Yael Dragwyla and Rich Ransdell First North American rights

email: [email protected] 9,000 words

The Eris War

Volume II: The Dragon from the Isles

Book 1: Independence Day

Chapter 5: Firetongues
Suddenly the scene shifted to one of a street in a devastated city under a smoke-filled sky, a lovely
dark-skinned woman in gray coveralls standing in the foreground, holding a microphone. In the
background there were men working on what appeared to be a generator, and two more taking away
gigantic batteries from the field-unit’s vehicle. The men had probably just finished changing the batteries
that were used to power the cameras and the blip-squirter feeds back to the TV station, hence the generator,
which they’d have used to keep everything running while they pulled the discharged batteries and replaced
them with fully charged ones. Clearly, at least in the case of this unit, either they weren’t able to tap
electrical lines in the area or, more likely, electrical power had already gone out where they were, a
casualty of progressive failure of the national power-grid due to this day’s horrific events.
The woman’s pleasant voice answered: “ Yes, George. Ready to go.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, now looking directly at the camera as it moved in closer, “hi. I’m
Elaine Dressler with the KTTV News Bureau in Portland, Or- er, I mean, KTTV Oregon News Affiliates
Bureau. I’m . . .” Chewing her lip for a moment, she said somberly, “At the moment, we are not sure what
the status of anyone in Portland, Oregon is, nor whether I am still with their bureau, because of the
tremendous disaster that occurred here in the Pacific Northwest earlier this morning. At the moment, we
are unable to re-establish communication with our main station in Portland. When . . .” She bit her lip
again, then said, “If and when we are able to communicate with the main station again, you’ll get their
report direct from Portland. In the meantime, we will be interviewing various members of the staff and
faculty of the University of Oregon here in Corvallis, as well as others, such as police, fire department
personnel, local citizens, and anyone else able to shed some light on what has happened here. – You there,
sir!”
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“Yes?” The camera swung around to cover a stocky, bearded, red-haired man in early middle age,
who was flanked by his wife and their four children. His wife, who was both older and slightly taller than
her husband, had turned her head away as she fought to control tears. Their four children, who looked
utterly exhausted, had dark circles around their eyes; their expressions were frighteningly reminiscent of
those of war refugees from Bosnia or Rwanda. The clothing of all six family members was so smeared
with ash and grit that it was hard to tell what its original colors had been. The man had several small cuts
on his face, and one of the children, a red-headed, fair-skinned adolescent about 13 years old, clearly much
younger than his three siblings, had a bruise as gaudy as a sunset that covered the entire right side of his
face.
“Cathy, I’m gonna go into the spare room and use your computer to try to get on the Internet. I’ll turn
on the little TV you’ve got in there, too, all right?” I asked my wife.
“Do you have them hooked up to a UPS?”
“Yeah, remember? I did that a week ago, testing that unit. I never took it out.”
“Okay,” she told me. “I’m going to fix lunch in a bit, want me to bring it in to you?”
“That’d be real nice. Thanks,” I told her as I headed for the spare room.
Shortly after that I had hooked up the universal power source, had the tiny little color TV we kept in
there hooked up the USB and tuned to the same channel the other one was on, and was booting up Cathy’s
computer to see whether I could get online. On the TV, Ms. Dressler was asking the father of the family
she’d been interviewing: “Are you – I notice that you and your family seem to have, er, just arrived here at
OUC campus. Were you . . . er, do you know anything about what’s happened up north of us, here?”
Dressler asked him.
“No. I have no idea,” he said, sighing heavily, sounding a little loopy. “We just . . . we were driving
up US 101 from the Bay Area to get back home from a trip we made to visit friends down there. It was still
dark, about 4:45 a.m., I think, not exactly sure, we left San Francisco around a little before midnight. I
wanted to get back here this morning to take care of some business and we couldn’t leave last night, but
anyway – there we were, driving up 101, when this huge flaming rock just . . . just fell from the sky, right
in front of our RV. I . . . I was able to dodge it, but . . . we went off the side of the road and onto the verge
in the process. Bumpy ride. We . . . we found a side-road nearby, took that – by then, there were gigantic
rocks falling all over, the trees were starting to catch fire because some of the rocks were so hot, flaming
gravel falling all over the place. We made it, though, I guess because there’d apparently been a large storm
over most of this state last night, everything was drenched in the area we were driving through, and fire
couldn’t make much of a headway there. So we didn’t have to put up with that as well as those damned
rocks falling all over the place . . . I say we made it, but only to here. Our home is actually on Southwest
Jefferson Avenue, over in Corvallis, and we haven’t been able to go on from here to see if our home is still
there because there are firemen all over the place over there and they aren’t letting anyone in. But they told
us that so far, our house is safe, and they think they can keep the fire contained so it won’t get anywhere
near it.”
“‘Fire’?” Dressler asked him.
“Haven’t you seen it, lady?” one of the girls suddenly yelled. “Look at the sky, willya – there’s smoke
everywhere, and over that way you can see it’s all orange and red!—” he told her, waving to indicate
everything north, east, and south.
“Er, and, er, may we have your names?”
“Oh, sure, I’m sorry, I’m just so . . . wiped out,” the man said. “I’m Ian Turnbull, and this is my wife,
Kathé.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Kathé Turnbull told Dressler, her voice low and subdued. She sounded bone-
weary, and looked it, her gray hair, matted and filled with ashes and soot, straggled about her face as if it
hadn’t been combed in days.
