Long Empty Roads

by Sean Little

  When Renata explained the stones’ significance to me, I felt chills rush up and down my spine. She said, “The stones feel charged. Touch them.” I reached out my hand and placed it on the warm, gray granite. They did feel different, but I don’t know if it was my own imagination doing it, or if they really were special.

  The inscriptions on the guidestones said the same thing in multiple languages:

  1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

  2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.

  3. Unite humanity with a living new language.

  4. Rule passion—faith—tradition—and all things with tempered reason.

  5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.

  6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.

  7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.

  8. Balance personal rights with social duties.

  9. Prize truth—beauty—love—seeking harmony with the infinite.

  10. Be not a cancer on the earth—Leave room for nature—Leave room for nature.

  Ren ran her fingers over the inscription in English. “Number one, check. Number two, check; nobody’s reproducing around here, anyhow. Number three—who knows? You and I both speak English, I speak some Spanish. It’s all good. Number four, check. Number five, no people or nations anymore, so…check. Number six, no nations: check! You know, an apocalypse did a really nice job of ending petty laws and useless officials.”

  I laughed. “Yeah. No more census takers or city aldermen knocking on your door, that’s for sure. I guess there really is no great loss without some small gain.”

  “I think we’re doing pretty well. Ol’ R.C. Christian set a low bar for a societal rebuild after everyone died.” Ren walked around the monoliths touching the stones. “Spooky, though. This group forty-some years ago said, Hey! Shit’s getting out of hand. Let’s figure out rules for after everything falls apart.”

  “How smart were they, though? If they put up the stones in 1980, you’d think they might have expected the collapse to happen sooner than it did. I don’t think they anticipated a virus wiping out everyone, either. I think they were thinking about an economic collapse.” I walked to the spot where a slab said there was a time capsule beneath it.

  “An economic collapse would have been brutal. The virus was a mercy.” Ren saw the time capsule slab and raised her eyebrows. “Want to dig it up?”

  “Not in the least.” I said. “I bet it’s buried beneath concrete. It looks like it would be a bear of thing to get to without heavy equipment.”

  “What if there’s like some sort of Genesis pod in it that would spread humanity all over Earth again?”

  I looked at the quiet, peaceful countryside surrounding the stones. I listened to the meadowlarks’ song and the cicadas and frogs chirping along. “Maybe it’s for the best that it stays put. As much as I’d like the world to go back to how it was before the Flu, I don’t know if that sort of recovery is possible. Or if the Earth really even wants it.”

  “You think that maybe we’re a mistake? Maybe we should have died, then?” Ren’s eyebrows knitted together when she frowned at me. “That there is no point to us still being alive?”

  I shrugged. I felt stupid when I did it. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Ren shook her head and fell backward in the tall grass, splaying out like she was going to make a snow angel in the weeds. “Maybe,” she agreed. “But at least we’re having fun, right?”

  I flopped into the weeds next to her. “Yes, we are.”

  “Out of everyone who didn’t die, I’m glad I found you, Twist. You’re making being alive feel like a good thing again.”

  Ren didn’t move after she said it. I almost thought that sounded like an invitation, like maybe I should have tried to kiss her. I did not try, though. I looked up at the blue Georgia sky and kept my mouth shut. I should have said something.

  I’m such a coward.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Kingdom of New America

  I always hated it when people called the city of Atlanta, “Hotlanta.” I had a friend in Wisconsin who did that. He was one of those guys who thought he was going to be a rapper, always talking about some non-existent mixtape he was going to cut. Good kid, but it was always a little weird to hear a chubby suburbanite teenager talk about how the rap scene in “Hotlanta” was the place to be. When I got to Atlanta, I understood why the name originated, though. It was hot as hell. Ren said, “It feels like I’m breathing sauna air.” That’s probably the best analogy for it. It was hot, thick, messy air magnified by the concrete and asphalt to another level of magnitude. The tar on the roads was sticky from heat. It was too hot for this Northerner.

  “The Atlanta metro area, plus the suburbs, had a population of four million people. We’re going to find someone here,” Ren said the morning after our first camp in Atlanta. As usual, her optimism percolated.

