The End of Eden (Water Worlds 1)

Chapter 20

20

It should only have taken two days or so to make it to the Canadian border, but it took us a week.

Fuel shortages were everywhere, and we searched town by town, station by station, for petrol. Father had plenty of fuel in backup containers, but his vehicle used quite a lot. Kasey's Jeep was part electric but it used petrol too, to help keep the battery charged. We needed as much as we could get, as often as we could find it. 

The coastal roads of the Pacific Northwest were forbidden to traffic now, and who knew what their own refugee scene was like? We heard people saying, more than once, what a shame it was they never built the Golden Gate Dam, and how it would have saved poor old San Francisco. 

So we turned north and west through Idaho, and eastern parts of Oregon and Washington, keeping to the back roads as much as possible. Petrol was easier to find in the smaller towns and villages where the traffic was lighter. Most cars here in the Pacific Northwest were electric now, so petrol wasn't in all that much demand, but still we managed well enough.

The people were nicer, too. Especially when Father kept peeling off the hundred dollar bills. I refused to wonder any longer where he got all that cash. I banished the question from my mind. I didn't want to know anything else about him. Ever again.

We took the road due north and entered Canada far east of Vancouver. Even though it was a rural area, the border crossing was crowded with vehicles of all sorts.

At the American side of the border, we were stopped and questioned. There were military vehicles and men with automatic weapons, and we were surrounded by barbed wire. The border guards were very stern-looking men and women. Father presented Canadian passports for all of us.

Where did he get those? I thought, and then quickly dismissed the question, remembering I was not interested in anything about Father anymore.

"Where are you coming from?" the guard asked.

"Texas," Father lied.

"You have Maryland license plates." the guard said.

"We lived in Maryland last year."

The guard wasn't buying Father's story, but I think he just took us for survivors and found pity in his heart.

"And where are you going?"

"Home. To Vancouver." Father sounded genuine, now.

The guard looked at Father and Mother, then at me and Joo Chen in the back seat. Kasey was several cars behind us. We thought it would be best to separate. Well, Father thought it, and Kasey agreed. I would have done anything to have stayed in that cramped little Jeep with him.

The guard looked down at the passports again.

"All right." he said at long last, handing them back. "You have a safe trip now."

We drove through the gate about twenty-five meters to the Canadian side. There, we were stopped for interview and inspection again. Father answered the same questions, except the Canadian border guard wasn't interested in the license plates.

"Welcome to Canada," he said. No one replied.

We were free to go. And just like that, we were almost to Vancouver.

About a half a mile down the road, we pulled over into the car park of a closed restaurant and waited for Kasey.

We waited for hours. 

He never came. 

Father tried the in-car link but Kasey was too far away, and phones hadn't worked in days, so we had no idea what was wrong. I pleaded with him, but Father insisted we move on.

"We'll continue on to Vancouver. Kasey knows where we're going. He'll catch up with us."

But I had a sinking feeling in my heart. 

The gray clouds parted and we drove through a suddenly bright, sunny sky. It lifted everyone's spirits, but mine. It had been a long time since we had seen the sunshine. But I felt no warmth. I didn't care.

The roads and farms and villages in Canada seemed much the same to me as in America, and were mostly untouched by the damage brought by Apophis. By Father.

We reached Vancouver from the east and it was mostly intact, but a moderate tsunami, created from a small piece of Apophis that struck in the Aleutian Island chain, had found its way around Vancouver Island and into Burrard Inlet.

It lifted English Bay, flooding all of downtown, and combined with the waters of Vancouver Harbour before receding, dragging away untold amounts of soil and debris and treasure-turned-trash into the Salish Sea.

Countless businesses, waterfront homes and glamorous high rise buildings perched on the edge of the coast were inundated, but there were very few casualties. At the sound of the tsunami alert, people simply moved toward high ground.

We started a new life with the Chinese community in British Columbia. Father, and Mother too, seemed to know many people. People who cooperated and were thoughtful and helpful. They helped us find a home. Made us feel at home.

I was happy to stop moving around. Although it was crowded, everyone was looked after and no one went hungry. I heard Canada was barring immigration in the wake of the disaster, and after a while, I gave up hoping Kasey would arrive any day. It was too late to care.

Recovery teams continued clearing and rebuilding as best as they could, but soon, the skies darkened here, too.

After a year, Joo Chen left. He went north, with so many others. "There's nothing for me here," he told me. Mother cried. Father looked at him blankly. I kissed his cheek goodbye and he didn't squirm this time.

It is astonishing, really, how fragile civilization is. We are like a bubble of soap: light and beautiful and swimming in a riot of colors, but we are just a thin, delicate film, and we burst so easily.

Now there's no one left but Mother and me.

And Father.

I hate him now.

I lie every time I say good morning, when what I want to say is, "You have destroyed us all."