Desolation

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.”

60.

The Storyteller

56 Years A.E.

Formerly New Mexico

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.

Tonight, Stepha was doing what all in his tribe loved. He was telling stories about the old world, the Time Before. He and his wife, Dar, were the oldest in the tribe and had many stories to tell. Dar was sitting next to their two sons and one daughter, and her grandchild, Gord, was attentively sitting in her lap. All the tribe loved Stepha’s stories about the Time Before when objects smaller than your hand spoke to you and you spoke back; where you would climb into a moving cave that took you to faraway places; when the people of the broken monuments ruled the earth; and when all of this went away, when the great gods of the sky took everything from the people.

Stepha thought about this time before the Event, when people would assemble at drive-ins or movie theatres and watch a movie staring up at a screen, waiting for it to entertain them. He missed those times, but he also didn’t. Back then people assembled, but not in community. No one knew anyone else staring at the screen, necessarily, and they never discussed the story with the others, only noisily talked on their phones, and texted their friends, or Facebooked their experience instead. The movies themselves didn’t provide much mental engagement either, leaving nothing to the viewer’s imagination. Now, without the electronics of old, or even many books from the old way, people relied on oral stories, where their imaginations would soar into the winds, and the story was discussed with everyone in the community. He relished these times as much as his tribe did.