Awakening, Pt 6

The oppressive, sweltering heat lessens to a small degree the more the day shifts into night. Shadows grow from all sides as the dark orange sun sinks beyond the skyline, then further still past the horizon. As it does so, the amber-red skies turn progressively deeper and darker until it's a shade of dried blood.

Can we stop somewhere? thinks Noir. Feel like I'm dying out here.

You emit a sentiment of agreement, too tired to actually say anything in response. Plus your throat feels too dry to speak - you had sunk yourself into deep thought for too long and had forgotten to take enough swigs of your drink.

On realizing this, you take a few gulps of your electrolyte drink, and then a few extra to compensate.

Although the heat has certainly relented to some degree, you can still feel a great deal of it wafting up from the asphalt. The streets have had an entire day to soak it all up, after all. The heat of it practically slaps you across the face.

No longer needing the shade that your hat provides, you hang it behind you once again. This allows you to wipe your brow, which seems soaked with sweat.

Noir is behind your head, as always, and you can feel her panting very lightly. It's clear that she too is overloaded and overheated.

Although neither of you are actually close to dying or anything like that, you still take your exhaustion to be a very bad sign. You started your journey in the afternoon, presumably at a time when it is hottest during the day. But you had also kept to the shade and stayed within gusts of wind.

It was still too much to handle. There's no way you can deal with a full day under the sun. Especially out past the city. Shelter and shade are gonna be few and far between.

Now that you're at the edge of the city, you realize you need to rethink your plan a bit.

All around you are the kinds of buildings one typically finds at the edges of cities - fast food joints, gas stations, bus and taxi depots, a convenience store or two, and a handful of cheap motels. Every single building looks like they have been thoroughly looted, if not partially demolished by crystalline shards.

One of the larger motels seems to have been severed in half - a crystalline shard has torn through it and caused one half of the motel to completely collapse and crumble. You sense a great deal of dead underneath said rubble, but shake off the thought.

There's going to be a whole lot more of that as you travel.

"Best we move at night from now on," you say as you peek inside a busted storefront.

Inside is a fairly basic convenience store, the kind that seems the same no matter what city or town you're in. The same muted colors on the logo plastered above the doors, the same rows of beige metal shelving, the same coolers, cash register, frozen drink dispenser, everything.

You step through the wide, shattered windows cautiously. Its broken glass is strewn all over the ground, and crunch delicately under your hiking boots. There's also a distinct change in heat - it's simply much cooler inside. Makes sense, as the shop is more or less protected from direct sunlight most of the day.

It's still hot enough that you're still bothered by it.

There's a bit of trepidation in the air as you glance around. The last thing you want to do is tread on someone's 'home' and get into some kind of fight. You're really not in the mood or state of mind for one. Thankfully, no-one comes to greet you or ambush you, so you quickly relax your shoulders and your guard.

As you open up your canteen and take another swig of it, Noir hops down from her perch and pads curiously around you.

I'm gonna go try to find dinner, she tells you.

"Wait, have a bit of this first," you reply.

You pour your drink into the canteen's cup cap, and place it on the ground for Noir to drink from. She laps it up greedily, including a second capful. But once she's done with that, she licks her lips then slinks off into the shadows, towards her next meal.

Meanwhile, you pull your poncho off then drape it over a mostly empty shelf. You hope that it'll dry a bit overnight - it's soaked up a bit of your sweat, especially around the neck and chest area. What's worse is your shirt. It's utterly drenched in sweat.

You find yourself peeling it off you, a sensation you find both a little bit gross, and a little bit pleasant. Gross for obvious reasons, but pleasant because you feel a slight draft cool your skin.

You drape your shirt over a different shelf, then wonder if you'll even use it again. It's going to absolutely reek tomorrow, and will be even worse the day after that.

It dawns on you that you didn't quite fully prepare for this trip, and you didn't think through everything. You've always been a victim to your own impulsiveness, and this is just another reminder of that fact.

For example, you're going to stink for a very long time, something you're wholly unprepared for. What few baths and showers you could take in your little settlement are going to become an outright luxury from here on out.

You've also been taking relatively clean clothes for granted - being able to wash and reuse them on a weekly basis is a privilege you're definitely going to miss. The one change of clothing you do have with you isn't going to do a damned thing.

You quickly scout the shelves for some deodorant or soap, but find nothing of the sort. You don't even find a travel toothpaste among the aisles. Thankfully, you do find a four-pack of undershorts and a three-pack of undershirts.

Not even a moment later, you're out of your pants and swapping underwear, to your great relief. You then toss your old pair of undershorts into a corner, glad to be away from its swampiness forever. Your pants seem fine - there's a bit of sweat around the waist, but nothing too bad.

So you put it back on, along with a fresh undershirt.

You then stuff the remainder of clean undergarments into both your bags, marking them as treasures in your mind.

Though you're satisfied with your loot, you're not exactly done with this place. There's still all kinds of nooks and crannies to get into. You certainly wouldn't want to rest until you know everything that's in here now. Who knows if there's some hidden thing in a corner somewhere.

You'd rather it not be some monstrosity.

Still in the process of cooling down, you walk down the aisles casually and glance at whatever contents are left.

The snack and food aisles are most definitely empty. Boxes that were once filled with candy bars or crackers or chewing gum are strewn all over the place. Some have even been partially crushed underfoot, no doubt victims of whatever looters were here before you.

You do scrounge up some older candies near the rear of the bottom shelf, seemingly unmolested by time or happenstance or desire. But you're not exactly ecstatic when you see them. They're not the kind of candy you would have ever bought in your entire life. It'd just be a waste of your time and money.

But you pop one in your mouth anyway.

