Speaker 2: the gunfight that killed the two men at my feet.
Speaker 2: In between the vulture's furrows. Their death wounds read like scripture,
Speaker 2: declaring the changed nature of our dying world, robbed of
Speaker 2: the full power of the focused force of combustion. Bullets
Speaker 2: still are deadly, but instead of piercing, these shots pushed great,
Speaker 2: shallow craters into their flesh. These men took many shots
Speaker 2: before they succumbed to their wounds. In the cab of
Speaker 2: the truck lies the last corpse, his chest flattened and shredded,
Speaker 2: his eyes staring and milky. His skin is not quite
Speaker 2: as blackened as the others, and he bears only the
Speaker 2: one wound in his hand. He still clutches a revolver
Speaker 2: as if still warding off attackers in death. Dried black
Speaker 2: blood as sticky as oil pools in the seat. I
Speaker 2: take the gun from the driver, check to find two
Speaker 2: bullets remaining, and seeing them two chances of taking back
Speaker 2: my destiny from the storm. For a long minute, I
Speaker 2: am drunk on the idea of spitting into the unmaking
Speaker 2: as I send one slow bullet hammering into the thinnest
Speaker 2: part of my skull. I live this moment over and
Speaker 2: over again, even as I feel the ground shudder with
Speaker 2: the storm's approach. That's when I hear the frightened exhale
Speaker 2: and dry breath of the fourth horse. He's moved out
Speaker 2: from behind wherever he was hidden, and he stands fifty
Speaker 2: yards away across the road, shredded ropes dangling from his
Speaker 2: twisted harness and bridle. He flicks his head towards me
Speaker 2: and then to the oncoming wall of the storm, and
Speaker 2: stamps his feet with fear and frustration, eyes rolling back
Speaker 2: and showing white. I ignore the screaming in my ankle,
Speaker 2: don't even hear it. After a dozen paces, as I
Speaker 2: lope and vault towards the speckled gray beast, my sudden
Speaker 2: lurching approach seems to baffle him as much as the
Speaker 2: absurd horror approaching in the sky, and he manages to
Speaker 2: take a few panicked steps back, whinnying in terror. Before
Speaker 2: I reach him. I grab at the rope miss and
Speaker 2: then lunge forward again. He tries to rear up and away,
Speaker 2: but my fingers close on the frayed nylon cord and
Speaker 2: I close tight with a death grip. I can feel
Speaker 2: the layers of flesh on my palm. Abraiding away as
Speaker 2: the horse screams uncomfortably like a woman's voice, and whips
Speaker 2: its head from side to side. I hold fast and
Speaker 2: scream right back, my eyes just as wild. I roar
Speaker 2: at the beast, and he shrieks back, and I feel
Speaker 2: naked and alive in a way I can't ever recall.
Speaker 2: Close Now, I hear a shuddering crack as the bones
Speaker 2: of the world fall away into the mouth of the storm,
Speaker 2: and I hold fast at my only chance to live.
Speaker 2: The horse is wasted, his ribs showing through tattered, piebald hide,
Speaker 2: But he was once a massive beast. I curse and
Speaker 2: scream at him, and his struggling stops as he surrenders.
Speaker 2: Mounting the animal proves the hardest task of all. Even
Speaker 2: as he submits to my will, it takes a great
Speaker 2: and painful effort to lunge and throw my body up
Speaker 2: and over his unsaddled back. I manage to drape my
Speaker 2: myself across his spine, the protruding vertebrae pressing into my
Speaker 2: empty stomach, with some effort, thanks only to the beast's
Speaker 2: state of exhaustion, fear, and malnourishment. I throw my wounded
Speaker 2: leg up and over, and I rise into a hunched
Speaker 2: seated position, my bleeding hand still pulling tight on the bridle.
Speaker 2: Less than a mile away is God's maw, the slow
Speaker 2: chewing event horizon of the unmaking that shreds ancient mountains
Speaker 2: like transient summer weeds. I dig my heels into protruding
Speaker 2: ribs and turn away to buy myself just a little
Speaker 2: more time. The horse needs little encouragement. We descend the
Speaker 2: downhill side of the pass, away from the storm. I
Speaker 2: stroke the tattered mane beneath my fingers, and I'm unsurprised
Speaker 2: to find myself crying as I whisper my thanks. Soon
Speaker 2: we're moving at a steady trot, putting the peak behind us,
Speaker 2: and it's again advancing away from the storm. I allow
Speaker 2: the horse to stop a few times as he sniffs
Speaker 2: out thin highland grasses and a few pools of melted
Speaker 2: snow missed by my tribe on the way down, and
Speaker 2: I even dismount to drink greedily from the standing water.
