Southbound Chapter 2

All day there is the vastness of swaying wildgrass and the constant wind. Birds sometimes scatter and flit about the flora black and dartlike and suddenly gone as if mere visions. Sometime past noon she spies a line of trucks moving east. A flatbed eighteen-wheeler flanked ahead and behind by large pickups. She spies rifle barrels poking from the windows and armed men resting in the truck beds.

She watches the emptiness of their wake for a long time. That the smaller trucks escorted the larger big rig intrigues her.

Where are you going? To what end? She murmurs to herself.

She eats a small collection of sunflower seeds that taste stale and sips a canteen of water. Elsewhere in the vast American steppe a dog barks and sets her on edge. As she continues she keeps her head on a swivel for more traffic and the dog but saw neither.

The sun widens upon the close of day to where the orange disc engulfs the sky entire with its color. The woman hikes on into eastern dark.

She does not set camp, however, for there was something on the plains the woman did not expect.

Halted there on a small rise as the sun is half-dipped below the curve of the world, she sees artificial light. Street lights.

Ahead on the highway lies a truck stop that has been augmented with a fence, a gate, sprawls of A-frame tents similar to an army camp, and it encompasses several other nearby buildings other than the truck stop. A compound built around pre-collapse conveniences.

And there are people. In the fading light they stand in a line like a long black snake and are checked by what appear to be armed gunmen. She watches through binoculars until all that is left is the light left by man, pale white and isolate against the cold gulf of night. Still the line shrinks and moves into the massive fenced compound one person at a time. She hears the sounds of engines, sees tanks of fuel under guard.

Undecided, she paces on the swell of land overlooking it all. Her stomach rumbles. It spurns her downhill and a half-hour later arrives at the highway and approaches the back of the line. People nearest to her turn at the sound of her boots on the emergency lane pavement.

“Good god,” says a man, “she just come out the dark like that.”

Another asks, “You walk here ma’am?”

She nods.

“God almighty,” says another.

“No other cars comin, do you know?”

The woman shrugs.

“Quiet thing ain’t you?” asks a younger man.

“What is this place?” The woman asks.

The first man, older than the rest, with a kindly tone to his voice says, “This here is an oasis in a desert.”

“They let anyone inside?” She asks.

“And they let em leave,” he says. “Nobody will stay too long. They can’t. But it’s enough I guess.”

“I guess,” she says.

In the rear of the line, she listens to the noise beyond the chain link fencing, smells the smoke of several fires. The line moves forward quicker than expected and so had no time to rest her legs at the roadside. Instead she looked out into the cloudy night sky and watches the thin cat’s eye moon in a break between clouds. Somewhere in the northwest yellow lightning lances soundlessly.

There are two in front of her left in line. She eyes the men checking in the newcomers, hears their line of questioning. They wear heavy-looking vests and carry rifles that a soldier would carry. A man missing one ear shines a flashlight into the faces of the two in front of her, the old man and younger man who spoke to her at her arrival. The gunman waves them forward through a small gate that squeaks on its hinges and causes the chain link to rattle.

The gunman missing an ear shines a pale blue light at her face. She squints, darts her gaze away from it with an unpleasant grimace.

“Name?” He asks.

The woman says, “You boys federal?”

The man blinks once and glances at his three fellow gate guardsmen and they share a short, knowing laugh. “Hell no,” he says. “We’re with the state.”

“There’s a state left?”

“You should know,” he says, “you’ve walked through it enough.” He settles his eyes on her face and even backlit the woman knew he was tracing his sight along the scars. “Somebody had their fun with you didn’t they?”

“Some fun,” she says.

“You armed?”

“Bet your ass I’m armed. Why? That against the rules?”

“No ma’am, we have to ask. I’ll let you know any violence here isn’t tolerated. Zero tolerance. None. Judging from your face I’d say you’ve had your fill.”

“You gonna get that light out my face or do you need to take a picture? Provided you got a camera that works.”

The man pauses, shrugs, and clicks off the light. “Alright. You probably heard me back in line but I’ll tell it to you straight. You have a two-day reprieve here. After that, you have to leave. On the right-hand side of the road is the camp. That’s where you’ll stay. The truck stop and any vehicles are strictly off limits to travelers like yourself. Thieves get shot around here. You’ll be in tent L-27 and you’ll have to share.”

“I can sleep on the ground.”

“You’ll sleep in the tent or be mistaken for a squatter and forced to leave early.”

“Fair enough.”

“At the center of the camp is a place where you can post a letter for anyone you’re looking for, or search for a letter or picture left behind by other travelers. Are you looking for someone?”

“They wouldn’t have left a thing,” she says.

“Do you have anything worth trading?”

“Maybe.”

“If you did, the tavern up the road from the truck stop accepts trade goods for extra food or if you’re in the drinking mood they have some whiskey.”

“You have a tavern?”

“That’s what we call it.”

“Nice little place you boys whipped up then.”

“Don’t get too comfortable,” he says. “Remember, tent L-27. Don’t steal or start trouble or we’ll be seeing you again.”

The woman nods and waits for the gate to swing open. Before walking through she asks, “How far is the next town?”

“The one that’s wrecked or the one that’s still up?”

“Well I don’t like crashing in ghost towns.”

“That’s a six day hike if you can make it,” he says. “I’d stay in a group though. Further east you go you’re more likely to run into some rough people.”

“Sure. Everywhere’s got rough people.”

“I mean it,” he says and half-turns his head, “in you go.”

He steps back and opens the gate. The woman hitches her thumbs beneath her hiking pack straps and steps through into a dark hallway created by more fencing covered in thick tarps. There is light at the end, soft glows of various fires and the street lights.

