The World as We Know It Page 15

  That last dream was recurring, and it always happened the same way. I would wake up in cold sweats, terribly afraid in the tall grass and surrounded by nothing more than the wide open plain. The loneliness was haunting. It was so quiet. Fear is what happens to guilt and regret when you know that nobody but God is watching.

  The days were better than the nights, though. Even as we moved west and the hills began to grow, the landscape was expansive and plain but so beautiful. It was bittersweet. Sometimes I wished it were uglier. To experience such profound natural beauty and have nobody with whom to share it is a feeling of equally profound loneliness. Most of the land looked as if no person had ever touched it. The only way I knew others had been there was by the road on which we walked.

  There were a few small camps along the way—very small—just enough to remind me that I wasn’t the last person left on earth. Often, it’s hard to remember that existence is not as limited as our vision. Those times, it was exciting to see the upright spots moving toward us on the horizon, but the sight always ended in disappointment. Most of the towns up there had been abandoned, and the few people I did meet were already on their way elsewhere, looking for new places to call home. As the weather grew cooler, some were migrating south from what had been Canada. They had no more shelter or food to offer than I had. Nomad and I passed through briskly, and I hoped that those people would settle before the winter. As suddenly as we had found them, we were alone again in our eerie solitude.

  Days turned to nights and nights to days, but little changed that I could see. The aurora borealis snaked across the star-spread sky, smearing the night in green, purple, and red. It was astonishingly beautiful. Most nights, I fell asleep watching it, a cosmological wonder teasing us to inquire farther outside of our own little marble in this vast universe. A sign, I thought, to remind us that we were not alone. Such a sign has driven many a man to madness, but it was one of the few things that kept me sane. What was out there beyond our world? Where did we come from, and how had we arrived at this strange point in the comparatively short history of humanity? Where would we go from here? I felt gifted, blessed, even, to experience such a marvel that only a fraction of earth’s population would ever see.

  The northern lights reminded me of Matthew’s family and the way they prayed. I began to do the same. Strange things happen to a man when he feels he has nothing left, and the farther I got from home, the more the feeling crept in, growing like a parasite feeding on my body and soul. Throughout the days, I began praying to a God whose existence I often questioned. Though on occasion I had pondered His presence, I wasn’t what I would call a man of faith. I hadn’t thought to talk to God before or to ask for help when I felt alone or without hope. Self-sufficiency had become such a staple of modern culture before the collapse that it had bordered on an epidemic of narcissism, and the irony was that we had never actually been self-sufficient at all. The more we “advanced,” the more dependent we had become on the things that I had come to learn were so fragile. So easily broken.

  They appeared as an inescapable line of dark storm clouds, low to the ground, creeping up on us from the west until eventually the snow-capped peaks came into view. The mountains have a way of tricking you like that. I was relieved when I saw them. In that same moment, I heard the faint patter of hooves on the ground behind us and turned to find a herd of wild horses converging. There were dozens of them spreading like an organic sea of flowing manes behind us in a range of colors that shimmered in the morning sun. A low cloud of dirt and dust puffed beneath them and left a trail in the air.

  “Look, your brethren!” I called to my horse over the rumble of the herd as it blended around us.

  Nomad broke into a gallop, and for miles we ran among them, through the wild grass of the plain and toward the great Rocky Mountains. I was one with the herd, as if I belonged in that state of divine freedom with the cool wind gusting through my long hair like a mane of my own. For a short time, I forgot where I had come from and where I was going—even who I was. I didn’t feel alone. I felt the shine of a greater being upon me, drawing me forth as a part of that great wild place. I felt as I imagine the mustangs felt. Nomad galloped with an unmistakably untamed spirit. A herd such as that had been his family before we had taken him as ours, but I had become his family. I wondered: if I were to set him free, which path would he choose?

  When the herd broke away, we moved from the highway to the railroad. I hoped that that route would be flatter in the mountains. It was, but I had to keep faith in Nomad’s footing. The terrain became rough as the plain moved behind us. We crossed narrow bridges, some of them so high that there was no question as to my fate if I were to fall. The tracks wound through valleys alongside beautiful alpine streams and cut long mountain tunnels so dark that, without a torch, we were blind. Aspens towered over us, the golden sunbeams breaking through them like a photo on a postcard. Their leaves glowed in the most glorious greens, yellows, and reds, accentuated by bony black-striped ashen trunks. As the sun passed over throughout the day, shadows seemed to crawl between them, peeking through to steal a glance at the strangers passing beneath.

  The quiet beauty of the mountains in mid-September was indescribable, and it drew me back into that nearly incapacitating desperation and loneliness of before. My wife was more and more just a memory, evaporating from reality as the days passed. At night, I could hardly sleep, and it slowed us down. I was exhausted and starving. Even Nomad seemed sluggish, as if his energy were somehow dependent on my own.

