A Night in the Badlands

The ear-piercing shriek of the kettle startled me, ripping me out of my dark thoughts. I blinked rapidly to help my eyes focus on my current surroundings. The expanse of nothingness was around me, well nothing but some bushes and my tent. The longer I was in the Badlands the more my thoughts twisted and cracked into depression.

It's been six months since the world fell into a drought. According to the scientists something pissed off the sun and created several severe solar flares to increase Earth's temperature to dry up the skies. All the plants left up in northern Canada were some low lying bushes and grass. Almost everything else died within a few weeks of the drought, including humans.

Most of the elderly and the young died from heat stroke by week two. Air conditioning units couldn't keep up with the spike in heat and the electrical grid fell from too much power used at once. Once the power went out people started to overheat.

The next round of deaths happened about a month later. The increase of heat caused Earth's bacteria to flourish. Our drinking water became a soup of microorganisms. H. pylori and Shigella infected millions, causing bleeding ulcers and violent diarrhea. The more they would drink to prevent dehydration the more bacteria they introduced into their bodies. The little water we had was boiled several times to help kill the bacteria but some people still got sick.

We lost contact to the outside world by then and all forms of government disappeared. It felt like we were in a bubble, only knowing what happened by whisperings of travelers. There were only a couple towns within a reasonable walking distance away.

I pinched the soft skin on my forearm to keep my mind in the present. I couldn't think of the past, I had to keep surviving. My wife and kids wouldn't want me to give up and join them in the afterlife. I bet my boys thought I was playing some super cool video game. I just needed to get to the next town over, have a meeting, rest up, and come back home. Four steps in my plan. I can do that, hopefully.

I carefully picked the kettle up from the fire and poured the boiling water into my cup of dried oatmeal. Nothing like a cup of plain oatmeal for the fifth meal in a row with a cup of plain steaming water. At least I had something to eat, others were surviving off of weeds and what little water they could extract from the remaining tree branches. I would rather eat oatmeal for the rest of my life than chew up some bushes. Clean water was incredibly hard to find and I was lucky to have a few liters of it, barely enough to finish my mission.

With the fading light from the fire I looked around to make sure I was truly alone. It was risky to sleep in such an open spot but I didn't have any other choice. My last hiding spot was found by a group of angry bobcats who were looking for dinner.

The breeze whipped by me and I shivered, it's funny how the low 90s feels cold to me now.

The first few nights in the Badlands weren't terrible except for the constant feeling of something watching me. At first I didn't really mind it, there were so many creatures looking for food and I probably smelled really tasty to them. But the feeling was starting to make me nervous, I highly doubted that the animals followed me out of their territory to where I was now.

I was exhausted but something kept me awake. My heart was racing and sweat started beading down my back. I rarely sweat anymore, my body preferring the moisture to stay inside. It seemed like no matter how much I drank I almost never peed. Just another quirk of the world going bad.

I rolled over to my hands and knees, my toes twitching uncomfortably in my socks. I felt like I was ready to start a race. A race between life and death? Or a race between humanity and whatever was hiding in the Badlands? It probably looked almost animalistic. Wasn't I though? It's been days since I've seen another living human being. I was stuck in what felt like an endless loop of the Badlands, the wild area between each of the towns. Lost scavengers and messengers would arrive back home weeks after we sent them off, crazed and babbling about there not being other towns and made up tales of whatever they thought happened to them. I was selected to be part of the next group of messengers, letting the next town over know how many more deaths we had in the month previous. I had nothing to lose, with my entire family dead from the bacteria.

My ears were tuned to the soft pats of bobcats, the solid thuds of moose, and the chitters of foxes. My ears weren't prepared to hear voices at all. I wanted to go hide and avoid other humans. We were all in danger from each other. We should be on our own.

A new shadow blocked out the remaining light from my campfire and my body shook, my hand blindly reaching for my weapon. I only had a medium size hunting knife and my bare hands. I was too exhausted and weak to do much more than slash the bad guy.

