Lockets Full of Instructions

The end of the world didn't come like anyone said it would. I guess it still hasn't come, but it sure feels like it most of the time. Especially now.

First there was a pandemic. Then there was a drought. Then there was another pandemic, but people were more serious about the second one. A lot of people talked about how it was cause people were already hurting so bad, but people had been hurting like that for a long time and nobody ever seemed to give two shits. I think it was because they stopped seeing avocados after a while. That was what made it sink in for the selfish types. They could horde toilet paper and fill waterbeds up with gasoline, but you can't get fresh peaches when all the trees are gone. That just made people nicer for a little while, though.

It was when the internet started failing that people got real mean. Weird factions that had started forming online became tiny pockets of unprepared bastards who thought they were gonna be heroes and ended up being loot drops instead. Then the mini militias that took to the streets got gunned down pretty quick for the most part, but the military couldn't keep the country from falling apart at the seams. It wasn't just the internet, it was everything that came with it. Bitcoin isn't worth anything when there's no market. Shit, even fair prices on gold became whatever someone had to offer assuming they cared enough to make one in the first place. Can't eat gold. You can make some cool shit with it, though, and D.G. knows all about making cool shit.

He was the one who found our little spot on the river. Said he used to come out here to the big house just shy of the little bridge every summer and give the owner twenty bucks to camp on his land and go tubing. Lots of people used to come out here, he said, but not a lot of people remembered it when shit got bad. When he got here with a truck full of supplies he found the old man dead inside from a heart attack or something, and nobody else had laid claim to it. That was a while into the end of the world or whatever, but it's hard to keep track of when exactly that started, so maybe it was right at the beginning.

So D.G. fixed this place up and started adding to it. He figured it was well enough hidden from the road that he could probably keep it safe, and the river near the house wasn't deep enough to bring anything bigger than a canoe through it. Not a lot of recreational water sports these days, so not a lot of worry about that, I guess. Anyways. After a while he started adding to the place. It started with a little garage out in the back of the big house where he could build his cool shit. I mean really cool shit. You'd think that the end of the world means no more cool shit, but D.G. is the kind of guy who can build a drone out of nothing. He did that. A bunch of the things, too. That's how he found some of us. He'd spy on people with these weird little quadcopters sometimes and then let them follow the drone back if he thought they were mostly alright. A few people found him just by pure luck, I guess, and he only ever had to shoot at a couple of them. He never shot at me when I found this place. I might have to shoot some people for it, though.

The problem with making a little town on the river is that it's a whole lot easier to spot than one big house. Now there are eleven buildings and eighty-seven people to protect. Never really had to protect them before. Not really. D.G. said he's been here almost seven years, and I believe him, but I still can't believe how good he's had it up until now. Or until a few days ago, I guess. A couple people got sick, then a couple more, then D.G. checked the water. We had to dump everything we had pulled from the river that week just to be safe. Probably lost a bunch of plants, too. Somebody had been leeching some nasty stuff into the water, and we didn't realize it until after it hurt us. I don't think we would have realized it until a lot later than that if it weren't for D.G. Good old Doctor George. I can't even look him in the eyes right now.

So someone put some nasty shit in the water, and a few people got sick, and now D.G. has to come up with a plan. So he scopes things out as best he can, talks in secret to a few other people living here. D.G. doesn't do secrets. Then he comes to me with one, and asks me to keep it for him. I did. I guess until I started writing this diary or whatever you want to call it. So he gets me and Summer and Adam and a few others together one day real early and asks if any of us wouldn't die for this place. He says he would. Everyone said they would. Then he starts handing out these stupid lockets. Mine was a little golden heart. I don't think that mattered at all. I think it was just whatever he could find in the shop. But they were all little lockets full of instructions written on the tiniest pieces of paper, and they all had the same coordinates engraved in the backs of them. I still don't know how people are using coordinates right now, but whatever.

So now there's nine of us, all with these lockets, or pocket watches, or whatever it was that we all got, and we've all got a job to do. My job is to point a gun at some people and pull the trigger if I have to. My job is to go make sure the water runs clean again. My job is important, and I really don't want to do it. But I told D.G. I would, and in all my life he is the only person who has always followed through with everything that he has ever said. I'm not gonna disrespect him by not following through with mine. Makes it feel like the world really did end already, I guess.

This series is continued in Hunting Upstream.

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