Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
Two of the enormous crosses are bent, leaning over, and the great pavilion has been shredded, torn apart by whatever battle I’ve missed. My face aches, but I’ve had many worse beatings before. My guess is that all the preaching and all the dogma flew out the window when the whole thing went up in smoke. Whoever found me lost all interest in me or left me for dead. There’s something in my fucking mouth. I spit it out and don’t bother looking at it. I don’t want to know.
I can see the trucks now that most of the tents have been burned down or collapsed during the battle. Stumbling toward them, I can hear the moans and cries of the survivors who aren’t long for this world. There are men and women out there dying. A decent fellow would go find them, help them or at least they’d put them out of their misery. Not me. These bastards get what they deserve.
The back of the truck is loaded with supplies, just as I had suspected. Climbing over the tailgate, I look at everything they’ve loaded in here and begin to imagine this as a sort of survival truck or a colonizing truck. There’s enough supplies in here to start a whole new fanatical camp out in some other city. Maybe they had their eyes on Savannah. They have enough gas and water to get this truck all the way to Los Angeles if they wanted to. What were they doing with it just sitting here? I make my way to the back where a large green case is nestled up against the back of the bed. I reach for the latch and flip it open, staring inside with a big wide grin. God bless the United States Marines. I close the case and think about it. MREs. A whole, shit ton of MREs. I clamber out of the truck and drop down into the mud, looking around to see if there’s anyone who could have witnessed me. I don’t really see anyone, but just like I had been hiding, I’m sure there are probably a few out there that are keeping wary eyes on me.
Dropping my pack, I fish out one of my extra knives and unsheathe it. I don’t want any chance that there are others who could follow me. Looking into the back of the second truck, I see that everything is identical. They had to have knocked over a convoy from one of the refugee camps to get ahold of all of this. Taking the knife, I stab it into one of the tires and listen to the loud pop of the puncture, followed by the long hiss of the tire deflating as the entire weight of the vehicle shifts. Wrenching the knife free, I walk around to the other side and slash the other two tires. Coming back around to the front driver’s side tire, I slash it and leave the knife. I won’t be needing it. I still have a machete and only one hand.
I take the time to relieve the sabotaged truck of a portion of its supplies, stuffing as many MREs into the back of my truck as I can. I follow that with an extra two containers each of gas and water, figuring that it’s better to be safe than sorry. Walking around to the driver’s side, I open the door and find the keys sitting in the ignition. They must have been expecting this truck to be used in case of an emergency. Too bad no one thought about it when my army of killers besieged their little commune. I turn the keys and grin as the engine roars to life. It’s time to get out of this fucking city.
On my way out, I run over anything in my path. I’m not frightened of anything. This is a big ass, old school five ton military truck and I’m getting to Florida no matter what. Rumbling toward the northeast entrance, I crush tents, tables, and anything else that might be in my way. I love the feeling of the rumbling engine under the seats, welcoming me back to the good old days. As I make my way toward the entrance, I feel like a conqueror leaving the battlefield. But that’s when I see them.
There’s a patrol waiting at the entrance and I immediately think of Dean and his crew. There’s probably twenty of them at the entrance, all armed with spears and swords, waiting for others to show up. Many of them approach the truck, waving their arms to flag me down, not suspecting that I might be someone who isn’t a member of their little crazy club. I hate them. I hate the sight of them and I feel my foot pressing down on the gas. Underneath me, the gears shift and I keep moving at full speed. They don’t stand aside. A few of them jump out of the way, but the majority are just standing there, waving at me to slow down.
A decent man would lay on the horn to try and disperse them. I am not a decent man.
I barely feel them smacking into the nose of the truck or the crunching of their bones under the tires or their screams filling the air, or the horrified shrieks of the surviving women and children as I pull out onto the street, smacking a few with the tail of my new ride, hurling them out into the street with me. They’re charging after me, but the doors are locked and I’m still going at full speed. I don’t know for sure. I counted five, maybe six or seven. That’s a good number to take with me on the way out. Fuck them all. Fuck Atlanta.
