Tales of the Derry Plague , Anselmo, Ray [fun to read txt] 📗

Tomales Bay, where a finger of the Pacific separated the Point Reyes National Seashore from the mainland like a referee between two fighters. McDonald. Blakes Landing. Vincent Landing. The highway veered north while the coast continued northwest. Tomales. Fallon. Valley Ford.

A few miles farther, Kelly pulled over in Bodega Bay to stretch and look around. Bodega Bay was no bigger than Sayler Beach, but far better known, since it catered to visitors coming up from the Bay Area. Imagine Cannery Row in Monterey, the restaurants and touristy places along the coast, but without the city behind it – you wouldn’t quite have Bodega Bay, but you’d be close. A nice place to visit, and she had, several times.

Seeing it now, depopulated, not a single response to her speakers blaring “How Do I Live,” gave her the rampaging creeps. “It shouldn’t be like this,” she said aloud, and she was right. It was a Saturday afternoon – there should be families on the beach soaking up the sun while they could before the autumn cold set in. The restaurants on the water should be getting ready for the dinner rush. People should be puttering around the harbor on jetskis or hiking the trails around Campbell Cove or South Salmon Beach.

“It shouldn’t be like this,” she repeated. But it didn’t change anything. It was like this.

She couldn’t bear it. She’d gone far enough and found no one. She wanted to go home and cry. She settled for just going home.

But not directly. There was one more stop she wanted to make, even though she was now pretty sure she wouldn’t see a live human being there. She needed to see it, though, for herself. To make up for the desolation, she needed some concentrated natural beauty, and she knew just the place to find it.

Just south of Point Reyes Station, she turned right onto Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, which wasn’t a boulevard, just a country road with no shoulders. The road curved north, then west, then south in a huge arc, finally turning west once more toward the famous lighthouse at the end of the continent. It was a place she’d found quiet comfort numerous times, after a rough work week or a nasty phone call from Mom or just a day when her meds weren’t quite doing the job.

She parked, sat on the edge of a hill, and looked out at the lighthouse, the sun dappling on the ocean, the gulls swooping and squawking. She didn’t feel sad so much as frustrated, like when she couldn’t make the till balance after a day at the store. By all rights someone else should still be alive. There was no reason she would’ve made it when no one else did. But where were they?!?

That was the question she couldn’t answer, the thought that plagued her days and interrupted her dreams at night. Driving all this way up the Pacific Coast hadn’t solved the puzzle. She was starting to wonder if anything would. Or could.

Kelly watched the sea and the seabirds and the sand until she risked having to drive home in the dark, then got back in the truck and pointed it south down the highway. “God, I know we don’t talk as much as we should,” she prayed. “As I should. But I want to tell You something. I promise I won’t take Vivi Fifi’s way out. You want to kill me, You go ahead and do that. When it’s my time to go, You do what You have to, but I promise I won’t jump the gun and do it myself. You have my word.”

She sighed before continuing. “But I’d like to ask something – not as a trade or anything, just as a favor. If there is anyone else out there, anyplace … could you let me know? Send a sign or something, or have them show up where I am, or move me to where they are, or … I don’t know, whatever. But please, fill me in, because the not knowing is really starting to chew me up.”

She had nothing more to say. God, as usual, didn’t say a thing. She kept driving toward home as the sun went down.

20

SIGN

September passed, a day at a time. Every morning, Kelly got up, ate and wrote in the journal. She kept siphoning gas until she ran out of containers, then periodically thereafter when she emptied one into the Hyundai or the Ram. It took eleven more days to finish checking every house, apartment and other building in town, including those on the horse ranch and the two on the Nature Conservancy grounds. They were all catalogued in her little ledger for future reference.

And just in the nick too, because now she needed the time to harvest the crops over at Holy Green. Her original plan had been to pick crops for an hour or two a day, figuring that it would be too physically taxing for her to do more. But while it did take a toll on her back and her joints, the combination of milder weather and the psychological relief of no longer going through people’s houses made it easier than she expected. With sufficient sunscreen and bug repellent applied, it was almost relaxing.

After a few days, she rewrote her schedule. Now she put in an hour or two after siphoning, harvesting carrots and kale and collards in the morning. She’d pack a lunch and a DVD in the morning, eat while watching a movie in the A/V room, then go out and spend a couple more hours on the crops. Sweaty from the work, she’d bathe and do washing before dinner.

And since she was catching a film several days a week, she found another use for Friday evenings. That became Dog Day. Between dinner and sunset, she’d throw on the fire suit, grab a bag of kibble and a gallon