Joshua Johnson
29:16:04:59
Prologue
I am awake, but my life means nothing.
I am lost. I thought hard trying to remember something, anything, but nothing registered. Looking around it was it was positively desolate. I stood on some bare, stricken road in the middle of nowhere. Sweltering lines of heat rose from the asphalt, twisting mirages beyond line of sight.
As I turned, my vision registered an object, a person! The first stranger popped into view, followed by droves of others. There were maybe twenty in all. Most seemed as lost as I was moments ago, all still caught in whatever had happened, detached from life with blank expressions caught in some terror off in the distance.
The man closest to me was of medium build with bushy eyebrows and a hatefully dissatisfied look of despair traced in his frozen facial features. I opened my mouth to ask him a couple questions. Nothing too complex; my mind just couldn’t work like that.
“Where are we? What happened?” I asked.
The man with the disjointed expression stared dumbfounded. The questions struck him as perplexing, a complete conundrum. Something jingled around in his skull, and he was only able to drool as an answer. I moved on, trying to find someone lucid enough to respond.
But no one was conscious yet. They all just stood there, absolutely still, gazing off into space like empty husks. I kept catching glances from them as I passed, or at least thought I did. I hoped someone would have a few responses, but these people were no help.
Instinct set in, as if I had done it before, and I reached into my front left pocket and pulled out something. It was called a wallet, or what my brain itemized as such. Flipping through the creased leather, I extracted a driver’s license. Some numbers that didn’t ring a bell were written on the top of the plastic, while others spelled ‘ISS’ and ‘EXP’ were on there as well. It didn’t make a lick of sense, though one detail was hauntingly familiar: the name, Jackson Aims.
A trigger pulled and a shot rang between my ears. This was my name. This was the only piece of information that felt like it fit. Even looking over the picture of myself, or what I could only assume it to be, felt oddly disconnected and unfamiliar.
Placing the license back into the wallet, I rummaged through the rest of the leather pouch. There were just some other pieces of plastic with numbers scribed on them, a few photos of people I didn’t know, and a few dollars. Nothing to help me figure out this infuriating moment in time. Flustered, I returned the bi-fold to the pocket while my mind continued to race with a million needs.
“Hello?” a tiny, shrill voice came calling from over my shoulder. When I turned, there was a girl, just a small thing. She was filthy, beaten and broken. Her tear-soaked eyes emitted a silent plea for help. I wanted to help, but fear for this bizarre new world I was flung into made me cautious. Still, perhaps this girl knew what had happened.
I guardedly approached her.
“Girl,” I blurted out. The words were hard to find in the moment as I struggled with the details. I bent down to a kneeling position so I could look at her directly. “It will be okay. You’re not hurt, are you?”
She shook her head.
“Do you know where we are?”
She just looked down at the ground, telling me what I already knew. I cursed and stepped back. Of course she didn’t know. Just what the hell was going on? Where am I?
That was when she started crying. Not loudly, though, just a soft whimper, as if she was trying to hide it. When I looked back I saw her lip quivering, eyes misting over. Poor thing. How could I be so greedy? Reaching back, I took her by the hand and she didn’t resist.
“Shhhh now, everything will be fine,” I said, partly talking myself down as I tried to gain some control of my emotions. “My name is Jackson. Do you remember yours?” We had to start somewhere. I stared into her eyes, her left eye was slightly darker blue than the other.
“Olivia,” she said, as if she was saying it for the first time. “Olivia Martin.” Her eyes watered more.
I wiped the tears away. Her little body shook with strain and tension. It was hard to watch someone in such a way. To have to fight that natural instinct to shy away from people we don’t know, asking things of us we don’t trust to give them. I was sure that’s what she felt because I felt it too.
“Well, Olivia, how old are you?” I didn’t understand why I asked it, maybe to keep the conversation going or to activate her own memory. She was, after all, the only one that wasn’t mesmerized like all the others, staring off into emptiness. I looked around and saw that not one of the others showed signs of coming out of their stupor. It was so vivid and utterly terrifying, watching these people, their bodies alive yet lifeless.
“Eleven,” Olivia answered.
Olivia surprised me again. Finally we were getting somewhere, albeit with simple questions, but they were small victories. I smiled, wanting to laugh even though I had to blink away the tears of being so lost.
“How old are you?” Olivia asked and gave me the recognition of a delicate smile.
The question brought on a trembling wave that assaulted each one of my senses. A rapid buzzing filtered into my ears and a burning continued down my skin. My brain fell into full overdrive trying to search for an answer. It was right there too, right on the tip of my tongue.
“Twenty-three,” I said, flushed. I felt like I was scorching hot, ready to fall over. It was so bizarre knowing so little about myself. It made me even more terrified.
“You’re sorta… old,” Olivia said with a frown. Her slender hand still gripped mine. It tightened with every passing second. She blinked her blue eyes at me to wipe away her tears. Her blonde, dirty hair flapped in a gentle wind. For being so young, and so scared, the comment was bold enough. An unwilling smile appeared on my face.
“Come along. Let’s see if we can find any friends, huh?” I said.
Olivia nodded in agreement. Standing back up, I twirled around, leaving her little hand attached to mine. Together we walked the crowd, trying to find anyone who could help. But what we had to do was wait. Slowly, the others drifted back to this plane of existence, though no one remembered much of anything beyond their age and name.
When some time had passed, when every person had come back from the brink of undying, I decided that we needed to leave. There was nothing for us here, not in this barren wasteland. Since I seemed to have the most aptitude, I decided to lead the group. Not exactly what I wanted to do, but no one else was capable. So I set out with my ragtag assembly of men and women, children as well, all of them marching behind me.
We stayed in the middle of the cracked, abandoned road, twisting and weaving into the distance. It led us through an unnatural landscape, incomplete and unrecognizable. Buildings destroyed all around, nothing untouched by whatever tragedy occurred. I wanted to call out, to try and find more faces, but it felt wrong to do so. I was afraid to raise my voice in this unfamiliar land. Moreover, there wasn’t a reason to alarm the others just yet, who were still mostly useless and only able to accomplish the slow, meandering walk.
Olivia no longer needed to hold my hand, but stayed within reach. Even in her short time since coming to, she’d grown in strength and resolve. She was willing to help those who didn’t have the power to walk, aiding others with patience and kindness. The environment was what terrorized my thoughts the most. All about us were the results of some great disaster, but we hadn’t a memory of what exactly occurred. Even though my mind couldn’t comprehend any of what I was seeing, my gut told me otherwise, that eventually I would know what I was looking at. We came into a world not our own. We were in some neighborhood where homes were razed, foundations crumbled, and nothing whole. I tried not to pay attention to the background. I had more important things to deal with.