“And these are our four kids, Waldy” indicating the youngest, “Tesfaye—” – a boy of about 12, the
one who had spoken before – “—Mestowet, and Asnacech—” – two girls, the first perhaps 18 or so, the
other maybe 16.
“I – they’re all . . . yours?” Dressler squeaked. Her expression was a bastard cross between a crooked
smile and wigged-out astonishment.
“Of course they are!” he snapped. Then, collecting himself, he said, “I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m
Goddamn’ tired. Yes, they’re all ours.”
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“Tesfaye, Mestowet, and Asnacech are from Somalia!” Waldy volunteered proudly. “We adopted
’em!” he said, looking over his brother and two sisters with a proprietary air. His siblings grinned back at
him fondly.
“Somalia – oh, they’re adopted!” Dressler said, her expression changing from totally confused to
relieved, as if someone had just told her that nobody had slipped LSD into the punch, after all.
Holding up a dark hand, Tesfaye said belligerently, “You got a problem with that, lady?” With all the
dignity of outraged adolescence in defense of his parents, he put a protective arm around his father, who,
with a fond look at Tesfaye, grinned broadly.
“No, no, of course not!” Dressler said, chuckling weakly. “Just – it’s not a situation I’m very familiar
with.”
“What – adoption?” Tesfaye asked her, rather meanly.
“No, uh, well . . . Uh, anyway, Mr. Turnbull, was it very difficult to make your way here from
Highway 101?”
“It wasn’t too bad . . . We’d just passed Yachats, going north on 101, when that . . . rock came down
out of the sky and I had to dodge it. When we were able to get back on the road again there, everything had
begun shaking and the ground was rolling under us. For a minute there I thought I was going to be seasick,
it was so bad.”
“I was seasick,” one of the girls said quietly. “It was awful!”
“Yes,” Mr. Turnbull said. “Anyway, about a quarter of a mile up there was this logging road that took
off east from 101. I managed to drive back onto 101 north of the rock that had come down and make it that
far without getting hit by anything, and we took the logging road and followed it up to where it connected
with State Highway 34. When we got to Alsea, though, another rock came down in the middle of the road,
hitting when we were about 200 feet or so from it. I wasn’t going very fast at that point – so much crap
was falling from the sky by then that the road was covered with it, lots of loose rubble and that sort of
thing, and I couldn’t make very fast headway. So I’d slowed down, gotten into first gear, and was taking
the bumps as easily as I could – you see that bruise there on Waldy?” he said, gesturing to indicate the red-
headed boy He got that when I was coming off 101 onto the logging road at top speed, to get away from a
rain of hot rocks that started coming down all over the freeway there, and hit a pothole. We were lucky I
didn’t roll the RV. Anyway, poor Waldy was thrown against the side of the back compartment, where he
was sitting then, and that’s how he got that bruise.
“But there was another road that took off from 34 there, going north, in the general direction of
Corvallis. We took that, and when it didn’t turn east, we found another road that led off east from the first
one, and took that. By then, we were out of the worst of the bombardment, and made pretty good time
getting to the university. Like I said, when we tried to go home, the firemen directed us here.”
“How long ago . . . when did that first rock hit, when you were driving up US 101?”
“I . . . don’t remember. Maybe a couple of hours. Or more. Or less. I just don’t know,” he said
wearily. “From what some of the people here told me, it was probably about two-three hours ago, because
that’s when they think that whatever it was happened up north, you know, in the Seattle area.”
“How do you feel now?”
He looked at her, his eyes narrowed. “Now, how the hell do you think I feel, ma’am? I’ve been
driving for 2-3 hours straight, trying to save the lives of my kids and my wife, not to mention my own,
from a flaming hell that suddenly fell on us out of nowhere! A rock went through the windshield and I got
glass cuts all over my face, and we don’t know if we’re going to have a home to come back to yet! Once
we all had to get out and push the RV over a giant hole in the road somewhere, which is why we’re all
covered with soot and grit. And I haven’t had anything to eat since last night, and neither have my wife
and kids!”
“Mr. Turnbull – Mr. Turnbull, I’m so sorry,” Dressler told him apologetically. “Uh – they’re setting
up a mess tent over that way, next to the physics building” – she pointed – and they should have coffee and
soft drinks and something to eat for all of you by now.”
“Good!” he snarled. “God, I could eat a whole Goddamn’ rotten mule by now, I’m so hungry! I could
use a nap, too – so could Kathé and the kids.”
“Mr. Turnbull, why don’t you go over and get something to – oh, hello, Chief Barnes.”
Striding toward them was a tall man, his face covered with soot and grime, wearing the uniform of the
chief of the Corvallis Municipal Fire Department.
“Ian!” he called out as he came up to them, a wide smile on his face.
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“Jake! Well, what are you doing here?” Mr. Turnbull said, turning toward him.
“Don Lasky told me all of you had been trying to get home earlier and they had had to turn you away,
sent you here. Just wanted to let you know your house is safe. We’ve established a perimeter on this fire
about three blocks away, and it looks like we won’t have much trouble holding it unless more of this crap
comes down. The science boys over there told me they think that part of it is pretty much over, so it’s a
pretty safe bet your house won’t be touched by any of the fires,” he told Turnbull, grinning broadly.
