nine eight nine, 2049

The heat felt like it was screaming curses into my skin and my sweat was its spit . The haze of warmth around me made it hard to focus on anything but the shrill of cicadas in the distance , but at times I swear I could hear the heat . other than that it was silent - between the white hot pavement and the empty streets filled with dust , this was a fucking ghost town.

The heat added an extra stab of pain to my fist as I punched it onto the road again . It stung like fire , knuckles reeling like the ground was hot oil. My head was teeming with the aftermath of an outburst , swimming in deafening exasperation. It was embarrassing, but the clerk beside me didn't seem to mind . He was fumbling for a packet of camels in an oversized jacket pocket, and didn't seem fazed . I wondered if he was just glad to see a new person for once , albeit in a bad situation.

He looked somewhere between 14 and 30 . Acne scars littered his face, but not in a blighting way - the eyebags, to me , signalled he was older , twenties , maybe - but his features and his face seemed out of place , like they were a hand me down he was yet to grow into . He was scrawny, sunburnt and pale , and had eyes I can only describe as having a consistently worried expression, the concern baked into them from years of working off the 989 .

He handed me a camel and furtively lit one of his own . I grasped with the lighter for a second before giving up in frustration . Even rolling my thumb down the igniter felt like I was stripping flesh from my own finger . I looked down and realised my knuckles were bleeding profusely - the clerk seemed to have realised this too and was now groping his jacket for a tissue, cigarette poised tightly between his lips , tentatively clenched so as not to drop it on the dust coated pavement below.

"Shit." he says after a second , bringing his hands back to the cigarette defeatedly . "Sorry man . I can't find a wipe . I can go back in and find one if you'd-"

I cut him off mid sentence and tell him to not worry about it . He nods and looks off into the distance , taking a longer drag on the camel . I guess this is his break.

He turns back to me .

"This happens a lot , you know . Nasty fuckers. Anything they can melt down they'll take . Filters , too . no matter if it's near a filter stop or not , because the more you can flip them if you sell them further away . and they'll take random shit , too”

I tug on my backpack strap with my less bruised hands, wiping sand and dust on the canvas . Staring at the clerk , I noticed he had his eyes fixated on a building opposite us . The windows were plastered over with newspaper, and what was left of the sign had rotted into an abstract lump on the side . It was a hulk of a structure , a hollow carcass of abandoned life.

“Hey, what was that used as ?” I said , gesturing at the building tentatively. I didn't want to strike the wrong chord with the clerk - he seemed like he was wary of me but in a morbidly curious manner . He glanced at me for a second , before turning his gaze back to opposite us.

“It used to be a pet shop . All round here were pet shops and vets and baking shops . for a while after it was a coffee shop but that got shut down a couple of years back . Pretty much everything down these parts are shut now . We've got Halley's here and there's a diner about 4 miles east from here . That's where you got the post office too , and that has a shop in it and a filter stop . It's nice parts round there . it's deserted here , fuckoff wasteland - we only get one-stoppers like you and pillagers -”

He cut himself off , circumspect he might have caught my offence or started to babble. I felt sorry for him in this moment - this was probably the most he'd spoken in a while without somebody trying to maim him . My anger had eased off largely at this point - the frustration was no longer hot under my skin. It was pooling at the surface and had cooled to mild bitterness. The camel had helped. I caught his eye and waved for him to continue . tell me about this place then , I said , humouring him . “-I'm from out west so i don't know here at all , I've seen a couple of shitholes on the way , deserted like this , but never had my shit jacked before like that - jesus christ man , you must get some fucking cases out here-”

He looked at me like a small child would look at an animal they'd never seen before . I guessed he was racking his brains to think of a reason why somebody would travel that far , and for what reason . I braced myself for the question , but it never came - he seemed to gulp down his words like sour medicine when reading my expression and clocking I wanted to avoid the subject. This kid had quick reaction times . He quickly danced back onto the subject of the hellscape we were currently melting into , a tower of ash residue collecting on an untoked cigarette flitting between his fingers - more of a stress toy than something to smoke .

