“Man, this is the Wasteland.” The man looks around the fire. “You’re sitting right in it.”
“This is the Freedom Republic of Texas, amigo.” Billy salutes the others around the fire. “Liberty and Life!”
“But we mostly get death,” says Joe Mercusio, deadpanning.
“Careful, boys. You don’t want Paltrow hearing that. Not with the White Texan on his way,” Julius says.
Billy smirks. “Paltrow’s abusing himself in his tent.”
“I don’t want to hear about the Wasteland,” Vane says. “I want to hear about Vermont.” To Vane, Vermont is the opposite side of the world, a fictional place that exists in books she has never had the chance to read. Her eyes shine.
“What’s your name, pretty girl?”
“Vane.” Her eyes still shine.
“Vane, have you ever seen snow?”
Vane shakes her head.
“Have you ever been cold?”
“Yes, very much so.”
“Vermont is snow, and Vermont is cold. And when it’s not, it’s green. Green as a cactus, but not as sharp. But, most of the time it is cold, the cold that goes straight to your bones.”
“I will tell you about Vermont. And I will tell you about the Wasteland.” The man has everyone’s attention; he has finished his meal and settled in to seriousness.
“From here to there, the world is pockets amongst chaos. Pockets of people living together to shield themselves from the chaos that surrounds them. The Freedom Republic of Texas is one such pocket, only it’s the largest, and pushes its borders outward like an inflating balloon. North of Dallas and El Paso is the Wasteland as you have heard stories of. It is wild and largely unknown, even to the Pony Express riders. The great midsection of the country out to West Coast is a terrible question mark.
“To the north and east, the emptiness of the Wasteland turns to more populated chaos. The Southern states all the way up to the major population centers of the Northeast are the most chaotic. The pockets are small, and crowded. The cities are much like the ones here -- inhabited with corpses and rats. One must give them a wide berth, as the pockets around the cities are the most violent.
“Above the cities, where it is rural, the cold has created a kind of peace. People live in communes that are loosely connected to each other. While there is no formal government, there is a cooperative network that stretches from what was eastern Ohio, Pennsylvania and up into rural New York and Vermont. People up there are starting to call it the New Union.”
Julius has relaxed, perhaps because Vane has settled into his side and he can feel her warmness. The faces around the fire are rapt. Julius motions to Billy who produces a bottle of peyotequila from his overcoat.
“So tell us some stories, Pony Express Man.”
The man accepts the bottle and drinks deeply, before passing it on its circuit around the fire. The stars are appearing in the sky, and also in everyone’s eyes as the bitter liquid works its magic. Even Roger takes his share, again, hoping to muddle the cacophony of thoughts that are welling inside of him.
The man’s sonorous voice firmly grasps the attention of every ear as it dances with the flames of the fire in the night air.
It all happened at once; you know that. The First Apocalypse came in like a roaring lion, cubs on her tail.
Vane’s eyes are saucers and Julius’s arm is a green snake that writhes harmless in the long grass, puppy teeth that nip and play, he pulls in and toward, in and toward.
The strange sun killed the cars and the people in the streets killed each other.
Faces through the flames recall the horrible days.
The White Texan emerged from waiting, and sounded his call.
Roger closes his eyes to the infamous name, wills the peyotequila to smother his consciousness, and represses all memory.
The red-crossed were branded, and the black-crossed were burned. The White Texan spread his arms and the Freedom Republic grew beneath them.
Joe and Billy lean forward in rapt attention.
In the Wasteland, the bombs went off. The cubs were loose, and wild. Disease ravaged the cities.
The Pony Express grew its network. In the North the communes formed to struggle against winter, and The Flood.
Stranger Sun still pulses, still makes the skin prickle. Just like the day it shut everything down. The New Borealis is its only gift, the only gift from its ugliness, and it only comes out at night for its fear of Stranger Sun.
Roger leaves the Pony Express Man’s story and drifts back in time, the peyotequila muddling the flow from dendrite to axon. Time is a series of cards in a deck, and he is shuffled through them. The New Borealis glows above, but in his mind the sun is how it was before—normal, as he knew it. Before the events that separated him from Esther, the changing of the world. She is somewhere under this sky, at the antipode of his current reality.
So why I am still here, he thinks, but not for the first time, or the last.
Chapter 3: The Beginning
“Balls.” Sneck sucks down a quarter pint of piss-yellow beer in one take, stifles a belch and wanders his eyes across the bar. “This is balls, my friend. My muchacho. What’re we doing here?”
“Excellent question, Sneck,” Roger says as he tears off a little piece of the label from the corner of his bottle. “Why are we here, eating at a Chili’s mere miles from the border. It’s criminal.”
Sneck swallows another large gulp. “We need to find some action, man. Club or something.”
“Feel free.”
“Some wingman you are.”
“We’re barely friends. We find ourselves together as an unwritten addendum to the terms of our employment. And none of those places seem to have windows, down here. Creeps me out. My idea of fun isn’t risking my neck so you can get laid in your imagination.”
“Balls.”