“Oh, thank God!” cried Kathé Turnbull. Suddenly she put her face in her hands and began sobbing her
heart out as her children began trying to comfort her.
“Hey – my rats are gonna live!” Waldy shouted happily.
“Mrs. Mims! And Heathcliffe!” cried one of the girls. “are they – are they –”
“She means the cats,” a grinning Turnbull told the puzzled fire chief. “Knowing them, bet we find
both of them sitting at the front door, waiting for us, giving us hell about their exciting morning. They’ve
been fed, or should have been – a neighbor of ours said she’d feed them and the rats and the goat and the
rabbits, and otherwise take care of them while we were away, but the animals still get upset when we go
away and leave them for more than a few hours.
“Thanks, Jake – we really needed that. You have no idea how good it feels to know we’ll have our
home to go back to tonight.”
“Oh, yes, I do, Ian – my own home is about one block from the fire! But I think we’ll be okay.”
“Oh, shit! – Er, sorry Ms. Dressler. I know we’re on the air,” he said, turning back to her. “Uh – do
you mind if we all go over there to the mess-tent you pointed out to us? We all need to get our blood sugar
up, and get ready to go back home.”
“Sure, no problem. Thank you, Mr. Turnbull.”
“Kids? Kathé?” he said, turning to his family.
“Food!” screamed Waldy. “Geronimooooooooooooooo!” he yelled as he began racing toward the tent,
his brother and sisters not far behind. Chuckling, the fire chief said to Dressler, “I’d better get back to
work. Just wanted to let the Turnbulls know about their house.”
“Of course! Thank you, Chief Barnes. May we interview you later?”
“I’ll see. If I’m around. I’ve got a fire to fight, ma’am – maybe we can talk later.”
And then, before Ms. Dressler could say anything else, he turned and strode briskly away, heading
toward a group of firemen standing next to a pile of electronic equipment and a radioman.
“Whoa!” I cried. “Cathy, did you feel that?”
“Yes! Was that an aftershock?” came her voice from the front room. Somewhere out there I could
hear Mungojerry and Rumpleteazer crying in fright.
“Sure felt like it, darlin’,” I told her, nervously watching the components of the little Klee mobile she’d
hung up over the computer swaying back and forth. “Didn’t seem that bad. There’re bound to be
aftershocks for quite a while after the quake we had this morning, especially if the whole American plate is
shifting, which is what it sounds like is going on, from what the news announcer said earlier.
“I – ah, here it comes!” I said in satisfaction as the America Online welcome screen began to come up.
“You got online?”
“Yeah. Let’s see what they’ve got on AOL news this – what the fuck?!”
“What’s wrong, Rich?” she said, coming in to see what the problem was.
“I – look at this, darlin’,” I told her as she entered the room, the two cats hot on her heels, crying and
crying for attention – she’d let them out again to give them a treat, apparently. As Cathy hovered over me
to see what was going on online, Rumpleteazer plopped down on top of her feet as if trying to pin her to the
floor and keep her from going anywhere, while Mungojerry jumped up in my lap and began butting my
chin with the top of his head, purring hopefully. Putting up a hand to pet him, I used the other to point at
the screen. “Look at that, Cathy,” I told her in consternation.
“It looks like somebody dropped and broke the image and now they’re trying to glue it back together!”
she told me in bewilderment.
Indeed, the familiar, friendly America Online Welcome screen had begun fragmenting into ragged
chunks. Some of the fragments were disintegrating into a sort of dust in the midst of which bright streaks
of color ran back and forth, while the rest, though they were still close to one another, were clearly
beginning to drift apart. “Weird!” Cathy commented.
“Tell me about it. I – oh, shit, there it goes,” I said as what was left of the Welcome screen suddenly
dissolved into a wild, polychromatic electronic blizzard, and the modem began making strange noises.
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“AOL’s down?”
“I don’t think it’s just AOL, hon’,” I told her. “Cathy, would you pick up the extension phone over
there?” I asked her, meaning the phone jacked into a wall socket near the doorway.
“The phone?” she asked me as she went over to the phone and picked up the receiver. “What – oh,”
she said quietly, carefully hanging the receiver up again. I had a feeling she wasn’t concerned about the
phone itself so much as she was about her own nerves – she didn’t want to do anything too precipitately
right now, for fear her nerves might snap.
“Is it –”
“Yes. The phone system seems to be having a nervous breakdown,” she told me, sitting down heavily
in a nearby chair.
I looked back at the monitor, which now presented to me the America Online “vestibule,” the screen
that came up when the AOL software was first activated and was there when one got offline again. It told
me: “You Have Lost Your AOL Connection.” “I knew that, jackass!” I snarled at it. “What else did you
expect when the phones stop working?!” It wasn’t rational, but right then I wasn’t particularly in a mood to
give a shit about rationality.
“Rich, Rich, calm down!” Cathy admonished me.
“I’m sorry, darlin’, but my God, it’s all falling apart! What else is gonna go wrong today?!”
“Better you should ask what won’t,” she told me. “Oh, damn, it happened again,” she said, looking up
at the wall behind me.
“What?”
“My wall clock just did something funny,” she told me.
