All around the stranger, who wrapped himself in tattered and darkly colored cloth, sand spun in whirling spirals as if God was spinning his finger. The cloak that covered the stranger completely, flapped furiously in the wind like an ominous black flag in the raging storm. Whoever he was, not a single part of his body was left naked for the sands to tear mercilessly at. The face of the stranger was concealed by a red bandana, pulled over his nose and mouth and his eyes were covered by thick, darkly platted goggles that cast the stranger’s eyes into obscurity for a passerby’s imagination to make play of them what he or she may. A black beanie, well-knitted was pulled down over the forehead and the back of the neck of the nameless figure that stumbled forward through the raging winds and the sands that whipped up from the great desert. Hands gloved with black knitting similar to that of the beanie. Legs covered by what could be made out as sand-blasted brown jeans that were tucked under black combat boots pulled up to the stranger’s knees. A brown-leather belt that looked reasonably worn was wrapped tight around the stranger’s waist and attached to it were his provisions including a good-sized knife that looked as if it had been put to good use judging by the stains running down the blade, a canteen of water and a small rawhide pouch drawn tight that clinked with coins with every step. This was exactly the kind of weather that the stranger had prepared for and was very thankful for the prior precautions of others on his part.

Under the flowing, curtain-like cloak of the wandering stranger, was what could be made out as a blue denim jacket that covered the lengths of his arms and torso, tightly fastened with leather straps across the front like numerous little belts that ran down the zipper. The zipper itself had long since been broken and the belts were quick-fixes to keep the jacket closed and they did the job reasonably well. But on his back, slung over the denim jacket and concealed beneath the black cloak, was a stock-pump shotgun holstered to the stranger’s back by leather straps. When the flowing cloth of the cloak would blow up as the wind howled in rebelliousness, the sliver shine of the barrel could be seen attached to the magnificently carved butt with the letters, JB engraved deeply into them. They looked as if they had been made in great anger at the time as the marks were deep and obviously done hastily judging by the stray marks that extended past the letters.

The stranger had a name, but none one that came across him on his journey were privileged enough to discover it. He was not a very talkative or social person by nature, it seemed, as the stranger would wander through settlements or refugee camps, eat quickly and restock his supplies at the local markets and bazaars. The most people ever heard from the stranger was a casual and cold, “Thanks.” And most didn’t even receive that. Quickly, the stranger became a legend of sorts and he was often spoken of in bars, inns and even on the radio channels between the settlements. Over the months that the stranger had surfaced, he began a race with the myth that preceded him in most of the destinations he arrived at. Rumor had him as a great bulky man that stood well over seven-feet tall with muscles rippling along his body like the dunes of the desert. Women feared him. Men hated him. Girls fancied him. Boys idolized him. But when he would walk casually into the settlements carved into the sides of great rock mountains or on the edges of an oasis, they would find their imaginations to be much more exciting that the real deal of the six-foot-something, average build of a person he was.

People gave him names behind his back. The Shadow. The Wanderer. But most called him stranger. He would leave the same day he arrived when he had finished whatever business he needed and people would find their minds embellishing his past as they stared. So even after he would leave, he would still remain in conversation. Most likely, the stranger was aware of this but chose not to pay any heed to it.

He had a destination in mind. And he needed to get there. He just didn’t know where it was.

For three days he had been wandering in the great sandstorm of the deserts outlying a nearby settlement. The journey had been slow progress. With every step, the dunes seemed to swallow his legs like a great demon of the desert. Aches and pains were beginning to form in the muscles of his legs and back, but still he kept on. The stranger himself wasn’t sure if he slept by his own free will, but sometimes he would find himself collapsed from sheer exhaustion, almost entombed in a great coffin of coarse sand that mockingly whistled in his ears.

He was caught in the great chaos of the sandstorm that cast his way in its haunting orange veil. Nothing could be seen say for the abstract art that the winds seemed to paint for him. Spirals and twists, Mother Nature’s own canvas with the sand and dirt as the long curling bristles of her brush that she held so delicately in her hand and the stranger as her only patron, for the time being. During the day, she would paint with oranges, reds and browns. While night her canvas was covered with purples, blues and blacks. But no matter the color and no matter the image that the stranger saw, he was anxious. The sands might as well have been sheer darkness that he could not fight. But it was worst than darkness. He could feel it pulling and pushing him back no matter what direction he made his way in. It was freezing, then burning and he would feel the great ribbons of wind and dust brushing against him. But that wasn’t what terrified him so. No…

He felt as if he were being watched.