"Waste not, want not," you tell yourself.

The candy itself is as terrible as you thought it would be. You've had this prediction your entire life, and didn't need psychic powers to come to that conclusion. It's chalky, and crumbles as you bite on them. Whatever flavors they're supposed to have are barely discernible or distinguishable. And this is even with your heightened sense of taste.

Still, you never know if you'll ever come across it ever again, so you may as well try it. The world is gone, so now's the time to enjoy whatever's left of it. Not only that, but someone might want it somewhere down the line. Maybe a collector, or an aficionado, or someone who thinks this tastes good.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing, after all.

So you tuck away the rest of your candies into your backpack, where the rest of your barter goods are.

You take a quick glance over at the frozen drink machine and note that its beverage tanks are completely empty save for grime and mold. Of course you'd love one of those frozen drinks right now, but the power in the city ran out long ago. And whatever actual drink in the thing has long since evaporated, or outright taken.

Still, you can't help but daydream about slurping down that delicious slush.

Your mind turns sour when you glance at the machine next to it, which appears to be some kind of sausage heating device. There are rows of rollers under what's normally a powerful heat lamp. Sausages and hotdogs would typically be on those rollers, slowly cooking under those lamps.

One of those same hotdogs is still on those rollers, though it looks rather shriveled and aged.

The fact that it has no signs of fungus or mold growing on it scares you stiff. Then you realize that no-one has touched it after all this time. So you wisely decide to leave it where it lies. You hope that one day, hundreds of years from now, people will look at it and think of it as some kind of demonic artifact.

Maybe it becomes sentient and gains psionic powers of its own.

A chuckle escapes your lips as you turn your attention to the coolers lining the walls. They share similar fates with each other, with most of their glass panes shattered. None have any power going through them, of course, so all are relatively dark.

Most of the drinks inside have been taken and looted, of course. Anything that's still on the shelves can't be considered drinks at this point. Namely, a few jugs of milk and juice whose contents are more dried mold than rotten fluid.

Otherwise, every cooler is devoid of anything useful or otherwise.

The rest of the shelves are pretty much the same. And anything that has been left behind or overlooked is of no use to you. There are things like engine oil and old rags and torn magazines left over, none of which help you in any way.

No-one's driving anything anytime soon, not while batteries drain this quickly. And certainly no-one has any need for gardening and decorating magazines any longer. Those things don't really exist, not any more.

And anyone who does still garden or decorate has likely long lost their sanity.

A part of you can't help but pick up a couple of those magazines and stuff them into your backpack anyway. You never know if someone's craving them. Even insane people need stuff to take their minds off of things.

Since the shelves are all pretty much empty, you head towards the front counter - aka the frosting to this looter's cupcake. Of course this area has been ransacked heavily as well. The cigarette shelf above the register has been picked completely clean - it's practically spotless.

And of course the register itself has been forced open, with almost all of its contents taken. The only things left in there are scraps of paper, unbanked checks, and random receipts.

The sight of it causes you to laugh uncontrollably.

Money's useless and it's become practically worthless, so whoever stole the register's contents are just carrying around pointless trash.

These days, most everything is done through barter trading. Someone's trash is another's treasure, that sort of thing. Or rather, people trade their personal trash with each other, in hopes of finding treasure. Even if everyone values everything differently.

Then again, material values might not be static, but they shouldn't be. Scarcity isn't the only thing that's important - so's sentimentality. One person's disgusting candy is another person's childhood treasure. Whether that pays off or not in the end… well, you hope it works out. In a way, you suppose everyone that's doing any trading at all is hoping it all works out too.

You get down on your knees to check the space under the counters. There are drawers up top, but they're mostly empty, or have drawer junk in them - snapped rubber bands, paperclips, dust. The usual. You're more interested in the large open spaces beneath the counters and drawers.

Usually, things like extra stock go there. Such as wrapped boxes of snacks, gum, cigarette cartons, and so on. Sometimes, there's a safe just to the side. But of course the spaces have been looted, and even the safe has been ripped open.

Everything's empty.

But you do spot something odd about the drawer just beneath the register. This drawer seems to be taking up more space than the rest, vertically. The difference isn't too obvious, but thankfully you spot it anyway.

So you pull the drawer out all the way and set it aside. There's a thin space beneath it where some stuff has remained hidden all these years. There's a wad of cash, which is all but useless so you ignore it. There's also a dead cellphone and what looks to be an adult magazine folded in two.

You stow away the cellphone - maybe you could do something with it later. And when you grab the adult magazine, you realize that it's got something in between the fold. So you shake the magazine, which causes a large, heavy coin to fall down onto your waiting palm.

You tuck the adult mag into your backpack mindlessly, even as you stare at your newfound coin. Of course the thing is completely worthless, even if it had been made with gold or silver. This just appears to be a regular currency-type coin, but simply wasn't widely used. Probably because it's kind of unwieldy, and is kind of a novelty.

Still, you could find a use for it. Specifically, for practice.

You place the coin down on the counter in front of you, then reach out with barely discernible psionic energies of Control. Your face contorts and your hand twitches as you fumble around with pitiful amounts of power. It takes you three whole seconds to simply lift the coin off the counter with your basic Telekinesis, and then another three excruciating seconds to bring it to your outstretched hand mere centimeters away.

You gasp audibly and exhale hard as you pluck it out of the air. Then you tuck it away in your pockets, relatively happy with the results you've gotten. It wasn't long ago that you couldn't even so much as budge an object.

As long as you keep practicing, you should get better at it. In fact, that's true for all of your powers. As long as you practice all of them, you'll only get better at using them. And they're going to be crucial if you want to survive this journey.