P A R T III
When you come from a city of millions to a small town of a about five thousand, something eerie happens. You feel watched.
What makes it worse is realizing it’s not just a feeling — we were being eyed by the locals. For them, it might have been as simple as knowing who lives here and who is a stranger. But for us, the strangers, it was haunting.
Florida, despite being the southernmost state geographically, is not the true “South.” True South — which includes Georgia — is where people greet you by half-pronouncing “Hi” so it comes out like “Haa!” And they only greet you after you greet them — strangers first, I guess. It wasn’t as bad as swamp hillbillies or Confederate flag–flying rednecks, but it wasn’t metro either. What we mostly saw were truck-driving country folk, sitting on their Americana porches, waiting for something unusual to happen. Well, apparently a Russian family wandering into their old industrial town in the middle of July was eventful enough — censuring eyes were everywhere.
To our surprise, the people who made us feel most at ease were the Mexicans. They were the clerks, the cooks and the janitors of the hotels we stayed in, and their 3.7-star indifference to our presence was the cosmic balancing force of this town. I never appreciated tacos before, but now I know — where there's tacos, there's people whose sole interest in you is solving your hunger... with tacos.
July 15th was here — the day something horrible was supposed to happen to the world... We slept for a few hours after driving all night, and then, after walking the pets, spent the afternoon hours at the hotel, scrolling the news on the internet, looking for the breaking headlines about the complete and utter disappearance of Florida under the 200 meter tsunami, and the ensuing panic. But nothing changed in the world: the same conflicts remained, the same wars waged on.
I sent a text to my boss, saying that all seemed quiet, and that I'll keep him updated. He, in turn, was happy to inform me that he was still dry and alive — and apparently, the sane one between us two, despite sporting leopard pattern pants in 2006.
With nothing happening, we decided to explore the town. My brother and sister took off on their own adventure, while mom and I went to drive around in search of some interesting little shops that we previously passed on our entry to the town. But, other than the burn marks on our backs from the locals' stares, we had nothing to show for it.
My brother and sister, on the other hand, had much more to tell: Zombies were after them!
I didn't know this at the time, but apparently, after they left us in a suspiciously hurried way, my siblings drove on to an obscure country road, parked at a small gas station plaza, and pulled out an apocalypse-worthy quantity of weed stashed inside a Vaseline container to mask the odor. They figured that meeting the end of the world (as we knew it) was only appropriate with high-grade dope.
After lighting up, my brother came up with a 'brilliant' idea — to go explore an old railroad and some idle train cars they'd spotted on an overpass, some distance away. This was no surprise — being a pretty decent photographer — train tracks were bound to attract him. But, as we all know, photographers occasionally meet their demise in the act of making some pretty decent shots.
As they approached the sparsely graffitied, seemingly abandoned wood-and-metal wagons, they suddenly felt 'the eyes'.
"Where they inside the wagons?" I later pressed my brother.
"I don't know, they just appeared."
"How many?"
"Don't know... enough to get the fuck out!"
"How did they look?"
"Strange... wearing some white clothes."
"Really, what kind? Pants and shirts, or robes??"
"I don't know, all I remember was a lot of white."
"Did they look official?"
"No."
"Did they say anything?"
"Nope, just walked towards us."
"So, what did you do?"
"We said 'Fuck that', and ran back to the car, of course!"
This was all the information I was able to extract out of my half-baked siblings. My sister added "Do not go to the railroad, no matter what." Bremen, by the way, is a 100-yo town, known for its railroad junctions. So basically, what she meant was: don't go anywhere.
After that we went for some tacos at our hotel, and all was good in the world. Meanwhile, the World was also still in tact, and we were beginning to think that maybe taking our chances with the tsunami would have been better.
That night, we reluctantly decided to stay for another day, just in case the comet fragments were somehow delayed. That was the day that broke the camels back.
To be continued... PART IV
A N K A P O L O