Like some malevolent figure, human or something else, was watching his every move. Watching. Waiting. Waiting to strike. Paranoia or not, the feeling would not leave him. It was distinguishable amid the turmoil that encased every part of him. Unexplainable. Some instinct, some ghost of a thought, that screamed at him from the dregs of his mind. Jerking around, he would see nothing, which wasn’t saying much. But half the time, he expected some great shadow to leap out and tear at him.

No. It was in his head.

But the feeling, the paranoia, the pure and unadulterated distrust of what the sands held within their veil plagued him. And with every step it grew stronger.

And then, a voice. It was not his own. Several times before he had heard voices and found them to be his own muffled words. His thoughts leaking out through his lips. But not this time. This time he heard a voice that was undeniably that of another stranger. A hissing whisper and from no proper source, as if the winds themselves were speaking to him. Whispering in his ear as they past.

“I can save you.” It hissed. The very words seemed to flow around him like great unseen banners.

Stopping, he looked around for the owner, but found none. He felt a chill crawl up his back like a terrible creature inside of him.

“Go west and walk straight for about a mile…” The words faded slowly, the wind seeming to blow them from existence.

In truth, the stranger was not set on taking advice from strange voices, but a peculiar feeling deep in his chest urged him to follow the voice’s advice and head west. Getting his bearings from the sun, he found himself to be heading north and simply turned to his left and kept walking. Paranoia crept back, asking questions of the owner of the ethereal voice. The stranger attempted to shove these thoughts into the back of his mind but they were eager worming things, that always resurfaced.

It’s not as if I have a direction. What have I got to lose? He thought, almost directly speaking to the paranoia as if it were a living entity.

He knew what he could lose, but if trouble should manifest itself…Slowly, the stranger found his fingers itching for the feel of the butt of the shotgun beneath them.

After walking for quite some time, it felt like, the stranger suddenly felt the terrain change beneath his feet. From the hungry white sands, to some sort of hard stone surface. Crouching down, he found himself to be on some sort of black rock plain.

The voice returned, airy and haunting again, “I can calm the storm.” The offer seemed more a temptation, as if there would be an ‘if you…’ added to the end of the strange voice’s statement.

Still understandable wary, the stranger stood, “Who are you? Come out here!”

Abruptly, the winds suddenly stopped. But they didn’t seem to stop like normal winds, it was if they had literally been pulled from the very realm of existence. The sand and dust that had been carried on it fell to the ground like a savage snow and cast the stranger momentarily in a gently swirling cloud.

The stranger was speechless at the event.

“God…” He couldn’t even find words to express the awe he was in. But as the dust cleared, the stranger found himself overcome by an even greater sense of wonderment.

He was standing near the middle of an asphalt road that was divided down the center by a great white line. On both sides of him, enormous buildings of black glass and iron reached skyward. The very fingertips of human accomplishment that pointed to the heavens as if laughing in God’s face. Mannequins, hung like stiff corpses out of large, broken glass windows. Many were burned and sand-blasted so that the waxy-skin was black and melting off the mock-human effigies. Scraps of cloth clung to the naked bodies of these mannequins. How ironic that these images of human perfection carved from plastic and clay were the only human-like thing that remained in the city. The sidewalks ran along the buildings doors, cracking and fault-filled. Everything from books to china plates to what appeared to be car doors, were pulled into little corners and crevices, away from the wind that had been gusting through the streets. A few yards away was an intersection with the stoplights and street names still there. At least a dozen or so abandoned automobiles of varying color and make were stalled and abandoned in the roads. This was a ghost of a city. A mere shell. Without human life to occupy its sidewalks and roads, it became a new landscape for Mother Nature to conquer.

It was like nature was running water behind a dam. As long as people were here to keep the dam’s operations running smoothly, they could take control of the waters of nature and nature and city would never mingle, say for rare instances of parks and gardens. But when human-life vanished, the dam would break and nature would recapture the city. Flooding it. It was almost as if nature despised the place and wished to bury it beneath itself. The thought was somewhat frightening.

In his sheer amazement of the sudden change in landscape, the stranger pulled his goggles up and revealed brown eyes, like the skin of a leaf in autumn, beneath thick black eyebrows. A spark of youth still played in his eyes. Wonderment for the unknown and an unquenchable desire for adventure. The goggles were followed by the bandana, which he tugged down swiftly revealing red-chapped lips and a tan, stubble-lined face. He looked as if he wore in his young thirties, certainly no older, but a certain childlike aspect still remained in him.

