Man Is Not Dead
The stranger raised his head and peered beyond the rag that covered his face: the vicious dust winds were still blowing all around him. They weren’t strong enough yet to knock him off his feet, but they were growing in intensity every minute, pressing him to find somewhere to take refuge in before they would develop into a full-blown dust storm. Barely aware of the road underneath him, he kept his head low and covered the mouth with some cloth to keep away the sand. It had been bad luck for him to get caught in a storm like that, but he had made his own bad luck by leaving it so late to cross the wastes.
Some reprieve came, however, when an unevenness in the road made him stumble and raise his head. He noticed a sign, half-obscured in the swirling black dust, indicating that he’d arrived at a town: Deedsville, Indiana. He’d never heard of the place, which showed just how much of a rip-off that map he’d bought had been, but he didn’t really care: beyond the veil of dust, he could see the shadow of a collapsed building, a house with a partial cave-in. He hustled to it and and huddled in a corner of the room. It was not a refuge that could last for too long, but it would suffice for now.
As he had feared, the winds’ howls had increased in intensity, and the world beyond the walls had turned into a dirty brown blanket. A few errant gales blew ash and debris onto the stranger, and he had to shake every once in a while to avoid being submerged; even though he was extremely hungry, he did not want to open his backpack lest it got filled with sand. Fighting against the torpor and the weariness as well as the raging storm, he kept himself awake, forcing himself to move in order to get the dust off of him. Eventually, the storm subsided, and he could see the sky again: it was dark and starry, and he was surprised to realize that so much time had passed since he’d last seen the sun. Finally giving in to tiredness, he let himself sleep a little.
When the stranger woke a few hours later, clouds had covered the area, the sun filtering sporadically through them. He spent a good minute or two staring at them, trying to figure out if they were fallout-bearers or if they were of the harmless variety. He concluded that he didn’t have the luxury to stay there and find out. Shaking off the sand at his feet, he got up and began exploring the dead town he was in.
It was a really small settlement: just a main road and a few buildings on both sides, perhaps ten or fifteen in total. It was mostly dilapidated houses, and the stranger understood why no one had put this place on a map: just like the many ghost towns that dotted the Midwest, it had probably already been ransacked of anything of value and quickly forgotten about, perhaps used as refuge for a night by people like him that were crossing the wastes.
His suspicions were confirmed when he reached the local grocery store, which was, if possible, in even worse conditions than the other buildings. The entrance had been completely ripped away, maybe by crashing a vehicle onto it, and the interior was mostly rubble. It had been looted so long ago that there weren’t even any corpses around, and the chances of finding anything in there were non-existent. The stranger looked anyway, but every object or good had already been removed, leaving only the empty, rusting shelves that had been bolted down. With a sigh, he checked how much water he had left, and he tried to locate himself on the map. He estimated that he was somewhere midway between Indianapolis and The Lake, some 50 or perhaps as much as 100 miles from his destination. It would take at least two more days of walking, barring other sandstorms or encounters with bandits, and the ferry left in three days. He wasn’t doing too badly on food, but the water was running low, and getting to The Lake dry was inadvisable. Although he’d hoped to find somewhere where he could refill his supplies, all he kept running into were ghost towns like this Deedsville. Frustrated, he put away his backpack and returned to the main road.
Sand covered everything, though the space between the houses was marginally less wild than the desert beyond the edges of the town. Perhaps the military patrolled this area, or maybe it was some bandit gang; without tracks, covered by the dust storm, it was impossible to tell. The stranger decided that nothing of value was left in there, and prepared to leave.
As he was next to the town’s border, however, he noticed one house that was considerably less destroyed than all the others: the front was almost intact, save for some broken boards, and only the upper floor seemed to be damaged. If the ceiling in the lower floor was still standing, then it was a perfect refuge, especially during the vicious dust storm of the previous night; perhaps someone was still inside. There was no hint that this was true: the exterior looked just like any other collapsed house. The stranger knew it could be a complete waste of time, but one does not survive for fifteen years in the wastes without learning which hunches are worth following. Carefully, he approached the building and examined the sand in the yard and the door.
His guess proved to be correct. Whoever was inside had been very careful in concealing their marks and lucky that the dust storm had made a mess of it all, but an expert tracker such as the stranger would be able to notice the lack of sand on the door’s hinges, which indicated that it had been opened recently. As he sneaked towards it quietly, he became increasingly convinced that the house had been occupied, as late as a few hours before. He could not know if they were still there, if it was someone friendly, or even if this was all a freak coincidence; he decided to follow his hunch and cautiously got out his scanner.
