When Gods Fail by Nelson Lowhim - HTML preview

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When Gods Fail

By Nelson Lowhim

Copyright 2012 Nelson Lowhim

Eiso Publishing

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Table of Contents:

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

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This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead or otherwise, is purely coincidental.

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I'd been stuck in the cave for weeks. Months perhaps. Wasn't my fault. I planned to spend a little more than a week in these caves, south of Portland, exploring new routes.

Then the earthquakes hit.

Stalactites fell from the ceiling above me. One crushed my watch as I protected my head with my hands. Then the slide started. I thought of running back up the route I'd just come down, but dirt and rocks filled up my route up faster than I could think, and I watched as my only way out was blocked.

I screamed, prayed to be saved, but after a few hours I knew it was up to me to get out. Rationing out my food, I thanked the Lord that there was a running creek where I was trapped, and started to dig my way out.

I thought about what Carol would say if she found out what happened. She'd probably ban my hobby. She never did like it. I couldn't blame her. After a few days, when the cup I'd been using to scoop dirt broke, I resorted to using my fingers. I dug until my forearms knotted up and my fingers couldn't move. My fingernails loosened. Failure seemed so close.

Food was running low when I finally felt the dirt and rocks give way. I punched through to the other side and widened the hole.

I came out in the mouth of the cave. It was a room-sized, ball-shaped hall that led up to the cave's entrance on the side of a hill. I expected Carol to be waiting for me. After all, I was late, by several weeks, and she usually overreacted to everything. But there was no one. I didn't think much of it, until I climbed out of the entrance.

At this point my stomach grumbled for food, and I felt weak. I looked forward to eating the energy bars on the dashboard of my car. That's why when I saw that all the trees were gone—nothing but a few stumps and a coat of ashes—I couldn't comprehend what lay before me. My guts twisted into a knot. I looked to where my car should have been parked, but there was nothing. I doubled checked the cave entrance. It was the right one. No doubt about that. The slope of the hill that tongued out of the cave entrance was the same shape and angle as I remembered. The outline of the hills and mountains around me also seemed right, except there wasn't a tree to be seen—though who really memorizes such things?

A forest fire?

Certainly conditions had been getting drier recently. That meant an accidental spark could have set this all off. How sad that such a magnificent forest had been destroyed. I shook my head. Carol might not be able to get out here, the place could be closed down, or worse yet, she could be mourning my death.

On my map, I made out the nearest town. I could make it there before nightfall and hopefully find a phone to call Carol. I thought of how she rested her head on my chest, how it hurt to see her cry. I shuddered.

I walked for what seemed to be hours. I couldn't tell where the sun was because of a thick coating of clouds, but it seemed to be midday when I started. Nevertheless, as I walked through the ashes I noticed there was no burned wood smell. There really wasn't a smell, just clean air. No insects either. And, though I was certain it couldn't have been past August at the latest, it was bone-chattering cold. You would think that having been in a damp cave would have prepared me, but I was shivering by the time I saw the shipping container. It was located in an odd place, but I welcomed the sign of humanity.

I prayed that there was someone here, because I didn’t have the energy for another push over the small hill behind the container. I regretted leaving the cool waters of the cave. Never imagined I would want to go back there.

I leaned on the container catching my breath. I jerked back when I heard a voice. It was distant, as if the container had a belly somewhere beneath the ground. I rubbed my skin. It felt as if it had been burned in a full day of sun at the beach. I looked up, no way; it was dark and cold.

The voice tickled my ears again. It growled one more time. I heard the distinctive fricatives and vowels of a man. I examined the shipping container. The door to the container was not locked, so I considered walking in. Perhaps not. I wasn’t certain of my precise location, but I was surely in rural Oregon. Which meant I could be infringing on someone's property without knowing it. Whatever had happened, however big the forest fire was, the people here probably wouldn’t take too kindly to city folk. I would have to be nice and polite.

I knocked. The voice stopped. I waited, but nothing moved. I knocked again, this time louder. There was some movement, steps and the door moved slightly. My heart started to beat faster; it would be good to see another human.

“Hey, shit head.”

I looked up and saw a man with a shotgun pointed at me. He was large, held the shotgun with one hand, and looked like he could fire it stiff-armed. His face was covered with an uneven bristle of dark brown hair, and his skin, though young, sagged with the signs of a man recently emaciated.

“Uhhh, hi,” I said and raised my hands. “Don’t mean to be trespassing on your property, sir, but do you have a phone or some food and water—”

His face broke into a sneer.

