Foster took his hat off and glanced at the POLICE patch on the front while he spoke. "Oh, there's not much going on. Just some rabble-rousers with too much time on their hands, I suppose. It's not like we have a gang problem here." He snorted. "Ellsworth's too small to be on anybody's radar. This will all settle down in a day or two."
Reese shook his head. "I'm not so sure it will. And every day I stay here is another day my wife and daughter are alone back south."
Foster put his hat on and tugged the bill low over his eyes. “Well, I won’t begrudge a man wanting to get back to his family. I suppose with everything going on, family’s the most important thing left nowadays. If you won’t stay, at least let me get you geared up. You didn’t have anything worth talking about when you walked into town last night, and you got even less now, I suppose.”
"Chief, I—” Reese began.
“No,” Foster said, holding up his good hand to stop Reese’s argument. “Wouldn’t be neighborly. I’ll get you kitted up with weapons, ammo, and food and water. I’m not turning you loose out there to fend for yourselves—what with you all cut up on my account,” he said with finality.
Reese started to say something, but Jo grabbed his arm and spoke first. “That’s mighty nice of you, Chief Foster. We’re much obliged.”
Foster looked them both over one more time, nodded to himself, grunted. “Ahyup. We’re in for a blow, I figure. Least I can do is give you a proper downeast sendoff. Tell you what—meet me out front in, say a couple hours. I’ll make sure you have a ride to the edge of town. We got plenty of gas for the squad cars and nowhere really to go. It’s the least I can do.”
Overwhelmed with the show of gratitude, Reese found a lump in his throat prevented him from speaking. He nodded and managed to croak his thanks.
And so, a little over two hours later, Reese and Jo found themselves standing alone on the road that marked the western limit of the town of Ellsworth, Maine. Glivens said his goodbyes, handed over another box of ammo for the matching pistols Reese and Jo carried—courtsey of the Ellsworth PD—got in his squad car and drove back to town.
Silence once again descended around them, and the two refugees from Mount Desert Island stood in the middle of an empty road and stared south through the whispering pines toward an uncertain future. And home.
They both carried backpacks donated from the Walmart, filled to the gills with freeze-dried camping food, bottles of water, ammunition, spare clothes, and more first-aid supplies than Reese could count. Jo carried a shotgun over her shoulder, and Reese carried the ammo. They had tarps for keeping the rain off them, each carried a lightweight summer sleeping bag tied to the bottom of their packs, and a supply of disposable ponchos. The town doctor had changed Reese’s dressings and given him a week’s worth of antibiotics, and also provided him with a fresh, proper sling, to replace the grubby, blood and mud-stained t-shirt that Jo had originally used.
Both wore clean shirts, shorts, and new hiking boots. Jo’s legs, exposed to the sunlight for the first time in decades, were a bright pasty white. They’d trashed their filthy, ragged clothes, but she refused to discard her weathered park ranger’s campaign hat.
“Well, don’t we look ridiculous,” Reese said after a long moment of listening to the birds in the trees.
Jo snorted. “Speak for yourself, Hoss. I represent the height of late summer fashion,” she said, striking a pose with her hip out and one arm up over her head.
They both laughed. “Shall we?” Reese asked, inclining his head toward the empty road south.
“Oh, yes, let’s do,” Jo said, affecting a British accent.
A short while later, they emerged from the pine forest as the road swept back toward the coast. The ground rose slightly, just south of town, and the brisk walk had raised beads of sweat on Reese’s forehead, but the exercise so far felt good. Walking on smooth asphalt allowed him to stretch the long muscles of his legs and back after the tortuous three-mile hike from the coast through debris and mud the day before.
The sun warmed his healing face, and the breeze cooled the sweat glistening on his brow. Birds chirped in the trees, and the world felt at peace. There were no planes flying in the skies, no helicopters, no cars racing down roads. Everything was quiet and natural, as it should be.
Then they emerged from the tree line and saw the destruction further south along the coast. The hill they’d crested sloped down toward the Atlantic, and the mega-tsunami’s wrath lay evident for them to see for miles around. Like near Ellsworth, trees proved no match for the power of the raging ocean. Raw, bare earth, still glistening in the sunlight, had been exposed for miles. The black ribbon of road cut through the debris and disappeared under large swaths of mud flow. The tsunami’s damage was complete and to Reese’s mind, apocalyptic.
Next to him, Jo whistled, low and soft. “I was starting to think it was all a dream…” she muttered.
Reese narrowed his eyes at the destruction before them, watching water still seeping over the cliffs and falling to the ocean below. It reminded him of a Salvador Dali painting.
“No,” he said after a long moment. “No, it’s not a dream, Jo. It’s an obstacle. Just another wall to climb over…”
“And if we can’t climb over that wall?” Jo asked softly, still taking in the ruined landscape ahead of them.
“Then I’ll smash through it.” Reese turned to Jo. “I swear to you: nothing is going to stand in our way of getting