It consumed batteries like there was no tomorrow, but ever since he’d won it in that poker game back when he scavenged around Little Rock, he’d never been disappointed with it. Careful not to use any more juice than he had to, he checked the door, and saw that there were no likely traps beyond; indeed, the place seemed clean. As slowly as he could, he twisted the knob and snuck inside.
The house was in good order, for the most part. A room opened to his right that had only one piece of rubble in it, a broken table, and stairs climbed to the floor above in front of him. Next to them, a corridor ended in a closed door, barricaded by a heavy armoire. The stranger shivered contemplating what could possibly be beyond, but, based on the tracks, it had probably been moved there many years before, and whatever was inside was probably, and hopefully, long dead.
Still, he cautiously examined the wardrobe, keeping a hand on his gun in case something jumped at him. The only thing he found, however, was an old photograph wedged between two boards, which he struggled to get out. It was all wrinkled and yellowed, but the true sign of its ancient age was its subject: a family smiling happily at the camera.
It was in that moment that the stranger heard a faint noise, not from the armoire, but from behind him. He had neglected the left side, a closed door from which he had heard a sound of something softly moving. He dropped the photograph, pulled out the gun and very slowly opened the door.
Beyond it, there was a living room, full of dust and sand. It was quite dark, the only light whatever filtered through the boarded up windows; it took him a while to see what was inside. Eventually, he made out the source of the noise: a man lying on a couch.
The stranger immediately tensed, fearing an ambush, but his hunch told him that the man was truly sleeping. Even though he did so with great slowness, he approached him and saw that, indeed, the man had dozed off, exhausted and sweaty. A bag rested at the feet of the sofa, neatly packed and ready for an eventual escape; inside he could see at least two bottles of water, some medicines and even rations. There was no doubt, this was an expert and well-prepared tracker, save, of course, for the bad luck that he’d let himself be caught unaware.
As the stranger pondered whether he ought to wake him up or not, he noticed the probable cause of the man’s exhaustion: his right leg was bandaged and bloody, and a purple rash extended from the edges of the cloth. The stranger winced. It was a nasty case of porphyrian infection.
It was a very horrid disease, porphyrian: the stranger had once had it on his arm, and it had been a hellish three weeks. Judging from the state of the rash, the sleeping man was still in the early stages, when you need to treat the wound round-the-clock. He did seem to have the appropriate medicines in his bag, and maybe he was going to make it through, but he was going to be stuck in that town for a while, or forced to walk at a very slow pace.
The stranger looked at the bag with greed. It was more than what he had, and he definitely needed it more than the sleeping man. This fellow was likely to die and let all this go to waste, or, worse, in the hands of a scavenger or a bandit, but he could surely make it to The Lake and get the ferry if he had those extra bottles and rations. The sleeping man was in no condition to get there on time, and the next ferry would not be for weeks, if not months, so he would’ve just kept himself alive a little longer to wander around the desert without any point. The stranger put the gun to the man’s head.
Wasn’t this a better death? A clean bullet through the brains while one is calmly sleeping; certainly beats long withdrawn suffering from porphyrian, or being woken up by a jackal pack that tries to chew off your face. If only all could have such a merciful demise, instead of protracted radiation poisoning, starvation and malnutrition, or at the hands of a cruel bandit. Just an instant, without any pain.
Besides, even if the stranger left him there, someone else with even less regard for him might find him, and then he was sure to be in for some trouble. The radio had sounded the alarm that Jackson Bull was running around not too far from there, and that guy was a freaking psycho. Or maybe the Callow Siblings would stumble upon him, and they’d definitely not have the good grace of shooting him in his sleep.
Instead, the stranger would avoid him that fate, or even a slow death by porphyrian. Even if he survived the infection, he would still in a rough part of the wastes with little way out and probably depleted supplies; the stranger would put the water and rations to good use. Yes, he agreed, killing this man in cold blood while he slept was the most humane and convenient thing to do, for everyone.
The stranger took the gun and put it away. He gave one last look at the man and left the room, closing it carefully and ensuring that no trace of his passage was left. He covered his tracks and prepared to leave the town. He regarded the clear way before him and felt a hunch he might make it to The Lake on time after all. The stranger got to the edge of town, ready to continue his crossing of the wastes.
As he was about to go, he noticed the sign that announced the name of the village at the other end of the road. Playfully, he took out his knife and scratched an A in place of the second E. Content with his joke, he began walking; one must do what they can to preserve their spirits.
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