The Cabin Ahead

Strider ran her fingers over the tattered picture another time. The scene within was hardly visible anymore. It was, after all, as old as she was. She mourned this inescapable truth as she stared at the tiny young girl in the picture. If that little girl had only known what lay ahead, she would have spent more time sitting alongside the rugged old man pictured beside her as the two watched the sunset over the field of flowers. Strider told herself that every adult felt that way at one point, but she knew it meant something utterly different after the Fall. It was no longer a sentiment of longing for more years of ignorant bliss and youthful wonder. Now, it was a sentiment of longing for just one more day before the world collapsed around them.

Flipping the picture over, Strider read the words on the back for the umpteenth time. “Come find me when you’re ready. Always, Papaw.” “Always” had been his way of saying, “I love you.” When she was little, every time she visited, she would ask him if he’d missed her and if he loved her. Every time he would reply, “Always.” When it came time for her to leave and go home, she would ask him if he would miss her while she was gone, and every time he would reply, “Always.”

On holidays as a kid, Strider would visit her grandparents, but her favorite visits were always during the summer. Every summer, she would spend weeks on end at her grandparents' regardless of where they were living at the time. Countless summer hours were spent hiking trails nearby, kayaking down the longest rivers they could reach, and climbing any tree, mountain, or cliffside they could find. Her favorite activities, though, were helping her Papaw tend his marigolds and watching the sunset with him from the porch. It didn’t matter where her grandparents lived; Papaw would always have a summer field of gold and orange blooming in front of the house. Even when they lived in regions with hardly any blooming season, he would still have the seeds in the ground as soon as the frost was done and tend them all summer long.

Strider asked him once why he bothered with all the work since he would barely have any time to enjoy them. Papaw explained to her that the beauty of a thing was not in how long it lasted but in its impact while it did. When she was young, he had taught her the marigold’s various representations throughout history and cultures; from its ties to the sun and meanings of passion and prosperity to symbols of grief and remembrance and beyond. Once she got older, Papaw confided in her that none of the symbolism had ever truly mattered to him. He simply adored the radiant color the large poms brought to the world. The deeper symbolism was merely a justification he adopted in retrospect. It was a profound and formative realization for Strider, a greater understanding of how humans eventually find some deeper reason for their actions. She cherished the wisdom she gleaned from the wonderful old man over countless days in the fields and nights on the cabin porches.

When she received the picture in the mail from Papaw, her first thought was simply that he missed her. She had taken her phone out immediately to call him and ask that very thing, and his response was his usual, “Always.” He explained to her, though, that the picture meant something entirely different, and in time she would figure out what that was. When she did, when she was ready, then she would know what she had to do. Initially, she took the “me” in “Come find me” to mean him, but that wasn’t the case anymore. He, like so many others, had been claimed by the Fall.

Before the world went dark, her grandfather had taken a new position at Great Basin, his sixth new location since retiring and becoming a park ranger. Every five years or so, he and Strider’s grandmother would pick out a few new parks, and he would submit a transfer request. Whichever one was approved first would be where they went next. Strider had once asked him when he was going to settle down and enjoy his retirement. He had simply laughed and, with a warm smile, explained to her that he was doing just that. He had grown up on military bases, moving from location to location every time his father was transferred. When he was old enough to enlist, he did so like his father before him and like Strider’s father after him, a tradition she had continued. He had served until he reached his full retirement benefits, but he wasn’t ready to be done serving the community around him. So, he joined the park rangers. Growing up, she had said she would do the same, but her retirement happened much differently.

When the world fell into shambles, she was still serving; only there was no longer a government to serve. She had lived on base at Coronado; only that base no longer had anyone to whom it answered and no jurisdiction aside from its physical authority. They had worked as peacekeepers and humanitarians in the early days of the long silence, striving to keep the structures of society in place until things could get back to normal. Normal never came. Right before things went quiet, there had still been commands coming out of Washington, but after the months of silence turned into a year with no sign of ending, the sovereignty had faded. There had been almost three years of silence and darkness before the first communications channels were reestablished between the newly formed Citadels. Another two had passed before any Outriders brought back word from the Settlers that had taken up residence in the smaller outlying cities. By the time they had established connections along the entire western seaboard, there were new governments in place, and when the first communications with the east coast were finally made, she was well into her role as a Strider.

