I’ve been sleeping for so long these past couple of days that when I woke up, I couldn’t tell whether the sun was rising or setting. I decided to place some stones on the shadow of a street sign as the day progressed. Once I knew the shadow was shrinking, along with the noticeable brightness, I knew I had a full day ahead of me, and could get a lot miles covered.
Even though most of the world had disappeared after the big event, there were still random lost souls you would find on the deserted roads of this country.
The scar that I earned on my right arm was from an encounter I had with one of them, during the first days of this new world. I was a lot more gullible then and honestly, eager to talk with any human being to not feel alone.
I drove through one of the deserted cities and about half a mile in front of me, I could see a car turned into an inferno. As I got closer, a woman was on the road, wailing over what appeared to be the dead body of someone she cared about.
I stopped my car and got out to assist her in good faith but was ambushed by a gang. They sliced my right arm with a rusty pipe as they tried to break it, demanding me to give them my car keys.
Then, they used that same pipe to strike me across the head which knocked me out cold.
When I woke up, the woman, her ‘dead’ loved one, the gang, and my car were gone. All that was left was black smoke smouldering from the inferno car and the rusty pipe laying a foot away. Which helped me understand why my brain was pulsating as it tried to escape from its skull.
It took me some time to get back on my feet, I had to rest in a furniture store, sleeping in one of the beds at the back to avoid being seen by any other passers by.
But hey, lesson learned, I have no idea what damage that pipe did, it wasn’t like I could go to a hospital. They were all deserted or turned into multi-story graveyards with dead bodies.
However, I found taking some painkillers helps alleviate the pain but sometimes I’ve had some blinding headaches, which me wipe out. That is why I’ve slept so much recently and lost track of time.
Anyway, the reason I’m writing all these thoughts down is because today as I was trying to cover as much ground as possible, I saw what I thought was another car inferno in the distance. I was determined that no matter how much distressed this person was I. WAS. NOT. STOPPING.
But this inferno was different, there was no one crying over a corpse. Instead there was a man carrying a spade, wearing sandals, a red robe that hugged his shoulders, revealed his torso and heart-shaped boxer shorts.
I pulled over to the other side of the road but kept my foot on the pedal, just in case I needed to escape. I watched him shovel old smartphones from the back of a van into a wheelbarrow and then toss them all into this growing fire.
As he made me eye-contact with me, he started raising his shovel in the air, then started yelling, ‘They knew too much about us, we were so blind!’ over and over again.
I hit the accelerator and watched this man collapse to his knees as he failed to chase me, holding his shovel in both hands and disappear into the horizon from my rear view mirror.