{"id":578,"date":"2009-12-16T10:00:10","date_gmt":"2009-12-16T15:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=578"},"modified":"2018-10-30T19:45:59","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T23:45:59","slug":"finzel-collected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=578","title":{"rendered":"Finzel, Collected"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been asked by a few friends to give them a print out of Finzel <\/em>since they’ve just come in from 1899 and their time machine is broken.\u00a0 Another friend, along with my girlfriend, told me that they can’t follow the serialized version of the story.\u00a0 So I’ll try to meet everyone in the middle and post the complete stories from the Serials section after each one concludes.\u00a0 That way all of you weirdos can print it out, then sit in the barn that you just raised with Jedediah and read it at your leisure.<\/p>\n

Here’s Finzel<\/em>, collected.\u00a0 And for those of you who don’t mind a serialized story, the current one is Season of the Witch<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

——–<\/p>\n

Parker’s People <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Two miles past the exit for Finzel, MD on Interstate 68 was a billboard. Not the usual screaming ad mounted on a column, drawing attention for miles. This was a homemade affair, the sort of thing only a passenger noticed. Set back into the scrubby pines of the always seemingly hard-scrabble forest covering the hills of western Maryland, hand-painted but still tasteful, facing sideways on the northbound side, it read: \u201cThis Way to the Hen House\u201d and then provided directions from the next exit, a rural side track on old US 40 that led nowhere and promised nothing besides the mysterious Hen House.
\n
\nParker had passed the billboard countless times on her way from DC to West Virginia University in her college days and, later, between the same two sites for business. She was the child of a displaced Appalachian family: Grim West Virginia pessimism fleeing the Ohio Valley in the war years and blending with the queer southern hustle and sweat of DC. She was the granddaughter of a man and woman who pined for the harsh simplicity of their childhood hills to their dying days, and the daughter of a woman born in a rented dirt-floor Parkersburg shack and raised in a suburban rancher outside DC which World War II bought.<\/p>\n

Parker. Black sheep. The first of the family born in DC. Belonging neither to the city nor the hills, most of the time feeling that she didn\u2019t even belong to her own family. Life as a dream, rolling past her in increasingly unforgiving waves. Forty years gone and no family of her own. No time, no desire, to try and establish a home. How strange, then, to become a post-apocalypse den mother\u2026<\/p>\n

School, business, travel\u2026 The trappings of responsibility, expectations, and the duties of life. That was the old world. Her old world. But not even the apocalypse allowed her to escape the role.<\/p>\n

Now the Hen House billboard was no longer quaint roadside Americana, an oddity that, maybe, some day, if there\u2019s time, might be worth a side trip on America\u2019s byways. Now it was camouflage. A fading remnant, behind which her guards watched the dead Interstate.<\/p>\n

She arrived \u2013 this unexpectant den mother \u2013 with 27 people. They\u2019d stripped the land during their desperate flight up I-68, weaving through the dead traffic. They piled supplies into the backs of trucks. They hit Wal-Marts, they hit pharmacies, they hit grocery stores, they hit homes, restaurants, anything promising. They ignored the bodies of the dead, they fired over the heads of the few frightened survivors that chose not to join them, they were holy hell. And she regretted it. Every minute of it. But when she decided to make a run for the country, it was about survival. For the first time in her life, she was awake. Alive.<\/p>\n

Finzel stuck in her mind. A sleepy little town. That stupid Hen House sign. Now a road was cut through the struggling pines and the tangled undergrowth behind the sign, leading to an outpost of 35 souls. A Jeep was always parked just behind the sign, at the head of the obscured ruts leading into the forested hills, and always manned by two well-armed watchers. Everyone spent their lives hoping nothing would again come down I-68. Farther back, a converted firetower kept an eye out in all directions. And, shielded by forest and the natural curves of the rolling land, farms and houses formed the heart of her community. Parker\u2019s people.<\/p>\n

First came the end of the world. The government, always, lying. The people, always, fighting. First came the lies, the corruption, the downfall. Then came survival. Every person for themselves. Guns, food, water, life. Every pretense of a civilized world dissolved in a heartbeat. A heartbeat is all there is between regular broadcasting and static. Between the panicked voices on the airwaves and…well, nothing. The end. Silence.<\/p>\n

When it happened, Parker was home, in Glover Park, trapped in DC, wondering if her end had come. What do you do when the world stops spoon-feeding you? Despite the malaise, she couldn\u2019t complain. She had a nice life, a nice house. Her little city car, so useless now that she finally needed it, was parked against the curb outside a home that political lobbying had built. A career that needed an apocalypse in order to escape. She was privately thrilled.<\/p>\n

Her backyard stared down, with sublime manicured poise, at the forested expanse of Glover Park in the Northwest quadrant of the city. The TV and radio shouted static, half the neighbors had fled and the other half were hunkered down and sandbagged in. Next, the lights would go. The water. Before all that, law and order. What possible future did she have when the power died? When the cars wouldn\u2019t start? When the natural wildness in Humanity took hold of her neighbors and dog walkers and baristas turned into rapists and murderers?<\/p>\n

Parker wondered if she was the sort of person they would talk about in history books\u2026if there was going to be a future history. She became the leader among leaders. The tough brunette who fought her way out of the city, gathered supplies and followers, and led them to safety in the sad rural expanse of western Maryland, where the winters now killed in a world without technology and the summers were about prayers for crops, for rain, for survival, and for fewer and fewer raiders\u2026<\/p>\n

The latter prayer had been answered. Ten years now of tenuous survival off of the land and even more strained political infighting. The raiders were thick at the start, forcing Parker to post scouts behind blinds along I-68 and the parallel mother road, Route 40. A jury-rigged radio tower allowed coded communication, until too many parts went bad. Time took its toll. But so did the angry new world, and the raiders started to vanish. Every spring, lives lost. Both out there in the dead world, and behind the Hen House sign. Until recently, Parker had maintained one last blind, conveniently placed on a now crumbling overpass that had been consumed by nature. Young Oak trees grew on a decaying concrete span 12 feet in the air. That, along with the two guards behind the now faded and illegible Hen House sign, was all that was needed. More than was needed. It was a boring job now. The short straw job. Chatting or snoozing for endless hours, cold coffee from a thermos, picnic lunches, almost tedious enough to make the guards wish they were out in the fields, repairing the community\u2019s buildings, or perched in the watchtower mentally playing king of the hill.<\/p>\n

What everyone wanted was to be part of the raiding party. God, wouldn\u2019t that be awesome? The guard jeep could no longer move. Tires had been removed, the engine cannibalized, a tree was growing through the hood. Everything was used to make the community\u2019s patchwork Land Rover run. The pride and joy of Charlie Gates and Lance McGavin. Parker\u2019s raiders.<\/p>\n

Gates and McGavin had held up in an old warehouse between Fort Totten and Takoma, in DC. They\u2019d stockpiled and hoarded. They defended with man-traps, Molotov cocktails, and crack shooting from a thousand hiding places. How Parker had managed to coax them out was a mystery to all of her people. Leading her flight from the city along the railroad tracks, she and her people were pinned down by Gates and McGavin who, apparently, tried to murder anything that moved. In the early days after the fall, that\u2019s the sort of thing city raiders inspired. Kill or be killed. Live and let die.<\/p>\n

Parker finally told her people to hang back. She tied up her hair, stripped off her gunbelt, and walked leisurely into the kill zone.<\/p>\n

Gates and McGavin don\u2019t talk about what charmed them from their snakepit. Within an hour, they were out apologizing, and two hours later they were loading up their 18-wheeler with supplies and joining Parker\u2019s people, her rag-tag party leaving the tracks, taking over trucks, and painfully threading their way through suburban streets and onto the Beltway. Though Gates and McGavin never really socialized. They stuck together, brought up the rear, and snarled at everyone except Parker.<\/p>\n

She knew the need for compromise. She was a politico. It was her genius. She let the boys slide when they didn\u2019t want to become farmers. She told them: Pull your weight or get out. They became the raiders. They went out in a Ford and came back with a Hummer full of supplies and dragging a U-Haul. Parker and her people gave them shopping lists and, once a week, they\u2019d drive off. Maybe for an hour, maybe for three days. They\u2019d check off every item on the lists. From candy to gasoline to books to penicillin to Legos. As the years took their toll, they traded out the Hummer for an old school Land Rover, which seemed to welcome creative mechanics and bubble-gum patches. The old beast craved hard roads. The boys once returned with a flat tire and, when one of Parker\u2019s people pointed it out, the boys looked down surprised and shrugged it off with a grin. Real cool cat shit. If they wanted to, Gates and McGavin could take over. Retire Parker to a cottage, snicker at her graying hair, tell her that the harder world needed harder people. Angrier. More violent. And they were violent. When they pulled onto the broken remnants of I-68, or US 40, or Finzel Road, they became raiders. They became what everybody hoped would go away.<\/p>\n

Gates and McGavin were no threat. They weren\u2019t leaders. And they could never lead Parker\u2019s people \u2013 the weak and scared, sheltering under their savior\u2019s wings, hunkered down in the forest, dousing the lights at sunset, baffling chimney smoke, always keeping out of sight. Parker\u2019s people dreamed about the old world. They wanted it all back. It was owed to them, it was their birthright. They wanted to walk down crowded streets with music in their ears, to live thoughtless pleasures, nose to the grindstone, check\u2019s in the mail. They knew it would never return. You couldn\u2019t live through The Fall and not see the truth. You couldn\u2019t battle your way from the dead capitol to unincorporated Finzel without seeing the full pantheon of human horror.<\/p>\n

