Hope and Undead Elvis

chapter Twelve

Hope and Ashes





The Way rumbled down the highway as the sun made its slow trek across the sky. Hope stayed quiet, keeping the turmoil of her thoughts unspoken. Undead Elvis plucked at the ukulele without much enthusiasm, it seemed. The sand of the surrounding landscape was as pervasive as it had been on the other side of the bridge, but occasional clumps of cacti and yucca poked from it. The mere presence of greenery brought fresh cheer to Hope, and her spirits lifted.

Once, she even pulled over to get out of The Way and smell a bright red flower sitting atop a barrel cactus. It had a faint, fruity scent that reminded her of body wash. She was becoming aware of her own unwashed odor, and longed for a stream or pond with enough water in it to bathe. She promised herself never to take cleanliness for granted ever again. How long had it actually been? At least several days, she figured—hard ones full of sweat and dirt and strong emotions. She wrinkled her nose at stenches real and imagined as she got back into the car.

"Are you going to keep fiddling around with that thing or are you going to sing me a song?" she asked Undead Elvis, who'd been plucking idle notes on the ukulele for hours.

"My pleasure, Li'l lady." He adjusted a tuning peg. "This here song was always one of my favorites. It's a hymn called How Great Thou Art."

He played simple chords in counterpoint to his soft, crooning voice. Hope could feel tension melting out of her shoulders as he sang for her. He'd just finished a line, "I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder," when Hope had to interrupt him.

"God, I'm sorry, Elvis. It's a beautiful song. What is that up ahead? Is that some kind of storm?"

A long, dark cloud hung low over the horizon. It roiled and twisted with unsettled but slow movement. Undead Elvis adjusted his sunglasses and leaned forward to peer through the windshield. Hope suppressed a sudden urge to pull off those glasses so she could see what hid behind them.

"I'm not sure, Li'l lady. You see the way that it curves up on one end and then stretches way out?"

"Yeah."

"I think that's probably smoke."

"That would be a pretty big fire." Hope touched her tummy. "Like that forest Ash told us about."

"Could be."

After another stretch of time that might have been an hour, Hope had to agree with Undead Elvis that the cloud was smoke. She could smell hints of it in the hot air that blew in through the open window. "I hope it isn't too bad," she said. "What if the smoke and ash clogs up the motor?"

"What if it does?"

"You know, it's infuriating that you answer questions with questions all the time." Hope glared across the seat at Undead Elvis.

He shrugged. "Sorry about that, Li'l lady. I just don't have the answers you're looking for."

"Nobody does." Hope growled in irritation.

The road climbed up some hills and the air grew a little cooler but much more smoky. The scent of burnt wood triggered an old memory in Hope.

She said, "You know, my dad was named after you."

"He was?"

"Yeah. When I was really little, before my dad left, I remember we all went camping in… well, somewhere in the mountains. I don't think I was more than two or three. I remember we had a red tent, and my dad said to always look for the red tent if we got lost. Anyway, that night we had a campfire and had hot dogs and s'mores. My mom undercooked the hot dogs but we ate them anyway, and I burned my mouth on the s'mores. I remember afterward I lay on my sleeping bag looking up at the stars while the fire died down and thinking it didn't get any better than that." Hope clenched her jaw. "And I was right. A few months later my dad walked out and never came back. We never saw him again. A real deadbeat. Although…" She smiled. "That night at the campground, he still loved me."

"You don't think he loved you after he left?"

Hope snorted. "That's a hell of a way to show it if he did. Leaving my mom, my brother, and me behind. No calls, no cards. Not even for my goddamn high school graduation. I may not have been the best student, but at least I got the stupid diploma. Didn't do me any good, though. I was dancing and stripping by the summer after and that was it until I walked into that bar in Nowhere." She glanced at Undead Elvis. "That seems like forever ago."

The Way went over the top of a hill and Hope braked to a halt. Before them lay a great valley covered in ash and blanketed by a thick pallor of smoke. Blackened and burned tree trunks stuck out of the soft grayness like a nightmarish copy of winter. Flakes of ash floated like snow, carried on the currents of remnant heat from the fire. Instead of the cool of winter, stuffy warmth radiated from the valley floor.

"God," whispered Hope. "This was a forest. And it's gone. Why?"

"Fire burns when there's nobody to fight it, Li'l lady."

Ashes, as far as Hope could see.

She pulled The Way forward into the scene of charred destruction. Great spinning clouds of ash swirled up from the tires. Stifling heat swirled through the car, and Hope had to hold the collar of her schoolgirl blouse up over her nose so she could breathe without choking. The Way's temperature gauge climbed closer to the redline every few hundred feet. "We're going to overheat," said Hope. "I bet the radiator is full of this stuff."

"Maybe there's some water ahead," said Undead Elvis.