Whirling around, he drank it all in. This was the sort of thing archeologist would have died to find! But he was no archaeologist, he thought.

The voice returned, but with the wind gone, it seemed as if the buildings and streets were speaking to him. Echoing, yet still in a harsh whisper, “Good…”

With the resurfacing of the voice, reality set back into his thoughts and the stranger threw a glance over his shoulder then tossed his head skyward, still looking for the owner of the voice. The sun was high in the sky, almost directly above him. It would be lunch about now. Lunch…It hadn’t occurred to the stranger just how hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten, or drunken anything for than matter, in about two and a half days. But his mind wandered back onto things other than food.

“Who are you?” He demanded, “Come out here! Stop hiding!”

A laugh rang out through the empty streets, “When did you all become so untrusting…?”

The stranger whirled around, “Come out here! Talk to me face to face!”

“Face to face?” The voice inquired.

Silence followed. A frightening silence that seemed to echo from every part of the empty city. Its vibrations shaking the stranger to his very core.

The voice spoke calmly, casually even, “To your right there is a diner, no?”

Looking over his shoulder, the stranger saw that in fact there was. It was a small white building, nestled between two, much larger and darkly colored ones, with bay windows lining the front and loopy red writing above the glass that read: Margret’s. It was too dark for him to see everything. From what he could see though, there were several red-cushioned booths inside along the bay window.

“Go.”

No. No, this wasn’t right. Instinct told him one thing. Reason told him another. And his heart was an entirely different matter. He was wary of the voice, still untrusting, but whoever the owner of the voice was, he, or she for that matter, obviously possessed a great deal of power. Winds don’t just die like that, not so suddenly. Could the owner be the source of his prior paranoia? He couldn’t say for certain. But he knew that there was something in that voice that set him off and rubbed him the wrong way. A feeling deep in his gut that the voice was not something to be trusted.

“Are you a friend?” The stranger asked, first in a small voice and then again, much louder, “Are you a friend?”

The voice gave no reply.

“An enemy?”

Again, nothing.

Indignant, untrusting and on-edge, he turned to the building and began walking towards it, slowly, diligently watching for something to happen. Blocking the door was some sort of cart with a large magazine rack that was now empty. It was much heavier than he first thought and it took a good deal of strength to get it’s creaky wheels moving. He finally got it aside far enough where the door could be opened. The stranger was beginning to realize just how hungry and worn-out he was. Cautiously, he reached for the door and found it to be unlocked. Hanging from the cracked window on the door was a sign that read: Will Return and below it was what resembled a small painted clock face with red plastic hands positioned at 12:25.

A cloud of dust fled from the door’s path as he pushed it opened. Like a ghost of some gray wave, it fell in on itself and vanished into the darkness of the building. There were red lamps, that looked like abstract bubbles, hanging above each booth and above, what he could now make out as a bar with several red-cushioned swivel chairs, the counter. At each table, and at several places along the bar-counter, there were napkin boxes with small slots on each side. The walls were white and glossy and decorated with many painted caricatures of men and women with various expressions and of various ages, hung in large red frames. The stranger speculated that perhaps it had once been a pleasant place for the people who had previously called this city home.

But time and destruction had taken its toll. The booths were merely springs and cotton with torn and fading red fabric scattered about the guts of the rotting seats. Dust clung to everything it could reach its grimy palm across. And the stench of old must hung dryly in the air. This diner was now nothing more than a relic now.

“Come. Sit. Are you hungry?” The voice asked pleasantly, conversationally even, as if the two of them were good friends that had not seen each other for quite some time.

The stranger did not move, but continued to stare into the shadows that the building held captive in its walls.

“Oh come now.” The voice stopped as if thinking, then added, “Let’s brighten up the place shall we?”

From somewhere deep in the viscera of the building, there was a low roar of some ancient machinery being resurrected from its relic-state. The sound startled the stranger so much that he almost tore the shotgun off his back and filled the nearest wall with a good-round of lead and fire. But before he could, the red-bubble lamps slowly began to fill with an eerie glow that cast everything in its strange shade of gypsy-red. From a doorway, behind the bar, a blue-white light suddenly flickered into life with a welcoming buzz. On the far side of the building, on the bar counter, a single candle in a red, glass bubble, similar to the lamps, burst into life with a brilliantly sudden, yet small flame.

“Sit…” The voice cooed. “Sit. Sit.”

