What Remains Here

Chapter 3

October 11

We were supposed to be back in a day, all the backups in my backpack only for the worst emergencies.

But it's a good thing that Mom insisted on bringing all these supplies because we're trapped in an abandoned home, hiding in the darkest room so that the light from the lamps wouldn't seep out through the slits in the shades and turn this house into a lighthouse. Right now, Dad and I are sleeping in one corner while Caspian and Tim are in another one with Caspian giving me a weird look as I'm writing in my journal. We were both assigned to do night watch, not for threats outside but for those inside, and there's this odd, dark tension slicing between us that broke some rapport that we had earlier.

The morning of the journey started fairly disastrously. It turns out that Dad didn't check the bicycle wheels, so when we tried pedaling the bike, it moved unevenly, the tires partially deflated and lumpy. We had a bicycle pump, but the only issue is that it's electrical and we only had not much storage in the batteries left that we had originally planned to use to keep the bright lights in the greenbox running for as long as possible.

"We can cancel the trip," Dad said, looking at our somewhat sagging plants. The growth of the mustards had badly slowed down ever since the full-day lighting system collapsed with the return of the ash storms.

"You're going," Mom said. "We need to think long term. We've got many more peas and mustard seeds to replant in case this batch doesn't flower, but the solar panels, the possibility of expanding, are just much more valuable. Take whatever is remaining in the batteries and pump the bikes."

"Are you sure?" Dad said, as he slowly hooked up the clips to the lead acid batteries and put the plug of the bike pump in front of the socket, not plugged in out of fear of sucking out excess energy.

"Let's do this," Mom said. "I'll help."

Then Dad nodded and plugged in the bike pump, and immediately stuck it into one of the wheels, the machine making a loud sound that reverberated throughout the garage as it inflated the bike wheels. We were committed to go on this journey. There was no turning back after that point, no way to convert the electricity flowing through the pump back into the battery.

Because that would take a while, I decided to walk to my room to pick out a paperback in case the journey took longer than expected. Just as I entered the room, May ambushed me, fake attacking me with a piece of cardboard that she wielded as a sword.

"Bam!" she said. "You're dead now."

"It's a piece of cardboard," I said, turning around and giving her a weird look.

"Well you would be if it was a sword," May said. "You have to be prepared all the time when you're outside. The people outside are crazy."

"You're crazy," I said and she rolled her eyes.

"Where's your knife?" she said. "I know that Mom gave you one."

"My backpack," I said, pointing behind me. "Front pocket."

"You're the crazy one," she said. "Why aren't you carrying it around you? You should always have it in your pocket."

She went and rummaged through my backpack, pushing aside the socks and matches stored in the front pocket as she attempted finding the knife.

"Careful," I said. "I don't want to be stabbed or lit on fire."

"You're the one that needs to be careful," May said as she handed me the knife in a faux-leather sheath that was fashioned in the early morning by Grandma out of one of Dad's old jackets from his thirties when it was cool. "You know how to fight with a knife?"

I didn't even get the chance to open my mouth before she continued talking. "Remember, try poking people's eyeballs. Or their brain. Try to stab a bunch too since the knife will go super deep and they'll, like, bleed out and die, you know. That's how it works in video games."

"I don't think that's how it works," I said. "I'm pretty sure you're supposed to slash since stabbing only targets on specific places and you get off balance. Also, aiming for the head seems too hard when you can aim at their upper body--"

"Okay, we get it," she said. "You're the expert at this. Just don't die. It's gonna be embarrassing to put on your gravestone that you died from very mysterious reasons."

"Wow, is that literally the only reason you don't want me to die?" I said sarcastically.

"Well, obviously," she said jokingly as there was a knock on the room's door.

We turned back to see Mira coming in, and May turned towards me. "Wow, you're like a person that's dying in the hospital. Like everyone literally wants to meet with you."

Mira and I exchanged a glance, the memories of the couple that died both collectively flashing through our minds, and as May left the room, Mira walked up to me and handed me a rubber keychain figurine.

"My lucky pikachu from, like, third grade," I said, looking at it. "Where'd you find it?"

"In mysterious places," Mira said, making "ooh" sounds, as if she were parodying a phantom, and we both shared a laugh. "More like at the bottom of that weird drawer on the fruit basket cart where we dump things. I'm surprised Mom and Dad haven't emptied and sorted it yet to be honest."

There was a moment of silence between before I said, "You know I've confessed all that I can--"

"Yeah," she said before brushing a loose strand of hair from her face. "I know. I've actually got things to let you know. Last night, I know that this sounds obvious, but I realized that it might be the last time that I see you too--"

"No, I get it," I said. "I guess I felt the same way too but sometime else."

I think my interjection confused her a bit, her eyebrows furrowing and whatever she was about to say being delayed for a few moments, probably because my statement was vague. I guess I was just thinking about how I felt on the day that Charles left, but I couldn't bring myself to say those words. I didn't need my mouth tainting his name anymore.

"Neal," she said. "I just want you to know your own worth. Even though the world has collapsed, you've kept your compassion and generosity, and that's what we'll need if we're to build the world back up again. You and Dad have got this, so don't let the world out there change the best parts of you."

"Cool pep-talk," I said while blushing a bit, and Mira looked a little hurt because I kinda sounded sarcastic even though I was mostly being sincere. "I really mean it. I guess, I don't know, I was just surprised since it was a bit random."

"Look, I can tell you're still down from..." she said, the empty space conveying the person on both of our minds. "And I just want you to at least get a push in the right direction, so that you can at least stop blaming yourself and know that you did your best and you'll continue to do good. Dad isn't the best at this kind of stuff, so I wanted you to know this from me."

"Thanks," I said, and I was going to say more, but Dad's holler from the garage, telling me that it was time to leave, disrupted my train of thought, as a silence set in.

"I love you," she said as I was about to step out of the door.

I paused for a moment. Those words sounded so strange coming from her, even if they're exactly something that she'd say, the honesty dripping from her voice. But I was frozen, unlike how I was when Charles said that to me, because it was just so unexpected and expected at the same time. What was I supposed to say back to her when she threw this emotional bomb at me without warning or build-up? The moments stretched for an eternity until I mustered up a tepid, "Same here."

Mira and I both walked to the garage, where May, Mom, Grandma, and Grandpa were all waiting for me. On the short walk there, I tried finding something inside me to elaborate on my curt response and pull up more emotion, but it's just this idea of love that held me back. It's just too weighty and too meaningful and too tinged with subtle loss.

Dad and I double checked our backpacks, making sure that we brought all of the usual supplies along with the backpacks that were going to store all the solar supplies and yarn that Mom braided together all night to form a tight-knit rope that could be useful for tie the backpacks to the bikes to relieve some pressure from our backs.

We only had two bikes that worked and were pumped, so the Cooper (and later, I found out, the Coopers) had to ride a scooter, a small one that May and I used in middle school. We brought an extra in case one of our bike tires burst, and Dad helped fold them into our backpacks to make transportation easier, not like we had to bike far before taking the scooters back out. Still, it made our grand exit more graceful, I guess.

When we got on our bikes and were just about to leave, everyone spoke at the same time, their farewell messages blurring into a blob of sound.

"Stay safe," Mom said.

"You all got this," Mira shouted.

"Donut die," May said. "Sorry, I'm super hungry."

"Zai jian," Grandma and Grandpa said, which means goodbye in Chinese.

When I looked back, I saw all of them waving, and as I moved further away, I saw how washed out and skeletal we looked, our bodies slowly resembling the trees lining the streets, a manicured, ash-streaked petrified forest. I thought that the clouds would at least break for just a moment so that a streak of sunlight could cut through the haze and we'd disappear into the sun. That would be too poetic for reality though.

We biked down the road to the Hunters home, where I could see Tim and Caspian standing outside as they gave us a wave. When we parked our bicycles, I looked back and noticed that we had kicked up clouds of ash, fogging the path back, like the universe was telling me that there was no turning back.

"Where are our bikes?" Tim asked.

"What's he doing here?" Dad said and pointed at Caspian. "We agreed that it would be just three."

"We want to get as much as equipment as we can," Tim said. "I know that you don't like this change of plans, but how can we let each other know last minute changes without phones, you know?"

He tried playing that last part off in this sort-of jokey way, but Dad's eyebrows just furrowed more deeply. He sighed, burying his face in his hand, before using his growly, low-voice. "If you guys pull off anything, you'll regret it."

"We won't," Tim said. "We're just decent people trying to get by, just like your--"

"Good," Dad said, as he stooped down and unzipped the backpack while pulling out the scooter. "I only brought enough food for three, so you two need to share. As for your bikes, we didn't have enough, so you're going to have to use these scooters."

