Vanguard | Post-Apocalyptic YA

Part 16: We're all Monsters

Splitting into two groups, Jed takes Nelly and the camouflage twins with him while Freddy gets Pam, Ellen, and me.

We pile into the cab of our truck with the two women taking the middle seats and me on the far right, but before he gets in, Freddy does something curious. Standing at the door and closing his eyes, he bows his head and remains silent for a few moments. When he stirs, he touches his right hand first to his forehead, then to his chest, and finally to each of his shoulders.

"What's he doing?" I whisper across Ellen to Pam.

"He's praying," she says.

"What does that mean?" I continue to ask, but Freddy is now taking his place in the driver's seat and instead of answering, Pam just furrows her brows and looks at me like I have two heads.

"Do you know what that was all about?" I quietly prod Ellen instead, but she just shakes her head.

Freddy starts the truck, and a few of the dials light up. Meanwhile, Nate manually cranks the doors open far enough to allow for the vehicles to get through. With Jed leading the way, we head out. Nate closes the door behind us and after he hops into Jed's truck, we're on our way.

This is my first time in a vehicle with wheels.  A few seconds of the bumpy and dusty ride is enough to convince me of its unpleasantness. One look at Ellen's frown confirms that she is of the same thought.

Nobody appears to want to talk, so I amuse myself by taking in the view. I have so much of the real world to see, but nothing is as it was in books and movies.

Leaving O-town behind, we first head north and soon turn onto a wide strip of pavement lined with the remains of broken lights. Given the nature of these facilities, I'm assuming it once served as a landing strip for aircraft, perhaps even ones that had been to outer space.

The ride is increasingly bumpy, and I initially attribute that to the crumbling road. Freddy's sudden declaration of "Damn aftershocks," in the pause between melodies makes me realize that the earthquakes are more frequent than I thought.

After a few miles, the pavement ends and we cross a grassy path to get to a perpendicular road. The scenery on either side has been mostly just brown grass or sparse brush, but as we get further west, we see more and more patches of standing water. These seemingly isolated ponds eventually merge until the road is enveloped by a boggy marshland.

A couple of minutes later still, we're faced with a wide body of water straight ahead. However, the way across it is blocked by a tall, chain-link fence that reaches a ways into the water. Nate – or maybe Bram, I can't really tell the difference from this distance – jumps out of the truck ahead of us to unlock the gate. He gets back into the vehicle before it moves on, but after we drive through, Freddy makes me get out and lock the gate behind us.

We continue on at half our previous speed, and as we drive over the two-lane causeway, I soon see the reason for the increased care. The encroaching ocean that laps at the strip of land on either side has narrowed the road at some points to barely the width of one car. Any mistakes from the drivers could easily lead to us ending up in the water.

Our convoy encounters two more such gates: one about halfway across, and one at the far end of the roadway. It makes me wonder what Governor Bradford is trying to keep out. Or perhaps in. We follow the same process to get through them and when we finally get across, we suddenly find ourselves in an urban environment. Signs indicate that there used to be restaurants and gas stations, flower shops and pet stores.

Much like with everything else up here, I see things for what they really are instead of how they had been. The biggest difference is that most things now are dark, dirty, and broken. Most roofs have holes in them, while some are missing completely. The windows that haven't been boarded up are shattered, while debris litters the ground.

"What caused all of this destruction? Surely it's not just the result of years of neglect," I ask, not addressing anyone in particular.

As usual, Pam is the one most willing to answer. "Hurricanes. They're bigger and more deadly than ever. We get hit almost every year now. And what Mother Nature didn't get, looters – and then ultimately scavengers – did."

"Is that how you all got what's in those boxes in the hangar?" I prod, and her silence indicates that my question was on point.

Continuing to go deeper into the heart of the city, I see by the glare of the headlights that a shallow layer of water covers lower lying ground. There is also increasing evidence of erosion on the foundations of even the steel and concrete skyscrapers. Pam explains that with no one to maintain them, the levees surrounding the city have long broken. It's only a matter of time before everything crumbles to the ground.

Amid the desolate landscape, we take a similarly abandoned highway and turn south toward suburbia. Soon we're in the midst of residential neighborhoods where cracks in the pavement have allowed more hardy vegetation to burst through and abandoned cars corrode on the side of the road from neglect.

"Where did everyone go? Is anyone still alive out here?" Ellen asks solemnly.

I think we're all surprised when it's Freddy who answers. "They may be breathing, but they ain't alive. 'Cause you can't call getting by under these conditions living."

"So, there are more of them. More sick and starving people like those you killed that night," I finally get a chance to ask.

He chuckles as if I said something funny. "We didn't kill them. We did them a favor."

"You're a monster," Ellen accuses, but Freddy doesn't seem to take it to heart.

"Maybe. But you can't blame just one person for getting us into this mess. So in that sense, we're all monsters," he says. "And so are our fathers, our grandfathers, all of our ancestors, really. Their greed, their dependence on technology and machinery that made life easier ultimately destroyed the world. We can't change that. We just have to survive it."

I never figured Freddy for a philosopher so hearing him say these words momentarily leaves me without a proper response. While I consider how best to dispute his argument, he turns into a large parking lot surrounded in a U-shape by various stores.

Although these looks to be even more ravaged that the others, I'm excited by the prospect of perhaps arriving at our destination, so I forget everything else and focus on the present. However, Jed doesn't stop, but instead, he turns into an obscure alley leading behind the shops. The surrounding buildings cast shadows that even the moon can't penetrate, and I don't realize where we are until both trucks stop.