“I didn’t mean to come here, on your property. I didn’t see any signs, and I haven’t eaten for days. So I...” I stopped. His face contorted into a half smile. I thought that perhaps I should have introduced myself. If I just got the chance to call Carol, my wife, I could get out of here. But I needed to get to a phone. “I’m Tom, I...”

He squinted at me, seemed to be looking over my body for something. Between his hard looks, I could sense a kind of kindness, kinship.

The man took another moment to stare at me, then jerked and looked all around him, as if he were expecting a horde to come at him. In fact he looked around for so long, his eyes piercing every rock in the distance, that I was certain he was scared for his life. Then I thought that they must have been moonshine men, or worse, meth cookers. That would explain why he was so jittery. And if that was the truth I was in trouble. I got light-headed. Was this going to end well?

"Please," I said, exasperated that he was just staring at me like an animal.

He seemed to sense my inner plea. “Bill," he said and nodded his head, "pleased to meet you.” He placed the shotgun beside him and reached out his hand. I shook it.

“Tom. Pleased to meet you. Once again I’m sorry about trespassing on...”

“You really aren’t kiddin’ are you?” he asked with an odd expression on his face.

I looked at him. “About the trespassing?” He seemed nice, or at least willing to help.

“There is no trespassing nowadays.” He stopped to look at the horizon. “Maybe territories, but who knows?”

“Like gangs?” I asked. With meth raging the countryside it made sense.

He laughed at my insinuation. “Yeah, like gangs,” he said.

“Do you have a phone, some food, maybe water? Really, I haven’t eaten all that much for ages.”

Again he gave me that look. “No one has. You really aren’t kidding about the phone are you?”

I couldn't see his point. Perhaps he was poor. If he didn’t have a phone what was I to do? “You don’t have a phone? Because if it’s money I’ll give my wife a call, and we’ll reimburse you. Really, I need...”

He raised his hand to indicate that he didn’t want to hear anymore. “Where does your wife live?”

“Portland, she can be here in an hour and we’ll give you some money.”

I stopped because he was shaking his head, not at me but at something else that seemed to be tearing through his mind.

"You certain this isn't a joke?" he asked, staring at my eyes like I would reveal something to him.

I glanced at him, some anger boiling up. "Am I kidding? Are you?" I tried to tone my voice down, but something inside me wanted to scream. I took a deep breath and took my eyes off him. Another look at the shipping container, and I noticed that all the paint had flaked off and settled on the ground. It must have been old. What was he doing living here? Meth might not have been the answer, though perhaps the chemicals did this to the container.

“Where have you been the last few months, buddy?” he said.

I hesitated, perhaps he would hate a hiker, but I'd no choice. “I was spelunking and man... some earthquakes started to shake up the ground, and wouldn’t you know it but I got trapped.” I shook my head, and could see Bill shaking his too. Then he started to laugh.

“So you’ve been under a rock huh?” He shook his head in amazement, leaned his head back, and roared out a laugh.

“Yeah,” I said and smiled politely. “Luckily, I'd enough food to ration while I dug myself out, but I ran out a few days ago. I got out and I walked until I got here. I guess there was a forest fire here? How’d it start?”

"You really aren't kidding," he said and laughed again. At this point, I realized that I could smell him. Body odor, shit, old food. Smelled him very well. I also remembered that I hadn’t been able to smell anything else. As if the air was a vacuum; no smell of ashes—which is what I should have smelled after a forest fire—just pure air. I looked around again and thought that it was odd that not a single plane in the sky had come over in a while. My eyes rested back on Bill. He looked at me with concern.

“You better come in buddy, you’re not going to like what I tell you,” he said and reached out his hand.

I wasn’t certain if I should go with him.

“I can use your phone?”

He shook his head. “Sorry bud, there are no phones. Well, ones that work at least.”

He spoke with such a mournful voice that I felt bad for assuming he had one. Perhaps I was being too cocky. “Sorry, I didn’t mean any offense. Then some food perhaps, and you can tell me where to get to a payphone?”

“Don’t know about the food, but... you don’t get it do you?” he said.

I didn’t like this. “No, I don’t get it.”

He smiled. “There are no phones anywhere. Phones need a network to work; there are no more networks. Get it?”

“The networks? The cell phones?”

“Cell towers, satellites, land lines. All. Gone. Got it?”

“You mean in the area, from the fire?”

“Bud, that was no fire. Those weren’t earthquakes you felt,” he said and raised his eyebrows emphatically.

