The World as We Know It (8 page)

Good-byes were tearful, but Maria was strong—stronger than I had expected her to be. When I held her for that last time, it felt like it lasted forever, but at the same time, only for a moment. She seemed finally at peace, if it only sustained the morning. Though I didn’t know it then, the last look on her face would linger in my mind until I returned, and that was a better way to remember her. Not tormented, but proud. So many days I had cringed at
her inability to look at me, but not that day. I could feel her love for me despite the cold, callous machine I had become.

My family and friends came for the somber send-off. All were encouraging and wished me well, but it was one of the most difficult days of my life—up until then, that is. There would be many worse to come, and had I known then the trials that awaited me on the road, I might never have left. I’d never had to say good-bye quite like that before. It was possible, I knew, that I might never see any of them again. I would be facing danger I could not yet comprehend or predict. The memory of that day is one that leaves knots in my stomach, even now. Such a range of emotions had been previously unfathomable, but they had to be endured. The eyes of those I loved glistened with the rising sun so brightly that their colors shone, even through the tears that blurred my own vision.

“I hope somewhere in all those miles you find yourself, Joe,” Maria said, holding my hand tightly. The soft skin of her cheek rested on my tanned and hardened shoulder. In the light breeze, I felt her warm tears turn cold on my neck. “I miss you already,” she said. “I’ve been missing you for months.”

When we finally let go, she stepped back and looked into my eyes. I looked back into hers, straight-faced, without a word.

“You had better come back to me,” she said.

“I will.”

As I began to step away, she grabbed my left hand with hers. “Wait,” she said, gazing at me for a moment as if entranced. “I love you.”

“I love you,” I replied. I had not uttered the words in so long that I could not remember the last time. I wondered if I even meant them.

A tear rolled down her cheek, and the faintest of whimpers escaped her lips. I turned away before I could change my mind, and as our trembling fingers slipped apart, I heard the click of our rings as they tapped together.

By noon, I had set off alone on my horse and without the mathematical confidence of Phileas Fogg, headed south toward what used to be New Orleans. I looked behind occasionally as we trotted into the woods, watching the silhouettes of all of the people I loved shrinking behind me, still standing together, watching forward as I did the same. When they had vanished, we broke into a gallop that would persist until the fall of dusk.

Once we had emerged from the woods, Nomad and I followed the highway, riding down the grassy median. The roads were like a scene from the dark parts of Cormac McCarthy’s imagination. Cars were abandoned everywhere with their doors open and their paint turning to rust. Many were stripped of parts that had been salvaged for tools, but there were few people in sight. Occasionally, we would pass small groups walking down the middle of the road or pitching a tent or gathering around a fire. Some of them gave a courteous nod. Some avoided looking at all. I
was wary of every passing drifter, and I could see that they were wary of me. At the sight of another person, my heart would beat faster, and I would instinctively take my gun in hand. They didn’t seem so desperate, though, as they had those months ago. “Roughing it,” as we used to say, had become a way of life for all of us.

It was clear that I was better equipped than most of the others out there on the highway, anyway. We—my family and I—had been blessed with resources that not everyone else had. Very few, I imagined, had had a farm to run to when the cities had become inhospitable. Most had left without direction, without the slightest idea of how to survive in the wild, and nothing but hopes and prayers to keep them going. But they learned. We all had to learn.

When the sun had gone down, leaving only an orange glow over the western horizon, it was time to turn in for the night. The first day had been light and uneventful but exhausting nonetheless, more emotionally than physically. But neither Nomad nor I were used to covering that kind of distance in a day, I on horseback and he burdened with the weight of a man and his gear. We stopped near a lake and a field of tall grass off of the side of the road where he could drink and graze. I built a fire, dug for earthworms, and went fishing, and then I enjoyed my filet with a healthy side of clovers, dandelions, and redbud flowers. Gathering food, however, proved significantly more difficult in the dark than it would have been in the light. Had I been thinking, I would have stopped to eat at one of the many farm fields that had lined both sides of the
highway for most of the day. It hadn’t occurred to me yet that someone must still have been cultivating them all and I was never quite as alone as I might have felt. Waiting to stop until the sun had gone down was my first mistake. Fortunately, it was one easily recovered from the next day.