  Time dragged on—days and nights. I wanted Maria desperately. I worried about her, how she would go on without me, but I also wondered about the sense in those fears. I had thought of myself as her caregiver, but I realized that perhaps the truth was in fact counter to what I had known. I looked at myself, lost without her and losing hope. I relied on her as much as she did me. Perhaps more.

  “You’re the peanut butter to my jelly,” I had told her. “The grapes to my wine.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, baby.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t be the grapes to your wine. Maybe I’m the cheese to your grapes.”

  “You mean wine? Cheese to my wine?”

  “Cheese and grapes are good too.”

  “Whatever, I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  Nomad wasn’t much of a conversationalist. Try as I might, the greatest response I could get out of him was a peek over his shoulder at me, as if to question why I even bothered. Sometimes he would let out a snort or give me a poke in the shoulder with his muzzle or scrape a hoof in the dirt. I would walk alongside of him under the aspens, feeding him grains that I had collected along the way and talking to him. He always listened. We had become best friends in the time we had been together.

  I began using my tent again in the mountains. The forest was black as death at night, and I felt too vulnerable without it, but I still couldn’t sleep. Insomnia or terror, I don’t know which kept me awake, but it seemed the only thing that soothed me was the monotonous rocking on the back of my horse during the day. Sometimes I would wake up on the side of the tracks with a curious muzzle in my face and a pain from the impact of the fall.

  It was time to put an end to that, I decided briskly when I opened my eyes to find myself dangling with my arms tangled in the reins and my legs swinging freely a hundred feet over a rocky white-water river. Confusion quickly turned to terror when I realized where I was, suspended in the wind whipping between cliff faces on either side, the infinite sky above and death just a short fall below. Nomad stood still, looking down at me judgmentally.

  “See, this is what happens,” he seemed to say. “Pay attention. Get some sleep. Focus, or we’ll never make it out of here alive.”

  “Shut up and pull me up!” I yelled.

  I struggled for a better grip and reached for the saddle, but I grabbed the shotgun instead. It broke from its sleeve, exposing the two letters that I had tucked into the saddle next to
it. How could I have been so careless about securing them? There I was, dangling over a gorge of certain death with one hand tangled in the reins attached to my horse, the other gripping my primary means of protection, and right in front of me, shuddering in the wind, the two envelopes that had driven me to keep moving.

  They could not be lost.

  It could not all be in vain.

  I let the shotgun slip through my fingers into the abyss and watched as it shrunk to a speck below me. Then I closed my eyes. I counted.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  A gunshot echoed from the stone cliffs on either side of me, startling my horse. Nomad shifted his stance, and the envelopes came loose.

  “Don’t move!” I yelled.

  Nomad froze. Still dangling in the air, I reached as far as I could, but my fingertips barely touched the paper sticking out of the saddle, an inch shy of salvation. Just then, I felt a gust of wind and watched the letters break free. My arm swung toward them wildly in a desperate final attempt to save the two pieces of paper I had brought clear across the continent. I closed my palm and my eyes tightly.

  Deep breath.

  Eyes opened.

  Victory.

  I stuffed the envelopes into my pocket and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Now, back,” I said.

  Nomad lifted his head and backed slowly away from the edge, dragging me onto the bridge. I lay there, face down on the tracks with my heart pounding and gasping for air, my body quivering with adrenaline. Nomad snorted, and I felt the spray from his nostrils on the back of my neck.

  “You bastard.”

  I think he was laughing at me.

  I fell asleep then—or passed out from exhaustion—with my face pressed against that railroad tie.

  Hours later, I woke up in the darkness to the sound of the river rushing below the bridge, and Nomad was no longer next to me. I sat up and saw him at the end of the bridge, standing just beyond it, waiting. After crawling out to him, I lay down in the dirt and fell asleep again by his side.

  I didn’t have much trouble sleeping after that. There were still nightmares, but they didn’t keep me awake. I wonder now if I may have been reaching the point of collapse. Failure. Giving up. Just lying down under the aspens, closing my eyes, and falling asleep. Forever.

  About the time I figured we were crossing the Great Divide, I began to feel very ill. Food had become scarce in the mountains, and I suspect my condition was a result of the combination of starvation, exposure to the elements, and an impending emotional breakdown. The void inside me continued to grow, but it somehow seemed to extend beyond the longing for my wife and the life I had left. It was as if there was something even greater that I was missing, masked by the presence of people when they were around, but haunting my thoughts when I was alone. I wondered what was in those letters I was risking my life for. What could have been worth that? Was I crazy to have continued on when I was so close to home? If not yet, would I become crazy?

  As if the torment of my conscience wasn’t enough, that of the environment was equally relentless. I was certain that we were nearing the base of the mountain and the journey would soon become easier. There wasn’t enough strength and stamina left in me to take much more of it. My innards were constantly subject to what I can only describe as a torturous wrenching and twisting, as if some wicked creature were devouring me from the inside out. My mind seemed to be suffering the same. When I had left the Green Mill I had been strong and healthy, but my body had reached such a grave state of malnutrition that it was feeding on itself. The little bit of fish I’d finally caught for dinner had overwhelmed my stomach, and I left the remains of my meal on the ground just outside my tent before turning in. It was a mistake. I know it now and I knew it then, but my head was not clear.

