From the Darkness

1. The Desert

A faded breeze carried sand across the bare concrete of the decrepit building. The rough grains wore it down with time, stripping it down to its skeleton of rusty metal cords. They lay bare where the walls crumbled, poking like ribs from a mass of flesh.

Wooyoung sat with his back to the empty window frame, blocking off the vicious bite of the sand on his dry skin. His gloved fingers fumbled through a dirty box, bending the thin plastic to expose its contents. The sound of his rustling seemed obnoxiously loud in the otherwise desolate surroundings. He prayed it wouldn't alert the fouls from their slumber and kept his ears strained.

The crate finally gave under his yanking. Quickly, he looted the contents. Later was enough time to figure out what was worth keeping. When his fingers closed around a bottle of water, delight rushed through his chest, momentarily distracting him. He buried the treasure in the folds of his worn jacket and stuffed the rest in his bag.

Metal groaned to his right. It bore the burden of the desert swallowing the building with every passing day. Wooyoung glanced its way at the wrong time.

A shadow moved to his left, dancing past the crumbled window. Wooyoung's hand flew to his gun holster at the same moment he twirled to his feet.

The nozzle of his gun stared at a tall man, and hands lifted in defense. A meek smile spread across his lips.

"Sorry 'bout that," he grinned. With a huff, Wooyoung took the gun down and crouched to pick up his bag. He dusted the sand off it - a fruitless habit - and jammed the gun back against his thigh.

"One of these days I will pull the trigger by accident and your feed the coyotes with your naïve brain matter," Wooyoung muttered. Yunho accompanied him outside into the perpetual gloom of the wasteland. The skies were brown to match the jagged cliffs that rose against the far horizon like a giant maw ready to swallow the sandy plains.

"I wouldn't want to die by anyone else's hand. I know you'd make it quick." Yunho's voice was light, easing the tension that wrapped around Wooyoung's heart like barbed wire. Safe by the tall man's side, he rolled the strain out of his shoulders. It wasn't night yet, and they hadn't stirred up any animals or fouls. Nimble steps brought them back into the desert, hunting down the other building nearby.

"Say it like that and I will come up with torment specifically for trying me. What did you find?" Wooyoung diverted the topic with a peek at Yunho's bag. His dark-haired companion shook his head.

"Just some rags and documents, nothing of worth. You didn't want to build a camp there?"

Shivering at the lonesome view across the barren land, Wooyoung shook his head. It was the same everywhere. It always had been. The world was empty apart from its hungry creachers and the occasional madman dumb enough to strive for survival.

"The second level didn't seem stable." And they both knew better than to sleep on the ground where the scavengers of the night could find them.

Yunho pondered the other building. This one was taller, a whole four stories high. Neither could tell what it was before the nuclear holocaust, but it must have been important. When they spotted it in the distance, they shared their hopes that it might have been a hospital or a grocery store. Though crooked with time and tilting into the sand, it towered proudly in the empty landscape.

They picked that one to go to last. It would make a decent camp for the night, but its size and position might have caught the interest of others.

"That one seems about right. It will get us through a night unless it crawls with fouls." Another survivor, they could barter with. But not the brain-dead, ravenous leftovers of the human race.