I pulled out another scooter and failed to mimic how Dad unfolded it, so I had to wait until he had finished setting up Tim's scooter. I crossed my arms and stood away from Dad because I was still mad at him for the stunt he pulled yesterday, and when he looked at me while unfolding my scooter, I could almost see a smirk on his face, the trademark arrogant smile hidden under two layers of masks. Or maybe it was just my imagination since I'm thinking of reasons to stay mad to motivate myself to keep avenging Charles.

Once he set everything up, Dad grabbed two empty backpacks and handed them to Tim and Caspian before looking at Tim. "So lead the way now."

"I've got a couple of routes pathed out," Tim said. "The big question is will we be taking the highways or not. They're quicker and more empty--"

"We'll do residential," Dad said, instinctually going against whatever Tim said. "There's no harm in taking a detour."

"It'll be around 15 miles longer," Tim said. "We might not make it back--"

"We're taking the longer route."

"Okay," Tim said, opening up a journal that held a list of street names and directions. "Let's go."

And so we set off, the tires of our bikes crunching on the gritty ash while the scooters clanged with every crack in the road, the sound echoing throughout the empty sprawl of the neighborhood. Even though the bikes were a lot faster, we had to pedal slowly so that Tim and Caspian would be able to keep up, maybe moving at around 10 or so miles per hour, which is basically a crawl compared to cars. But life would be too easy if we still had access to cars.

The first half an hour or so was quiet. It wasn't funeral quiet with the smothering somber attitude of the early days of the tidal tsunamis that caught the unaware beachgoers, nor was it this uncomfortable silence when no one wants to say anything but have to say something just to maintain the atmosphere of conversation. This was a fresh-air (ironic given the the ash-soaked air), nervous with anticipation quiet, the kind where any conversation would steal the novelty of adventure as we ventured into new places.

Well, not really new places. I vaguely recognized some of the streets, though the replacement of the twinkling restaurant lights and ornamental hedges with charred burn scars and heaps of ash made it feel like I was living in an alternate universe. Maybe in the right universe, there would be hordes of people walking around, sipping on boba tea and eating sticks of popcorn chicken, as soft music drifted from open cafe doors and the sweetgum trees lining the roads would be bursting into the colors of sunset. But in that universe, I'd be facing junior year of high school and probably dying under the weight of calculus and advanced biology. I guess it feels less scary than before, but I wonder if this is the prospect of death talking right now.

We managed to keep a pace of about 8mph for the first half an hour before we started slowing down significantly, as the endless suburban sprawl became more unfamiliar and foreign. Tim was stopping more often to check on the street signs to figure out which streets we needed to turn on, obviously frustrating Dad who sighed every time that we reached a street corner.

Since we were moving much slower, I began looking at the homes that we were passing, checking to see if the windows were smashed in, more being a sign of desperation and starvation, and little trails of smoke or a flicker of light, a sign of just a bit of life. Almost all of the houses were dark, though I noticed a clump of houses with smoke coming from their chimneys, and it seemed like they were working together. It felt good knowing that people were at least trying to help each other, though at the same time, I breathed a sigh of relief as we zipped past them, not lingering enough to be shot or attacked.

At some point during this time, Caspian, who was trailing me most of the time, started scootering next to me. I guess the silence was just too much for him.

"Are you excited?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I guess so."

"It's going to be fun," he said between pants, and even under the mask, I could see his smile. "We're going to go to new places. I wanted to travel the world right after high school, and this is going to be like that."

"I mean, I guess so," I said. "Feels kinda sad to see the world like this though."

He laughed for some reason, and even though I was a bit peeved by his laughter, I also felt a little better. I'm honestly envious of the people that have this ability to uplift people and take conversational risks in a way that I wouldn't dare to.

"I know this is an awkward question," he said. "But what's your name? Sorry, I didn't catch it the first time we met."

"Neal," I said, and just to make it less awkward for him (even though I already knew his name very well), I added, "And yours is Caspian, right?"

"Like the sea," he said, and I blushed since he remembered my embarrassing comment.

I didn't really know how to respond, so I tried biking a bit faster, but when we made a stop at another corner, Caspian caught up before saying, "You were blushing, weren't you? It's not embarrassing. I get that a bunch, so it's not a big deal."

I continued biking before changing the subject since there was no sensible response to that. "Where'd you want to go, before all of this?"

"Maldives," he said. "Or Jamaica. Or San Diego--"

"Those seem pretty random," I said.

"They are," he said. "Kinda. I just wanted to go and see the bioluminescent algae and that 'random' collection of places are where it happens a bunch."

"Why'd you want to go?" I asked, my pedaling slowing down as I devoted more energy to a conversation that was going fairly well.

"Because they'd go well with my eyes," he said. "Just kidding. It's that they're like the fireflies of the ocean, like stars that fell down to us. It's just something that my--"

He stopped speaking, and I thought he had swallowed a fly or something and was choking to death. But he wasn't convulsing or coughing or anything, so at least there was no death risk. Still, the silence was a bit alarming. I asked, "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," he said. "Sorry for just spacing out like that. It's embarrassing, really--"

"It's fine," I said with a shrug of my shoulder, as I braked the bike because Tim and Dad had stopped in the middle of the intersection. They were shouting at each other, and it was a bit disconcerting to see Caspian's dad kinda yelling (basically talking loudly), given how soft-spoken he's been throughout all of our interactions.

"You're intentionally delaying our trip," Dad said. "We had a deal. You navigate, I provide the transportation. This was supposed to be a one day round trip."

"I didn't know how difficult it is to navigate," Tim replied. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to manually check every street to see whether it's the right one?"

"Not as difficult as getting the tires pumped," Dad shouted. "We wasted the last bit of our battery on the bike tires, all for this journey."

"It's not over," he said. "It's just going to take us longer than we anticipated. We'll reach there mid-afternoon tomorrow."

"Let me see the map," Dad said and Tim moved his backpack away from him, defensively holding it back.

"It's no use," he said. "All you'll do is damage it. We could've at least secured the panels if we had taken the highways."

"I want the map," Dad said and held his hand out. "Unless you and your son don't want dinner."

"That's not a part--" Tim said but then sighed before ruffling through his backpack and handing Dad a thin sheet of paper, folded into nice rectangles. "We can't keep going through this cycle, you know. At some point, we need to trust each other."

"I'll trust when I see results," Dad said, opening the map. But I doubt that he would be able to see any of the markings as the sky darkened, the hidden sun slowly beginning its descent below the horizon. I think after the weeks of ash-storm free skies make us underestimate just how early the sky begins to darken, as the metal poles lining the suburban streets refuse to shine, like they used to do. Now, they were just the empty remnants of our past.

We ended up biking around the neighborhood, attempting to find an empty home that had a window left open because Dad said that we didn't want to risk getting impaled or cut by the glass shards if we attempted to shatter and climb into a window. I think he also didn't trust the Coopers with glass shards since they were dangerous, small weapons that could be easily hidden. But so are pocket knives and a billion other things that we never checked for, so this line of reasoning just falls apart, like many of Dad's reasons.

It took us an hour that could've been spent making progress on our journey, but after climbing a tall wooden plank fence to enter an abandoned garden, the wilted tomato vines and squash leaves scattering the ashy soil, we found a window that was left open. We weren't able to see any movement inside the house, the chimney not spitting out smoke, beyond the fluttering of the curtains in front of that window, so we climbed in. The darkest room ended up being a small visitor's bedroom, the only window quickly covered by Tim and Dad with the tall bookshelf propped against the wall.

And then we ate our dinner, composed of refried beans and cold corn, in our respective corners, no one talking to each other out of fear of the other group eavesdropping. Dad and Tim ended up bringing a mattress from another room and put it on the floor. There were only old yellowed pillows but no blankets, so we were forced to shiver ourselves to sleep, as the temperatures dropped.

Caspian and I took the first shift, up until 1 in the morning. There was nothing much to watch out for, given that the window was closed, so I spent most of the time writing in the journal to detail day one of our adventure. Not like it was really much of an adventure so far. Just miles of deserted suburbia, an untouched anthropogenic wilderness. It's scary how empty the world is because I have no idea where all the people are.

Did that many people attempt the journey South? I can't imagine it. There's almost 40 million people in California. Maybe a million or so died directly in the volcanic eruptions, and because of how densely packed our coastline is, maybe another five or so million perished in the tidal floods. But that's still 34 million people, with maybe 4 million people, at most, choosing to make a stand like us.

Could the South even support that many people? There's probably going to be less, given the cold and starvation and dehydration and disease and the bandits and all the possibly depraved people out there. But that's millions of people, and I wonder if Dad was right about the South being just a rumor, or worse, a death trap of false promises that people realize too late.