Speaker 2: In my parched haste, I drop the nilon rope, leaving
Speaker 2: behind a layer of skin and setting the horse free,
Speaker 2: but he waits for me. I'd like to attribute this
Speaker 2: to some sort of mutual survivor loyalty, but I see
Speaker 2: only empty eyes, already filming over as the overtaxed body
Speaker 2: begins to shut down. The horse carries me another dozen
Speaker 2: miles before he dies, but not before we pass my tribe.
Speaker 2: They look mutely up at me, the pistol tucked in
Speaker 2: my belt. Some wear masks of fear, some lower their
Speaker 2: eyes in guilt, but most simply look with flat faces,
Speaker 2: as if they expected me to return at any moment,
Speaker 2: neither pleased nor surprised. I don't know what I, in turn,
Speaker 2: expect of them, but the reunion is as hollow as
Speaker 2: it is comforting. I bear them no ill will and
Speaker 2: expect nothing from them beyond their essential human presence. I
Speaker 2: reserve one small smile for Tucker, all gritted teeth and
Speaker 2: bloodless gums. As I pass. He keeps his expression blank
Speaker 2: and cool, but I see the flaring nostrils and the
Speaker 2: tremor at the corner of his lips. Then I ride on,
Speaker 2: leaving them behind for a short while to collect my
Speaker 2: thoughts and turn away from the business of today's survival
Speaker 2: to think about tomorrow. A mile or so later, the
Speaker 2: horse falls to his knees and shudders once before toppling over.
Speaker 2: I am thrown to the road and tumble without grace,
Speaker 2: skidding and rolling, and grateful that my people aren't here
Speaker 2: to see me go down. The horse breathes four last
Speaker 2: ragged breaths, and I whisper my thanks to glassy and
Speaker 2: clouding eyes. By the time my tribe catches up to
Speaker 2: me near dark, I've started a weak fire from mountain
Speaker 2: brush and have begun to cut the stringy meat from
Speaker 2: the flanks of my horse. They come towards me, mouths
Speaker 2: watering at the spicy scent of concentrated blood splashing to
Speaker 2: the stones, and a few produced knives to take up
Speaker 2: the work of butchering. Tucker stands away from the knot
Speaker 2: of silent people, people that are no longer His arms
Speaker 2: limp at his sides. His body is unladen with supplies
Speaker 2: or water, Naked and alone. There's no expression on his
Speaker 2: face nor on mine. As I approach him, few of
Speaker 2: our tribe even turn to look. Most are too busy
Speaker 2: or too exhausted to care what is about to happen.
Speaker 2: None of it will be a surprise, least of all
Speaker 2: to Tucker or myself. He nods to me dipping his
Speaker 2: head to the ground for a long and quiet moment,
Speaker 2: before turning to look backwards. We've made good time on
Speaker 2: the downhill side, and only the churning clouds in the
Speaker 2: high atmosphere signal the presence of the storm. The ground
Speaker 2: no longer shudders once again. We've outpaced the storm by
Speaker 2: one more day. But you can still feel it in
Speaker 2: the air and in your bones. I know that's where
Speaker 2: Tucker is looking. It holds his attention for a long time.
Speaker 2: He turns back, mouth parted as if to speak, and
Speaker 2: I fire the pistol. The weak popping sound of the
Speaker 2: shell seems to vanish instantly, but the fat, wide bullet
Speaker 2: cracks the center of Tucker's face like a lead fist.
Speaker 2: Everything caves inward towards the impact as the slow bullet
Speaker 2: dissipates its wan force against the delicate arches and filaments
Speaker 2: of his skull. He coughs as he falls once from
Speaker 2: his ruined mouth, sending a fine mist of blood into
Speaker 2: the air from the ground. He blinks as one remaining eye,
Speaker 2: looking straight up at nothing, And although I think about
Speaker 2: leaving him there, I kneel and press the barrel to
Speaker 2: his temple, his eye closes, and he sighs, a strangely
Speaker 2: musical sound in the absolute quiet of the evening muffled.
