Civil Lies

The hideout he created has served him well, but he knew what needed to be done. He had not seen the city since the beginning of this nightmare. As a matter of fact, Kenny hasn’t even had time to think or reflect for several years. He had been hiking for weeks and each time he rested nostalgic memories would flood in both painful and joyful. “Civilized? More like civil lies”, Kenny thought to himself. What he witnessed was proof of the lies we tell ourselves to convince each other we had the capacity to be civil. The chaos and devastation were gradual. The end of the world did not happen overnight.

Never thought it would get like this. Never in a million years. Humanity and our hubris. The lofty ideals we used to cling to. Hobbies we shared and the dreams we once had. When memories like this float into the mind’s eye you hold them for as long as you can. Any semblance of joy or serenity is nearly impossible since the bombs dropped. It is almost like obtaining happiness is like trying to grasp a salmon as it swims upstream. At least it feels that way as of... What was that? Kenny stopped breathing as he heard shuffling in the distance. It sounded as if someone was walking. “Be still.” Kenny thought, remembering what happened in the early days of the war. As silent as he could possibly be, he waited several moments before the apprehension dissipated.

Before the war Kenny had a simple life with his daughter Clarice. He was an auto mechanic and was usually out of work with enough time to spend with Clarice before the days end. Those simple moments hearing her giggle before bed or on a Saturday afternoon at the park. Who knew it would all be gone in the blink of an eye? He looked down at the dirt locket around his neck. It was probably shiny at one point in time. Now it is dirt and dull with a locket in the shape of a heart. He opened it to see Clarice looking back at him, the effervescence of her spirit somehow captured and frozen in time. He snapped the locket shut as a tear started to well. “STOP”! Kenny thought to himself. Any emotion is unnecessary noise and the last thing you want to do is attract predators.

When the power grid went down, we didn’t know what to think. The financial collapse was like a tsunami approaching the shore. We saw the water rising and all we did was stand there. The bombs were not what you are thinking of fire and brimstone. Once the financial markets collapsed and the bubbles popped there was a massive rush to dump assets and get out of fiat currency. EMP’s were launched effectively shutting down power grids for several nations. This is what limited information Kenny was able to obtain in the years since the event. No nation claims ownership of the attack and from his understanding, several countries and continents were also affected. Why did this happen? In the early stages it was thought that there would be an attempt to reset and rebuild. Now, five years have passed and there is no time for speculation, only survival.

What happened to Clarice was unthinkable. You didn’t start to see the fabric of civilization coming undone at the seams until it was too late. The point you understood what was unfolding it was how fast you could react, and how prepared you were. For Kenny, he was always simple, kept to himself. A family man. He never saw his neighbors as monsters. Then again, he didn’t think that he could commit the unspeakable horrors that he’s had to just to survive. Not even 3 months into the power being off… Kenny woke up one night to the sound of Clarice talking. Who could she be talking to? Smoke? The fire was about completely out… Is that… Screaming?! Kenny jumped out of bed and ran outside to see Clarice being dragged away. There wasn’t a name for them at the time, but Kenny has since called them Jackals. Groups of what he used to call humans who ride in packs. They behave like coyotes where they will manipulate and play mental games to take advantage of their prey. In this case, they used their dog to lure Clarice out of hiding. The Jackals did not find Kenny. He watched from a distance as people who he used to go to church with tore Clarice apart limb from limb and cooked her over an open flame. 6 months prior Kenny was at the bar with these people! The last five years have been a carnival ride from hell.

*THUMP* Blackness. Kenny smelled bacon… and pancakes… and the smell of rotting flesh? His vision was blurry, and he realized he was waking up from a dream. He was tied to a post with another thing. It was a carcass but mutilated beyond any recognizable animal. He had been kidnapped. These people didn’t look like Jackals. There are people who have been hardened, out of necessity to adapt to post-civilized life. The Jackals, as Kenny coined them, were born for the apocalypse. It was their moment to shine. Kenny pleaded with them to please let him go. It turns out he was right, they were desperate, and hungry. The carcass was another not so lucky traveler and Kenny was hoping to avoid the same fate. He brokered a deal, that he would give them his water filter, the food on his person, and a map to get back to his old hideout so long as they let him leave. The head of this group pointed “What about that?”, motioning for the Heart Locket he was wearing. “YOU CAN’T HAVE THIS!!” Kenny shouted. He took a moment to explain what had happened to Clarice, getting progressively more emotional as the story unfolded. By the end, Kenny was a blubbering mess having a moment relive the events all over again. “So where were you going?” the group leader asked “If you let me go, I will show you” Kenny responded.

Underneath the picture of Clarice on the backside of the photograph was two simple longitude and latitude coordinates. It was these coordinates Kenny was concerned about protecting more than the photo of his daughter. Kenny had a cousin who was an engineer, and the reason Kenny was so proficient in making his own hideout. The difference is Kenny’s cousin Scott had a large plot of land, in a rural area in northern Maine near the Canadian Border. Kenny had been trekking for many months out of the city, and across state lines with this group of people who originally tried to rob him. It had been what felt like months, but time was irrelevant now that society had collapsed. “What’s that??” Someone in the group exclaimed. Kenny couldn’t remember their name, he called them Bug. Everyone had nicknames. Kenny was Mark. It was an inside joke amongst the group because he was an easy Mark when they had attacked him. “It looks like a fire!” Kenny responded. Each one of them was exhausted and malnourished, but the excitement pushed them further, faster than they had been going for the last several weeks. As they approached it wasn’t fire it was electrical light. It had been so long since anyone had seen artificial light. “SCOTT!!!” Kenny screamed as loud as he could. Silence. Crickets and other wildlife noises. An ear-piercing whistle broke out, patches of grass opened and there were several men wearing ghillie suits that were camouflaged into the tall grass with sniper rifles. Among those was Scott. He approached Kenny with open arms and embraced in a Hug. “Welcome home!! We thought you would never make it. Where’s Clarice?” Scott implored. Still embraced in a tight hug, Kenny laughed. Exhausted, his laughter was a mix of relief and deep visceral pain. “She’s gone.” Kenny whimpered. The hug was the first physical contact he had in years that was not violent. “To be honest Scott, I didn’t think I’d make it either”, he choked between tears. “It’s ok.” Scott squeezed tighter. “You’re here, your safe, and there’s plenty of work to do. Let’s get started.” As the entrance to the bunker opened Kenny looked back into the darkness from which they came, his face still wet from tears and took a deep breath. “I’ve never been more ready man, lets go”.