It’s nice not to have the fingerprints of humanity around, though. It’s depressing looking at the world that once was, seeing what we could have had if everything hadn’t just gone to hell. It’s nice to have a break from that. To get away from the ruins and the chaos, the lingering shadows of all that has happened. I don’t miss it. I don’t think I’ll ever miss it. We have to move on, not just the four of us, but humanity as a people. We have to look past the things that were and stop trying to scramble together something that might mirror our past. We need radical solutions and I hope that Jason has figured out a radical new path for us to walk that doesn’t involve cannibalism or insane god worship.
In the distance, a flash of light warns me that there’s yet another storm on the horizon. The sight of it makes me cringe. I’m sick of storms. The clouds swell up while we suffer the fate of the cannibals and the monsters running amok and then we deal with the deluge, watching the world change before our eyes.
I watch another bolt of lightning ripping across the sky and I wonder how all of this is going to resolve itself. Jason is supposed to have all of the answers. He’s supposed to have a plan that we can all get behind and we can rally to support. I can’t imagine that there’s anything that anyone can do to put a stop to this or turn the tables for the better. Out there is a world that will never go back to what it was, from where I’m standing, but Jason apparently isn’t so negative. I’m interested in meeting him.
“Where are we?” I ask after Charlie is quieted and happy again. Maybe not happy, but he looks content to me.
“Close to where the X is on the map,” Greg answers, looking at the phonebook. I don’t know how he got a hold of it, but I must have really been out of it. He probably pulled it from my hands while I was sleeping. I look out the window at the open, flat land that had once been covered in produce and lush plant life. There’s nothing that would make this place look like it’s beautiful or worthwhile. I look at a tractor stuck in the middle of one of the fields where the mud has started to consume it, hardening around the tractor. It’s something strange to see, a machine that tills the earth, mastering it, and now it’s being sucked back into the earth. I don’t know if that’s ironic, but it feels like it.
I hope he’s right. I don’t want to keep driving around for much longer. I want to be there, to finally put everything down and call it good. I want to have the chance to see everything that’s to behold with Jason and all the wonders that he can offer the world before I die. I’m sticking around for this and I’m not willing to endure all this pain and all this suffering just to have myself die in the wilderness, looking for a beacon in the darkness. We’re so close, so why can’t we find it?
I suppose that I should be looking for hummers or tanks, maybe even helicopters flying around, patrolling to make sure that any dangers coming their way are gone or kept at bay. Whatever this place is, it has to have military support. You’d expect to see watchtowers and spotlights, the kind of stuff that would make you feel like a sniper’s watching you at all times. I don’t know, maybe it’s a bunker hidden away out in some field for all I know. It might just be under a mound of dirt, a door in the side of a hill, and that’ll be where humanity’s salvation is hidden away. It seems like there would be some sort of special indication that the future was hidden out here in a farm stretch. I don’t know. I’m not an expert in these things. Maybe it’s just going to be a house. I suppose that it doesn’t matter really. We just have to find it.
Perhaps it’s not going to be a military presence though. Maybe it’s going to just be a sign of civilization, of control or authority out here in the lawless expanses of the dead world. I look for signs of people, signs of society where there was nothing before. It would make sense to try and rebuild, and out here in the open stretches it would be easy to defend yourself with nothing but endless expanses to give away enemy movements. They’re also close to Dayton, which could supply them with everything they would need to build a new society after all the old one has crumbled. It would nice to see such an endeavor.
And yet, there is nothing. All around us, there is nothing but the swirling dust that is beginning to pick up with the growing wind that vanguards the storm on the horizon. We see a few houses in the distance, a couple of sagging or partially collapsed barns, but nothing that would give us any indication that the salvation of the world is out here. It’s depressing, but then again, everything out there these days is depressing. The whole world is spiraling down into a dark, dark hole.
Looking away from the window, I glance down at my shirt that’s coated with dried blood. It smells like rust and it no longer makes me sick, none of it does. I’m used to all of it and now that I’m part of the walking dead, it just seems like I should smell the part. At least I don’t smell like decay, yet. I’m sure those days will be coming soon enough. I won’t relish those days like I do now when all I have to smell is rusty, dried blood.
Lifting the shirt, I see that my bandage is thoroughly soaked, but the good thing is that I was expecting black stains, but they’re perfectly red still. It’s a good sign, for now. If we get to Jason and he has a medical staff and a well-stocked operating room, I really might be able to survive this. I’m not holding out much hope, but it’s definitely a distinct possibility. Surviving this would be nice, but I’m not sure that it’s going to be possible. The truth is, there’s no way that they’re going to have a surgeon and a fully stocked operating room. They’re going to have a nurse or a veterinarian, like me, who knows how to sew up wounds and that’ll be it. I doubt there are any trauma surgeons left in the world and the coincidence of him having one is too much. I’m going to die, but looking at my bandages, I’m not going to die terribly soon. I suppose that’s a bit of a relief.