Speaker 2: The second shot barely makes a sound beyond a wet thump,
Speaker 2: a pile, A few rocks on to Tucker, the empty
Speaker 2: gun laid on his chest, making a cairn where he fell.
Speaker 2: A few of my tribe come to assist me. There's
Speaker 2: no guilt in me or the tribe. There is no
Speaker 2: malice in the murder, and no hatred in its aftermath.
Speaker 2: It is simply a correction, a balancing of the sums.
Speaker 2: Another step along a very long path. I take Tucker's boots,
Speaker 2: the high ankle serving as the basis for a simple
Speaker 2: brace made of nylon rope from the horse's bridle. When
Speaker 2: we're done, when the horse meat is dried and packed away,
Speaker 2: and we have slept through the silent night, we turn
Speaker 2: our backs to the burial and to the storm, and
Speaker 2: Tucker's name is never mentioned again. We move on. We
Speaker 2: keep walking. As we cross the aired highlands between the
Speaker 2: great spines of the country. We learn small towns still
Speaker 2: have food, and we learn to carry supplies efficiently, distributing
Speaker 2: the weight. Nearly every home has at least a gallon
Speaker 2: of fresh water in the back of each toilet, and
Speaker 2: plastic bottles in abundance. We learn to carry the perfect
Speaker 2: amounts of water from one stop to the next, maximizing
Speaker 2: our speed. Libraries have, among other things, books on edible plants,
Speaker 2: and we begin grazing what meager calories we can. We
Speaker 2: carry less, we burn less energy. We walk farther. We
Speaker 2: become long and lean, like gazelle tanned brown by the sun.
Speaker 2: The world is empty. We meet a few lone people
Speaker 2: who never saw the great waves of refugees, never knew
Speaker 2: what happened after the blackout, and we invite them with
Speaker 2: open arms and tell them of the storm. Not all come,
Speaker 2: not all believe the wild tales of these strange eyed nomads,
Speaker 2: and we don't blame them. We simply walk on. It
Speaker 2: would seem many of the people of the Heartland headed
Speaker 2: for the bigger cities when the lights went off, hoping
Speaker 2: for strength in numbers, or to bind their fate to
Speaker 2: organizations that had already crumbled. Every city is a perpetual
Speaker 2: pillar of smoke and a vast killing field. We give
Speaker 2: them a wide berth, ranging instead through the wide open fields,
Speaker 2: through the bread basket of the country. We don't know
Speaker 2: what happened to the first refugee waves that came before us.
Speaker 2: The signs of their passing becomes harder to see as
Speaker 2: they diminished and aid each other alive. Maybe all that
Speaker 2: washed across the plains ahead of us were ragged ghosts
Speaker 2: gibbering about the impossible storm. They don't matter anymore. Only
Speaker 2: our tribe matters, and we have learned to survive where
Speaker 2: they did not, And we have a long way yet
Speaker 2: to go. We've outpaced the storm, so far ahead of
Speaker 2: it that it would take a full week for it
Speaker 2: to catch us, and this serves us well. We sleep better,
Speaker 2: we harden, and we travel faster. We plan when we
Speaker 2: reach the ocean in the east, sometime in the world's
Speaker 2: last autumn, when we can walk no further. We will
Speaker 2: need time to search. We tear pages from books and
Speaker 2: study them obsessively, learning everything we can about the ocean,
Speaker 2: about boats and sails. We will find whatever tall masted
Speaker 2: vessels we can, and we will resume our eastward journey
Speaker 2: on the wind. We will go as far as we
Speaker 2: can until we reach land again. Failing that, we will
Speaker 2: wade into the waves and swim until the Storm takes Us.
Speaker 1: You have been listening to Observable Radio. Tonight's episode East
Speaker 1: was performed by the Ensemble featuring Phil En Hest, written
Speaker 1: by Cameron Suey, Produced by Cameron Suey, Phil vn Hest,
Speaker 1: Parina and Wendy Hector. Edited by Cameron Suey. Our psychology
Speaker 1: consultant is Doctor Elisa Leal, Art by Karn Fletcher. Our
Speaker 1: theme is the back Rooms, performed by Mew. Additional music
Speaker 1: from this episode provided by American Legion Johann Glossner, Lennon Hutton,
Speaker 1: Tim Koolick, Victor Lundberg, Telsonic, and Roy Edwin Williams. Observable
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