But everyone lives in the past. Everyone is always coming home.<\/p>\n

Parker gave them what they wanted. Behind the Hen House sign was a miniscule mockery of civilization. Rural chic. The sun rose on bustling farms, men split logs for fires, women made bread and prepared meals, both toiled in the fields. A small police force manned the firetower, the overpass lookout (now just on occasion), and the decaying Jeep forever watching I-68 westbound for refugees fleeing the eastern cities. A fear that was becoming imaginary. The stuff of nighttime tales to the new batch of young children, schooled by Parker herself who acted as teacher, scientist, judge\u2026monarch.<\/p>\n

There was routine. In a way, the anarchic Gates and McGavin might simply be the final touch on Parker\u2019s brilliant canvas. The traveling minstrels with tales to tell. Her indulgence in the increasingly esoteric shopping lists was necessary for the survival of her community. When the storytellers returned from the empty world, they not only entertained, they brought gifts from the past. Relics of the old world, which Parker allowed to become a commodity, a currency. The collector of useless machine parts became rich, a day\u2019s work bought for a bottle of scotch that had festered on a forgotten shelf for a decade, an extra ration at suppertime for a rusty can of shaving cream.<\/p>\n

Parker was not immune. She had the boys get her a plasma TV three years after The Fall and the flight to Finzel. She even plugged it in, though the socket would never again feed it electricity. She found herself lonely without a TV hanging on the wall, dominating the room. It was her concession to her empty life before everything fell apart. When people met with Parker, eyes moved towards the TV. The unspeaking great eye, another member of the conversation. Almost everyone wished it would flicker to life, throw up a comforting face telling them it was all over, it was all a dream, a new America had begun and they were welcome.<\/p>\n

The children weren\u2019t drawn to it. Those born after The Fall, and those who don\u2019t remember. They treat the TV like children would treat a picture on the wall. It just didn\u2019t register. Parker gave them books, also trucked in by Gates and McGavin. They found more life in the yellowing pages than they did from the black box on Parker\u2019s wall. She marveled at children reading and enjoying classics, she prided herself on the brave new world that sprang from her mind fully grown.<\/p>\n

Parker\u2019s people were happy. Well, as happy as they could be, considering. They all carried ghosts with them, many still cried themselves to sleep. From the shadows, Gates and McGavin dealt briskly in long-expired pills and moonshine. Somewhere, out beyond the Hen House sign, they harvested marijuana. No doubt a local\u2019s old field grown wild and free. The world, for them, was easy pickings, and they traded on nostalgia and escapism.<\/p>\n

But every community has these problems. Parker turned a blind eye. What happened behind closed doors, and under cover of darkness, was private business. That, too, was part of her genius. It takes a village, yes. It takes a village to ignore sins and suffering. That truism remained from the old world.<\/p>\n

The majority found escapism in work. After a decade, mourning was fading into simple survival. Working a farm, cutting wood, maintaining the community was an all-day business. Working together without distractions, building new families, and no longer polluted by passive or aggressive inhumanity helped. Everyone worked for something, everyone pulled their own weight.<\/p>\n

Freedom from the chains of the old society came with a problem. Waking up, seeing the world, surviving the horrors, and carving a refuge to start again only served to illustrate one thing\u2026 The fragility of life, of peace, of expectations. The old society\u2019s stock and trade was immortality. Health care, anti-aging cream, artificial hearts, miracle cures, vitamin waters, and an infinite array of snake oils sold by massive corporations. After The Fall, mortality became a bedmate. Jack Otongo broke his leg in the seventh year repairing the side of the firetower. He died of a simple infection. The flu took little Lucy Rich in the fifth year. In the ninth year, 35-year old Martin Cleary drunk himself into a stupor and fell asleep under a tree when a cold snap moved in. A fever took him ten days later.<\/p>\n

Rural chic indeed. But could they complain? They had survived the impossible. They should all be dead. Their continued existence was a fluke. Attitudes changed. People didn\u2019t think about hair loss, or hiding the grey, or covering up wrinkles. Humanity had returned. And, with it, the stoic rural realization that every story must have an end.<\/p>\n

This story ends in November, the tenth year of the community. Almost three years since anyone had come up I-68, or ventured east to look for supplies in the abandoned cities. US 40 was returning to nature, also abandoned. Parker\u2019s people had begun to believe themselves to be alone.<\/p>\n

The nights were dark and cold. Autumn giving way to an early winter, which everyone dreaded. On guard duty at the Hen House sign, bundled in jackets and blankets, sipping the last of the coffee, now cold, and dreaming of the end of the shift, sat Ken Eaton and Chris Shingleton. One had been a wage slave at the Comcast call center in DC, the other had been a PG County cop. Two souls rescued by Parker. Two people who, a decade ago, had never set foot in the woods. Now they peered into the cold night for any sign of trouble. What had become the most tedious job of all.<\/p>\n

The shift dragged mercilessly into the early AM, and Ken kept them both awake with trivia, songs, inane conversation that drove Chris up the wall. The blind on the overpass was abandoned. No need for an early warning system when any sign of their existence was obscured by the wildness growing beside \u2013 and onto and through \u2013 the road. Anyone traveling the interstate would probably be on foot, anyway. Or mounted. The mechanized Gates and McGavin team were most likely unique, eccentric adventurers given license to pursue their technology by a prospering community. Parker\u2019s people could afford to indulge. But they knew they were lucky.<\/p>\n

Chris had argued to reduce the jeep duty to just one person, or do away with it entirely. Years without seeing a soul\u2026 Gates and McGavin fanning out across the countryside looking for plunder also returned each time with the depressing \u2013 or uplifting, for some \u2013 news that they had seen no one, nor signs of anyone\u2019s passing. From the firetower, the nights were always dark. No lights, no fires, no glow on the horizon.<\/p>\n

Parker insisted on the guard duty. Always be prepared. She was a regular boy scout. Chris told Eaton that he was taking a piss, and he pushed open the jeep\u2019s door with a vicious, grinding crunch and jumped down onto the loam of the forest floor, trudging through the leaves to the big Sycamore that had started to crowd what remained of the rutted dirt road leading back to the community. Here was beautiful silence. The sharp, earthen smell of autumn in the mountains filled him with childhood memories of Halloween, and holidays, and playing in leaf piles. Trudging in the dark to school, and returning to play in the late afternoon as the trees shed their last and the November sky stared down coldly blue-white.<\/p>\n

He leaned against the tree, lit up a joint and inhaled deeply. So much for autumn smells. Time to come down from the chattering tension in the rotten cab of the dead jeep. He closed his eyes and listened to the forest sounds. The rustling of leaves as animals small and large moved about, the scrape of trees as a breeze he couldn\u2019t feel playfully tugged at the upper branches. When he opened his eyes again and looked up, the moon hid behind clouds, and the increasingly skeletal trees waved against the dim glow. He didn\u2019t process the alien sound until a few dull seconds later. A train whistle. He blinked and shook his head, stubbed out the joint on the bark of the Sycamore, and cocked his ear towards the night. A hallucination? Good, wild mountain weed? Over-fatigued and half crazed by fucking Eaton\u2019s mindless blather?<\/p>\n

There, again, a train whistle. Ricocheting through the cold air from somewhere along the B&O tracks that ran through the dense forest into Pennsylvania. The tracks were miles to the east, but the cold air played games with the sound and he could swear some phantom train was about to come hurtling through the trees.<\/p>\n

That cold night air is something. He could also clearly hear Eaton, about 100 yards back in the jeep, say: \u201cHoly mother of fuck\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The whistle woke up Parker\u2019s people. Everett Macchiarella was reading a Braille book in the firetower. Endless hours of boring guard duty, and he taught himself Braille. Talk about useless skills. But what was a joke became the perfect way to pass the time, as he was forced to sit in the dark during the night shift to protect his position from imaginary attackers. He heard the whistle and briefly saw the headlamp on the locomotive pass through the distant trees. A flickering phantasm that he saw before the whistle, and it spooked the shit out of him. The whistle wasn\u2019t much help, either. He stood up and shouted to no one, he fought two urges \u2013 to run to the window and plaster his face against the glass and to run scared down the winding stairs and back up Tower Lane to the community. He felt suddenly alone and exposed. Alone in the tower, illuminated by the moon, almost half a mile from help. He felt suddenly aware of the dark forest surrounding the tower, and of that half a mile hike back to the others. Some watchman instinct made him turn to the west, looking over to and up the Interstate to where the Hen House sign and his fellow guards were. Of course, he could see nothing. But countless fearful images began filtering through his mind.<\/p>\n

In the community itself \u2013 a gathering of huts and small houses grouped around an old farmhouse \u2013 everyone was asleep. A hard day of work done and another one soon to come. It took the whistle two blows to rouse the lighter sleepers, one of whom was Parker.<\/p>\n

