Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
It’s amazing how dead the world truly is. I don’t know how else to feel about it other than a sucking despair that clings to me, dragging me down and forcing me to realize that everything I once knew is gone. Isolation didn’t teach me that. Isolation taught me passive hope and fear, not the truth. The truth is something more horrifying, something that’s paralytic about it now. I look at the world and I only see the doom and devastation. How are people still out here? How are they still hoping that God will save them or that there’s some sort of divine guidance through all of this? For me, that’s too far. That’s where the line is crossed.
I look at Lexi and watch her holding my nephew and I think that this is the only hope that I need. This is the only hope that any of us should truly need. The fact that I’m completely in awe of this child while death snaps at our heels makes me think that there is some sort of divine light at the end of the tunnel. But whatever it is, I know it doesn’t want me hunting down and killing travelers, of that much I’m certain. I look at my nephew and I know that God is out there, whispering in the darkness for us. I look at this tiny pinprick of light in a world filled with darkness and I know that I’m going to get him to Dayton, if it’s the last thing I do.
“I wish Devon and the others came with us,” Greg says after a moment. I think about them for the first time in days. I think about them and I feel a sudden overwhelming sense of terror. They never got to see this moment. They never got to see that there’s new life in the world. Who cares if everyone around us is dying, there’s still hope out there. I wish they were here too. I wish they hadn’t stayed behind. “We could really use someone with a gun in the back,” Greg adds nervously. That’s not exactly why I wish they were here, but same idea, sadness and loss.
“Just keep us ahead of them, Greg,” I say calmly, not wanting to spark his anger. “Just keep us going.”
Chapter Three
My nephew cries out, his weak little voice barely making it over the engine, and with each subsequent scream, I know that Noah and Lexi are growing a huge balloon of terror and confusion inside of their hearts. As for Greg, he looks over at my nephew with a worried and concerned look that is easily distracted by the men with guns behind us. I look up at Lexi, wondering how she’s going to pull this off. How is she going to pull any of this off? We don’t have any supplies that we need. There’s nothing basic here for us to work with, there isn’t even diapers or other taken for granted, simple supplies that could make all of this so much easier. I look at my nephew and wonder what we’re going to do for bedding or clothes. It’s not like there are any stores left for us to go shopping at. What happens if he has colic and starts screaming in the middle of the night, drawing people down on us? I don’t know what to do with him. I don’t know what to do with any of us.
With an enormous burden on all of our shoulders, I try to figure out which is more important at the moment. Is a new child, a hope for humanity’s endurance more important, or is it an ark hidden away in the ruins of Dayton? Honestly, I’m not so certain that there’s much of a difference. There’s a future out there waiting for all of us and I’m not so sure it’s wanting us. I figure that if we show up with a baby, it would mean that they might be a little more willing to take us in. I hope so at least. After all, who can turn away a group of survivors with a newborn in their arms?
I reach behind my back, searching for my Sig. I figure that there’s going to be a need for this soon. I feel the grip and there’s something alarmingly comforting about my fingers wrapping around it. I feel something swelling inside of me, something that is akin to bravery. Deep down inside, it fights to overcome me, but I’m not sure how to process it right now. There’s something that makes me feel like I’m changing, changing into something that reminds me of my dead father. My father was a brave man. My father understood this feeling. He had to. Fight or flight, that’s what they called it in school. Every living thing has it, and for most it is instinctual. But that is the very thing I am now struggling with.
Outside there’s a world of death and emptiness and all I can do is think that out there, there’s a lot of terrible people. There’s a lot of really horrible monsters. From what I can remember of the elder’s diatribe, there was a lot of those fanatics out there. He talked about how the very truck we’re in was a colonization truck destined for Savannah. How many others are out there? And how many similar, yet less religiously inclined lunatics out there? I can’t stand the thought of there being legions of these madmen between Dayton and us. Before, I was fine with that, but now, there’s a child that we have to protect. I look at the whole scenario now differently, like a mother. What right do I have to take my nephew out into that dangerous hell? If we survive these maniacs, should we keep moving toward Dayton or would it be better to just hole up somewhere and wait for us to regroup, to find something to help our situation? Our situation… What does that mean? Since the beginning of this, I thought that it would be just us, but now, I realize that I’m in way over my head. I’m responsible for more than just me or my friends now. I’m responsible for my family. I think of family as more now. I think of family as something other than just my sister. I actually have a family, extended and diversified.
