The cracked asphalt pulses beneath me every time the tires roll over them. A crooked sign stands half uprooted along the side of the road, the words eaten away by the elements. I drive slowly, looking for any sign of life, any vestige of civilization that can be salvaged. I’ll spend hours doing this every day.

Across this plateau, the land is dead. Greenery reduced to small patches of weeds; even the hardiest of plants beginning to die from a world bathed in endless gloom. The trees stand lifeless, desiccated; their skeletal branches stretching towards the sky like some futile plea for salvation from above.

It’s difficult to tell whether the changes in the mirror are from my age, or the weathered effects of this blasted world. There is constant concern that I will succumb to scurvy, or rickets, or that the antibiotics in my kit are long past their use.

I stop briefly to eat, stepping out into the cold. It’s eerily quiet now; I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard the sound of birds. When the radiation swept across the world, they were the first to go. I remember seeing their rotten bodies littering the ground for miles.

There is only the sound of my chewing over the empty, blowing wind. I wonder if it’s like this everywhere, if places like the Amazon still exist or if the great kelp beds have been reduced to dead water. Perhaps somewhere, in some other part of the world, someone like me is asking these same questions.

The temperature begins to drop as midday passes. On the road again, I spot derelict cars, long stripped of anything of value, merely the frames left behind like giant steel skeletons. There’s an old gas station sticking out amidst the dreary landscape. I pull over a short distance away and step out of the car, and right away I catch the lingering scent of a recent fire. There are others here.

I reach in the back seat and pull out the rifle tucked under several blankets, carefully peel the protective tape from the breach and barrel, and wiggle the bolt back and forth to make sure dust hasn’t gotten into it. I load the weapon and approach the station slowly, creeping up to the employee’s entrance. The door is locked from the inside. It’s a typical five-pin deadbolt – easy enough to pick. A few minutes of work and I’m in.

It’s dark, but light shines faintly through the front portion of the station. To my left, a restroom; the toilet is dry, encrusted with old feces; the sink inoperable. A roll of toilet paper rests nearby, a gleaming white treasure amidst the refuse. I grab it and continue on to the front of the station, trying to remain silent. The floor crunches under my feet: dead leaves and broken glass. I can feel my heart begin to pound in my chest from the sound.

“Who’s there?!” The voice sends a jolt through my body, but I don’t panic. I stay silent, holding my breath, taking a step backwards with the rifle pointed out in front of me. A small, gaunt figure steps forward, leaning on some kind of stick. I catch a flash of him briefly in the light: sores on his face, patches of hair missing from his scalp and beard. He leans against the wall and waves the stick in the air. “Get out of my shop!”

I take another step back, my weapon steady in my hands. The figure lunges forward with the stick and smacks the wall with a clatter, and it rattles his frail arms. He tries to steady himself, but loses his footing under a piece of broken glass and stumbles backwards. Right then, I step forward and point my rifle at him and say, “Easy…”

The man looks up at me like a wild animal, fear and anger on his face in equal measure. He spits on the floor in contempt. “You people, you all the same!”

“I’m not here to hurt you.” I say.

He tries to get up, gripping at the wall but finding no means to steady himself. He slides back down, sobbing. “Oh god… just take it. Just end it here. Do it quick.”

I kneel down in front of him, setting my rifle aside, extending my hand to help him up, but he jerks his arm away and forces himself to his feet. Broken glass sticks in his hand but he appears not to notice. “They come… they come and take everything.”

”Who?” I ask.

“Men like you. They come and they take all my food.”

I try to reassure him that I’m not here to steal from him, but he ignores me. He grabs his stick and limps along, and I follow him to his makeshift living space behind the counter. A few bottles of stagnant water lay strewn about, their contents brown, obviously filled from puddles outside. The filthy pillow on the floor rust-colored from old blood. The sores on his face are like burns, his skin sloughing off in sheets. He is a man not long for the world and he knows it.

All I can do is leave him to his fate.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2012 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Survival Log. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.