Winston thought again about Vietnam and Tran and mine detonation and May and Ben and Med and Julie as he now walked the white centerline, still cautious, but less frightened than being outside in Johnsonville. There, in his occupied hometown, the threats were real, both foreign and domestic. Here, the roadway was so eerily peaceful that he felt little threat. It was so flat and straight that he could see a vehicle’s headlights from miles away in either direction, and he let his guard down and his mind wander. As he strode briskly toward McDonough, he felt deep within his heart that the road was only leading him to heartbreak. And though he didn’t want to think about it, he couldn’t deny that he and May had somehow drifted apart while being cooped up in the barn. They couldn’t engage in meaningful conservations and they stopped playing games altogether. They both stunk after weeks of not bathing. Evacuating their bowels in such an intimate setting was humiliating, smelly, and embarrassing, and with no way to properly cleanse themselves, a filthy matter. Quite frankly, the apartment was a prison cell — even being imprisoned with someone that each unequivocally loved, and even though they had committed no crime other than to be American. He thought about teaching her how to climb the fence to get outside, but it was too dangerous. One slip and they’d both be dead. Hell, he was surprised that he hadn’t already been caught, but the risk was worth it — he intended to survive this ordeal and go back to loving his wife.
Blind with regret for allowing their relationship to flounder, Winston nearly walked into a lone car abandoned on the highway’s white centerline. It was an older beige Cadillac, probably a late 2000’s model. It was the only car in sight, which aroused his EOD technician senses, and he became highly suspicious of his surroundings, recognizing the Cadillac as a potential trap. The highway shoulders were overgrown with dense swaths of sweet gum and scrub pine, leaving few places for him to hide and giving a potential enemy plenty of places to conceal themselves in ambush — but none came. He surveyed the area, controlling his breathing to shallow, open-mouthed breaths, listening intently for a careless foot to rustle the crisp leaves of the fall’s recent shedding or catch a glimpse of movement from beyond the scrub line, but he neither heard nor saw anything suspicious and turned his attention back to the Caddy. He paced slowly around its perimeter and peered inside; no dead bodies, no blood, no sign of entry or exit. He spied something thoughtfully set on the tan leather back seat — three VHS tape-sized packages. Pressing his face to the rear window glass, Winston saw standard issue American military MREs — meals ready to eat — three of them — just waiting for him to snatch them up.
Winston circled the car several more times, peering inside, and determining his next steps — take the sustenance or continue his journey to McDonough. The calories contained in those packages could nourish him and May for three days. He wandered to the highway shoulder and found a rusted out trailer hitch ball, brought it back to the Caddy, and rapped it once on the rear windshield. The safety glass gave way and crumbled. He took cover behind the rear bumper and surveyed his surroundings again, and when he was satisfied that he wouldn’t be ambushed, he set the rifle onto the roof, scrambled up the trunk, reached into the back seat, clutched the booty, and squirmed ass-end back off of the car. He grabbed the gun and darted to the safety of the scrub line, squatted to the ground, and waited. Nothing. No soldiers streamed out to kill him. No sniper took him out with a single accurate shot. No hungry locals confronted him. Still, he waited a solid five motionless minutes before he moved. Grateful for the nourishment, Winston stuffed the MREs into his hoodie and continued south toward McDonough. He thought about turning back, but he was so close to his destination that he may as well sally forth. Besides, May wasn’t expecting him back to the apartment until tomorrow night. He was outside for the next day at minimum.
An hour later, Winston crossed the McDonough town line. The closer he got to the McDonough exit, the more bodies and burned out vehicles littered the highway. This was the scene that Ben had relayed from Med — the PLA shooting anybody they came in contact with — men, women, children, pets — all gone, killed while they attempted to flee the invasion.
“Poor Med,” Winston said aloud, startling himself.
The town’s highway exit was a consumer mecca, replete with every form of boxed capitalist consumerism from chain restaurants to enormous grocery stores and home improvement outlets. He and May only went to McDonough occasionally, when they required items not available at the local Johnsonville mom and pop stores, like Calef’s. Still, they knew the town well enough. A queer scent suddenly assaulted Winston’s nose as he marched down the on ramp and into the heart of McDonough. It was a sweet, sickly odor, reminiscent of the Mayor’s barbecues. Well, not exactly the barbecue itself, but the aftermath — the cleanup — when all of the guests had departed and the Mayor would fire the giant grills up once more to scrape off the crusted and burnt meat that was left on the grills. It was that fleshy stench that bit Winston smack at the base of his throat. Had he had anything in his stomach, he might have vomited, but he fought back the retch and kept moving, marching into a scene of destruction unlike anything he had ever witnessed — not even in Vietnam.
The town was wholly destroyed — eradicated from the earth’s memory, as if it had never existed. Winston surveyed the devastation, and an incredulous feeling of helplessness overcame him and he fell to his knees. What once was a thriving metropolis was now reduced to a burnt-out skeletal framework where buildings once stood. His boots kicked up ashes — of wooden frames, store products, food, and people — and it clogged his nostrils and burned his eyes. He thought he could taste the bodies, his mouth filled with a rancid, salty, charred tang, which sickened him even more. He dashed through the debris, perhaps a mile or more, through a torched landscape that did not yield. Molten, car-shaped forms shimmered in the dark moonlit night sky like a hardened pyroclastic flow of obsidian, clogging the burnt-out hollow shell of a town. Harrowing shrieks of the dead filled Winston’s ears as their charred bones and skulls crumbled under his worn canvas combat boots, forming a thick gray dust that stung and choked his throat, and coated his entire body. There was nothing here for him but death and heartache, so he turned on his heels and rushed back toward the McDonough I-75 on-ramp, back to his home and to May. Johnsonville, Winston now understood, had been spared compared to the total and complete annihilation that McDonough suffered. He yearned for the solace of May’s comforting words and loving embrace. And she needed his strength and support now more than ever. He had scored enough calories to last them a few more days, and prayed silently that this hell would be over soon.