I turned around to see what she meant. High on the wall behind me she’d hung her wall clock, a lovely
electric model decorated with decals of flowers, fruits, ears of corn, and the like spilling out of cornucopias
in all directions. She’d bought it about six years ago at a flea market in Taos during the vacation traveling
through Arizona and New Mexico we’d taken that year. It was at least fifty years old, but had been taken
excellent care of by both its previous owners and Cathy, and – at least up until now – it ran like new.
But now it had begun to behave oddly. Every few seconds its hands abruptly stopped moving for a
moment or two, then jerkily resumed movement. Instinctively I glanced at my watch, a shielded digital
model that I’d had for years, which hadn’t lost as much as a second in all that time. Sure enough,
according to my watch my wife’s clock had lost about seven minutes of time – yet last night, as it had ever
since she’d gotten it, the clock had been keeping perfect time.
“I wonder how long that’s been going on?” she mused.
“The Grid’s eating it,” I told her. “A little at a time, but it’s progressive. That clock is showing us
when another part of it goes down and the rest of the Grid takes up the slack for the part that isn’t there any
more. You want me to put that on one of the UPS units, too?”
“No – we’ve got your watch, plus mine. I took it off while I was working in the bathroom earlier, so I
wouldn’t get it wet or doused with chemicals, but I’ll put it on again later. Anyway, with the clock not
plugged into a UPS, if it stops completely, we’ll know the power’s gone out completely. Otherwise we
wouldn’t be able to tell, what with everything plugged into those units.”
“Well, there’s the ’fridge – oh, shit, the refrigerator!”
“What?”
“It and the freezer – they’re not on one of the UPS units!”
“You want to put them on one?”
“I – no,” I told her, suddenly getting the first glimmerings of an idea. “No, that’ll just use up our
batteries. I could recharge them with the car, but I don’t want to do that until I absolutely have to.
“No, I’ll tell you what: why don’t you take everything out of the refrigerator and the freezer, cook up
everything that takes cooking, set the stuff that won’t keep, like milk and ice cream, to one side so we can
use up as much of it as possible before it spoils, and get something to pack all the food in that will keep for
a while.”
“You’re thinking of taking off, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know yet. I do know that food isn’t going to keep for very long unless you cook what you can
and seal it in airtight baggies or Tupperware containers.”
“Hmm . . . we can use up some of it for lunch. Maybe I can make an omelet –”
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“No, hard-boil the eggs. Hard-boiled eggs will keep. How about that tuna-and-Spam sandwich-spread
you made a couple of days ago? That won’t keep long. Or could you make it into a casserole or
something?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll figure something out. Okay, let me go do that. – Come on, ’Jer, Rumpy, want some
milk?”
Wide-eyed and licking their chops at the word “milk,” the two cats happily charged after her,
Mungojerry leaping from my lap with so much energy he damned near unmanned me.
Shaking my head and grinning over the antics of the cats, I turned back to the computer and began
shutting it down – we needed to conserve power as much as we could now, and the computer made a big
drain on the batteries. While I got it shut down and was starting to dismantle it prior to packing it up in its
carrier, just in case, I kept one eye on the TV screen. By now, whatever stations were still broadcasting
almost had to be running on generators or batteries. The national power-grid had suffered enormous
damage as the result of the events in Washington State and on the East Coast last night and early this
morning, and then additional wounds due to the debris raining down on southern Oregon from the volcanic
eruptions further north. As more and more of the Grid went down, its surviving individual sections were
having to work harder and harder to handle the demands begin made on it now, and it was progressively
burning out in one place after another due to the overload. Every pause and hitch of Cathy’s pretty antique
wall-clock told of the death of one more part of the Grid, the subsequent assumption of the burden it had
borne by its surviving sections here and elsewhere. It wouldn’t be long until the clock stopped for the last
time – and didn’t start again.
At least, thank God, our stove and heaters were fueled with natural gas. As long as there weren’t any
ruptures in the gas-lines between here and the big LNG storage facilities up the coast, we could cook
without any problem – and, of course, as it was mid-July, here in Southern California there wouldn’t be any
real need for heating the place any time soon. (At the thought of the gas-lines, the idea I’d begun playing
with glimmered a little more brightly in my mind.)
Suddenly, on the TV screen, the announcer was excitedly saying: “–We’ve got another feed coming
in! Ladies and gentlemen, we have a report from Prospect, Oregon, concerning mammoth, out-of-control
forest fires raging through the southern end of the state which, starting about two hours ago as a result of
the gigantic lava-bombs hurled in that direction by the disaster in Washington State as well as from the
sudden eruption of Goosenest Mountain just south of the Oregon-California border, have already killed at
least twenty-five people and destroyed an as-yet unknown number of homes and livestock. We now turn
you over to Terry Black of United News Services of the Pacific Northwest, reporting for KTTV-news and
affiliated bureaus from Medford, Oregon, where he has been interviewing survivors of what has rapidly
become a holocaust engulfing almost the entire southern half of the state of Oregon. – Terry?”
“Yes, George. Thank you. – Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Terry Black of UNSPN, now reporting live
from Medford, Oregon.” The view had changed to show Black, standing in the courtyard of what seemed
to be a large, multi-story motel complex. Behind him in the courtyard there was a great mass of running,
shouting, gesticulating people, some wearing uniforms, most not. Black was a young man, at most twenty-
eight or so, but his eyes were ancient. He looked haunted. Absently running a hand through his gold-red
hair, he said, talking directly into a hand-held mike in order to be able to be heard above the pandemonium
taking place behind him, “I am here in the main courtyard of Motel 6 in Medford, Oregon. As you can see,
we have quite a situation here – the people you see here behind me are either firemen, police, or other
emergency responders, or refugees from Grant’s Pass and other areas near here. In a moment – ah, here
comes the airlift rescue unit.”