What would my father have thought? What would my father have done with this entire situation? What would he have done with this new development? Would he have sent us to Dayton if he’d known? Would he grab his rifle and take us on the road with a newborn? I take a deep breath and I look at Lexi, trying to comprehend what my next move should be. What should
our
next move be? I’m looking at a broad, terrifying future with a thousand forks in the road. I hear another bullet smacking into the side of the truck. Whipping my head around, I can see that they’re coming up on the side of us, edging closer and closer. I reach behind me and feel the handle of my pistol again, feeling the same comfort as before.
I hear my nephew wail again and I look at Lexi. “It’s time to kiss modesty goodbye, Lexi,” I tell her as my nephew begins to cry again and again. He’s getting no louder, but he’s starting to sound a little more desperate with each passing second. She looks at me with wide eyes, scared and confused. I know that she’s thankful for me. She has to be. “You need to get him to try and feed,” I tell her patiently. There’s nothing more terrifying than the prospect of my nephew not being able to eat, and starving like everyone else. His small cries erode my sanity with each passing scream and I give Lexi a stern look. “He needs to eat,” I tell her.
There’s no other option out here. The wasteland seems to stretch on forever, something that we all know, something that we’ve all denied for a long time. There are no more formula factories and there are no other options for Lexi. She’s going to have to breastfeed and we better pray that there aren’t any kind of complications in what appears to be a simple process. She can’t get an infection or have any other troubles or my nephew isn’t going to make it. He’ll starve out here and wither away just like the rest of the world. I watch her pull up her shirt and tenderly lift my nephew up so that he can feed. Noah looks away out of respect, something I find odd being that I just pulled a child out of her blood-slathered vagina.
My nephew struggles at first, shying away from her nipple, but in a matter of a few tries, he latches on and both Lexi and I smile, watching him greedily suckling away, filling up his tiny stomach. I watch her holding him, seemingly already a pro at it. I let out a tiny sigh now that he’s eating, glad both mother and baby were able to follow their instincts and get the job done. It’s one more fear that we’ve got nestled away in the dealt with box.
Another bullet hits the side of the truck and I flinch at this one. Again, I know that we have to get out of here. We have to get to safety and there is nothing safe about the road. We’ve barely made it into Georgia and this is the second time that we’ve nearly died at the hands of these crazed maniacs. I saw what remained of the streetlights in town. I saw the corpses tied to the posts, blackened and withered from the hungry flames that consumed them into darkened husks. The piles of ash at the base of the poles were like gray hills, their whole bodies twisted into horrible caricatures of former humans. I don’t want to end up that way. I don’t want to be tied to a pole while they rip apart my nephew. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to stop that. I look at Lexi and my nephew.
“I see something,” Greg says, reaching up and wiping the sweat from his eyes. There’s nothing but Lexi in front of my eyes. I can see the pale grey light against Lexi’s face and I wish that I could see out one of the windows. Glancing out the side windows, I can see the cloudy gray skies and that’s all. There’s nothing that I can see to pinpoint anything close to what Greg could be talking about. “I think there’s a town or a city or something up ahead.”
“It looks like a town,” Noah adds, narrowing it down for me.
I picture a town in my head, but I realize how ridiculous that is. There are no more towns, no clean sidewalks or people window-shopping lazily down streets, or postal workers going from house to house. All of that is gone. Instead, I picture the hollow, dusty tombs that remind me that the world has turned into the set of a spaghetti western. I feel unprepared for all of this. I feel like we need something larger and something with a lot of bullets. All in all, Greg was probably right, we should have put someone in the back of the truck. Of course, the odds of them surviving this little chase that we’re on is highly doubtful. I can only imagine the trail of dust that’s flying behind us, maybe that would have been enough to defy those odds, to actually stand a chance.
Unlikely.
“Can you lose them?” I ask Greg.
He looks at me like I’ve just asked him to spin air into gold, but there’s a glimmer of courage in his eyes that makes me have hope in him. I remember the reckless look from when we were first dating and he was still trying to impress me. I push Noah to the side so that he’ll make room for me. He looks at me with confused eyes, but slides over nonetheless. Greg shoots a glance over at me and Noah, wondering what the hell we’re doing. Crawling up off of the floorboard, next to Lexi, I feel the aches and stiffness of my crouched position shrugging off with my awkward crawling. Clambering into the seat next to Lexi, I look out at the world around us.