He was not trusting of the voice in the least, but slowly he began to make his way over to the bar. As he did, he began to strip himself of his many layers, like a snake shedding its skin. He first pulled off the great cloak over his head, with much difficulty, and lay it over his arm and kept walking. Carefully removing the shotgun and the homemade belt holster that slung over his shoulder, he began working on the many tiny buckles running down the denim jacket. By the time he finished he was standing over the swivel chair nearest the candle. The stranger set the shotgun down against the bar and dropped the rest of his clothes in a large pile beside him.

Under the jacket, it could be seen that we was wearing a white T-shirt with the logo and name of some music band that no one remembered. He had found it awhile back and had taken a liking to it, wearing it as his own ever since.

“Was that necessary?” The voice asked teasingly.

“I haven’t taken those crap rags off in days. They smell like ass.” He took a seat in the swivel chair, wary that it might crumble beneath him. It didn’t.

“Well you don’t smell very kind yourself.” In front of his very eyes, a young woman suddenly turned to face him. She was young, barely out of her teenage years, with bouncing dark chocolate curls and ringlets around her face. Her eyes, with a hint of a secret hidden somewhere in their blue shade, were wide and surrounded by thick lashes. Her skin was fair and her body was slim and curving, but the stranger didn’t take immediate notice of this What he noticed was the strange uniform she wore: a red and white striped shirt with the collar combed down and the buttons unfastened just low enough for any man deprived of intimate relationships to slip into deep lustful sheets and pillows of sexual fantasy, a short-red skirt that swayed with every delicate movement of her body, knee-high, white-cotton socks and what he could make out to be shined-red shoes.

It took a few seconds for the stranger to take all of the girl in, as her sudden appearance had taken her a bit by surprise. As if he were watching the world in front of his eyes as a projection screen and several clips of the girl walking in from the back had suddenly been removed. But something told him that the girl was not unfamiliar. The voice. It was her.

“You…” The stranger said, rising steadily to his feet.

“Sit down.” But her voice was entirely different from the voice prior, the whispering and disembodied hissing. Her’s was young, youthful and girlish. Reaching under the bar, the girl pulled out a shot-glass and a perfectly clean rag and began spit-shining it.

He grabbed his shotgun from the next to him and raised it so that it was inches away from the young girl‘s face, “Who the hell are you?”

“Now, now…” Even if the voice had changed in every way if humanly could, the tone was the same. “Don’t be rash.”

“Who the hell are you?” He repeated, pushing the barrel a few inches closer.

Slowly and almost patiently, the young girl set the shot glass down in front of him and he saw it suddenly fill with a clear liquid, “I have no formal name, so to say…” Nodding towards the glass in front of him, the girl grabbed another from under the bar and began to wipe the dust off from inside it, “None that you would understand at least.”

“Do you normally look like this? Dressed like some clown-hooker?” He asked.

Laughing, the girl smiled up at him, “Angry, aren’t you?” She returned to staring at the glass she had been polishing with a dull interest, “I have no true form. So I take whichever suits me best for the time being.”

“True form?” He lowered the barrel of the shotgun, “What do you mean?”

“I don’t have a name either, like I said. But I guess I do need one.” She stopped the task at hand and appeared deep in thought, “How about Susan?” She replied finally.

The stranger appeared somewhat subdued as he sat back down in the chair and set the shotgun aside for the time being, “Susan?” He asked.

“Sounds good.” And like another skip in the film-reel of his vision, a plastic nametag was now on her breast that read, Susan.

“But…” The stranger fingered the liquid in the shot glass skeptically, “Who are you? Or what are you, I guess would be a much better question now.”

“It’s not poisoned. It’s scotch.” Susan smiled, “Now I’d like to answer you question, but can you answer one for me first?”

He looked up at her, “Why not…” And downed the scotch in a single gulp. It wasn’t what his body had been looking for, but the feeling of having something wet to loosen his throat felt good either way. But what he really wanted was water. Before he could say anything, Susan had pushed a much larger glass in front of him that was filled with water.

“You must be hungry too…” But she did nothing to quell his rising hunger that the water only seemed to intensify, “What do you know?”

“What do I know?” He repeated between a chug of the water.

Susan nodded, “I’ve watched you for quite sometime since you started your journey. But this journey. Away from the settlement on the ocean-side, your friends, your family, why? Why?”

He said nothing, the gears in his head turning as he recalled past images of the pastel houses that lined the beach, where a step from the backdoor was a step into the sand. The smiling faces of his mother and older brother. The sound of the waves, crashing and receding as he lay in his bed at night. And then the sound. Like God himself was screaming bloody murder. As if all the air were being sucked from the world. And everything gone, in fire.