Over the sound of his voice came the wop-wop-wop! of helicopter rotors and the wails of numerous
sirens. The camera panned around to look out at the parking-lot next to the motel, where a Bell helicopter
was landing. Ambulances were pulling into the parking-lot, as well. Two paramedics carrying a stretcher
dashed from the milling throng in the courtyard toward the parking-lot. In the parking-lot, a dozen people
or so, many of them small children, were being gently helped out of the helicopter. One of them, a woman,
suddenly began to struggle wildly as several men tried to hold her and keep her from falling from the open
doorway of the helicopter onto the tarmac below. Her voice came faintly to us even over the hubbub in the
courtyard: “No! No! We’ve got to go back! Darby’s in there – he’ll burn to death! James, let’s go back
right now!!!” Then the men who were trying to shepherd her from the helicopter to the ground finally got
the better of her, and were able to get her down safely. Once down on the tarmac, she stood looking around
in shock, as if finally robbed of speech by whatever had happened to her. Her hair was wildly tangled and
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her clothing, consisting of what must once have been a very expensive dress and a light sweater, was
askew, heavily streaked with soot and dotted with small charred holes. Suddenly her eyes closed, and then
she simply folded up and collapsed in a heap on the tarmac. Within no more than a couple of seconds
several men, most of them wearing uniforms of one sort or another, had surrounded the woman and begun
ministering to her.
Now the camera turned back to Black, who was saying, “What you just saw, ladies and gentlemen, was
an armed forces helicopter, one of those that have been helping to evacuate people whose homes are
located far from the cities, off-loading some of its passengers in the parking-lot here at Motel 6. Earlier this
morning, that helicopter and its crew were been assigned to carry out rescue operations in the area in and
around Grant’s Pass and to the east of there, and for the last two hours or so have been doing just that. This
is probably the second or third load of people brought out of the fire-danger zone by the helicopter. Other
aircraft are also doing the same thing over an area covering most of the southern border of Oregon, through
which enormous brush-fires are now sweeping. The fires were started earlier this morning by lava-bombs
and other extremely hot debris from the catastrophic eruptions which, as you have probably heard by now,
took place this morning in Western Washington State.
“It is clear that – oh, wait a minute, here comes someone . . . Yes, sir, can we help you? –”
A disheveled man, his short-sleeved shirt and trousers torn, soot-stained, and speckled with scorch-
marks and char, his face and arms likewise smeared with soot and sporting a number of second-degree
burns, had wandered up to Black. Waving his hands wildly in the air, tears pouring down his cheeks, he
cried, “You’ve got to tell them!—”
“Er, tell them what, sir?” Black asked him, flustered.
“They’re all dead back there! They’re all dead! Only the horses got out! They’re all dead! –”
“‘They’? Sir, could you give us your name, for our audience out there?” Black asked him, extending
his hand-held microphone toward the other man.
“Me? Oh, I’m Darryl McGavin,” the man said, sounding lost and tired, the wind momentarily taken
out of his sails by Black’s question. He looked both confused and agitated, and had clearly just been
through some particularly nasty corridor of Hell. He looked to be about 40 or so. Pattern-baldness had
given him a tonsure; what remained of his medium-length brown hair looked straggled and dank with sweat
or, perhaps, water he’d used to cool his face and head. “My God, my God,” he mumbled, over and over,
his gray eyes not quite focused.
“Mr. McGavin,” Black asked him, “did you – are you one of the people we’ve been watching come off
the helicopters back there?” He pointed in the general direction of the parking-lot.
“Uh . . . yes, yes, I am. That’s . . . I came from . . . there,” McGavin said, more than a hint of a
Southern accent slowing his speech, giving it grace, a welcome gift to the listener’s ear. Where had he
come from? East Texas? Mississippi? – No, not Mississippi, a little too much twang for that. And not
Kentucky – a native of western Kentucky myself, I still couldn’t make out the signature in his voice, so he
wasn’t from there, either.
“Sir, do you know anything about the fires east of us, here?” Black looked back toward the parking-lot
again. The sky in that direction was thick with heavy, steadily darkening smoke, and ash was beginning to
drift down in the courtyard of the motel.
“I – I – we live back that way. Uh, my wife and I did live there . . .” the man began. Then he began to
cry in earnest. “Oh, it’s gone, it’s all gone . . . everything we worked for . . . our life savings . . .”
“Mr. McGavin, do you mean your house?”
Finally getting a grip on himself, McGavin, stifling another sob, somehow keeping his voice steady by
what must have been the last dregs of his self-control, told Black, “Our house, our barn, our animals – my
wife and I came out here twelve years ago, from Arkansas [Ah-hah! Howdy, neighbor!], we worked for ten
years, using my GI Bill and what we both earned from our jobs, to buy our land, our home and all . . . all
the buildings on it. The . . . the original owners built the house and barn back in 1908, I think . . . Oh, God,
it’s hard to think . . .
“We have . . . we had about twenty goats, two horses, a tractor, a mule, about a hundred rabbits in
hutches, we raised them for the meat and the market, God, we had so much, and now it’s all gone, it’s all
gone . . .”
