All Roads to a Burning Rome.
A Solarpunk Project.
By Dylan Clockwork
Feb 19th, Scavenging anything at all costs.
Morgan had to be faster, the flickers of the burning city were swirling past her. She could hear the scrape of metal warping and the gentle pop of electronics and machinery around her crackling in the fire. The house around her was coming down, now.
“I need to find something,” Morgan practically shrieked through clenched teeth.
As the houses around her burned, she rummaged through the remnants of the not yet completely destroyed house around her. It had already been broken into, the contents of the kitchen were splayed over the floor. Some of the easier to carry things or perceived valuable items had been made off with.
“Please a knife, please a knife, food something.”
Everything she found was spoiled, broken, worthless, or too heavy to carry. Morgan grabbed a few things that she hoped weren't too worthless. Rusty silverware, a roll of cheap string, something that was either breakfast cereal or dog food. She shoved it into her mouth as she found it, more room to carry things that way. It tasted like dirt. Around her the house gave a noticeable lurch and cracking noise. She gathered that a tree or a utility pole must've fallen on it. The house would be alight soon.
The dueling parts of her brain told her both to run outside and keep going till she found somewhere safe. The part she was listening to told her to keep looking. The world outside might be on fire, but she’d die soon without any supplies. She checked over the fridge and smelled rotten eggs, the ration part of her brain managed to scream at the rest of her that it was the same smell as the gas leak that nearly killed her. Morgan tore herself away from the room and began dashing outside.
Outside revealed that the house was in worse shape than she thought and the edges were already starting to smoke. Leaves in the gutters had already come alight and the sickening black plastic smoke began to drift up from several windows.
“Holy shit how am I not dead,” Morgan sputtered, wheezing for air. “I wonder if this place has a shed.”
The area around her was vibrant with the sounds of disaster. emergency sirens were still going off somewhere in the distance, a cleasless noise for the past few weeks. In the February storms power had gone out and not come back on for the entire city. In the near freezing weather, there was no gas, no power, little sunlight, emergency services were exhausted and Morgan’s phone had run out of power a while ago. Her own apartment burned a few days ago when someone tried to start a five in theri oven to get warm.
“What did I get?” She asked, shuffling through her bag.
There wasn’t much, a few tools, some kid’s toys, some batteries, some pens, a few water bottles, the kibble.
“HEY WHO’S THERE?”
Morgan looked around panicky.
“GET OUT OF HERE.”
She couldn’t see where the person was shouting from. Then she heard the gunshot and started running.
“SORRY,” Morgan pleaded and ran further down the street.
Since she had no idea where that came, Morgan ran to the edge of the street where the blocks of houses ended and woods gave way. She hid behind a shed at the edge of the woodlot and waited for her heart to stop pounding.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whimpered.
She sat quiet for as long as possible and tried hard not to make a sound. Her watch told her ten minutes had passed but she refused to move. The crackles and demneted shrieks of distant burning tormented her. Every unusual noise was a footstep in her direction. Then there came more gunshots. They grew louder and finally the sound of an automatic weapon ripped out any trace of silence the dusk held. When a person actually did walk past Morgan she didn’t even hear them coming. She could only watch in silence as they ran past her. Morgan stared at them as they ran into the woods, they stared back at Morgan. The figure was carrying a piece of jagged metal and wore a backpack that clinked as they ran. The figure paused as they looked at Morgan, the metal instrument dimly illuminated with fire nearby. As Morgan got a closer look she could see their shoulder was red and dripping with blood. Then more gunshots fired and the person continued running into the near wilderness.
For several minutes Morgan had to try and remember how to breathe.
“Why didn’t I take out my knife?” Morgan asked herself.
For another half hour Morgan just tried to focus on breathing as quietly as possible. The sound of gunshots shattered the night much like the emergency siren’s she’d been hearing all week. They always seemed to be somewhere in the distance, never near.
“Hello,” Morgan asked around her.
There was only the sounds of fire and other distant pandominums to respond to her. Carefully Morgan weighed her options. In the past week, she’d lost her apartment, her car had been stuck in traffic then picked over, most of her belongings had been stolen, her phone had nearly run out of charge, and now… what? The weight of what was happening hit her in the chest and she nearly started to cry, no not cry. She didn’t have the energy to cry, she wanted to find a suffocatingly small hole and crawl into it until she was convinced that everything was going to be ok.
