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False Daybreak on I-90

 Millions of cars. Tens of millions. The number seems impossible, inflated beyond belief like how ancient lost history turned battles between men into battles between his gods. But, it’s true. Tens of millions of these wretched, silent corpses litter the roads and fill the shallow off-side creek beds, all lying still. All silent. All of them memories of a time long vanished. Even the word, car, for these husks sounds funny. A made up thing for a made up people and their dreamlike lives. 


It’s four in the morning, everything still cloaked in purplish darkness as those first tendrils of summer dawn prickle far away. I watch those subtle shades glow, study the prickling outlines of this world come into focus like an artist sketching refines his piece. Realer and realer. Light a cigarette with its satisfying thunking click, the fire dancing vibrant and beautiful and old, so very old. The first triumph of humanity. 


The carcasses of countless cars are around me. It feels like being in a mass grave from some bygone era as moss creeps across the peeling, rusting skins and little colorful birds make nests on so many rotten leather seats. Ashton is another days walk across this road, and yet people once made the journey in hours. Belching metal monsters glittering in the hot summer sun across immaculate black tarmac. I chuckle at the impossibility of it all, the absurdity that these fleets were once anything other than obstacles to navigate around. 


But, I know the truth. I know the sad weight they represent of a dead, almost-vanished past. Over the horizon from the direction I’ve come emerges light— but not dawn, something silent and red, sweeping searchlight beams over the landscape with the deliberation of a predator seeking prey. 


The ships came, and in return, darkness returned to the world. Absolute. I have no context for the words my father spoke, the things that smoked and crashed: computers, modems, cellphones, transformers. Just the truth of a silent world that knows only light from four places: the Moon, the Sun, the Stars— and Them. 


Red light sweeps my way across a nearby lane, and in silence, I make my way into the shadows.

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