Afterwards

"Throw me a line if I reach it in time, I'll meet you up there where the path is straight and high..."



There's water all over Florida. Never mind the whole thing is surrounded by ocean, you can't walk a block without falling in a runoff pond or scummed-over canal. Florida wasn't so much built on top of marshland as it was nestled down in it, a perfect storm of laziness and poor civic planning.

Sgt. Theodore Broach rescued me from the last cleanse. He found me on beach on Long Island, told me about the cleanse that had already come and the one coming up. The last one had cleared New England, he said, and the next one would scrub the rest. The entire east coast north of Athens Georgia would burn for six months, he said. "33 days from now" he said.

33 days to pull hard south on foot, and avoid the bombs and the fire. Long island was an 18 hour car ride from Athens over well-kept interstate pavement, at a carefree 75-80 mph. Going - as we'd have to - on foot, I felt better taking my chances with three weeks of relaxing and a quick nuclear death. I heard TB out politely, told him "thanks, no" and got back to my beaching.

That - by rights - should have ended it, but Broach wasn't having it. He pulled a chaise lounge out to my spot on the beach, threw down his pack, and sat.

There was conversation between us until late that night, and in the end, I left with him. We put almost 1300 miles behind us in 3 weeks, walked the last 100 miles. TB and I spent the next six months in Key West, listening for reports and waiting out a cleanse that never came.

***

Turns out, Broach is actually from Florida. He was raised on the Gulf Coast and knew everything about the shape of the land, how to stay out of sight, and the safest places to hide. He's a talker, is Sarnt. Broach, and he spent the last 300 miles of our run telling me about two things: the water snakes, most of which were "deadly poisonous and fast as herpes", and the cats:

"Cats down south are strange these days" He said in his lazy-sounding whisper of a voice. "Resist the urge to approach them, especial if there's more than one. " A decade of feral generations had apparently altered the genetic purpose of the once- domesticated feline. They'd taken to traveling in packs - "prides" he called them - and they were to be avoided at all costs. "If you do end up crossing paths with one of 'em, resist the urge to run, and for fuck's sake don't get up a tree. They can see and hear much better that you can, and in their world only prey runs. Water - pond, stream, fountain, fucking puddle - whatever there is, you need to get to it. Slow so they don't get suspicious, but fast so you're safe before one of them decides he's hungry. If you can get to water quick enough, you might have a 50/50 chance. "

I didn't believe him, of course. This was a long time ago, when I was still just Danes and he was still just Sarnt. Broach. At this point, by my estimation, he was also the crazy man who'd talked me into an impossible task, and who was now telling me elaborate warnings about evil, predatory house cats. The weirdness of his tale, delivered as it was, in TB's deliberate, emotionless tenor left me weary. Most nights found me shivering and miserable, knowing I should run away as Broach slept, and castigating myself for not having the balls to do it.

By the time we made Florida, worrying about Broach had become a full time job and I'd forgotten all about the bad cats. My partner was a mystery to me back then, and getting weirder by the day. I didn't know him, and I didn't trust him. True, he'd saved my life and given me a reason to go on living, but for all I knew he'd been fattening me up like a game-bird, waiting for his moment to strike.

Bubbling beneath the Broach worries, there was the constant, and growing threat of actual other people. As the days wore on it became clear that folks in the south knew about the coming cleanse, and about the relative safety of the Sunshine State. We saw more functioning human bodies our first day under the Mason/Dixon than we had the entire journey. Mostly, the encounters were at a distance, with neither party hailing the other. As they crawled father south - however - we were actually able to stop and chat.

A former police officer in Dunedin told us they'd start bombing in less than a week.

A woman in a pant suit told them the local McDonald's was plugged in still, and that they had breakfast "all day long now!! Int it great!!?".

A guy in Tampa pulled a gun on us, demanded "loot and a blowjob", then shot poor TB right between the eyes.

The man's aim was true, and it earned him the worst beating one man ever gave to another with an orange plunger dart protruding from his forehead. It was during this beating that Broach and I both had the idea to get the fuck out of Florida.

