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Instead, I wave and smile at a few of the people we pass as he drives to the gate and waits as the guards open it for us.
I’m still smiling as Grant drives us over the dilapidated country roads that head west. He doesn’t say anything, but I don’t expect him to. I’m enjoying the wind on my face from the open window and the new sights.
There’s a lot of dusty blue sky. And the sun blazing down from above us. Overgrown woods, brush, meadows of long, untended grass. Random battered buildings and broken road signs—echoes of a world that used to be.
It doesn’t feel like the same world. I never saw it change. It was one thing when I went into the bunker and another thing now that I’m out. I wonder what it would feel like to have been out here the whole time. To see the old world razed to the ground and transformed into this unfamiliar one. Maybe it would make more sense then. Maybe it wouldn’t seem like we’re on an entirely different planet the way it often feels to me.
After about twenty minutes, Grant slows down as the road leads through the ruins of what used to be a small town. I feel his eyes slant over to my face as I stare.
“What?” I demand, looking over at him.
“Is this not what you expected?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure what I expected. It’s good to be out of the camp for a little while, and the woods and pastures are what I thought. But this…” I wave my hand in a gesture to take in the destroyed town. “This just makes me kind of sad. Look. That used to be a McDonalds.”
The hint of faded yellow arches under the rubble makes my chest ache for some reason. My eyes burn. I have no idea why.
“Yeah,” Grant murmurs softly.
I swallow hard. “I guess we never really had time to process it all. What was happening to the world on the surface. I mean, we knew it in theory, but it’s different to see it like this. Everything that used to be… just gone.”
“Yeah,” he says again.
I check his face, but he doesn’t look impatient or condescending. He’s never soft, but I’d swear he understands what I’m saying. “What could have done this to a town?”
“Some of it is time and neglect, but it would take more than that for the whole town to be flattened like this. Those big armies of violent people we used to talk about—evidently they called them droves—they’d pass through towns like this and decimate them. Scavenging anything they could pick up, killing or kidnapping everyone they could catch, and destroying the buildings for no reason except destruction. I’d guess that’s what happened here.”
I put a hand on my stomach, trying to imagine what it was like. That kind of senseless violence. It makes me sick to even think about. “Are those droves still around?”
“I don’t think so. At least, everyone I’ve talked to says they fell apart once most of the resources got used up. The one in this region broke up into those gangs that still hang around. Wolf Packs.”
“Wolf Packs?”
“That’s what the people at New Haven call them. The violent gangs. They’re dangerous too, but at least they’re smaller.”
“No wonder there are so few people left around.”
“Yeah. Between the violence and the lack of food and the lung problems from the dust in the air, the population has reduced to maybe a quarter of what it was, if the estimates from the people I’ve talked to around here are accurate. And a lot of the people who survived have moved away from here, toward the middle of the country.”
“Why do they do that?”
“It was safer there early on. Fewer natural disasters. So there’s more civilization there now. The larger cities have organized and built up infrastructure again. They’ve got power and water and schools and hospitals. At least that’s what the rumors say.”
“Wow.” I think about it for a minute. “Should we move there?”
“I don’t know. There’s some talk about it. But traveling is dangerous, and we don’t have any definite reports on what it’s like there. My guess is the communities in the middle might be safer, but they’re probably militantly controlled. We still have the bunker with its power and water. And here we have our freedom. Self-determination.”
I nod, relaxing slightly since I don’t like the idea of leaving the bunker. “Where are you from originally?”
His eyes widen, like he’s surprised. “North Carolina.”
“Did you have much family?”
“No. Just my mom. She raised me alone, and she died a couple of years before we locked down.”
“So there’s no one left up here that you’d want to try to find?”
He shakes his head, staring at the road in front of us. We’ve made it through the town, so he can pick up his speed. “I had some friends, but… It was a different life. This is the life I have now.”
