“Hey, Hugo!” Eli shouted. The old laborer stood up from where he and his team had been crouched by the Roller’s wheel. They were sliding metal sheets under the wheel so it would have traction for when they left. Apparently it saved time, however Eli had the feeling that Hugo was just trying to keep his crew busy. While Cone was a high-tier administrator in his clan, he rarely interacted with the common workers. That work fell to people like Hugo. Eli wasn’t sure how the dynamic worked between the four crewmates, their boss, and one of their community’s most valuable organizers. Varly, Splint, Beefcake, and Dedschik all followed Cone when he asked them to do something, but they looked to Hugo for everything else. While they would definitely be loyal to representatives of their clan, they put the most faith in whoever they had worked with the longest. On account of his age, Hugo was that person by default.

“Yeah?” Hugo said as he jogged to the expedition’s lead researcher. Jogged. This was the height of professionalism. Looking back, he might have been able to cut Cone out of this mission entirely.

“What’s your experience with ruin-stripping?” Eli asked.

“I worked it for almost ten years before I moved to freight-handling.” Hugo replied. This was exactly what he needed.

“Alright, come with me.” He said as he started walking to the town’s main street.

“What do you want me for?” Hugo asked, looking back to make sure his underlings were continuing to work. While he had been a bit of a prick during the meeting, Hugo had really come around. He was being consistently respectful, and almost servile.

“Blood-sacrifice.” Eli quipped to a face of stones and white hair. While the foreman definitely had a sense of humor, he must have left it onboard the Rusted Horizon. Eli looked forward to drinks with him when this was all over, if he made it.

“I need an expert’s appraisal on this town. I did my share of stripping when I was a kid, but it’s a different environment out East, everything rotted very quickly.” Eli said, hoping that a bit of technical jargon and a practical job would warm him back up. Hugo nodded.

“You’re right about that. Our winters act as a good preservative for the wooden structures. The trouble is that the freezing shreds concrete.” Hugo said. Thankfully he wasn’t the kind of old person who rambled about their jobs. That was also on the list of things that went wrong, because it killed so much time.

“A lot of the structures look intact.” Eli commented as they started walking past the buildings.

“They do…” Hugo said as he stopped in front of one of the buildings. Judging from the shards on the ground, the front wall had been mostly glass, with supporting pillars placed every 8 feet. And judging from how one of the pillars had been snapped off from its place, things hadn’t been entirely peaceful in the area. Yet everything else appeared to be undisturbed by anything stronger or more deliberate than the elements. This was a remarkably well-preserved town— there still was a town and not charred remnants buried under sediment. Eli’s parents had broken into tears when they saw what had become of their village after they left it for the hills. All across the country, he had heard the cry of “There’s nothing left!”. But the people who lived here could resume their lives after some minor renovations… if any of them were still alive after all these years.

“Looked like a store of some kind, someone might have driven their car through this wall.” Eli said as he walked into the opening. Inside were the merchandise racks found in stores. Most of the items were so rusted that he couldn’t tell what they had sold. It didn’t help that the setting sun made everything look black, and like there was something waiting for them in each corner. Hugo was squatting by an intact portion of the half-wall that ran beneath the panes of glass. Things like this bugged him. The world before the Burnout had resources out the ass, so why couldn’t they have just used panes that went from the ground to the ceiling? The half-wall looked stupid. Maybe the people back then found it aesthetically pleasing.

“I thought so too… but this lower barrier was made of wood, and it’s not likely that one of their cars would’ve just hopped it.” Hugo said as he stood up to look for another piece of evidence. The stick up his ass wasn’t stopping him from being diligent. Eli stooped over the half-wall. The little barrier had been full of wood, but most of it had rotted out, leaving this shell of paint and other things that Eli didn’t have a word for. Hugo was right to say that it wouldn’t have withstood a car even in its prime. The old man was in the back of the shop looking down at something on the floor.

“What’s that?” Eli asked.