“It has to be around here,” Greg says with an adamant voice. I look at him, still driving and can’t help but pick up the last little bit that he angrily and doubtfully tacks onto his statement with a grumbling voice, “If your dad knew what he was doing.” I don’t blame him. There’s nothing out here and from all of this, I can’t help but feel like we’ve been led astray out in the middle of nowhere on a wild goose chase.
The truck slows, coming to a near unbearable crawl as we drive down the nearly completely consumed street. The power lines and the leaning fence posts are all that tell us that we’re even on a road right now. As the truck slowly crawls we look at the few crumbling, dusty farmhouses, waiting for something to pop out at us. I don’t know what any of us are expecting, a billboard or a glowing neon sign, but none of us are seeing anything that we want to. We want there to be some sort of definitive sight and right now, we have nothing.
After several miles, Greg slams on the brakes and slams his hands on the steering wheel. I can feel his anger wafting off of him and I don’t blame him for it. Honestly, I’ve looked at all the vast stretches of nothingness to the north and wondered what the heck my father was even doing out here. There’s nothing out here and it’s too far away from the main interstate to give him any purpose for being here. Was he just wandering out in the middle of the world’s largest open stretch of land and happened across the world’s salvation like a mirage that proved to be worthwhile? None of it makes sense and as I look the few structures that are out here, none of them call to me. I wouldn’t have come this far north for this if I’d known. There’s nothing out here. What could he have been thinking?
“That’s it,” Greg says in a weak mutter, looking out at everything after his immediate flash fire of anger has receded for the moment. He stares out the windshield at the flashing lightning on the horizon, no doubt striking the last pieces of burnable material on the face of the earth to burn humanity’s last strongholds down. Why is the world like this? So full of disappointment and doom? Why would any of us survive just to endure this unending nightmare? Wouldn’t it just be better if we all died?
“It has to be back there,” Lexi says with a determined voice that makes me wonder just how naïve she is. I think
that Greg is right. My father probably just marked the map hastily and didn’t measure out exactly where Jason’s place was supposed to be. For all we know, it could be anywhere in a hundred mile radius of ‘north of Dayton’ and we’re in the wrong spot. “Turn the truck around, we have to go back and see if we missed something.”
“Like what?” Greg snaps at her. “You saw everything I saw. There’s nothing out there but fields and a bunch of crappy old barns. There’s nothing out there.”
“So what? You want to walk around shouting for Jason to see if he comes running?” Lexi glares at him with eyes so full of fire that I’m afraid that we’re all going to explode in a few seconds. “Turn the truck around and let’s have another look.”
Silently and begrudgingly, Greg turns the truck around and heads back down the road we just traversed and I can feel anger radiating off of both of them. The tension is electric in this truck and I want out of it. It’s suffocating. I wonder if Charlie can feel it. But as we’re driving, I wonder if Jason is even still here.
My father was a careful, meticulous man. I doubt that he would haphazardly plant an X on the map and suggest that we follow it. He would want accuracy and precision in such a mark. He had to have known that he might not make it to us or that his wounds might be the end of him. After all, he had his fair share of them before Henry put that final bullet through him. I saw all the injuries that he sustained on his way to us and he at one point had to have sat down and realized that he might not make it. Why else would he have marked the map in the first place? If he knew that he was going to be with us on the journey back, he wouldn’t need to mark the map. He would remember it all on his own. So of course the X is accurate. Jason’s place has to be around here somewhere and I’m not ready to give up just yet.
But, that doesn’t mean that Jason will be there. Who knows when my father ran into Jason and who knows how long it’s been since they both crossed paths and my father told him he’d be back with his two daughters? Jason’s circumstances probably drastically changed over that period of time and his operation might have been put in jeopardy by the ever-changing climate outside his door. Maybe he was forced to find a new sanctuary for one of a myriad of needs, or maybe he had a new opportunity to expand and made the exodus to his new home. No matter what his reasons were, he’s probably gone by now. He’s probably somewhere else and we’re just following his trail. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t still find him. The best way to track him down is to find where he was. He would have left something to warn my father if they were good enough friends that my father wanted to return to him. Maybe there’s a note or a map at his old base of operations telling my father where to go. If we could find that, then we could track him down. It’s a start.
Making our way down the road, we stare at the windows of the small farmhouses that we pass, but there’s nothing here that sticks out. If it didn’t hurt so much to walk, I would get out and search every one of them myself, but Greg doesn’t have the patience to stop and Lexi is expecting a billboard pointing directly to Jason. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I know that she’s wrong.
Light is dying and what we had to work with is now passing us by. The storm is practically on top of us when I look out on a farmhouse that has been completely burned down or at least collapsed in on itself. It’s hard to tell at this point in the dying light, but I know for certain that we won’t find any answers there. Greg isn’t saying a word and Lexi is smoldering with anger. I’m afraid that if it starts raining again the water will come in on the dash and kill the electrical system in the truck. I don’t know how they work, but I’m sure the instruments inside of the truck aren’t meant to be soaked with water.
