Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
Chapter Twelve
The sun stands high in the sky, unveiling the world around us. I look to the north, confused and completely lost. We should be at Atlanta right now, and the tangle of highways and interstates is getting larger and larger. There are cars shoved to the side, making a path through the center lane, but they’re not leading to anything. I stand in front of the warm grill, watching the world around me snow, and I can’t help but wonder at the fact that an entire city is missing. As the snowflakes land on my shoulders and in my hair, they crumble, streaking my shirt and clinging to my hair.
Ash. The cloudy sky gives way for a brief moment and I stare to the north, looking at the skyline of Atlanta that is no longer built out of concrete, and metal, and glass. The thick columns formed are built out of ash and white smoke, the kind of smoke that tells you that whatever was burning has stopped. I look at it with a horrified feeling in my stomach. Everything is gone. All of Atlanta has burned. My heart races at the sight of it and I feel a panic swelling inside of my mind, whirling and stinging as I look at the thick veil of smoke and the ash that keeps raining from the sky incessantly. Everything is covered in it. There’s a thick layer on the road and I stare at the fresh blanket.
People have been this way. The cars that are all shoved and pressed against the other lanes of traffic, forming the central lane, are dented and banged up. But that fresh blanket of ash is undisturbed. No one has fled this way from Atlanta, at least not on this road. If they did, then they escaped before the blanket of snowy ash descended upon everything. It looks like winter in hell. I almost expect to see gargoyles and devils perched on the roofs of the cars and trucks, watching us as we look at the map. It doesn’t make any sense. How could an entire city just burn up like that? It reminds me of the jaws of a demon, smoldering and pale smoke rising up, freshly destroyed and settling. The buildings that once marked the skyline are all gone, just jagged remains of charred rubble and blackened debris, all waiting for the world to forget, to pass by and not even know that it was there.
My lungs burn with the lingering stench of smoke and charred filth. Everything has burned and as the sun climbs, I see that it’s not just the heart of the city that’s gone up in smoke, but everything else. All around us, everything has been burned. The whole city and its outskirts have been completely incinerated and left among the ashes. There’s nothing left of this place. Everything is gone. I look over at Noah who has walked out a little ways and lifted his hunting rifle up to his eye, and gazes down the scope to the city.
“See anything?” Greg winces as he investigates his wounded leg. We need to stop somewhere soon and help him. I’m afraid that we’re going to have to take drastic measures. I’ve given him the antibiotics that were stored in the thick medical duffle bag. I look at him with a lingering sense of fear, worrying that my man may not survive this ordeal.
“Everything’s gone to shit,” Noah says, shaking his head and lowering the rifle. “There’s still a ton of fires down there, but that’s not our only problem.”
“What? More cars blocking the way?” I ask him.
“Worse,” he shouts back. “Those things are down there.”
I’m not worried too much about that. If those things are down there, then we’ll be able to get through them. There’s nothing terrifying about them now that we have a truck this large and this powerful. We’ve made good time through the morning. We’ve only stopped now because we need to fuel the truck back up, but it appears that it isn’t safe enough right now. We’ll have to keep going for a while longer and stop again.
I look at Noah, who has calmed down in the passing hours. He’s had more than enough time to sit safely and think about everything that’s happening with him. I honestly wish there was a bar around that he and Greg could go have a nice chat at. Looking over my shoulder at the window where Greg leans out and frowns at the world around him, I smile softly at him. I hope he doesn’t get an infection because we can’t find a place to take care of his leg.
I look at the map in my hands, one of the few links I still have to my father, and stare at the city of Atlanta, which he has circled and drawn a picture of flames over it. The black cross is drawn next to the city, meaning that this city was inhabited by the religious fanatics and the Leader back at Tifton had said that someone had burned Atlanta, attacking it and killing their brethren. I don’t feel too bad for the city, then. If an entire city was subjugated like Tifton, then I don’t think a cleansing fire is going too far. I stare at the remnants of the city and wonder how much is left of the city on the north side. Maybe the fire only burned south.