“A mounted sign.” He said. No shit. There wasn’t much of it left besides a circle-shaped plateau of rust with the remnants of several bulbs sticking out from it. Even after this much time, a few of those bulbs should have still been intact. He had even seen some fluorescent tubes that were still somewhat operational. He walked over for a closer look; Hugo pointed to the remaining text. The few patches of red lettering weren’t legible anymore, however, this looked like something that would be mounted on the outside of a structure.

“How bad do the winds get up here?” Eli asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Hugo said. Eli didn’t know why he had asked that. Of course Hugo wouldn’t know anything about the meteorological conditions near the Singing Road. And that sign looked like it had been sitting for at least 30 years, perhaps even longer. It could have been blown through the wall during the early days of the Burnout, when the weather could have done just about anything. One of the phenomena he researched had viewed a series of fire-tornadoes as divine proof that they should start marauding through the remnants of southern Missouri.

“Think it could have come from that?” Eli interrupted his own reminiscing of that expedition by pointing to a motel across the road. There wasn’t anything else on the street that would have needed a flashy sign like the one in the store.

“Would have required one hell of a gust.” Hugo said as he traced a line of flight with his pointer. The angle seemed rational, but the sign would have had to have traveled over 40 feet, with enough force to go through a sheet of glass. He felt uneasy about this.

“Or something stronger.” He said.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Blastwave?” Hugo wondered. Those things had produced all manner of absurd arrangements for the stripping industry. He had no doubt that Hugo might regale him with stories of pulling cars from third-floor offices, or trying to assemble skeletons that had been scattered across 60 foot areas. If there really were supernatural forces present during the end of the world, the blastwave would be the closest thing.

“Hard to say.” Eli answered as he realized that nothing in the area looked blown-up. There hadn’t even been fires here. And the only roof that was collapsed had obviously been a result of heavy snowfall and weak architecture. The blast would have to had come from further away, maybe if he asked for a sweep he’d find the blackened remains of a fuel truck or someone’s septic tank. Maybe this had been from…

“Huh, we got a laundromat.” Hugo said to himself. While Eli had been pondering the travels of a certain mounted sign, the laborer had walked down the street to the front of another establishment.

“What is it?” Eli asked as he walked over. The road was still a mostly continuos surface. Winter had killed off all of the small plants and covered everything in snow, yet he could tell that there was something more solid than dirt under his boots. He also saw a few saplings poking up in the middle of the street, which meant it was only a matter of time before their roots destroyed the asphalt. With what was left of the old world, everything was a matter of time.

“The laundry machines are still here.” Eli pointed to the lines of metal cabinets that lay beyond another shattered wall of glass. They started walking into the building. While Eli stepped through the glass remains, mindful to make sure nothing fell from its place and stabbed him, Hugo opted for the door-frame, which had once housed a door made of glass. The hinges screamed as they were forced open for the first time in years. Hugo could have just stepped through the frame. At least they knew that no one else had been here recently.

“This place never had anything past the first wave of stripping.” Hugo said like he was making some academic deduction.

“I haven’t heard of that model before.”

“There’s still a lot of debate on each wave… but what you need to know is that the first ever ruin-strippers were just looters.” Hugo said. Eli had never thought of it that way before. It was a uncomfortable evolution to imagine. The looters had been animals ravaging the places they had once lived and worked in the hopes that they might survive long enough to burn through another locale. Their descendants were somber and thorough workers, who picked apart ruins for profit and a more stable future. But no one did that work unless they wanted to. Eli’s family and everyone else in his community said that they found it soothing to help put the tortured relics to good use. At one point they had also been looters. His “uncle” had told the story about how he killed a woman with a loaded shopping cart as he was fleeing his condominium.

“So the first wave was everything that wasn’t nailed down: Packaged food, currency that might still be usable, clothing, vehicles, weapons. Everything a looter could want.” Eli said.

