Free The World as We Know It by Curtis Krusie Page A

tearful, but Maria was strong—stronger than I had expected her to be. When I held her for that last time, it felt like it lasted forever, but at the same time, only for a moment. She seemed finally at peace, if it only sustained the morning. Though I didn’t know it then, the last look on her face would linger in my mind until I returned, and that was a better way to remember her. Not tormented, but proud. So many days I had cringed ather inability to look at me, but not that day. I could feel her love for me despite the cold, callous machine I had become.
    My family and friends came for the somber send-off. All were encouraging and wished me well, but it was one of the most difficult days of my life—up until then, that is. There would be many worse to come, and had I known then the trials that awaited me on the road, I might never have left. I’d never had to say good-bye quite like that before. It was possible, I knew, that I might never see any of them again. I would be facing danger I could not yet comprehend or predict. The memory of that day is one that leaves knots in my stomach, even now. Such a range of emotions had been previously unfathomable, but they had to be endured. The eyes of those I loved glistened with the rising sun so brightly that their colors shone, even through the tears that blurred my own vision.
    “I hope somewhere in all those miles you find yourself, Joe,” Maria said, holding my hand tightly. The soft skin of her cheek rested on my tanned and hardened shoulder. In the light breeze, I felt her warm tears turn cold on my neck. “I miss you already,” she said. “I’ve been missing you for months.”
    When we finally let go, she stepped back and looked into my eyes. I looked back into hers, straight-faced, without a word.
    “You had better come back to me,” she said.
    “I will.”
    As I began to step away, she grabbed my left hand with hers. “Wait,” she said, gazing at me for a moment as if entranced. “I love you.”
    “I love you,” I replied. I had not uttered the words in so long that I could not remember the last time. I wondered if I even meant them.
    A tear rolled down her cheek, and the faintest of whimpers escaped her lips. I turned away before I could change my mind, and as our trembling fingers slipped apart, I heard the click of our rings as they tapped together.
    By noon, I had set off alone on my horse and without the mathematical confidence of Phileas Fogg, headed south toward what used to be New Orleans. I looked behind occasionally as we trotted into the woods, watching the silhouettes of all of the people I loved shrinking behind me, still standing together, watching forward as I did the same. When they had vanished, we broke into a gallop that would persist until the fall of dusk.
    Once we had emerged from the woods, Nomad and I followed the highway, riding down the grassy median. The roads were like a scene from the dark parts of Cormac McCarthy’s imagination. Cars were abandoned everywhere with their doors open and their paint turning to rust. Many were stripped of parts that had been salvaged for tools, but there were few people in sight. Occasionally, we would pass small groups walking down the middle of the road or pitching a tent or gathering around a fire. Some of them gave a courteous nod. Some avoided looking at all. Iwas wary of every passing drifter, and I could see that they were wary of me. At the sight of another person, my heart would beat faster, and I would instinctively take my gun in hand. They didn’t seem so desperate, though, as they had those months ago. “Roughing it,” as we used to say, had become a way of life for all of us.
    It was clear that I was better equipped than most of the others out there on the highway, anyway. We—my family and I—had been blessed with resources that not everyone else had. Very few, I imagined, had had a farm to run to when the cities had become inhospitable. Most had left without direction,