Before he could break down again, Black asked him, “Do – do you have insurance?”
“I . . . yeah, I guess . . . but there’s so many things you can’t never insure . . . And I loved those
animals, all of ’em, even the . . . the chickens and the rabbits and so on. Made pets of a lot of them, we
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couldn’t never have eaten ’em or sold ’em, we loved ’em just like our own kids. And the cats . . . and the
dogs . . . The . . . the cops wouldn’t . . . wouldn’t give us time to get them out, even. We couldn’t even
taken more’n a change of clothes or whatever we could grab on the way out. Left all our photo albums of
our fam’ly, pictures of my kids by my first marriage, her nieces and nephews, all her jewelry, almost all our
clothes, everything we loved, all the stuff you cain’t replace . . .”
“Sir, what happened? Where – where is your home located?”
“Back up toward Prospect, up on State Route 62. Way out in the country,” he said, waving vaguely in
a northeasterly direction, where thick, oily black smoke, eager scarlet and yellow tongues of fire shooting
up through it, was pouring upward into the sky. “First, early this morning, I don’t recollect just how early,
it was maybe around dawn, or a little after, all of a sudden this stuff started falling down outta the sky. See,
we’d just had this earthquake, really strange thing, because we don’t generally get quakes around here. We
just don’t. But this’n . . . it was bad. Must’ve been worse’n the one my sis went through back in ’90 – she
lives in the Bay Area, you know. She was comin’ home from work when it hit, if she’d gone her usual
route, she’ld’ve been crushed under one o’ them falling bridges on I-880, where so many people got killed,
but she had an appointment with this beauty parlor over in Hayward, she goes there all the time even
though it’s so far out of her way because she loves the service, you see, anyway, she didn’t go her usual
route home, and that saved her life. But it was terrible what happened to San Francisco . . . terrible . . .” he
said, shaking his head, casting his eyes down.
“Sir, I know, sir. But you were saying about your own place –”
“Oh, uh, yeah . . . I forgot. Uh . . . you’ll have to excuse me, Ma’am, it’s been the Morning from Hell,
it really has.” Gamely, McGavin tried to chuckle, but it came out as a croak.
“I’m so sorry, sir . . . You were saying about the earthquake you went through this morning?”
“Oh, yeah, I was . . . Well, Molly – my wife – and I were in the kitchen (we get up about 4 a.m., you
know, had a lot of chores to get done in the morning, and we’d already been up about half an hour, I think),
and I was about to go out and tend to the goats, get some eggs for breakfast, you know, and suddenly it was
like the world was comin’ apart!” he said, his Arkansas accent becoming more and more pronounced as he
got farther into his story and the stress stripped away the patina of years of living on the West Coast from
his voice. “There was this roarin’ and rollin’ all around, everything shakin’ and rollin’, and things started
fallin’ off the shelves, windows broke, plaster came down from the ceiling, it was – Christ, it was like the
end of the world, it really was, that’s the only thing I can think of. They told us later, in the chopper on the
way here, that something had happened up in Washington State that had caused that quake we had this
mornin’. They said the one we felt was about a 7.6, which is real bad, I understand. Maybe more. They
said if we’d lived farther north, it’d’ve been even worse – somebody was sayin’ they’d had over a nine-
pointer up that way, but I, I just cain’t imagine such a thing, the one in 1989 in Frisco my sis was in was
over 7, and that was enough to bring down I-880! And the one we were this mornin’ – I hope to God I
never go through anything like that again! And like I say, they told us it was about 7.6.
“Anyway, I made sure Molly was all right – she’d jumped into the doorway, like my sister always told
us to do, and I’d gotten into a corner, and we were both rode it out in good shape. Then one of the cats
came screamin’ out of the bedroom, so scared her poor little tail was all fluffed up like a bottle-brush, and
the dogs started howlin’ outside, and in the barn I could here Jessie and Pete, that’s our horses, and Dustin,
our mule, beginnin’ to neigh and all. You could hear the goats and chickens and all them, too, cryin’ and
yellin’, all scared. I don’t blame ’em, poor things . . .” His eyes started to sheen with tears again; with an
effort he stifled it, and went on. “Well, Molly and I ran outside to see if the animals were all right. The
fence was down and the goats had got out and were running around like mad things, bleatin’ and bleatin’,
and the chickens were in an uproar, squawkin’ an’ flappin’ their wings an’ runnin’ around in circles all over
their coop, though they hadn’t got out. Part of the barn had collapsed, but fortunately it was at the other
end from the horses and the mule. I – I made sure the animals in the barn were all right, and then I to check
the dogs. One of them was dead – she’d been killed when a tree came down on her. – I mean, that’s how
bad that quake was, it actually toppled full-grown, healthy trees, trees with roots halfway down to China,
not a thing wrong with ’em!” The expression on his face was one of mingled awe and horror; it reminded
me a little of those worn by some of the damned sinners in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.
“Then I began to notice that big chunks of . . . stuff were beginnin’ to fall from the sky. Stuff that
burned, all red-hot, even white-hot. I didn’t know it then, but apparently that was what they called lava-
bombs, stuff thrown out by whatever happened up there in Washington. That, and burnin’ . . . things that
had gone up with the lava-bombs, come down here with them. There wasn’t much, at first, a rock or
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whatever here or there, but after about half an hour, it was practic’ly rainin’ the stuff on us all around. And
that stuff was hot, not just ordinary burnin’ wood or whatever, but red-hot rock! Sure enough, it wasn’t
long until we could see fires startin’ up all around us, in all directions.
