All Roads to a Burning Rome.
A Solarpunk Project.
By Dylan Clockwork
Feb 20th, Porting through dying suburbia and scavengers.
Morgan woke to her body completely sore. But there was a scratching noise at the door so she got over herself fast. She tried to not breath and not let the tarp crinkle as she stood up and gripped her shovel.
“I am not dying today,” Morgan declared to herself.
She gripped open the shed door and flung it open, ready to slam down the shovel on whoever was behind.
“Meow?”
Morgan relaxed and packed her bag. She gave the cat one of the few remaining treats, before leaving and hoped it knew how to catch mice. After thinking about it herself, she wished she knew how to catch mice.
“Ok how am I going to do this?”
She began with the easy part. Throwing everything that didn’t fit in her bag into the canoe. Then came moving it. The canoe was unnaturally smooth and light to haul across the half dead grass. Though it didn’t take long for her to start to get out of breath. Morgan was certain a few days ago she could have done this no problem, as it stood every one of her joints hurt and her legs quietly shrieked as she hauled the thing. Morgan was so tired she nearly forgot where she was going.
“Ok going downhill, I just need to cut across a few yards and I should hit the Blue river.”
Gradually she got her bearings and tried to figure out which way that was. Thankfully after taking longer than she cared to remember that the sun rises in the east, she started heading in the right direction. Along the way the world seemed strange, everything seemed off from the days before. The first thing that struck her as odd was something that wasn’t there. She couldn’t hear a single car on the road or any wailing siren in the distance. It gave everything an unearthly quiet, one she’d never heard before in four years of living in the city. A quick glance at the sky still revealed the billowing black smoke from housefires, Morgan hoped the sires had just burnt themselves out. Then there were the guards.
“Get off the lawn,” someone commanded.
“What!”
“Get off the lawn,” someone repeated.
Morgan looked around to see a small whitish house that was falling apart a bit. Sitting on a raised porch poking at a fire pit was a man wearing two coats drinking a mug of coffee.
“I’m sorry I’ll get off,” Morgan apologized, dragging her canoe off to the side.
“Thank you,” the Stranger mouthed.
“Is that coffee? I’ll trade you for a cup!” Morgan rummaged around in her bag wondering where her wallet was. The thought of having something warm in her stomach was enough to bring her a smile. Morgan hadn't really stopped being cold for the past week. At this point she was surprised she hadn’t lost something to frostbite.
As Morgan pulled out her wallet, she could see the stranger had pulled out a revolver and was beginning to level it at her.
“I’ll keep moving,” Morgan murmured.
“Please do.”
Morgan dragged her canoe through the street and into the next yard. The stranger continued to eye her. As she dragged the canoe nearby a burnt house she passed by a nearby house that had burnt to the ground. Huddled next to the burnt house she found a person in a sleeping bag huddled up against the burnt wreckage. She couldn’t help but eye as there were few bags nearby, old backpacks full of supplies. Morgan did the math on if she could get away with grabbing one, while walking by. She wondered if the stranger with the gun could see her, if he cared about his neighbors, would the bag clank as she carried it, could the sleeping person hear her even now. From around the corner of the wreckage she came face to face with a kid covered in blankets eyeing Morgan. Morgan tore her eyes away from the bag and gave the child a sad look. The kid looked at her for a minute before walking over to the sleeping person.
“Dad I’m cold, can we go somewhere else?”
“Ermh.”
“Please?”
The sleeper blinked awake and responded, “I don’t know.”
“Ok,” the kid mumbled.
Morgan focused on pushing the canoe forwards and didn’t look back.
“Bye weird lady,” the kid waved.
“Goodbye,” Morgan responded, trying to push even harder.
Along the way to the river there were dozens of scene’s like that. People sleeping in their cars, people in homes that were partially burnt or had massive damage from the storms. People were lighting fires outside trying to keep warm all the time, she passed by two houses that were eating breakfast outside. One person asked them to go around their house, and after the first encounter she didn’t think twice. On the last street before the river, Morgan was approached by a woman managing a cookfire out of a broken propane grill.
“¿Tienes frío?” they asked.
“Umm, I’m not sure,” Morgan hesitated.
“Quieres cualquier desayuno,” the woman explained, pointing between Morgan and the fire. “Podría usar un poco de madera, si puedes hacer trabajo.”
“Sorry I think I got the word Si in that,” Morgan apologized.
The woman cooking called back into the house. "Obtener el teléfono del traductor."
“Nice talking to you,” Morgan responded. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Muy bien, adiós,” she replied with a wave.
“Ok that I got.”