“No fire,” I said. Perhaps I had come out the wrong hole, mistaken it for the place I had entered and come out near the desert area of Oregon. Perhaps that was what he meant. No, I had seen some burned stumps. I raised my hands, exasperated. “Okay I give up, what do you mean?”

“War, bud. They, we, everyone went to war. Your wife, if she was in Portland, she's probably dead. All cities got nailed. Not that it mattered; every square inch of land on the planet was covered. The radiation fallout killed anyone who was left. Well most anyone,” he looked back out over the land.

I felt everything spinning, and wondered if the hunger was finally getting to me. No way was I going to pass out to some stupid prank, but some part of my brain swallowed the story whole. The smell, the silence, in a part of Oregon that was never this quiet, all added up. I'd seen other forest fires before, and the beautiful thing about those was plants would start growing immediately after. There was nothing here, not a green weed to be seen, or an animal or insect alive. My heart dropped. Oh Carol. I started to dry heave.

“No bud." Bill's eyes softened up. "You're alive, be thank..." He seemed to choose his words, actions again. "Come.” He grabbed my collar and hoisted me up. He was strong. “Besides you’ve been exposed enough.” He led me down the trap door.

“Exposed?”

“Don’t you feel your skin?”

“The burning,” I said and touched my red skin. Then I remembered Carol touching me next to the fireplace, the heat from her skin, her sex. No, a nuclear war couldn't be real. Too many stops were in place to prevent it from happening. Right? This was a joke, and I'd get to the phone soon. Don't be a sucker.

“Yeah, radiation. It's gotten better, used to be you couldn't come out here without a suit. But best not to stay out too long," he said. "Though you made it so far.”

I entered the container and realized it was a bar. Across from me stood a man who oiled a gun. He looked up with a sneer on his face. He was like a rat-faced, skinny version of Bill. He seemed much meaner.

“Who the hell is that?” he said.

Everything was still hazy; plus down here, away from the pure air of outside I was having problems absorbing all the smells. For certain there was Bill’s unique body odor and liquor, but there was also burning flesh. I double-checked my skin to make certain that it wasn’t me. I couldn't tell. There was something insidious about the smell.

“I’m Tom. Pleased to meet you.”

The man didn’t look at my hand. Instead, he sneered at Bill.

I put out my hand.

“Where’d you find this faggot?”

I took a deep breath. Not exactly a homophobe, but I understood the implications of his words. I was a skinny guy with a meek posture. He wouldn’t respect me unless I said something.

“Who you calling a faggot?” I said.

He cocked his head, and as quick as lightning, he bounded across the cramped room and pushed a knife to my neck. “I’m callin' you a faggot, faggot. You got a problem with that?”

The knife was sharp and pushed dangerously into my jugular. One slip and I would open up to the floor, smile with my neck. And yet I still couldn’t feel my heart race; it was steady. As if the news of the nukes was still combatting my hope and taking up too much of my energy for me to worry about a knife. Under the red light, I could see scars all over the man’s face.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I said, and was surprised that not a tremor showed in my voice. This friend of Bill’s had cold eyes. But as soon as I spoke he cocked his head back and stepped back, removing the knife from my neck. He still held it pointed at me.

“Leave him be Paul. He’s cool,” Bill said. He rifled through a closet. “Besides, he doesn’t even know what’s happened the past few months. Tell him, tell him where you’ve been.”

I told him the story.

Paul tilted his head backwards and laughed. “Under a rock huh?“ He looked at me with a little more respect, some warmth returned to his eyes. “Lucky you, you missed some horrible shit,” he shook his head.

“He’s looking for his wife... she was in Portland.”

“Oh...” Paul gave me a look of pity. “Sorry bud, she’s probably... The city's gone.”

Could this have been a joke? I hoped so, but why else would they live in such a dilapidated place? Wasn't anything to hunt here.

Again my mind started to walk without my permission. A nuclear war. The forest fire. The air too pure to be real. No smells out there. No life anywhere. It was too much evidence, but I prayed for another explanation. These two men were involved in some practical joke. And yet something about their body language—how there was no hesitation, how there was real sympathy—pulled on my intestines and I felt nauseous.

“Are you serious? This isn’t a joke?” I said.

They glanced at each other, again with a look of collaborative knowledge.

“Come on man, if it is a prank just tell me. I don’t wanna be rude, but I was hoping to see my wife soon,” I said again. My voice cracked.

The mention of my wife seemed to sadden them again.

“He’s not gonna believe us until we show some proof. I know I wouldn’t believe someone unless I saw it with my own eyes,” Paul said and gestured to Bill to open a case of ammunition.