"There should be if this was a forest."

Hope looked out at the blackened and charred tree trunks, many of which were nothing more than lattices of ash. As she watched one near the road collapsed in a puff of gray and black flakes from the car's wake. The sheer volume of destruction made her sad. Tears mixed with the ashes on her cheeks and created muddy black tracks on her face. Every time she wiped snot from her nose, it came away as thick black slime. "God, this stuff is horrible. And I'm breathing it. I'm pregnant now. You're not supposed to smoke when you're pregnant."

"You were smoking when I first met you," said Undead Elvis.

"That's different. Maybe I wasn't pregnant then. Besides, that was clean smoke."

"I see."

"Well, clean-ish, anyway." She glanced over at him. His jumpsuit was still pearly white and his skin, though blue, was unsullied by ash. "Hey, how come I'm a mess and you still look clean?"

"I'm the King, Li'l lady. Uh-huh."

Hope snorted, blowing out more black snot against the steering wheel. After a couple more minutes, she knew she'd have to shut off The Way. The temperature gauge was past the red line and the engine noise had grown strained. As she reached for the keys, she spotted a break in the land off to the right. "Hey, is that water down there?"

"Looks like it, Li'l lady."

"Time for a break." Hope killed the engine. She hoped the radiator wouldn't blow up anyway. Steam leaked around the edges of the hood.

They trudged through ash that was ankle-deep at times until they both stood at the stream's edge. A sluggish trickle of water meandered along the bed. Ash floated on its surface, but because it moved, Hope didn't think the water itself was choked with the stuff. The idea of drinking or even bathing with it was unappealing, but it would be good enough to cool down The Way's engine and wash some of the ash out of the radiator.

"Come on, Elvis. We've got work to do. Open that hood. It's too hot for me."

Hope rummaged through the few treasures Asher had left her and found a battered saucepan. It would serve well enough as a water vessel. She trudged back and forth between stream and car, each time bearing a panful of muddy water that spat and hissed like an angry kitten each time she poured it over The Way's radiator. Her legs and feet became covered with mud mixed from ash, water, and sweat. Soon, the radiator cooled enough that, although steam still rose from it, water no longer boiled off its surface. Tired from her repeated exertions, Hope turned over the cleaning of the radiator to Undead Elvis and sat down to eat some leftover lamb and one of the last apples.

The food tasted of smoke and felt gritty with ash in her mouth. She chewed and swallowed like an automaton. She remembered when eating had been a joy. Now it was a chore, and an unpleasant one at that.

She finished the piece of meat and debated what to do with the bone. Were they going to have to resort to using them as tools? Had humanity's remains fallen that far? She didn't know, but decided not to take any chances. She saved the apple seeds in a foil pouch. Maybe they would still be viable and she could plant them in Graceland or someplace along the way.

As Undead Elvis hunched down in front of The Way, brushing ash from the radiator with a small unburnt twig, Hope gathered up handfuls of sand and ash and polished the lamb bone until no gristle or moisture remained on it. She slipped it under the seat, just in case she thought of a need for it later. Saving seeds and bones. What would be next, living in a cave and putting up mysterious paintings on the walls for future generations to decipher? We were here once. These things had meaning to us.

She stood and looked around through the gray air and noticed a couple pillars of smoke she hadn't seen before. "Hey, something's still burning over there."

Undead Elvis straightened and looked where she pointed. "So there is, Li'l lady."

"Maybe we should go check it out."

"Uh-huh." He brushed ash away from his hands. It fell as if unwilling to cling to a dead man's hands.

Hope made sure the pistol's comforting weight still rode in the waistband of her short plaid skirt. She wished she had a change of clothes. And as long as she was wishing for what she might never have, she added a clean bed and a bathtub in a hotel with room service to the list. She took a last swallow of clean water, knowing she'd have to refill the bottle from the ash-filled stream, and then set out.

Hope and Undead Elvis kept their pace measured as they hiked up and down rolling hills covered with still-warm soot. Some plants still looked like they were unharmed but for a thin coating of ash, but when Hope touched one, it crumbled like a shattered lattice.

At the crest of a hill, they saw what caused the smoke columns. Hope had entertained the notion that perhaps they were related to God somehow. She recalled hearing that God liked to appear to people as a pillar of smoke or a burning bush or something. Not that she believed any such thing. But seeing the tableau before her convinced her even more that there was no God, for what God would have allowed people to be bound to crosses and then burned?

The land had been cleared of flammable materials around two metal crosses that might have been power line trestles at one point. Fuel had been piled around the bases of the crosses and set alight, burning the poor souls who'd been chained to them. The words SINNERS WILL PERISH had been spelled out against the sandy dirt in fist-sized rocks.

Hope bowed her head. It seemed the breaking of the world had brought out the worst in some people, and she feared for herself and her baby.