THE ROAD REMEMBERS

DATE: 8.29.2224
LOCATION: Baytown | Stilted Row House
STATUS: Ready to Move
SIGNAL: Active
RADIATION: Elevated

I stayed for a week.

Not because I was afraid to leave.

Because for once, I had somewhere worth staying.

The row house gave me something the road hadn't.

Time.

I cleaned my armor piece by piece. Straps. Plates. Buckles. Anything that had collected road dust, blood, or rust. I repaired what could be repaired and replaced what needed replacing. My shoulder still reminded me of Bay Runner steel whenever I moved the wrong way, and some of the deeper aches had settled into places I couldn't reach with bandages.

They would heal.

Eventually.

For now, they were mine to carry.

I slept.

I ate.

I washed.

I let the house stay quiet around me.

There were no answers waiting in those walls. No great revelation hiding beneath the floorboards.

Just enough shelter for a man to remember what it felt like to be a man instead of a thing moving from one problem to the next.

The Pip-Boy stayed close.

The signal stayed active.

The radiation stayed elevated.

Nothing had changed enough to make me comfortable.

But I had changed enough to move.

This morning, I started packing.

Then I remembered the date.

August 29.

Two hundred nineteen years ago, on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southeast Louisiana. The storm weakened before coming ashore, but the water did what water does. Storm surge overwhelmed parts of the Gulf Coast, levees and floodwalls around New Orleans were overtopped or breached, and roughly eighty percent of the city flooded.

My great-grandparents lived through that flood.

Eventually, they found their way to Houston.

I don't know how many roads they took.

I don't know what they carried.

I don't know what they had to leave behind.

But they made it here.

And now I'm standing in Houston because another hurricane brought me here.

Hurricane Kendra tore my world apart and pushed me into the place my family once reached trying to survive theirs.

That's the part that stays with me.

They came here because the water forced them away.

I came here because the water forced me here.

And now I'm leaving.

Not toward Houston.

Away from it.

The same history that once carried my family toward this city is now carrying me in the opposite direction.

I don't know what to call that.

Maybe history.

Maybe coincidence.

Maybe the road doesn't care what I call it.

I just know I'm here.

And I'm leaving.

I checked the armor one last time.

Secure.

The Pip-Boy came next.

Maps.

Signal.

Radiation.

Medical information.

There was still a hospital somewhere north.

Maybe damaged.

Maybe abandoned.

Maybe barely functioning.

But if there was still a chance of getting my shoulder properly treated, I was going to take it.

Learning to live with an injury isn't the same thing as healing it.

I tightened the last strap on the backpack.

Water.

Food.

Medical supplies.

Armor.

A few things worth remembering.

Nothing extra.

The house had given me a week.

That was enough.

I stepped outside before sunrise.

Baytown was quiet in that strange way places become quiet when they're waiting for the day to decide what kind of trouble it's going to bring.

I looked back at the row house.

For a week, it had been more than shelter.

It gave me room to breathe.

Room to repair.

Room to remember that rest isn't surrender.

Sometimes you have to stop moving long enough to find out whether you're still capable of moving.

I was.

So I walked.

The road north was still there.

Hospital first.

Then east.

Then wherever the world decides to put the next piece in front of me.

I still don't understand this world.

I don't think I'm supposed to.

Not yet.

Maybe understanding comes after enough miles.

Maybe it never does.

Either way, standing still won't teach me anything new.

So I left the house behind.

Katrina brought my people toward Houston.

Kendra brought me here.

Now I'm taking myself out.

Different storm.

Different century.

Same road.

North.

Then east.

— Big Chief