Barren Sky, page 20
Shiva had been right. They would never have found the journal, not even with a thousand warriors searching.
Dia had to climb over two blocks of rubble and down a flight of dark steps into what had once been a parking garage. Whatever had happened in the city or from the earthquakes since was a mystery, but the concrete structure had collapsed into thin layers of rotting cement and mortar. Several cars had been crushed or cut in half—the trunks compacted beneath tons of rubble while the front ends stared at her like dead dragons. She’d stashed the journal in the glove compartment of a Honda Civic, tucking it between an owner’s manual and a handful of napkins. After a moment of hesitation, thinking for some reason that it wouldn’t be there, Dia climbed into the car. She opened the box and there sat the journal, exactly as she had left it. She tucked the water filtration plant schematics into her sack along with Mel’s flight plan and headed north through the ruins to what the crazy pilot had called the hangar.
Dia spent the rest of the morning reading through the plan, examining the sketches and diagrams which explained how to get the craft off the ground and then how to navigate it once the balloon had been grabbed by the jet stream. On paper, it made sense, but Dia giggled at the idea. She was going to attempt to fly in a basket tied to a balloon, across the continent and back home to Erehwon, where she would deliver salvation to the settlement in the form of water filtration technology. The girl. The water whisperer. But she felt like more than that now. She was Hado. She was Katy. She was Lane, and Willie, and Quinn, and Mel. For the first time in her life, she felt like a person instead of a tool or a pawn in someone else’s game.
The craft hadn’t been difficult to find once she’d found the part of the city where Mel had lived. She couldn’t understand how he could have hidden it in plain view, why Los Muertos or the River Rangers hadn’t seized it or burned the thing to the ground as people were apt to do when faced with something they didn’t understand. But the basket and balloon were there, in the open and waiting for a pilot to raise them into the sky.
It took a few hours for her to load the food, water, and supplies Mel had stockpiled. He hadn’t had enough water for the trip, which was why he’d double-crossed her, but Dia was half his size, and what he had ready would be enough for her if she stretched it—and if nothing went wrong. But she couldn’t consider that possibility, because it was much more likely things would go wrong. Very wrong. Dia focused on Mel’s flight plan and not on what would probably happen, which would be the balloon crashing to the earth and killing her in the process.
The fuel tanks worked, and she had no problem lighting it. The balloon inflated, and the basket came off the ground several inches until the moorings tightened. There was nothing left to do now but leave.
She reached over to cut the ropes with her knife and the basket floated up into the sky. At first, Dia felt it sway and her stomach dropped into her feet. She clutched the sides and closed her eyes.
Dia checked the flight plan, and steered the craft over several buildings, gaining altitude until she was several hundred feet in the air and looking down at the San Francisco Bay in a way she could never have imagined. The clouds floated across the top of the Golden Gate Bridge and the deep blue Pacific cut a line in the distant, western horizon. The afternoon sun glinted off the steel and remaining glass of the ruins, and Dia could see the urban sprawl that went for miles in every direction. Her mind struggled to comprehend how many people had lived—and died—below her. Millions. She couldn’t fathom that.
The balloon continued up and she felt the wind current pulling it to the east, just as Mel had said it would. Days. That’s how long it would take for her to get back to Ohio if she could stay afloat and if the jet stream cooperated. According to the flight plan, Dia could end up hundreds of miles north or south of Erehwon, in which case it would be weeks or months until she could get there, even if she could land the craft.
But all that concern faded as she rose higher into the sky and the air cooled. Dia passed over Oakland and then looked to the east, to where the high desert crept up to the edge of what was left of civilization. She turned one last time, saying her final goodbyes to the memory of all those she’d lost on the journey. Dia smiled and silently thanked Lane, Willie, Quinn, Snowball—even Mel. The River Rangers and Los Muertos had been eradicated by Shiva, but Dia would bring their spirit with her back to Erehwon and make it part of the new Venganza.
Finally, it was time to go home.
Chapter 45
The night pushed at her back while the rising sun pulled her forward. Dia opened her eyes and lifted her head, rising to her knees and peering over the basket’s railing to see the expansive water stretched out below—a sparkling surface of broken glass.
“Fuel.”
She’d said the same word every morning since lift-off from San Francisco days before, knowing she had to check the tank without saying anything, but feeling the need to hear words spoken by someone.
The journey through the clouds had been a blur, the days and nights mixing into a synergistic stew of shock and awe. Through the snow, rain, chilling temperatures, and a pesky flock of Canadian geese, Dia had realized she never wanted to be in a balloon again after this. Not that she could ever imagine the opportunity arising, but if it did, she’d be quick to shoot it down.
The time spent in high-altitude solitude had made her question what she really wanted, forcing her to think about everything—not just the most recent conflict ending with Shiva’s drowning, but all of it. Dia shivered, wanting nothing more than to curl up by the fire with Decker, another one of the spirits whispering to her from beyond death.
She blinked and wiped the frost from her forehead. Dia had seen stretches of water below before and had almost landed the balloon in one several days back, but when she’d done the calculations as Mel had explained in the flight journal, she realized it wasn’t Lake Erie. But today she was flying over the western basin of a Great Lake, and knew that the Cleveland ruins sat on the southern shore. Her home, Erehwon.