The stars were like an exaggerated stage backdrop across the entire pitch-black sky. They were the brightest stars accompanied by the darkest night that I had seen, even since the electricity had gone out so long ago. The loneliness of that night was unlike anything I had ever experienced, but it was nothing compared to what would come over the following months. I lay on the pavement in the middle of the highway for a while, looking up at the stars, watching them slowly creep in formation through the night. Not a soul made a sound beyond Nomad’s occasional heavy breathing as he slept tied to a tree nearby. Even the springtime crickets were silent. My fire crackled as it died down, and memories rushed in of vacations we used to take in the old world. How different that road was from the four-star hotels in which we used to sleep.

I remembered a trip that Paul, Noah, and I had taken to New Orleans during college, where we had booked a room in a high-rise overlooking the French Quarter. After checking in, I had been inspecting the bathroom for cleanliness, as was customary when staying in any foreign place, when I heard Noah out in the room yelling, “What the hell? What the hell is that?” I had bolted through the door to see what was the matter, and I had found him holding the room phone with a dry washcloth
half a foot from his ear, a look of repulsion smeared across his face.

“What’s your deal?” I had demanded. He had pointed at the mirror hanging above the dresser as he started in on the front desk operator.

“We need maid service in room fourteen twenty-one immediately. No, no, we need another room! Someone ejaculated all over the mirror! Yes! The bloody mirror! You know he was looking at himself when he did it!”

Paul had started rolling on one of the beds in hysterics.

“That’s what we get for taking a room on the thirteenth floor.” He had laughed.

“It’s the fourteenth,” I had said.

“Did you see a button for thirteen on the elevator? It’s a trick to make the superstitious more comfortable. Think it worked?”

He had looked at Noah’s animated expression of repugnance and erupted with laughter.

I found myself laughing too, lying there in the middle of that highway with nothing but the moon and stars lighting the silent wilderness around me.

I tried to count the stars, and the next thing I knew, the sun was rising, waking me to a beautiful bright blue morning sky. I must have been more exhausted than I had realized, because I had passed out on the hard pavement before I’d even had an opportunity to pitch my tent. My skin was sticky with dew. I got up, sore all over from my asphalt bed, and joined my horse in the shade where I broke in the first page of my journal. Then I got the fire going
again for breakfast. Though I may not have mastered the art of archery back at the farm, I had no choice out there on the road. There was nobody else to rely on, but I was only hunting to feed myself, and small game was far more abundant than large. Missing the first few shots, however frustrating, was not devastating.

We started off again after breakfast. As if adapting after the collapse hadn’t been difficult enough, the journey certainly found a way of topping it, which I guess was to be expected. I had no experts in nature or survival traveling with me to make up for my shortcomings anymore. You’re never as prepared as you think you are for such things.

Over the next couple of weeks, I spent some days almost entirely alone, save for my horse, and a few with great numbers of people. We crossed rivers and creeks on old highway bridges. We passed through settlements outside of what used to be Memphis, Tennessee, and Jackson, Mississippi, spread out in vast camps of people. Both seemed to be at about the stage we were at back home, which was comforting in a way, disappointing in another. At least we were not alone in our struggle, but I wished to see more of the world as I had once known it. I spent a day or so in each place, paying for food and boarding in labor and explaining my mission. I began a list of the settlements I came across and asked a member of each to designate its exact location on my map for record.