She sat up as if from a fever dream, shuddered as the old world came rushing back, and threw the covers aside. Her farmhouse \u2013 her palace \u2013 was cold. The fireplace showing no more than dim, smoldering coals. She didn\u2019t notice anything, though, as she rushed to her window and looked out at the night. Stupid reaction. She grimaced, then began throwing on clothes, coats, boots. She wrapped a scarf around her head and ran downstairs and outside, where others had already begun to form in the makeshift communal square outside the old homestead. They were all staring east, past the little hill with their graveyard and into the woods as if their eyes could penetrate the gloom and reach across the miles and bear down focus on the train tracks.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrain,\u201d Thais Schain muttered needlessly. She was 20, pretty. A child of The Fall. The ten year old waif following Parker as she led her people up the Interstate and to safety. Now she was a woman, and occasional consort when Parker\u2019s defenses wavered.<\/p>\n

Parker glanced at her, put a hand on her shoulder, then strode up the hill towards the graveyard as if she could get a better view. She looked at the stones of her people, and she knew it was all over.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do we do?\u201d Murray Walter asked from somewhere behind her.<\/p>\n

Parker turned sideways, not looking at anyone, and issued her orders. \u201cGet to the jeep and the firetower. Tell the guards to stay put, but get a full report. And find Gates and McGavin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Muttering, assigning tasks, and then shadows ran out in three different directions. Parker strode back to the farmhouse, followed by her people, and, after closing the shutters on the library windows, lit up several oil lamps. They all stood watching each other, her people, bundled in utilitarian clothes, long haired, some unshaven for years, sleep still in their eyes. Hope and dreaming beginning to shine behind that sleep. A train whistle meant real civilization. It meant machines, fuel, manpower, trade, currency, resources.<\/p>\n

Parker sat down heavily in her tattered easy chair. Could she protect these people from themselves? From their wistful decade-gone memories? Her gut told her that, at best, Pandora\u2019s Box was about to be opened.<\/p>\n

Midnight Train<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Peter Gates didn\u2019t hear the train whistle. He and McGavin had moved into a warehouse about a mile east of the village of Finzel along what was once called Sampson Rock Road, though you\u2019d be hard-pressed to call it a road now and, back when the world was alive, you\u2019d have to be local to actually know the name of the lonely stretch of black-top. They were near the firetower, their warehouse boldly sitting in view of the old road, the front a dusty parking area where decrepit trucks returned slowly to the earth. They\u2019d been used often in the early years, but, now, it was a full-time job just to keep the Land Rover running.<\/p>\n

Inside the warehouse, the two men had created what felt like a giant hanger-bay dorm room. Useless loot had been stacked everywhere, and they each kept sleeping quarters on opposite ends, converting office space into crash pads. Gates was deep into a bottle of homemade gin, with McGavin\u2019s help, and the two were blaring records from a hand-crank Victrola.<\/p>\n

A well-used Risk board was laid out between them and McGavin drunkenly pondered Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis gin\u2019s bad for us.\u201d Gates whispered.<\/p>\n

McGavin snorted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019ll go back to wine. Leave this rotgut for the shills.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLife among the shills!\u201d McGavin sing-songed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you going to take your turn?\u201d<\/p>\n

McGavin tapped his finger on the board, \u201cI keep thinking of my move and then forgetting it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hammering at the front shutters made Gates look up, but McGavin remained focused. Gates turned back with a sigh and capped the gin bottle. \u201cMoving?\u201d<\/p>\n

McGavin grunted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile this experiment in Alzheimer\u2019s plays out, I\u2019ll go see what our early morning visitor is after.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGunshot through the peephole!\u201d McGavin screamed as Gates moved to the shutters and placed his eye against the tiny hole he\u2019d cut in the metal. Shadows on shadows.<\/p>\n

\u201cPorch light\u2019s out.\u201d Gates called over his shoulder.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we\u2019ve had the same president for a decade!\u201d McGavin called back.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I\u2018m going to wildly open this door and see if we both get gunned down. Are you game?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRock on, tiny dancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

A breathless youth stood on the flight of three concrete steps that led up to the loading dock entrance. The squeal of the security door, beefed up by Gates over the years, made him flinch.<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung Jacob!\u201d Gates exclaimed. \u201cIs there a great darkness in Amishtown? Is little Timmy trapped in a well? I hope the old mill\u2019s okay!\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacob sucked in air. \u201cTrain,\u201d he said softly. \u201cTrain\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates screwed up his face, then mockingly put on a thoughtful look, staring over Jacob\u2019s shoulder into the night.<\/p>\n

\u201cA train \u2013 didn\u2019t you hear?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDude\u2026what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA train! Didn\u2019t you hear it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike a choo-choo train?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacob blinked.<\/p>\n

McGavin, who had stepped up to peer at Jacob, rolled his eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cY-yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates turned to look at McGavin, who shrugged and headed for the rolling clothes rack where they kept their coats and boots.<\/p>\n

Gates sighed deeply, then handed the bottle of gin to Jacob and trudged towards his peacoat.<\/p>\n

Dawn was still several hours away, and the night\u2019s cold sapped at his bones. Gates crossed his arms over his chest and listlessly followed McGavin and Jacob up the hill, through the ghost town of Finzel, and up the bridle path towards Parker\u2019s community.<\/p>\n

Everett caught up with them, his breath misting in the moonlight. He\u2019d put the runner sent to get his story in charge of the firetower and seemed to be on the verge of climbing a tree and howling at the moon.<\/p>\n

\u201cSaw the damn thing,\u201d he hissed between pained breaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cA train?\u201d Gates asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cSaw the light, heard the whistle blow.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGavin hung back and Jacob took the lead, intent on completing his mission and returning to his lord and master.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been at the gin, Everett.\u201d Gates replied, \u201cWhat\u2019s your excuse?\u201d<\/p>\n

Everett shook his head, \u201cJacob heard it. Everybody heard it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d Gates said, \u201cbut you\u2019re all collectively insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were listening to music.\u201d McGavin said.<\/p>\n

Everett clicked his tongue and nodded.<\/p>\n

With just 35 people, the old farmstead\u2019s library was the perfect size to become a meeting hall. Warm and welcoming, Parker used it as her base of operations. It was judge\u2019s chambers and courtroom, it was schoolroom, and it was the nerve center of the community. Heads turned as Jacob led Gates, McGavin, and Everett into the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohnny\u2019s on tower duty,\u201d Everett explained as he sat down. Gates and McGavin flanked the door, appearing to be ready to make a run for it if need be.<\/p>\n

Parker took a deep breath, looked down at her boots, then stood and paced over to the old secretary beneath the shuttered window. She leaned against it and turned to Sarah Bowman, who had run to the Hen House sign to check on Ken and Chris.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just heard it,\u201d Sarah said. \u201cFour blows from a whistle. No sign of any other activity. Chris is heading out to the old overpass just in case.<\/p>\n

Parker nodded. \u201cEverett?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHeard and saw. Heading north. Couldn\u2019t have been much of a train or I would have heard the cars, too. Maybe just an engine. I\u2019m thinking they were clearing the tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt 3am?\u201d Thais asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cAin\u2019t no reason for anybody to be doing anything out there at 3am, to be frank.\u201d Everett replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo good reason.\u201d Gates muttered.<\/p>\n

Parker glanced at him, but spoke to Everett, \u201cYou\u2019re sure you didn\u2019t hear any cars? Nothing but the whistle?\u201d<\/p>\n

Everett shrugged. \u201cI was inside. Frozen to the damn spot. Been ten years since I last heard a train whistle\u2026 Coulda missed it\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you thinking?\u201d McGavin asked. \u201cIt was a shipment of Beamers heading up to Pittsburgh?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what to think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray Walter stood up, turning to face the group, \u201cI say we find out. Head out to the tracks at first light.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd do what?\u201d Thais asked. Follow them in which direction? Look for what? Do what when we find it?\u201d<\/p>\n

McGavin coughed, \u201cWe\u2019ll find it fast. No way those tracks are clear for any serious length. And no way they could have been cleared or repaired without us noticing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have a choice\u2014\u201c Walter started, but Parker launched to her feet and cleared her throat. Walter \u2018s mouth snapped shut and he spun around, alarmed. McGavin glanced at Gates, who shook his head with disgust.<\/p>\n

Parker weaved around the room, pacing past most of her people. All eyes followed her as she chewed her lip, eyes downcast. She ended up near McGavin, and looked up, her back to him, to address the community. \u201cI know what this means, but we\u2019ve got to be careful. We\u2019ve all seen what happened. We\u2019ve lived through it. Even if civilization has begun again somewhere out there, it may not be suited for us. Our natural tendency is towards dictatorship, the cult of fascism. Chances are that\u2019s what formed out of the ashes. We\u2019re the lucky ones. The smart ones. We sealed ourselves away and have worked the land, built a community. But you know full well the sort that are out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can carry this paranoia even further,\u201d Gates interrupted. \u201cWhat if the train people are hunting for us? Trying to draw us out?\u201d He made a frightened face and waved his hands in front of him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to know one way or the other.\u201d Walter replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to stay put. \u201c Thais, from the other end of the room, spoke softly, but her voice carried. A few nodded.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow about Gates and I just check it out. Business as usual?\u201d McGavin offered. \u201cWe were planning on heading out in a few days, anyway. Let\u2019s bump it up to first light. We hit the tracks and recon a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to find the train,\u201d Walter insisted. \u201cWhat are the tracks going to show us?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they\u2019ve been properly cleared,\u201d McGavin said, \u201cthen we know we\u2019re up against something bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre we up against it, Lance?\u201d Parker asked over her shoulder.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeredith, you know Gates and I aren\u2019t always on board with your social vision. But on this one, I agree with you. We\u2019ve got a good position here. Food, fresh water, livestock, security. Those luxuries are not out there anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parker turned to face him, \u201cI want you to take a couple others with you. Jacob and \u2013\u201c<\/p>\n