It was a strange transition at first. Her unique skill sets had been efficiently honed in her work with Joint Special Operations Command, but putting them to use in the new world order took time. For a season, Strider felt wasted as the world around her completely reshaped. Controlling the chaos within the walls of the Citadels and maintaining peace amongst the citizens was well within her capabilities, but it did not fully utilize her aptitudes. She needed a mission to complete, intel to gather, a plan to be executed. Once the Citadels required operators capable of more than diplomacy to venture out into the wasteland beyond their walls, she had leaped at the opportunity. Strider took the most challenging assignments the Citadels could offer, wasting no time proving herself worthy of ultimate responsibility and freedom to operate — the freedom she desperately needed for her own paramount mission; finding her grandfather’s cabin.

It took the collapse and ensuing cascade before she had finally understood what the words on the picture had meant, and it was taking almost as much to make it a reality. It had been four years after the Outriders made contact with the first Settlers before she had finally made it to her grandparents’ most recent home in Great Basin. Strider had used an assignment to infiltrate and survey the Citadel of Salt Lake City to make her slight detour to the cabin. Like every other home her grandparents had, Strider remembered every detail. That was easy because her grandparents worked to find a new cabin that looked just like the last one each time they moved. The house was meant to be the same everywhere they went. Only the setting would change. When Strider finally found the cabin, the lone difference was striking; the field of flowers was gone. Strider hadn’t expected to find her grandparents still alive after all that time. They were resourceful and resilient enough, but Papaw had already begun fading even before the Fall. In the years of silence and her years as a Strider that had followed, she fashioned a soothing story in her mind of how her grandparents lived out their final days peacefully tending their farm and living off the land in the park around them.

She had thought finding the cabin would have been the grand resolution in her quest, a chance to finally make the change she so desperately wanted. Much to her frustration, it had only been the first step in a much larger mission. Her grandparents not being there came as no surprise, but the absence of anyone else or any signs of her grandparents was. The place had been emptied, not ransacked, and no one else had taken it. Her grandparents were simply gone, and inside she had found the note explaining why. On the mantle above the fireplace in her grandfather’s handwriting, had been scrawled a simple message.

“If you’re reading this Darlin, then the picture finally makes sense to you. Unfortunately, it no longer means quite the same thing after all that’s happened. Your grandma and me already said the next move was gonna be the last one, and we already knew where that place was. Somewhere along the way we just got too old and tired to keep doing it. I’d figured you and me would end up having this chat there. I’d hoped for so much to happen before that. I wanted to maybe see you get your second star, or get out before you started wanting it. Don’t look like anybody is getting a lot of things we wanted at this point, and me and your grandma decided if this is how we’re gonna die we’d rather do it in our favorite place. We still got enough fire in us to make that trip. I’m sure we’ll be long gone by the time you get there, though, if you ever even do. Hell we’re probably dead right now by the time you’re reading this with the way shit has gone. I had so much I wanted to share with you still before we said goodbye, but it’s never really goodbye. Part of me is always sittin on that porch with our wide eyed little girl with her whole world ahead of her, and by God that’s where I’ll always be. I’m sure I won’t ever see you again in this life, but if you truly understand what that picture means then you know where to find me. There’ll be something waiting for you when you get there, something for what comes next.

Always, Papaw.”

Strider flipped the picture back over and ran her fingers across it one more time before placing it back inside the chest pocket of her jacket, the words from the back still echoing in her head, “Come find me when you’re ready.” It took losing everything she had ever known before she understood what the words had meant, and it had taken her nearly a decade after The Fall to get to that cabin in Great Basin and find Papaw's note. After that, the “me” was no longer a person, but a place. She stood outside the empty house in the field devoid of flowers amid the agonizing reality of the gaping void that stretched before her.

Strider knew where she must go, but that was no trivial feat. She had spent the last decade working through Citadel-controlled lands, and she was barely halfway there. The rest of her journey, though, would take her into the Frontier. It would be the most harrowing trial she had ever faced, but she would welcome every challenge the journey presented and appreciate the impact of it all, no matter how long it lasted. “Always.” Strider thought, patting her chest pocket as she stepped into the unknown.