Bill slowly meandered over to the case and opened the hinged lock. He pulled out a handful of newspaper clippings.

“We’re not joking bud. This is all that’s left of the world,” Bill thrust the clippings over to me.

I took them, some were old and yellow, others were a little newer. The first papers were that flimsy newspaper paper, and with the accompanying ads I was sure they couldn’t have created these with a normal printer. Though these days who really knew? Somewhere in the back of my conscious the realization that this was real hit me, and a lump formed in my throat. I flipped through a couple of them, read something about climate turning for the worse, major food shortages, famine, droughts, followed by floods that ripped off topsoil—a hopeless cycle. Like the news from when I went spelunking. This, however, was on a larger scale. Was there a tipping point where everything went out of control? Then something else about forest fires spreading. Then there were more clips about international summits breaking down. China and US blame each other for not doing enough about resource distribution. Typical I thought, part of the reason I was taking a break from the city, life was getting too stressful. Then the last one: dirty bomb goes off in Shanghai. China blames US, US blames terrorists. Then Miami hit by another dirty bomb. Then nothing else. I looked up. The ceiling looked like was going to cave in, and I sat down on the ground. The article was printed on normal paper; random blogs, that could've been written by anyone.

Bill shuffled around and came with a bottle of water and a piece of packaging.

“Here bud, drink and eat,” he said.

“No,” I said and shook my head. I couldn’t handle not knowing the entire story. “Tell me Bill, tell me what happened?" I felt a few tears trickle down my cheek, though I reminded myself that I had to stay strong. I had to find Carol. “Carol.” I shook my head, when I wanted to rip it out and end the hollow emaciation of my being. A numb feeling followed.

“You sure we can afford the food?” Paul mumbled, but seemed to quiet down when Bill shot him a look.

“Eat up bud,” Bill said and tore open the package.

I grabbed the spoon he handed me. I drank the water in a gulp.

“Fuck, we ain’t got much water left,” Paul said, giving me a deadly look.

Bill ignored him. “Well, that was the last major story. Then all rumors. Well...” he hesitated. “That last day no one was certain what would happen. Everyone was certain that the last nuke had been launched and people would resort to talking, you know? Within a few hours the world was dark. That’s what we do know. We’ve tried to contact some city that might have survived this, but no luck. The first few weeks you couldn’t go outside without dying of exposure. Even with a radiation suit. We lost quite a few people that way. My mother, she had to go see the world, didn’t want to stay here. Found her a week back. Suit burned, skin peeled off, eyes burned. Buried her.”

Bill stopped and looked at me. A vein in his forehead throbbed. “Portland is gone bud. Your wife probably...”

“Well how do you know that Portland's done? I mean there are no networks; maybe it’s just that the whole world’s cut off from each other and no one knows about the other, right? I mean have you guys left this area?” I stopped as they both remained silent, exchanged glares with each other. Suddenly, I felt unwelcome.

My words died; I finished my food and water, and stared into the red light that provided the illumination for the room.

“Electricity? How do you get it if there is no grid, right?” I was now looking for something, something to show these men that their pessimism was misguided. There couldn’t be nothing else out there. There just couldn’t. Seven billion people at my last count. So what if there had been a nuclear war? That still left a lot of survivors. A lot of places that wouldn’t be hit by a nuke. There had to be. I looked at them both, hoping that with all the gray matter in the room we would figure this out. I was a computer nerd. Loved programming. Thought if you put enough brains behind any problem you could find a solution. Innovation was the saving grace of humans. Made us more than a bunch of chimps with tools. We were Created and thus could create. I searched each of their faces for a sign of what I was going for. They seemed saddened by my line of questioning.

“We have solar panels and mechanically rechargeable batteries. That’s all. Ain’t no grid,” said Paul.

No grid. The words hit me. Again I felt weak, alone, floating in a sea of nothing. Like when I was a child and my father gave me a pea to represent the earth then walked me many blocks to tell me where the sun was, and then told me we couldn't even walk to the first star—I cried then and almost cried now.

“Then couldn’t we hook the battery to a satellite phone or radio frequency and keep trying to reach some people?” I said.

“Listen,” he said and jerked his finger towards me, his other hand still holding the knife. “You’re lucky I didn’t finish you off. The last thing we need is another mouth to feed. You better learn to earn your keep around here, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna be done with smart ass questions. You think we haven’t thought of all that? You think we’re a buncha dumb rednecks? Dontcha?” He raised his knife. “You better learn.” He looked at Bill, walked behind the bar, lifted up a trap door in the floor, and stepped down into it.