They committed themselves to building local postal centers, and they would spread the word of the new system
throughout their own communities. As future carriers passed through, they could begin to send and receive letters. I wrote my own letters home, and a man from each place vowed to head north and deliver them. In addition to his deliveries, during the period of genesis, each carrier was also responsible for informing each place down the road of new locations to keep the network growing. Other carriers were recruited to establish regional routes to places I would not pass. Recruiting new carriers was easy. There were plenty of people like me who were looking for direction and purpose, and such a great responsibility provided exactly that. So began the New World Mail Network, as it would come to be called.

The weather grew warmer as I moved south. I got used to traveling in the rain, and some days I even welcomed the cool cleansing it brought with it. It was liberating and exhilarating to travel in the open air, unconstrained by a need for luxury and comfort. Sometimes, that is. Other times, I could hardly bear it. The landscape grew increasingly lush and wet. Palm trees began to appear. I thought back to a vacation Maria and I had taken to Florida one February. We had left home with snow on the ground and blowing from the tops of tractor-trailers in front of us, and then we had passed under palm trees within the same day. People wondered then why we had decided to drive when a flight would have taken only a couple of hours. I just liked to drive. I liked to watch the scenery change as we passed from place to place. There was humor to be found in the irony. After the collapse, the same trip
would take me weeks, and I longed for the convenience of a plane.

Eventually, I came across a settlement outside of what had been New Orleans, and at a fascinating moment. The sounds gave away its location. The first of its inhabitants I met were the six armed sentries posted on the highway outside who blocked the road as I approached and surrounded me.

Who are you?

What is your purpose?

Are you alone?

How long will you stay?

When they were satisfied that I wasn’t a threat, they allowed me to pass. I hadn’t seen the water yet, but the community spread immensely and abutted Lake Pontchartrain and the bayous. It was massive—there were thousands of people in dense crowds reminiscent of refugee camps in Africa or the Middle East or wherever that I had seen on CNN. Everyone seemed to be passionately involved in some kind of job.

I dismounted and led Nomad on a stroll through the place, looking for someone in charge. It looked as though it
should
have had someone in charge, and that was the person I needed to meet. How, I wondered, would that person have been chosen? Would he be the smartest? The loudest? The most cunning and clever? Would “he” be a “she,” and would he or she be white? Black? Would he wear a suit? No, certainly not, I thought. Nobody in a suit and
tie would be taken seriously. If you didn’t have a layer of dirt on your shoes, you weren’t to be trusted with much.

I say it was a fascinating moment because after a short walk, I came across a group of laborers who were singing like they’d just struck gold. But it wasn’t gold they’d struck; it was water. I approached next to a man standing with his arms crossed and a grin on his face, watching the revelry.

“The fun part will be digging the well,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t miss the water table down here.”

“I’m Joe,” I said with a chuckle, extending my hand.

He turned to me and shook my hand with his, which was coated in dried mud. “Glad to meet ya, Joe,” he replied. “I’m Dr. Lazarus Heron, formerly of the USGS. Sorry about the dirt.”

“No problem, Dr. Heron.”

“Call me Laz,” he said. Then he looked me up and down. “Where ya from, Joe?”

“St. Louis, originally.”

“Rode that horse all the way down here?”

“Well, we’ve been building a community in southern Missouri for a while. That’s where I came from.”

“That’s quite a ride. How are things going up there?”

“They’re coming along. We’re adapting, you know?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. We’re all adapting. I can’t believe it’s taken this long to get a well going around here. You see all these people? Thousands of us. Millions, maybe. We’ve been drinking out of lakes and rivers and creeks. Depending on where you’re coming from, it can be quite a walk, and they get crowded. And you just have
to hope there isn’t someone taking a leak upstream. I feel like a barbarian. I’m hoping we’ll have readily accessible running water within the year—
hope
being the operative word. We’ll have to pillage some supplies from the city. Lord knows I’m not looking forward to going back there. The things I saw…The first step, though, is a well. Will you be sticking around a little while?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Good. Got a place to stay?”

“Not yet.”

“All right. Let’s see your arms, Joe. Yeah, you’ll do just fine.”