I thought that I'd find an empty pathway ahead because that'd mean that Charles and his family had a safe trip to the South. But with all these empty houses, bare and stripped of belongings, I'm wondering if my wish was a double edged sword. Maybe he'll have a safe, maybe even too safe, journey to the South, but once he gets there, he'd face a refugee crisis. There'd probably be endless miles of impromptu tents with people suffering from frostbite and forced to cannibalize (maybe not that extreme but they'd be endlessly fighting for scraps). And what about Leon, too? I don't want to think about this, but the more I think about this, the less irrational this sounds.

Shoot! Caspian just asked why I looked so concerned, and it seems like he wants to make conversation, so I'll have to end this quickly. I just want to curl under the blankets and erase my thoughts, but it's too late to take them back.

October 12

I finally found out where I knew Caspian from.

"Are you alright?" he asked as I was internally panicking while writing the entry. "You looked a little--"

"I'm fine," I said. "I'm done writing my entry anyways."

"Cool," he said. "We never actually finished our conversation before."

"About what?" I said, feigning ignorance even though I knew what he was talking about. He gave me a weird glance, so I added, "Is it about the places where we'd go?"

"Do you want to sit closer?" he asked, and I furrowed my eyebrows since that was a pretty weird request before he clarified. "Sorry, it's just awkward how we're trying to talk while sitting on opposite sides of the room."

"Yeah, sure," I replied.

We ended up sitting next to each other outside of the room, not to disturb both of our dads. The door just slightly opened, letting a small slit of light touch the wall between our two faces, and both of us were shivering a bit. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to speak first, so we sat in a bit of an awkward silence until he said, "So?"

"I don't know," I shrugged.

"You must have thought about it," he said.

"Well, I guess I would like to go to the Maldives," I said. "Or maybe the mountains. Or just anywhere that's a bit warmer than what it's like right now."

"That's definitely a 'random collection' of places."

"I guess it is," I said, and there was this lull in our conversation, the only sounds being Dad's loud snoring that seemed to reverberate across the floorboards. I felt bad that he always had to reignite the conversations, so I asked the only question that I could think of. "What was your life before all of this?"

"Wow, going for the deep questions huh," he said. "Things were going great. My team, we were actually heading for the state volleyball championship again. We won county a week before--"

"Volleyball," I said, and that's exactly when I remembered where he came from.

There was an article that I had read in my freshman year in our school newspaper, about how a nearby private school had made history as the first team with an out team captain to win state championships. It was a big upset, especially against the superior Southern California teams, and a ton of local newspapers, including our school newspaper, which I impulsively picked up a copy of, ran. On the front page of the paper was a picture of Caspian, looking more alive and fit than the version of him right now, but with the same confidence being projected.

"You're the gay volleyball captain," I said, somewhat regretting my words since I felt like it could've been phrased better.

He blushed for the first time since he's been here. "Yeah, that's me. It's embarrassing, to be honest, having my face plastered on every small newspaper for a couple of days. I don't know how celebrities deal with it. By chance, did you see this on Outsports--"

"My school newspaper," I said.

"Oh, I didn't know anyone read those."

"I don't read them," I said before realizing that sounded contradictory. "I don't usually read them. I remember that I kinda just picked that one up impulsively."

"So fate brought us together," he said.

"I guess," I said. "Seems like coincidence, though."

There was another pause. Dad's snores had calmed down, so there was just silence. The first question that I asked was the only one that I had stored up for situations like this, so I just waited for him to end it or ask another question.

"I don't want to be rude," he said. "But is your family alright with gay people like me?"

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, yeah. My dad's a bit weird about this, but we're not hyper-religious or anything, so I don't think anyone is really going to be, you know, homophobic."

"Oh, good," he said with a sigh. "I was just worried. Even though we live in a pretty gay friendly neighborhood, you just never know."

"And--" I said before cutting myself off as Caspian gestured for me to continue.

I wanted to say, "I'm just like you" or even the more timid "I'm kinda like you too." But that's not true. Caspian is actually out and confident like the guys in the books and, you know, kinda good looking, like how the people in the books describe each other, the piercing eyes and bulging biceps. For me to say that I'm like him would be a lie because I'm not any of these things. I wish I was better looking, and maybe that'd make it easier to be confident, but I'm not.

"Nevermind," I said. "I forgot what I was thinking of."

Then, before we could continue, I heard my voice being called by Dad. I responded, "Yeah, I'm here."

Dad cracked open the door and saw both of us. "You guys shouldn't have left the room. Some of the light could have escaped."

"Sorry," I grumbled but didn't really mean.

"Anyways, it's time for us to swap shifts," Dad said. "It's going to be a--"

"Long day tomorrow," I cut him off. "Yeah, I know."

"Get plenty of rest," he said and sighed, as all three of us walked back into the bedroom.

The bed mattress was soft, even though the pillows were flat and hardened. It was relatively comfortable, certainly more than it ought to be, but I had a hard time sleeping because all I could think about was my regret about not saying more to Caspian.

I wish that he wasn't the only guy that I'd ever meet that actually likes guys, but as I thought about the probability, given that, from what I remember from freshman year biology, only around 2% of the US population is like that. And for that someone to be around my age, we're talking about much less than a percent. Caspian, for all I know, could be the only guy in the world left that's kinda but not really like me. I just wish it wasn't him.

If I had a way with the universe, I'd want someone that's like me. Someone who isn't the most confident or the most funny or even the most outwardly attractive because there's less pressure to be equally as charismatic or just as perfect as they are. Like, you could just be yourself, even if you are a very boring person. I'd also want someone who is going through the same things as me right now, not confident in who they are like Caspian, but just someone who can actually understand in the moment. I know that my description here goes against the guy in the magazine that I always look at and think about, but I guess there's this distinction between a fantasy and something you'd, like, actually want in real life.

I kinda feel bad for Caspian after writing this because he, you know, deserves someone. Maybe I'm being a bit self-pitying and whatnot, but I think I'm being considerate when I say that I don't want him to just settle for me. That's of course assuming that he'd even like me or that I'd even like him.

Anyways, the morning was much colder than the night. We had a light breakfast of some pre-cooked rice that had begun to harden, and after we shoveled a hole in the garden to use the restroom and refilled our water supply from the clean water tank of the toilet (not the bowl), though we still added just a couple drops of bleach to purify it, we grabbed our bikes and scooters to leave. The sky was the usual light gray, but there was just something ominous in the air, as if a big storm was coming.

For most of the bike ride, I didn't really talk to Caspian all that much. I wouldn't say that I was ignoring him but that I didn't really approach him to converse. It's hard to know if you're making a new friend or whether that other person is just talking because it's polite too and that approaching them could be inconveniencing them. So I looked everywhere but at him. The avenues and boulevards were empty, except for the stray car, wheels stripped from it with metal guts played across the street. There were no human voices or sounds, besides our panting and Tim's quiet muttering as he examined street names.

It took us around three hours before we managed to reach the critical juncture, where we paused to take a lunch break. Dad only packed enough food for around two and a half days, so we were supposed to conserve all we could, but it was so hard not to just stuff myself with all the food and take a nice nap. My calves and thighs were in pain, and I had no clue how we were even going to make it back, considering that this was the easy part of the journey, free from the burden of the heavy panels and wiring.

"The solar store is likely to be looted," Tim said as we sat while eating small spoonfuls of cold soup. "But the warehouse behind it, where they store much of the equipment, will likely be safe. Luckily, we have a way of breaking through."

He then turned to Dad. "You brought the hammer, right?"

"Yes," Dad said and pulled it out of his backpack.

"Good," Tim said and then pulled out a small, handheld can, one of those ones that are used to clean keyboards. "Then we have everything we need to break a lock."

"You've got to be kidding," Dad said. "An air can?"

"It's not air in there," Tim said. "But that doesn't matter. What does is that it's cold, cold enough to freeze metal to the point where it begins to shatter. When we were scavenging the remains of the stores a month ago, much of everything was taken, but there were still cans of these laying on the ground. We grabbed as many as we could, just in case--"

"So let's start going down," Dad said.

"Let's rest a little after lunch," Tim replied. "There's little cover down there and we'd be fairly exposed on the highways, so we'll have to be quick, and we can't afford to get cramps."

"So the highways are dangerous," Dad said, and Tim (along with all of us) sighed at Dad's macho routine. Sometimes, Dad just doesn't sound smart, even if he was right when pointing out this contradiction.

