It's been weeks now... Maybe months...
No one can really remember when we first stopped moving. Some maintain that we were moving slowly up until a few days ago. I guess I'd like to hold on to that thought. But I'm not sure I know what to believe anymore.
All we know is that traffic stopped moving, and we were all trapped on this strip of desert highway. Nothing around for miles and no hope of driving around the blockage. The sand beside the road is a death trap. Along the edges of the highway the cars that pulled off are stuck in the sand. Peeling in the sun. Whole lines of them, like grave stones along the road home. The occupants - driven to the terrible decision by impatiens or desperation - are squatting outside their vehicles. Some are begging for food. Some worse. All can be seen with an outstretched arm and a thumb pointing skyward. Waiting for the line to start moving.
Our engines haven't been run in weeks, save for the few cars that were trading food for the luxury of spending gas on AC. Most people are too low on food and water for luxuries now. I had enough to get home four days ago. With what I've had to trade for food, I might just make it to the outskirts of my burb and will have to push the car the rest of the way.
Personally, I don't care if I ever see this wretched thing again. If I ever make it out of this terrible machine I'm buy a bicycle and starting a farm. If my job didn't fire me weeks ago, I'm sure they will after I explain that I had to use the monthly reports for fire kindling and that my laptop melted in the sun.
I don't care about that anymore anyway. All I care about now is summoning the will to go on for another day. There is no way out of this line of cars today. No escape. We've all settled into the idea that we are trapped here until something changes. Until we start to move again. And until that happens, we wait.
Robber tribes line the exits 20 miles up the road. People who have been sitting in traffic for too long. People too long removed from society. People who have forgotten who they are. Anyone left here is cut off from their homes. Anyone left will just have to wait until traffic starts moving again.
My cellphone died 3 days ago. Anyone with any battery life left is keeping it to talk to their loved ones. My wife has been trapped inside our apartment on the edge of some shitty burb ever since we stopped. The Traffic trapped her too. As far as we know, the roads are frozen everywhere. Some people say there's flowing traffic way up north, but that's no good to us down here.
I don't know if she's still ok. The first day we talked for hours. We were down to once a day by the last time my battery ran out of charge. Last time she went to the store to barter for food it was pretty much picked clean. The government had somehow managed to keep the water and electricity flowing. Tomorrow I will run the car again long enough to charge the phone for a call. To see if there is any word on when the Traffic Crisis will end.
When we last spoke she said the military was working on a plan to start relieving traffic, but they were having trouble getting their generals together. Monster trucks had been commandeered (some even commissioned) as personal transport for military command that was off base at the time. It was cheaper than using tanks to retrieve their command. Seemed to me they were shooting themselves in the foot trampling cars on the road, but what do I know? At this point any glimmer of hope is worth holding onto.
Somewhere there has to be someone with a plan to relieve this congestion. Somewhere there has to be someone who can save us from the traffic.
We don't know how it started. No one has received word of any major catastrophes. Not even some crazy like a statistically impossible coinciding of accidents! A few fender benders, but they were all caused by people coming to abrupt stop in the first place. It's like, all of the sudden. There were just too many cars on the road. … Like the roads gave up.
I heard a group of people a couple mile behind us took to road worship. Some primitive form of polytheism where the god of roads has grown angry and must be appeased. They coat themselves in loose asphalt to show their devotion. Everyday they whipped themselves with pieces of ***rubber pavement filler *** as repentance and refused to walk on the road except to pray for forgiveness. Some kiss and hugged the road. I've even hear of a renegade off shoot sect that got a little more frisky with potholes. The christian fundamentalists a few cars over scoffed at this, but I didn't mind. What harm could it do really?
A week or so after we first stopped I though about pulling off at the next exit, and taking a back road. But all the main exits are under construction. The ones that weren't, lead down dead end country roads. I walked half a mile to the next exit and saw line of cars backed up through those roads too. Refugees from those cars had pooled at the rain gutter by the exit. The rumors were that cars up that way who weren't under attack from bears had reached the towns only to find fundamentalists cults and inbred cannibals. I saw human bite marks on the forearm of a little girl who asked me for food. I passed her the candy bar I had in my pocket, turned on my heels and went back to the car.
