A Multi Leveled Planet

CHAPTER FIVE

THE MULTI-LEVELED PLANET (working title only)

CHAPTER FIVE

The Walters’ home was no longer the happy place it once was. Now it was more often darker, dimmer, with the Venetian blinds and drapes pulled across the windows. Leon found himself going from room to room pulling drapes and opening blinds. Martha, beside herself, was sunk too deep into depression to notice.

It was almost a week since the sheriff had pulled up to tell them that, though they had spent two days scouring the cave, after having spent a full day widening the small opening into the second, true cavern, they hadn’t found the kids.

The cavern hadn’t really been traceable, since the limestone floor left no imprints. The kids just weren’t there! Except for the first small dirt cave where their tracks were all over the place, there was just no sign of them.

He informed Leon and Martha that he had put out ‘All Points Bulletins’ all over the place and until something turned up, they’d done all they could. From that point on Martha had gone downhill.

•          * *

Leon entered the kitchen to find his wife sitting at the small breakfast table, a cold cup of coffee, forgotten, going around and around as she absent mindedly twirled it with her forefinger.

“Honey,” he sat next to her on one of the wooden chairs. “We’ve got to get to packing, you know? We’ll close the house up real tight and hope we can come back soon, but we’ve got to go, and soon!”

“I know,” she sniffled, wiping her eyes and nose with a well used kerchief, one of his. “But what if Jason should find his way back and we are gone and the house is closed up tight?”

“He will know what has happened. Everyone knows, and he will too. We can’t stay here any longer to wait for him, Martha. That damned ‘Super-volcano’ is still erupting and from the latest news the worst is yet to come. Ash is already reaching our border and when the wind turns right, it will hit us here, too.”

“I know, John, I know,” she wailed with a fresh spat of tears. “But I just hate to leave right now. I know he is alive, I just know it!”

“Then we will just have to see him when we get back, hon. Right now we just have to leave.”

“And fast, Dad,” Josh stepped into the kitchen. “The local news reports the ash is coming closer and closer to us. The weather is all messed up, too. They say the smoke is going around the world, carried by the winds, and it could even bring on a new Ice Age!"

“Oh quit listening to that stuff, Josh!” Martha was close to yelling, something she had never done with her kids, as her frustration heaped to overflowing. “We don’t need any more things to worry about.”

“I was just…”

“Go on, Son,” Leon urged his boy, “just get the rest of your stuff that you absolutely have to have packed and ready to go. Then I’ll sweep through the house to gather the most likely needed items. I think I’ve got most of our stuff; your mother’s and mine, already packed in the trailer. The van is as full as I’m going to let it be. We have to have some room to move around while traveling.”

“You’ve already packed us up?” Martha looked into her husband’s face, her own eyes brimming with more tears. “I guess that’s it, then. You’d think the government would have let us know a little sooner that... that… super volcano… that Yellowstone, was getting ready to erupt. They must have seen the signs, they must have! If we’d of known… Jason would still be here!” Finished, her shoulders started heaving with silent sobs.

Just then a now familiar shaking made them all grab on to something. Earthquakes had become an almost daily event now, not that any of them were really violent here in Arizona, but they were there. Without warning, a sudden distant BOOM sounded. It was far away, and yet somehow they heard it loud and clear.

Leon felt the ground shift a little more than usual, and yet he knew it was coming from a long way off. He remembered the stories he'd heard of Krakatoa and the 'bang sounded around the world' as it blew itself apart in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

“Dad, what was that?”

“I imagine it’s Yellowstone blowing its top, son.”

“We’ve got to go, Dad, now!”

“I doubt we’ll get any of the hot stuff rolling this far, we’ve still got a little time, but not much.”

Sniffing, Martha pushed herself up, straightened her shoulders, wiped at her eyes and nose one more time then firmly stuck the used kerchief into her apron’s pocket.

Just looking at her Leon knew this was the end of the last week of her crying jag. Martha hadn’t cried more times than the fingers of one hand, in all their years together. Once, at the miscarriage of their first child, a year after their marriage, twice at the deaths of first her mother, then her father, once when their only daughter, Lucy, was accidentally run over when she was two and died a day and a half later, and now, since Jason had gone missing.

•          * *

Two days later they found themselves deep into Old Mexico. It had taken them nearly a whole day to wait their turn to cross the International Border, so many American citizens were flooding southward, away from the ravages of Yellowstone.

He glanced over at Martha, seeing her asleep with her head resting on the open passenger window. He turned his attention on his remaining child, Josh, who was quickly leaving his childhood behind. Like his mother, Josh was also sleeping. Then he searched his rearview mirror, yep, the dog was sleeping too. He could see the Sheltie’s one lop-sided ear close to the seat cover, and the tip of the dog’s nose.

