The Promised Land
The next day we rolled out in the small hours, while the dark still hung thick and heavy over the land. Headlights cut a narrow path through the pitch-black Nevada desert as we pushed southwest, those twin beams our only guide. Beyond the glass there was nothing but endless sand.
Once, a night like this would have poured stars across the sky. Now it was the bottomless dark of deep space — the kind of black that made you swear the road ran straight off the edge of the earth and into a black hole.
And so the last leg of the journey toward California began. In that vast, silent landscape, the radio was the only company that kept the boredom at bay.
A faint smile found its way onto my face as their hopeful chatter spilled through the speaker. I turned the dial on the AM radio. The thought came to me, as it always did, that simply being together was a great comfort.
From the faint, crackling signal, a worn-out host's voice spilled through the speakers.
I switched the radio off. Listening any longer wouldn't change a thing. The ice of law and order had melted down to something thin as paper. All that remained was the most American method there was: looking after yourself.
I don't know how many hours we ran while those thoughts turned over in my head. Then a roadside sign swept through the headlight beams — and Dave's cheer exploded over the radio.
The channel filled with a giddiness we hadn't heard in a long time. The promised land. The last hope. The relief of finally setting foot on that soil wrapped itself around every one of us.
We decided to take a late lunch and a rest at a massive truck stop on the outskirts of Bakersfield — the last waypoint before Dave's aunt's farm.
Midway through the meal, Mike spoke up as if he had good news to share.
"Last night I miraculously got through to my boy."
"Really?"
Every pair of eyes at the table turned to him. Mike's face held a mixture of relief and pride.
"Yeah. He's coming to join us. Said he'd take a day to get ready and leave Tempe tomorrow morning, or the morning after. So once we get to the Central Valley farm, I'll do a little maintenance and then go bring him back."
It seemed Mike had decided there was no hope left in Arizona either. I asked him,
"Where did you arrange to meet?"
"Three places. First is Kingman, Arizona. Second and third are the outskirts of Las Vegas, and the highway rest stop at Needles, California."
"..."
"We wait one day at each point. We only move to the next if we make contact with each other."
Hearing that, I thought of the promise I had first made with Dave. I had no way of knowing whether Mike had taken a page from our book, but it was a way of not losing each other in a world where nothing was certain.
With the destination so close, everyone was restless. We pushed on again. This was the last stretch. It really was.
When we had nearly reached the farm, I picked up the radio.
The last truck stop on the outskirts of Bakersfield. The atmosphere there was nothing like the desolation we had come through in the north.
The gas stations were limiting sales to ten gallons, as if they had all agreed on it beforehand, but the restaurant was bustling, and though the store shelves had their gaps, they still held a decent selection. More than anything, there was still hope in people's faces — a little room to breathe. Their expressions were nothing like the taciturn Canadians we'd left behind. It felt like we had crossed into another country.
We were just about to take a table in the restaurant when Dave came over, grinning from ear to ear. Two strapping young men stood beside him. They looked at me with healthy, slightly bashful smiles and said hello.
"Chan, these are my little cousins. This here's Jake, the oldest, and Cody's the second."
"We've heard a lot about you."
As it turned out, the two of them had been sent into Bakersfield on an errand for Dave's uncle — farm equipment parts and daily supplies — and had stopped here for a bit before heading home.
The sheer unlikelihood of the coincidence set everyone cheering. Frank, coming back from the store, shook his head in admiration.
"Man. California really is California. Look at these people's faces — nothing like the folks up north."
I figured we couldn't show up at Dave's aunt's place empty-handed either. I decided to pick up a few gifts at the store. But when it came time to actually choose something, nothing felt right. In the end, standing in the middle of the crowded shop, I grabbed a few packs of toilet paper and dumped them in the cart like I was fighting someone for them.
Dave burst out laughing when he saw it.
"Toilet paper. Honestly, in times like these, that's the finest gift there is. Hahaha."
"Yeah. In Korea, when someone moves into a new house, there's a custom of gifting toilet paper. It's a housewarming thing. Doesn't quite fit the situation, but it just popped into my head, so I grabbed them."
With that last rest behind us, we finally set out for the farm. The destination everyone had been waiting for.
Watching the column of vehicles, I had the strange sense that hope and anticipation were rolling along in every turning wheel.
Dave's cousins' pickup led the way.