Atlanta is an escapee’s wet dream. Everything that these psychopaths have done seems to be working perfectly for me now. The roads are empty, there’s not a single Zombie out there, and all the people who survived the assault have taken cover, fled, or are trying to flag me down. I quickly realize that my bloodlust for these fuckers is never going to be satisfied. I swerve and veer off the road for them, trying to take out as many as I can before I leave. One guy I catch with my fender and squish across the exterior of a parked car, leaving a blood smear across the car and the dead man lying in the road while a woman screams in horror and the others charge after me, throwing spears and axes at the back of the truck. There’s nothing they can do. They’re completely on the wrong side of this fight. I’ve won, they just don’t know it yet, or they do and they’re just too stupid to accept it.
This is my city now.
I run down another man who is just wandering in the middle of the street with blood spattered all over his white cloak, his hands outstretched, and his head tilted back, beseeching his cruel god for some sort of enlightenment. I suppose that I’m the answer to his prayer. Death is the only escape this world has left to offer. He smacks into the grill of the truck and his head splits upon the edge, splattering blood across the hood before he is sucked under the truck and vanishes. I don’t care. These aren’t my people. They aren’t anyone’s people. None of us are people. We just are.
There aren’t very many of them left as I put distance between myself and their camp. I begin to notice that the streets are empty and abandoned by people entirely, so I pull over to the side of the road, parking next to the line of sabotaged cars moved over to the side of the street. I kill the ignition and step out, looking at the four story buildings all around me, completely clueless as to where I actually am. I don’t have a map and I haven’t been paying attention to any of the road signs. Stepping out of the truck, I look around, listening to the sounds of the vacant city. There are no horns any longer. There are no shouts or chanting prayers. There’s nothing but the dead city and its tomb-like silence.
This is my city and it is mine to do with as I choose. I walk around to the back of the truck and wonder if I killed Dean when I fled the encampment, or if he’d died during the uprising. I’m assuming there’s still a fair amount of blood to be shed before Dean gets control of the survivors. There will inevitably be the power struggle of those who still side with the religious fanatics and then those who side with the more pragmatic Dean, who simply wants to be a tyrant, living out his days in comfort and pleasure before the end comes. He’s the kind of man that will probably be a cannibal by the end of the week. I figure that I should give them a hand.
Climbing into the back of the truck, I grab one of the smaller, gallon containers of gas and drop down onto the street. Walking to the passenger side of the truck, I throw open the door and search though my pack for the lighter I’ve been carrying for what seems like ages. Stuffing it into my pocket, I cross the street and splash a quarter of the container’s contents onto the wooden door before lighting it and watching the door engulf itself in a wall of fire before moving back across the street to where the truck is parked. Turning, I lock my incendiary gaze on the pawnshop I’m parked next to. Again, I douse the wall and door with gasoline before igniting it and letting the street burn.
Back inside the truck, I drive on, as a wall of heat and destruction rises in my rear view. I linger just long enough to see the fires begin to feed hungrily on the buildings, consuming the exteriors in enough fire to leave me confident that the whole block will burn. I drive several streets before stopping and repeating this, lighting two buildings on fire before driving on and doing it all again. I empty all of the gallon containers of gas before I’m satisfied that this whole city is going to go up in flames, a pyre to the god of madness and vengeance.
“Here you go, Lindsay,” I say to myself. Maybe I’m praying. I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just talking to her. Or at least, I hope she’s hearing me. “Here’s your funeral pyre, like the Vikings did. Like they did in the old days.”
Smoke rises up in to the sky, a fragrant offering to the cruel and unforgiving gods that now hold sway over the world. I hope they like it. I park on an overpass that’s crowded and jammed with cars, watching the fires rise. I want to sit here and watch the whole damn city burn, so I do. I pull an MRE out of the back of the truck and climb up onto the bloody hood, watching the fires swell and grow with the awe of a child at the circus.