So we sat down and looked at the building as our stomachs grumbled. Caspian scooched next to me and grabbed my shoulder, shaking it lightly. I nearly recoiled from his touch, mostly because of surprise and I'm not used to the physicality of most friendships, as he said, "Are you ready for the next great adventure?"

"It's only a twenty minute bike ride," I said. "Two ways."

"We're going to be committing a heist," he said. "Like an actual real one. How cool is that? It's pretty cool, isn't it?"

"Not really," I said. "It seems pretty intimidating, you know?"

"Yeah," he said and looked me in the eyes. "We're like Bonnie and Clyde, their first meeting being coincidence, though smarter people argue it was fate, just like us."

"Don't they die in the end?" I asked.

"Who cares about endings?" he said with a scoff. "The moment is where life's best experiences rest."

And even though I didn't want to, I was smiling as we talked. Some aspects of him reminded me of Charles a bit, with the kinda dorky jokes, even when he steamrolled through the conversation, his confidence never letting there be any moment of silence. It also felt good just to talk to someone who never knew who the old me was, the brand new start that the apocalypse provides, even if I felt guilty about actually enjoying myself with someone else.

There, I said it (or wrote it). I guess I do kinda like being around Caspian. But the thing is that I wouldn't voluntarily hang out with him, just because I don't really know if he really would like to be around me, especially given how he and May are like conversation partners. I don't want this to be a one way thing, where I'm the nagging one and he's just going along to maintain his nice persona.

"That's enough time," Dad said after we rested for ten or so minutes. "Let's go get it."

So we grabbed our backpacks and rode down to the junction where the road curved into the giant streams of freeways that slithered across California and began pedaling as fast as we could. The big bonus of highways was that there were no houses and zero chance of being spotted by chance from a nearby home, but that worked as a double edged sword, in the sense that there was nowhere to hide. I thought Dad was being stubborn when he wanted to take the long route, but for once, he actually made sense. We were completely exposed.

I expected the highway to be packed with the rusting carcasses of cars and other broken down vehicles, but oddly enough, it was virtually empty. Sure, there was an occasional car sitting on the side, rubber wheels stripped from it and glass windows shattered, but not as many as I imagined given the gas shortages. It was a bit disconcerting to see these deserted roads, as if they were being cleared by someone.

We kept our eyes peeled for any sign of movement in the dusty distance, but it was hard to determine if a moving patch of darkness is a person or just a movement of the ash clouds, kicked up by the strong winds being funnelled down the highway. With all the leaves gone from the trees, except for the evergreen ones, which looked snow covered, the wind was ferocious. Any sounds of an engine or other sound of human life would have been masked by the whistle of the wind.

I don't really know how we were able to make it through unseen, but we managed to get to the solar panel store with the giant warehouse behind it. There was a modest parking lot, completely barren, and I could see visible dents on the walls of the store, with the windows shattered. It was clear that people had looted the store before us, so our gamble with smashing the lock was our only option.

We stepped through the smashed windows, glass shard firmly embedding in our shoes, even when we attempted to avoid them. Dad handed Tim a flashlight, giving him a stern look to make sure that the flashlight gets returned, and they flicked it on and looked around, sending the beam of light swerving across the store. I kept my hand close to my pants, trying to grasp the pocket knife. I don't know if I even would be able to use it though, to be honest. I don't think that I could be the person that takes someone's life or gravely injures them, even if they are trying to kill me.

As expected, the entire front was devoid of solar panels and other, larger contraptions that would be needed to make the solar panels function, with only wires scattered around, which Tim picked up. We walked as quietly as we could, our eyes swiveling around to catch any movements hiding between the shadows. Dad accidentally shined the lights on Caspian and I, and that nearly gave him a heart attack since it looked like there were two people stalking us from behind. When we reached the back, we found a battered door with two mangled locks, with another one laying on the ground, broken. Dad pulled against the locks, but they were still latched onto the door.

"Let's do--" Dad said before realizing he didn't know what to do next. "What should we do next?"

"I'm going to just spray the first lock," Tim said. "Just make sure to keep the light on it. I'll spray it until the padlock you'll see this steam coming off of the padlock and ice crusting it. When that happens, just hit the lock as hard as you can."

"Okay," Dad said. "Let's do this."

The air can hissed as Tim sprayed the lock and from the glimpse at got from behind Dad's back, I could see ice crystals forming on the hand of the lock. After a minute, Dad hit the handle with the hammer. Nothing much happened and they continued this for another few minutes before a distinct crack reverberated through the empty store. And after a few more hard smashes, I heard the lock clang on the ground, the edges of the handle serrated and sharp. Dad wiped at his forehead and panted as he looked at him.

"It actually worked," Dad said. "How'd you know about this?"

"Well, when I was younger, I was a fairly rebellious college student," Tim replied. "My friends and I, we used to go around and cause chaos, which is how I learned about this technique."

Dad stiffened up. "Do you have a criminal record?"

"I'm just kidding," Tim said, and Dad loosened up. "I got it from some panicked Facebook posts. Caspian was doing some college research, and I thought that I'd research along with him but separately. It's hard to let your kids go to college, as you must know."

"Yeah, my wife loved those parent Facebook groups," Dad said. "When Mira went off, she checked them constantly. I had to force her off the phone sometimes."

"That's how my wife was with me," Tim said. "Always telling me that I needed to spend less time glued to my phone and more present. Well, I suppose the good thing about the apocalypse is that there are no more phones."

"The world has truly gone back to our days, huh," Dad responded before turning back to the door. "Let's get this done."

Despite the fact that they were working much better together, the second lock was taking much longer. Dad's arms were tiring out, and even though Caspian offered to smash the lock (and was probably the better choice given how he was actually in shape), both Dad and Tim didn't want him to, so the both of us were just sitting around and not doing much.

"Do you want to check out the rest of the store?" Caspian asked. "I'm bored right now."

"Yeah sure," I said. I know it's petty and insecure of me, but I felt a bit hurt that he's only being around me because he's bored. I know that it's just a filler phrase that we all use, but still, I guess it still made me think that he'd just disappear once this journey is over. I'm probably overthinking this because I'm 99% sure that Charles also said this, but I wasn't viewing it from this immature angle.

The store was decrepit and deserted, metal shelves stripped bare of much of their value except for some damaged goods, trampled boxes and crushed contraptions, along with some wiring. Some day in the future, the metal shelves would also be taken down and the broken devices salvaged and broken down for small parts. But for now, while there are still new supplies, we wouldn't have to worry about this.

"It's not always true," I said. "About the best moments being in the present."

"What do you mean?" he asked. "That's when the memories are the freshest, the most alive. How can it be better than that?"

"I don't know," I said. "I guess it's just that things seem better once you think about them more."

"You're that type of person," he said. "The one that'll be that old person that just sits and talks about how everything was 'better in the olden days.'"

"I won't," I said. "You know, your life was great before while mine was just okay. It's not like I'm going to sit around and just say that I had the greatest life ever."

"We just have to keep moving forwards," he said, kicking around some debris on the ground. "The future is out there for the taking. That's why we're doing all of this."

"I guess," I said and shrugged my shoulders. Then, there was a roar from the back of the store, and Caspian and I ran back. Dad and Tim, who had suddenly become best friends (which would take a 180 almost as soon as we left), were cheering at the two broken locks scattered across the ground.

"Where were you?" Dad asked me.

"Just checking out the store," I said. "We were bored."

"Well, do you two want to do the honors of opening the door?"

I looked at Caspian. "You want to do it with me?"

"Of course," he replied, and we both stood at the door, placed our palms on the door, and then pushed it open, the darkness of the backstore warehouse obscuring the area sprawling in front of us. I held my breath as Dad's flashlight swung towards the space beyond the door, revealing whether the solar panels and supplies were just a false hope or actual reality.

If the universe was being cruel, the warehouse behind was completely empty and barren, and our whole trip would have been for nothing. But this was an exception to all our suffering: the volcanic eruptions, ash-choked air smothering our skies and vision, the hunger weighing down our bodies, the promise of a short and painful life. While there was damage to many of the boxes from the massive earthquakes, there was just a massive bounty, a treasure trove of supplies that exceeded my wildest expectations. I'd never been awestruck while shopping, and this was the first time when I understood how shoppaholics like Dad felt.

We ended up having to ration the amount of supplies that we could bring. Solar batteries are extraordinarily heavy, the high quality lithium ones weighing around 40 pounds, so Caspian and Dad, the two most fit people here, carried one each. The solar panels were also fairly heavy, and I was forced to carry both of them, each weighing around 15 pounds. I tried walking around with them in my backpack, and even after a few steps, my shoulders were in pain. Tim ended up carrying one charge controller and inverter along with a bunch of PV and copper wiring to connect everything all together. He also grabbed another solar panel, lugging it behind him as we left the store, all of us panting as we jumped onto our bikes or scooters.