“Answers. Probably revenge too while I’m there.” He said finally downing the last of the water in the glass. With a clink, he set it down and pushed it towards her, “Susan, right?”

“That’s what the nametag says.” She said cheerily.

He nodded, “Why are you here?”

Susan’s seemingly sarcastic honey-like demeanor seemed to slip away from her very person, “It would come to this…” From under the bar, she pulled a red plate with a hamburger and fries, in good-sized portions, atop it. Pushing it forward, she nodded, “This journey was a necessity and a quirk of fate. There are things for you to do, that only you can do. But I know that you are haunted by dreams of dark things and figures.”

The stranger was reaching for the food, when he stopped, “How did you…?”

“This world is dying.” She said quietly, sorrowfully even, “Things are falling apart. Before, a great civilization that touched the world from landmass to landmass, from ocean to ocean, existed. But it’s downfall was met when wars and diseases, caused by terrible weapons that these people possessed, came to destroy them all. The suicide of a civilization. But that was all so long ago…” Her hand slid to her chest as if the memory were an actual pain pulling lightly at her heart. “There are forces in the world at work and without you…”

He began picking at the fries, which were surprisingly warm, “Where do I come into play into your ‘suicide of a civilization’ story?”

“I want you to bring life back into this world.” She said finally and stared up at him with eyes so desperate and pleading, welling over with a great tenderness that the stranger felt he would never fully understand. This woman, Susan, was a mystery, but an intriguing one none the less. He wanted to know who she was. He had to know who she was.

“How…”

“I can’t tell you.” She said, “Not yet.”

He scoffed, “Why the hell not?”

Turning, she strolled away from him, running her finger, with a wake of cleared dust forming behind it, along the bar, “This story is not your’s alone.”

“What are you taking about?”

She turned to him and for the first time since he had met the strange woman named Susan, she looked impatient, but her decent manner never seemed to leave. “I’ve been alive for…a very long time,” Looking up at him, she smiled, almost with a trace of sadness pulling at the corners of her lips, “I’ve seen so many stories of love, hate, revenge and anything else you could possible think of. But nothing will be as this story. But it’s not your’s alone. It hasn’t even truly begun yet. But there are thousands of stories that overlap this one. And it isn’t just your’s…”

The stranger studied Susan, deciphering her. What was she? Was she even a she, so to say? Or was Susan some pseudonym of a great shape-shifter who played epic mind games with people she (or he, the stranger supposed) deemed as game-pieces on this great playing field. Well roll the dice bitch, he wouldn’t play that way for sure.

“Sorry.” He had just began working into the burger as he set it down and pushed it away, “I don’t take mission requests from random strangers just cause they feed me and perform a few magic tricks. Dinner and a show just won’t cut it.” Standing from the chair, he bent down and began gathering his things, “Thanks for the meal though.”

Susan suddenly slammed her fists down on the bar and the sudden outburst nearly made the stranger drop the shotgun, “Are you that selfish?” She asked angrily, “Really? Is it even physically possible for someone to be this selfish?”

As the stranger looked up at her, what he saw almost made him drop the gun again. Her eyes were no longer the soft shade of blue he first recalled. No. Now they were blazing red, like great burning suns casting violent rays of fiery guilt across him. Bearing deep into his very essence and making him feel…cold.

He took a step back and raised the shotgun again, this time pressing the barrel against her temple, “What the hell are you? A demon?”

She grabbed the shotgun by the barrel and pushed it away from her face, “Don’t ever threaten me! I’ve never met anyone so selfish…” Her eyes lowered, “Didn’t you learn anything from the selfness of those in your past?”

Those words seemed to break something in him. So dam holding his sanity burst and there was nothing to contain. There was action with no rational thought behind it. With such a violent motion that he caught himself off-guard, the stranger flung the shotgun up again. Cocking it quickly and, to his surprise, pulling the trigger. Never before had he killed anything and the world seemed to skip. The red-lined shell flew off and out of his vision. The bullet, a mere blur juggernauting through the air. He watched in his own private horror as the bullet pierced Susan’s skull and felt his heart beat up in his throat as he saw her blood and brains splatter sickeningly on the back wall.

Susan’s eyes grew blank as the look of sick-shock overcame her ever feature. She stood, tottering for a few moments, a steady, almost artistic, drip of blood spilling over down her brow and cheek, before she fell forward onto the counter and slipped off, leaving a thick smear to taunt the stranger.

