Chasing Storms

The End of the world, as Kala would like to call it, wasn’t really a set day in time. It wasn’t a set hour or a set minute. It had been the result of a pan cooking on a stove for years and years, heating up until it burst into flame. When you hold a pan full of messied and flammable ingredients above a hot stovetop, it’s only a matter of time until it bursts into flame -- so why wasn’t it stopped before the flames reached the ceiling and overtook the kitchen? Why couldn’t the pan have been emptied in the sink, the meal restarted, the stove’s blue flames kept at bay? Hubris, perhaps. Or foolishness. Whatever had caused the gradual downward spiral into what could only be known as the end of the world was a matter of human error, simple as that. Now, with such little humans left after wildfires ate up the West and blizzards claimed the East and Kala’s Florida was devoured by a towering ocean, there was nothing left to do besides wait for their demise to take the rest of them.

Before The End, Kala always liked to call herself a storm-chaser. Her monotonous days at the office were bookended by those stormy weekends and hot summers where hurricanes brewed on the Florida coast. When she took her red Toyota out onto the winding backroads, which attached Pensacola to the innermost nooks of Alabama, she was reminded of those childhood days where she and her brother stared out of the windows of their trailer, eyes wide with fear and excitement as thunder and lightning crackled. Some of her storm-chasing equipment still functioned, albeit behind dimming screens and aging circuitry, and she spent her days tracking the distant thunderstorms. Most of the South had become a land of chaos and havoc, decentralized packs of survivors scavenging like vultures for the last signs of nourishment. Kala had torn through most of her share, her stock, everything she’d taken from her deceased parents’ and brother’s house, and what was left could extend her life by a week, or maybe two. Those houses now were skeletons, most likely eaten away by the water. She’d taken what knick-knacks she could, the family photos and her sister-in-law’s dirtied wedding gown, unused baby clothes and a few empty notebooks and pens. 

Where her Toyota waited, on a patchy blacktop that was once Route 29, she was protected from the roving groups of other survivors and was a safe distance from her old hometown. She’d become used to falling asleep in the backseat, using old clothes to keep warm as the temperature dropped severely in the nighttime hours. The high hours of the day involved Kala’s scavenging for more supplies with the sun beating down on her, or sitting in the backseat reading books or tracking storms.

One morning, the sound of thunder awoke her. Kala sleepily groped for the handle, and stepped outside. Lightning crackled above Kala’s head, and the first drops of rain touched her scalp, she stuck her head back inside. She opened the clunky slab of computer that acted as her tracker, a weight on her lap as she booted it up and waited for it to process the surrounding area. Surprisingly, the cell towers had been successful in avoiding most of the water damage, tucked away on high areas or in dense forests. She tapped her fingers as she waited to the beat of an old pop song, humming as the dangerous streaks of green and yellow appeared on the black screen. Well, that was normal. There were always those little storms. She waited longer, longer, letting the lag eat away as itself as the screen descended into an intense Pollock of red and orange. 

This was surprising. This was unexpected. At least, Kala would have at least some foresight to the more powerful storms, a week’s hindsight to begin camping out in her meadow shelter. She’d been used to cowering in her car as the wind shook it with violence, her days of running like a maniac out into it behind her, merely waiting for it to subside as the colors streaked the screen. Kala replayed the simulation, eyes following the oncoming storm, and calculated how long it would be before disaster struck. Her gut told her that this wasn’t a storm to cower in. With enough rain, the meadow could fill and might as well cast her and her Toyota out into sea. As she ran her hand across the screen, she thought about what remained up north. The places that would be protected from the storm, if not a little banged up, but were still thick with other survivors.

Kala bent to look inside the trunk of her car. Her supplies had grown bare. Her bony hands felt her stomach and she swiveled to look at the oncoming storm. The sky was smeared with shades of gray and brown, that putrid smell of acid and waste filling the air. Lightning shot through the air and the thunder clapped like a distant cymbal. She weighed her options. She weighed the colosseum ring that Pensacola had become, the violence, the unknowingness that waited for her up Route 29. She thought about her mortality, and that eventually all of her supplies would run out and that her fate was imminent. She thought about the fact that if she decided to stay out here, she would die alone and bobbing out to sea. Kala thought of the people she abandoned and the faces of her family.

Today, Kala thought, pushing her hair from her face, I will not cower.

