Somewhere south of the abandoned real estate developments and failed dry land shrimp farms in central Florida, floating ash began to hit their windscreens. All around them ash fell, silently, covering the roadside and the fields beyond, transforming them. They were both stunned, unable to comprehend, staring at the transformed world, carpeted by ash. A vast, barren, dead expanse of ash covered earth, lifeless, forlorn and dark grey, lay spread flat before them.
They slowed down. Augustus came alongside Marlow.
“Is the world dying?” Augustus asked.
“No. Not now.” Marlow replied.
“I hope not.”
“Might be a sugar cane field burn that got loose. They call them ‘money burns.’”
“I forgot that you are Irish. Surely, everything is ending; but, as you’re wont to say ‘not yet.’”
The ashen and smoky sky dulled the sun. They heard a piercing scream of a raptor off in the distance. They motored past the ash covered gravel parking lot of a long ago, demolished gas station.
They slowed down further, so much so that their boot heels dragged alongside them, leaving sidewinder snake slithering marks atop the ash powdered pavement.
They spent very quiet moments as they watched this particulate darkness fall.
Suddenly along this desolate road what was once a farm and abandoned silos loomed ominously, still standing. These ruins slid out of view as a gust of ash and smoke obscured them.
They slowed to a stop to examine some animal footprints in the ash. They looked to be those of a four legged mammal, perhaps a Florida panther.
They listened and heard a low thudding of drums in the distance. Still the ash fell.
They noticed tied to a dead sapling a thin green neckerchief. A sign? Perhaps. But nothing else came into view.
Out of the murky sky more gray snow fell. They were almost lifted out of their saddles when a sudden noise, a loud thunder crack and concussion wave – this time very close behind – hit them. They looked around just as out of nowhere it began to rain. The ash snow lessened then stopped as the rain continued. The landscape became a lifeless dark grey black soup.
As the rain slackened and then stopped, the riders coughed reflexively until they could cough no more. Blackish grey colored drool unspooled from their lips onto their black jackets.
They then rolled into a blackened chasm of burnt grasslands and sugarcane fields. The few surviving roadside Melaleuca trees were both emaciated and exhausted, coated in grime and soot from the burned, blackened landscape around them. A sickening sweet smell abounded. The land was a desolation, lifeless, and without movement.
There was a low rumble, the winds freshened and they could smell another rain storm coming. A line of squalls must have put out the recent fires in this remote section of south central Florida’s decade long, drought land.
There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. The air temp dropped and the air scent cleared momentarily.
Further on, burned, broken asphalt fissures opened up alongside the road, obviously from major road edge burns during rain showers. Then they crossed a section where fire has crossed the road melting the tarmac. They looked for prints in the tar to study. There were none.
The riders slowly edged past a small pond filled with dead pencil thin trees. They then headed down a long straight road through a dark, forbidding tunnel of dead trees. As soon as they exited this columned hell hole, the everglades engulfed them in a rich lush greenness.
They were now deep within an Indian reservation somewhere near Lake O.
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