“Think,” Morgan commanded herself. “I need to get out of here. I need to get home.”
Morgan wondered how to do that. She had a shoebox apartment from when she was at college that had now burned to the ground. The car she practically lived out the past five years had been gridlocked and ran out of gas. Her school was half online, the other half were crowded hallways of people she barely knew. At her job of one month, the owner locked the doors and told everyone to get out until this blew over. That really only left going home to her parents farm. She did the mental math, it was three and a half hours away to the middle of nowhere in south Missouri. She was in south Kansas City and couldn’t make it three blocks before running into someone trying to rob her or worse. She needed to think of a way out.
“Who who?”
“Who’s there?” Morgan threatened.
This time she pulled out her knife in an instant and began pointing it at anyone or anything that looked threatening in the shadows. She didn’t let up, the next person who tried to get the drop on her wasn’t walking away from it.
“Who who?”
She stopped panicking for a moment and realized it was just a little hoot owl.
“I’m losing my mind,” She sighed.
As Morgan looked around for the owl she realized how dark it had gotten. It was mid February and the nights were arriving fast. Combined with the amount of ash in the air and a lack of streetlights with the power out, it became pitch black fast. Morgan shuffled around the shed and peered into the darkness. Besides distant fires it was nearly impossible to see anything. Though nearby there was an odd source of dim light. Gradually Morgan crawled closer to the source and was surprised to see a butterfly of all things. It was one of the little solar powered ones people decorate their yards with. She picked it up, glad to have a source of light besides her phone. As her shadow fell across the yard more lights illuminated trying to fend off the darkness. She could see that practically the entire yard was illuminated. While the house beside it was a smoldering ruin the garden still shone beautifully.
“Who who?”
There was a rustle of wind. Several burnt trees around her swayed, the lights flickered and began turning on more as clouds billowed overhead. It was going to rain again. Further back Morgan could see a person near the house.
“Hello?”
The trees creaked and gradually more lights began glowing. Gradually Morgan walked towards the figure. She could see that they were an older person hunched over in a rocking chair. They were inside of a circle of the lights, Morgan approached with her butterfly so that she could see. As she stepped inside the circle, her shadow fell over the lamps near her. Odd little lights, they looked like mushrooms. Morgan could see that the figure was an old woman, who seemed to have bundled up and went outside when their house burnt down. There was even a makeshift fire pit in the circle, she was just trying to keep warm. Morgan lifted the lamp to get a better look, there was an obvious blood stain near her gut and her purse had been rummaged through, all the contents were spilled out over the firepit.
“I’m sorry,” Morgan apologized to the corpse. “Who are you?”
She rummaged through the remains of her purse. There was still a load of supplies that looked useful. A lighter with some charge, a bottle of tea, a bag of assorted change, an ID that placed her as Eabha McDonnel. A half empty bottle of painkillers and another unidentified bottle of medicine There were signs Morgan wasn’t the first person to rummage through their things.
“Thank you,” Morgan murmured. “I’m going to take your purse, I really hope you don’t mind.”
There was no response other than the trees around her creaking. Morgan grabbed the purse and stepped back through the yard. In the lamplight she could see the purse was covered in images of twisting vines and clovers. As she stepped away, Morgan detected something near the shed. It was a sharp green glint, unlike the solar lights around her. The light crept forward. Morgan tried not to breathe. Once it got to the edge of the circle, she could see it was just a black cat approaching. It meowed at Morgan a bit before jumping into the lap of the dead woman.
“Nice cat,” Morgan shuddered. “Good cat.”
“Yes I am,” The cat said.
Morgan stared at the cat for the next ten to twenty minutes.
“Hello?”
The cat continued to sleep.
Gradually her brain began to form normal thoughts again. “Ok I definitely didn’t just hear that,” she thought. “I have been awake for over forty hours at this point and I need to get some sleep. That Cat Can’t Talk.”
“Who Who?”
“That’s Just the owl,” Morgan reassured herself.
“Who Who?”
“I need to get some sleep.”