“But here, it doesn’t seem like anyone came back for the other things. Each of these machines contains a decently powerful motor, and they’re relatively easy to move. This is almost as good as a restaurant.” Hugo said. He was frowning as he thought about all of the materials here that had gone to waste. Eli had no illusions about what this man had been forced to do after the Burnout.

“Any thoughts on how the looting went?” He asked.

“Hold on.” Hugo said as he pulled a multi-tool from his belt. At one point it had been a wrench, but the butt-end had been filed into a chisel shape, and there was a pick welded to the side of one of the pincers. Eli could make out a set of notches near the chisel. Hugo could probably still kill people with that thing. Right now, he was using it as a crowbar to force open a compartment under one of the machines. After grunting in exertion, the cover came loose metal coins flooded out.

“That’s a lot of currency.” Eli said as a pile formed on the floor.

“It’s not the most valuable form of old currency… but it’s still plenty strange. If I was the owner of this laundromat, and I knew that the world was coming to an end, I would have emptied and stashed my income on a nightly basis. It’s been 40 years, but I know there’s no way that’s just one day of business.” Hugo said as he looked down at the mass on the floor. Now he was grimacing worse than when Eli had told some of his jokes during the orientation meeting. There was something fucked up here, and Hugo was beginning to see it plainly.

“How old were you?” Eli asked.

“I turned 30 in the fall of 2030.” Hugo said. He had definitely rehearsed that line many times before. He might have been saying it since that year.

“I guess that’s lucky.”

“You got a fucked up sense of luck.” Hugo replied as he walked back into the street. He really wasn’t good at talking with older people. No one was, everyone that this age-group was comfortable with was dead.

“What do you reckon we’ll find in the other structures?” Eli asked when he caught up to Hugo.

“I’ll try and find something residential next. If we were here… 25 years ago, I think there would be a clearer picture of what happened.” Hugo said without even looking at him. The setting sun made him look far older and tired than he actually was. The solar red made his wrinkled and tan skin look like rust.

“There doesn’t look like there was much violence.” Eli said

“I know for a fact that this isn’t one of those towns that was completely abandoned before the Burnout. There’s still parked vehicles, and…” Hugo bit his lip, and he was breathing heavier.

“What do you feel happened?”

“People were living here, pretty close to the end— but they left in a hurry. Like something happened that forced them to leave. They decided to forsake this place.” Hugo said. That sounded like a retreat into the same dogma he had spouted when he found Center-Brace’s frozen corpse. At least he had some kind of a faith to retreat to. Eli only had his academia and cutting wit.

“Do you consider yourself to be unreasonably superstitious?” He asked.

“I’m cautious.” Hugo said in an unexpected show of self-awareness. But he was still bitter, and afraid of what was here.

“Caution and superstition are two very different realms.” Eli said. The old laborer looked at him. And thought for a moment.

“I’ve seen things, and… there have been events in my life that I’ve never been able to explain.” He said. This much was true. Another Formers, this one with a chip, had calculated that people like Hugo were more likely to win a pre-Burnout lottery, than to survive for as long as they had. The person before him had been one of the few to escape the burning cities and mind-breaking slaughter. All of this while keeping his own sanity and morals. Hugo was one of millions.

“Let me ask you this. If there are miracles, then isn’t there the possibility for something darker?” He asked with all of the wisdom he had absorbed in his long and agonizing life.

“Do you think part of it’s here?” Eli asked. Almost immediately, he knew he should have waited… or found a way to not sound like an asshat. As impatient as he was, someone like Hugo deserved his respect. And now the old man was glowering at him.

“I think that people like you have no true reverence.” He said as he left to join his crew. Eli was used to pissing people off, and being numb to their responses. For the first time in several years, he was fucking hurt by this kind of rejection. It wasn’t like he had wanted Hugo to like him or something, but… not this.

The sun had almost disappeared from the horizon. Soon it would be dark out, and Eli would have something more entertaining to research than that various oddities and relics that surrounded him.