Breathing heavily, he felt as if he was going to vomit. What had he done?! In all his time in ownership of the weapon, he had never shot a person. Animals? Yes. Creatures? Yes. But never a human. His fingers grabbed the beanie and goggle he wore and pulled them off, revealing a head of disorganized, short, dark-brown hair. He dropped it to the ground and stumbled back, the shotgun slipping from his fingers.

“Oh…God…” He stumbled back onto the seat of a booth and pushed himself up against the window, “Oh…no God.”

Suddenly, there was laughter. Great fits of girlish laughter and suddenly, Susan pushed herself up. But she was different now. Her eyes were now like a pool of water in the spring, brilliantly blue and her hair was now straight, white-blonde and perfectly parted, framing her face like a curtain encloses a window. Red now graced her lips more fully and she appeared older. It wasn’t anything like the face prior to it.

“I liked that face too. And now you’ve gone and blown the brains out of it.” Chuckling to herself, she grabbed the white dishtowel and began wiping up her own blood as she shook her head, “Stupid.”

Anger, confusion and even a sense of wonder mixed in the stranger’s chest as he rose from the booth slowly, “What the hell…are you?” It was the only question he decided he wanted answered at the moment. He had legions of others, but now, this was the only one he cared about. Uncertain, he stumbled towards her, he picked the shotgun off the floor and set it against the counter.

“Made you feel like a child?” She lifted the rag and looked at the countertop, unsatisfied, and began wiping it down again. “Didn’t I? You were scared, weren’t you?”

He didn’t say anything, but merely grabbed the edge of counter, his knuckles still white, “You bitch…”

“Got your attention though...”

Shaking his head, he began pacing, massaging his face with the palms of his hands. All the while, Susan, with her new sparkling blue-eyes, watched him walk around the room, his hands now folded behind his head. Chuckling, she continued on with her menial task.

“Magic tricks…” He said quietly, under his breath.

“Your brother and mother would have wanted you to…” Susan said quietly, knowing she was touching into dangerous territory with the subject. “They would have wanted you to help this cause.”

He turned and looked across the room at her. The look in his eyes was not the anger from before, but nostalgia as images of his mother and brother filled his head, like thousands of TV sets suddenly flickering on. She was washing dishes. His brother was throwing rocks into the ocean. She was pushing him on a swing. His brother was swimming in the cool summer water. She was laughing. He was laugh. She was crying. They were gone. And deep in his chest, a flame began to burn softly. And he knew that Susan was right.

With a deep sigh of acceptance, he walked back to the bar and took a seat. The plate with the burger and fries was still sitting on the counter, but in honesty, he didn’t know if he could eat it. Partially because he wasn’t sure what his stomach was turning at the thought of what he might be getting himself into, and partially because the hamburger meat was strikingly similar to the flecks of Susan’s old head that he had blasted to ground-beef . He took to eating the fries.

“What do I have to do?” He asked with a mouthful.

Susan smiled, realizing she had won him over, “To the west, there is another city like this. You will meet others. Four others.”

He took another handful and shoved it in his mouth, “Who are they?”

“You’ll know when you see them.” Placing her hands on her hips, she sighed, satisfied with the small portion of the counter she had made some-what decent. “There we are…”
“And you…?” He asked.

Slowly, she looked up at him, “We will meet again in the City to the West. You will not be alone. They come from across the land for the same purpose, whether they know it or not…”

He had finished the fries and with a somewhat contented sigh, stood and began replacing the layers that he had stripped off earlier. Susan watched him with a genuine interest as he slung the shotgun back over his shoulder.

“You’re not used to killing things, are you?” She asked.

He shook his head honestly, “No. On the way here I killed a few deer to eat. Maybe a creature, or two, that came to tear my face off. Never a person though.”

Again, she smiled, this time sympathetically, “The time might come when you’ll have to repeat the action you did back there.” She nodded to the splatter of meat and blood on the back wall. He turned away, embarrassed and unsure if he could.

Slipping the cloak over his head, he made his way for the door and then turned back to look at Susan, “Will you look like you do now?”

She shook her head, “I doubt it.”

Nodding, he grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. A slight breeze pulled through the diner. A warm breeze from the west, where he would soon be heading. The lights flickered off and the candle’s cozy flame vanished into a wraithlike stream of smoke. As he was stepping out, he knew Susan, the girl, was gone, but the voice from before filled the room as he shut the door.

“Be careful Gray…”