Morgan dragged the canoe through the brush. There was a sheer wall of honeysuckle and young trees trying to compete with each other. She followed the wet soil through, it looked as if a deer had run through. After a a few dozen feet she discovered it was a homeless person, in a clearing. The clearing had tarps vaguely in the shape of a tent and several scavenged boxes and castoff scraps of furniture, anything that could be dragged from a roadside. The homeless person had a fire going and seemed to be looking at Morgan with a tilted head.
“Hello?” they asked.
“Hi,” Morgan responded.
“Going fishing?”
“Something like that,” Morgan replied, wondering how much they should say. “The Blue river is down this way right?”
“Yea it’s flooded to high hell though,” they explained. “The floodwaters are still around and the river is up, god knows what’s washed up in there. The current is fast too, don’t think about going back upstream.”
“Thanks... I’m meeting a friend downstream who will help me out,” Morgan articulated.
“Right…” the homeless person said. “I take it you lost your place too.”
“Well, yea,” Morgan admitted.
“Whole world seems like it just sort of turned off,” the homeless person stated. “There were a few days of panicking but everything has just sort of fallen apart.”
“Well alot of stupid mistakes were made,” Morgan remarked. “I heard that nobody prepared for any kind of storm since it was so out of season. A load of places went offline after floods took out roads, power lines, my own place was burnt down after the natural gas stopped for some reason.”
“Dam, how many people are as screwed as you right now?”
“Nobody is doing well, but most people are doing a bit better than me for now,” Morgan added. “I think I may have just had a bit too much bad luck.”
“Well that’s what happened to me,” the homeless person declared while doing a little dance. “Everyone’s been dragged to my level, chaaa.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Oh I’ve been here a year,” the homeless person explained, straightening themselves out. “Parents kicked me out when I was 18 without telling me their plan. I would up couchsurfing, and when my friends moved away for college I’ve been living out here.”
“Your parents suck.”
“Yep.”
“Uh do you want to um…” Morgan tried to figure out how to ask this.
“I don’t really know any area other than this one,” the homeless person replied. “Thank’s but no thanks, all my friends are around here, I know how to survive here, and I know where to scavenge supplies. If I were to go with you I’d maybe survive wherever you’re going to crash on your couch. Then you’d get sick of me in two weeks. You and the people you live with would get sick of me not having a job despite applying to dozens of places a day having no real skills and no permanent address. Then in a month you’d tell me to get out of your house and open the door for me if I knock. THEN I have to hope like hell that my spot-”
“You ok?”
“NO.”
“...”
“Sorry,” Morgan said.
“It’s life,” they responded. “Don’t trust people, half of em are terrible, the other half are the kind that’ll turn terrible.”
“I guess so,” Morgan replied, looking at her feet. Morgan wasn’t really sure how she got into this conversation and didn’t know how to get out of it. She was also vaguely wondering if the homeless person was going to threaten to stab her like so many other people in the last week.
“Erm,” they paused, realizing Morgan’s discomfort. “Er, how prepped are you for going down that river?”
“Not very,” Morgan admitted.
“One day journey of multi?”
“Maybe a week?”
“Gone camping much?”
“Nope.”
“Ok I’m going to give you a couple of pointers here.”
Over the next hour Morgan spoke to the homeless person who she learned was called Ana. Ana lived maybe a ten minute walk from her family’s neighborhood. Her parents locked the house on her, although the rest of her siblings still lived there past 18 for some reason. She could meet them occasionally though . Ana ranted a good deal about her parents. Morgan sat around Ana’s fire a good deal just grateful to warm up. Morgan nodded plenty and made sure that she remembered enough of the rants to be quizzed on them later. In between bouts of anger Ana gave her some heads up for how to live in the elements. How to start fires, how to hide a tent, how to dress, stay out of the wind, if you get wet, warm up or you’ll die, how two thin layers were better than a single thick one. When in danger, run or threaten people, nothing else works once they make you a target. Ana even gave Morgan some plastic bags to put her things in. Morgan was going to give her a solar light as thanks but Ana refused. It seemed as though Ana was in a much better position than someone for once and was going to refuse the charity.
“Yea you don’t have anything I need,” Ana mused, poking through Morgan’s bag. “I have a solar charger already and a few flashlights. Wish I could charge them but I’ve already found lights like yours at the dollar store. Hello!”
“It’s just a toy,” Morgan said looking at the fake gun.
“You could kill a squirrel with it maybe,” Ana chirped. “Pew pew pew.”
“I don’t have any bbs,” Morgan retorted.
“Well don’t tell the squirrels,” Ana joked, handing it to Morgan.
Ana then started throwing scraps of paper and twigs inside a plastic bag.