Glancing down at the name
Lindsay
scrawled on the map, I run my thumb over the name, wondering who Lindsay was. It makes me feel uncomfortable, looking at the name. It’s not a bad feeling. It’s just a potent, nebulous sensation that whirls to life inside of me as the ash lands on the map. I stare at the name and feel a curiosity as to know who or what Lindsay was. Deep down inside of me, I’m certain that Lindsay is not so much a thing as she was a person. Touching the name again, I wonder how close she was with my father. I don’t think he would have written her name on the map if she wasn’t someone important to him. I look at the writing of her name and study it. He took time with it. He wrote her name out lovingly. It wasn’t a hasty, fast scribbling of her name. No, she got his time. I wonder if he loved her.
Deep down inside of me, I hope that he did love her. As far as I knew my father, he was loyal until his dying day, bleeding out atop Olivia’s dining room table. He was a good man who had found his soul mate and decided that it was enough to love just one woman for all of his life. When my mother died, I never saw him date. I never even saw him flirt with anyone. My father had a sense of loyalty that transcended death and the suffering that my mother had experienced. I know that she died of breast cancer when I was young and I have brief glimpses of her in my memories, but that’s it. I don’t know what she smelled like, what her hugs were like, or how she laughed. My father had all of those memories and he clung to them like a piece of driftwood in the sea of his anguished memory, but I saw them more as anchors and chains, dragging him down, keeping him out there in that immeasurable sea. Looking at the name, I hope that Lindsay was the one who broke those chains.
I hope that there was someone out there who liberated him from being haunted by my mother. Everyone deserves happiness and I don’t think that my father was a happy man. I think that he was a dedicated and loving man. I think he was the kind of man who wanted to get to heaven and tell my mother with an honest heart that he stayed true, that he stayed loyal. I think that’s a silly notion and I think that anyone would want their lover to find love once more. People in love become acclimatized to it and when they’re deprived of it, they wither and suffer. My father had Lexi and me, but we weren’t enough. We couldn’t fulfill his needs and desires. We were just a single facet of love, but my father believed it was enough. He believed that we were all he needed. I think my mother would have wanted him to find love again. I think she would have wanted him to find happiness in someone who could give him what she could no longer.
Whoever Lindsay was, I’m glad that my father had her. She’s the only thing that makes me feel like my father wasn’t alone for the majority of this journey. Maybe she was with him the entire time. I try to imagine my father keeping this Lindsay a secret from Lexi and me, while we shuffled off to college and left him in the hollow ruins of his old life. He’d been a father for so long, I often wondered how he was going to fill his time when we vanished from the daily routine. Maybe they’d been lovers for a long time, maybe best friends. I wonder if she was sitting in the car, waiting for him when he told me on the phone long ago that he was heading to the cabin. I wonder if she stayed out there with him in the long, scary nights where no one knew what to expect. She might have been his anchor to reality, listening to him as he toyed with the prospect of heading south. I wonder what she said when he told her that he had to come to Lexi and me.
No matter who she was to him, I feel bad for her because this was the end of the line. I look at the ruins of the city before me. Whoever Lindsay was to my father, this was where she died and I can’t help but feel like I have my answer. I know what happened to Atlanta. I look at the smoldering ashes of a city that incurred the wrath of Charles Duwain. I feel sorry for him. I look at the incinerated remains of Atlanta and can’t help but feel like my father’s tale is one of woe and tragedy, and I can only see his fingerprints on the world that he’s passed through. I imagine that this is his message to the world. This is the capacity of hate and suffering that my father is capable of when his heart is broken. I look at the city and I feel sorry for him. I feel an aching in my heart for his loss. My soul constricts and twists with sadness for him and I feel the tears welling in my eyes when I look at the tomb he’s left for Lindsay. My father was a great man capable of great love.
The world is less for want of him.