\u201cMe,\u201d Walter said.<\/p>\n

Parker shrugged. \u201cIf you wish. This is reconnaissance.\u201d She put a hand on McGavin\u2019s shoulder, \u201cNo contact, no matter what. You come back here first. We decide what to do as a community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates sniffed. \u201cDawn in a few hours. You boys better get what you need and come meet us at the warehouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walter Murray nodded, but young Jacob looked scared. For him, this would be his first trip out of the community in ten years. He glanced at Parker, who saw and moved closer to him, but then his eyes moved to Gates, who was also watching him. He didn\u2019t move, except to duck out the door as soon as people started to file out.<\/p>\n

Parker knelt down in front of Jacob\u2019s chair and took his hands. \u201cIt\u2019ll be okay. I need someone young out there. Someone fast. Your priority is to protect yourself, and make sure you get back here.\u201d She leaned close, and he instinctively pressed back in the chair. \u201cAnd don\u2019t trust the others. You\u2019re my eyes and ears. My representative from this community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cold sapped the gin out of him, for which Gates was grateful. There was no rest for him tonight. Hike back to the warehouse and start prepping for the journey. They would travel light, follow US 40 out and down to the tracks, crossing them about two miles north from where they saw the train. Both he and McGavin doubted the train moved very far. As the night deepened into the pre-dawn hours, he went over possible scenarios. He kept returning to the obvious \u2013 a lark. Somebody screwing around with an abandoned locomotive. When the world ended, the computers dying with civilization, the trains would have been crippled. There was probably an old freight train that came to a standstill out there in the woods, thrown out of contact with the railroad and afraid to move blindly forward. Somebody had found it and fixed it up.<\/p>\n

He and McGavin always kept an eye out for trains. They\u2019d traveled days looking for a train in the early years, hitting Frostburg and following the tracks west along the weaving Mt. Savage Road to Cumberland. They found a few boxcars there, but something had happened to Cumberland. When they first followed Parker up I-70 and west along I-68, the Cumberland gap was announced from nearly 100 miles away by a high column of black smoke. Roads and trains came together at the historic chokepoint, the high overpass for 68 a maze of abandoned cars. From above the gap, at the Ali Ghan Freemason temple, Parker and her people peered down the interstate at a burning town. Fires glowed through the night as they sought shelter in the temple and, the next morning, they braved the gap. Bodies littered the overpass, and the town below was consumed. Smoke enveloped them, billowing up through the joints in the concrete, and they had to inch through with the trucks, pushing cars away and ignoring the corpses as they were crushed beneath the wheels. It took most of a day to work their way blind across the elevated section. It was only a mile long before rising up out of the Cumberland Pass once again, but that mile seemed to never end. The black smoke followed them up and over the ridge and down, again, towards La Vale. They didn\u2019t breathe fresh air again till they hit Frostburg, perched up on its mountain. There they collapsed and watched the smoke from burning Cumberland.<\/p>\n

Half a year later, McGavin and Gates made it their business to sift through the wreckage. There wasn\u2019t much. The town had been brought to the ground, the Potomac black and oily as it flowed through and on down to DC. Even the houses on the heights had been methodically torched.<\/p>\n

The purification of Cumberland. Clearly done with a purpose and a plan. Was there a sickness? A gang of <i>Mad Max<\/i>-style lunatics? In the past decade, there had been no answers. No people ever returned to the spot, and there was never a sign of other scavengers.<\/p>\n

One thing was for sure \u2013 no trains would be going east ever again, or coming west. Fires had been set beneath all the tracks, Civil War style. They were bent and warped beyond repair.<\/p>\n

From Frostburg, the tracks led north, crossing into Pennsylvania, turning west. The problem is that they were through deep forest, with limited road access. They\u2019d already explored what they could from the road. Would they now have to hike along them? Hopefully not.<\/p>\n

US 40 crossed Finzel Road, running parallel to I-68 as a sort of glorified frontage road. It meandered through the countryside into Frostburg and, from there, they would take the local roads running along the tracks for a few miles. But then, about three miles south of where Everett claims to have seen the light from the locomotive, the tracks take their own route through the forest, now grown wild for a decade.<\/p>\n

Gates didn\u2019t care about the train. He was happy where he was \u2013 feeding off of Parker\u2019s community and not responsible for anything, as long as he kept bringing crap back from the dead world. He wasn\u2019t happy in his old life. He didn\u2019t miss it. A wage slave who parked himself in front of the TV every night. Trying to kill time\u2026all of it. 24 hours a day. After a while, youth left his soul and he just simply dreamed about retiring. Get a government check and drop out. Be a grumpy old man in some rural community. Fuck the world.<\/p>\n

The Fall was a breath of fresh air. An escape into a second chance at life. He never tired of exploring the dead countryside. Since Parker set up her community, he and McGavin had been as far East as Hancock, picking up Interstate 70 and always tempted to return to DC. Surely, after a few years, it was a ghost town as well. Nobody wanted to stick around the cities. They\u2019d gone as far west as Morgantown, north deep into Pennsylvania, and south into other parts of West Virginia. They were the kings of the Alleghenies, the lords of western Maryland. All hail the empire of ashes.<\/p>\n

The early light of dawn had just begun to creep into the mountains by the time the Land Rover was packed and, begrudgingly, running. McGavin gunned the gas, which burned thick and dirty. Largely homemade shit that they brewed up behind the warehouse. Jacob was wrapped in patchwork coats in the backseat and Walter Murray was leaning against one of the old trucks, smoking a joint, staring at the mean machine with a wary smile.<\/p>\n

McGavin shouted something Gates couldn\u2019t hear over the clattering roar of the engine, but the meaning was clear. Time to move. He climbed in with Murray, McGavin let out the clutch, the damned monster stalled, then they waited five minutes before it could start again. When it did, it puked black smoke out of the exhaust and from beneath the hood, then all was okay. They pulled onto the cracked, potholed macadam of Finzel Road and turned south towards the interstate.<\/p>\n

National Road<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

He was on the Oregon Trail. He was on Zane\u2019s Trace. He was on the Victory Highway, the National Road. It was once the Mingo Path, cut by Indians. It was the soldier\u2019s road blazed by George Washington, General Braddock, Colonel Zane, and signed into life by Thomas Jefferson. US Route 40. Once going from Atlantic City to San Francisco. The true Mother Road.<\/p>\n

Jacob had read all about it. He\u2019d grown up with the books in Parker\u2019s library, but it was the history of his private little world that most fascinated him. Western Maryland, and US 40. Until The Fall, his tenth birthday, he was a city boy. Now there was nothing but the farming settlement outside Finzel, the ghost town of Finzel itself, the cold and humid woods creeping through the low mountains, and the National Road. Still a road \u2013 still stretching into the hills, leading east and west. The Interstate was a graveyard. Good for foot traffic once upon a time, and now good for nothing. But old 40 could still take cars. Ten years since technology died, so it wasn\u2019t a nice trip. Not like when he was a kid. Between the pock-marked apocalyptic road and the cantankerous Land Rover, he was starting to wonder if he\u2019d lose his teeth before they made the train tracks.<\/p>\n

He liked to think about all the people who had used the natural path through the mountains \u2013 how many generations had passed through the Cumberland Gap on a journey west? The old roadbed itself was steeped in history. It had seen the slap of tires since the 1920\u2019s. It had grown, divided, shifted slightly, cut back on itself in some places and straightened out in others, and been bypassed. The river of America, meandering in old age through the worn valleys. The river of commerce\u2026 Go West, Young Man! Or sit still in Finzel and fade away.<\/p>\n

Parker put a great weight on him. Eyes and ears. But even he saw what the train meant. Parker came all the way up here because she wanted to fade away. Remove herself from the world that rose from the ashes of the end times. That\u2019s not why her people followed her, though. They were running from something, Parker was running to something. That was clear even to a child, ten years ago. Parker had found her goal, but everyone else wanted their world back. Jacob, himself, wanted to see cars on US 40 again. He wanted to follow 40 all the way to the west coast. Gates said it was impossible. He said 40 was consumed by interstates along the way, bopping and twisting around them like some long parasite.<\/p>\n

Gates talked about how 40 came to a crumbling end just outside St. Clairesville, Ohio. You had to get on I-70 if you wanted to follow it, picking up the old roadbed miles later. He said it did this throughout. The old road wasn\u2019t, truly, coast to coast anymore. It was a shell, a ghost, a memory.<\/p>\n

But Jacob could feel the draw. Even now, driving east on a road that would destroy a normal car, he felt the nagging, gnawing pull\u2026 Go west. Or east, even. Sea to shining sea\u2026 a world out there. Probably full of survivors\u2026 People who could come together and use the old roads. Or the old rails\u2026 He\u2019d been under Parker\u2019s wing, and under the shadow of an old mountain, for the parts of his life that counted\u2026 Yet he knew that the future must be about rebuilding, not hiding.<\/p>\n

