Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
“Make sure everything has the safety on,” I say, like I’m the mom of the house. They all look at me like I’ve just asked them all to make sure that they have two ears. “Just do it,” I tell them all again without compromise. “I don’t want my face blown off when we hit a speed bump.”
“Don’t take everything,” Devon snaps at us angrily.
Honestly, we’re running low on pretty much everything. We have plenty of ammunition, but it’s dead weight. If we never use our guns, then it’s just wasted energy and with food so scarce, that’s not going to be something that we can sustain for very long. We need to come to terms with the fact that all of our bodies are going to start shutting down soon, consuming muscle and fat stores. A few magazines and we should all be fine. I look at Noah who has two pistols, one on each hip, and is loading a shotgun. I want to tell him what an idiot he is, but I figure that he hasn’t logged any hours at the shooting range like I’ve had. He’ll probably need the ammunition and extra guns. Honestly, I think that everyone here but Lexi and I are just playing with the guns, not sure what exactly is expected of them right now.
I watch Lexi prepping a Glock and slipping on a shoulder holster before looking at me and I instantly know that she’s thinking the same thing that I am. Everyone here is an amateur. It’s not the most inspiring thing in the world, but at least they’ll have weapons if we get into a situation that’s hairy. As I look over them one last time, I see that Henry seems to have some semblance of knowing what he’s doing with his bolt action hunting rifle. Slinging it over his shoulder, he heads for the exit and I decide to follow him. I grab one of the shotguns and a box of shells to match. I figure that Marko will want something.
As we head for the Sidekick, I notice that Marko is already flagging us to hold up. “There’s not enough room for everyone,” Marko says with a grin on his face. “Five of us can go at the max and since I’m a crucial member of this little expedition, that means one of you needs to stay behind.”
“Henry,” Noah volunteers immediately and I’m forced to bite my tongue. I want to tell them that Henry actually knows what he’s doing.
After all
, I think bitterly,
he’s killed my father. He’s the only one here with an actual kill under his belt
. Lexi and Greg both nod in agreement and Henry seems to get the idea.
“Okay,” Henry says, holding up his hands in surrender. “I get it. I’m cool with it.”
“Come show me on the map where we’re going to find it.” Marko calls him over to the driver’s side of the car. Marko’s a good guy, more compassionate and caring than the rest of us combined. If we fall into any kind of trouble though, we’re going to regret not having Henry with us. I hate to admit it, but leaving him behind is a mistake.
Lexi takes the middle in the back seat. I sit to her right, looking out the window at Greg, admiring how attractive he looks in his explorer get up. He catches me admiring him and I offer him a little wink. He grins and climbs in.
“Good luck, everyone!” Henry shouts as Marko fires up his Sidekick.
The world is gone. Everything that served as a marker to society has been discarded, decaying in the harsh sunlight and heavy humidity. As we pull out onto the A1A, I am immediately aware of the fact that it has been nearly a year that we’ve been in that beach house. I look back and I see the structure and I can’t help but feel like I’m leaving the last known parts of the map. It’s a sickening sensation in my stomach. When we pull onto the road I feel like I’m in the middle of an entirely different world. Looking ahead, I feel like I’m on the moon.
The road is hardly there. Mud and dirt has nearly claimed the entire surface, only the center of the road with the lines painted remains. If it weren’t for the power poles, no one would be able to discern where the road is. I look at Lexi, but she’s too busy looking at how vast and endless everything looks. It’s like a great desert has claimed all of the world, engulfing everything that can be seen. From where we are, there’s beaches and oceans everywhere, but it feels like the beaches never end. Marko heads north and I feel sick already.
On the way north, we pass Marineland and I look at the parking lot sparsely populated with abandoned cars that linger like tombstones to a world that has long since died. A smiling, cartoon dolphin sits over a fading arch and the whole thing looks morbid. The macabre dolphin, with its haunting gaze seems to mock and taunt us as we drive past it. Several cars have been rammed into power poles or through the high, chain link fence that surrounds the amusement park. I wonder if they were trying to get in in order to eat the dolphins. On the opposite side of the road are numerous shops and businesses, all of them look like they’ve been completely abandoned. The windows are all shattered and the doors have been kicked in. Dust, sand, and dirt pile up at the base of the walls, making it feel like we’re on the set of some desert epic.
Marko passes the randomly abandoned cars. Some of them look like they’ve been outfitted for survival, prepped for a journey, but cast off nonetheless. Most of the vehicles have the windows smashed in and the doors all flung open. The wind has closed some of the doors, but the majority are still open, the contents cast about and then pulled off in different directions by the wind. What alarms me the most is how quickly we come across signs of the anarchy that has consumed the world. Graffiti covers the abandoned cars and the walls, people leaving messages to others hopefully following, telling them where they are now. Others are warnings for anyone who might be reading them. Several skulls are painted on the walls.
