by Abigail Stewart
I.
The sky was a lurid orange when Cara awoke. Her television set had turned to static overnight and the alien sun bathed her furniture in a thick ointment of russet light. Somewhere an alarm sounded, relentless and impatient.
She rose, ran the water at her kitchen tap. Nothing but a sad trickle, then air. Her mouth felt intolerably dry.
The refrigerator had turned off days ago, its stink permeated her senses, sweet and rotten, as she blindly groped for something to drink, finally landing upon a tepid bottle of once-iced tea, she’d forgotten it in her initial plundering.
II.
What do you take when you’re forced to leave? After the animals have already voluntarily evacuated and the trees have betrayed you?
Cara gathered her passport and wallet, her laptop, phone, chargers, a small cardboard box of photos, clean underwear, one change of clothes, a book from her nightstand whose title she didn’t remember. These things, along with a last minute tube of chapstick, she haphazardly crammed into an old black backpack before joining the others in the street.
Her neighbors wore their pajamas and expressions of barely contained terror – a young couple gripped their cat and child and each other, all with equal fervor.
Cara didn’t have anyone’s hand to hold as she stepped into the van that would ferry them all to a place devoid of trees.
III.
The tents lined up on the empty fairgrounds one after the other, an endless row of multi-colored donations from a local camping store. They were handed masks and a sandwich. Cara wondered if she should choose sustenance or protection.
She was ushered into a tent, once blue, now stained grey with ash.
By night, she was sharing the tent with a roommate, a woman who stared silently at the sky as though it would save them.
Cara knew it would not.
IV.
The wind blew for three more nights.
Her roommate’s name was Linda and she’d watched her house burn to the ground with her parakeet trapped inside. Her tears streaked down her face, clearing a pathway through the dirt. Cara had nothing to offer her but chapstick.
Together they coughed soot and spit ash into paper towels, listened to the groan of generators, the midnight cries of children, and waited.
V.
In Nevada now, the sky is always a predictable blue and her new apartment has cool running water that she drinks in cupped hands, a miracle. Cara stands quietly on her small balcony, gripping the cool iron railing, and looking at an expanse of mountains unobscured by haze.
Her backpack had retained the smell, the ash, for weeks, like forgotten memories from a campfire.
They’d given her money, not much, then hustled her along, already preparing for the next natural disaster.
But Cara had taken it, and her box of photos, and Linda with her to Nevada.
Linda emerges from the kitchen now, kisses her collarbone, hands her a cup of tea, and they sigh together into the soft, morning air.
Abigail Stewart is a writer from Berkeley, California. She lives in an apartment filled with plants and books and breakable things. Her writing has appeared in literary magazines, but mostly on bathroom walls. She writes a blog about books and dungeons & dragons: http://www.ageektragedy.net. Follow her on Twitter: @abby_writes // IG: @abby_cake.