Copyright © 2000 by Ryan Heilig All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
 
 

“Well, never quite thought it’d end like this.”  That was all Rob could think to say, even if he was only talking to himself, as he flipped open the spindle on his revolver.

“Great! Four shots four assholes. How do ya like them apples?”

Huddled in the corner of the office of an abandoned gas station in some dreary part of ex-Georgia wasn’t in his greatest dreams of how he’d spend his last moments on earth. For that matter, he had never thought that he’d be gunned down by four nameless goons (who probably couldn’t even speak English) either.

The goons had caught him when he rode into a small ghost town looking for some supplies. He always would pick a small town for a supply run because the survivors would’ve abandoned it. The crazies hid in the big cities so they were unsafe, but small towns were always abandoned. 

Rob had been through this part of Abraham County before and knew that all the people here were either dead, hiding, or had moved on so these guys had to be drifters. Like vultures, going around picking off the remains of the once proud United States. They’d glean one area dry then move on. Locusts, Rob amended in his mind, not vultures, Locusts.  

This ghost town didn’t look like anything special. It has the same husks of cars sitting in the middle of the street. Weather the owners had left them or died in them was a question only time itself would remember the answer to. Same dusty old McDonalds with the busted out windows. Busted out during the rioting at the beginning of the war probably, but fifteen years of neglect also has it’s effect. Another question left to time. Also, the more ghastly of landmarks in a ghost town, the same unclaimed skeletons bleaching in the summer sun.

Rob always rode through a ghost town with reverence, riding down the middle of the street, taking in the whole picture. He felt safe doing this because even if there were any survivors in town, they’d sooner hide from a stranger than approach him. In every town, Rob saw the same horrid scene played out in his mind. He could see the last few months of the town’s life just by looking at the remains. 

He could see the people running around for supplies when President Mitchell announced that China had won the record breaking twelve-minute battle of St. Petersburg. He could see the riots when the ration laws were put into effect. The scared looks on the people’s faces when the Chinese invaded Alaska. He could see the crowds of people looking up at the sky as the first barrage of tactical nukes were launched. 

And finally, he could see the death. The vast piles of bodies from the radiation fall out, people just lying in the street dead. The aftermath, people killing each other for food.  A couple months after the last of the fighting, the roving gangs would show up. Running each town they invaded like a kingdom, they would eat all of the town’s food, take all the supplies and women then move on to the next town. 

Then the people would leave, most likely West, to the mountains. A few would stay at first, stubborn and afraid, not wanting to give up their homes, but eventually even they would lose heart and follow the setting sun. This left Rob his ghost town.

He could read the town history as simply as one could read a traffic sign, the details weren’t important, the basic shapes and colors told you most of what you needed to know. It was possibly even easier than that for Rob because he had personally lived through most of what this town went through. Not in Abraham, Georgia, but in his own hometown in Virginia.

Those times still haunted him, but riding through each ghost town made him feel better and better. It confirmed he wasn’t alone in his suffering and that everyone else had gone through the same holocaust. 

The goons, probably in the ghost town for the same reasons as he, spotted Rob before he had a chance to spot them. Rounding a corner, they had started shooting at him and it was only the frightened reaction of the horse that saved him. He immediately turned around and rode out of town as quickly as possible, but they were on his tail. After a couple of lucky misses one of the goons hit Rob’s horse and he crashed to the ground outside of a gas station. Thankful for the cover Rob scrambled and dove into the main office, where he now huddled, considering what last rites the bandits would give his corpse before removing his gear.
 

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