Have you seen my daughter?
is painted on one of the walls and I feel my heart shattering.
It’s been over a year since we left campus. In just a year, the whole world has collapsed and completely fallen apart. Everywhere, the palm trees stand like petrified monoliths, baked to death in the scorching, unforgiving sun, half rotten with blackening trunks. Most of them have fallen down across the roads, onto buildings or fences, and lie where they fell. Marko makes his way around them, muttering that this looks real bad.
When we find our first body, we all go silent with the same horrified, grim terror that is so infectious right now. I don’t know if it’s a man or a woman, but they’re lying in the middle of the street, caked with dust and mud that’s hardened into a tan skin over the rotting corpse. Whoever it is, they’ve been dead for a long time. Judging by what I can see I can tell it’s mostly decayed skin on a skeleton with hair whisking high in the breeze. I feel nauseated by the sight of the body and I want to close my eyes to make it go away. But that’s not an option. When I blink, I see the body in my mind’s eye and it haunts me still. This is the world we’re in.
Marko slows the car as we approach a scene that makes all of us nervous. It’s a minivan that’s blackened to a crisp. The windows have all shattered and inside the vehicle, behind the steering wheel, is a blackened skeletal driver. The doors are open and riddled with bullet holes. Just thirty minutes from where we live and we come across this scene, which is made worse by how slow we are traveling. It makes my skin crawl. Beyond the ring of charred debris and ash, the body of a woman is sprawled out naked, her things scattered and stripped for what’s useful and what isn’t. I cringe at the sight of a naked child nearby, dead as well.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but the world is a dark and horrible place now. Everything is gray and tan, marred by the follies of man and brought low in the wake of the apocalypse. I imagine that only terrible people remain and I can’t fathom how my father navigated this world on his own. Maybe he wasn’t alone. I think about all of this and wonder how one person could possibly make it through this world alone. It isn’t possible. Everyone has their limits and my father must have had his. There’s no way he made it by himself, and if he did, then he’s a much stronger man than I ever gave him credit for.
We drive for two hours, give or take, wandering so far away from home and so horrified by what we see that I’m afraid to look back. There is a hellish wasteland between us and the beach house. I think about Devon, Henry, Skye, and Katrina back there, wondering about the world that is beyond the fence. If only they knew just how terrible it really is. I wonder if Greg and Noah regret agreeing to come with us. I wonder if Marko regrets it. I wouldn’t blame any of them.
We’re forced to make our way through yards and over the sidewalk to avoid abandoned cars that look like relics from ages ago. It’s amazing how terrible the world looks. There are buildings that have burned, leaving nothing but blackened skeletons of the once glorious vacation homes. Their ruins are silent, revealing nothing but a location where humanity once built something and the world has reclaimed it, marking it with hellish finality. Many of the buildings are mostly gone as we drive through a subdivision and I can’t help but think that these are the shadows of dozens of lives. It gnaws at me. I hate it. I hate thinking about everything and everyone that has been lost. I can’t help but believe that the entire world is this way.
I think of my home I grew up in and know that it’s completely gone. I think of our old neighbor’s house, Mrs. Branson who always decorated her home for every holiday, and how it’s likely a dust-covered, empty shell. The park down the road is probably nothing more than metal and ash. My elementary school, my middle school, and my high school are likely mausoleums to the world that used to exist. It plagues my soul as we pass one dead building after another. Everything is gone. Everything is dead. Everything is completely abandoned and we are all alone.
There’s no signs of anyone, except for the violent footprints they leave behind. I don’t see anyone moving on the streets or in the distance. As we drive, I’m scanning the horizon for signs of life, but there’s nothing out there. I can’t help but feel like we’re the last people on the planet and everyone else has fallen prey to the Collapse and everything that followed.
“I see it,” Greg says after a moment.
For miles we’ve been driving down the dirt-covered road that is only marked by the power lines stretching from pole to pole, some hanging like limp snakes from their posts. The military compound for the Coast Guard is on a chunk of the beach that has been pretty well cleared of anything that might resemble a structure. They’ve got enough beach front for them to have thought that they’re part of their own little world, even though Jacksonville is just a short jaunt further up the road. As we draw closer and closer, I get a bad feeling about all of this. I wonder if I was mistaken to take up this cause.
The Coast Guard was part of the military and every branch of the military was given priority treatment in the end. They were given food, shelter, and electricity while the rest of the world was running mad because drunks kept screwing with the power, and the military was taking food to shelters so that the community could all share in the wealth of a few. At the sight of this facility, I’m reminded of how brutal the military was getting there at the end. No one could blame them after all, they were doing everything they needed to so that their own families could be safe and secure, but I remember hating them. I remember watching them as they opened fire at rioting refugees in their FEMA camps and dozens of bodies dropping on the TV. It felt so wrong, so unjust.