  “You said that in Charlotte, too. Same sort of size,” I reminded her.

  “But this time, I feel it, Twist. I feel it in my bones.” She sounded so definite, so sure of it, that I didn’t bother to contradict her. Her hope was helpful. It gave me hope.

  We went downtown. The downtown part of Atlanta didn’t feel especially big. The suburbs that sprawled around the city made the area feel bigger, but to me, the downtown felt like going into Milwaukee. There were some tall buildings, but nothing like New York. There were some park areas, and a lot of commerce and restaurants and apartment buildings. It was a lovely city, but looking at the roads around it, I just knew there were probably some heavy traffic issues that would have made commuting a miserable endeavor back when people still existed. We parked somewhere near the center of town in the shade of a tall office building. It was at least ten degrees cooler in the shade. It was a noticeable and welcome change. I popped all the windows to vent the RV for Fester.

  “Why are there peaches everywhere?” Ren asked. She had abandoned her shotgun for one of the pistols from my small collection. After the misfire at the raccoon, her taste for long guns evaporated. I gave her a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .357 that she said felt comfortable in her hand and we found a holster and a nylon tactical belt for it at a gun shop along the way. It made her look cool, I have to say. As much as I’m not a fan of guns, the way the belt hung on her hip gave her a roguish appearance. She reminded me of Han Solo the way she stood with her palm resting on the knurled hand grip, her curvy hips cocked to the side. As a kid, when I played Star Wars, I always wanted to be Han Solo. I think everyone did, male or female. Han was the man, easily a thousand times cooler than Luke, even though he didn’t get his own lightsaber. Unfortunately, as I got older, I found myself to be much more C-3PO than Han Solo, stiff, awkward, and spouting facts and data no one asked for or wanted.

  “Georgia is all about peaches. State fruit. They produce a ton of them here.” I pointed to a license plate with a big peach on it. I slung my ruck over my shoulder, fastened a gun belt with the semi-auto at my hip, and picked up my shotgun and a MagLite. Ren had her own Maglite now, too. She was an old hand at camping and scavenging now. It had become second nature to us. We walked to the office building in front of us. The doors were locked. None of the glass was smashed. All good signs. We walked around the building trying other doors. A freight entrance was unlocked on the backside of the building. We walked in, flashlights illuminating our way.

  The office building was plain and boring. Much like the tower I climbed in New York, the place was full of different companies using different floors as office space. The offices were pretty standard in that they usually had a reception desk, a cubicle farm, and a couple of executive offices on the corners. There were restrooms on every floor, and every office had a break room with vending machines. On the first floor, at the first vending machine, Ren used her flashlight handle to shatter the glass. She pulled out a bag of Cheetos and read the expiratio
n date printed on the crimped foil edge. “Sell by twelve-sixteen.” She frowned, opened the bag, and sniffed them. “Hell with it, I’m eating them anyway.” Office buildings were goldmines for expired junk food and packs of ramen.

  We walked up the darkened stairwell to the twentieth floor. We could have gone higher, but neither of us had a desire to keep going. Twenty stories gave us plenty of view over the area. We moved through the offices looking out the windows. I took the offices that faced north and east. Ren took the south and west corners. I saw nothing. I hadn’t expected to see anything. Ren called for me, though, her voice betraying excitement and nerves. “Twist. Get over here!” From her vantage point, she was able to look down into a cluster of buildings. Nothing was immediately visible. I raised an eyebrow, but she pointed at a dark brownstone building. Against the dark of the stonework, I noticed something ghosting past it. Smoke. White smoke from a cooking fire. Someone was alive.

  Ren and I sped down the stairs in near darkness. We hit the front entry of the office building near the Greyhawk. There were emergency exit push-bars on the doors so we could get out easily. “Should we take the RV?” Ren said.

  “It’s not too far away. Probably be better to go over there and see what we’re dealing with first,” I said. “Could be someone harmless. Could be a bunch of ass-hats like the Patriots. We can’t risk losing the RV.”