The shadow's arm reached up and waved, presumably to others. Oh hell no, I wasn't going to get tortured by a bunch of people and eaten alive. I'm scrawny from my time in the Badlands but I still had meat on some of my bones.

I slowly turned and crawled to my tent zipper, ready to catch the person standing outside of my tent and stab them. But as soon as my fingers touched the cold plastic a white light blinded me.

***

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was that the room was echoing with the odd sounds of chirping and chattering. The sounds were almost approving and happy.

The second thing I noticed was that I was completely paralyzed, my limbs feeling like they were in solid blocks of ice.

The third thing I noticed was the overwhelming smell of alcohol.

Well, I guess I wasn't in the Badlands anymore.

It took every little fiber of my being to force open my eyes. It felt like I had the worst case of sleep-crusties. I almost wished that I wasn't able to open my eyes once I was blinded in the bright white light above me. It only took a few moments for my eyes to adjust but I wasn't prepared for what I saw.

Aliens.

Alarm bells screeched in my head as I opened my mouth to scream. Blurry green blobs surrounded me, with large heads and too many arms. I felt numerous needles poke into my limbs as a fire burned through my veins.

It only took two blinks for the darkness to carry me away.

***

A giggle escaped my lips when I woke back up in my tent. My limbs tingled pleasantly and I had butterflies in my stomach. I was so ready to go back to town and tell the others what I had seen.

How silly are pretty green aliens?

It only took a few minutes to pack up my camp and get my backpack organized. I felt better than ever, it's been months since I've felt properly fed and hydrated. The lingering pain from whatever they did to me was overshadowed by the endorphins flowing through my body. I was so excited, but I wasn't sure what for. A whisper of running water trickled through my subconscious but I quickly dismissed it. Water was such a silly joke!

It only took a few miles before I found a familiar trail that I knew would lead me back home. I can't believe that I was this close to home!

My hands clapped together and I did a little twisty dance. I was so excited to go back home. The meanies out here couldn't follow me back home to eat me all up.

Every single rock on the trail home grabbed my interest and I had the overwhelming urge to pick every single one up and sniff it. The odors of the great outdoors overwhelmed my delicate nose and I squealed before picking up the next rock.

When I could see the outline of the town in the distance I started hooting and hollering to get the guards attention. My arms flapped when they rushed towards me and a waterfall of words tumbled out of my mouth.

Their concerned glance at each other should have bothered me but I didn't care. I had to tell them all about the aliens and how they healed me and how there were so many meanies wanting to eat the meat off of my bones and how I kept hearing the sound of water in my brain.

I dug my feet into the dirt as we approached the gate. We had built a large fence around the perimeter of town once the animals started to get hungry and hunt humans. I was an animal now, one with nature and the aliens.

The guards released me and let me fall to the ground. The feeling of dust and dirt made me chatter more nonsense to them as I rolled over to my hands and knees. The sound of water in my ears made me deaf to their outcries and pleas for me to cross the gate.

Once I balanced up on my knees I threw my hands to the sky, trying to call the rain out of my brain and into the sky. The aliens needed to come back and give us water. They were happy and pleased and made me feel the same way. Was my mission really to converse with the other towns or was it to convince the aliens that the experiment was up? I couldn't be quite sure with all the drugs in my system.

A bright silver light gleamed across the sky, briefly blocking out the sun's rays and enveloping us in its shadow. The cool darkness was very welcome after baking in the sun trying to get home.

I screeched to the silver object and waved my hands, snapping my fingers in a language only I knew. The guards behind me cowered but decided I wasn't worth grabbing. They probably thought I was insane but I knew better, I was the one to bring back good news to the town. Aliens are real and the scientists are fake and all we need is rain and aliens and rain…

I tilted my head back and laughed when the first few drops of water fell on my face. Behind me I could hear the guards slowly retreat as the silver object in the sky flew away.

The water filled my body with energy and I staggered to my feet, spinning and dancing as the rain fell from the sky.