Across the Wastelands

Day two: searching the wastelands. I’ve survived thus far on the few morsels and scraps of food I’ve been able to turn up. The results have been poor so far, with little hope in conditions changing. I’ve run across the remains of a few fellow stragglers, many days long expired, laying in their tattered tents, or huddled beneath the sparse branches of nearly dead trees. The scenes have been gruesome, too gruesome to describe. I am nauseous even now as I remember them. 

But in the midst of it all I ran across one man not quite gone. He simply called himself The Follower. It had been so long since anyone had called him anything else that he couldn’t even remember his real name. But there was no time for details beyond that, as he was almost gone. I sat with him, telling him of all I had seen, trying to distract him from the pain until he was dead.

He said he had heard rumors of signs of hope in the West, the direction I had already been going. These were his last words before his breath left him. I hope he is right.

I had neither the tools nor the strength to bury him, so I left him where he lay, regretfully. I can only pray the rumors he heard were true. I travel on.