The man gaped his mouth, swallowed air, staggered across a concrete plain. He favored his right leg, so his gait was hesitant and weird; blood traced the jean-covered leg with a long vertical wound. Black structures stood against stars in the all-around distance—his panting took up and sweat shone his face in milk light. His right boot was gone and every footfall with the left came as an abrupt click against the concrete. Then the right followed dully. A repeater rifle, glinting with his steps, was strung over his shoulder. Panic on his face made the whites of his eyes like two small moons in the dark.

He crossed a dead parking lot like a man trudging across the desert for water, beleaguered. Light shafts came from between the tall concrete buildings, and atop the high rooves, his eyes shifted to see the long shadows of utility towers.

A risen piece of sidewalk rose to meet his right foot, and he stumbled over and caught himself on the side of his ankle but did not stop; he skimmed the ankle along the pavement and did not protest. He went across the dry dirt island then into the street where blackness was.

He was a man alive in a decayed world.

Standing in the street were rusted cars, trucks, overturned pushcarts. The man took among them, planted his palm against a rough hood, twisted to peer back to the thing which injured him.

Across the barren lot where painted lines no longer stood, there was a broad and flat cinderblock building; hanging there over the face of it remained its portico which drenched the ancient storefront in absentness. No noise came, save the man’s own belabored breathing; he puckered his lips on the exhale, tilted his head, and watched the unmoving building. Silence delirium.

The man knelt by the wheel, kept his head tilted above the hood gopherlike, lifted his right leg and inspected it. Along the ankle of his right leg, the jeans came apart and billowed. He gingerly lifted apart the tear in the pants and grimaced. Copper hung in the air while he calmed his breathing. The man shimmied from the dark into the light of a moon shaft—white bone stood exposed where muscle threads were robbed from him. He shook his head in the fit of an outraged whimper and angled into the darkness again.

In tilting his shoulder, the repeater rifle fell from where it was slung, and he held it awkwardly like a shivering child. He took the rifle across the hood and pointed it in the direction of the supermarket, glanced down the bead, adjusted himself, glanced again; nothing emerged.

“Fucker,” he whispered.

He waited and nothing came.

The man’s shoulders relaxed while he adjusted the rifle in his hands then jammed his face hard against the forearm of the gun. The barrel wavered and he winced and still nothing came.

Furiously, he took to his feet again, shouldered the strap, and began to make his way across the road with tentative looks back to the storefront. He leveled his hands out wide and touched the strewn dead vehicles in the dark, using them for support; the man more hopped than walked. Darkness swallowed him entirely as he reached the other side of the street, and he peered out from it.

The building opposite the parking lot stilted over him. He took to the exterior wall there, windowless, and traced his hand across it as he moved from the scene. The road went on and so did he while his limp became further pronounced, each movement spurred a whispered groan. The dilapidated sidewalk under him seemed a further hinderance as the rubble around his feet impeded his steps.

Finally, the man came to a hitch truck, looked to the tow hook which hung from its rear, settled with his shoulders at its back wheel, held his breath to listen; he remained in full shadow and stretched his legs out entirely. He rocked left then right on the hard pavement, removed the rifle and sat it across his lap. Hooking his fingers into his pocket, the man snaked out a bent stogie alongside a book of matches. He swallowed hard, sighed, and lit the crummy thin cigar. The match illuminated his face ghostly and he shook it dead. After two puffs, he adjusted himself, rested the hand holding the cigar alongside him on the ground.

He became still and moved no longer.

***

“Look!” called Trinity, the hunchback; she pointed at the corpse.

It was daylight, but the scene remained; the man, now unbreathing, sat there against the rear wheel of the hitch truck, eyes closed, half a cigar stuck dead in his fingers, silvery repeater rifle sitting across his lap—a deep stain upon the asphalt was beneath him where he was. Trinity lumbered forward, gave the man a shove, and he fell over without protest.

“You see this?” asked Trinity to her comrade.

Hoichi, an earless clown, squatted between two vehicles in the street, bare-assed; he heard the call of his comrade, perked as his name was called, then gave a final shake, wiped, then pulled his trousers to his waist and spilled into one of the many narrow thoroughfares created by the vehicles lining the road. The sun was high, Hoichi sweat, put his hand to his brow, squinted across vehicle glass refraction. Shaking his head, the clown called out, “You were supposed to watch out for me!”

The clown, as he’d been called, was so named for the arrangement of his face; tattooed over his skin was the permanent image of a smiling clown—forever makeup. The color around his eye sockets were faded blue, his face looked dull and milk white, and around his lips, in a perpetual grin, was an oblong red boomerang.

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Upon angling through the vehicles, he went ahead in the direction they’d been traveling and came upon Trinity many yards out from where he’d squatted. The hunchback was his friend, his confidant, his sister—non-biological. He came to lean against the hitch truck adjacent where the woman stood.

She lifted the repeater from the dead man, examined it from several angles while turning it over in her hands. “Sorry,” she offered to Hoichi, “I guess this caught my eye. Besides, you were taking forever to finish.”

Hoichi sniffed and patted his stomach. “I’m bloated. No matter the number of canned beans, I feel swollen and sick.”

Trinity raised an eyebrow, pivoted and glanced the length of her traveling companion, “Coming down with something?”

Hoichi shrugged. “Gas perhaps.”