“This place used to be called Mabel . It was always a stopoff town for the 989 but around ten years back when things started fucking up and people started leaving . All the young people left for something more central to major ports basically , and after that it started to really go to shit . you get loads along this line , yeah . A lot of them existed way before the 989. All of them were like old persons’ towns - you didn't get many youngsters there , these were old communities. once they die their businesses go too , and suddenly it's fresh meat"

I look at the light from the cigarette cherry as he takes a drag . He looks a little more open now.

“Can I be honest with you , man?” he says , stubbing the last of the camel out by his foot . without waiting for a reply , he goes on -

“- most of them are good people . hard times hit everyone and i was angry at it first too . Now I just sit with it . It's hard to other people in your head and mark them off as scum when you've known them since you were a kid . I'm not saying they were okay to steal your shit like that though man , disrespect -”

He pauses, glancing down the road.

“I didn't know those people . Didn't recognise them , people i know , respectable people , they don't come up here like that . You get groups of tourists , that's what i reckon fucked you . the bastards come up here in troves - they think its free ground for scrap, an easy place for whatever shit they can't do in their own backyard . They're right , too , god knows what the fuck would actually happen if somebody got caught . you can't get arrested out here . no courts around-"

I nodded. The thought flooded my head of my old place in Gillsbeth. It was scrap land like this - , with relentlessly steep hills and groves infested with nettles. Me, Dana and Al used to shoot the shit catapulting bricks into old shops, with the ease of tossing stones into a lake . It wasn't any different back west at all . Wasteland for miles . The land is a dried out corpse anywhere past major ports , and we are maggots within the dead flesh .

The clerk went on.

“Whatever it was in that bag, if it was filters and perishables or toilet shit I can go and replace it . I'll get bandages , too -”

I thank him . I'd been mentally assessing the content of that shithead bag for the past hour . Each item within it has not been catalogued in my head , like neatly filed missing persons reports. My old keys . My filters. A swiss knife , a penknife . Some old coins and finally , the locket . Right at the bottom , tucked away in a little plastic bag . I gritted my teeth . Nothing fucking perishable there . This was valuable . They knew that when they took it , but they'll have a fucking field day when they dig to the bottom and find carat gold . The seething rage of having that opportunity ripped from me had stripped away any sentimentality I had to it before . I only cared about what I could have gotten in exchange from the locket when I reached Gloria , and found a place to stay . That tiny piece of metal would have made my life start again . Even with the keys and the penknife too , I would have been able to trade up to enough fuel to get to a Port from there , like Sapling or New Canada - I would have had clarity.

Being brought back to the drawing board, to me , is like being stripped naked and left for dead . I felt like I was already long gone - i'd died when they'd taken it , and i'd been a cadaver since , the flies gnawing at my skin in the beating sun .

I decided to focus on the mortal comforts.

“I need some filters -” the words stumbling out of my mouth .

The clerk moves to stand up .

“Anything else in the bag ?”He says , brushing the dust off his jacket.

“Nothing much”, I continue directing my focus to the slow accumulation of a scab on the exposed flesh of my knuckles .

“Scrap?”

“Kind of . Just some shit from my old place and some coins i’d picked up along the way. Was going to trade them at Gloria”

The clerk nods, and begins to head towards the store. I go to take another drag of the camel but noticed it had fizzled out to the filter. Long gone. When the clerk goes inside I get up to stretch - the heat is still beating down on me, brutal punches of searing warmth. I feel raw and bloody in the crimson blanket of high noon. I begin to plot my next step. I know Gloria is still a few days away, and i’ll have to recuperate my losses.

The clerk comes back with a full canister of clear water and a stack of filters.

“Free of charge, man. It’s okay” . I thank him and start to pour water from the canister onto my knuckles. It feels like cool bliss. I take in the surroundings one last time before I leave. The screaming of the cicadas. The dilapidated houses and shops. The environment around me hummed a tune of a loud bright past full of people and love. Only wasteland now.