We left the highway and followed a well-kept two-lane road, and the world beyond the windshield transformed. Almond and pistachio orchards stretched to the horizon, irrigation canals running between them like a network of veins. To the east, the great peaks of the Sierra Nevada stood like a folding screen. To the west, gentle hills drew the line of the sky.
When we finally passed through the massive arched iron gate at the farm's entrance, I couldn't help but stare. Fields without end. Orchards tended with care. And in the distance, a vast warehouse and the farmhouse itself.
Looking out at that landscape, I thought: farming the way they used to would be hard in the Great Winter — but with land this wide, and whatever was stockpiled in those warehouses, we could last a few years. Easily.
A feeling I had forgotten how to name rose up in my chest. Hope.
And then it happened.
The pickup leading our column — Jake and Cody's — suddenly surged forward like a thing gone mad. Tires tore at the dirt, throwing up a cloud of dust, and the truck slammed to a halt in the farmhouse yard as if it had been dropped there.
Before I could even make sense of it, the two young men were out of the truck and running. And a moment later, what tore from their throats was not a cheer. It was a howl — raw, animal grief.
I threw the truck into park and bolted outside. The others did the same. We saw it when we reached the front yard — a scene of utter ruin.
In the middle of a well-kept green lawn, a boy who looked to be in his late teens lay fallen, a bullet in his chest. The life had already gone out of him. His empty eyes stared up at the ash-gray sky with something like accusation.
And there, at the front porch. The man who had been master of this farm, its patriarch — Dave's uncle — lay collapsed on the steps, an old pump-action shotgun still clenched in his fist. The gunshot wounds in his chest were plain to see. He had fought to the last to defend his home and his family.
And behind him, through the wide-open front door, lay Dave's aunt. She had come running out to help her husband, it seemed, and been cut down for it. A small revolver lay limp beside her hand.
The whole scene looked like a single frame cut from a battlefield, time frozen around it. A peaceful farm afternoon. A sudden raid. And the desperate fight that followed.
"Ah, no... No. No!"
Dave saw it and screamed, running toward them. His mother, Eleanor, who had been following behind him, sank to her knees on the spot, crying her sister's name.
"Catherine! My sister! Aaaaah!"
She wailed as if she were on the verge of fainting, and that sound — the sound of our last hope shattering to pieces — rang tragically through the quiet farm.
We stood frozen where we were, unable to find a single word.
Frank's wife Sarah and Raven ran to Eleanor's side, wrapping her in their arms and weeping with her. Dave pulled his two younger cousins into his arms and broke down with them. Frank went to them too, and clapped a silent hand against his friend's back.
I stood there myself, staring, able to do nothing at all.
I had seen plenty of death. I had watched comrades fall right in front of me on the battlefield. But this was different. This was not a warrior's honorable end. This was death at the very threshold of hope — hollow, bewildering, and utterly without meaning.
In that instant, a memory I had buried flashed through my mind like a lightning strike. The wreckage of a shattered airliner on a television screen. And inside it, the last image of my parents.
My heart went cold. My breath started to come short. The ghost of PTSD was lifting its head again, here on this blood-soaked farm.
I was still standing there, staring at nothing, when Mike came up beside me and gripped my shoulder hard.
His low, steady voice pulled me back to the present, just barely. I drew a deep breath and tried, by force of will, to find my composure again.
While everyone else was lost in grief, unable to move, only Gunner was in motion.
M4 in hand, he moved through the farm like a scout working an enemy position, examining every trace left in the dirt. His eyes had pressed the sorrow down beneath a layer of rage. What filled them now was cold analysis, and a watchfulness for whatever threat was still coming.
After some time had passed, Gunner came to me and reported what he had found.
"Judging by the tire tracks, at least five or six vehicles came through."
He jerked his chin toward the massive fuel depot in the distance.
"No real traces around the warehouse or the water tower. They had one target: that fuel depot. Signs they pumped fuel out of it. Looking at the spill on the ground... it hasn't been dry for all that long."
Mike, who had been listening, asked,
"How much fuel is left in the tank?"
"The flow meter on the side still reads over eighty percent. Fifteen-thousand-gallon tank. The kind a tanker truck fills direct."
"..."
"A handful of jerrycans wouldn't have made a dent."
At that, Mike let the words out low, almost to himself.