Desolation Boulevard

6: The Aftershock

I hike towards the base camp, which look tiny from my perspective. After half a mile, I fall. The landscape is getting more rugged. I find a rock, sit down, and get the radio. It is almost the end of the stock market report, "Where is Thurston Howell? With his oil business, Tehechapuku Oil and Mining Corporation in Dust Bowl, Oklahoma, he has done it again. The corporation has found an oil jackpot, bringing up it's stock by 30%. But the question is, where is Thurston Howell? Here is the afternoon news, aftershocks scheduled today in the Northern India after 6.5 earthquake in the area, killing 8 people, injuring 5,000 others. Blizzard warning still active in the area. A man, Jefferson Hardy has crashed in the Himalayas in a plane. Plane not found. Presumed dead after search party called off after landslide." I stop listening after that. They called off the search for me. I never knew they even had a search for me. Just then, an aftershock hits, but there is no landslide. The snow fell already. Now it is falling rocks, I run and put on the hard hat I got earlier. But the rocks after an earthquake are pretty unstable. A boulder from a high cliff falls and starts rolling towards me. As the ridge gets steeper, the faster the boulder goes. I see the ridge is getting more narrow the farther. But the boulder is going. To run faster, I sing, that's how I go faster.
"Deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans,
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens.
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood,
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode.
Who never ever learned to read or write so well,
But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell."
Then I hear a rocks scraping aganist each other and I turn around. I see the boulder got stuck. "Phew", and I continue on