At first, I can track my zigzag pattern I took to leave the city, watching a trail of fire grow for whoever wants to follow me. I’m sure someone will. I’m nearly certain that they’ll show up soon with a pack of killers looking to bury me. They probably won’t even care about their faith anymore. It’ll all be personal. I eat with my fingers, chicken pesto pasta, the greatest, tastiest thing that I have ever stuffed in my mouth. I watch from my seat as the trail begins to grow and spread, soon there are more and more buildings burning and a curtain of black smoke rises up toward the darkening skies of the stormy weather. The slate gray is quickly corrupted by the growing darkness of the smoke. I eat the entire MRE and open another. This one says that it’s buffalo chicken. It tastes like it and I thank God again for the armed forces and those geniuses whoever invented these.
When the world is overwhelmingly quiet, I begin to feel that it’s time to leave. The fanatics haven’t cleared off the interstate, in fact, I’m sure they did the exact opposite. The more I drive, the more I’m beginning to suspect that they’ve been jamming up the roads with cars to funnel travelers into their territory to kill or convert. I try to find a way out, but it takes an hour just to find a passable road out and then another hour to bash my way through the parked car barrier at its entrance before I can actually leave the city. By this time, the inferno is growing more and more. Atlanta is going to be gone, just like Detroit. There’s no way that they’re going to quench the fires unless a monsoon happens to pass over the city.
“Sorry, Dean,” I say as I’m passing a sign telling me that I am now leaving Atlanta.
I drive for hours, before I decide that the silence is too much. I’m concentrating on avoiding parked cars and even more terrified of booby traps that the fanatics might have set up to stop invaders. Looking at the dash, I decide that the silence is killing me and that I need to at least try and find something on the radio. Most of the airwaves are dead, but I stumble upon something that makes me feel sick to my stomach.
“Are you looking for sanctuary?” A woman’s voice that’s as soft as velvet and as sweet as honey speaks to me with an alluring tone. “Are you tired of the dangers out in the wide, deadly world? Then come to Atlanta. Come to the Faithful and we will offer you warmth and comfort. Come and rest your weary head. Come and find salvation. Come, to Atlanta.” That’s the last I hear of her before the Carter Family starts singing to me that I should keep on the sunny side of life. I leave it here, listening to them for a while as I drive down the road, smashing into cars that are strewn chaotically every which way they want. It seems to be on an hour long playlist of old time gospel and blue grass before the woman starts calling me back to Atlanta again. Eventually, she shuts up and I’m left to contemplate the sunny side of life again.
I pass several towns, but I keep to the interstate. As I put distance between me and Atlanta, the only way to truly see the road is to follow the parked and abandoned vehicles. Eventually, I’m left with the crooked and leaning power poles with their dangling, dead power lines as a guide to where I need to be going. There are half-submerged bodies in the hardening muck, who had either died a long time ago or were caught in the last series of storms. I don’t give them much thought. The dead can bury themselves. Hell, the world is taking care of that. I keep my foot on the gas and wind past another dead car and keep on traveling south, heading toward Florida.
Whenever I pass the towns, there’s always a sinking feeling in my stomach that wonders if I’m going to be shot at, but I don’t think that there are very many people in the area with guns. I do see a small encampment on an off ramp, a bunch of dark and dingy faces looking over their shoulders, staring at my truck without a single word or intention to stop me. They don’t shoot at me and they don’t bother trying to wave me down. A small child stands next to a group of men and women around a campfire, he raises a hand and waves at me before I pass him. Part of me wants to stop and give him an MRE, but that would just encourage opportunists to follow after me and to slit my throat while I sleep.
Eventually, I’m out of range for the broadcast and I’m left in silence. I’m abandoned with my thoughts and as I drive, I can’t help but think of Lindsay. I think about her dying in my arms and leaving her at the mercy of those killers. What kind of a friend was I to her? I let her die. If she’d just abandoned me, I would have been the one left for dead and she would have been well away from the city, on her own, and more importantly, alive. It weighs on my heart, how everything turned out. Keeping my foot on the gas, I drive until my eyelids grow too heavy and I decide that it’s time for me to pull off somewhere.