When I got back that day it was pandemonium near my car. One of my neighbors had tried to end his life by huffing fumes from his exhaust pipe. Several people were holding him down and trying to stop him. Some where saying they should let him end it and split his supplies. One older woman was complaining about the waste of gas. “In this economy!” she exclaimed.
That was weeks ago. Since then a whole new economy sprung up. One where food and water are traded for what services can be provided. It is close to the end now. No one is trading.
I had to turn Benz-shit (as I call him)
away again today. The middle-aged silver haired upper management
shit who had cut me off in his Benz (along with the four cars in
front of me) found that the ground he gained made little difference.
Worse, he discovered that his cellphone port, GPS, and collection of
sports and business magazines had little street value. At one point
he had tried his hand at a 'take charge' approach with his neighbors.
Tried to organize a scavenging party and to get everyone to pool
their resources. Unfortunately for him, he was surround by people
who knew what kind of person he'd been before Traffic stopped.
People who watched him slow two or three lanes of traffic, yo-yo-ing
back and forth trying to pass people and cutting people off for one
extra place in line. People like that made traffic worse on the
best of days. When we stopped he was regarded as ** bad Omen ** as
someone who was in some way responsible even if there is no logical
reason to think this.
No one really cared much what he had to say now. I'm a little ashamed to say it, but I felt almost happy when I watched him proposition Crazy Bob for a part of a SlimJack BeefSticks.
Crazy Bob was not a survival nut by any means. Those guys had all taken their parties and gotten moving by the end of the first night. Crazy Bob was simply a man with a fondness for SlimJacks and a pick-up full of empty 1.5 Liter BigSwig soda cups. His wild hair, wild beard and wild eyes earned grimaces that 'decent folk' reserve for homeless people talking to telephone posts. I first saw that look in a neighbors eyes when he pulled a SlimJack from his box full and started to pretend he had to wrangle it to the ground like a fresh caught meal. He triumphantly picked up the subdued beef stick, smiled an expectant smile and proclaimed “MMM SlimJack. There's good eatin' on one of those”. The joke became his trade mark. I think he liked watching people who had treated it like a terrible joke now do their best to make their laughs sound sincere (desperately hoping he would toss the wrapper in their direction).
I was quite fortunate that he took a liking to me early on. I had 4 empty large energy drink cans in my car and, as luck would have it, a BPA free water jug that I had stolen from the bottle repository at work. The water in my building is packed full of salt to keep the pipes from rusting over. We have to fill up water from a tap in the laundry room. The jug would have made life so much easier. On the second day, I traded Bob part of an apple I had left over from my lunch for some of his last remaining big gulp. Many people were put off by his decision that “Seeing as how it was the apocalypse an' all, pants are now optional,” as he put it. I didn't care. I lived with musicians in college. I'd seen worse.
By being one of the only people willing to deal with Bob I'd made a powerful ally as it turned out. We talked about what we had to trade and I mentioned the jug. His eyes widened. He showed my his Big Gulp collection. We all saw the rain coming a day later, but Bob's cups allowed us to more quickly fill the jug. By the end of the rain I saw two more people give up wearing pants as part of a not so subtle attempt to make friendly with Bob.
It hasn't rained in weeks, and I've stopped trading what water I have left, except to Juddy and Tracey. Tracey was a skinny rabid recovering meth addict. She had missing teeth and the back sunken eyes of someone who rips off ears and worse if she's riled up. Juddy was whatever the female equivalent of a Bear is. Bear-ess? Her Harley was tricked out and she had the leather jacket, skull stomping boots and chops to match.
One night early into the great drought a gang of four men came to my car and started smashing my windows in an attempt to get at the Jug. Tracey and Juddy woke up from their hammock-cuddle on their motorcycle and proceeded to kick the living shit out of the smash-and-grabbers (one of whom I'm pretty certain was Benz-shit). After that day, Bob and I agreed it would be best to have them as our body guards. Bob wanted to make it mandatory that they too gave up pants. I suggested that that might be a bad idea in a fight. Juddy went pants-less for a while all the same, but soon found that Tracey preferred that pants-less time to be a Juddy and Tracey only time. They are really quite sweet in their own scary way.
