Desertcrawler

5

He saw the desert stretch out as far as his eyes permitted him to see. The undead men were gone. It was only him and the desert. The pain in his legs was gone. Neither was he afraid anymore. He felt a strange sense of peace and tranquillity. It was so odd a feeling that for a moment Jake considered, “Have I died? Is this the afterlife?” 

But no! It was not. He realised it before long, for everything had a vague quality like he was looking at everything through a frosted glass. It was a dream, a strangely immersive one, that too. And then the sands rose. They made all kinds of forms and shapes in his front. They rose in clouds and slowly arranged themselves in the form of buildings. Cars were being formed too and so were billboards, flyovers and roads. In no time it became a city. And actual people started to appear. The sands were sands no more. Nor the desert remained a desert. He was sitting beside a fountain. Before he could grasp what was happening, he rose. He rose in the air. No, he didn’t have to stand on his feet. This was some external force lifting him. The sound of the shifting sands was eaten up by the sound of this newborn city, teeming with life. He was flying. And he rose up and up and up. The city became smaller beneath him. He could see its borders now. There was a forest beyond its northern frontier. Towards the south, there was another city. He kept rising higher and higher and suddenly stopped. There was a loud noise. Something was roaring amongst the clouds. Roaring so loud that Jake’s ears would have bled had it not been a dream. But had they not bled already? There was only one thing that could roar this loud in the sky, a jet. It was a military jet; must have already passed till Jake reached up to that point in the sky, and so he was now hearing its roar. But no, there wasn’t only one. Three other jets appeared from the cloud to his left and darted past him so fast that he could barely catch a glimpse. They were not just military jets, they were bomber planes. And as they crossed, they dropped bombs on the city. Suddenly, the force which was keeping Jake afloat vanished, and he plunged into the sky beneath him. Panic hastened his heartbeats. He knew it was a dream but still, it was so real that he wished he would wake up soon. He was following the bombs, not intentionally, no; he had no control over his body now. Just before the bomb hit the ground, he stopped falling and saw it all. The bombs hit the city and blew it up. Not just blew it, the bomb was too powerful for that. It turned the city into dust. It cracked apart every building, vehicle, billboard or road those sands had formed and returned them all to dust. From dust we came, and dust shall we become! He dropped but felt nothing upon hitting the ground. He looked around him, the fire had engulfed the entire city. Citizens of that urban settlement cried and shouted for help in agony. There were limbs severed from bodies. Some bodies were turned to charred jelly. And then another series of bombs hit. There was nothing visible through the flames this time. But it did not affect him. Dark clouds of smoke billowed out skywards. It just went on and on and by the time the smoke and the flames receded, Jake couldn’t believe what those bombs had turned the city into; pure dust and nothing else. The city had risen from the desert and now became the desert. It was just like his teenage dream. “Told ya! That’s where your guns and your bombs would take you!” he wanted to shout. Just what he had thought. And then the sun moved quicker above his head. It was as if he was suddenly inside a timelapse video. The day became night and night became day within seconds and it went on and on and on. And then it suddenly stopped. Jake lost count of how many days passed in those few seconds. Who cares? It’s just a dream. And then that force was back. That force, which now raised him once again towards the sky. He spread his arms out to feel the air but nothing was there to feel. It was as if Jake had lost all senses except his sight and hearing. He went up and up but to the same point where he stopped before. He looked beneath him and what he saw was… desert. There was no forest towards the north, no city towards the south. All had become a vast desert. Jake had never felt this in a dream before but this dream… it was so real… it was as if this had happened in the actual world. The clouds which were clouding his vision of the city vanished. He rose higher. And higher. And higher. And stopped. He could see almost half of his country now. And now he knew where he was all that time. Zone 15. The place where his plane had crashed. And from here he could see Zone 13 and the city of the Gellenum Reserve. He couldn’t believe what he saw. His city, Zone 13 was under a transparent dome. He knew what it was. The Gellenum Reserve had it, the covering. It was an artificially supported atmosphere. He could never understand the need for it in the Gellenum Reserve but now, he could see. It wasn’t just an artificial atmosphere… It was a shield; from all the radiation that drenched the regions outside these domes, which had been turned into deserts. The thing in the air that made it so hard to breathe was nothing else, but the radiation and the dust. This was what the war had wreaked upon his country. Sure his side had won the war… but the cost? There was nothing left in his country, except for the few dome cities. Thousands of cities had been turned into dust. Billions of people were burnt down to their basic components. Jake felt loss inside him. As if the war had made a hole in him. He felt himself getting sucked into it. And then he woke up.