Eyes around the bar start to stick to the screen of the muted television hanging in the corner, and Roger looks up, too. It’s tuned to a cable news network. Under the talking head the words “Widespread power disruptions reported in Asia” scroll by.
Roger sips from his beer as more words scroll across. “Millions, possibly billions affected.”
“Say what?” Roger looks up from his beer. “Billions?”
“What’re you going on about?”
“On TV. A huge power outage in Asia. Billions affected, maybe.”
“Meh. That’s a drop in the bucket over there,” Sneck says. “You know what I think?”
Roger doesn’t want to know what Sneck thinks, especially not at a restaurant bar where he might be overheard. Roger curses himself for his mental error: no mentions of China or anything remotely Chinese when with Sneck in public. It was a top-tier item on a very long list. Just being in Brownsville, Texas, this close to the border with the man broke about a dozen rules on the list.
Time for a conversation diversion.
“This better not mess with my flight tomorrow,” Roger says. Air travel was a safer hot topic.
“Puta Barata airlines!”
Sneck had learned a little Spanish during his two weeks in Brownsville. Very little.
Roger motions to the barman for two more drinks. It was going to be a long night.
Hours later, Roger stumbles across the boulevard and back to his motel, alone. He fishes the keycard from his pocket and swipes to open the door to his motel room. The small light on the device blinks red. Piece of crap shithole. He tries again, with no better luck.
Card’s backwards, idiot. The green light appears and the lock clicks open. He shakes his head, goes inside and flops on the bed. Two weeks of searing heat, fast food and piles of technical documents to edit. Tonight is a relief. Tomorrow would suck, but then he would be home again.
He plugs in his phone and checks the screen. No new messages. He taps in the words “Love you, miss you,” makes a concerted effort to check his spelling, and hits send.
Esther’s prompt reply glows on the screen.
&nb
sp; “Love you. See you tomorrow night :)”
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}
The sun pierces through the window and forms a burning rhombus over Roger’s face. His lips stick together and his tongue strafes inside his mouth like a wedge of sandpaper.
What the hell time is it? His mind races over the repercussions of sleeping through the alarm.
Esther’s message is still on the screen of his phone, battery almost dead. Didn’t he plug it in? Ten o’clock. Shit. His flight would leave in just over an hour. He could make it. He had to make it. Brownsville was a small airport.
Bright yellow piss.
Warm tap water from the faucet for breakfast.
Washcloth to the face and underarms.
Shove everything into the carry-on.
Hell of a day to sleep through the alarm.
No message from Sneck. No messages from anyone. Asshole’s probably sitting in the lobby.
Or is he? Sneck didn’t return to the hotel last night. Roger recalls stumbling across Route 77, past the Loan Star and Whataburger and into The Palace Motel. Bored look from the lobby girl playing with her phone. But no Sneck. Sneck would have flirted with the girl.
Sneck went out to find the nightlife. Hopefully he made it back. Or whatever.
Roger isn’t his mother. Dude’s a grown man. He’s probably down in the lobby anyway.
Except, he isn’t. A new girl sits behind the desk.
“I’m checking out.” Roger sounds like a frog. “Can you call me a taxi? I need to get to the airport. I’m late.”
Sneck has the keys to the rental car. Sneck who isn’t in the lobby.
The girl shrugs. “Phone’s not working and the power’s out, all over town. It’s a mess out there.”
Roger’s head pounds. Not today, of all days.
“How far is the airport from here? Could I walk it?” Not in time to catch his flight. He knows that.
“Across town— it’s a ways. But maybe your flight is delayed, you know, with the power outages and everything.”
“True,” Roger says. “Maybe if I’m lucky.”
No service on his phone. No bars. No maps. He vaguely remembers the drive with Sneck. A few wrong turns on the way in don’t help his memory.
“How would I get to the airport from here?”
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}
The hangover conspires with the sun to maximize Roger’s misery as he trundles along the boulevard, carry-on luggage in tow.
Thank God he didn’t check a bag.
Most of the businesses lining the road are closed, handmade signs tucked in windows. Police manage traffic at the busier intersections, and the rest works itself out with darting and honking.
One foot after the other. He thinks of Esther, and wonders if the power outages affected the Northeast.
She would be fine. She was capable. And smart.
Probably smarter than he is. Roger questions his decision to walk to an airport miles away in the brutal heat, already dehydrated.
At the next intersection a man with a large cooler sells generic-brand bottles of water to passengers of backed up vehicles.
“How much?”
The man holds up one finger. Roger surveys the contents of his wallet— a twenty-dollar bill. His hand checks inside his pant pocket and finds a few crinkled singles leftover from last night. He smooths out one of the bills and hands it to the man.
“How far to the airport from here?” he asks. The man hesitates, and Roger makes a flying motion with his arms. “Airport?”
The man laughs. “About a mile.”
“I’m sorry, I’m an idiot.” Roger says, embarrassed. “My name’s Roger. What’s yours?”
“Miguel.”
Roger thinks for a moment.
“Actually, I’ll take two, Miguel.”
Miguel hands Roger the bottles of water, then points up to the sky with one hand, shielding his eyes with the other. “You see that?”