McGavin drove. Gates sat in the passenger seat with his lunatic rifle stuck out the window, cold air roiling in and clutching at all of them. Gates liked his guns\u2026 But there was no real use for the big bad artillery anymore. Still, Gates and McGavin hoarded ammo, and made their own. Parker let them slide because they always shared their hoard. That seemed to be the Great Compromise from ten years ago. Parker let them live by their own rules as long as they shared the wealth. Though there must have been something else. They were sitting on a fortress back in DC, and now they had thrown in with a commune that was, collectively, afraid of them. What hold did Parker have over them? Or maybe it just made sense to leave the city. That\u2019s why people followed Parker. The dream of the woods. No bodies, no raiders, no disease. No need to have a fortress and live in fear. Though that\u2019s exactly what Parker had created. Her fortress without walls. Why had they remained hidden when it had been years since human contact? What kind of leader didn\u2019t try to gather other survivors, to strengthen her position? Had Parker simply condemned them to some sad rural death? Broken bones\u2026fevers.<\/p>\n

Jacob\u2019s mind drifted to his gran. Diabetes. Of course, they all died out fast. They were gone in a matter of months. That whole ritual fading into legend\u2026 The insulin, the shots. How many diabetics survived the Fall? What was that like? To live through hell with a death sentence hanging over your head? All the people who needed doctors to live\u2026 How many people choked to death in their apartments after the Fall? Maybe that\u2019s why Gates and McGavin gave up their fortress\u2026 When Jacob thought of DC, he shivered. How many corpses hiding behind all those windows? How much suffering in the final days of the dead city? How many people stuck underground in the subway? All those Metro tunnels were probably filled with water now\u2026 An average of 100 commuters per car, dead and underwater. Like a lost submarine. How many people died at their desks?<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think people still live in DC?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d Gates answered immediately. \u201cI think people are everywhere, and they\u2019re all like us. Hiding in the trees like scared monkeys.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do we know if they\u2019re good or if they\u2019re bad?\u201d Jacob asked, thinking now about their destination.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be able to tell from the blood spatter patterns after they blow our heads off from 500 yards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Time to stop talking to Gates. Hint taken. Jacob looked back out the window down at the shattered pavement of US 40. McGavin swerved wildly around a pothole, cursed under his breath, then got back to running down the center of the road. They dipped and swayed, the forest eating away at the road, creating tunnels of branches. Jacob focused ahead, and noticed something not quite right.<\/p>\n

\u201cHas the road been cleared?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s us.\u201d Gates said.<\/p>\n

\u201cKind of points people right to us, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cKind of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if raiders came up 40?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019d find us and kill us and rape our corpses and eat our brains.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacob muttered an apology, suddenly self-conscious.<\/p>\n

Walter Murray put a hand on his shoulder, \u201cDon\u2019t let them fuck with you kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray grinned, then closed his eyes and pressed uncomfortably back into his seat.<\/p>\n

There was no way to go over 25 on the decaying road. Frostburg seemed far away, and Jacob wasn\u2019t looking forward to cruising through the dead town anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think there are people still alive in Frostburg?\u201d he asked the car.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there are, they\u2019re very, very quiet.\u201d Gates put on his Elmer Fudd voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re bypassing.\u201d McGavin said tersely, his eyes wide and focused on the road. \u201cJockeying onto 68. Main street Frostburg looks like a bomb went off.\u201d<\/p>\n

They had bypassed when they all first journeyed to Finzel, too. Camping out in the Days Inn lot but never going down towards the town of Frostburg itself. Jacob lived a few miles from a town \u2013 dead or not — and had never been there. Of course, that meant little these days. Why go to the towns? Anything useful that had been in Frostburg had been consumed by Parker\u2019s people, or passing raiders. Or time.<\/p>\n

The exit onto 68 was a water-logged meadow, but McGavin followed ruts and joined the once mighty interstate. Traffic was thin through this section, and, again, Jacob saw how clumsy Gates and McGavin had been about clearing the road. Cars were pushed aside to clear a path to the meadow, and the cleared section of 40. Though they were now pretty much overgrown and reclaimed by the forest, Jacob wondered how it was possible for anyone to miss this wide avenue leading right to Finzel. Were they truly the only survivors left?<\/p>\n

Then he realized that the threat was long over. Gates and McGavin had spent a decade ranging over the land. They knew more about the outside world than any of Parker\u2019s people. How it must be for them to not see signs of other survivors all these years. What must be going through their confident minds now that they were confronted by new signs of life? Jacob craned his neck to see their faces, but they were both intently watching the road. They were all routine. McGavin looking for potholes and obstructions, Gates looking for trouble.<\/p>\n

The interstate rose, spreading broad, and then turning towards the main Frostburg exit. Braddock Road, nearly blocked by two trucks. The same two trucks were there ten years ago, and Parker\u2019s people drove around them and mounted the long rise up a bald hill towards the island of convenience just outside of town. Burger King, BP, and the Days Inn parking lot where Parker\u2019s people had rested after the horrific journey through Cumberland. McGavin now pulled into that same parking lot, shifted the Land Rover into neutral, and sat with his head cocked towards the dashboard.<\/p>\n

\u201cShould we be getting out and running?\u201d Murray asked, opening one eye.<\/p>\n

McGavin turned off the engine. \u201cHot,\u201d he muttered.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates turned and looked at Murray, \u201cShe gets hot. We let her cool down. Sit tight, cowboy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFuck,\u201d Murray whistled. \u201cHaven\u2019t thought about this place in a decade. This fucking parking lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStayed here in 2004,\u201d Gates said. \u201cground floor room. I had a fight with the wife, so I drove all the fucking way up here, bought a trunk full of cheap beer, checked in. It was snowing like a bitch and they didn\u2019t have fridges in the rooms or any of that shit, so I just dumped the beer outside the window, settled down with HBO, and had myself a booze up. It was great. Open the window to winter, grab a freezing beer from the snow drift, drink it down. I think I fell in love with that room. Those stupid hotel easy chairs that are harder than wood slats, the ubiquitous table with the light hanging over it. Drifting silently to one of the two beds each night, full of snow-cold beer.\u201d He turned to stare out the window towards the hotel, sitting ominously against the grey dawn sky. \u201cThat lonely bathroom with the harsh lights. Telling the maid to fuck off. Slinking out at night for a burger. I always liked being alone. I liked the anonymity of the hotel room. Since I was a kid, I mean. Always. That whole life\u2019s nameless passenger thing. Is that a poem? Something. Passing through these places where nobody knew you, nobody remembered you, nobody cared about you. Lose yourself in your little cell. Overpriced can of coke over ice in a plastic cup, flipping through the channels, lying on a comforter on a bed that\u2019s seen a thousand stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease, God,\u201d Murray said, \u201ctell me we can start the car now.<\/p>\n

McGavin smirked, then turned the engine over smoothly. Jacob turned to watch the black smoke cough out of the exhaust. God knows what Gates and McGavin were using as fuel.<\/p>\n

Jacob never imagined gasoline would be such a problem. With everyone gone, and the roads full of the dead, he figured there\u2019d be plenty to go around forever. But the stuff in the cars only lasted a year or so, and the stuff in the tanks just about five years. He didn\u2019t understand why it went bad. Gates said it was water, corrosion, age. Gates started bitching about gas from day one \u2013 he actually spent time trying to push Parker into building a mini-refinery. Hoarding crude oil and converting it themselves. Something Parker never committed to and Gates, probably, was too lazy to do himself. Why bother when they could convert to diesel, which lasted longer for some reason, and then move on to homemade fuels. The two rebels had been using biofuels from the waste that the community\u2019s crops produced, but they\u2019d been weaning off of those. Relying on their high grade liquor concoctions, no doubt. The days of true mobility were numbered, though, according to Gates. Too much wear and tear on the Land Rover. They\u2019d scoured the countryside for spare parts, patching the thing together for nearly a decade on roads that were no longer safe to travel. Vast potholes opened along the surfaces, floods washed out gulleys, trees and landslips formed natural barricades. If ever they wanted to go any serious distance along the interstate, it would have to be on foot.<\/p>\n

But there was no escape plan. As they weaved onto Braddock Road, skirting past downtown Frostburg and heading onto the shattered streets along the rail line, moving ever closer to the phantom train, that thought suddenly crystallized in Jacob\u2019s mind. There was no Plan B. No way out. If something put them in danger, there was nowhere to run. Head into the mountains with winter coming? No emergency rations, limited ammunition, few functional weapons, and only a handful of people who could hold up in a real firefight\u2026 That was Parker\u2019s people. One big soft belly exposed to the world, relying only on their ability to hide.<\/p>\n

McGavin and Gates knew this. They were ready to run. Jacob had seen that a hundred times whenever he visited them at their warehouse and, even now, when he glanced back at the crates of supplies neatly packed into the rear of the Land Rover. They were ready to leave with a moment\u2019s notice. And they probably had a plan, too. Back to DC? North into Pennsylvania? If anyone had a plan, it would be those two.<\/p>\n

The road names meant nothing now. Industrial waste cum residential in that mountain town, Hicksville Maryland sort of way. Trailers in the hollows, big houses on the hills, and abandoned shit in the middle. Frostburg was supposed to be a dead traintown, a bypassed nothing, a forgotten village, but the university had kept it alive. That mix of small town and boom town ran deep. Room enough for the pick-up mounted yahoos and the more cosmopolitan college kids. Jacob liked that middle ground. He was envious of it. He\u2019d be in college now if it wasn\u2019t for the fucking end of the world. Maybe he\u2019d be up here, or College Park, near where he grew up\u2026 Or anywhere in the world. Not now. He\u2019d never have the chance. He\u2019d never see the world. Hell, he\u2019d probably live out a shortened life in the dark hills of western Maryland and join the others in the graveyard beside Parker\u2019s house, a wooden cross faded by time marking his last memory.<\/p>\n

