I watched as the blood poured from the open wounds littering the corpse at my feet. It trailed down over his sun-seared flesh, and pooled in the yellow sand beneath him, corrupting it with its saccharine beauty.

     Heavy breaths. Broken nails, and cracked ribs.

     I hear the voices coming again, their shouts of darkness lacing around the deep throbbing of my mind and taking hold.

     Its time again.

     I spin around just in time to avoid the heavy swing of a tire iron wielded by the corpse’s bride, her black teeth standing out against her deathly white flesh in an animalistic sneer embodying all the brutality enacted on her by those hundreds of us left.

     This new world of searing sand, charred land and boiling skies has made her cold, jaded and detached. And those of us who inhabit this still-new desolate landscape of our own obliteration have driven her made, unhinged by the horrors she- like all of us- has beheld.

     I sidestep her deadly advance and she stumbles forward, having not expected me to have been able to avoid her fury.

     I move quickly, taking her pitch into the sand as an opportunity to disarm her. I send a swift kick with my right boot into the elbow of her right arm, that which wields the instrument of her rage. A sickening crack echoes out over the wastes as her joint gives way, snapping like a twig, weak and malnourished in this end of days.

     “You fucking sod,” she growls, flipping over onto her back and lashing out with her legs, striking me in the knee.

     I grunt but remain standing, instead leaning down to grasp the discarded tire iron from the sand.

     But as I do, she kicks out again with her right foot, her aim on point a bit higher this time. Her foot makes hard contact with my groin, sending waves of stinging pain shooting through by body, vibrating my teeth and blurring my vision.

     I tumble back down the sloped dune upon which we stood, head over feet down the hot sand, sliding to a stop in the canyon between dunes. I jump to my feet, working furiously to clear the sand out of my eyes.

     By the time I manage to clear my vision, still blurred by tears, I behold the sight of the bride screaming down the dune after me, slipping periodically in the loose sand but never falling, to my great distain. High above her head, she wields once again the discarded tire iron, posed to strike.

     Panic now quickly setting in, I attempt to move away but to no avail. She brings the blunt object down hard, just barely allowing me the time to bring my arms up in defense over my head.

     It makes contact hard with my forearm, cracking the bone and splitting the flesh. Streams of blood now pour from my arm, staining my tan jacket, soiling it with the memory of this encounter as it has been in so many others.

     Seeing this, a vicious smile tears its way across my attacker’s face, so very contented with having struck me.  

     “One more for you, cocksucker?” She spits venomously, what I can only assume is a rhetorical question.

     She doesn’t slow, bringing the pain again, and the again. Over and over, she swings. The force of each blow crippling, I stumble back, desperate for a reprieve, falling over my own feet.

     Once on the ground, I allow her to step over me, posed to release the finishing blow. It’s just as she begins her downswing that I kick up, hitting her between the legs, launching her into the air.

     The lands hard on her back.

     I don’t allow myself to rest, quickly jumping atop her before she can recover, wrestling the iron from her hands. Once I have it, I bring it down upon her head.

     Her eyes widen, reflecting my own distorted visage; a cruel and ferocious caricature of the man I once was.

     The impact leaves her dazed, but not dead. That won’t do. I raise it high and bring it down hard, over and over, as she had done to me. Only she has no arms raised in defense.

     I’m not sure how many times I bring down the iron. Only that she’s nearly unrecognizable in the end.

     Exhausted, I allow myself to fall back into the sand, closing my eyes.

                                                                                                                                                                    ***

     Sleep brings a much needed reprieve. When I wake, I find that the moon is high in the sky, casting the Wastes in an unnerving dim luminescence.

The kind where it’s light enough to see, yet still dark enough to hide the horrors of legend.  

The dunes lead me to the scene of the crash. Piles of metal and steel litter the sand, hunks of car, scorched and burned from the chase earlier. An aftermath so of fire and chaos that it had nearly consumed us all.

I use all my strength to pry the charred door from the bride’s car, heaving it over my shoulder and dropping it to the sand. I squint in an effort to protect my eyes from the chips of burnt paint that fall from the now useless hunk of metal.

Once inside, I’m relieved to find that the Omninyx remains intact. The Syns would have my head if I’d allowed it to fall into the hands of the Waste Dwellers.

Grunting, I lift the football sized sphere of metal into my backpack and rise out of the destroyed vehicle. Glancing from left to right, I work to regain my bearings.

After a moment of thought, I set off for the east.