Tell me if you think this goes too fast
I felt the warm sandy soil beneath my fingers and opened my eyes. The blue sky stared back. The sun was at its peak, dazzling me as I sat up and looked around with hazy eyes. Wasteland. All I could see for miles and miles in front of me was pale brown ground, cracked open like parched lips, occasionally dotted with tufts of brown stringy grass and scrubs. Behind me, the earth has been torn open leaving a gaping impassable ravine that extended from east to west as far as my blurry eyes could see. On the horizon lay what looked like ruins, squatting there like the husk of some giant insect. I could just make out several tall skyscrapers, surrounded by the grey sprawling mass of the buildings lower down.
A harsh cry sounded in the dusty air and I looked up to see what looked like large black birds wheeling in the sky above me like messengers of ill omen. I shivered despite the baking heat and slumped down to the ground in utter despair. Here I was, in the middle of a strange deserted plain and that wasn’t even the worst of it. I couldn’t even remember my own name. I couldn’t remember where I came from, how I got here or where I was. There was only one thing I knew for definite and that was I was hopelessly and desperately lost.
I put my head between the knees of the worn jeans I was wearing and sat in the gritty sand fighting off a wave of despair when I noticed something glinting in the light of the sun. It was a length of chain with an engraved tag on the end hanging out of my jacket pocket. Quickly I scrambled up and grabbed the tag reading the faded engraving etched onto its shining surface. It read “NO. 6892576, Sector 194”.
All of a sudden, a searing pain tore through my skull, pictures flashing like sirens before my eyes, a whitewashed room, a smiling woman dressed in white, men with faces as rough as rock standing in line. As soon as it had come, the burning pain faded yet the world still span around me. Those words had obviously meant something to me and I had to find out what. There was no real choice in the matter, I had no other link to my life before now and I couldn’t sit around feeling sorry for myself. With new found resolution, I pulled myself up and began walking slowly across the barren wastes.
At first it was easy going as I had no baggage or equipment to weigh me down, just the clothes on my back and dogged determination. The only real problem was the heat pounding away relentlessly at my back through the thin cloth of my shirt. The sodden material of my clothing clung to me, sticky, unpleasant and still I was sweating profusely, losing more and more water by the mile. I soon realised that the lack of baggage was both a gift and a curse. I wasn’t weighed down by anything, but that also meant I had nothing, no food, no water or the necessary means to get either. I couldn’t remember when I had last drank or eaten, but my stomach growled ominously and my throat felt rough as sandpaper. The situation seemed more and more desperate by the second but this only served to harden my resolve and give me a rush of defiant energy.
The day wore on and the sun began to sink in the west, draining all colours from the land leaving every feature murky brown and scattering long spindly shadows over the wastes. The setting of the sun had also sucked all the heat away leaving the air icy and chill. I couldn’t guess how many miles I had covered but I could no longer see the ruins of the city, or any other landmark for that matter. I was beginning to shiver uncontrollably as the cold clammy fingers of the night wormed their way into my bones and sapped the energy that had seemed so plentiful just hours ago. My eyelids were heavy with exhaustion, legs lumps of lead and my dry throat rasped as I breathed out, leaving ghostly wisps of steam hanging on the frozen air.
Panic set in. I needed somewhere warm to rest or my journey would be over before it had begun. With the world growing dimmer by the minute, I raced over to the nearest scrub and broke of off several branches, the dry wood splintering easily before my numb hands. Next I grabbed some dried out grass, placing it in a loose circle and piling the branches on top while hurriedly sifting through my trouser pockets in an attempt to find some sort of ignition. They were empty. I reached into my jacket pockets one by one in a mad frenzy until my shaking hands closed around the cold metal of my tag. As soon as my fingers felt the chill steel my mind suddenly became clear and the panic melted away. I pulled the chain out of my pocket, grabbed the tag and began to bend it until it snapped clean in two. Without wasting a moment, I put the pieces of metal on top of my tinder and scraped them together. White sparks jumped willingly from the surface of the metal bouncing onto the dry tinder which burst into flames, licking hungrily at the sun bleached wood.
Relief. It felt better than anything I had ever known. I let it wash over me like a soothing tide as the dancing flames warmed my stiff fingers and toes. But beneath the relief there was lump caught fast in my throat. I was nothing but a young boy, forsaken and abandoned. As I fell asleep by the light of the fire, it was only then I realised how alone I was.