She steps out and stops. To her right is a long muddy path between many tents. Folks crowd about barrels alight with fires. The scent of food floats on the wind. To her left across the highway lies the truck stop where more armed men patrol. Dark shapes of vehicles, trailers, shipping containers, tanks of fuel, all are crammed in an orderly fashion in the parking lot. Down from the truck stop are more buildings and most are dark, save one.

She turns right to follow the muddy central path between the tents and where the path ends is a much larger tent where several people moved about behind a long wooden table. Cooking pots sit over fires. The same people who waited outside the fence with her are now in line in front of the table. She decides to fall into that line rather than search for tent L-27 and found that it moved at a quicker pace.

Soon she stands at the table where a large man wearing a white apron thrusts a paper bowl and plastic spoon at her.

“Take it,” he says, “There’s mostly beans in the stew, some rice. A little meat. Enjoy.” He speaks the words as if spoken a hundred times before and without any feeling to them.

The woman moves left like the others and watches a younger man fill the bowl with the stew. “Are there second helpings?” She asks.

The young man ladling the contents of a cooking pot into that thin paper bowl only tells her to enjoy her stay. The woman lingers for his answer but there is none. She smells the warm meal offered and ventures off to find a place to eat.

Back at the highway she sits cross-legged in the emergency lane and faces the camp. She blows steam away from the bowl and takes a cautious bite. The stew mix is runny and without seasoning but within moments she is licking the bottom of the bowl clean. As her stomach settles she listens to the camp. There are muted conversations, jumbled words adrift and indistinguishable from another.

Yawning, she stands and stretches and heads into camp. Some crowded at their fires watch her pass, their words fall to silence, then they begin to speak once more as she leaves their sight.

In deeper reaches of the camp a woman cries, some children holler as they play. A thin dog scuttles past an alleyway of tents pressing its nose to the earth and glances at the woman and is gone in the dark between tents.

Signposts mark the columns of tents and soon she found column L and followed the numbers down to twenty-seven. A lantern is alight on a cheap table at the center of the tent.

Three cots arrayed in a U-shape take up most of the space. Two people lie in their cots, one fast asleep, the other looks up at her entry. She recognizes the old man and the sleeping younger man from the line at the gate.

“Eat your fill?” asks the older man.

The woman nods. She enters and places her pack next to the lefthand cot. “Better than eating rodents.”

The old man gives a tired smile. “Plumb near gave me a heart attack when you come up out of the dark like that.”

The woman settles onto the mattress cross-legged and looks at the sleeping man. He snores lightly. She cuts her eyes to the older man the way a hungry dog might. “That line of folks didn’t hike here?”

“No ma’am. A truck driver and his escort was kind enough to bring us here.”

“I saw the convoy earlier today. Lots of hired guns in those trucks.”

“Better believe we were glad to have em.” He says. When he smiles she sees his missing teeth and red gums. “Hard to believe a place like this exists.”

“Don’t get too comfortable they said.”

“I know what they said.”

“Anyone being this nice to strangers has to be wanting something.”

The old man chuckles once, a rheumy, hacking sound. He coughs many times and holds up a hand as if to ward off an attack. “Don’t I know it.”

“What would they want, you think?”

“Men with those guns? The effort they’re putting in?” The old man gestures with a single outward brush of his hand. “Loyalty would be my guess.”

“Loyalty from random travelers?”

“A guarantee they would speak kind words about the people in charge.” He nods. “That build’s legitimacy. Legitimacy here brings power and power is order. I’ve seen enough of this chaos to know which way people go and everyone here was glad to fall in line. Even you.”

The woman opens her mouth to speak but instead stays silent. She drinks from her canteen.

The old man pulls a blanket over him, props himself on his elbow and picks at the remains of his teeth with a toothpick. “It does pain me. Pains me dearly to see what’s come of us. But I cannot say I am surprised.” He spits a fleck of whatever the toothpick pried out from between his molars. “I am not. Things had been different I would be somewhere more comfortable. You would be…well I can’t say where you’d be.”

“I don’t talk about where I would’ve been old man.”

“I do for myself. I think about it. I think about it plenty.” He watches her. The lantern light casts soft shadows about the interior. They shift over his face as he moves. “I tell you this — ”

“You’ve said enough about the world old man,” she says. “Old men often have nothing else to talk about.”

“There is nothing else,” he says, “other than what you plan to do and the state of all things.”

“And what do you think I’m planning to do?”

“I see it in you,” he says.

The woman sets her jaw. “Old man. I am going to try and sleep. Any of my things go missing or if I feel something’s off, you’ll know you fucked up.”

“You got nothin I want,” he says and sets the toothpick behind his ear. “Just don’t give me or my son there any problems. Cause I see trouble in you young lady. And I don’t want none of it.”

The woman reaches for the lantern and snuffs the light and the tent falls into darkness. While lying on her side she pulls a blanket up to her shoulders and beneath the covers she hold a small pistol in one hand. Soon the old man joins the younger in snoring. The woman allows the softness of the foam mattress and the warmth banishing the chill of autumn’s night lull her off but it carried with it no rest.

For she dreams old dreams of old faces long past. Faces of friends with whom she shares laughs, fragments of good times. There is a taste in the dream reminiscent of alcohol and the sound of music and lights of a city. There is fire and panic and thirst. There is violence. There is the face of the man who maimed her so and the childlike grin he wears that does not touch his eyes. There are screams. Her own. Others being field dressed and readied for the cook fires. His followers waiting and pacing and laughing drunk. The smell of human meat and pigflesh is inseparate. She pleads even as the hot knife touches her and feels the heat in her dream as if it were the day it happened.

When the woman opens her eyes it is still dark and the occupants near her are fast asleep and the camp is dead silent save for the sound of wind flapping the tent fabrics and she weeps. After drying her eyes, she gets up and takes her backpack and leaves into the darkness of the camp.