M. Banner - Desolation

After only a few minutes of debate, they each announced their decisions to the group.

“Let’s all tell Max,” Sally proclaimed.

The Kings came out onto the porch and told Max the news. The three of them were going after they said goodbye to everyone.

When it was Max’s turn with Darla, Toma, and Stepha, he offered them a gift.

“Here,” he said, handing them the journal. “This has been in my family for over a hundred and fifty years. Besides being our family journal chronicling various odds and ends of unrelated stuff, it is mostly about Cicada. Plus, there are a few secrets,” he winked at them with a grin. “But, that’s not the reason I’m giving this to you. If sometime in the future, you, or your son, or even your son’s son, decide to make the journey to Cicada, I have provided the map my grandfather drew and I added to it to show you where it is from here. When you get there, just hold the book up at the entrance after you announce yourself and they will take you in. Hopefully, we will return long before that day. But just in case,” he said, releasing the journal.

“We will take good care of it, Uncle Max,” Darla promised him.

Around noon, they pulled the truck out onto the highway and drove north. The distance they had to travel was a little less than half what had taken them almost a year to travel from Mexico. In their Blazer, in the days before, when there was a clean road and AAA to call on if there was engine trouble, it was an easy day of driving. In this world that had changed so completely, it was impossible to guess. They would be the only operating vehicle on roads with scattered hazards and people everywhere who were willing to kill for no reason. They presented antagonists with many solid reasons for violence: food, supplies, and a working vehicle. This trip was extremely dangerous and they all knew it. They planned on it taking less than a week, but to be safe they packed for a month.

They passed Albuquerque without incident because the city had apparently been abandoned. Only one person shot at them the entire time, but he (she? Who knows?) missed. When they crossed the Colorado state line as the sun was setting, they decided against pushing on to Pueblo and chose to pull off the road. They parked under the cover of several trees near the Saint Charles River. Max, Bill, and Lisa pitched a tarp and slept a restless sleep, interrupted by cool blowing winds, the bright luminescence of the night sky, and anxious dreams. Sally slept well in Stanley’s back seat. When they left the next morning, just before the sun rose, they were full of expectation and excitement at knowing they were less than sixty miles from Cicada.

Max took over the driving from Bill, giving him shotgun, almost literally, as Bill’s job was to shoot at anyone who stood in their way.

Pueblo posed no problem for them and they drove onward toward Colorado Springs. Just before signs of the city appeared, Max turned off the road onto a four-wheel-drive trail.

“This is sort of a back way, so we can avoid any traps. I’m worried that this place will be less of a secret than I hoped. If word of this sanctuary gets out, there may be many others trying to get to Cicada just like us.”

“I’m all for the back way,” Bill replied, still remaining vigilant on watch.

They stopped on top of a hill several miles farther on. Max asked, “Lisa, can you hand me the binoculars?”

“Sure, is everything okay?” She handed them over and frowned.

“I don’t know,” he said, looking toward the horizon. “There are a lot of people around the grounds. And I see a fire and some smoke, which is probably nothing. All right, this might be hairy.”

When they had gone less than a mile, they passed people. It was just one camp site, except it looked like it had been there for a long time. Then another, and then another. A half a mile up the little Jeep trail they were on, a man stood in the middle of the track with his hands up, holding a rifle in one hand.

Max said in a low voice to Bill, “You know what to do.”

Bill rolled the window down, aimed the rifle and fired two shots in quick succession at the man’s feet. He dove into a nearby ditch. Bill kept the sight on him in case he tried anything .

“Ladies, keep your eyes open. Yell if you see anything,” Max ordered as they all scanned the area.

They pulled up to the base of a mesa on which stood a rock wall that looked fairly old and circled the summit. On top of the wall was barbed wire. They all glared at the insurmountable fortress, heads craned upward against their windows. All, except for Max. He pulled the truck onto a frontage road that appeared to go around the mesa.

“This is it, guys. This is Cicada,” Max stated proudly.

After driving a mile down the frontage road, they came to a steep Jeep trail up the hill to a tall gate only slightly wider than their truck. Max drove up the trail like a pro, handling every inch with knowledge and skill, the truck’s wheels fighting to grab on the broken road. After a few short minutes, they pulled up to the gate and honked the horn. He waited a bit and then honked again. A couple more minutes, another long honk.

“I have people walking our way,” Bill called out, as they all watched a group of people walking up the broken road they had just driven. “I count five, six… no, eight, and most of them have guns.”

Max put the Blazer into gear and stepped on the gas, bumping into the gate. A big thump reverberated through the truck. He then started honking like a crazy man, or so it seemed. After a few seconds Bill realized that Max wasn’t honking wildly, but with purpose. He was using Morse code, telling whoever was behind the wall it was him.

“Bill, you have to take the shot!” Max stopped only long enough to shout at Bill and went back at it, producing the same pattern each time: honk-honk, hoooonk, honk-honk-honk… hoooonk-hoooonk, honk-hoooonk, hoooonk-honk-honk-hoooonk .

Bill took aim and once again shot at the dirt in front of the first man, who was coming close to them. This time the man shot back.

Sally screamed, then Lisa. Max kept honking code and thumped the gate again.

Bill aimed and took another shot at the leader who’d shot back, and this time hit him square in the shoulder. More shots sang out. A bullet hit the back of their vehicle.

“Max, we’re sitting ducks here!” Bill flipped the switch to automatic and sprayed bullets in the group’s direction.

The gate cracked open for a minute, and then it opened just wide enough for them to drive through before it clanged shut right behind their rear bumper.

Several men with guns surrounded their truck, and everyone put their hands in the air.

“Mr. Thompson? Oh, thank God it’s you. We thought you were dead when you didn’t return after the Event.”

“Thank you, Preston,” said Max warmly, shaking his old friend’s hand. “Please meet my old friends, the Kings.”

“Gladly,” said Preston with a wide smile. “Welcome to Cicada!”

Steve and Darla stood on the rock ledge about five feet from the sand and rock floor of the oval-shaped open area they called home. Steve was holding his son and Dar had her arms around them both. They looked out admiringly at this amazing place, then at each other.

“This is home, little Toma,” Dar told her son. “This is where your father will stand up and tell stories and the whole tribe will listen with bated breath as he regales us all. Sounds like a wonderful life to me,” she said, kissing her husband.

“Me too.”

Stepha stood on the rock ledge that many in the community had stood on before him, to make announcements or to teach. This ledge had been carved in a time long ago, before the Event, that moment that separated the time of now from what most call the Time Before . The view from here was always magical, even after all these years. They were outside, but it felt like the large atrium of a luxury hotel still part of his memories. This oval area was perfectly enclosed by rocky cliff walls that shot upward almost thirty arm spans. Hewn into the cliff walls was a walkway that wound all the way around the oval several times to the very top of the opening, like what some in the Time Before called a corkscrew. Every few feet was an opening to a residence, almost all of these occupied by the one hundred people that made up their tribe. Many of their tribe were sitting on the walkway’s edge at various heights, their legs dangling over. Others sat on the rocky and sandy ground of the oval.