The Perfect State: A Fictional Commentary on Humanity and Politics

The Journey: Chapter 2

Great North American Wasteland, 29 January 2048

9.00 AM, Quent having found supplies in the storage room of the diner headed back to the parked Convoy. Inside the container was all the essentials they required to survive; for a journey which seemed to be impossible at journey's beginning, it was a good start. The container containing the supplies was heavy, Quent could feel it digging into arms.

Reaching the parked Convoy, he saw only one person standing guard outside the cars and that was Mane. Mane said "Ah, that's a good amount of supplies. Did anything happen out of the ordinary?"

Quent replied "Well we are in a poisonous wasteland so nothing is 'out of the ordinary' but yes I sort of did actually, I met a man, sort of man, in the diner as I initially opened it. Seemed there were survivors of the 'Fall of Man'. He led me to a storage room underneath the diner."

Quent stopped short, Mane picking up on the gulp in his throat said: "What went wrong?"

"Well, nothing 'went wrong' but once I shot open the lock and descended into the storage room. I found ten or more decomposing bodies lining the floor of the room. It seemed that there was a nerve gas attack here many years ago because the corpses were heavily decomposed. The man I met, Abraham, I think his name was. One of the bodies was his daughter, It was heart-wrenching stuff including pretty vomit-inducing."

Mane said "It's not easy, I know. I found some pretty disturbing sights when I entered the motel to look for any supplies."

"What supplies did you acquire there?" Mane said in a depressed manner.

"Just alcohol, the motel mini-bars were still full. Surprised actually, I kinda thought in the situation the unlucky people who were here while at the time of the attack you mentioned would turn to drink."

Quent agreed with the sentiment of his sentiment before asking "What alcohol did you get?"

Mane lead him to the boot of his car, once opened he saw a phelora of alcoholic drinks ranging from light beer to spirits like whisky. Quent asked curiously "Don't you think the light beer would have gone off by now?"

"Probably yes but the children need hydration and I don't think their livers could take the harder stuff. It's gonna have to be a risk we take."

He realised that Mane spoke the truth and to be fair to him during the medieval period children drank 'small beer'.

"I'm thirsty admittedly," said Quent.

Mane passed him one of the light beers allocated to him by Mane, Mane had organised the drinks into individual collections based on how much hydration they needed. The can hissed when opened and he put his lips close to the can. First sips began to enter his mouth and it wasn't pleasant. It was warm and probably off, he resisted the urge to spit it out. They could not waste a drop of liquid.

"How did it taste?" enquired Mane.

Quent replied "Bloody awful but that was expected. Check the children need a drink before we head out."

Mane looked confused saying "What about Miss Adelaide?"

"We'll wait for the allotted two hours but after that, we leave as agreed. One of us will have to take her child."

Mane reluctantly agreed that it was the best course of action, every moment spent waiting was a moment of time wasted.

Mane got out four light beers and passed them out to their families. Mane and Quent decided to pack the food supplies into their respective books for the next leg of the journey ahead. Assuming their associate and somewhat friend was dead, they packed it into the boots of their own cars and put Miss Adelaide's one child, Katherine in the back of Mane's car with his son, Milton.

It was nearly past the two hours time allotted to search the town, Quent and Mane standing guard outside their respective cars looked at their watches, it was only three minutes until the allotted time. They gave each other a look of despair, Miss Adelaide had been instrumental in getting the process going to retrieve the folders from the Records; it would be a shame if they had to leave her to fend for herself.

The next three minutes seemed to drag on forever; By the time it was a minute past the allotted time, Quent and Mane had a plan to extend their cars life. They would be using the toolbox in Mane's car remove the half-charged battery from Miss Adelaide's car and store it as a spare in case one of their cars ran out of power. This was most certainly guaranteed death for Miss Adelaide but reaching New Providence was the sole objective, morality would have to take a back seat.

Mane and Quent looked at each other confirming that was what they were going to do. Quent being a self-learnt amateur mechanic grabbed his toolbox. Mane opened the engine compartment of Miss Adelaide's car allowed Quent to do his work. After fifteen minutes or so, the battery was removed from Miss Adelaide's car. With all the wires disconnected, Quent carried the now disconnected battery to his car to store it until it was needed.

They both got in their respective cars and drove off out of the town using the only road through it, the former Main Street. Mane looking back, he could see Miss Adelaide's car and tried to put at the back that she was most likely going to die in the closest thing to hell.

There were only nine hours rounded left of daylight, every moment of that both Mane and Quent would have to keep driving regardless of how tired they felt to cover any reasonable distance. This was not even accounting if they encountered danger if they did encounter danger it would take considerably longer to get a reasonable distance.

Both knew they had to get some sleep and eat soon, the hope was that by sunset they could find another ruined town to rest up in before heading out again into the Great North American Wasteland proper. All this was conjecture, for now, they had just to continue driving and that is what they did. Leaving behind Miss Adelaide to die out of a pure desire to survive.