  We made a beeline toward the area where we saw the smoke. It quickly became evident that there was definitely a person, or people, still alive there. Garbage was piled neatly in the alleys toward the block of brownstones. Wood was stacked in the alley, mostly from old shipping pallets, and there were open plastic barrels under downspouts to catch rain water. As we got closer, I could hear singing. “The Great Pretender” by the Platters was being belted out by someone with a mellow bass voice. He sounded really good, too.

  I grabbed Ren’s wrist. “Stay back. Stay hidden. If it’s safe, I’ll come get you.”

  Ren nodded and fell back behind me. “What if it’s not safe?”

  “I’ll need you to come rescue me.”

  “Like a damsel in distress?” Ren winked at me. She started to creep back to hide behind a pile of trash bags. “Should we have a code word or something so I’ll know to come rescue you?”

  Code word? I think she needed to stop reading my spy novels. I said, “How about if I just scream, Help?”

  Ren blew her hair off her forehead with a puff of air. “Good plan, genius.”

  I pressed myself against the wall of the alley and moved toward the street. At the corner, I steeled myself and peeked at the row of tenements. I wasn’t exactly prepared for what I’d see; it’s hard to be prepared for something like this. A large, black Weber kettle grill was standing in the middle of the street. A fire raging in its cauldron shot flames a foot or two into the air. A large steel pot was sitting precariously in the midst of the flames. It was black from heavy use and lack of cleaning, as camping supplies tend to get over time. A full dining room of expensive patio furniture was arranged in the street including comfortable chairs, a metal table with large umbrella in the center, and plastic tableware set for four. The master of the feast was a rather large, elderly black man. He had a large, scraggly beard that was almost purely white. He wore a pair of thick, black-rimmed spectacles straight out of 1955. He also wore a full suit of plate armor complete with a lancer’s helm, the face-guard flipped upward so his face was unblocked. He had a medieval longsword buckled to his side with an elaborate, jeweled belt. He was rocking back and forth next to the grill while singing Oldies. He had a wooden spoon in his hand and a cooking mitt on the other. He poked at some sort of animal carcass that was bubbling away in the stew pot. Judging from what I could see, it may have been a cat or a small dog. I couldn’t be certain. Over his suit of armor, like a tabard, he wore an apron that proclaimed in bold font:

  This Ain’t Burger King—

  You Don’t Get It Your Way;

  You Get It My Way

  Or You Don’t Get the Son of a Bitch.

  I set my shotgun down at the corner where it would be out of sight, but close enough for me to dive back and grab it, if I needed. Fear started to clench my guts again. I had no idea how this man would react, especially since I caught him wearing a full suit of armor on a one hundred degree day. I stepped around the corner, my hands in the air. I cleared my throat and said a very respectful, “Hello.”

  The man’s head snapped up and his eyes grew large. He drew the sword. “What, ho! What demonry is this? Be you a minion of Hell sent to claim me? You’ll not take me without a fight! Prepare your greasy talons, demon!” He advanced, sword-tip making slow circles in the air.

  “Easy, sir.” I held my hands up higher so he wouldn’t think I was going to go for the gun at my hip. “I’m not a demon. My name is Twist. I’m from Wisconsin.”

  The sword stopped twirling. The tip lowered a bit. The man squinted. “Wisconsin? Is that in my northern realms? Have you come to swear fealty to my realm and pay your taxes?”

  I looked at his eyes. I saw not one hint of jest in them. I think he was dead serious. I went with it, playing into his game. “Yes…uh…sir.” Thankfully, I’d read more than my fair share of fantasy novels over the years. I knew what swearing fealty meant. I dropped to a knee and bowed my head. “I am…Twist, of the Northern, uh, Prairie Lands. I have come to swear fealty to…uh, you.”

  The sword-tip flipped up and rested on his shoulder. The eyes went wide and he smiled a filmy, yellow-teeth smile. “Good, good! I have been awaiting messengers from the Northlands for many moons. Tell me, Northman. How goes the battles? Have we a full army in the north yet, or have they succumbed?”

