Badlands by Bruce W. Perry

Author:Bruce W. Perry [Perry, Bruce W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Dystopia, Fantasy, Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic, Science Fiction
Published: 2018-01-31T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

They never found diesel. The gauge hovered on empty by the time they'd cleared downtown Provo, Utah. The town hadn't fared well, buried by more than three feet of ash. Like snow in the high mountains, it was piled higher in certain places, sometimes toppling the walls of buildings. A route for cars plowed down the middle of Main Street, but the wind and depth of ash had made the effort look inadequate and half hearted.

Provo was where they ran into the vast pilgrimage on Interstate 15, heading south.

A somber migration of refugees, as if driven by war out of cities, trooped in rows down the road, carrying or pushing their possessions in carts. Their facial expressions were flat and exhausted; the children had more energy but looked fretful and confused.

There were thousands of them; Garner had never seen anything like it. Take a big stadium rock concert and multiple it by 30, he thought.

A truck or sedan here and there rolled down the breakdown lane. More of them were abandoned by the side of the road; some with busted windows and adorned with graffiti. God is dead and To Hell with it and Super Vol Rules.

The surrounding desert had the Sahara look that they'd seen in the canyon lands; the ash sculpted into successive waves that were almost picturesque, if you didn't know what they were made of.

Members of the Latter Day Saints church were famous disaster preparers, but few of them could have properly prepared for the blizzard of toxic soot that had settled over their region.

Garner rolled slowly along the north side of Interstate 15, waiting for the bus to run out of diesel. The refugees filed in an orderly silence down the highway south, some of them dusted head to toe with ash, looking like a lost tribe of white mud people.

At one point, a fleet of vehicles, the size of troop trucks, came down the highway south. The crowds parted. The cargo areas of both trucks were jammed full of body bags.

The bus stopped for good on the outskirts of Salt Lake. The scene was gray and despondent; the wide empty north lanes of concrete highway and drifts of ash and a sad sea of humanity flowing down the opposite lanes.

Garner could see the dark Salt Lake skyline across the highway and trees.

He stood up from the driver's seat and swayed, exhausted. He quietly walked to the back of the bus and lay down on one of the backseats and pulled a coat over his head. They still had more than 300 miles to go, if they ever could get to Idaho, he thought. He fell asleep to the sound of boots and shoes scraping and murmuring voices, including the shouts of children, carrying across the windy open spaces.

# # #

It seemed like he'd slept for 12 hours. The procession outside was oddly comforting, and he'd locked the door of the bus, since a small crowd of people had gathered there, assuming the bus might deliver them to salvation.

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