Jacob strained to make out road signs. People used to live here. They\u2019d know all of the roads. Lived and died, for generations, all for nothing. All so the world could end, and their town fall into decay, and their graves get buried by tall grass and landslides and trees, and their roads fall into ruin and become fields again. Lots of cars rotting in driveways. Lots of people stayed home\u2026 That was good old country thinking. Rot and die at home. Defend your castle. In the city, people fled. Panic, fear. Take to the roads, clog up the highways. The dead on the Interstate were a bunch of city slickers. No sense of community, neighborhood. How many sad, friendless office workers died as they lived? Commuting one person to a car, stuck in traffic? Out here they died in each other\u2019s arms.<\/p>\n

Jacob turned away from the ghost houses. He stared ahead, pretending he was driving. Watching McGavin\u2019s intensity and gauging his reaction time as he swerved around potholes and obstacles. The tracks appeared on their right, peaking from behind the late autumn leaves. Gates was devoted to that direction entirely. Sloppy. He was supposed to be watching for trouble from all angles. Jacob found himself surprised to learn that Gates was probably just as excited about the train as everyone else. What did it represent to him? Certainly not the old world. For all his talk, did Gates secretly want the boredom of his old life back? Or was he thinking escape? And, with that, it became very clear to Jacob why Parker assigned him to the team. Murray and just about everyone else wanted to go home again, Gates and McGavin were open to the highest bidder. Jacob had no real designs for anything. He was the oldest of the children who had come with Parker\u2019s group, or been born after. He was the oldest of the generation that called Parker\u2019s settlement, and Finzel, home. Truly called it home. The place where he grew up. Everyone is always coming home\u2026 That\u2019s what Parker said.<\/p>\n

If something better really came along, would Jacob take it? Probably\u2026 Survival of the fittest. But would he ever forget a childhood spent in the forest outside Finzel? No. And Parker? The woman who so easily replaced the mother that he lost to the apocalypse? Never.<\/p>\n

McGavin stopped, pulling the Land Rover across the road. The road continued, but you could barely tell. Deadfall from a decade of storms, and just the slow encroachment of nature, had pretty much turned the stretch of blacktop to meadow and forest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tracks have been clear this whole way.\u201d Gates muttered.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we walk. North.\u201d Murray said. The first he\u2019d spoken since the hotel parking lot.<\/p>\n

Gates was shaking his head. \u201cHow have they cleared the tracks without us noticing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if they\u2019ve always been clear?\u201d Murray asked.<\/p>\n

McGavin waved his hand towards the ruined road.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, what if someone has been keeping them clear since day one?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTen years of stealthy railway maintenance? That requires the sort of emotional imbalance that isn\u2019t exactly welcome here at the end of days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray opened his door, picking up the light pack he had put together from between his legs. \u201cIt\u2019s not impossible that trains have been running this whole time. We wouldn\u2019t really have noticed. This is miles away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo why blow the whistle now?\u201d Jacob asked.<\/p>\n

Gates turned smiled. \u201cWell, if we indulge my paranoia, it\u2019s because they want to lure us into a trap. And, like moths to the flame\u2026\u201d He shrugged and looked at Jacob and Murray levelly, then leapt out of the Land Rover. McGavin followed silently, and Jacob was the last. Something in him told him that it wasn\u2019t paranoia. The world was a bad place. They had all started to forget that.<\/p>\n

The tracks were clear. A straightaway through the forest. Many of the trees were already skeletal, ready for the coming winter. The brilliant colors of fall now gone to brown, leaves drifting down in the breeze that tussled the upper branches. Gates kicked through leaves and walked up to a fallen tree that had been roughly cut a few feet back from the edge of the rail. Jacob looked to the opposite side and saw the rest of it. McGavin bent down and studied the rail itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot much use,\u201d he said, running a finger along the rusted surface. The rails ran dull brown, but there were signs of use. Silver streaks here and there. Weeds and saplings springing up in the path of a train broken, stunted, chewed off. \u201ccertainly there have been trains running\u2026 But not too often.\u201d He looked up at Murray, who was staring blankly ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay, kiddies.\u201d Gates called over his shoulder, taking to the center of the railbed and moving forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know what this means?\u201d Murray muttered.<\/p>\n

McGavin stood up, brushed a leaf off his shoulder, and smiled crookedly. \u201cNo, Walter, I don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCivilization. If they\u2019ve been running trains all this time, then they have commodities\u2026 Trade. Communication. They\u2019ve got to be bigger than we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGavin huffed and shook his head, turning to follow Gates, who had already covered several yards, stumbling occasionally over small branches and washed out gaps between the rotting ties. Clear or not, the mystery train operators weren\u2019t keeping the tracks themselves up to snuff. Though, Jacob guessed, that was a harder task than simply clearing brush and trees.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all he was able to concentrate on. The usual beauty of fall that tended to enchant him was gone. It was high alert time. But an acute awareness that was hopelessly distracted by the little things. Cleared trees. Signs of humanity. Signs of life besides that which had thrived beneath Parker\u2019s wings.<\/p>\n

Then there it was. A single locomotive. One of the old, squat workhorses that Jacob had seen outside Union Station a thousand times. The short ones that never strayed far from the trainyard and looked like they steamed out of the 60\u2019s. It was in piss-poor shape, too. Windows busted out, the gunmetal gray weathered black and brown, dirt and leaves collecting everywhere they could. How the hell the little thing made it all the way up here was mystifying. Maybe they used them at other train yards? Maybe it was a survivor of the destruction of Cumberland.<\/p>\n

McGavin and Gates fanned out, but Murray and Jacob froze in place. They both watched the two experts stalk the locomotive like cats.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs there something wrong?\u201d Jacob hissed. \u201cIs someone in there? What\u2019s happening?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacob\u2019s panic kick-started Murray, and he grabbed the boy and headed towards the treeline, taking shelter behind a recently cut tree angled up towards the sky, the massive root system a filthy, half-buried crown. Jacob saw shadows everywhere. He saw every fear possible rising up from the loamy forest floor, and from behind every tree. Mankind\u2019s time had come to an end. Now was the age of ghosts. Murray had his rifle pointed towards the locomotive, his hands shaking. Jacob fumbled with his pistol but didn\u2019t do any more than hold it by the grip, aimed at the ground.<\/p>\n

McGavin and Gates vanished. McGavin round the side of the engine, and Gates, boldly, up and inside. One of the handgrips gave way as he was hoisting himself into the cabin and he fell back gracefully, landing on his feet, then climbed again.<\/p>\n

There were several frozen moments. Jacob\u2019s heart pounded in his ears, the trees rustled with the mindless passage of nature and life, and his ears pricked at every tiny forest sound.<\/p>\n

Finally Gates reappeared and waved for them to approach. When they cautiously crept up to the engine Gates, up in the cab looking down at them through the ruined sliding door, said, \u201cWhat the fuck are you two doing back there?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t know\u2026I\u2026\u201d Jacob looked to Murray who, ashamed, was glaring down the tracks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis baby\u2019s our train.\u201d McGavin said, coming round from the front. \u201cI think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCab\u2019s been cleaned,\u201d Gates added. \u201cWish I knew how to work it. Do these things have keys?\u201d<\/p>\n

McGavin shrugged. \u201cAnyway, no sign of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo how\u2019d it get here?\u201d Murray asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, Walter, I would assume someone drove it here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are they, then?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou two can fucking cut it with the attitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGavin spread his arms and pursed his lips.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t think\u2026 I mean. Could it \u2013 \u201c Jacob knew they\u2019d all make fun of him if he said it.<\/p>\n

\u201cGhosts, young Jacob?\u201d Gates laughed. Jacob flinched, but Gates seemed good natured about the idea. Maybe he was thinking the same? Jacob almost grinned when Gates didn\u2019t shoot him down.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it\u2019s strange times,\u201d McGavin said, \u201cbut I think we can rule out the Phantom Train of Frostburg.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what, then?\u201d Murray asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo options.\u201d Gates leapt down from the cab. \u201cThe driver is holed up back in town or out in the woods.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo let\u2019s find him.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGavin slung his rifle over his shoulder and started walking back down the tracks. \u201cIf they want to be found, they\u2019ll let us know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates shrugged and followed, but Murray stayed by the engine. \u201cHold it the fuck there, you two. We gotta find whoever drove this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGavin turned, \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell\u2026why are they clearing the tracks? Where are they going? Where are they coming from? Why\u2019d they stop here? We have to know. We live<\/em> here, man! Anyone else is a threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the least we can use it.\u201d Jacob added.<\/p>\n

\u201cUse it for what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. Surely you two have a use for it!\u201d<\/p>\n

McGavin looked at Gates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can use it to go back and forth and blow the whistle and freak the fuck out of agrarian survivalists.\u201d Gates said.<\/p>\n

McGavin tapped a finger to his nose and smiled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need this!\u201d Jacob insisted.<\/p>\n

A dark cloud passed over McGavin\u2019s face. \u201cWe don\u2019t. This is nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need answers.\u201d Murray said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy not?\u201d Jacob asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cCall it a gut feeling.\u201d McGavin replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at the bigger picture,\u201d Gates said, looking to Murray, then Jacob. \u201cAll this work done without alerting us. That involves some level of secrecy. If they live around here, then no way they\u2019re ignorant of our little outfit. If they\u2019ve decided not to contact us, then that\u2019s the way it should stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to expand. We need to rebuild\u2026\u201d Jacob muttered.<\/p>\n