  I don’t think it was a game; I think he was mentally ill. Maybe he was sick before the Flu, maybe isolation made him snap. I couldn’t be sure. I decided to continue to play along. I bowed my head to my chest. “I’m sorry, m’lord. The Northlands have fallen. I am the final emissary from the Central Northlands, the only one left. I met up with an emissary from the Eastern Northlands, and have brought her with me. We are sad to bring you news that the dreaded pox riddled the armies of the Northlands, much as it did in the Southlands. I fear the kingdom is lost, your majesty.”

  The man—the king?—sat heavily in one of his patio chairs, his armor clanking in protest. “Then it is as I feared. The realms have fallen. I was named knight-protector of the realms, but if they have truly fallen, then the Archangel Gabriel sent unto me the proclamation to become king.” He tore off the lancer’s helm and chucked it aside. It bounced into the street. He ran to a box of stuff on the steps of the brownstone. He thrust his hand into the box and withdrew an actual gold crown studded with jewels. He placed it on his head slowly, with great reverence. It reminded me of Napoleon crowning himself Emperor. “As the Archangel decreed unto me, I proclaim myself King Francis Delacroix, First King of New America, Ruler of the Divine Province of Atlanta, Protector of the Southlands, the Georgian Realm, and Defender of the Remnant of the Living World.” He pulled his hands away from the crown and stood in glory on the first step of the tenement, staring into the sky with wide, wild eyes. Then, he turned those eyes to me. I sensed he was waiting for something.

  “Oh…uh, long live the king!” I shouted.

  “Long live the king,” King Francis repeated. “Long live the king.”

  Ren came out of the alley after me. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I’m not certain. Kneel.”

  Ren, without questioning it, dropped to a knee next to me. “Who’s the geezer?”

  “Our new king.”

  King Francis strode over, sword in hand. He stood before us. “And who is this brave young woman? Is she my emissary from the Eastern Northlands?”

  “She is, uh…your Majesty. I present, uh, Renata of Brooklyn.”

  King Francis stared at her. “Speak truth, Renata of Brooklyn—is it as my emissary from Wisconsin spoke? Have the Northlands succumbed to the pox? Is my kingdom fall
en?”

  Ren looked to me, and I nodded slightly. She cleared her throat. “Uh, Twist speaketh truly, your Highness. We have traveled many days and found very few have survived the pox. There is an enclave of…uh, orcs in the Eastern Northlands. They have seized control of…” She looked to me for help.

  “The orcs have seized York and Jersey, sire. Those provinces are a lost cause.”

  King Francis’ face fell into a stern mask. “This is grave news indeed. Grave, grave news.”

  The pot on the grill behind him began to bubble over and the water and fat in the stew made the fire wildly hiss and spit. Steam rose in great clouds. King Francis spun and pushed the pot away from the center of the grill with his cooking mitt.

  He turned back to us. “There shall be a feast this eve. We shall celebrate your safe arrival in the Southlands, and we shall celebrate my coronation.”

  “What’s cooking?” Ren stood and eyed the fatty gray-brown stew in the pot.

  “Nothing you want to put in your mouth,” I whispered. At that second, a skull with bits of meat clinging to it and a melting jellied eye rose above the lip of the pot. It was a raccoon. Definitely a raccoon. The stew had a thick, gamy smell. It smelled like manure and copper pennies. It was enough to gag me.

  King Francis strode toward us removing his cooking mitt. “But first, we must reward my subjects for their bravery. Kneel, and be recognized.”

  Ren gave me a look that clearly said, He has a sword, should we run? I shook my head. I dropped back to a kneel and hoped for the best. The old man seemed harmless. Delusional, but harmless. Ren took a knee beside me, reluctance etched on her face.

  King Francis lowered his sword to my left shoulder, lifted it over my head to the right, and then back to the left. “I knight thee Sir Twist, of the Northlands, Defender of New America.” He repeated the sword motions on Renata. “I knight thee, Sir Renata of Brooklyn, Defender of New America. I shall now hear your oaths.”

  Ren’s eyes went wide and she whipped her head around to look at me. “Oaths?” she mouthed.