She half expected the cat to say yes. A quick look around revealed that the burnt houses nearby had nothing but ash and shadows. In the yard there was the tiny shed, the dead woman, the makeshift firepit and a few other odds and ends scattered about the burnt house. She couldn’t figure out how to use lawn gnomes or a birdbath though. The Shed was the only real choice. Before going inside, Morgan grabbed for a few of the solar lights. Better to have the option of light than a scenic garden. As she grabbed the nearest one though, Morgan nearly tripped over something in the tall grass. It gave a noticeable bonk as her foot rammed into it, and her heart nearly jumped out of her chest.
“Who who?”
Nobody but the owl heard it at least. At a closer look with her light she could see a dark object protruding out of the dead grass. It was sleek black and covered in a dark green tarp which she ripped off in a hurry.
“The hell?”
Morgan poked and prodded at the object for a while before turning it over to discover how light it was. In the dim light of the butterfly light she could make out a streamlined canoe.
“Ok not what I was expecting.”
She picked up the tarp as well as several of the solar lights before heading into the shed. Inside there was mostly firewood and plastic junk for the dollar store. The floor was wood chips though, so it made for a half decent bed. There was even a bag of cat treats out here with some gardening supplies. Morgan piled the woodships into a bed with a shovel and munched on cat treats while she worked. They weren't good, but the hunger of the past three days was getting to her and she just needed something in her stomach.
“Made with real fish,” Morgan said looking at the labels. “The scales I think.”
Pet food was safe to eat. She knew because she’d bet other people to eat it before and had to tell them that to seal the deal. Now she was prepared to beat someone to death to keep it.
“Ok what do I have?”
Morgan began pulling anything and everything out of her pockets that looked useful. She had; a phone and chargers, bits of string, her chemistry and biology books for school, her notes, bits of string, random toys including a fake gun, some seeds from the shed, the tiny shovel, the tarp, cat food, a wallet with 20 dollars and credit cards, a key to a destroyed car, a key to a burnt apartment, her winter clothing, a bundle of assorted kitchen tools, the dead woman’s bag, and a water bottle with no water. For a minute she thought about walking out and taking the dead woman’s clothing but that didn’t seem right. Mostly she was too tired to walk outside.
“Night Night.”
Morgan rolled the tarp over her and tried to keep warm. Her body was tired but her brain was still racing with the same thoughts she had been going through the past week. What was she going to do? How was she going to get through tomorrow? What if someone tried to rob her here? When are things going to go back to normal? And now how was she going to get back to her parent’s place?
“I need to get with a large group, or hitchhike or something.”
She began planning things out. It was around two hundred odd miles, she could walk maybe twelve hours a day at two or three miles per hour. Assuming she had food, water and shelter, which she didn’t. Followed the roads and didn’t get robben on them. Then discovered there weren't any bridges that were out, which was a big if. A week ago the floods did so much damage to the countryside that people said it might be weeks before things went back to normal. Morgan wondered how long she could squat in this shed without dying. With a ruffle from under the tarp she pulled out her phone to take her mind off things. It still worked, even with a fifteen percent charge.
“No new messages, I have data though, not sure how.”
She pulled up a maps app and looked at how far it would be by walking. Not as bad as she thought actually. Maybe 180 miles, so about 60 hours of walking. It could be done. Then the road closure announcements started loading in. Things started looking a bit less possible after that.
“I need a bike or something.”
Then she began thinking of the canoe outside. It couldn’t be that hard could it. Morgan zoomed out and traced where she’d have to go with her hand. It was less of a straight line, but at the same time it was nearly all down current. And it wasn’t the first time she’d used a canoe, though it was pretty close to the first time she had to admit. Morgan would have to drag the canoe a few blocks to the Blue river and put it in there. Hopefully nobody would be poking around the backwoods at the edge of suburbia. Other than that the only real problem was that she would have to paddle up the gasconade a bit, but that was a cakewalk compared to walking all that distance. She could even leave the canoe behind if need be.
“This is actually doable,” Morgan said, eyeing the full map.
After a minute of staring she remembered her phone battery was still dropping and decided to turn it off. But not before sending one message. While she couldn’t make a call, she could email a note and it should get there eventually provided they were able to check their mailbox at some point.
“Mom, I’m coming home. It’s not going to be easy. Please don’t worry. Love you.”
Then she turned her phone off before it died completely.