Kala slammed the screen shut and climbed into the front seat. Her car hadn’t moved since The End and still had about half a tank to sustain her riding. Thunder rumbled in the background, the sky grew a bit darker, and Kala jammed the key in the ignition and gunned her engine.

The car flew up the disrepaired blacktop, her dirtied headlights casting weak rays of light on the dark road that waited ahead of her. For miles, and miles, and miles, there were abandoned homes, fields of dead grass and toppled power lines. When the route passed underneath what used to be an overpass for Interstate 10, she spotted a billboard in the distance.

A cross jutted out over a red sky. “THE END IS HERE! CALL 1-800-GOD FOR MORE,” it screamed.

A smile tickled Kala’s lips, and she continued up the road.

She must have crossed the border to Alabama at some point, she was sure of it, even though most of the signs had been toppled and destroyed. All that remained were the stoops and dips of exits and the anatomy of empty overpasses. Kala knew because the sky was a shade of blue that wasn’t visible back in Florida, though clouds were quickly gathering in the distance. With her eyes transfixed on the sky, staring up into the blue emptiness, Kala forgot to keep her focus on the road until a horn blared. Gripping the wheel, she steered to the side, just missing another speeding Mini Cooper. For a moment, she caught the expressions of two shocked drivers, who must have met her shocked face, because their car halted and their doors slammed behind them.

Kala pressed the brake and sucked in a breath. Well, if she was going to be killed, at least it wouldn’t be a lonely death. Murder isn’t ideal, but it’s not exactly dying alone, is it?

A hand tapped on her window. Without making eye contact, and with a long moment of hesitation, Kala lowered it. “Hello.”

“Who are you?” asked a belt and a tucked-in shirt.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Kala replied, unbuckling herself and leaning out to face her visitors. A lanky man, probably Asian, stared down at her with wide brown eyes. “Who are y’all?”

“State your purpose here,” he stammered. Behind him, what Kala could only assume was his adolescent sister watched with a cocked eyebrow.

“I’m running from the storm.”

“Storm?”

“Hitting Pensacola. Looks bad, you know.”

The man took a step back. “How do you know?”

“Know what?” Kala raised an eyebrow and made a face.

“How do you know there’s a storm?”

“I got a storm computer. Unimportant, really, there’s always storms. This one looks particularly destructive, though, so I made the true survivor’s choice and chose to get the hell out of dodge. So I’m here, now. Alabama, I think, right?”

“Alabama,” the girl confirmed, brushing her hair out of her face.

“Lillian, shush. She could be dangerous,” the man waved a panicked hand and hurried to back away as Kala stepped out. A miraculous 5’3, skinny to the bone and with her bony hands pressed on her hip, she frowned. 

“Not really… Unless you two are? I’d appreciate some exposition before you execute me,” Kala asked, smoothing her pants down and observing her dirt-soaked nails. 

“I got a knife!” Lillian cried joyfully, holding a Swiss army knife to the sun. 

“Lily--! Erm, uh, no, we’re not-- we’re not going to execute you, I don’t even have a weapon, much less fighting ability! Shit, okay, um, what do you have?” he demanded.

“I have a name, my name is Kala, Kala Danielson. And you are? Look, I’m not dangerous, whoever you are, and I’m mostly just trying to live as long as I can. Like everybody else. I’m not in a pack, I’ve been on my own since The End. So, um, how about we make a truce?”

Lillian nodded. “Oh, truces are cool.”

“I’m Ricky Park. And Lillian Park is over there. And, uh, I was just an engineering major over at FIT, and then the world decided to end on me. I’ve been carting her with me the whole time. I think a truce is… good,” Ricky offered, nodding as he spoke. “Can I see your computer? To… have confirmation?”

“Be my guest,” Kala threw open the backseat and pointed at the two-inches-thick computer, tucked among old clothes and granola bar wrappers. 

Ricky peeked over at it. “How old is that?”

“Do you want to look at it or not?”

Without another word he crouched into the backseat, lifting open the laptop and watching as the screen blinked to life. Lillian watched, intent, from behind Kala. “It looks green. That’s normal though, isn’t it? Light rain? But, uh, oh…?” his confusion faded and he slammed the screen shut. “Is that a hurricane?”

Kala thought about how much she could use a cigarette right now. “It’s a freak of nature. Still awful, probably, and destructive.”