The world is full of silenced, cold cinders that have broken off of the trees that reach up into the sky like blackened, broken bones, snapped in two by an angry, unseen dog. There’s nothing out there but trees that are as diverse as a box of toothpicks. I feel the uncontrollable desire to weep, but I hold onto my strength, refusing to let this get to me. It looks like snow has fallen across the world, only it’s sickly and gray, stained and blackened. Stumps and ruins of forgotten thickets and woods remain, completely at the mercy of the ash that fills the world now. Everything looks like the inside of my father’s old wood stove. I remember opening it and looking inside at the darkness, at the lumpy pile of ashes. The whole world here has been turned into a wood stove.
As for the town we’re approaching, a great pair of white, wooden signposts give us no hints as to what it could be that we’re entering. The sign, held between the two posts, has been run through with a tractor that is now sunken in a huge drift of ash, stalled and abandoned to the ashen world around it. It’s a haunting image to me, but I’m curious about where we’re entering. I don’t see any of the black crosses on the other signs that we pass. The speed limit is thirty-five, but I’m certain that Greg is pushing sixty. The truck doesn’t feel like it’s going that fast, it lumbers angrily through the town, passing the already rusting corpses of abandoned cars and trucks. A gas station welcomes us into the town, the sign bent, but the Chevron listings of gas prices remain. Even at the end of the world, gas was extremely expensive. They refused to lower it, even then. I stare at dust and ash-caked pumps. There’s a car stalled at every one of them. Their windows are dirty and murky, refusing passage of any form of light. The windows of the gas station have been shattered, leaving only the jagged outline of the jaws of a monster. I feel like if we get too close to the building, it’ll swallow us whole.
Greg slams into a Subaru and a caravan that are blocking the road. Their ruined carcasses groan, sliding and grinding against the front of the truck as it hurls them aside, glass tinkering and dancing across the sides of the truck. I watch the gas station zip by and I look at the small houses that look like they’re all getting ready to fall down in exhaustion. They’re coated with ash that has thickened and hardened thanks to the rain that’s fallen recently. Their windows are all shattered and the doors are thrown wide open. The houses look old, built by poor people who just wanted a place to live. They don’t have fancy or beautiful trimming or siding. They’re basic walls, flat and unwelcoming. The windows are covered and surrounded with mold, thoroughly covered with the stuff. One of the houses we pass has a chain link fence around it with a sign that warns us about the dangerous dog that lives within. There’s nothing but dead, tan ivy that has coated the fence and died. I look at it and feel a shiver run down my spine. I wonder what happened to the dog.
There are fewer cars in this town than on the outskirts of the town. I suppose that it makes sense. People would have tried to get out of town, to get away from all the madness and the insanity. Watching the houses, looking for pallid, timid faces, I’m only shown the ruins of humanity. It’s like I’m looking at Petra or at Giza. There’s nothing here that is remotely inhabited. Leaning forward, I try to see if I can catch a glimpse of our pursuers in the side mirror.
All I can see is the whirling extension of our journey that swirls and roils out behind us in a thick, choking cloud of ash and dust that works better than any smokescreen could ever hope to. If I was driving, I’d just drive really quickly in a great circle, capturing them like the Roadrunner used to catch Wile E. Coyote. Then we could just shoot off, jetting in any direction and leave them dazed until the dust cleared. Or whenever they drove out of it. Maybe I should keep my ideas to myself.
“Did we lose them?” I ask Greg.
“I don’t know,” Greg answers nervously. “I haven’t heard a bullet hit us recently. Maybe we lost them. But they’re going to be able to follow us easily enough. There’s a giant cloud of dust following us wherever we go. They’ll just have to follow the bread crumbs.”
Before Greg could continue his rant on the fact that a nearly blind man could follow our trail, we’re all startled and horrified at the sound of bullets clanking against the side of the truck once again. The sound of it is enough to make me twitch in surprise. Speak of the devil and he shall appear. The bullets smacking into the side of the truck are drawing dangerously close to the cab and I look at Lexi, still feeding my nephew, and I feel the direct sting of terror. What if the bullet rips through the door like it did when my father was driving it? I look over, past Greg, to where the hole still remains in the metal. It’s like an eye staring at me, bright and offended.
“Shit,” Greg snaps.
“What?” Noah looks over his shoulder through the window. “What’s happening?”
“No, it’s the fuel gauge.” Greg slams his palms on the steering wheel, resisting the urge to explode into cartoonish profanity. I feel my heart sink. What’s wrong with the fuel gauge? I want to ask him, but I know Greg well enough that silence is the best stance to take right now. “They must have hit the fuel tank. We’re losing gas—quickly.”