What Comes After

July 1

Things are going bad with the volcanoes. The radio wasn't as staticky today, so I was able to hear the news reports. For the Cascade Range volcanoes up in Northern California and Oregon, scientists have been noticing large spikes in sulfur dioxide and other gases from around the volcanoes. They said that those signs don't mean that a volcanic eruption is going to come, but they warned us that there's a strong chance that will occur.

But the signs don't look good and there has been increased volcanic activity around the world. The volcano on Hawaii has been spewing out streams and streams of lava while volcanoes in Indonesia are rumbling again. I told May about this. "The volcanoes might be erupting.".

"Cool," she replied.

"What do you mean cool?" I asked. "We could die. People could die."

"We're not even close to any volcanoes. Do you see any outside," she said and pointed out of the window. "That's what I thought."

"But still, it could happen and—"

"The news is probably exaggerated," she said. "They do it all the time. Remember the time that the news was saying that everyone was going to get Ebola and die? Well guess what? It only infected a couple of people outside of Africa."

"That's because the government stepped in and stopped it. It can't stop this."

"Exactly," she said. "What can we do about it? Nothing. We're far away from the volcanoes, so we don't need to move. All we can do is wait until the news stops blaring about it."

"Okay," I said.

"Don't panic," she said. "Everything is going to be alright, and everything will return back to normal by the end of summer."

How can she think that everything is going to go back to normal? I just noticed that May is the only one that is acting like everything is going to be okay. Mom and Mira are gardening to make sure that we don't starve if the food runs out. Dad is going to council meetings to see if we're ever going to be able to fix up the houses by the water and get electricity back. I'm openly worried about the news and it seems like May is the only one not affected by the Mooncrash. She's taking pictures, going to birthday parties, pretending that everything is normal. Is this what hope is like or delusional dreams? I don't know.

I told Dad the same thing. "That's bad," he said.

"What are we going to do about it?"

"There's nothing much to do about it?"

"What do you mean?"

"We won't be able to stop the volcanic eruptions. Nobody will be able to. Not us, not the government, not even the world. The best that we can do is hope that it never happens."

"That's what May said too, kinda," I replied.

"Sometimes you should listen to your sister."

We didn't do much today, but I went into the pantry. Cans still lined the shelves, but I could tell that food was slowly disappearing. We still eat three meals a day, but if things take a turn for the worse, I don't know what we'll do.

July 2

There were a couple of tremors today during the afternoon. I was with Charles in the community garden when the first one happened. The ground began vibrating. "Are we in an earthquake?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "We should probably get down."

"Get down under what?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Should we move to an open area?"

"That seems like a smart idea," he replied.

There was a grassy field next to the community garden. The area was bordered by some trees, but none in the middle, so Charles and I ran out into the meadow. There were already a couple of people gathered there— probably volunteers for the community garden. But I noticed that there were only about ten or so people there, far less than what we started with in the beginning.

I was going to talk about that with Charles, but the tremble got stronger. Trees rustled and crows roosting on their branches flew away, forming flocks of black in the sky. I heard a crash of plastic. The greenhouse fell down. There were a couple of groans and some cursing. "I feel bad for the greenhouse people," I said.

"Yeah, they worked pretty hard over the summer for it."

"Do you think they're going to restart?"

"Probably," Charles said. "Or they might start working in the main garden and abandon the project. With all the earthquakes, I don't think they're going to be able to make much progress anyways."

"There aren't many people here," I said.

"Yeah," he said. "Told you that everyone is leaving."

"Are you going to be leaving?" I asked.

"Probably not," he said. "We won't have anywhere to go even if we wanted to leave."

I breathed a sigh of relief. We chatted a bit more until the people in charge of the gardening effort told us that the earthquakes made working in the garden too dangerous because of trees and things falling, so they dismissed us early. We're still meeting next week though.

Charles and I walked home together. He asked all of a sudden, "Are you going to leave?"

"No," I said. "Well, probably not. Why are you asking?"

"Why did you ask?"

"I was just curious, that's all."

"Okay," he said and turned towards me. "Have you thought of your five things on your bucket list?"

"Not really," I said. "The only thing that I've got so far is 'Make Charles do something embarrassing.'"

"You better have your goals down next week because we're starting."

"Don't we have all summer to do it."

"Didn't you hear?" Charles said. "The mayor says that we're getting power by the end of the month."

"How?" I asked. "That doesn't make any sense. There's no way the city could get all the solar panels and wind turbines up or ship in enough oil to power the city."

"I don't know," he said. "All I know is that everything is going to go back to normal by the end of the month, so we better hurry up."

"Okay," I said, and we reached his house. "See you next week."

"You better have your list ready."

"Totally," I said.

"That better not be sarcastic," he shouted back and waved goodbye.

A couple of minutes after I got home, another tremble hit, but it was softer than the one at the community garden. I went into my room and cranked the radio one. The scientists were talking about the Moon's effect on the volcanic eruptions. Because it's much closer than before, the Moon's gravity is pulling on the magma in the mantle and forcing it upwards to the surface and causing volcanic eruptions.

The volcanologists have been monitoring volcanoes worldwide and many of them are steaming up and becoming more active. The only good news is that the supervolcano in Yellowstone doesn't seem like it's going to erupt soon, but scientists believe that it's going to happen in around a century or two.

I was going to keep listening to the radio when Mira interrupted me. "Are you listening to the radio again?"