“Be sure to keep it to yourself if it clears out.” Trinity shook her head, leveled the rifle down the street, stared down the bead with her left eye while pinching her right shut. She relaxed, lowered the gun, and awkwardly slung the rifle over her shoulder. “What do you think got him?” she nodded at the dead man.

Hoichi hunkered by the dead man’s leg, opened the frayed jean. “My best guess is blood loss.” He stared at the expression on the dead man’s face. “He seems lucky. It looks almost like he’s gone to sleep.” Upon rising to his feet again, the clown held the cigar he’d taken from the corpse, lit it from a book of Republic Brand matches, frowned and shook his head. He passed the thin cigar to Trinity; she casually puffed the thing while the clown lowered himself once more to examine the body.

“Pockets,” said Trinity, nodding.

“Yeah,” said Hoichi, he fingered the dead man’s pockets and came up with nothing besides coins. The clown stood once more, put out his arm to usher his sister onto the busted sidewalk; she stood there and watched. “Something bad injured this man. We’d do well to keep our eyes sharp until Dallas. Of course, we could always head south.” He gently rocked his head left and right as if with weight. “South means fewer Republic patrols, but that is not always such a bad thing.”

“I want to see the gardens, if we can,” said Trinity. “You know that.”

Hoichi nodded, “Why don’t we go see the zoo in Fort Worth while we’re at it?” The clown exposed his teeth with a chiding smile.

“Don’t pretend you couldn’t do with some greenery.”

The clown sighed, “You’re right.”

The duo continued in their travel, moving with the mild trepidation that came while maneuvering through the wasteland. Even within Republican borders, a person could never be too careful.

Though there had been factions which sprung up in the wake of the first deluge, there were perhaps none in North America which maintained as much land as The Republic. Many of those that called themselves Republic citizens did so proudly, and while places further elsewhere retained their own determination like free city-states, all under The Republic fell beneath its central jurisdiction. The nation kept the stars and stripes as its banner. It was New America, and it was not so uncommon to find Republic citizens—especially politicians—which proudly called themselves Americans to harken back to better days and rile their constituents.

“Movin’ right along,” sang Trinity as they went and Hoichi absently hummed the tune to match. The woman’s voice was small and fragile and cracked often in the heat; upon completion of the brief, partially recalled ditty, she shirked the gourd from her pack and drank three hard audible swallows before putting it away. They continued in silence.

Hoichi studied the buildings; the outskirts of Dallas grew around them as the streets seemed narrower and the structures came high. Empty concrete places stood on either side of them till they took onto Gaston Avenue and then it became Pacific Avenue—an old but maintained roadway—and they passed defunct dry ornamental fountains and walked parallel to train track lines that’d been partially picked over. Dilapidated vehicles became fewer as they travelled into the deeper parts of the city; likely they’d been scavenged for parts. The glow of the sun became distant and peripheral from within the beast.

The duo pulled their robes closer to their bodies and Hoichi passed the back of his hand across his forehead. With the absence of noise, every breath was audible, every step was explosive. Then came the steady hum of a battery wagon far ahead and traveling in the direction of the pair. The wagon moved at a brisk speed down Pacific Avenue and the driver sat high in their seat while the carriage behind remained encased and closed; upon approach, it was apparent that it was a civilian-owned contraption and seemed kept together with spit-work. The driver—an androgynous woman—waved and passed the duo; Trinity and Hoichi gave the wagon a wide berth and waved back. On passing, the carriage portion contained faces which pushed against the small glassless windows there—a family?

Upon watching them go, the hunchback and the clown stood side by side on the righthand of the street upon a concrete-tile plaza, in the forefront of a monstrously tall girder-bare tower. The hum disappeared after the wagon.

“Do you ever think about your family?” asked Trinity.

Hoichi shook his head, “I try to keep all of that away. What about you?”

“If I ever see my parents, I’ll likely need a hand in burying them.” Trinity’s eyes remained still and same even while she guffawed.

The clown smiled.

They went on.

Trinity spat, “You ever think about starting over?”

“I don’t think I’d want to.”

“Even if it’s someone you really liked?”

“No,” said Hoichi.

Trinity averted her eyes from her brother, cast them to the impossible heights of the flat-topped towers on either of their sides. “I think about it. Sometimes. I think it would be nice to have someone care about me like that.”

“I care about you.”

“But not like that,” Trinity shook her head, “I think it’d be good. I think I’ve seen enough. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“No more running?” asked Hoichi.

“I don’t think I was ever really suited for it.” She shrugged and there was a moment where only the sound of their own footfalls resounded. “I’ve seen too much, actually—now that I think about it, I’ve seen too much,” Trinity laughed, “You know, I can handle the death of most people—

“Even me?” teased Hoichi.

“You know what I mean,” she gave a light shove to the clown, and he swiveled on his heel to catch his footing before returning alongside her slower stride. “Death is one thing. Seeing children though,” her voice trailed off before it returned, “Or things worse than death. Or God, what about wasting away? Could you imagine the pain of wasting away? Starving! I’ve felt bad bad hunger, but never starvation.”

Hoichi winced, but kept a cheeriness to his tone, “You’re dwelling on Tuscaloosa still?”

“Haven’t you thought about it?”

The clown nodded. “Shame,” was all he said about it.

“Yeah.”

Quiet returned and they kept on till they saw the liveliness of Dallas City’s edge.