Fire Age - From Embers

Quédate Lejos

Amidst the scorched land, two figures could be noticed. Silhouettes of resilient men, who still walked in a place of death - a desert, grown from what once was a city. The husks of buildings from a time not too long ago would sometimes rise from the ground.

They weren't both walking. One was dragging the other in an improvised stretcher, for this man couldn't sustain himself alone. Looking closely, he seemed to have been beaten almost senseless: his face was covered in dirt and blood, his eyes looked to the sky without seeing it. Through dry lips he mumbled some words. "Alejáte de mi... idiota..."

The other man also had dry lips. Their water supply was running low, and they were walking for three days now. Although less hurt, he wasn't way better than the other: dirt covered a pale skin, his chest moved violently when he coughed; dark circles rested around deep eyes. So small and fragile was his body that one wouldn't believe the size of the backpack he carried, but he did it nonetheless. Surviving meant carrying that backpack.

Survival, for the beaten man in the stretcher, meant two things: first, it meant getting to a doctor.

And second, it meant hell.

The traveler found him in what used to be a gas station across the border of Mexico. The station had been silent for quite some time, so they sent a group of men. The group slowly fell apart: one got mauled by a coyote, two were assassinated on the way. The last one stole everything that he could carry before running away, terrified. Only one kept going, William Jones.

It was too late to turn around then. If he did, he would run out of water before getting back home, or his supply of food would be gone. So, he kept going, worried that not knowing a damn word in Spanish would make his life a little harder. It didn't.

The station across the border wasn't abandoned as much as it was desecrated. Corpses were all over the place, everything was broken, and somethings were burnt. Everyone had horrible wounds: cuts, bites and slashes.

Everyone but the man on the stretcher, who had broken legs, broken arms and contusions all over his body, but not a single drop of blood around him. At least, not his blood.

Jones could not communicate with him, but he was determined to save his life. Back at the station, someone would be able to understand what he was saying.

"Quédate lejos de mi... No... Aléjate... Aléjate, imbecil... Si quieres... vivir... aléjate."

A bunch of gibberish, but he said it over and over again. The pilgrim started to call the wounded man Alleh, since he kept saying that. Aléjate, Aléjate... some kind of variation from Alejandro, maybe?

Didn't make much sense that the man would be saying his own name on repeat, but so beaten was Alleh that Jones assumed he was just way out of his mind. When he got the stretcher, the traveler noticed the abscesses; putrid pockets in his skin all over the body. Whatever the poor devil had contracted, surely was taking its toll.

William got everything that he could put on that backpack and started to make his way back to the station on the other side of a border of not so old. He noticed some more nonsense written at the entry, in red paint:

Abandonen toda esperanza aquellos que entran aquí.

And then, they started the journey. A five-day walk, that became a little more than that because of Alleh. Afternoon came and went, turning into a cold night. William Jones left the stretcher on the ground before starting to make camp. There were two blankets tied to his backpack.

Fire was worth more than both their lives, so there wouldn't be any that night. He got a little flask and poured water in Alleh's mouth.

"Dejáme aquí... y se vaya... No quiero agua... quiero solo... morir."

"I don't understand a single word of what you're sayin'. Sorry, Alleh."

There was a shorter way to go, sure, but it was filled with coyotes. Demon coyotes, like William called them. Horrible creatures, deformed, sick, as ready to spread the plague as the water.

And the coyotes never went too far from the focal points of the plague. Five days through the crumbling landscape was nothing compared to that.

In the fourth day, Alleh fell silent. Although still breathing, his voice was now so hoarse that it would hurt too much to keep talking. Even more since the other man clearly didn't understand a single word. It was futile, desperately so.

In the evening, the howling of the coyotes was too close for comfort, but something scared the walking man more than that: the closer sound of gunshots.

Armed with a strength and will that he did not know to possess, William went through the night without rest. His vision was blurry, and his chest ached when, at dawn, he reached the station from where his journey started.

Exhausted and basically destroyed, he called for the patrolling guard. "Call a doctor... and someone who speaks Spanish..." he said, before succumbing.

They were fast to carry out the task, since the night patrol too heard the shots and got people on the ready. Alleh was taken to the infirmary, and William was taken to somewhere he could rest.

His slumber was a complete black out. When he woke up, one day later, almost couldn't believe he actually made it back. His sore throat was treated with a cup of water right away, given by a grieving man.

"What happened? How's Alleh?" he asked, then remembered that no one knew who Alleh would be. "I mean, the man I brought back. How is he? Where is he? What did he say, what happened?"

"He's dead."

The answer hit him like a moving train. After all he went through to get Alleh safe and sound, he died...

"But... how?"

"Euthanasia. The man wanted to die. And it gets worse, I'm sorry to tell you."

After some time to understand what he heard, William asked for the man to fill in the details.

"His name was Diego, and he told us exactly what happened, but only too late. The plague mutated somehow. It isn't always lethal now. Under some circumstances, that he could not explain, one can now contract the disease and spread it. It takes the form of pockets in the skin and coughs in the beginning, maybe fever and things like that. When one of these pockets gets in contact with blood, it'll make the diseased go feral. He'll bite and scratch and do anything to spread it even more.

"Diego was carrying the disease, but he could only tell us after most of our medical staff had already got in contact with him. Then, they started spreading it and everything went down south with a little boy who got slashed after contracting it. Many people died, and many more got sick. We strangled Diego, as he asked us to not cause any bleeding and to save the bullets for the diablos, like he called them. It means 'devils'.

"We are trying to do our best now, but it's hard. We've banned most knives and piercing objects, can't have these waiting to cause another outburst. I know it isn't easy for you to know that, but there is a last bite. A little something to make it more painful. You want to know what Diego's last words for you were?"

It took William almost two entire minutes to digest everything. He was speechless, and could only nod as an answer. After all that, there wasn't anything that could make it all worse. Was it?

" 'I told you to stay away.' "