Derelict

Life to the Bitter of Soul

Chapter Thirty

With shreds of flesh dangling from a dozen wounds and what remained of his clothes saturated in blood, a dark figure stumbled through the night. He held little awareness of his situation other than a vague, impending sense of danger and a longing to seek shelter. It was instinctive, a knowledge seeping into his consciousness that he was injured and powerless against the terrors of the Wastelands.

His strength ebbed with each labored step. A trail of blood traced his tortured progress across the desert floor, an open invitation pointing the way for whatever predator lurked in the shadows. With no weapon and growing ever weaker, the desire to slump to the ground and surrender to their hungry jaws threatened to overwhelm him.

Rest, he thought. You've fought a good fight. The end is near and now is the time for rest.

He looked down at his feet and it took him a moment to realize they were no longer moving. He was confused. He didn't remember stopping and had no notion of how long he had been standing still. He willed them to move and take another step, for there was something important that had yet to be done. There remained a mission, a reason for his being.

But to stop for a moment to rest and maybe gather his wits seemed so very inviting. You deserve it. It doesn't matter anyway. Nothing matters but rest, to sleep even.

Yet something nagged at him. A task or a quest left incomplete, perhaps? He knew something lingered and remained unfinished but identifying it seemed just out of reach. His vision blurred as his eyes filled with sweat and blood. He raised a hand to wipe his eyes only to find them covered in even more blood.

It didn't matter. He had no strength to continue.

He had failed. His struggle had come to an end and he had failed. As that realization sank in and took hold, despair filled him. Whatever had been his mission, whatever had been that thing lingering in the back of his mind and nagging at him was doomed, as was he.

He stood, swaying with weakness and trying to decide whether to give up and die here or move a few more feet and die over there. It was all pointless, he knew that now. All his struggles and everything he had lived for had been meaningless. He would soon be dead with his bones scattered across the desert and whatever was left undone would forever remain so.

There are worse places to die. There are worse lives to have led. He accepted it, it was over and he knew that now.

Once the decision had been made, there was relief. He was tired of the fighting and the grief and the pain. It would be so easy now, just sit down, give in, and it would all be over. The Wastelands would have claimed another, swallowed into the void of darkness.

Then, just ahead the noise of an animal sounded out against the still of the night. Not the strange, otherworldly chirps and growls of an alien creature. No. This was familiar, comforting even. He recognized it.

It was a mule.

He struggled to make sense of it, to understand the presence of a mule this deep in the Wastelands and it didn't add up. It shouldn't be alive.

There! A solitary figure stood silhouetted against the night sky watching as a mule raced away in the opposite direction. It was a slight figure, a child maybe? Again, it didn't make any sense. Was he imagining? Had his mind ceased to filter fantasy from reality?