Dust - Chapter 1

 

 

 

            The Walkers strode into the town late in the afternoon. They did not speak to any of the people who warily looked at them. They did not stop to get food, they did not seek shelter. The little village was used to Walkers coming through, as any place in the Waste was, but there was something wrong about these two. An air hung about them, something that made people get out of their way, something that made people feel ill.

            The man was tall, thin and rugged like most Walkers. He did not pay much attention to the people around him, looking at them only long enough to discern whether they posed a threat to him or his companion. The woman he was with was slight and her face was hidden. She was the one making everyone nervous. Something about her was not right.

            In the two months they had been traveling together, everyone had been staring at them. No one wanted to talk to them; no one wanted to get close. The man, named Emory, was glad for this in some ways. There was a bounty on his head and the less people associated with him, the less chance they would have to recognize him. On the other hand, he and his companion, Neeli, had a task; they weren’t wandering the Waste for the hell of it.

            The tension from the people in every town and village they passed through was, at times, unbearable. Everyone was always glad when they left. The trick would be to find the ones who were not.

            “Winter is coming,” Neeli said when they stopped for lunch. “There will be much snow this year.”

            Emory looked around. They were sitting in the dried out bed of what had surely been a lake long ago, but was now just a bowl of dust in the Waste. Everything out here was so dry and it was hot. He had trouble believing that it would snow soon; he hadn’t seen snow in at least fifteen years. However, he had been with Neeli too long to question anything she said.

            “Will that make it harder to find them,” he asked, “with the snow?”

            “We’ll find them,” she replied, “I think we’ll find the first one soon.”

            She had been saying this ever since Emory met her.

            “If you say so,” he said.

            “No,” she told him, “it’s true. I can see her face now, if I look.”

            “Really?” he asked, “do you know when?”

            “No,” she said. “When we get closer, I’ll know.”

            She pulled her shotgun out and examined it in a bored way. Ammunition was expensive and nearly unobtainable. She had come to him with more than anyone could ever possibly need, even in the Waste. Whoever had sent her to retrieve Emory was obviously rich and probably insane. Then again, Emory wasn’t anywhere near finished with his task; he had hardly even started yet. Who knew what trouble lay in the future? Things were sure to get ugly if winter was coming.

 

            Late in the night he woke up and reached out for her. She was there waiting, keeping watch, just as she had every night. Sometimes, laying there in the dark, he wondered if she hadn’t perhaps been somehow watching him before he met her, before he came into the Waste. He knew that she knew everything about him; she knew more than he did. He hadn’t given much thought to destiny before he met Neeli, and if he had, he certainly never would have imagined that his would lead him here, to this strange creature beside him.

            It was at night, after the dreams, that he could feel the universe moving about him, all of the parts slowly sliding into place.. His life, it seemed, was not his own anymore, he was moving on a path set out for him long ago. The man he had been before all of this had been lost.

            It was hard to tell what Neeli knew and chose to keep a secret and what she did not know. Whenever he asked about his wife and children, she told him she did not know. Would he see them again? She did not know. Were they alive? She did not know. He wanted to know how and why she knew what she knew and why she did not know everything else. She told him that it was just the way it was.