Gates truly looked sad. He walked back and put one hand on each of Jacob\u2019s shoulders. \u201cThat world\u2019s gone, Jacob.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo! It\u2019s not.\u201d Jacob surprised himself, and Gates removed his hands. \u201cIt can\u2019t be. We have to work together. I\u2019m not going to die young toiling in Parker\u2019s fields.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAmen,\u201d McGavin whispered.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to stay hidden in the woods like some goddamned animal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cParker and her people are a rare breed, kid.\u201d Gates said, \u201cWe\u2019re inherently evil. I wouldn\u2019t trust any other group I met.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou hate people. You always have. Both of you. You only joined up with Parker because it was lucrative. Because you liked the idea of heading out to fucking hide your heads in the sand and the only way you could do it and keep up with your lazy shit was if we all worked for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWow, kid.\u201d Gates said.<\/p>\n

Murray nodded, though, and stood beside Jacob. \u201cThe kid\u2019s right. What the fuck have either of you two really done for us?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, all the supplies for a start.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTrading nostalgia for free food.\u201d Jacob said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd women.\u201d Murray added.<\/p>\n

\u201cTold you,\u201d McGavin said to Gates, who rolled his eyes and turned his back on the other two. He froze when he heard Murray chamber a round.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay, Walter. Now you\u2019re in the deep end.\u201d McGavin replied, arms out again.<\/p>\n

Jacob edged away, not sure what was happening. He was pissed, but he didn\u2019t intend this. Never this. There was a weird light in Murray\u2019s eyes, and he realized that it had been there all along. Staring at the tracks, taking in the cleared trees and shrubs, and then when he trained his rifle on the locomotive. Possession. Anger. Fear. Envy.<\/p>\n

Gates turned around, but said nothing. He simply stood there and stared at Murray, expressionless.<\/p>\n

McGavin, usually the quiet one, stepped up as peacemaker. \u201cLook, Walter, relax. We\u2019ll go check out the town and see if there\u2019re signs of life, okay? We\u2019d do that anyway. It\u2019d be irresponsible not to. I agree with you. We agree. We need to get the full picture, okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray just smiled, and Jacob shuddered when he saw it. He backed away from all three.<\/p>\n

\u201cSee,\u201d Murray said, \u201chere\u2019s what I\u2019m thinking. You,\u201d he gestured with his gun to McGavin, then to Gates, \u201cand you are a cancer on our community. Just as whoever drove this train last night is a cancer. We\u2019ve been just fine for ten years. Ten<\/em> years! We\u2019re safe, we\u2019re hidden, we have food and community. I\u2019m just fine living out my days the old way. The way we used to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThought you were excited about the train, Walter.\u201d McGavin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot if they\u2019re doing\u2026whatever it is they\u2019re doing in secret.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates shared a glance with McGavin, then shrugged and said, \u201cUm\u2026okay, Walter. We\u2019ll not look for the train driver. Is that what you want? I\u2019m confused here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d McGavin shifted slightly. \u201cWe\u2019re confused.\u201d Jacob caught the drift and backed up a little bit more, stumbling on the railbed\u2019s stones long ago buried under ivy and brush.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way I have it figured,\u201d Murray continued, \u201cis that we\u2019d be a whole lot better off without you two fucks. And a whole lot better off if we destroyed this train and kept things just as they are\u2026better than before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates kept his hands up, and kept his gaze locked on Murray.<\/p>\n

Murray lapsed into melodrama. He rolled his eyes and waved his gun around, \u201cOh, let\u2019s call it the perfect murder. Crazy train people shot us, killed you two assholes because you\u2019re Parker\u2019s fucking front line douchebags, poor little Jacob has to go, too. Sorry, kid. But loose lips sink ships. And it won\u2019t surprise Parker that her pet rat got offed in a firefight. She knows he\u2019d stick by you two. Then I\u2019ll make sure this train never runs again and go home. We hunker down and live out our days.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHappily ever after, eh?\u201d Gates asked.<\/p>\n

Murray leveled his gun and scowled, \u201cYeah, happily ever fucking after.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates flicked his eyes over his shoulder towards the locomotive and recoiled. Murray spun, saw nothing, and was blindsided by McGavin. The two fell hard, McGavin\u2019s head bouncing off one of the rusted rails. Gates covered the distance in three large steps and dropped down on Murray\u2019s back with one knee. The other man screamed as his spine cracked, his arms spasmed and he tried to turn, but Gates grabbed a handful of his hair and smashed his face against the rail, once, twice, and a third time just because it felt good.<\/p>\n

Gates sucked in air, turned and looked into McGavin\u2019s dead, staring eyes, then looked over his shoulder at Jacob.<\/p>\n

The boy was shaking his head. He let out a small animal sound, then crashed into the woods and melted into the shadows, though Gates could hear him for about ten minutes, cracking and battering his way deeper and deeper into what had become, after so short a time, a primordial forest.<\/p>\n

He looked over at the locomotive. Yeah. Fuck it. Fuck it and fuck any hope that Parker\u2019s people had for salvation. Let them all die on this sad little mountain. He stalked towards the engine and pulled himself up into the cab. He started with any exposed wires, and then he worked over the control panels, and then he figured out how to get into the engine compartment and took it from there. Let the old world die.<\/p>\n

Always Coming Home<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Let the old world die. Die like he should\u2019ve. Survivor\u2019s guilt. Why was he walking around when everybody he knew and loved died? Why had he been passed over?<\/p>\n

Well, no longer. He was going to go back to where it began. Back on the couch, in front of the TV, gaping at the idiot news, watching the world come tumbling down. Then watching static. Then sitting in darkness staring at the dead TV set. Frozen in place till hunger pushed him to get up, to eat what remained in his kitchen and, finally, to venture out into the newly dead world. Scavenge, hoard, meet McGavin, have Parker come up and whisper to them over a bottle of scotch, and ten years in passive-aggressive Amishville.<\/p>\n

Life has many paths. He could have been like everybody else. Could have stayed on that couch forever, mummified in a honeycomb suburban apartment, eaten by vermin and slowly falling apart on a moldering couch while day after day, night after night, the entire world passed by outside the clouding, cob-webbed windows. Forgotten forever. Finally free.<\/p>\n

Surviving wasn\u2019t freedom. It was even more responsibility. It was worse than 9 to 5 at the fucking office, and credit card bills jammed in with all the pleading, screaming junk mail, and wrestling dead-eyed soulless monsters at the supermarket check-out lane. All that nonsense, all the time desiring freedom, and, when it finally came, it was anything but freedom. It was the absence of control. Of uniformity. Of the vast cushion of life in the land of plenty.<\/p>\n

So he destroyed the locomotive, left his friend of ten years lying dead and tangled with the corpse of idiot fucking Walter Murray, and just started walking east. He followed the interstates home \u2013 68 to 70 to 270 to 495. Just like a thousand times before, except now on foot. Past towns long dead and through nature very much resurgent. He picked his way over the crumbling, scorched overpass spanning the blackened ruin of Cumberland, climbed the hills and gazed down at dead villages peeping from amongst the new forest. He climbed the long, slow rise to Sideling Hill \u2013 the ridge that had been blasted through to lay the 68 roadbed and forever make old US 40, weaving up into the mountain and down again, obsolete. A man-made marvel \u2013 a cut blasted in the mountain over 300 feet deep. But now I-68 was gone, subsumed by a decade of rockfalls and landslides. He scampered over the rubble, past the weathered visitor\u2019s center, and started the descent down the other side.<\/p>\n

Winter caught him at Hancock, where 68 starts as an exit off of I-70. An early December snow surprised him, though the nights had been increasingly dreadful. Just a decade without humanity\u2019s control and the weather had started to change. Or maybe it was all part of the old climate change stuff. Super storms and colder weather. It didn\u2019t matter now. Humanity\u2019s time was over. The Earth would right itself.<\/p>\n

There was no need to push on. He had a destination but, really, it didn\u2019t matter how long it took to get there. He decided to overwinter in Clear Spring, 75 miles outside of DC. Mid-December found him ensconced in a house, positioned behind a hill and a screen of trees to keep the worst of the wind out. He covered the windows in plastic sheeting and boards, and burned every scrap of wood he could find. The remains of two people were in the upstairs bedroom, and he unceremoniously dumped the bones and papery flesh out of the window. Then he broke up chairs and table and beds and, as winter moved on, even ripped up some of the old hardwood flooring.<\/p>\n

Clear Spring seemed to have avoided the worst of the looting. How strange that the toll of 10 years scavenging was less obvious the closer he got to the city. Everybody who could bugged out \u2013 got as rural as they dared. Perhaps he and McGavin were wrong to follow Parker after all. The city and suburbs were a fatted calf, abandoned out of fear. Fear of attack, fear of disease from the corpses\u2026 But, once deep in the country, there was no time for anything but simple survival. It certainly hadn\u2019t crossed his mind to make the long trip to the city. Why bother?<\/p>\n

Clear Spring was nice. Lots of canned goods in the stores and houses. Enough for a carefully rationed winter. The descendents of livestock roamed the forest, and deer were plentiful. Winter would take a toll\u2026but they\u2019d survived ten winters. He could make a go of it in Clear Spring. But that wasn\u2019t the plan. Let the old world die.<\/p>\n