Going south until they finally reached and crossed the border into the nation of Mexico, no one had slept. Now at least, the others’ were catching up a little. He yawned, fighting sleep himself. It was about time to find a place to stop, but so far, anything resembling a hotel or motel, or even a camping spot off the road was filled with other refugees from his country. There were thousands of them sharing the same roads with them, causing them to travel at a snail's pace.

Turning for higher country he continued until he found a rutted trail leading straight to a pinon covered hillside. Somewhere he had to find a safe place to pull over for a few hours. He was becoming more and more dangerously 'rummy' from lack of sleep. He didn't want to kill them all in their race for survival just because his body refused to go any further without rest.

“Where’re we going?” Martha stirred awake at a particularly rough rut the car slipped into.

“Somewhere we can rest and catch a few zees, Martha. I’ve gone about as far as I can today. With some hot food in us, and a good night’s sleep, we’ll feel like new again, or as close to it as humanly possible.”

“Sounds good to me,” she yawned wide before sitting up a little more alertly in her seat.

“Me too,” Josh said through his own wide yawn, Leon could hear the dog’s whiny yawn as well. “Especially the bit about some hot food.”

Leon chuckled, “I guess no matter what, that stomach of yours keeps reminding you to stuff something into it.”

In the rearview mirror he could see Josh’s grin. The pup must have approved, too, because a warm moist breath began to huff beside his right ear.

“Down!” Josh ordered, pulling the pet down to his side. “You behave now, okay?” For an answer he got a whine and a wet lick across his face. “Yuck, stop it Sam, your breath smells rotten!”

“He needs his teeth brushed,” Martha commented. “Doc Allen said at his last teeth cleaning appointment to brush his teeth, remember? I told you that. Haven’t you been doing it lately?”

“Uhh… guess I forgot to.”

“Well, that’s why his breath smells rotten,” Martha sniffed. Then she pointed to a dark green bunch of pines well off the rutted road. “There, Leon, I’ll bet that’s a perfect place. We can even hide the car in the trees so that no one, if they ever come this way, will see it or us.”

Leon was swinging the car off the dusty, rut ridden path, headed for the trees pointed out before she’d even finished speaking.

An hour later they were eating their first hot meal since leaving the United States proper. Each was sitting on a not-too-rotted pine log, balancing a full paper dish piled with fried potatoes, eggs, a thick slice of still fairly fresh ham, and a small roll. Before Leon had taken the last bite of his scraped-clean plate, he caught himself from falling backward with exhaustion. Ten minutes later he was on top of his sleeping bag, snoring.

“C’mon, Josh,” Martha urged her son, “let’s straighten up the van a little. I think I’ll sleep inside the car, where do you want to sleep?”

“I’ll do what Dad is doing; sleep on my sleeping bag on the ground. It is too hot for me to sleep in the car.”

“Probably a good idea, but I’d stay awake worrying about snakes and bugs. I’ll just have to put up with the heat, it’s cooling now anyway, did you notice?”

She looked around, “Yes, it is, and I see the afternoon is almost gone.”

Unnoticed, the sun had slid to the west and a cooling breeze seemed to spring up all at once. She turned to look northeast, where she figured ‘home’ was and had to hide the catch in her breath. Dark clouds hunkered over the distant north, testifying to the ash that was now falling over her nation. Would it reach this far south, she wondered?

The southern skies still showed a dark, late in the afternoon blue sky. So far there was no sign that disaster lay to the north. She heaved a sigh before turning to get busy for the night ahead.

•          * *

Leon stirred well before dawn. He could hear what passed for crickets in this part of the world. The eastern horizon had the tiniest bit of gray showing the sun was still going to be up there, looking down on its wounded planet. The stars were still there too, he noted, his eyes seeing the old familiar points of light still  waiting for mankind to figure out how to travel between them.

A sudden gleam of light near the ground caught his attention, a car was slowly making its way in the direction they'd come from the afternoon before. He glanced at their campfire, it was barely discernible even to him, much less any passersby.

They had found a near perfect spot to stop. Completely surrounded pinon pines, only the flicker of the distant car’s headlights could be seen. Then he frowned as he noticed the car’s sudden stop, something was going on. Quietly he got up and, keeping hid behind the short, bushy trees, he frowned even deeper as he watched.

With his view now un-impeded by the flora, he could see that someone was getting back into the front passenger seat. A moment later the car, he could see even in the darkness that the automobile had an old silhouette to it, was being pulled off the road, heading toward the campsite. They were about to have visitors, welcome or not.