The Road to Nowhere

Ricky stood at the forest's edge, taking a break under a huge cedar tree, he took a sip of the lukewarm water he had boiled and bottled up from the murky stream behind him. Taking out his most valued possession, a 1950s spyglass made of gold he had found in the attic of an old farmhouse he had spent the night in a few weeks before, he perused the vast empty landscape ahead of him. He hated to leave the protection of the dense forest but moving forward was the only way to get to where he was going. Where he was going was a mystery, as mysterious as the strange heart-shaped locket he had also found.

The locket he had found nailed to a rusted old stop sign at the end of broken paved road a few days earlier on the road to nowhere that he had so aptly named. The glint from the sun on the cheap metal had caught his eye and the locket reminded him of the locket his mom wore when he had a mom. Today he had no one. The plague had taken his whole family. Some days he was glad to be alive and other days he felt it a curse. He had long gave up missing the life he had and only lived to see the next day in this bleak new world where the elites lived like kings and everyone else didn't.

There was no picture in this locket like the picture his mom worn in hers of herself on her wedding day. "The happiest day of her life," she always said with a smile. This locket was empty of pictures.... there was no happiness locked away in this trinket. There was only 5 words scratched in the cheap dime store metal ... follow the sun 10 days. Today was day 4 and hope was losing to despair. There were times he wanted to just throw the damn thing away but he hadn't yet. He sometimes wondered if he was walking into a trap, and other times he hoped there was others like him at the end of the 10 days, but most times he just felt like he was following a clue to nowhere. So he held the old, cheap locket with the broken dime store chain tight in his fist hoping there was hope at the end of 10 days... anything else would be what he was running from.

As Ricky walked, he remembered how hard the first few days had been after he had escaped the training camp of the elitists. "Be happy you are alive," was their motto. Ricky was so despondent after losing his parents that the first few weeks he was hell bent on destruction and wanted to die. Then the voice of his father came to him in a dream one night, saying, "You have a destiny. Pick yourself up and stop feeling sorry for yourself and go find it." So the next night he had climbed the camp's fence and ran all night till he couldn't run anymore. Strange thing was, no one chased after him. He was a lost cause so he wouldn't be missed was his assumption.

The days stretched long and hot on the road to nowhere with no more clues and not one hint at what may be at the end of 10 days. The apprehension and anxiety was enough to turn his stomach into a bundle of nerves where he could barely eat or drink but knowing he needed to keep his strength up kept him from giving up... that and the longing for a somewhat normal life where he wasn't a servant to the elites. He kept telling himself he couldn't be the only one that was looking for more then just a life of servitude to a group of power greedy elitists.

At the end of 10 days Ricky stood atop the hill looking through his spyglass. As the locket fell from his hand, he fell to his knees with his arms stretched out to the sky, and cried, "Nowhere was hope."