He set out as soon as the roads were passable. The snow and the slush were gone, another season done. He marched down I-70 and, as he approached Frederick, the first storm of spring rolled in like a freight train. Dark clouds boiled on the horizon, and the cleansing rains chased him into the Hampton Inn right where 270 began, the corridor leading to the Washington Beltway. He hunkered down in the main office and devoured the last of his Clear Spring rations, trusting the upcoming suburban sprawl to provide enough for his needs.<\/p>\n

He slept fitfully on a moth-eaten fold-out cot, the last of winter\u2019s chill creeping around him. He dreamed of McGavin\u2019s staring eyes, he thought he heard the sounds of Jacob\u2019s flight into the woods and, as always, he saw Cumberland burning. Towards dawn, he dreamed of the old warehouse where he and McGavin had settled before Parker walked into their lives. A nameless, graffitied building along the rail tracks in Fort Totten. Still standing? Still stuffed with the shit they left behind when they attached their wagon to Parker? Maybe he could go back to where that all started. This new life. Pretend the last ten years were just a dream. That was the original plan with McGavin. Build a little empire on the train tracks. Maybe even find one of those hand-pump platforms that go on the tracks, like in the old westerns. Do they still make those? Surely there must be something like it lying around the Union Station railyard. Or was everything automatic now? Gas powered and rusting away.<\/p>\n

Let the old world die. He woke up in the hours before dawn, shivering and crying. The impossible silence of the dead world filled his ears and every movement sounded like an echoing rockfall. He screamed. He screamed and screamed and then got up and pushed over a snack machine, the glass front long ago broken and the contents gone. He wrapped himself up, picked up the pack he had made in Clear Spring, and hiked out into the darkness, thinking about nothing. Letting his brain empty as he joined the clogged interstate and weaved amongst the rotting cars.<\/p>\n

He felt the world spinning under his feet. It felt like it was finally going his way. Like those moving walkways at the airport. He picked up his pace and got into that spinning groove. Let the walkway carry him down 270. Deer skittered down the narrow paths, leapt over cars, and went every which way to get out of his path. A fox slinked quickly by in front of him, and a few foraging rabbits vanished into the retreating shadows. He thought he saw a black bear in the distance, and a pack of dogs yelped from an overpass. He wasn\u2019t worried. There was enough to go around. And these more urban animals seemed to remember the touch of man. They understood the rifle he had strapped to his back. They knew not to fuck with the king of the apes.<\/p>\n

The big sign saying that 270 was dividing was gone. It was one of those markers whenever he was driving home. Get ready, losers, 270 is about to go insane as it tumbles headlong into the Capitol Beltway. He\u2019d jockey into the left lanes to start heading towards Bethesda and Silver Spring. Home was in White Oak. Upper Silver Spring. Home was about seven miles away. He dropped down onto the surface streets as soon as he hit Bethesda. He spent the night in his old high school, curled up by his senior locker. Leaves had blown in through long destroyed windows and, throughout the night, he was woken by rats and other noises in the big building. Nothing mysterious. Just the sounds of decay. He moved through the buildings in the early AM, the new spring moon outside his only light. He\u2019d forgotten where all his old classrooms used to be. He wasn\u2019t even sure if he had picked the right locker. He just remembered the hall. His life was a foggy dream. His memories were sluicing away with the fatigue of the long journey home\u2026and the seemingly endless years since he last walked these halls. They seemed very small now.<\/p>\n

He cooked breakfast right out in the open, on the center lane of East West Highway. The blank-faced buildings of Bethesda stared down at him. Anyone home? No.<\/p>\n

He started walking again around mid-morning. Not far to go, now. Take his time. He crossed Connecticut Avenue, once a mighty intersection, now just burned out cars, crumbling houses, and silence. Everywhere silence. No smoke from cooking fires, nobody moving. He weaved down past Beach Drive, up the hill to Grubb Road, then down again into Silver Spring proper, then he cut up Colesville Road, hiking past the Discovery Building, which looked like something had crashed into its upper levels long ago, and leaving the sprawl of Silver Spring behind him. Now just houses and parkland and strip malls. He took his time. He passed by Blair High School, and, at noon, he lunched on the overpass that took Colesville Road over the Beltway. He could have saved some time, but that night in the halls of BCC helped align him. Helped remind him that a nice life in Clear Spring, or with Parker\u2019s people, or anywhere wasn\u2019t what he wanted.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re always coming home.<\/p>\n

He was close. He moved through the pitted White Oak shopping center parking lot, a portion of it almost swampland. He cut through the vast labyrinth of garden apartments behind the shopping center, wrapping up and around to Stewart Lane and, then, to April Lane. His apartment, on the top floor of a four-storey garden apartment, a series of buildings that were indistinguishable from each other. Before he reached his complex, though, he took a shortcut through the once new townhomes. When he was a kid, the whole area was forest. Paint Branch. Now it was garden apartments and ludicrously overpriced townhomes.<\/p>\n

He moved extra slow. He took it all in. The cheap siding and gutters of the homes was long gone, the paint peeled and the walls blackened by weather, mold, decay. Garage doors had pulled off of rusted chains and broken rails, and there was nothing but silence. He thought of all the times he\u2019d walked past the townhomes, on the way to and from the supermarket. Every Saturday, he\u2019d wake up at 5:30am, winter or summer, rain or shine, and head out to get his shopping done before the crowds came. He savored the apocalyptic fantasy. No sounds from his neighbors, nobody else out and about, no lights on. 5:30am Saturday was when he was most at peace in his old life. When he pretended the world had ended.<\/p>\n

Now it was a little after one in the afternoon on a weekday, and the same silence, the same loneliness that had fueled those early morning weekend fantasies was overbearing. He stepped off the sidewalk into the road and stared at one of the townhomes. Two cars sat in the driveway, one just on rims and the flayed remains of a tire. Inside would be corpses. People who died the way he should have. Useless fucking lumps sitting on their couch watching the TV as everything came apart.<\/p>\n

He threw a rock at one of the few intact windows, and the whole casement gave way with a screeching tear and cascaded to the ground. He shuddered as the echo played around him, then he hurried away, inexplicably panicked, and cut through the backyards down to his complex. The parking lot full of cars, three dead bodies still in the playground. Still! He\u2019d passed them, fresh corpses, ten years ago. Had nothing changed?<\/p>\n

11525. His building. He looked up at his balcony. The railing was gone, rusting in the bushes on the ground in front of him. There was nothing but concrete and his ratty patio table, tipped on its side. One side was covered in a mound of leaves.<\/p>\n

He hiked up the stairs and reached in his pocket. For ten years, he\u2019d carried his keys. They were a talisman. The door needed some work, though. He threw himself against it repeatedly until it flew inward with a spray of bugs and a startled flight of wasps. He skittered back to the edge of the landing, brushing dust out of his eyes and creepy crawlies off of his shoulders. Then he stepped inside. Rotting carpet, water in the kitchen, walls covered in black mold, paint and drywall gone in places. He kicked the couch, which looked like it had started to mummify, and pushed down on the cushions with his foot. No rats or mice. Or, at least, none that wanted to announce themselves. He dropped his bag, sat down with the dust and mold and insects, and stared at the TV set. The ceiling above had given way, covering the TV with a moldy cake of splintered wood, drywall, and rubble. Water leaked from the hole above, the afternoon sky peeking through. This is where he sat when it all happened. This is where he should have died.<\/p>\n

What was happening up in Finzel? Parker\u2019s people were probably toiling in the fields. Someone perched in the fire tower wistfully hoping for a phantom train. Maybe Parker had launched a proper search of Frostburg after Jacob returned with his story\u2026if the boy had made it. Maybe Jacob was lying out in the woods, never to be discovered. A feast for the animals. Surely Parker would have retraced their steps. No doubt Murray and McGavin were buried on that hill, overlooking Parker\u2019s plantation manor. It occurred to him that he didn\u2019t know where McGavin was from. He\u2019d never asked. It never mattered. After the collapse, you weren\u2019t from anywhere. You had no one.<\/p>\n

Gates picked up the remote, the bottom half covered in a grayish goo leaking from the batteries. He clicked the on switch, he put it down next to him, he stared at the blank TV.<\/p>\n

Crowds gathering outside the local rescue stations\u2026the sickness seems to be spreading\u2026reports now from around the world\u2026if you show any of the symptoms, then please hurry to one of the stations listed at the bottom of your screen\u2026experts fear the worst<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

It starts like the cold. Aches, a cough, runny nose. Perfectly normal for about a week or so. Then the fever starts. Then the mind gets fuzzy. You forget things. You get confused.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then you fucking die.\u201d Gates said to the TV. \u201cAnd then you get left in your living room, or slumped on the bathroom floor, or trapped in your car, or out on the street, in the playground. You get left and you\u2019re forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pulled out his .45 and put it in his mouth.<\/p>\n

The way it was meant to be.<\/p>\n

Let the old world die.<\/p>\n

There was nobody around to hear the gunshot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been asked by a few friends to give them a print out of Finzel since they’ve just come in from 1899 and their time machine is broken.\u00a0 Another friend, along with my girlfriend, told me that they can’t follow …<\/p>\n

Finzel, Collected<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[114,126],"class_list":["post-578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-serials","tag-collected-serials","tag-finzel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=578"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1286,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions\/1286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}