Ricky’s lips thinned, and he raised his eyebrows, nodding. Kala could almost think of a bobblehead, like the one she kept on her office desk of some Dolphins player she could no longer recall the name of. “So are you a meteorologist, or-?”

“This isn’t 20 questions.”

He went silent and kept nodding, stepping by Kala and grabbing Lillian’s hand. He yanked her back over to the Mini Cooper as Kala followed, keeping her hands in her pockets. “We just have stuff.”

“Stuff that we stole from Wal-Mart,” Lillian interjected.

“Wow. Hardened criminals,” Kala said. 

“We try to be!” Lillian said. “We, sadly, do not have gang affiliation.”

“What a shame.”

Ricky glanced over his shoulder, holding two backpacks in his hands. “Not such a shame. There’s nothing like participating in gang violence in a climate apocalypse.” He tossed a bag over his shoulder and handed the other one to Lillian, keeping his gaze firm. “Should we take your car? We have gas. A Mini Cooper isn’t ideal so I know that--”

“Where did you find gas?” Kala asked.

“At my university? I stole it from the warehouse. You know. Before it sank underwater,” he opened the Mini’s trunk once again and held up two red canisters. 

“Lucky bastard. I haven’t been able to find gas since The End. This is the first time I’ve driven in, what, months?”

Ricky glanced at his sister then at Kala. “Months? It’s been feeling like years.”

“Has anyone kept track?” Lillian moaned.

“Let’s say months. But, it really isn’t a set date, is it? It just… became like this one day, and we all kind of accepted it.” Kala took one of the canisters and tucked it beneath her arms. “We already knew. The wildfires, the hurricanes so numerous they had to switch into a different alphabet. The winters where snow came in September or as late as January. It was always like this, we just decided to ignore it until it got too bad.”

“No need to get existential,” Lillian replied, pulling her black hair into a ponytail. “But I guess you’re right. When the world’s ending, those movies always made it into a sudden thing. But it did feel like a slow-moving trainwreck, right, Rick?”

“Right.” Ricky nodded and patted the top of the Toyota. Kala flipped open the gas tank and hummed, before his soft voice cut her off. “So, where are we going to go?”

“I guess we’ll know soon enough,” Kala replied. “Go on. Why don’t you both make yourselves comfortable?”

The doors opened and shut. Ricky stepped back out onto the road and hurried back to the Mini, and Kala watched him search through the glove compartment as she tilted the red canister into the tank.

He shut the door and stepped out onto the blacktop as Kala shut the fuel filler. “What did you forget?”

Ricky opened his hand to present a tiny velvet box. Kala’s heart could have dropped into her stomach. “My boyfriend at FIT,” he said. “We got separated during Hurricane Patrice. I don’t know if he’s out there, but I hope so.” Ricky tucked it in his pocket and leaned against the front of the car at the darkening sky. Kala set the canister on the ground and joined his side.

“I lost my brother. My sister-in-law. I went back to their house and all I found was everything untouched, just how it was before The End. She was pregnant. I don’t know if they’re out there either, you know, but I still pray and hope that they are. That there’s a haven full of people we’re waiting for, safe and happy.”

Ricky glanced at her and back out at the sky. The clouds had begun to disguise the silver sun behind a dark sheet of wool. “I want to believe that. I want to believe that so much,” he added, chuckling. “Are we lucky or cursed for living through all this?”

“There’s a reason we’ve gotten this far, hm? Let’s try to keep it up. There has to be safety out there. Humanity will rebuild.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Well, we can both die surrounded by other humans and not alone in the water or heat or snow.”

Ricky bobbed his head again and put his hand on top of Kala’s. He smiled at her from over his shoulder and disappeared into the backseat. The smell of acid and petrichor touched Kala’s nose, and she inhaled a full breath before sliding back into the front seat. She felt the aging leather beneath her and the dips in the wheel where her hands had worn it down. “Y’all ready?”

“Ready.”

“Seatbelts buckled?”

Ricky nudged his sister and Kala heard a click. She flipped the key in the ignition and the car came back to life, engine humming with apprehension. “Off we go.”

The red car sped across the blacktop, a road peppered with potholes and rot. The road morphed back into a highway of dead grass and abandoned, dark towns, grim billboards casting shadows on the emptiness. The scene melted behind them, and the escape had begun.