Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(52)

We thought someone would come back to the terminal. A rescue mission. UN peacekeepers. Somebody. Anybody. A ferry would arrive with news that all of it had been a mistake. No danger. All okay. No panic. The world will keep turning, the cars will keep running, and the planes will keep flying.

I left the terminal to the seals. It’s their place now more than it is mine.

April 12

I’ve run out of fuel for the generator. I sat for a while, staring at the dead radio. For over a week I’ve listened to static while straining to hear a human voice in the crackles. Willing someone to speak to me. No one did. Now, I hear nothing but silence. I think I will never hear a human voice again.

We all have regrets.

April 15

Once I do some repairs on the Hannah Marie to get her in proper shape, I plan to sail up the east coast of the island to see if there’s any fuel still left near Masset.

April 17

I finished the carving of the dog. This morning I hiked back up to Spirit Lake to say my goodbyes. The last goodbyes. I’ve said them before, but I always thought I’d go back. Now, I suspect I’ll never hike up to the lake again.

In the most important way, I’ve been alone since she left. More than the evacuations, her decision drove it home. The end. Humanity had a good run. Some folks said it was the end of the world. Nonsense. The world didn’t end when a comet took out the dinosaurs. It didn’t end with the Ice Age. It won’t end now. The world keeps going. People on the other hand… not so much.

When she realized that, Gloria took her dogs and went up the trail. We still got news then from the radio. People still passed messages along. We’d hear stories about how someone had begun rebuilding in Vancouver. No, over on the Island, near Victoria. Or no, down in the States, near Seattle. The Americans had found a cure. Or the Chinese. Someone. None of it was true, but we liked to believe. I think the desire to believe pushed Gloria over the edge. She could have faced the end. She just couldn’t cope with the constant rollercoaster of hope.

She took her dogs with her. That part haunts me. She took her dogs, but she left me. I promised myself that I wouldn’t hold it against her.

April 18

I’ve begun sailing north up the east coast of the island. I remember making the trip on a fishing boat with my grandpa when I was eight or nine. I complained halfway there and halfway back, but I remember listening to Grandpa. He’d let me complain, “air it all out,” he’d say, and then he’d go back to telling me about halibut fishing or hunting for deer.

He’d point out the totem poles that spotted the coast. “Our memory,” he would say. He’d talk some in the old language. He didn’t speak but a very little of it; I never learned even that much. I wish now that I’d paid more attention and kept the old ways alive for one more lifetime. Maybe that seems pointless, at the end of all things, but it isn’t. If I remembered all the things he tried to teach me, that would have meaning. Even if they die with me. Because they might die with me. I could say I was like my grandpa, the keeper of a proud tradition. I can’t. I don’t remember his traditions, his ways, or his people.

I remember him, though. In the end, when it all came crashing down, I came back to his place. Maybe that’s enough.

“If one voice knows the song, the whole world knows the song,” Grandpa told me. I told him to put a video on the Internet. I didn’t understand.

April 20

Still sailing, rounded the cape on the north edge of Graham Island this morning.

A long time ago, I read that when the first peoples came across the land bridge, the islands of Haida Gwaii were one of the first places they made permanent villages. I don’t know if that’s a fact or just a might have been.

I suppose it makes sense these islands would be the first stop for those migrations back in the old, old days. My ancestors, those on my mother’s side at least, would have come down across the great glaciers of Alaska, or else in boats around the icy waters. Here were the islands, waiting for them, a place to fish and hunt dwarf caribou. That’s something else the island does: it shrinks things. The deer around Masset don’t grow much larger than dogs. The world closes in, surrounded on all sides by water. For me, the world shrank until only I remained.

Odd what settles on the mind, isn’t it?

So, the place where my ancestors first set up camp, all those thousands of years ago, and now it will be the place the last of my line survives. I can fool myself and think that some made it off the islands in the early days. I can pretend the refugee camps survived. I know better. I’m the last. The Haida Gwaii islands will see the last leave just as they saw the first arrive. I wonder if they’ll miss me when I’m gone.

I’ll make it to Masset in the morning.

April 21

I saw a pod of grey whales off to the north. Their kind has no reason to miss humanity.

April 22

I’ve found less than I’d hoped. A few gallons of fuel that might have enough kick to run my genny. Some food that hasn’t turned, but not much. I hit up the old hospital, but found nothing. The Haida brothers, Tommy and Christopher, had cleared out the pharmacy years back. I know; I traded a good hunting knife to them for antibiotics. I found a roll of duct tape, hidden behind a rusty filing cabinet like treasure. I took it and felt almost guilty.

Tommy died three years back. I think three years. You lose track of time after a while. I know it was summer and the brothers had gone out fishing. Tommy ripped his hand open on a line, and infection set in overnight. They tried all kinds of medicine, but none of it worked. I heard from Chris less and less after that. Last time I saw him, he was in Port Clements, scrounging around for motor oil. I don’t remember ho Lloyd had talked me into that trip, but I remember the wild look in Chris’s eyes. Feral. Broken. Never saw him again. Later, Lloyd said he was gone. I didn’t ask how he knew. I didn’t want to know.