Scorched Earth Tactics

I wake very suddenly with a heaving cough, chest tight and throat raw from the air heavy with smoke and ash. I don’t know how long I was unconscious, but I slowly become aware that I am lying on a scorched bed of grass and cracked mud, inches from the murky shallows of the tiny lake (really more of a pond) that is my Town’s only water source. Was my Town’s only water source.

The Town had a proper name once, a name that you could find and point to on a map. We gave up using it after a massive earthquake, severe drought, and hungry fire tore through the land, destroying other towns with names and leaving ours barely alive. Maybe holding onto the name would have helped us preserve a sense of normalcy, but we would have been kidding ourselves. Names make it too easy to get attached, and attachment is dangerous in a world ravaged by cataclysmic events. Plus, “Town” is simpler, and those of us left needed to embrace simplicity in order to survive. A lot of good it did us, in the end.

My head rings and most of my immediate memories feel wreathed in smoke, but a few remain quite clear.

Running down the main road, clasping hands with my partner and older sister for dear life as fire chases and surrounds us.

My sister’s young son and daughter hanging on for the ride, one in my sister’s arm and the other on my back.

Buildings on all sides sheathed in flames and black smoke, and the red blazes rocketing into the sky when the central fuel tank exploded like a firework.

Ash raining down like snow.

The Town is gone now, swallowed by the inferno that none of us saw coming until it was too late.

I know the loss in my gut as I painfully heave myself to a sitting position and squint at my surroundings through the haze of smoke. Heat hangs in an oppressive dome over everything, and ash and debris form such a thick layer over the lake that I can hardly see the water. The gnarled pines that grew here are blackened and naked, reaching for the orange sky like charred hands.

It dawns on me that since I am at the lake, I must have made it the several miles from Town to get here. How did I get here? And why am I alone? Where is my family?

I wrack my brain for details. For my whole life, the continent has spiraled steadily into chaos as one crisis strikes after another. Floods, storms, and fires came in such relentless succession that there was no recovery in between, and governments and infrastructure crumbled to dust when I was very young. Sickness raged for years, wiping out whole communities. My sister and I once lived far away, near the ocean on the East side. Our parents died in one of the first Great Storms, but we always stayed together. When we could no longer escape the eastern flooding, we journeyed west over years, going from town to town and disaster to disaster. Along the way, my sister found her partner, had his children, and we became a larger family. He died somewhere in the middle of the continent, in yet another fire. I found my partner soon after, in a desert town where we all lived in cave houses underground. That was probably the happiest I have ever been, holding my partner close in the cool hollow of the earth and walking with her under the glittering cathedral of desert stars. We left that town when the heat became too unbearable and food too scarce, and then we started fresh in the Town that just burned behind me.

My chest and stomach seize with panic for my family. They can’t be gone, they just can’t. Not after everything we have been through.

Slowly rising to my feet, I ignore the agony wracking my body and begin walking slowly from the lake, in the direction that I hope will take me to the road. I pray it’s still there.

My brain is stubborn as I continue to press for memories of the fire; I relive the same flashes of running through the burning Town until I remember that we were running to something. We were running to our old stolen truck that was parked just outside of Town, and we made it. Then we were driving as fast as we could, the car baking like a furnace as flames swirled in columns along the road.

And then…. it’s all coming to me now. I saw a man at the roadside, crawling and choking. Before I could think better of it, I jumped out of the truck to bring him to safety. No sooner had I grabbed his shoulder than a burning pine fell toward us, feeding the inferno and killing the man instantly when it crushed him. I barely had time to jump aside and run from the raging flames, away from the truck and my family.

Tearing through the blazing trees with my skin blistering and lungs screaming, I had just accepted my imminent death when I splashed into the lake shallows. I tore off my shirt, dunked it in the water, and slapped it over my mouth and nose.

That’s just about the last I can remember; I must have collapsed on the bank after hunching in the water for however long. I must have also lost my shirt to the lake, for I’m wearing only my tattered sport bra on my top half.

Step by shaky step, I walk for some time away from the lake and try to think of ways my family could still be alive. The most comforting thing to remember is that they had the truck. If they kept driving after the tree fell, they could have made it out. I just have to get back to the road and see if I can find them.