I look in the distance and see two barns, one of them looks like it’s collapsed in on itself, either by a fire or just by the age and decay of the structure. I look at it and wonder what the barns are doing all the way out there. Maybe there’s another farmhouse out there. Maybe that’s where Jason is hiding out. I look at them and watch as we pass in front of yet another farmhouse. It’s blackened by the growing darkness, and the gloom overhead only makes it worse, cutting off any light that the moon might offer us right now. As I stare at the looming structure, a lightning bolt rips across the sky and shreds the darkness, revealing for a second something that should not exist. I look at it for a moment in one of the pitch black holes where the windows are high above the house. I catch my breath in my throat, waiting before I say something. I look at that hole, praying that another flash of lightning will answer my question for me, but it doesn’t happen. We’re moving away from it and I know that I need to speak. If I remain silent, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, no matter how long or short it is.
“Stop,” I tell Greg immediately. “Stop, go back.”
I feel the truck gently come to rest just as the patter of rain on the roof tells us that time’s up. We need to find shelter before we continue any farther down this line of inquiry. Greg looks over his shoulder at me and then beyond me, through the window. Without asking me a single question, he puts the truck in reverse and starts going back the way he came. I don’t doubt that it’s incredibly frustrating to be going back the way he came yet again, but he’s a good man.
The house comes into view again and I look above the sprawling porch and the awning over it. I look at the dark window where I thought I saw something. It couldn’t possibly be what I thought it was, but the hope is enough to make me want to grin with delight. It’s a fool’s hope, but it’s my hope right now and that’s all that matters. We only have one headlight, but I want him to shine it on it. As we stop in front of the house, it’s as if the gods or God knows what we’re searching for, that we’ve finally found what we seek.
It’s unmistakable. I look up at the window and in the flashing light of the storm, I see something that comes directly out of the past. I look up and I see the green of leaves and I feel like we’ve found the Garden of Eden. Greg looks up through the passenger window at the house and we all stare in utter disbelief. We found plants, but what could that possibly mean?
Chapter Nine
We are all transfixed by the sight of the plant up in the window. We stare in absolute disbelief, but we are silent, unwilling to break the mirage that stands before us. If it’s not true, and some collective hallucination, then we all want to remain here with it for a few seconds, just to be here in this moment, looking up at a dark window, hoping to God that it’s not just a fraud, that it’s not just our eyes playing tricks on us. I realize that I’m smiling, staring up at the window as the rain tinkles on the roof of the truck, setting a soundtrack to our disbelief.
All this time that we’ve been out on the road, I look up at the window and realize that there have been no potted plants in the world, nothing alive and enduring in the recesses of abandoned homes. Plants were something that vanished long ago with everything else. None of them have endured this madness and right now, I’m questioning whether that plant up there is real or not. It could just be a fake plant sitting in the window, meant to lure idiots like us who are too desperate to see green for our own good. If it’s a trap, it’s a very good one. Who wouldn’t stop for it?
The house looks like a fortress. I don’t know why we didn’t recognize it the first time we rode past it, but there it is now, sealed up like a large coffin. It’s locked up tight. I stare at the boards across the window, keeping everything out and everything in. I look at the front door and wonder if it’s barricaded on the inside. I want this to be the house we’re looking for, but there’s something about it that makes me doubt it. I look at that house like most people might look at the face of God. If it’s real—if it’s actually something tangible for us, then we’re in luck, something that none of us know what to do with anymore. Luck usually just comes in the form of bad rather than good. I feel cautious about all of it. It’s dangerous to think about.
“We should check it out,” Greg says in a voice that sounds distant, curious, but hesit
ant about all of this. I think his voice perfectly sums up how we all feel about this right now. As I look away from the house, I feel sick with my nerves on edge. If we do check it out and it’s a trap, I’m certain that this will be the end. If we have a chance though, to find something green, it would be worth it just to look at it. I want to feel it, to touch a leaf and see what it’s like to feel plant life again.
Greg turns the keys in the ignition and the truck roars to life. The headlight that we still have shines out across the abandoned yard that is thirstily drinking in the rain with great eagerness and gluttony. As he pulls the truck around the house, we all stare out the windows at the building. It feels like we’ve been sitting in that truck for over an hour, staring at the boarded up windows, staring through the darkness and the rain, waiting for a sign of life. Greg kills the engine almost immediately, ending the beam of the light before we draw the attention of others in the area, bringing them down on us as they eagerly search for the source of the light. No, we’re playing it safe right now. I keep a hand on my wound, instinctively holding it as we all look at the house, silently waiting for some sign that there’s movement inside. We don’t say a word. We all just stare at the house, hoping that something will happen that will change our minds.
All the windows seem to be boarded up, hiding anything that could be inside, waiting for us. If this is indeed where Jason is hiding, then it would make sense that he’s adapted to the climate of the world, to the growing situation of desperation. If they have endured as much as we have, then he’ll know that light and movement draw attention, and attention means death. He would have come to terms with this long ago. He’s had over a year to deal with this kind of situation. I look from window to window, wondering why just the one window is open. Why doesn’t the house have more windows open? It feels so strange, so dangerous. I look at the boards and feel uncomfortable.
LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series Page 90
