Hey, so it’s been a while. Guess I’ve been busy with things, but here’s a recount of a dream I had the night before the night before last. Hopefully this will make up for it.

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She enters the room, gun drawn, stepping almost silently. She knows exactly what she’s looking for, and just needs to find it, but the corrugated iron walls are unforgiving. She’s given herself away and she knows this at the sound of scraping chairs on the concrete floor, and the sound of heavy footsteps moving towards her.

Back against the wall, next to the non-hinge side of the door she was just about to open, and waiting. The first of many walks through, and as the hilt of her pistol connects, a sickening crunch of shattered bone is followed by a sanguine trail in the air. Seemingly weightless for a second, this falls as the body slumps to the floor.

She’ll have to fight her way out, and she does. Firing a few warning shots, puncturing the thin walls, she continues forward and continues fighting, killing, looking for the fastest way out. She reaches for the next door, only to have it swing open. The barrel of the gun pointing at her is slowly lowered, revealing the face of her black accomplice, both concerned, yet relieved. There are small flecks of blood on his grey felt jacket, and one of the plain epaulettes is missing a button, hanging limply towards the ground, but any further absorption of detail is halted by the urgency in his voice.

“We need to go. Now”

Bursting from an open door, they run, along a narrow road, flanked on wither side by segmented concrete fences. The man stumbles, and falls behind, a freshly-made hole in his trousers, revealing the freshly-made graze on his knee. The woman has reached the end of the road now, past a barb-topped mesh gate, and onto her motorcycle. She returns for her accomplice, helping him onto the back, and they make their escape.

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The wheel of a motorcycle spins for a moment in the red desert dust, before biting the ground and lurching into motion. It’s not long before the dirt path ends, and the tarmac begins, square-ended in the sand. The gentle curves of the road offer a swaying rhythm, whilst not restricting speed. The first stop. Signalled by an abrupt stop to the asphalt, a checkpoint, concrete, trapezoidal, grass sprouting from atop, blocks the path. A narrow tunnel allows the traffic through single file, one direction at a time. Not that there’s much traffic these days, with most people living in the cities. The way-point is unmanned anyway, and the road begins again on the other side. This time the two lanes are more defined, separated by crudely painted yellow lines, one centralised, and the other marking the outer edge of each side of the road. The tarmac is clearly more worn here, cracked and chipping, sometimes the chunks missing from the edge accompanied by tire tracks which haven’t yet been filled and eroded by the breeze. Another checkpoint, unmanned, one more, also unmanned.

The ride continues for what seems like hours, the sporadic shrubbery dotting the red dunes sometimes bursting green, as a small stream trickles up through the rock. The sputtering and skipping of the engine misfiring means you must be nearly somewhere. The fuel gauge blinking and fading as the electronics fail, you pull over the next dune and stop to refuel. The building is typical of the region: tall, wooden, and narrow, about three stories including the space in the sloped roof, made from salvaged wood, already processed to build with. The top two floors likely contained a device to facilitate the extraction of water from the air. That’s about normal too. Attached to the side of this tall-barn a rusted steel silo, patched in places with slightly less rusted plate metal and unskilled, clumsy welding, stands defiant. I step off to go inside, through the door-less doorway, and to the counter. A woman stands there in a blue floral dress, to her ankles, thin, young but worn, with sun-bleached brown hair, combed back into two plaited pony tails. She asks bluntly what I need. Fuel, water, and a box of cigarettes. I pay, and she reaches under the counter, one hand steady on the shotgun at her side and never faltering her eye contact. I take the crumpled cigarette carton and tuck it into my sleeve, thank the woman and leave.

Back in the saddle, the keys are missing from the ignition; they glint in the dust a short distance away. A deep laughter emerges behind me, as my shoulders are seized from both sides, and I’m thrown next to them. Snatching my keys as I do so, I scramble back to my feet and turn to face my aggressors. Two men, one slightly taller than the other, behind them two more motorcycles. Slowly stepping forward, the taller of the two starts swinging the steel chain he’s holding around and grinning even more sadistically at what he’s planning.

A shot from the doorway breaks the tension, the chain-man’s shin splintering and collapsing as he falls. His accomplice, with a sudden blast of “Fuck this” climbs on his bike and rides off, back in the direction I arrived from. The fuel tank on my bike is leaking, must’ve been that shot. But never mind, there’s still one spare, probably better kept; I take it and leave. Looking back as I move down the road, the silhouette of a man being hanged lingers on the side of the silo. A gaunt woman hoisting the rope taught, and the corpse higher with every ounce of her strength.

The danger on the roads reminds me of my task. Back on the asphalt I speed through checkpoint after checkpoint, continuing to my destination. I’m being followed again. I can feel the rattle and the resonance in the air, of two, maybe three more bikes approaching fast. I swing left onto some train lines crossing the road, and follow them off road. No point taking the long route now. The clinking of kicked-stones on metal indicates they’re still on target. The tracks are getting steeper with the gradient of the hill, just a final push to the top. I make it as I hear two bikes collide behind me, but I don’t slow. I’m almost there.

I arrive in Boston within an hour. Did I lose them? I’m not sure. I avoided the city boundary by following the rail-lines, and they would have done the same. I push my stolen bike into the river, and duck into the subway. They’d only just got it working again I’d heard. I jumped on the next train, and got off three stops later at the central station. The people here were shuffling about their daily business, wrapped in grubby sheepskin coats, and mismatched scarves. Not much had gotten better. I pushed my way through the crowd and left the station. It’s façade crushed and crumbled, the outlines of a few of the golden letters that used to adorn it still faded into the brickwork that remained. A monument, a replica, of the original lay propped against the stairway underneath, it’s message of freedom and peace mocking the people that walked by.