“It was beginnin’ to look real bad by about an hour after the quake. We’d managed to call in the dogs
– all that were still alive, poor Ninja was the one killed by that tree, but the other five seemed to be fine –
and rounded up the cats, all three were okay, we put them in our bedroom and closed the door, so we could
round ’em up and put ’em in a Kennel Cab to take out. We were gettin’ ready to load up the truck with our
stuff, head out on Route 62, when we heard this helicopter comin’ down. It was the police, with some
Army guys aboard, they’d come to get us out. We told ’em we were gonna take the truck, but they told us
‘No time! No time!’ They made us leave all the animals, told us we could only take what we could grab in
two minutes. They said the animals’d be fine, they’d come back for them later. Yeah, right.
“If it hadn’t been for Molly, I wouldn’t’ve gone with them. But they said the fires were about five
minutes away, nothin’ could stop them, it was burnin’ all the way from Jackson, near where we was, to
Jordan Valley, over by the eastern border of the state, and from as far south as Klamath Falls to maybe all
the way up to the Columbia, at least in places, and those fires were all around us and movin’ fast. I made
sure my lady was on board that chopper, and then she raised so much of a fuss at the idea I wasn’t comin’,
started to jump back out again, I had to go with ’em, or she’ld’ve stayed . . . and died.
“We wasn’t . . . weren’t no more’n about thirty seconds off the ground when I looked out the chopper
window and saw the fires to the north of us sweepin’ right down on our place . . . It wasn’t too dry, we’d
had a lot of snow and rain this past Winter, and it wasn’t like, say, August, when all you have to do is say
fire and everythin’ goes up in smoke, you know? But there was so much hot crap comin’ down outta the
sky, so hot, red-hot rock, white-hot rock in places, and it was hittin’ everythin’, barns, houses, ever’thin’
that could burn – it was hittin’ cars and trucks, and they were goin’ up in flames, God, it was like nothin’
I’d ever seen before in all my life, like somethin’ outta that book by that Italian fella, Dante . . .
“Then we were goin’ over to the Young’s place. They’re our neighbors – they were our neighbors, I
gotta say. Because not only was their place all on fire, but the worst part was . . . I could see Fred and
Bobby, that is, Mr. and Mrs. Young, both outside, tryin’ to get to their own animals, tryin’ to save ’em, I
guess, an’ suddenly this hellacious big mother of a rock came down outta the sky, missed us in the chopper
by about a foot, I swear to God, and down it went onto the Young’s place, where it hit Mr. Young, smashed
him flat. He couldn’t’ve had any idea what killed him, thing must’ve weighed about a ton, maybe ten tons,
fell right on him. You couldn’t even see arms or legs stickin’ out.
“All the while we watched that, the chopper pilot was sort of hoverin’, goin’ in little circles around and
around, hopin’ to be able to land and take them out with us, too. But then a rain of really hot little chunks
of stuff, so hot you could see it glowin’ in broad daylight, that hot, began rainin’ down on the Young’s barn
just as Mrs. Young hit the barn door, pullin’ it back to get to the horses. They had horses . . . And then . . .
and then the barn just . . . went up . . . I don’t know what they’d roofed it with, or what the walls had been
painted or treated with, but suddenly the barn was goin’ up like a torch. Bobby dashed inta the barn – and I
saw the horses, there were three of them, this devil-mare they had, meanest horse I’ve ever met, part
racehorse and part wolverine, I swear, and her colt, and this other horse they were boardin’ for someone . . .
I saw the horses comin’ outta that barn. But not Mrs. Young. The chopper pilot took it down as close as he
dared to that barn, hopin’ we could signal to her – but then she did come runnin’ outta that barn, the barn
was all on fire at that point, goin’ up like a torch, and she . . and she . . . she was like a torch herself. She
was burnin’ all over, and screamin’, we could hear her over the fire, over the chopper, she was screamin’ so
loud, fair to broke my heart hearin’ her, and then . . . and then another rock came down, not as big as the
one did for Fred, just knocked her sideways. She fell down, and then . . . it kept rollin’, rolled right onto
her . . . and it was red-hot . . . and she . . . she couldn’t have lived through that, no way anyone could’ve,
burned and crushed like that . . .
“The strangest thing, though . . .”
“ What, sir?”