When I got onto my bike, I realized that Dad and I have the luxury of not needing to bear all the weight on our backs since we could loosen the backpack and use the straps to tie it to our waists instead. Caspian and Tim could just have to grit through the pain, and I could tell that they were in pain as we sluggishly traveled back, our speed not much faster than walking speed, since Caspian was struggling to keep up. I felt guilty for carrying the least while having the bike.

"Do you want to swap backpacks?" I asked Caspian when we paused to figure out directions

"Keep yours," he said. "I don't want to get on the bad side of your dad, as my dad has been doing practically this entire time. Plus, you're pretty scrawny."

I didn't really know how to respond to that. A boast about my non-existent muscles is something I'd never do, not even if someone paid me a million dollars. I couldn't even spit out a proper retort since I wasn't comfortable enough around him to risk alienating him nor was I able to respond with a generic "Okay" since that wouldn't make much sense. At the same time, my heart jumped a little because I guess there was something just a bit exciting about the prospect of him noticing me. I just realized that my emotions have been everywhere in this entry. Maybe that's what actually whatever this kinda lust but kinda not lust feeling is like.

In the end, I just couldn't come up with a non-awkward response, so I just ignored him since we were starting biking again. For the rest of the biking trip, I biked a couple of feet in front of him until the big blow-up happened.

It started with a light drizzle of ash. We all put a second cotton mask layer on and continued heading back home. We had only made around eight miles of progress in the two hours that we'd been traveling, around a tenth of the way back, probably not enough to make it home the next day. But then that little sprinkling morphed into a harder rain before transforming into a near-blizzard, our vision rapidly transforming into a blur of dark gray.

"We need to seek shelter," Tim said. "Right now. Conditions are too harsh for travel."

"Then let's find an open home, like last time," Dad said.

"That took over an hour and that's when we had good visibility. In these conditions, we need to get indoors immediately," Tim said. "Give me the hammer."

"We're not smashing in windows," Dad said. "We'll find a place, old fashioned style. We're better than this."

"We're not looting," Tim said, as he marched towards a seemingly house, scooter upraised. "We're just doing what we need to survive."

He then smashed the glass, cracks forming, as Caspian took his scooter and smashed the class helping his dad. Soon, the glass shattered, and they scraped the glass expertly out of the way before hopping right back in. Dad and I just stared at them move with such coordination, and Dad gave me a look of concern mixed with alarm, his eyes widened with a hint of panic. I think he was freaked out about how familiar they seemed with the process of breaking and entering into homes, as if they needed to do this to survive.

Dinner was tense at the same time. I don't think there was really much conversation about the day, the deathly silence reflecting the desolation around me. We repeated the same routine as before: blocking off the light to an isolated room and lugging a mattress in. But when it came to dinner and Dad opened up his bag to discover that there were only two cans left, the tensions just heightened.

Dad only opened one and offered me half, and Caspian's dad said, "If two cans are all we have left, we might want to ration one. The journey may take one more day."

"I know," Dad said. "You guys have already eaten all that I've packed for you two."

"What are you doing, Dad?" I said.

"I'm looking out for us," he said. "Go eat your dinner–"

"I'm not hungry," I said, though everybody knew that was a lie.

"Just eat," Dad said, pushing my rations in front of me. "You'll need it to make the rest of the trip back."

"We'll all need it," I said. "They need it more than me anyways."

"You can't keep doing–" Dad said before sighing. "I'm not in the mood for a fight, but we're talking about this later."

"Whatever," I said before grabbing a spoon for Caspian and looking at him. "You want to share my half."

"You don't need to," he said. "You sure? I don't want to mess–"

"Just take it," I said and pushed it in front of him a bit too insistently, though he didn't seem to mind since he dug in. We ended up sharing the ration, each one of us spooning in a cold, mushy canned food, though I let him eat more than half of the ration because I can't lose another person to starvation and selfishness.

Caspian was tired, so he went to sleep first, with Tim taking the first shift. Dad said that he wasn't tired, even though it was blatantly obvious that he was, and that he could manage an all-nighter so that I could get more sleep. The room was freezing, but luckily, the homeowner seemed to be a fan of plushy rugs, so we all just wrapped ourselves in pieces of fabric, shivering a bit before reaching a state of tolerable coolness. After some time, I curled up onto the mattress on the bed and fell asleep until I felt a tug on my shoulder.

"Can you keep watch?" Dad asked me when he woke me up in the middle of the night. "Just for half an hour. I just can't keep my eyes open."

"Fine," I said and then looked over at Tim slumped over and dozing off during his night watch duty with Caspian fast asleep on a rug. "Everyone's asleep, you know. You can just go to sleep. Nothing's probably going to happen."

"We can't trust them," Dad said. "Look at how easily they broke–"

"Yeah, I noticed," I replied. "They were homeless since the first tidal tsunami, so they did what they had to do to survive. It's not like the enjoyed it–"

"They could be dangerous–"

"I don't even understand why you wanted to come on this trip if you're just going to keep distrusting them," I said. "You didn't even want to go in the first place."

"Well I changed my mind," Dad replied.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I wanted to make it up to you, for what happened with Charles."

"You should've changed your mind earlier then," I said and brushed him off.

"I just wanted it to be like before," Dad said before leaning closer. "This trip was like the camping trips we used to go on, and Mom never liked camping anyways. It'd be some quality father-son time."

"Well, you could've said that first."

"Would you have gone then?" Dad asked.

"I don't know."

"You'll understand when you become a dad and have kids of your own," Dad said. "But the main reason that I came is that I want to believe in the hope that you and Mira have. I'm trying my best, and as parents, that's the best we can do for our kids."

"So," Dad said. "It's really up to you for forgiveness. I can't reach into your mind and flip a switch, even if at times I've wanted to, but just know that I'm trying as best as I can with everything that I've learned."

"I'll think about it," I said.

"Wake me up in 30," Dad said and as soon as he hit the bed, he was snoring.

I decided to turn on the lights and finish the rest of the entry, to at least jot down this conversation. I know that he told me to wake him up in half an hour, but the truth is that it has probably been two hours since he went to sleep. He was obviously very tired, and I wasn't, so it was probably better for him to get some more rest.

I can already feel some of the anger melting away, being replaced by just a sense of guilt. It's why I can never stay mad at anyone forever because I feel so guilty that they feel terrible about themselves and that I'm the reason for that. But I feel like if Dad is making the first step towards acknowledging what he did and at least saying that he'll try to do better, then I at least have to make the first steps towards forgiveness. I feel like I owe that to him, even if it does feel like a betrayal to Charles.

October 13

Dad woke me up early in the morning, his finger on his mouth, telling me to quiet down. I thought he was messing with me, but his eyes were wide from panic, and that's when I heard the source of his anxiety.

There was a loud grumble of an engine outside, the ash crunching against the wheels, and echoes of loud voices permeating the walls of the house. Even though I could tell that they weren't coming from right outside the house, they were close by, maybe a couple of houses away or roaming up and down the street.

"We need to go," Dad whispered, and I nodded.

We stuffed everything in our bags, Caspian and his dad doing the same. The window in the front of the house was shattered, but we could exit from there because of the threat of the people, so we snuck out from the back. We had to toss our bags and bikes over a tall fence and attempted to hop over, so that we could get one street over and remain hidden from looters. The air was thick with ash, the powdery ash cloaking the air with an ominous gray, and it was dark and difficult to see the roads. The only silhouette that we could see was the dark shadow of the coastal mountains to our west.

There was no time to come up with a proper plan. We just hopped onto our bikes and scooters and headed straight east, towards the mountains, where the suburban sprawl made way to a smattering of spacious mansions and private dwellings that are hopefully abandoned. The rumbling of engines increased and decreased in intervals, and my heart was pounding because I wasn't sure if we were going to get caught because we couldn't see where they were. They were away and near from us at the same time, the danger never not ebbing until we reached the outskirts of the town. Even then, we pedaled and pushed ourselves into the thick wilderness, the endless spikes of bare trunks that protruded from the landscape.

By the time that we had stopped to take our breath and assess the situation, it had been around an hour of biking, and we were knocked badly off course. With all of us sweating despite the cold, we were all thirsty, and Dad didn't pack enough water for more than a two day trip, with less than a cup left in the gallon sized jar of water that we had packed.

Dad swore before kicking the ground. "We're lost!"

I'm sure that May would've responded with something snarky, like "No, duh" or "Obviously," but this was actually serious. We were truly and completely lost with no landmarks, no sense of direction beyond that we were somewhere east of the coast. All that surrounded us was featureless phantom trees, the reddish bark turned into a grayish color, and no buildings or rivers in sight.

