When Gods Fail Read online

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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 practica
l 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.