The melted sole of my boot suddenly crunches on something metallic, breaking my reverie. Holding a burned tree trunk for support, I bend to see a faint shine amidst the ash and charcoal blanketing the ground. On closer look, it’s a small heart-shaped locket, probably bronze, with an intricate flower engraved on it. Carefully, I lift it from the ground by its still-intact chain.

“That’s mine.”

I jump.

The newcomer came so quietly that I didn’t hear her. Peering at her with my hand shielding my eyes from the sun, I have the impression of a goddess rising from the ashes. Her clothes are strange - some kind of tan uniform - and as tattered and singed as mine, but that doesn’t take from the regal beauty of her tall figure, golden brown skin, and dark eyes. A mane of thick black curls frames her face like a halo.

“I’m sorry,” I rasp, my voice emerging with difficulty after so much disuse and smoke. “I only just found it. You take it.” I hold out the locket to her.

Looking at me appraisingly, the woman comes closer and takes it from me, much more gently than I was expecting.

“Thank you for finding it,” she says. “I was afraid I had lost it for good. Where did you come from?”

I watch as she slips the locket into one of her vest's deep pockets.

“I woke up next to the lake,” I say, pointing back in what I figure to be the right direction. “Now I am looking for the main road. My family was there, in our truck, and I’m hoping to find them.”

The woman nods. “I believe you are near the road. I'm headed there too. I was a ranger at the lake with a couple other folks. Our base is gone, so I was going to follow the road and see if I could make it to an outpost a ways north.”

It goes unspoken between us that her ranger companions are gone too. We fall into step together, slowly continuing to move away from the lake. I can’t tell whether hours or minutes have passed when we finally come to the old asphalt road, riddled with cracks but miraculously still there. My heart stutters; the road is empty for the miles visible in both directions. The woman and I share a quick glance, and she pulls a strange round object from another of her pockets and studies it.

“What is that?” I ask, curious in spite of myself.

“A compass.” She holds it toward me, letting me gaze at the strange markings and spinning arrow at the center. “They gave them to the rangers, though they are very hard to find nowadays. I’m using it to check the direction away from Town, north.”

I nod and follow her as she tucks the compass away and starts down the road toward a great expanse of rocky plains and burned shrubs. We walk in silence for a while. Periodically, I glance at her, wondering her story. I know better than to ask details - I only have room in my heart for my partner, sister, niece, and nephew - but the compass piqued my curiosity, and I need a distraction from worrying about my family. There has been no sign of them, but I don’t dare feel hope yet.

“Where are you from, before the lake?”

“I lived for a long time on an island. I’m an ecologist by trade.” She sees my questioning look. “A scientist who studies relationships between living and nonliving things. I left the island when it flooded beyond habitability.”

“You can do that kind of work now, studying nature?” I ask, trying to imagine such a thing in the parched, burned, and flooded places I have always known.

“There isn’t much point anymore,” she says, tone withdrawn. “I have been a ranger in several places since I left the island, but I think the lake position will be the last.”

I nod, understanding. Still, we have not bothered to share our names with one another. We both know that there isn’t much point in that either.

Hours later, I am trying not to think about the hard lump of dread in my chest, or about how bone-tired and sore I am, when the woman surprises me. “My husband gave me the locket,” she says. “It’s the last thing I have of him.”

I say nothing, though I consider responding. I could tell her about my partner, how I already miss her so much that it hurts. I could tell her about my sister, all of our near scrapes with death, or the days when my niece and nephew were born. It would just be too painful to talk about these things. I let the silence stretch out between us as we walk through the heat of the day. Sunset is approaching when we reach a rickety wooden building with a chainlink fence. A thin old man with a face resembling that of an ancient tortoise sits on the stoop.

“Coming from the fire?” He calls out.

We approach, nodding.

“Have you seen any other survivors?” I try to control the rapid drum of my heartbeat.

“Quite a few folks, all headed down the road to a place with a lake - Oasis they call it.”

“Have you sold fuel to any people with children?” I can hardly keep my voice steady.

“Yep, several families.”

Relief blossoms at my core, flooding me with hope as the man tells us that the Oasis is only a day or two away walking.

Heading on our way minutes later, I extend my hand to my companion and tell her my name. She gives her name in return and shakes my hand, hope shining in her black eyes.

Introduced, we continue down the road, into the glowing light of the sunset.