Ashes to Ashes
by Michael Paul Gonzalez

Three hundred days since the Incident. Eighteen hours in a shaky helicopter ride. A day and a half on the road. We’ve been picking our way through the rubble of buildings for the past week now. We’re here to bury the dead, release the ghosts. Some people were content to accept the loss of their loved ones from the Incident. Others have to experience it. Walk the roads. Touch the ruins. Smell the burnt cinders and chemical stink in the air.

I work for the government, but anymore you could just call me a tour guide. We’re a specialized unit, allowed to take small groups of citizens to lay their demons to rest. All of this is off the books. We only work with people who can afford to grieve outrageously.

I have a single escort today, down near Union Street. The rest of the squad pushed further south towards the remains of the stadium. Me and this lady, we’re shin-deep in what’s left of downtown Seattle, painstakingly following what’s left of the roads by GPS, which is still hinky and unreliable because of all the particles in the air.

There’s a skeleton of Ranier Square, the south facing wall mostly intact. If I climb it, I may be able to spot our destination and speed things along. Some of these structures are optical illusions, ten stories of tightly packed carbon dust just waiting to collapse the instant you touch them. I approach and kick the charred girder, it’s solid as stone. So far, so good. No saying what I’ll find higher up. There are sections of the building with flooring still intact. The surrounding towers may have softened the impact by the time it got here. I climb as fast as I can. I reach the top floor – well, I guess you’d just have to call it the highest floor now, the roof being scattered in ashes below us – and survey the area.

Southwest, I can see the landmark we’re looking for, the Hammering Man statue. And further to the south, the Gutter. Last month, precipitation began to return to the area, pushing away the ash and debris. NASA got their first satellite shots. Like God dragged a fingernail down the entire Northwestern Seaboard. I have nightmares about this place sometimes. I remember my first trip in, when the air was still dark, and I had to do a high recon like this at night. Seeing the fire coming up from the ground hundreds of miles to the south…thinking about how, even now, there could be survivors out there, starving, choking, burning. What can you do? I slide down to ground level as quickly as I can, my client awaiting me with shiny puppydog eyes and a voice choked by tears and coal grit.

“What did you see?”

What did I see? Hell on Earth. The end of my faith in God. What can you say at times like this?

“There’s a hump about ten blocks south of here. I think I saw the Hammering Man, looks like most of it is still there. We should get back to base camp before dark.”

Of course, she’s having none of this. Not when she paid so much and traveled so far, and do I have any idea what she left behind, what she risked to get out here? I was paid to do a job, and we’re so close, blah, blah, blah.

Glancing at my wrist, the tattoo of a chain I started after my first trip out, like so many on the squad do. One broken link for each trip where we came back alive. If you find a survivor or any evidence of human life, you get a closed chain link. Me? I’ve got five broken links. Nobody has a closed link. Nobody ever will.

I remain silent and we push on. I was paid to do a job, after all.

It’s a fairly easy walk, all things considered. We stand at the foot of the iron statue, the remains of the Art Museum before us. The hump I saw is a half block away, a collapsed brick wall leaning on a neighboring pile of rubble. If the GPS is reading right, it’s what she paid to see. I flick on a halogen lamp and crawl beneath the collapsed wall. Inside, it’s bare, charred to nothing. There are lumps of nylon and plastic, blackened glass. Things that used to be a pool table, a beer-themed faux-tiffany lamp, a neon sign, dust that used to be the calendar of some big-busted women hawking the good life.

I turn around, and my client is behind me, on her knees, sobbing. Rubbing her hands against the gritty dirt on the floor. Pulling her dust mask off. Happens every time.

“Stop crying. Stop crying or you’ll suffocate.”

She blinks, nods, pulls her mask back on. Flips the bottom up like I showed her when she starts coughing out the particles. I pull a fresh carbon cartridge out of my belt pouch and set it down in front of her.

“I’ll be outside.”

I leave her to her suffering and the ghost of her father. Outside, I return to the base of the statue. I wish I could light a cigarette right now. I check my watch, scuff my foot across the rubble and uncover something startlingly blue. Scuffed, and singed, but mostly readable. It’s funny what survives. It’s a plastic sign. “Mariner’s Cove, Today’s Spe-” Another broken link in the chain.

Sunday, June 23rd, 3:46PM. Almost a year to the minute after the chain eruption. St. Helens, Ranier, the Yellowstone Caldera, and at least six more that scientists had never seen. I crawl back into the wreckage and find her sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees. I lay the scrap in front of her and she cradles it. Traces the curves of her father’s handwriting. This much is enough to bring her peace in this house of spirits.