Two different muscle-men have challenged them for the right to guard the water. I wish I could say it was a thunder-dome affair, but they went down pretty quickly. A third time I watched a half-starved Russian whose shirt proclaimed we was very confident of his SYSTEMA fighters training approach us. Tracey shot him in the head before he had a chance to even proposition us. No one else tried after that.
There was a not-all-that-surprising number of guns floating about, but they never bothered us. Most of them were held by people who had decided it was finally OK to let their white-supremacist flags fly now that the “Jew-controled liberal media” and the “Obama-SS” were no longer a prohibitive factor. It seemed to them an entirely justified practice to use their firearms (purchased 'to protect their families from black muggers and terrorists”) to mug the few helpless black drivers in the area and summarily execute Mohammed Razza for the crime of being a Muslim. This of course being 'payback for 9/11 and racism against white people'.
Once they realized there really wasn't much left to steal from minorities, however, they turned to robbing 'Unamericans' (anyone with an Obama sticker on their car) and 'race-traitors' (any one with a rap or R&B CD in their car). They never bothered me or Bob. During their reign of terror Tracey and Juddy sat with a knife ready to split the water bottle if there was a problem. Eventually the White-Terror shot themselves to death over whether or not New Country was real country music. The last man to bleed out apparently sighed a pathetic “It's not!” with his last gasping breath. After that, the few remaining guns were kept in case of raiding parties, but no one really wanted to use them.
Raiding parties had been a problem on the second week, but most had passed on to greener pastures. These days the only outsiders coming to our section of the line are the cannibals of the hills who come down to feed off of the dead. I've seen some people leave with them lately. Apparently, they have a lake with drinkable water and if you help them carry bodies, you can live off of whatever fish and squirrels you can catch, if you don't like the taste of people. Some of the refugees have moved closer to us, claiming that people where being taken. Mostly, though, they just carry out the dead. None of them happy about it. Some have a look in their eyes that I imagine a mortician would have. Others just slip in and out apologetically, like someone collecting empty bottles from people drinking in a city park.
No one has the strength to bury their dead, and sometimes the cannibals will trade water if a person is still grieving and promise their bones will be laid to rest properly (all be it without any marrow left in them) in a cemetery on a hill. Old Lucy on the corner said she'd like us to use her to barter for water for the coopers when she goes. Said she'd take comfort in knowing she'd get a proper burial and that she'd live on in all the people who survive the Traffic-pocalypse.
People around us have started to give up entirely. Guess it's hard for them to imagine there's much left to live for, given that we've spent so many months of it stuck in traffic.
...I can't let that take me over. Can't let this Traffic beat me. I have to keep hope alive. Hope that I will make it home to my wife. Hope that we will start to move again. Hope that humanity won't end here – in a line of cars.
No one really cared much what he had to say now. I'm a little ashamed to say it, but I felt almost happy when I watched him proposition Crazy Bob for a part of a SlimJack BeefSticks.
Crazy Bob was not a survival nut by any means. Those guys had all taken their parties and gotten moving by the end of the first night. Crazy Bob was simply a man with a fondness for SlimJacks and a pick-up full of empty 1.5 Liter BigSwig soda cups. His wild hair, wild beard and wild eyes earned grimaces that 'decent folk' reserve for homeless people talking to telephone posts. I first saw that look in a neighbors eyes when he pulled a SlimJack from his box full and started to pretend he had to wrangle it to the ground like a fresh caught meal. He triumphantly picked up the subdued beef stick, smiled an expectant smile and proclaimed “MMM SlimJack. There's good eatin' on one of those”. The joke became his trade mark. I think he liked watching people who had treated it like a terrible joke now do their best to make their laughs sound sincere (desperately hoping he would toss the wrapper in their direction).
I was quite fortunate that he took a liking to me early on. I had 4 empty large energy drink cans in my car and, as luck would have it, a BPA free water jug that I had stolen from the bottle repository at work. The water in my building is packed full of salt to keep the pipes from rusting over. We have to fill up water from a tap in the laundry room. The jug would have made life so much easier. On the second day, I traded Bob part of an apple I had left over from my lunch for some of his last remaining big gulp. Many people were put off by his decision that “Seeing as how it was the apocalypse an' all, pants are now optional,” as he put it. I didn't care. I lived with musicians in college. I'd seen worse.