When we got word on the radio that Washington DC fell, I remember wondering what was going to happen to the military. Just like any other lawless time in history, the person with the biggest stick got to say what the new laws were. I could always picture some group of generals dividing up the rest of the populated world, saying who got what and who was left to fend for themselves. Cities were burning and dying and the military was left with all the power. I wonder how many soldiers were on this base with hopes that their families would be protected and saved. Clearly, the government couldn’t protect and secure all of the families to all of their soldiers. For the National Guard units and the Coast Guard, their families would have been given the least amount of priority. How long until soldiers started killing their commanding officers and taking over the bases, just so they could escape to their families or have a say in what happened? I’m sure this is all very cynical of me, but as I look at the base, I can’t help but wonder what transpired there.
Were they all killed by rioters or marauders who took to the streets with their own guns to hunt down those who had more than them or those who had wronged them in the Collapse? Were those Zombie things that they talked about on the radio responsible for killing them? Or did they just walk away? No matter what happened, from the looks of it, the place is entirely abandoned. Of course, all of this seems like the perfect ambush to me. Marko keeps driving toward the fenced military structure and I can’t help but feel like I’m the only person who senses the impending doom. I look at Lexi, who is staring off to the west.
“Maybe we should stop,” I suggest to all of them. No one budges. “What if there’s an ambush there or something along those lines?”
Marko slows the Sidekick to a stop and looks over his shoulder at me. He glances to Greg who shrugs, and then back to Lexi and Noah who are too busy staring off at all the carnage. They’re all too paralyzed by the reality that the world as it remains. All we have left are the ruins and shadows of a world that we can no longer recognize. I don’t fault them for being like this, but they need to snap out of it. Our lives are on the line right now and I need them to focus on the task at hand.
“What do you suggest we do?” Marko asks.
“Well,” I try to think of our next step. “We should wait to see if there’s any movement. If there’s someone watching us, I’m sure that we’ll see something if anyone is still there. If no one moves after a while, then I say we drive up slowly and cautiously. Then we kill the car and head in on foot.”
There’s a truck that has rammed into the tall, razor-wired fence, taking out a post and creating an opening at the bottom of the fence. It’s off to the side and it’s high enough from the ground that we could all get through it easily.
We keep still in the Sidekick for several minutes, staring at the Coast Guard base, watching for any signs of life. Digging out my binoculars, I scan the buildings, looking at the darkened windows for any sort of movement. Honestly, if I were on my own, out against the world after the whole system came crashing down, military instillations would be my first place to go. There’s everything here if it’s untapped, but then again, everything looks tapped out. The whole world looks like it’s been ransacked. So if no one had the idea to come here first, people obviously came later on. After a while, I let out a sigh and look at everyone who is anxiously waiting for the go ahead.
“It looks clear,” I say nervously. “Marko, will you put the keys somewhere safe?”
“Yeah,” Marko nods. “I’ll hold onto them.”
“No,” Lexi says as everyone gets out of the vehicle, preparing to make their way toward the facility. “She means on the car. If something happens to you, we’re stuck walking back. No one should hold onto anything valuable.”
“Oh,” Marko says after a brief moment of hesitation. “I’ll put them on top of the front tire.”
“Good idea,” Lexi says with a soft smile.
As we make our way toward the building, my eyes are drawn to the crashed Ford that’s taken out part of the fence. I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe watchtowers or a minefield or something, but this place doesn’t look that well defended. Probably if it were fully staffed, I’d have a different opinion of everything, but right now, it looks like a mixture between a campus and a monthly payment storage facility. I wonder when it was last protected by armed men in military uniforms. Were they overrun? Were they attacked? Maybe they just walked away. That seems like something that the end of the world would inspire in people with friends and families back home.
The truck isn’t a new addition to the facility. Its ramming escapades must have ended long ago because the vehicle is covered in dust. The bed is packed with sand and dust from the storms. I wonder if the people who rammed the fence have already looted the place, taking everything of value. I’m sure whoever was driving got to the good supplies already. Everything else is probably useless. I look at Lexi as Greg and Noah take the lead, acting like commandos they saw on videogames and in movies. I wonder if they know just how stupid they look.
Marko brings up the rear, carrying his toolbox which rattles and gives away our position with every step he takes. I look back at him and he just sort of shrugs. There’s no helping it. Plus, if there was anyone on the base, they would have fired at us by now. They would have opened up on us and taken after us for our gear. Since there’s not so much as a pin drop from the base, I’m certain that it’s abandoned. Whoever owned this truck is long gone, probably taking a better vehicle with them as they went.