Roger squints into the glare. “The sun?”
“It’s fuzzy. Can you feel it on your skin?”
“Fuzzy? I’m not sure… I can’t really see anything. Anyway, thanks for the water.”
“My daughter is coming later if you need antojitos.”
“Thanks, Miguel, but I’m not coming back.”
Roger douses a t-shirt from his carry-on with water, and wraps it around his head. What was a mile? He could walk one more mile.
The last stretch to the airport is long, straight, flat and sparse. Still a ways off, Roger sees the entrance, blocked to incoming traffic, and is saturated with futility. The blockade consists of a few orange pylons and two disinterested national guardsmen with rifles slung over their shoulders. Roger puts on the friendliest face he can muster as he approaches.
“Airport is closed,” the guardsman on the left announces.
Roger manages a queasy smile. “Do you know for how long?”
“Won’t be opening today; I can tell you that. Every airport in the country is shut down.”
“What’s going on? Terrorists?”
“You have to move along, sir.”
Roger thinks about the desolate stretch he just walked, and the entire distance back to the hotel, and wants to sag to the ground. But what other option did he have but to keep on walking?
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}
The walk is a dream and it’s turning on its side, exposing its soft thigh. Esther and Roger sitting in a tree; Esther and Roger kissing in a dream. The walk is a dream, the heat is a blooming mushroom; the journey is a feat of strength; every footstep jostles the brain against the skull…
Esther be safe, Esther be safe. Why did I agree to come here?
Roger wrenches himself from his walking hallucination and sees Miguel with the cart. His daughter has arrived and is now selling the waters— the price now two dollars each; Miguel cooks strips of meat on a small propane grill and wraps them in corn tortillas. Roger breaks his twenty, buying more water and two tacos.
Food displaces despair. There is no distance he cannot walk.
At the hotel, Roger secures his room for another night with the mutual understanding that the electricity would return, and that credit cards would provide currency.
He feels himself recovering from last night, and the death march, pulling his chair up to the window and resting his feet on the sill. His view from the second story of two stories looks out on the street where pick-up trucks and cars continue to motor, to somewhere, or perhaps just anywhere. People lounge in doorways and windows, unsure of what to do with themselves.
Roger recalls a brown-out that occurred several summers ago. A large part of the Northeast had been without power for days in a period of record-breaking heat. So here in Brownsville, he was out of his element, he figured, but it couldn’t be much worse. Wait it out, and normalcy would return.
Hopefully normalcy would return by tomorrow. It would be nice to get home.
His phone rests on his lap. He avoids checking the screen compulsively to save the critically low battery.
No signal since last night.
The unknown is the difficult part. Talk of airports closed across the country. What could he do but wait?
And the lights snap on. Roger lurches from half-sleep and rides a wave a relief. Outside, cheers and celebration.
Plugs in the phone. Still no signal.
Turns on the television. Static.
The air-conditioner hums and the cool air would come. And so would the rest, eventually.
His stomach growls. How long until stores would open? He could hold out for the night, if he had to. It’s already growing late.
He should check to see if Sneck made it back to his room, he thinks.
A foot out the door, and then…
It all gets brighter in a blinding surge before sparking to black once more.
And the blackness holds.
Roger retreats back into the room and puts his head out the open window into the cooling air. The air is static, and the
hairs on his arm stand up as his skin tingles. In the street, a brand-new SUV heaves and gasps, jolting forward one lurch at a time. Other vehicles stop dead in their tracks.
In the darkening sky, blue and green twists decorate the air with a Texas-sized aurora borealis. People exit their vehicles and stare up at the spectacle.
A woman on the street drops to her knees and prays loudly.
The restlessness that had built throughout the day draws itself back for a moment of introspection and wonders under the energy from above. And as if the lights in the sky could touch, they reach down and thrum the skin, pitching unease and initiating something that would grow wilder.
The restlessness ferments into frothing, unstoppable until all of its fuel has been consumed.
Chapter 4: San Benito
A sound.
Someone else must be in the store.
Roger kneels in the aisle, a pillowcase in one hand and a jar of baby food in the other. The store is dark save for a soft glow from the skylights above. Outside, gunfire pops in the indeterminable distance.
But this sound had been in the store— a clink and a roll the next aisle over.
The last three days had been an outbreak of hell with drug syndicates and petty criminals clashing with police and citizen vigilantes. No safe zone existed. The border between Matamoros and Brownsville, Mexico and the United States, had evaporated.
The border between civil and criminal had evaporated.
The looting hadn’t been shocking. It was like watching television through his window. People smashed windows and carted goods from stores as if it were some communal, violent holiday.
Roger bunkered down in his room as long as he could, daring only two forays before tonight. One, down the hallway to the front desk, which had been abandoned. The second, down the hall to Sneck’s room. The door was locked and no one responded to his furtive knock.
Hunger and desperation had led him out tonight.
The HEB supermarket was within sight of his room’s window. He studied it carefully through a slit in the curtains. After two days of madness, the street had quieted and he made his move to forage for food.
Letters from the Apocalypse (Book 1) Page 2