  In the darkness of my dreams, I heard breath. It approached slowly and softly, growing louder and more primal as I felt my heart begin to pound in my chest. Was it speaking? What did it say? I could not understand. I was lucid, but was I conscious? Was I roaming the depths of the world of fears created by my own mind, or was I, in fact, awake? The black of night was the same behind my eyelids, and when I blinked and felt their wet, I realized they had been open.

  Then came the night’s breath again—the unmistakable sound of a hungry bear in my camp. In my tent, I lay silent, trying to keep as still as possible, terrified that the beast would smell me. If he were as hungry as I, he would have no reservations about taking my life to save his own, and certainly he had more will to live. I wanted to call to Nomad, but I knew that would only make matters worse for both of us. The only way to stay alive was to stay silent. If he was still alive, that is. I couldn’t hear him moving, and he would not have waited around to ask the intentions of the bear.

  I heard the sloppy chomping of his jaw as he ingested the meal I had inadvertently prepared for him. My carelessness was unprecedented. Had I been thinking straight, I never would have done some of the things I had. My thought process and reasoning were regressing as my body deteriorated, and it was only a matter of time before one of those mistakes got me killed. Perhaps this was it, I thought.

  I imagined my wife growing old without me—the loneliness and sense of abandonment that would burden her the rest of her life.

  I imagined the violent pain of those grizzly claws and teeth as they punctured my skin and began to devour me. Would it be a quick death?

  Slowly, I felt around for my satchel. I slid my trembling hand inside where I kept my knife when I slept and removed it, unsheathed the blade, and held it tightly, preparing for whatever would come next.

  It felt like hours that I waited in motionless silence, listening as the bear huffed around outside the tent. His nose poked the canvas in search of more food. That meager fish had been simply an appetizer, and he craved the next course. I fought to keep my fatigued body awake and my eyes open, just waiting for the moment that nose would find its way inside with me. Then what? I was too weak, too slow to react.

  My eyelids fell.

  I listened.

  The words of John Donne were recited softly by the night’s breath.

  Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

  Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

  For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

  Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

  From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

  Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

  And soonest our best men with thee do go,

  Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

  Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

  And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

  And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

  And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?

  One short sleep past, we wake eternally

  And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

  I awoke again to the sunrise with the knife still in my hand. When I crawled from the tent, the site looked untouched aside from the missing leftovers, and I sighed with great relief.

  But Nomad was gone. I called to him repeatedly and searched the area, but there was no sign of him. I took no sign as a good sign. It meant he was alive.

  I packed up and continued down the tracks on foot through the lush, green Pacific Northwest foliage. Under an ever-changing canopy of massive sequoias and firs, I tramped through the layers of ferns and moss that coated the ground. It rained so frequently that the water droplets on the leaves and pine needles never had a chance to dry. Nomad knew where we were headed, I figured, even if I didn’t exactly know. As much as I feared for the safety of my friend, I knew that my own life was in greater danger. I was growing sicker by the day, and without him, I was slower with a heavier load on my own legs.

  It was a few days going, fading in and out of consciousness, before I cleared the trees at the base of
the mountainside. I collapsed in the light of the sun and rolled down the slope like a limp rag in the wind, bouncing from tree trunks and sliding in the mud. By the time gravity stopped me, I was barely able to open my eyes. It was all I could do to lift myself and crawl on my hands and knees, falling to the ground again every few feet just to give my lungs a chance to breathe.

  There, as I cleared the trees, was the sight that I had been waiting for so long, but I was too sick and exhausted to even feel relief. Just a short distance away was a small village of cabins, smoke rising from their chimneys in the cool autumn air.

  It took everything I had left to climb to my feet one final time. I wavered from side to side, light-headed, dizzy, and nauseous, stumbling toward salvation, running on just the fumes of hope that still remained. My body was limp, my skin cold and clammy and too pale for a man who spent every day in the sun. My fingers were trembling from malnutrition.

  As I came near the village, I suddenly feared that perhaps I was not the only one starving in the northwestern autumn. What if the people there were in as hopeless a state as I had found myself in—so hungry, perhaps, that they might make a meal of one of their own?

  I stopped to turn away, but when I saw the faces of people around a fire turning toward me, I collapsed again. Villagers surrounded as I lay there looking up to the heavens, looking back down upon me.

  “Are you OK?” one woman asked.

  “I smell sausage,” I whispered.

  “You must be starving! Skin is hanging off your bones.”

  “I’m a little hungry.”

  “Let’s get you something to eat,” she said.

  “I can’t eat.”

  “Look, we have food.”

  “I have to keep going.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Seattle.”

  “We’ll take you, just stay and eat.”