"We're going to need to re-calibrate," Tim said. "Figure out where we are."

He pulled out the map and looked at Dad for the flashlight. Dad shook his head. "There are people around here. We can't risk the light."

"Well, we need to find our way back," he replied. "It's a necessary risk unless you want to die in this forest."

Dad sighed, probably because he wasn't used to being wrong, and handed up a flashlight. When Tim flicked the light on, the glow only just penetrating the haze, as he searched the map, muttering to himself. I saw him move his finger across the map before stopping at the easternmost edge, a giant green blob underneath his hand.

"We must be somewhere in this national forest," Tim said. "I don't know exactly where, but we're somewhere here, I think. I can't see any landmarks right now, and there aren't any homes nearby, so it looks like we're going to have to set up camp here."

"Why can't we just re-trace–" Dad said before looking at the ground, where the ash clouds had covered all of our footprints, leaving nothing but untouched ground. "We should at least try and stay away from the mountains. Especially given the earthquakes and landslides."

"It's too dark to go anywhere. And I don't want to get more lost."

"Well, we have to do something," Dad said. "If we're going to be staying the night."

"We'll need to build a shelter, at least for tonight and possibly more, until the storm clears up," Tim said. "I don't think any of us want to sleep in ash."

"And gather water. We're completely out," Dad said. "And we're just staying for tonight, so let's go get water. Neal, Caspian, you two can start building the shelter. Make sure to not stray too far."

"How are you going to find your way back?" I asked.

"That's why Tim's here," Dad said and looked at Tim, his faux smile probably underneath the mask. "Our idea man."

I could see Tim's loud sigh. "We'll use stone stacking, like what they do in national parks. Do you know how much battery is in these flashlights?"

"We should be fine," Dad said. "Aren't we in a national forest? There should be rivers."

"It hasn't rained in months," Tim said, but then he paused before a long moment. "But maybe a river will help us figure out where we are. I could find the road that we're on."

"And we'll be able to leave quicker."

"Assuming we find the river–" Tim said, but Dad cut him off by saying, "The sun is setting in a couple of hours, so we have to leave now."

"Caspian, Neal. We might be gone for a couple of hours or more. You guys know how to build a shelter?" Tim said before realizing how redundant his question is. "Of course not. Everything that's happened, it's just been so extraordinary."

"We'll be able to figure it out," Caspian said and looked at me. "Right?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I think so."

Dad nodded, and after a bit of preparation, mostly just emptying a backpack and putting all the water bottles in there, he and Caspian's dad waved goodbye and created a small vertical pile of stones in front of our camp. We stared at them disappear into the fog of ash, the dark gray of their silhouettes vanishing into the light gray of the ash around us, as if they were just ghosts that disappeared. It was unnerving, to say the least.

We turned towards each other. I was going to ask what we were supposed to do, but Caspian opened his mouth first.

"I'm sorry I called you scrawny. You're not that scrawny, at least from what I can tell underneath all those layers. I was just teasing–"

"It's alright. I didn't mind," I replied, cutting him off before he felt more embarrassed because of me.

"Oh, good," he said. "I still feel like everything isn't fine."

"It's fine," I said. "Really."

It actually wasn't fine at all. Maybe I was overreading the situation, but when he said that he didn't think that I was that scrawny, he was actually noticing me. Yeah, I'm definitely reading too much into his comment, which was probably something he just came up with on the fly to make me feel better, which it kinda did but kinda not at the same time. I didn't really say much about that subject, and my face mostly remained the same, especially inscrutable under the mask, even if I was blushing a bit. Anyways, I don't know what I'm doing because I'm supposed to be surviving and not doing whatever I'm doing, somewhere in between crushing and indifference.

We walked around a bit in the forest, always within view of the flashlight, looking for a wall or something that we could lean our shelter on. The fog was heavy, and for a moment, when I looked back, I couldn't see the light and my heartbeat spiked, but then I managed to discern a patch in the distance that was lighter than the others, and I motioned Caspian to follow me back as the ash swirled behind me.

We ended up finding something resembling something that could be a shelter. There was a steep bank, a sharp cliff that was relatively close by, with a bunch of branches and fallen trees scattered everywhere, perfect for building a kind of shelter. I motioned towards the bank and said, "This seems like a good place to build something."

"So, do you have any idea how to build this?" he asked me.

"No clue," I replied. "I guess we could lean the branches against the wall and, like, cover it with leaves. I know that I did this boy scouts-like thing when I was younger, but I don't think that they taught us how to build shelters."

"You did boy scouts when you were younger?"

"Not boy scouts, but something like it," I said. "I forgot its name, like youth guides or something related to that. It was just mostly an excuse to go camping and to beaches and hang out. I don't really remember that much because our whole group kinda quit in second grade. Anyways, I should probably stop talking about the past, with the whole focus on the future thing."

"Honestly, it's just good getting to know you," Caspian said. "Both of your sisters talked a bunch about their old lives–"

"Well they definitely had more interesting lives than me," I said. "As you could probably tell, May was super popular, and Mira was super adventurous. But my life was not super remarkable."

"I'm sure there was something interesting," he said. "C'mon. Give it a go."

"How about what you think my life was like?" I asked, curious to see what he thought my life looked like and also because I couldn't think of anything interesting, at least for him, on the spot.

"You seem smart, probably one of those math olympiad people, competing all across the US and maybe even the world. I didn't get to see your room, but there is probably, or at least used to be, a stack of trophies lined up. I feel like you're also the type of person to hang out in groups because you're a pretty good listener," he replied. "So how close was I?"

"If only," I said. "Mine was mostly just going to school and then the library and then leaving and then doing this over and over again. And I don't like math at all. And I only had– have one friend."

"Damn, I was really off," he replied amusedly. "You wanna guess my life? Let's see how you do."

"Uh," I said. "I guess you, you know, obviously went to a private school– I don't know where I'm going with there. I guess you had a pretty interesting life. You probably traveled everywhere for volleyball and were basically a school celebrity. And all the gay guys would probably be, like, into you because you were, like, the big out player. I don't really know what homecoming is like, but I could see you as the homecoming king, and yeah."

"You were actually very close," Caspian. "There were just a couple of things missing..."

"Like?" I asked.

There was this long pause, as if his words from the previous sentence came out before his brain could retract them. His eyes weren't really glazed over, like before when he went into this odd staring state, but he seemed to be fumbling for words.

"Like how I actually won the homecoming queen position," he said. "Our school didn't assign gender to the position, so technically, I wasn't homecoming king."

It was a weird response since that wasn't really something that was missing, more like a correction, but I didn't want to push this subject too much. I guess there's just some things in the past that he doesn't want to talk about, much like all of us. It's a bit depressing talking about everything that was and everything that isn't right now.

"Well, I was close enough," I said. "You wanna start building the shelter."

"Let's do this," he exclaimed.

That's what we spend the rest of the afternoon doing. There were tons of large branches everywhere, which Caspian lugged towards the bank and let them lean against the wall, building a frame for our shelter. I helped him a bit, mostly to ease the strain since I knew that his family probably hasn't had a lot of food, given how they were, up until pretty recently, living in one of those displacement camps. The only issue that we ended up having is that once we had a frame up, there weren't enough large branches to actually fill up the gap and piling up smaller ones wasn't effective.

Our solution was to find very branchy branches, ones with tons of smaller shoots that extended outwards in multiple twisting shapes. They'd weave and get tangled together, allowing us to stack large twigs and evergreen branches in between to fill the gaps. When I was working on the camp shelter, I remembered one of my childhood friends that did the whole youth guides thing with me, a while before I had met Charles.

"You know," I said. "Never mind."

"C'mon. Don't leave me hanging," Caspian. "What is it? A secret confession? A–"

"I guess–" I said. "You know that we were talking about the weird boy scouts-esque thing. Well, I guess I just remembered that my closest friend there before we kinda just drifted apart after we stopped going to the program was like you, you know, gay."

"He loved music videos and film in general. I think the first music video that I've ever watched was by Lady Gaga, and I remember one weekend, we were supposed to be doing camping stuff, but instead, we just ran all around the forest with his tablet filming stuff," I said. "I didn't find out until high school when we weren't close at all. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but yeah. I guess just thinking about the boy scouts thing reminded me of him."

"I wish I had someone like that," he said. "It would've made growing up easier to know that someone was like you."

"I guess I'm here," would be something that I should've said, another missed opportunity for being honest with someone who's a blank slate and doesn't know me closely. When I've read the books, people always seem to come out to the people closest to them: their family, then friends, then strangers, but I feel like I'm doing it the opposite way, where the people who've known me the least are the ones that I'm the most tempted to tell.

