And All to Dust

A thin man walks down dusty roads in a dead city. Steel groans overhead, and the wind screeches through the narrow alleyways. Cars are scattered over the road, many are overturned. Many are coffins. The man knows little of why the city is like this. He walks and finds an overturned baby carriage.

A small gray arm extends from underneath the ruffles of fabric. The man almost treads upon it, but sees the poor remnant of life in time. He steps aside, crosses his leather clad chest and says a silent prayer. This is not the first time he has seen this.

Hungry and tired, the heat bearing down on his back like that of a thousand deaths, the man breaks the window of a building. It was a hotel, well lit when powered and full of green plants. A mound of gray flesh sits in every seat, the clothes long ago having rotted away.

Pests scurry out from under foot. The man finds a door leading to a hallway, dark and unlit. He takes out a small torch, barely working with damaged batteries. A now illuminated sign on the wall points left. It says KITCHEN.

The actual kitchen is well lit, allowing the man to conserve his torch for later days. The gray shape of a man is slumped over a plate of decayed food, picked away at by insects. The man doesn’t bother with the meat locker or the bakery. He instead searches the cabinets, finding canned goods. Fading labels identify vegetables and soups.

A rustling, too large for a pest, sounds from the hallway. The man reaches for his weapon, a dented titanium baseball bat. Around the corner another man appears. he is well dressed, and rather plump in appearance. Startled apparently by the thin man’s existence he squeals.

Please don’t hurt me! I’ll give you food, water, whatever you want just go away!

Brother, God may have left behind the worse, but that doesn’t make us all bad. I am a man of the Book, I wouldn’t hurt an innocent.

Oh, yes, I’ll fall for that! An armed biker in my hotel saying he is of peace, no doubt a man of God!

Assuming of course you are an innocent.

What?

I wouldn’t harm you, assuming you are an innocent. Tell me, how many people did you let starve? How many lives rest eternally in chains, bound to your leg, following you wherever you go?

I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about!

There was a child. A hungry child. Did the mother ask for food? Certainly the fabric would have been gone by now had the death not been
recent.

No! It wasn’t my fault! I had no food!

But you have food enough to spare for a grown man?

Just begone! Surely you are just a figment of my mind, a demon come to torment me, begone I say!

Sinner, I pity whatever hell spawn is sent to collect your soul. An infant weighs more than a dozen men in the afterlife.

No! No no no!

The plump man collapses in a heap in the corner, sobbing, muttering. He rocks back and forth, then shrieks, holding his hears closed against the sound. He continues, until blood runs from his nose.

The man gathers his food, and goes on his way.