“The heck is that for?” Morgan asked.
“Keep some tinder dry, just trust me,” Ana replied. “If you can find it, paper works great, birchbark, leaves, anything that’s dry. You can even use thin plastic, you can't go two steps without running into it now.”
“Won’t that give me cancer?”
“Yep, same as everything else,” Ana Joked. “Look I have zero faith I’m going to live past thirty given how my life’s been going. And if I freeze I’m going to lose a foot to frostbite and die, no question. I don’t get to worry about my life in 30 years when I'm what, 48? ”
For the first Morgan actually realized that Ana was younger than her and having to deal with all this. She went through the peaks of sadness and anger in an instant.
“Why are you all the way out here?”
“A friend of mine lived maybe a two minutes walk from here,” Ana responded. “It’s one of the better spots I’ve found.”
“No I mean why don’t you live near your family?” Morgan questioned. “I get your parents are awful but why not live near your siblings.
“My dad doesn’t want me on his property.”
“Live near his property then, like you’re doing here. There’s loads of houses that have burnt down in the city since nobody knows how to start a fire.”
“Pretty sure he wouldn’t want me living near him,” Ana stated with a grimace.
“So, what do you owe him?” Morgan asked. “What’s he going to do, tell you to get off shit that isn’t his property.”
“They’re my parents and I have to respect them,” Ana mouthed. “Well… I have to put up with them.”
“You owe them nothing.”
“Yea… you know I think I’ll check out around the neighborhood then,” Ana reasoned. “It’s closer to the food pantry anyway.”
“Good plan,” Morgan said. “Alright I need to get going.”
“You try not to die,” Ana said tossing the bags of supplies in the canoe. “Have fun making your way to Dixon.”
“Thanks.”
Morgan tore herself away from the fire and got back to her canoe. The thought of lugging the thing even further was getting to her and caused her to look back at the campsite. It was a nice place, a small tent covered in tarps and brush, a fire pit made out of loose stone and tons of scavenged stuff hidden in cardboard boxes. It was all well hidden by thick groves of red cedar trees and brush. Morgan turned around and kept moving, if she didn’t start moving immediately, she’d never find the motivation to do anything.
“Just keep moving, Just keep moving.”
Morgan trudged through more and more brush. She was moving slowly but moving. It occurred to her that she’d thought she’d be moving faster. She knew she walked at around three miles an hour, around an average speed. Of coarse that was when she felt like walking, when she had food in her stomach, the temperature wasn’t terrible, there was an actual path, she wasn’t hauling a canoe, and she wasn’t getting snagged on every tree and thorn in her way.
“Fucking thorns,” she said picking off yet another branch that snagged her jeans.
Down her leg she felt warmth and was relived, right up until she realized it was probably blood. She wished she had thicker clothing.
“Just keep moving, Just keep moving.”
She found a railroad as she went through the forest. She wasn’t sure if it was meant to be there but to check and make sure would have meant to boot up her phone which had maybe a 7% charge. Morgan pushed her canoe to the other side of the tracks. She wasn’t worried about any trains. She heard on the radio that all the trains were stopped due to all the downed trees and destroyed bridges. It’s how a lot of gas and oil was delivered and now it was practically impossible to get a tank of gas. Shame her car was gridlocked and looted, it actually did have a nearly full tank. Enough to get home, it’s probably why it was stripped down in the first place.
For a while Morgan sat and caught her breath.
“Ok I need to get to the river where is it?”
Far in the distance she thought she heard a telltale honk of a train’s horn. While trying to find where it was coming from she discovered it sounded less and less like a horn the more she listened. After a minute of listening it sounded like it wasn’t even coming from the track and Morgan went to check it out. A bit of walking up the rails later and she found a ditch full of water, with a few canadian geese honking at each other. The water was flowing to the north slightly.
“Sweet.”
“Honk.”
“You do you goosething.”
Morgan dragged the canoe through the floating plastic and half submerged brambles. The geese protested and a few hissed at her. Morgan pulled out her shovel and prepared to whack them if they got close.
“I’ve had a long week, get out of here.” Morgan growled.
“Hiss.”
“Fuck off.”
Morgan pushed off from the bank and grabbed onto floatsoam to push further towards the river. From behind her she could still hear the geese complaining.
“Freaking canadian tourist asshole birds,” Morgan complained.
“Bitch!”
“What?”
“Honk!”
Morgan looked back, there were only geese. She continued forward, there was no energy left to start questioning geese.
“Yea… you know I think I’ll check out around the neighborhood then,” Ana reasoned. “It’s closer to the food pantry anyway.”
