The Collapse CXXXIV: On The Road II

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