“Let’s go,” I tell Noah, gathering my emotions and stuffing them deep down inside of me.
“Want me to drive?” he asks without facing me.
“No,” I tell him, opening the driver’s door and stepping inside of the truck.
Getting behind the wheel again, I hand the map over my shoulder to Greg, who takes it without a word to me. I turn the key in the ignition and listen to the truck roaring to life beneath me. The rumbling and the vibrating of the truck fills me with confidence. We’re actually moving. We’re heading in the right direction. I put the truck in drive and climb the overpass.
Getting a clear view of what’s waiting for us, I feel my heart racing and my lungs seizing up at the sight of the welcoming party for us down in the crammed interstate. If we’re going to catch up with the 75, this is our route. This is the path we’re going to have to take and the entire way is blocked by a sea of those skulking, lurking creatures in numbers that I would never have imagined. Staring at the city, only able to see the backs of their heads, the legion of creatures seem captivated by the sight, possessed by the ruin of the burning city. They remind me of lost souls, waiting for hell. It would almost seem like a mercy letting them die in the fires, burning with the buildings that had once been their homes. Yet they endure and here they are, unleashed upon the world. Where will they go now? Where will they wander to find their next meal? Images of the small town we abandoned linger in my mind.
“Think there are any survivors with any sort of sanity?” Lexi asks weakly, scared of the answer. I think we’re all scared of the answer, because we all know that out there, there are religious fanatics waiting for us. I’m afraid that they might be the only slightly sane, non-cannibalistic humans out there in the world. I hate the thought of that. There has to be others out there, people who aren’t bowing down to the altar of crazy, or feeding on human flesh.
“I’m tired,” Lexi says after a while. “Noah, will you hold him?”
“Sure thing.” Noah turns around as I pick an alternate route, choosing the shoulder to get away from the herd of lumbering monsters meandering down the road. It’s going to be best if we avoid the city altogether. It’s not like there’s any chance of us finding anything we might be able to salvage that wouldn’t put at risk what we’ve already got. Pulling off the road, I abandon the mass of freaks and horrors who are turning their heads, noticing that there’s something moving in the distance and are drawn to the sound of the truck.
As Lexi nestles in for a nap, I glance over to see Noah looking down at his son. I love the look in his eyes, even though I’m pretty sure that he’s the biggest jerk that I’ve ever met and I want to punch him in the face. But he is the father of my nephew and I’m glad that he seems to be in love with him. I would be mortified if he was disgusted or disinterested in my beautiful little nephew. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I look at the expression on Greg’s face and feel a small glimmer of hope in the depths of my heart. He’s not disgusted or annoyed by the baby’s presence either. Maybe there is a possibility that we’ll be able to have a child of our own one day. The look in his eyes tells me that he wouldn’t be too offended by the suggestion. After all, I’m probably the only person in the world who will take him now. I’m his only shot. I smile to myself. I’m glad we’re all here together as one. I’m glad that we haven’t split up and that we have each other. It would have been so much harder to do this alone.
I drive wherever I want to go. The shoulder, the median, the world is my playground. I don’t abide by the laws of men or gods anymore and I think of the world as just a giant jungle gym between points A and B. I drive into other lanes, off the road, or anywhere I might find as an acceptable route. I swerve to avoid the multitude of stalled or abandoned cars on the road. Every lane seems to be occupied at one point or another, like people drove their cars until the gas ran out and then got out and walked. The survivors just pushed aside the cars that were in their way, or rammed them into the barricades.
Glancing out the window and over to the smoldering ruins of Atlanta, I wonder where exactly Lindsay met what was likely a sudden and unfortunate demise. I wish my father had kept a journal. It would have been morbidly fascinating to read the final days of his life, the vast span of his whole journey. I look at this city and wonder if I’m looking at the diary of his life written out in a cryptic language, just waiting for me to decipher it. I let out a sigh and feel a heavy heart. It’s hard to think about him without feeling the gloom settling in over me.