"Yeah," I said and picked up branches, and I left this conversation to rust away, another opportunity to come clean turning into dust. We had so much time left over after finishing our shelter, a mash of lichen-covered branches, twigs sticking out at random intervals with small tufts of browning evergreen spikes. But inside, it was pretty cozy, even if the tent was in a precarious state. We even got some dead grass and scattered it on the dirt, though I'm not sure if being itchy and possibly triggering someone's hay fever is worth not sitting on dirt. After we finished, we just sat inside, looking at the powdery ash and waiting for our dads to come back.

"We did a great job, given how we had absolutely no experience," he said and raised a hand, and I high-fived it.

"Actually, thinking about it, I did have some experience," I said. "When I was younger, my sisters and I used to build pillow forts. We even tried sleeping in one one time, but it ended up collapsing on us overnight."

"Well, that doesn't make me a little scared," Caspian said with a laugh.

"I've gotten better, I swear," I replied, and he grabbed my shoulder and shook it in a friendly manner, though I somewhat squirmed at his grasp, mostly because I wasn't used to such casual physical contact, especially from someone I didn't know so well.

"You wanna build a fire?" I asked.

"Now, that's something that I know," Caspian.

"You do boy scouts when you were younger?"

"No," Caspian said. "I never really liked camping much. It was always the ocean for me."

"So you were building beach bonfires?" I replied.

He shook his head amusedly, and I could sense a sort-of rueful smile underneath his mask, as if my idea was far preferable to what had actually happened.

"It's something I learned after the disaster," he said and looked like he was going to say more before stopping himself, as if he didn't want to repeat whatever trauma he went through, because he then brightened up. "You wanna know a secret?"

"Uh, sure?" I replied.

"The secret to making a good fire is to fan last night's fire back to life," he said. "People always waste so much time trying to make a fire from scratch."

"But we're starting from scratch," I pointed out.

"We've got a lot of work ahead of us," he said and stood up. "It's going to be a long evening."

Since we didn't want to catch the forest on fire, given how dead and dry everything was, we had to clear out a large area in front of the tent, dig a small pit and line it with stones, and then fill it first with tinder, little bits of dried grass and crumpled leaves, with a couple of twigs in there to help it catch on fire quickly. The larger branches were on the sides for later once the fire got roaring.

I had three matches, and our first attempt was an absolute failure, composed of various moments where the universe decided to string us a series of almost failures before crushing our dreams with its cold, ashy boot. If someone was watching us attempting to relight the fire at least a dozen times from tiny, smoldering pieces of grass before conceding defeat, they'd probably die from how cringeworthy it was.

If this was a story, we'd get it right on the third and last match, but we actually got it on our second try. Caspian was the one tenderly blowing the fire while I piled up kindling around it, and because the winds were being kind to us this round, the fire slowly grew into a modest but warm campfire, the radiating heat warming our hands and faces as sparks flew between us, like flickering fireflies that faded into the dark. It's also at that point that I started worrying about Dad since the sun was setting, and it was unlikely that they'd be able to see their stone stacks in the dark.

"Maybe they're waiting for us at the original spot," I said.

"I doubt it," Caspian said. "They'd be shouting our names."

"Do you just want to wait where we were originally?" I replied. "I guess it'd be hard to see the fire from a distance since we're kinda far away."

"Just chill out," he said. "We're going to be fine. You don't need to worry so much."

"I guess," I said.

I did turn away from him, poking a stick into the fire and watching the sparks fade out. I know that I'm a worrier because it's just something that's been with me, the constant overthinking and overwhelming fear of consequences, but I didn't want Caspian to see me like that, at least not yet. I guess the blank slate was fading away.

He was right though because Dad and Tim appeared from the shadows a couple of minutes later. They were actually talking to each other, not in the hostile manner that had defined their relationship throughout the trip, but actually with more positivity. It turns out that it took them so long because they were walking down the road, charting its curves and attempting to match it to the map and the river they stumbled upon, and they actually were able to trace where we are.

We split the last can of food four ways. Even though I noticed Dad scooped out just a bit more mixed vegetables for me, I could see that, at the very least, a repeat of yesterday wasn't going to happen. I guess Dad is trying a bit more to be more open to the idea our deal with the Coopers isn't going to be some one-off deal, but an actual lasting partnership. If he's trying to be nicer to them, maybe I could try harder to forgive Dad. I don't know. Maybe I'm just too easily moved and too hopeful because this is what happens when I have grudges, where they always melt away faster than I'd like.

Shifts were also split into four so that everyone would be able to get as much sleep as possible. There's the risk that the Coopers would just take the bikes and run off, but there was a greater danger of not being able to make it back in time. We were out of food, freezing cold, and time-constrained, given how Mom and everyone else are waiting for us and especially given Dad's failsafe, which I couldn't imagine to be any good.

Looking up at the sky right now, it's pitch dark, and the tall sequoia trees, looking frozen with the ash caking them, pierced the inky black sky. It looked hellish, not the hot, brimstone and lava landscapes from the stories, but the opposite, frozen version of hell. At least fire and magma are coursing with heat and light. Here it's dark and cold, almost like death itself.

I don't know why I'm so fixated on death, but I do admit that the idea of dying scares me. It's kinda why I'm afraid to close my eyes and fall asleep out here because I'm scared that I'll never wake up and experience a new day. It's the missed opportunities and possibility of regret (even though it doesn't make sense to regret after you're dead) that honestly scare me the most because there's just no chance of closure.

Maybe that's why Charles wrote that letter to me because he had that same fear of regret after death. I wonder if he's staring at the night sky like me or is just staring into the abyss and that the letter's all that's left of those emotions.

October 14

"Hey, Neal, look," I heard in the morning as Dad pointed out west towards the sea.

I rubbed my eyes, dusted some of the ash that had drifted onto my glasses, and looked out into the distance, towards the ocean. The air was dark turquoise with a hint of lavender of sunrise, and the stark, bare trees that reminded me of a frozen hell now looked almost peaceful, as if we were just floating underwater. Maybe that's not the best comparison, given the violence of the sea, but everything felt so still that it's as if time paused to give us a breather to enjoy the colors of life.

But most important of all, the ash storm had passed, and even though the air was still powdered with ash, I could see down the slopes of the mountains and barely glimpse the sprawl of homes. And there it was, a couple of clumps of lights amidst the gloom, miles apart from each other but representing beacons of community. There are people that are actually working together out there, neighbors, friends, strangers, that banded together, pooling resources to build something more than themselves. Maybe Mira's vision of a better future is not just a relic of a bygone world but achievable.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Dad said, looking at me as I nodded, before looking back out. "Maybe someday this might be us, if the world was less cruel."

"It'll be us," I said.

"You seem more sure than usual," Dad said. "What's up?"

"Well I'm trying too," I said. "To make a better future happen, you know."

"I'm glad, son, that we're making our best efforts," Dad said before softly whispering to himself, so barely audible that I'm not sure that I caught his words, "So that you don't have to lose anyone anymore."

But I pretended that I didn't hear anything when I stood up, and Dad said, "You want to wake them up or should I?"

"You can," I said. "I want to just look more at the lights out there."

"Yeah, go for it," Dad said. "Spend all the time you need but know that we're leaving in ten-twenty minutes. Think of it like school, and I'm dropping you off. You can never be too early."

There was no breakfast, so there was no need to blow on the fire to reheat it. All we had in our stomachs was a bit of water to stave off the thirst but not too much that we'd cramp. After re-packing our bags, we stamped out the fire and sprayed it with ashes. They were about to break down the shelter too when I said, "Shouldn't we leave this here, like just in case we need it sometime in the future or someone else?"

"Sure," Dad replied. "It'll take too long to break down anyways. I don't know why we were doing it in the first place."

We then hopped on our bicycles and zoomed down the hill towards home, waiting somewhere in front of the horizon. Navigation was much swifter with less haze, and even though I was starving, there was this adrenaline in me that kept me pushing at the pedals, even when my legs were burning. Every block that we passed by in a blur, I'd try to see if I could get a glance of light, just to make sure that what I saw on top of the hill wasn't a hallucination but reality.

I didn't end up seeing any. Our path home probably didn't intersect these micro-communities, and maybe it was best that we didn't see each other. After a close run-in with the looters and raiders, I think that any contact with other people would be too stressful and fraught with the risk of ruining any possible future partnership. Maybe it's just better to let our hope just stay dreams, at least for now.

