The Hearts Call

Five years ago the world woke up one day and was in tatters as the long-coming apocalypse finally occurred. We all went to sleep one night in June of 2021, all of us expecting the next day would be there for us. At 2:37 am, central standard time, the Yellowstone Super Volcano that we heard stories for years about, erupted. The fear scientists had for years turned out to be justified, over half of the country was destroyed in a matter of minutes. Hundreds of thousands of people were obliterated during the first minute of the blast, a blast that could be seen by astronauts on the Internation Space Station.

The world's center of power was demolished and America, for the most part, was left as helpless as a third-world country. In mere moments, infrastructure was gone, communications were limited, the water supply of the country was contaminated, and nearly every soul west of the Mississippi River was dying. The ash fell like torrential rains, making it as far east as the Atlantic. The blast from the explosion sent shockwaves and earthquakes across the entire country, leaving the center of freedom in the world in shambles.

What nobody knew, not the geeks at NASA, or the nerds at the United States Geological Society, was that the heat from the explosion would cook most of the country. The climate shifts were dramatic and took just minutes. It would be weeks before the temperatures on the western half of our country decreased to a torturous 120 degrees. With everything laid waste and a long stretch of barren land, travel was nearly impossible.

It looks burned out but I stop to check it, seeing if there are any provisions I can salvage or working parts. They're getting harder to find. Sure, I could make a run for the far northeast, where the damage was the least destructive and people are finding their way. I could escape the horror of the new world and go north, live in the camps, and hope that somewhere under that senile sense about him, this President can get the country moving. Somewhere, on the other side of the country, there is a question for which I need an answer.

I've been in my car for nearly seven hundred miles. Certainly, I'll have to pull off somewhere and sleep. The roads are clearer than I imagine after looting that old pickup for what she was worth. If I make it to Southern California it'll be a miracle, but this is somewhere I need to go, despite the warnings. I see a good spot to pull in. Every place in the region now looks like a north Texas desert, the buildings wiped away into rubble, the grass and trees burnt to ash, just now beginning to show patchy signs of life.

Sometimes I wonder if I am even on an old road or driving through the fields the highways ran through. I bounce around in the driver's seat, things being thrown about. Looking over I grab the one thing I am carrying that matters, not wanting it to get lost. The Explorer gets over a large hump in the path, my tires leaving the ground entirely. We bounce around enough my backpack flies off the seat and lands on the floor, one bottle of water spilling all over the floor. "Dammit!"

Since starting this journey I"ve found myself in predicament after predicament that makes the rocky drives seem just inconsequential. Passing through what was left of St. Louis, I almost lost my ride to hijackers. After the fall of the country, people on the streets became desperate. There was an intensity in people as their desperation grew. Their greed and abandoned morals changed them into monsters, murderous, raging, abominations. It was in New Mexico that I went to hideout for a while, just long enough I could try getting some sleep. That was where my worst day happened.

I felt guilty about leaving them there to bleed out in such a desolate place, but where else would they go? There were no emergency rooms left. Both of them were going to die. Of that, I had no doubts. But, it was going to be either me or them. As they tried to take my Explorer, my wallet, and for some reason all of my money as if it would have gotten them anywhere now; I thought about why I was even on the road, risking the trip into the worst of the disaster.

Bang Bang!

The Gun went off before I knew it and both of my would-be assailants were down on the ground. My heart was racing as I stared into their faces, the taller, bearded one, looking back at me as the life in him drained away. He knew that he was going to die, whoever he was, and I found it of comfort after what he and his partner tried to do. I had one mission driving this journey and until I completed that mission, there could be no rest.

Lizzy went to her father's in San Diego. She left right before the disaster occurred. We were both pretty upset about her father needing her help for a while after the surgery. She was his daughter, after all, and I didn't want her to live with the regrets of not seeing him at least one more time before he passed away. She'd been so overjoyed with me being supportive that Lizzy left me something to hold onto, her favorite locket. Lizzy had worn this heart-shaped locket for as long as I have known her. She passed it to me for safekeeping.

"I promise I'll be back for that," she says to me, as she boarded her flight.

It took me forever, in an internet free world, to find out where her father's second home was located. Without the internet or a record trail to follow, it was harder than I thought. I promised myself I was going to get that locket to her one way or another, and hopefully turn her into my girlfriend while I was there. After five years of searching for her, there was no way I was letting looters or robbers that preyed on the obliterated countryside, take her locket.

It took a total of nearly thirty hours to drive all the way to San Diego. Getting there, with that heart-shaped locket, might have been my greatest achievement in history.

When I finally hit San Diego, I found her father's place fairly easily. My stomach was tied up in knots. Why was she living in the middle of such a war zone? This no longer looked like the 21st century. We no longer felt like we were in the same country.

I knocked on the door, waiting patiently for someone to answer. When the door opened an older woman was standing there. I didn't recognize the woman, but her eyes were familiar as she stared at me, a confused look on her face. I looked at the address again, thinking to myself that it was the right number.

"Hello, I'm Jon," I say.

"May I help you, son?" she asks.

I tell her that I'm looking for Lizzy, that we were together before the blast and I just found out a week ago that she survived. She invites me in to the home, a nice enough home on the inside, yet nothing like I would have imagined it from the exterior. The bars on the windows keep people from forcing their way in. The door at the front has been reinforced to keep looters and hooligans away.

"Is she here?" I ask.

"Um," she starts to say, "You should sit down."

Her name is Helena, and she is Lizzy's grandmother. Helena leaves the room and comes back with a glass of water, sitting across from me. As I take the water from her, admittedly a bit parched, I start to get an knot in my stomach. Helena has that familiar look on her face. I can tell she is about to gently tell me something she envisions being hard for me to hear.

"Lizzy started working for a recovery company, trying to find survivors. Her papa went with her. He wanted to keep Lizzy safe, even though we tried to convince him he was too old,"

"Son, they went into the Washington Mountains. There was an accident a couple weeks ago. Nobody knows where they went down..."

Was I too late? I sit there, staring at Helena, feeling nothing but sorrow for the older lady. She'd been left to fend for herself at her age, during an apocalypse. To lose her family in such a way was heartbreaking. I took out the heart shaped locket that I'd carried for the past five years. It seemed like the right thing to do so I told Helena about my best friend, the girl I didn't realize how much I loved until the end of the world came upon us all. Putting it around her neck, I gave the old woman a peck on the cheek and told her I had to go.

"Where are you off to in such a hurry, boy?" she asked as I headed out the door to my Explorer.

"A gas station, and then Washington. You hold that until I bring them back," I say, starting my old Explorer and getting ready to head out to find Lizzy and her grandfather.