By being one of the only people willing to deal with Bob I'd made a powerful ally as it turned out. We talked about what we had to trade and I mentioned the jug. His eyes widened. He showed my his Big Gulp collection. We all saw the rain coming a day later, but Bob's cups allowed us to more quickly fill the jug. By the end of the rain I saw two more people give up wearing pants as part of a not so subtle attempt to make friendly with Bob.
It hasn't rained in weeks, and I've stopped trading what water I have left, except to Juddy and Tracey. Tracey was a skinny rabid recovering meth addict. She had missing teeth and the back sunken eyes of someone who rips off ears and worse if she's riled up. Juddy was whatever the female equivalent of a Bear is. Bear-ess? Her Harley was tricked out and she had the leather jacket, skull stomping boots and chops to match.
One night early into the great drought a gang of four men came to my car and started smashing my windows in an attempt to get at the Jug. Tracey and Juddy woke up from their hammock-cuddle on their motorcycle and proceeded to kick the living shit out of the smash-and-grabbers (one of whom I'm pretty certain was Benz-shit). After that day, Bob and I agreed it would be best to have them as our body guards. Bob wanted to make it mandatory that they too gave up pants. I suggested that that might be a bad idea in a fight. Juddy went pants-less for a while all the same, but soon found that Tracey preferred that pants-less time to be a Juddy and Tracey only time. They are really quite sweet in their own scary way.
Two different muscle-men have challenged them for the right to guard the water. I wish I could say it was a thunder-dome affair, but they went down pretty quickly. A third time I watched a half-starved Russian whose shirt proclaimed we was very confident of his SYSTEMA fighters training approach us. Tracey shot him in the head before he had a chance to even proposition us. No one else tried after that.
There was a not-all-that-surprising number of guns floating about, but they never bothered us. Most of them were held by people who had decided it was finally OK to let their white-supremacist flags fly now that the “Jew-controled liberal media” and the “Obama-SS” were no longer a prohibitive factor. It seemed to them an entirely justified practice to use their firearms (purchased 'to protect their families from black muggers and terrorists”) to mug the few helpless black drivers in the area and summarily execute Mohammed Razza for the crime of being a Muslim. This of course being 'payback for 9/11 and racism against white people'.
Once they realized there really wasn't much left to steal from minorities, however, they turned to robbing 'Unamericans' (anyone with an Obama sticker on their car) and 'race-traitors' (any one with a rap or R&B CD in their car). They never bothered me or Bob. During their reign of terror Tracey and Juddy sat with a knife ready to split the water bottle if there was a problem. Eventually the White-Terror shot themselves to death over whether or not New Country was real country music. The last man to bleed out apparently sighed a pathetic “It's not!” with his last gasping breath. After that, the few remaining guns were kept in case of raiding parties, but no one really wanted to use them.
Raiding parties had been a problem on the second week, but most had passed on to greener pastures. These days the only outsiders coming to our section of the line are the cannibals of the hills who come down to feed off of the dead. I've seen some people leave with them lately. Apparently, they have a lake with drinkable water and if you help them carry bodies, you can live off of whatever fish and squirrels you can catch, if you don't like the taste of people. Some of the refugees have moved closer to us, claiming that people where being taken. Mostly, though, they just carry out the dead. None of them happy about it. Some have a look in their eyes that I imagine a mortician would have. Others just slip in and out apologetically, like someone collecting empty bottles from people drinking in a city park.
No one has the strength to bury their dead, and sometimes the cannibals will trade water if a person is still grieving and promise their bones will be laid to rest properly (all be it without any marrow left in them) in a cemetery on a hill. Old Lucy on the corner said she'd like us to use her to barter for water for the coopers when she goes. Said she'd take comfort in knowing she'd get a proper burial and that she'd live on in all the people who survive the Traffic-pocalypse.
People around us have started to give up entirely. Guess it's hard for them to imagine there's much left to live for, given that we've spent so many months of it stuck in traffic.
...I can't let that take me over. Can't let this Traffic beat me. I have to keep hope alive. Hope that I will make it home to my wife. Hope that we will start to move again. Hope that humanity won't end here – in a line of cars.