Because we were so exhausted, no one had any energy to chat, not even Caspian, who looked run down and ragged from carrying the heaviest load on a scooter, so this gave me a long while to think. I came out there to see what the world was like for Charles, and I don't know if I feel better. I said a couple days back that the whole world was empty but that was before our encounter with the looters, and I can only imagine the worst happened to Charles. The best worst-case scenario is that they lose everything except their lives, forced to scrounge for food in some town way south of us, trapped by the frozen landscape and piles of ash. And I don't even want to think about the worst case. I don't know why I'm feeling so cynical, but it's just that I'm scared for him.

As we got closer to home, Dad and I ditched Tim's written down instructions since we knew all the roads around us by heart, and we made rapid progress, taking around a quarter of the time that it would take if we needed to pause every so often to check the directions. However, just as we were about to turn into our neighborhood, we ran into Mira and her nightwatch partner, a brooding but somewhat nerdy guy, casually strolling down the street.

"Put your hands up," the man said with a big gun pointed at us. "What are you doing in this neighborhood?"

"Dean, it's my family," Mira replied. "Calm down!"

"What are they doing out of the neighborhood?" he asked.

"It's none of your business," Mira snapped back, a clear signal of a fairly poor working relationship between the two. "We're here to protect people, not control their movements."

"What if some dangerous people followed–" Dean said, but Mira just ignored him.

"You guys are back," she said, and I could sense a smile on her face, as she hugged me and even Dad, with Dad giving an awkward hug back. "What happened– Why did you guys take so long?"

"We ran into some difficulties," Dad said. "But we made it back."

"Was there any danger, like looters or raiders kind of danger?" she asked. "Or did you meet good people out there?"

"It was pretty empty, kinda desolate," I said, lying to Mira to keep her hopes up of a good world out there while cutting Dad off before he could get a word in. "But this morning, I saw something cool. I'll tell you about it later. Right now, I'm pretty tired from lugging around all this equipment."

"Equipment?" Dean said, butting into the conversation and pointing to our half opened bags. I tried covering my backpack a bit more, but it was way too late. "What are those? Solar panels? Where did you guys get them? Did you steal the–"

"We did what was needed," Dad said and stepped in front of me before looking at Mira. "How's the situation at home?"

"It's not great," Mira replied. "You all need to get home right now."

"What happened?" Dad said before quickly responding to himself. "It's the contingency plan, isn't it? We better hurry."

"Wait," Dean said, before pointing at Caspian and his dad. "You two can't leave, not yet–"

"They're family friends," Mira said.

"You've never mentioned them."

"You need to have some more trust, Dean," Mira said. "The reason that we picked these guns up is to protect people who need help, not to point it at friends and interrogate them."

"We're going to be talking about this later," he replied.

"Go," Mira said to Dad and all of us and we hopped on our bikes and scooters, now looking a bit ragged, especially the scooters with the paint and color scraped from the metal by the ash, and got home as quickly as we could.

When we arrived at home, I think all of us breathed a sigh of relief that the house hadn't burned down. But I saw Mom and Caspian's mom arguing in front of the door, with Mom decidedly inside while Caspian's mom was very much on the outside. We all only caught a glimpse of the pretty hostile conversation, but it was apparent that things were very much going south.

"Time's running out," Mom said. "It's already been two days too long–"

"Just wait," Caspian's mom replied. "You need to have some patience."

"I've had enough patience," Mom replied. "I can't–"

"Everyone calm down," Dad shouted. "We're back."

Mom, May, and Cora all stopped their arguments, and there was a moment of silence before May said, "Took you guys long enough."

And then there was this flurry of conversation, Cora rushing towards Tim with a kiss and Caspian with a tight hug, as their bags dropped on the front yard, their footsteps kicking up the ash. Mom gave us a smile and opened our backpacks, looking at the solar panel equipment that we were carrying.

"What took so long?" Mom asked. "Did they try to–"

"No," Dad replied. "We're safe, and they were a big help."

"Oh good. I thought they had done something," Mom said. "I was about to cut off her food supply. I just got so worried, thinking about the worst."

"You're supposed to be the hopeful one," Dad said.

"Only to a certain point," Mom said. "But seeing what you got, there's a chance it could get bigger."

And while Mom and Dad were talking, May came up to me and peered into my half-opened bag. "You guys were literally only able to get two solar panels."

"Three," I said. "Caspian's dad has another one."

"We are literally dead," May said. "We're going to have to buy a lot of time before we can even get enough to have a working greenhouse."

"Don't be so negative," I said. "What did I miss while I was gone?"

"Oh, other than Mom's giant meltdown right now, nothing much," May replied. "Let's see, we all hate each other more than we do before, and oh, did you get to use the knife."

"Uh, why would I?" I asked.

"There were no looters?" May asked.

"It was pretty empty," I lied. "It's like the whole world has disappeared."

"Great," she replied. "People are so stupid, and the emptier the better for me. Also, did you get more dirt on Caspian?"

"No?" I said. "I don't know. Oh yeah, he's gay."

"Dang," May said. "Why does every single hot guy have to be gay? I just want to at least date someone before I plop down and die, but I guess I feel bad for him since he's probably never going to find love since the odds are, like, super against him."

"Yeah," I said and nodded before Caspian's dad called a convention as both of our families stood on opposite sides of the door, staring warily at each other.

"I know that there's a lot of tension here," Tim said. "We were gone for a long time, and I know that everyone was worried that something had gone wrong, but we made it back safely, and that's all that matters."

He continued, "I can tell that the situation here, at your home, has tested our resolve and the stability of our partnership, and though I don't know all the details, I do acknowledge that the tenuous and rocky beginning that we had continues to reverberate. But from what I saw out in the world, none of us are going to survive if we stay divided. It was only because of our teamwork that we were able to gather enough supplies to have a functional solar system, which would've been impossible without our coordination."

He cleared his throat. "So I'm taking a leap of faith with this change in the terms of our deal. I'll install the solar panels and battery storage system without the food payment at the end as we discussed as an act of good faith. Instead, what I'm offering is a long-term partnership between our two families, so that we'll all make it through winter. Take all the time you need to decide, but just know that I hope that this will be the basis of a community that we can create. Together."

No one really said much after his speech, but I could kinda figure out what everyone was thinking. Mira was obviously elated since she gave Tim a small clap after his speech while Mom and Dad had their eyebrows furrowed, either in suspicion or to hide just a bit of hope. May was as unscruitiable as always while Caspian mostly looked as shocked as I was. His mom was the only one that seemed absolutely furious at her husband for trading away the security of guaranteed food, at least under the deal, in an exercise of trust.

"We'll think about it," Dad said before Mom stepped forwards with the key to the Hunters' home in her hand, conspicuously ignoring Cora and giving it to Tim.

"It's our leap of faith," she said to Tim before looking at Cora. "Do not betray our trust."

"We're just trying to protect our families," Cora said, her voice steely with a hint of defiance, though Tim just said a weary, "Thank you."

After that, there was just a brief conversation about logistics before Dad handed them two cans for dinner, and they left newly empowered with the house key, the Hunters' home now turning into the Coopers. There was this sense of uncomfortableness afterwards, as if no one was particularly convinced, the shine even dimming slightly from Mira's smile. Mom and everyone else pestered Dad and I about our trip, but he mostly just waved them off on behalf of us and said that he'd talk about it tomorrow. Given how persistent Mom's questions were, the tomorrow she was talking about would be Dad's graveyard shift for watching the fire.

There was supposed to be a "big" feast (apparently two whole cans of food for dinner for ourselves) for our return, but because we took so long and there was so much uncertainty, it got cancelled. Anyways, I don't think that I'd even be able to eat two whole cans during a meal. The guilt would be overwhelming.

Mostly what I did was just staring at Charles' still unopened letter sitting on the shelf and thinking about what Caspian said about the past and living in the moment. I don't really want to admit this to myself, but Charles and I, our friendship, is becoming part of the past because you can't really call never seeing each other again a friendship. I've had so many thoughts about why I can't open the letter, but I'm wondering if it's because the letter is like the one last call that I'd ever have with Charles, and I'm scared of wasting it. Once I read it, that'll be the last exchange between us and the nothingness afterwards terrifies me.

I think it's a nice idea to live in the moment, but there's so much that gives me anxiety, especially between me and Caspian. There's all just a possibility that he won't be interested in friendship and that we'll just end up as friendly acquaintances, amicable around each other without anything meaningful. Then, I'll have thrown away my past with Charles for essentially nothingness.

Sometimes, the past feels like it's both a burden and a source of comfort. I wonder if this is what Caspian feels every time that he drifts off mid-conversation every time that his past comes up, his mind probably preoccupied with everything that was. Maybe he also has a letter like mine, an aspect of that past that we just can't let go, even if it would be better for us.