John Adams - Wastelands 2

We joked about the nonsensical ways: zombies, aliens, the Rapture.

I don’t think that’s what this is. They don’t seem to discriminate the way I would expect the God of the Old Testament to do.

So far I’ve been safe. Luck seems to be on my side, and I am on my way to you. My fourth grade California history lessons will finally pay off: I am going to spend tonight at the old adobe Mission, and then walk south down El Camino Real from Mission to Mission during the day until I reach Los Angeles.

It’s quiet again, except for a sort of background noise, like a radio, or a conversation I’m not near enough to hear. There’s something familiar and almost comforting about it.

I only got as far as Summerland. Is it weird to say that I’m enjoying this part? Everything around me is in ruins; the survivors are grouped together in terrified clusters, some of them already talking about rebuilding. I try to avoid them as much as I can. But walking this stretch of the freeway is peaceful; the dolphins seem unaware of what’s happened, they swim just offshore as they always have on placid days. The air is cool, the sun is bright, the water the teal of early summer, and I know that this is the last time it’s going to be easy.

Once I get past Ventura the way will be treacherous. The city scares me; crossing through the Mojave scares me more. But all that’s important is that I get to you.

I’m going to Wichita, like we said we would. It was a joke, I know, but it’s all I can think of to do. I’m going, and I hope you are too. I hope you remember where we said we’d meet, what the place was called.

I’ve only seen a couple of angels today, black against the clear blue sky. I think they mostly come out at night.

I’m so tired. I’ve only just started and I’m already so tired. And scared, for reasons that I’m not sure I’m even ready to commit to paper. Reasons that have nothing to do with the end of the world. Suddenly I’m a child again, talking to imaginary friends, and believing for all the world that they’re talking back.

It’s nothing. Just the exhaustion. Tomorrow will be better.

There it is. The desert.

It scares me in ways I can’t even articulate. I know what it is to burn for a day, to have our nearest star turn from friend to enemy, to be blistered and nauseated. For a day. What about a week? Two weeks? I don’t know how long it will take. Water, shade, sunblock, and getting across that expanse as fast as I possibly can are what’s on my mind right now. If anything’s going to finish me, it’ll be the angels or the desert. I haven’t survived one just to let the other kill me. You’re on the other side of the desert, or at least I hope you are. I have to assume you’re there, safe, waiting for me, or there won’t be a point.

I stole a bike in the valley. Is it stealing? I don’t know. It has a patch kit and an odometer. I haven’t ridden much since I was a teenager, and I’ve never ridden more than forty miles in a day. Today I’m going to try for 100. I need to get across this wasteland as fast as I can. I’m pretty sure my life depends on it.

They came out at sunset, just as I was getting ready to ride. There must have been survivors there after all, though I didn’t run into any. The lack of bodies has been a puzzle until now. They take them, I think—I could see some of them carrying people, silhouetted against the dusk-lit sky, like a hawk carrying a mouse in its talons. Where? Why? I don’t know. Barstow is in flames; I can still see the glow from here. All I could do was ride as hard as I could, and not look back, not look up.

I think I may have figured out where they came from. They look like biblical angels, so I had assumed they came from above us somewhere, even if it doesn’t make sense. The air teeming with impossible creatures that set things on fire with their touch and carry people off into the sky doesn’t make sense either. But tonight at sunset I waited and watched.

They don’t come from above; they come from below.

Maybe you knew that already. Maybe it was obvious, the way the ground has split open, here in Arizona just as in California. Maybe it’s out where you are, too, the Earth cracked and broken, and soot-black angels emerging from the heart of the planet every night.

The tire on the bike just couldn’t take another patch, so I’m back on foot.

I should have told you back then when we were forming our “plan” that twenty-five miles a day on foot is about the maximum. I learned this in fourth grade, as did every kid educated in California: it’s how they decided where to put the Missions, always a day’s walk from each other. From the Santa Barbara Mission to the Mission Santa Inez is twenty-five miles; from Santa Inez to La Purisima is twenty-five miles. I knew that. We each have 1500 miles to cross. I think I’m still in Arizona. It’s going to take a long time.

I should have told you.

It’s too hot to travel by day, and by night there are the angels. I’ve been trying to split the difference by starting out late in the afternoon, before sunset, and going as long as I can, until I spot one of them and have to find shelter. Shelter is usually a rock, and it is usually already claimed by the non-human residents of the desert. It is a good thing I’m not afraid of snakes.

I’m down to my last few looted Power Bars, and I don’t really know how far I have left to go.

I have a lash of blood blisters across three fingers of my right hand, and I cut the hell out of my left. It hurts to hold the pen, but I’ve got nothing else to do. I used to think being alone would be great, with time to do nothing but think, and it was at first; now the sound of my own voice grates on me, and I’m tired of my own thoughts. I wish I could talk to you—you always had new thoughts, fresh thoughts I’d never had before, but they still seemed to settle in my mind as if they belonged to me all along. I’ve seen nothing but the brown of sand and stone by day and the world in grayscale at night. I can’t wait to see something green again that isn’t a cactus.

Did I ever tell you that I used to hear voices when I was a kid? I think it started after my parents died; trauma does strange things to a person’s mind. They were sort of comforting, those voices, even if they never made sense. In my memory they sound a little like my mom and dad. They made me feel like I wasn’t really alone in the world after all, just like you always made me feel. I decided at some point that they were the voices of the animals that lived in the ground, and I would lay on my belly in the yellow grass and whisper my life into their burrows, my hopes and dreams, my anger and pain. And I would listen to them answer with meaningless sounds—the language, I thought, of rabbits and ground squirrels.

I must not be holding it together as well as I thought I was. I have to face it: I’m hearing them again.

There are fewer angels now. I only saw three last night, though they were close and I thought for certain I was moments away from being carried off by those burning hands.

But only three. That’s good. Maybe it’s almost over.

I’m in Texas.

I met a guy on the road, maybe your age. He has a horse. He offered to let me ride it—I declined. My feet feel like they’re on fire all the time, but at the end of the world it seems unwise to accept favors from strangers. He says his name is Brian; I’m not sure why I don’t believe him. There is no reason to lie about our names out here. Maybe it’s that superstitious part of me that grew up on fairy tales that says I shouldn’t give him my own real name. Maybe it’s in our blood, the rules of magic. I think it’s a good instinct, in these strange times. I told him my name was Morgan. We’ve been traveling together for about three days. Some things are easier, like finding food. He’s good at that. I had time to study the survival book (why didn’t I put fishing line in the Apocalypse box? Why?!) so between the two of us I think we’re not going to starve. I don’t like him, though—he’s an arrogant prick. I was starved for company but now I just wish he’d shut up.