I spot a house that has collapsed over, but the barn next to it looks as stable and steady as the day it had been built. Veering off the road, I cut across what was probably a farm once, but now, it’s my road. I pull up in front of the barn and I sit there, looking over at the house that has a tractor rammed into its side. This appears to be the source of the collapse and leaves me with a dozen questions that I fear will never be answered. Most of all is the question as to who the fuck drives a tractor into the side of a house? But eventually, I turn my gaze to the barn and I can’t help but wish that she was here with me. I wish we’d both made off like bandits, without food and without water, rather than to make it this far with all this food and water on my own.
Did I do this to her? Am I the reason why she’s dead and not still alive in Bellbrook? I pull the truck slowly off the road as the pain hits me. I did this. I had to be the one who took the blame. After all, I’m all that’s left. Even if the psychopathic fanatics somehow track me all the way this far south, I’m the one left standing. I’m the last player. The queen surrounded by pawns. Looking around all that I’ve done, I can’t help but wonder how this all came to the breaking point. We were good together. We were an excellent team. We made it almost across America together. We could have made it all the way. How did all of this happen? What kind of luck exists in the world still? The kind that just robs me of every last shred of hope I have. It’s enough for me to wonder whether I should be looking for higher meaning in the fact that terrible shit keeps happening to me and I keep getting back up.
I step out of the truck and feel the hardening earth beneath my feet. Whatever nutrients were still in the soil are vanishing, running off, leaving us with this hard concrete. Soon, it won’t matter if we find ways to make new soil. The whole earth will be too hard to keep us alive. Going around to the passenger side of the truck, I take out my pack and a pair of bolt cutters from under the seat. I’m going to need them. I approach the old barn, looking at it for a moment, wondering if I open those doors, will unspeakable horrors come pouring out? I figure it doesn’t matter. They’ll come out, I’ll run, something terrible will happen to me, I’ll wake up, and I’ll keep moving. Life is set in this cycle. I approach the old barn without any fear. If death is waiting for me on the other side, so be it. I’ve been waiting for death. He’s been a little out of touch with me lately. I figure we should get reacquainted soon enough.
None of this is going to end well.
I can feel it in my stomach.
Taking out the bolt cutters, I cut the rusting chain around the handles. The side with the lock slithers down, tightening the slack. I give the chain a little help and it falls to the earth, thumping and coiling together in a heap. I stare at the chain for a moment, lost in my thoughts and worries. How much longer? How much longer until I’m dead? It’s not that I want to die. It’s that I know that it’s coming. Am I going to make it all the way to Florida, or am I going to end up dead after so far and so long? Is this my fate? I push the doors open and look inside the barn. Thankfully, it’s nearly vacant. It stinks of rotten straw and the long stale odor of rotten animals. After the unknown months of abandonment, there’s probably nothing left but bones and skin. I don’t bother looking. It’s not that bad. I’ll leave the doors open for a while, let the place air out.
Making my way back to the truck, I kill the ignition and sit in the cab, staring at the barn for a moment, watching the clouds lazily move across the sky in the distance. I don’t know what it is about the clouds, but they seem like the last relics of the past. I watch them and try not to think about anything. It’s the thinking that hurts the most, the loss sneaking in through my thoughts. I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this alone.
I don’t even have a memento of her, outside of my dildo abomination that I have strapped to my stump. My life, I guess, that’s another little token that she’s given me. I close my eyes and try to picture her, but I can hardly even do that. All I feel is alone, empty, and forgotten. It’s almost as if I’m holding them responsible for leaving me. Them—everyone. Every last person on the planet. Where have all the sane, normal, rational people gone and why did they think that it was okay to leave me here? To abandon me with all the delusional psychopaths and cannibalistic freaks? How is any of this fair?