“Like I said . . . the horses had got outta the barn, ahead of Mrs. Young. Well, we could see ’em
runnin’ along the main drive that led away from the house and barn to Highway 62. That mare was leadin’
the other two. Suddenly, she stopped, turned around, and went back over to the pen where the Youngs had
kept their goats. She started rearin’ and comin’ down with her hooves against the fence. Next thing, the
goats were loose, and she turned around and started runnin’ up the drive to where the other two horses were
waitin’. Strangest thing – horses hate fire, they panic worse’n anythin’ when there’s fire around. But those
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other two horses waited for her to come back – and she’d had to run back toward the worst of the fire to get
the goats out. And why the goats? Never saw a horse that cared too much for ’em. But she . . . that mare
deliberately turned back to rescue those goats! She didn’t spare a minute to grieve over Mrs. Young,
who’d loved her like a baby – which was just like that mare. But the goats – what had they ever done for
her?! It was almost . . . almost as if she knew Bobby was gone, that Bobby had loved them goats, too, so
instead of wastin’ time grievin’ over Bobby, she was gonna do her best to rescue whatever Bobby had
loved. Which wasn’t like that mare, come to think of it – but you’d figure, when any other horse would’ve
gone stark mad in that fire, panicked and bolted and maybe died about a minute later from runnin’ back
into the fire, that horse kept her head and did the one decent thing I ever heard about her . . .,” he said,
wearing an odd smile, mingled fond amusement and heart-wrenching grief. Sniffing back more tears, he
went on: “At that point, the pilot took us back up – we’d told him the Youngs were all by themselves on
that ranch of theirs, nobody but them and their animals, never had no kids, so there wasn’t nobody left to
rescue there, nobody human, anyways.” Stopping to wipe tears from his eyes, which had begun to flow in
a river down his cheeks, he added, “And as we climbed back up into the sky, dodgin’ those damned lava-
bombs and all the junk that was fallin’ around with ’em – I gotta give that pilot credit, he’s one brave so-
and-so, but he had to’ve been stark, starin’ mad or stoned on his ever-lovin’ . . . butt, takin’ such chances
instead of just gettin’ the hell outta there to safety – I looked down one last time, and I saw all three of them
horses, with the goats runnin’ along beside ’em, headed up the drive, dodgin’ burning branches and all the
other stuff the wind was tossin’ around, headin’ for the one place that might allow them to escape safely,
the road. She actually did it. She got the other two horses and the goats all goin’ the same way, keepin’
their heads and not panickin’, instead of flyin’ all to pieces and runnin’ in circles, the way they usually will
in a fire! That horse may’ve been a devil most of the time, but right then, she was one blessed angel, she
truly was.. . .”
Then the tears overwhelmed him at last. Turning away from the camera, putting his face in his hands,
hunching down in his grief, he began to weep, horrible wracking sobs sweeping over him, convulsing him.
For a moment, it looked like Black was about to go to him, put an arm around him, try to comfort him. At
last, though, all he did was say, “I’m so sorry, Mr. McGavin . . . I wish I could tell you how sorry I am . . .”
And then a man in uniform, probably a paramedic, came to lead Mr. McGavin away, saying, “There,
there, sir, there, there, let’s get you inside there in the motel, get you some food and a bath . . .” Black
watched the two of them until they entered the door into the motel’s main lounge. Then, turning back to
the camera, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, from what Mr. McGavin has just told us, and from earlier
reports both from our news service and the police officers, fire-fighters, and paramedics who have come in
here from rescue operations all over southern and eastern Oregon, it looks as if there will be tremendous
loss of both life and property all over the state as a result of the monstrous fires now burning out of control
here.
“We have heard that in many areas of Oregon, the rain of burning hot rock and rubble from the
volcanic explosions north of us, in Washington State, early this morning haven’t been very severe. Due to
the vagaries of the wind and of the initial explosions themselves, some area of Oregon, Idaho, and Montana
have been heavily inundated with lava-bombs and burning material, while other areas have been lightly hit,
or not at all. As Mr. McGavin just told us, the Winter here this year was exceptionally wet, with a lot of
snow and rain, and the ground, trees, and brush throughout the state are mostly still saturated with water.
So wherever the fallout from the volcanoes has been light, there has been little danger of fire. But in other
areas . . . I’m afraid the fires in the hardest-hit areas will burn out large portions of the state, especially in
heavily forested areas or where there is a lot of brush and grass.
“In fact, according to a report that came in a little while ago, fires are now raging, out of control,
through the city of Salem, the capitol of Oregon. Several square blocks of the residential areas are in
flames, with little or no hope of putting out the fires there within the next twenty-four hours. Hundreds of
homeowners in Salem have already lost everything they own, and thousands more may suffer the same
fate. Fifteen deaths due to the fires in Salem have already been reported, just as reports of hundreds more
have been coming in from other areas all over Oregon during the last hour or so. As you can see, to the
north and east of where I am standing” – he gestured in that direction – “northeast of here smoke covers the
sky so densely that visibility is now down to about five miles or less. There are also a few fires that have
started up southwest of us, as well, but apparently, due to the wind and the terrain, those fires are not likely
to get out of control. One fortunate thing is that the fallout from the volcanoes stopped some time ago, and
so whatever fires are started here now will only be started by other fires, or as a result of accident or,
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perhaps, arson. (Though disasters of this sort seem to bring out the best in many people, it appears they
also bring out the worst in others, including pyromaniacs, who set fires for the pleasure of it, and those who
set fires to cover up the evidence of crime or to cash in illegitimately on property insurance.)
“Here in Medford, however, because of good fortune in the form of prevailing winds and a lack of
heavy brush, apparently we’re quite safe, at least for the time being. That’s why those who have been
rescued from the fires by police and the US Army are being brought here and to a few other relatively safe
havens, to be cared for until the fires are out and they can go home, or go to see what has happened to their
homes . . .” He looked a little sick, his journalistic objectivity having been shot to shit by what Mr.
McGavin had told him.
“Since not too much is happening here at this time, we’ll turn you back to our main newsdesk in Los
Angeles. Uh, George?”