Our plan was pure simplicity:
We'd break for Alabama and then New Orleans, left on a Friday afternoon with food and supplies stuffed in every pocket. We made 38 miles the first day, and made camp in a town called Brayton Meadow.

***

The weather was perfect that day, and the ground soft with spring. We could have slept in mansions or high rise hotels, but outside seemed so cooperative and accommodating we'd mostly just eat at will, and pass out wherever we lay. We'd done just that in Brayton Meadow when we first heard the pride.

That fucking noise. I'd been fast asleep my first time, but when that insane screaming came blasting down on us I jumped to my feet with my head on a swivel. It was a sound like a violent cat fight, amplified and looped into an echo box and played back at triple-volume. It seemed tangible and mean, less a sound than a force, malevolent and crafty and stalking.

I was terrified. The wails and screams seemed to be all around us, flooding and suffocating the air over our heads. The sound evolved quickly into a waveform of building intensity and punctuated by momentary silences. It was during the silent parts I heard Broach, whispering in my ear like a thought: "The water", he said, annunciating so as to only speak once. With that he turned, and began walking away from me.

***

The previous night, we'd bathed in a nearby drainage ditch filled with clear water that looked almost drinkable. The pipe had been originally purposed as an outflow public early school, but years of neglect had allowed seepage enough to fill a natural pool around the last 50 feet of it's length. The pipe, long buried by the run off, served as a natural causeway running half the length of the pool. I fell in a few steps behind TB and we made for the pond with the hideous yowling getting louder behind us.

***

Tad wasn't running, but he was moving as fast as he could without running. It took all of 60 seconds to get from camp to the water, but when we arrived we saw somebody else had beat us to the spot.

A small girl was standing in the center of our pool at the very tip of the outflow pipe. She looked to be about 10-12 years old, Blonde-headed, fully clothed, and staring up past us at the oncoming cat stampede.

The cats. Whatever I'd been expecting, it couldn't have come close to the real deal. The word "Cat" is not effective nomenclature for the thing that these beasts had become. The years since the wars and the cleansing had honed the breed into a super-efficient predator. They were proud, these cats, and looked bigger around the chest and hindquarters than normal cats. The pride was like watching a freight train grind past at a busy Florida crossing. You kept thinking it could go no further, that nothing could be so long and still move, but yet there it went. The cats were scarred and mangled and maimed. Most of them were fighting and clawing at eachother as they went and a few were bleeding. I saw at least two with missing legs, and one with no hind legs, dragging his stumps in the dusty soil and fending off swipes and scratches the whole way.

They were making their way down to the water hole to investigate further, as TB and I walked out on the pipe. The girl was still facing us, still staring at the cats, still remaining silent.

Within seconds, thousands of yowling, raging cats had surrounded the pond, stacking up 20-30 cats deep, and completely encircled the three of us in the center of the water.

I turned carefully to watch the two tendrils of mobbing feline converge, like a line of fire ants mauling a sugar cube. They were walking in near-perfect rows of ten and sounding off. The cries had become an evil, black chattering that - at times - seemed more in my own head than an actual sound. For a few seconds I felt sure I'd pass out. TB grabbed at me from behind: "Easy duder" he said, barley distinguishable over the screeching parade, "don't wanna leave anybody..."

He stopped short. I was turning around to face him when he gave my elbow a squeeze, gesturing with his glance toward the banks of the pool and a giant water moccasin, wending and twisting it's way towards us on the pipe. At that first glance, the snake couldn't have been less than 20-30 yards away, but it closed -almost instantly - to within 20 feet. I felt instinct taking over, demanding that my feet run, hide, anything to get clear of the danger. I began to move, fighting my own consciousness for command of my arms and legs, when the girl spoke the only words I'd ever hear her say:

"I'm Going". With that, she jumped off the pipe into the muck, and started pulling hard for the waiting cats. As she broke, I heard TB behind me saying "fuck fuck fuck fuck" in a much louder whisper than before.