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10:16 am - Dream: Scarcity

Nothing ever lasted anymore.



Sure, people banded together here and there, for a bit, and made something that worked for a while. Call it a town, a village, a camp, whatever. But it never lasted. The world was not for lasting anymore. The winds were too fast, too hot, too dry. The raiders viewed success and failure as the same outcome and this made them bold. Every day, there was less untarnished metal, less unburnt wood, less undiseased meat, and there was never anything new that was good. New was only bad; new was only horror: a new illness nobody knew how to treat, a new tribe looking to fall upon you and yours, a new creature spit up from the desert to kill and maim in some new way you never imagined possible. And then the village or town or camp or whatever would be gone and those who survived would make their own way, again.



We were making our own way, again.



This time, at least, we had a car of sorts. A Volkswagen Beetle, I think it was called when it was still being made. The tank was more gas than sand and so we were able to coax it along what remained of a road, away from the last horror as it was winding down, towards the next thing we would try - whatever that might be.



But cars, like everything else in the broken world, cannot last, and so ours did not. We had just passed through a little town before the breakdown. It was still visible in the shimmering heat - some other group of folks bravely trying to make and hold onto something. They were too close to the recent horror for us to feel comfortable throwing in our lot with them but more power to 'em - at least, so we felt when we had the car. Now, we were repacking our supplies on the side of the road, arranging everything for foot travel. Heading back and seeing what the little shithole town had to offer for a bit wasn't looking so bad now.



Then a decision of sorts was forced upon us, because the wind changed, and with it came the unmistakable whisper of a distant sound: the pulsing, echoing shrieks of an approaching flock of banshees. Sure enough: the dark mass peeking over the horizon was no cloud. In their teeming thousands, the flock would be here all too soon, bombarding everything with their overwhelming din, setting our brains to resonance within our skulls no matter how tightly we plugged our ears. The effect would render us unconscious within minutes. In the open, this was the same thing as death.



As always, with these things, there was no time for rational consideration or the formulation of a plan. That we could hear them at all might mean it was too late. We ran for the town. If we could get into a secure building, we'd be safe - unconscious, sure, but locked away from their talons and beaks until the flock moved on. We couldn't bring the supplies. They'd probably be long gone by the time we woke up, carried away by someone else who awoke sooner. The way of things, now.



The town never seemed to get any closer. The sand pounded, pounded, pounded under our feet forever and the shrill, throbbing noise grew louder and louder. I couldn't look up, just down at my feet, running and running, feeling tunnel vision close in as my head began to beat like a drum. The flock was over us, around us, encircling us, waiting for us to fall, but we ran and ran - and then suddenly my hand was on a door handle.



Opened, we were inside, pull it shut, throw down the bar. Just enough time to look around once - before the tone became unbearable and we fell into darkness - to make sure we were all inside, that there was a roof over our head and no holes in the walls. Not safe, exactly, but safe enough. Hopefully it would last, in this time and place where nothing ever lasted anymore.



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For consideration: documenting the apocalypse one dream at a time