Now that I could see how easily he flared up, I wondered how I could tip toe around him. If I was allowed to stay. His last comment hit me. I couldn’t expect the same things as when I was back in Portland. I was in their house. I would have to listen to them. And I had to earn their respect. Show them I was worth something. But what the fuck would a computer programmer be worth out here? I looked at Bill, hoping for some sympathy. Maybe I should mention my wife, but it seemed that the time for pity was over. Bill was staring at me with a stern aggression that I did not like.

“You guys low on water?”

“Yeah, not much left. We have a machine that purifies our urine, but it gets less and less each time. Besides,” he said and licked his lips, troubling me again.

The others, what happened to all the others?

“Besides what?” I said.

“Besides, I’m just sick and tired of tasting piss, you can taste it... once you notice it there’s no going back.”

“The cave I was in, there was plenty of water. Clean too, I’m sure. I was drinking it for too long for it to be contaminated.”

Bill’s demeanor changed. He smiled once. “Nice, that’s just what we need. I’ll tell Paul,” and without any more words he walked down the small trap door.

Something about his smile was off, but I reminded myself that there were bigger issues at hand.

I tried to sleep, but all I could think of was my wife, her pretty lips, and how much I missed being in her arms, her belly slowly swelling in those weeks before my spelunking trip. I loved everything about her; she was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. My chest shrank. I shouldn't have gone on that trip alone. I could've picked a pastime that even she would've liked. I could have been with her.

I stared at the red light hanging from the ceiling. This was real. Everything I had seen: the burned landscape, no one around, not even a plane in the sky. This was real.

The thought of all those people and all those dreams gone, evaporated, filled me with a dread. It started in my extremities, spread to my heart, rushed to my head and paralyzed me. I wished I could have seen all those people just one more time. Seen Carol instead of trying to get away for another trip to be alone.

I sat there thinking about Carol. Her touch. Her laugh. I would have to go back to our house and see if Carol was dead. Even a shadow on a wall, like the ones in Hiroshima, would help.

I picked up the newspapers that lay before me. All alone; billions dead. Tears should have been forming, but they didn't. Inside, a piece of me was glad that I had gone into a cave. Survived. I ground my teeth and got angry with myself for ever thinking that. But perhaps in this new world things would be better. Now, people would be forced to rely on one another. They would care for each other. That would make it a better place.

Bill and Paul had taken me in like good Samaritans and given me a place to sleep. In the old world I would have just been kicked off their property. Perhaps this was God's way of performing another great flood. It had to be.

I squeezed my eyes shut, exhaustion finally taking over me. Carol's image floated up to me and as I tried to paw at her, take off her clothes and penetrate her, a loud rumbling sound shook me.

"Hey, wake up."

I opened my eyes to see Bill with a shotgun. At least it wasn't pointed at me.

"What time is it? How long did I sleep?" The room around me was the same; my heart filled with dread as I remembered that the end of the world was still a fact.

"A couple hours. We figured it would be good to let you gather some strength." He looked over to where Paul was standing.

I rubbed my eyes. Something was different; I could feel the wake of being talked about echoing through my ears. Paul's eyes weren't angry; they were cold. I glanced at Bill's eyes and his seemed to have the same demeanor. However, they darted off me, and focused on his feet.

"Get ready, you're gonna show us where the water is," Paul said, his voice wavering between hard and kind.

"Sure," I mumbled, stood up, and adjusted my belt. "Let's go."

"You first," Bill said and pointed up the door.

When we got out it was darker. The sky looked a color I had never seen before. "Nuclear winter, eh? I had always had faith that mankind would never come to this. That cooler heads would prevail," I said and looked at Bill and Paul. They didn't seem interested.

"No talking, just move," Paul muttered.

Bill shook his head. Both of them pulled out a couple of reined sleds with empty containers strapped on them.

"You mind doing some work?" Bill handed me the reins.

I took his sled. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. Within ten steps I was tired. "This is tough." I cracked a grin, feeling peeved that I would act so weak. Neither of them smiled. Paul only scowled some more.

"You're lucky we don't hitch both of them on ya," Paul said and spat in my direction.

I wanted to say something smart, but alarms were going off in my head. Perhaps I'd offended his sensibilities earlier. If so, now was the time to make amends. I stared in front of me and kept marching.

It took a few hours to reach the cave. I was exhausted. When Bill had said we would switch, he meant I would have one sled at all times. I had yet to earn m