17 July 20XX +1
My
Dear Lucilius:
This
morning, sometime around mid-morning, we effectively entered Terra
Incognito, the land beyond which I have not been since The Collapse
began.
I
write this with an odd sense of disbelief. Two years ago had you
asked, I would have scoffed at such a thing. This was a drive that
took 1.5 hours each way that I made at least once a month. There
was nothing remarkable about it, a series of
curving hills and town and fields and streams. It had become the
sort of drive one had during a commute, something that fell into the
background of the mind as one thought about other things.
Now,
Here There Be Monsters.
We
passed by the remains of The Locusts,
already stripped down and bones scattered across the road. We passed
by McAdams, strangely silent and quiet after our time there only a
few short weeks ago, the summer cottages windows staring mournfully
at us, eye sockets of another age.
And
with that, we passed into the Unknown.
For
most of this stretch of road, there was nothing. Periodically a side
road branched off but ended beyond a hill or turn we could not see.
Only ourselves, the grasses and hills, and silence.
The
Colonel, The Leftenant, and Ox switched off walking point and
rearguard, usually taken Young Xerxes with them (likely for training
as much as anything else), leaving myself the lone consistent center
to plod on.
Was
there a sense that potentially danger was around every corner? I
suppose so, yes – we have had little or now information from this
area in almost year. And yet, there is little enough in this part of
the world to suggest that something like Locusts
would want to stay here – towns like McAdams and Little City
were the true lures in today’s world. At best, anywhere in this
area would perhaps be a single home or ranch, not enough to maintain
a group of people for more than a few days.
Lunch
was taken at an old road rest stop, in the shadow of a historical
marker denoting this location as part of a historical route. The
irony of the moment struck me: once upon a time this was foot trail
and almost 150 years later, it had reverted to the same.
Technology can rise and fade, but the physical means to do things is
always there.
By
early afternoon we were approaching our final destination, a town at
the Crossroads between the road from Little City and the road to Big
City. Well before we got there, I was shooed off to the side of the
road in a convenient spot with Young Xerxes and the other three
headed on towards town. Our “orders” (do I call them orders,
when we are an association of choice?) were to remain here until
called or until late afternoon at which point we were to move farther
off the road and hurry back as quickly as we could. Fortunately
before I had too long to dwell on what “late afternoon” really
meant in a time without time, Ox had returned.
The town
was unoccupied, he said. But he also recommended that we prepare
ourselves.
I
have seen pictures of looted cities and buildings, Lucilius: the
news was full enough of them throughout my life and especially in the
years leading up to last year, when such things overseas and even
occasionally here became more common place. But seeing such things
is one thing; actually being in their presence is something else
entirely.
The
smell is the oddest thing. Not just rotting things, although that is
a part of it. It is the smell of old smoke and destruction, the
unseen wafting odors of dreams and hopes torn away by a reality that
descended in unimaginable ways and left nothing but desolation in
their wake.
At
one time this small hamlet had a greenhouse supplier, gas station,
and random set of stores designed to lure
in tourists who were in love with the idea of old things; now it was
a pall of ruined buildings and scattered items. Every door and
almost every window I passed were smashed in. Cars sat askew of
parking lines or street guidance, abandoned steeds bereft of the
ability to move. Birds were more in abundance here than I had seen
before, either scavengers or the l picking through the wreckage of
humanity in hopes of an easy score.
Walk
by but do not go in was the recommendation of The Colonel as we
caught up to him. Whatever had happened here earlier, The Locusts
were likely the cause of the destruction before our eyes. Best, he
suggested, if Young Xerxes and I just pass through without dwelling
on what might be inside.
Across
the highway we could see another set of buildings in the same
condition; turning these to our left we continued our journey North.
By this time I was definitely near the end of the day for myself; 16
miles was a good hiking day for me 20 years ago, let alone now.
The
Colonel had already planned a stopping point.
Just
to the north of Crossroads was a small resort billed as a hot springs
resort. It was one of those things that appears almost kitschy in
its tourist appeal; the small geodesic domes looking campy in the
middle of what was essentially still a frontier land. I had driven
by this location any number of times but had never stopped, the idea
of living somewhere and falling prey to a tourist trap something I
thought to be intellectually beyond me.
But
kitsch, apparently, was a repellent to random wanton acts of
violence; the domes themselves were largely intact. And so afternoon
and evening found us inside the largest of the domes, preparing to
spend the night under shelter, which was more than I had expected.
How
interesting, Lucilius. After dinner, I dipped my feet in the hot
springs. How remarkable that it only took
a complete collapse of civilization for me to finally stop here.
Your
Obedient Servant, Seneca