Dia had thought about living alone in the ruins since chasing the deer to the foot of the bridge leading to Treasure Island. She realized that, throughout her time in California, her ultimate, unspoken goal had been to come home and save the women she cared about most. And now, with Shiva gone, maybe they’d have a chance to rebuild their society; those smarter than her could build a filtration plant. If Willie and Snowball had been able to do so on the island, the Venganza of Erehwon would be able to do it on the shores of Erie.
The wind whistled by her ear and blew her greasy hair into her face until strands stuck on her cheeks. She had to use the waste bucket in the corner of the basket, but decided she’d wait and do her business in the woods. After she landed.
The pages of the journal flapped, reminding Dia to double-check the calculations and prepare the landing sequence. For such a silently majestic mode of transportation, piloting the balloon was surprisingly simple. Heat the air to rise; cool it to fall. She just had to be careful and juice the fire to keep the balloon from falling too fast, just as Mel had written in the journal. She smiled, wondering if he’d somehow known he wouldn’t be on the flight, leaving the instructions as a final gift to the girl he’d felt guilty about betraying. Or maybe he’d been obsessed with details and written them down for his own enjoyment. Either situation was possible, and neither mattered. Dia had one task left from the flight journal, and that was to land this damn balloon.
As if on cue, she saw the silhouette of the Cleveland ruins, as if illuminated by the rising sun. The steel and glass sparkled like the lake and she was struck with a sense of wonder about what it must have been like when those buildings had been full of people.
The balloon approached from the southwest and the current took the basket along the southern shore and right for the ruins. Mel hadn’t had a destination, and therefore had not written any notes about a landing site, but common sense dictated that Dia would need to find an open space.
Edgewater State Park.
The name popped into her head, a rusted sign from a faded memory. The land and break wall jutting out into Erie had once been a park, and although some of the trees had grown back since the world had ended, Edgewater provided a huge field in which to set down the balloon.
With numb hands and tears streaming down her face, Dia eased off the tank until the basket scraped the ground on three consecutive skims across the field. She closed the valve on the fuel tank and cut the ropes, letting the balloon drift a few hundred yards before it collapsed into the tall grass. The basket rocked up onto one side and, for a split second, Dia thought it might roll over. But it dropped back down, resting in the middle of the field. The early birds began to chirp while competing with the locusts and crickets who thrived in the grass.
“I did it.”
Dia stumbled from the basket on shaky legs. She squatted behind a tree before following a deer trail to the water’s edge. She looked out upon the lake, seeing the shape of the Lake Erie Islands sticking up like the humpbacks of gigantic beasts.
She giggled and wiped the snot from her nose. “Like a bird. All the way from the California territory.”
With the flight plan and filtration schematics tucked firmly into her backpack, Dia walked down the beach and to the water. She scanned the ruins and wondered if anyone in Erehwon had seen her balloon approach, doubting their own eyesight and not believing it possible.
The water chilled her feet as it ran over her boots. Dia reached down and scooped up some water, rinsing her face. And there, in the pebbles pushed against the shore for decades, sat a hunk of wood. Dia had spent most of her life exploring the ruins. She’d seen piles of rubble—concrete, glass, steel, and wood. Why this particular piece caught her eye, she couldn’t be sure.
Dia set her pack down in the sand, took off her boots, and rolled her pants up to her knees before wading into the frigid water. In another few weeks, Erie would turn into a frozen tundra.
A gull cried out as Dia reached down into the water and grabbed the piece of wood. It was grey and weathered on one side, but had remnants of white paint on the other. She held it up in the burgeoning sunrise, spinning it around and looking at the letters that had been painted on the wood so long ago.
ke Hav
She cocked her head, turning the partial phrase over in her mind before realizing it wasn’t a phrase at all, but part of what had been a painted moniker on the back of a seafaring craft.
“Lake Haven.”
Dia smiled and set the piece of wood back into the water, feeling as though that’s where it should rest until the end of time.
She turned around, grabbed her bag and her boots, and began walking toward the eastern horizon.
###
If you liked this book, you'll love, "Shadows of Another Life: The Cosmic Horror Trilogy Book 1!"
"In the eerie silence of the suicide forest, Samuel awakens, alone and disoriented. Surrounded by the dense fog of mystery and a chilling absence of life, he finds himself in a desolate parallel universe, a place where reality crumbles and nightmares come alive."
Binge the completed trilogy on Amazon right now!
About the Author
About J. Thorn
J. Thorn has published more than two million words and has sold over 200,000 books worldwide since 2009. He has been an official member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers, and is currently a member of the Horror Writers Association.
In 2019, J. co-founded the Writers, Ink podcast with J.D. Barker, and has interviewed some of today’s most successful authors including Matthew McConaughey, James Patterson, Dean Koontz, Seth Godin, Joyce Carol Oates, Hugh Howey, Andy Weir, Jodi Picoult, Nicholas Sparks, Lee Child, Stephen Pressfield, Chuck Palahniuk, and many more.
Thorn earned a B.A. in American History from the University of Pittsburgh and a M.A. from Duquesne University. He is a husband, father, writer, and educator, most recently teaching entrepreneurship at John Carroll University.
J. impersonates a cynical Gen Xer while secretly believing we’re all gonna make it. Like, whatever.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
About the Author
J. Thorn, Barren Sky
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