I nodded. "It's all bad news."

"I know," Mira said. "I could hear it from the hallway."

She took the radio out of my hand. "You should take a break from this. Too much bad news isn't good for you."

"But what if something new—"

"Any new information won't help you and it won't help us," Mira said. "Relax. Read a book. Help me with the garden. Just do something."

"Fine," I said. "I'll read a book."

"It better not be about volcanoes or natural disasters. Read something more positive like a comedy or romance or something like that."

"I don't have any books like that though."

"The library is open, right?" she said.

"I don't know," I said. "I'll go and check tomorrow."

"In the meantime, you can help me with gardening. We've got a lot to do," Mira said.

"I'll pass," I said. "I'm going to play cards."

"With who?" she said.

"Myself," I said.

"What card games can you play by yourself?"

"Solitaire," I said.

"Okay," Mira said. "But you better not touch the radio."

"Got it," I said, and Mira left the room.

I laid out the cards and played a couple of rounds, but I got bored quickly. I grabbed the radio from on top of the drawer and dimmed the volume, listening to the news. The radio spouted out estimations about death toll, economic impact, ecological damage, everything bad about the volcanoes. I wanted to be hopeful, but it's hard when the whole world is saying that the volcanic disasters might wipe out millions of people.

July 3

It happened sometime during the night.

The sky was dark and gray in the morning when I woke up. I thought that it was five in the morning, but it was around nine. May was the only one awake. "Why is it so cloudy today?" she asked. "It never rains here during the summer and it's only ever foggy here in spring."

I looked out of the window. The sky was a deep shade of gray, obscuring the sun and blueness of the sky. "Hello," May said. "You still haven't answered my question."

"Also," she said and pointed out. "It's snowing for some reason."

I stepped outside. It was quite warm, seventy degrees at least. There was no way that it was snowing. A gray flake landed on my arm, powdery and dusty. "It's ash," I said. "We should stay inside."

I went inside and woke Dad up. "The volcanoes have erupted," I told Dad and he told me to wake everyone up to meet at the dining table. After I woke everyone up, I grabbed the radio and cranked it a few times. The news was grim. Volcanoes all along the Cascade Range, some of which were thought to be extinct, erupted at night, wiping out most of Oregon and Washington along with parts of California.

"How do you know?" Dad asked as we circled around the table.

"The dark clouds in the sky aren't really clouds. They're volcanic ash," I said. "And the radio is saying that the volcanoes up north have all erupted."

"That's bad," Dad said.

"No, duh," May said.

"Not now, May," Mom said. "First thing we're going to do is to close all the windows. Breathing in all this ash is going to be bad for everyone's lungs."

"Neal," she said. "You're in charge of sorting out the windows."

"The next thing we're going to do is to bring in all of the potted plants so that the leaves don't get covered with dust. Mira and I will do that."

"But what about the ash?" I asked.

"Remember those masks that we bought for the wildfires. Everyone is going to have to put them on."

"But they're so uncomfortable," May said.

"Everyone is putting them on," Mom said.

"We should take the car in too," Dad said. "The dust is bad for the engine. Is there gas in the engine, Mira?"

"I don't know," Mira said.

"You were the last one to use the car. How do you not know?" Dad said.

"There's no time for petty arguments," Mom said. "Just try turning on the car and if it doesn't work, then we'll just have to push it into the garage."

"What about Grandma and Grandpa?" I asked. "Shouldn't we pick them up?"

"They're safe where they are," Mom said.

"I don't think so," Dad said. "There's going to be a lot of unrest after the volcanic eruption. It's best that they stay here for at least a couple of weeks until conditions get better. I can go get them if there's still gas in the car."

"But what if conditions don't get better," I added. "With all the ash in the air, we can't even see the sun. How are all the plants going to grow? I read one time that just one giant volcanic eruption caused famine, but with all these volcanic eruptions, will our garden even work?"

"That's a good point," Mom said. "We're going to need to start cutting down meals. Two meals a day from now on."

"Two meals," May exclaimed. "I'm going to starve."

"Mom," Mira said. "That seems a little extreme."

"Fine," Mom said. "Three meals on Sundays and Wednesdays. The rest of the days we're eating two meals only."

"What is May going to be doing today?" I asked. "You haven't assigned her anything."

"After you finish closing up all the windows, you and May are going to be counting up how much food we have if we ever need to ration."

Mom looked at all of us. "Is everyone ready to work?" she said. "Okay, good."

I went all around our house trying to close the windows. We had flung them all open because it was always hot at night. Finding and closing them was a chore, but it didn't take long. By the time that I had finished, May had finished organizing a chart system and we began to count up the cans of food. We've got around a thousand five hundred cans of food.

When I first added all the cans up together, the number seemed like a lot, but looking back at it now, we don't have a lot of food. We're eating twelve cans a day because Dad brought Grandma and Grandpa to our house. If we keep at it at this pace, we'll be out of food in four months. I don't know if the Sun is ever going to come out again, and if the volcanic ash is all over the world, then all our crops will die. The food deliveries that we receive every Saturday (except for today, though I guess it was because of the panic from the volcanoes) will start to get smaller and smaller. We'll start starving in the winter months and die slowly and painfully.

If the universe gave me a choice to reverse this whole disaster and prevent this whole Mooncrash, I think I'll take it now. I guess this future feels worse than my previous one.