Glade tried to keep pace in the morning. His body was sore from the previous day’s walking, and he had not slept long enough to recover. The crisp early spring air did nothing to make him feel better. Too much of the cold of winter lingered in its breeze. Still, Glade was glad to have a companion this morning.

  In the middle of the night, Jude shook him awake for watch duty. The old man made it clear that if he found Glade asleep, he would regret it. Not that the man would kill him, but he would certainly make it hard for him to survive. Glade felt perplexed by Jude’s vacillation between human warmth and Wasteland cruelty. Regardless, the threat kept him awake and gave him time to think about his journey and to daydream about coming back to his mother and sister, wealthy beyond belief.

  “Exit 54,” Jude said, pointing toward a half-rusted highway sign. The sign had been repainted over the years. A lone crow perched atop the sign watched them as they approached the exit.

  “How far until Manolin?” Glade asked. Jude had told him about the strange fishing village as they walked. There, he would be able to put Glade on a boat to Dewindalo.

  Glade glanced from the derelict highway to the bare shrubs and vegetation which overtook miles of asphalt and concrete. He could not even see the Great Lake behind the thickness of the outcrop despite the lack of leaves. The greenery of spring had only begun to bud.

  When his father told him stories of the world prior, he could hardly imagine living in a grey world surrounded by so many people. His father had once said this region of the world once supported a population of 10 million. Glade shook his head in disbelief. His father, rest his soul, had most definitely exaggerated the number. He could not believe the world itself held 10 million people, let alone on the shores of these Great Lakes.

  “We still have a few hours,” Jude said. “We need to take the exit and then walk toward the river mouth.”

  “Is it really a floating city?” Glade asked. He sped alongside the old man, who walked with a determined and relentless pace.

  “Sort of,” Jude said. “It’s more of a village, and only some of it floats. It used to be a marina -- a small harbour for the rich to dock their boats. Things have changed since then, let me tell you. I only need a day for business, then I’ll get you on a boat and you’ll be in Dewindalo before you know it.”

  Before Glade could ask another question, Jude put forth his hand. Glade absent-mindedly walked into it and was pushed back slightly.

  “Quiet,” Jude commanded in a whispered tone. He crouched closer to the ground and looked into the distance. “What do you see there?”

  Glade trained his eyes ahead. In the distance, there lay a long form, almost pulsing with black shapes. It took a few seconds for his mind to adjust and see it for what it was: a dead man surrounded by a murder of crows.

  “It’s a dead man,” Glade said, lifting himself back to his feet.

  “Get down!” Jude yanked Glade’s sleeve and pulled him to the ground. “You don’t know if it’s a trap.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Jude said nothing in response. His eyes scanned before glancing behind them. Then, he moved to the median of the highway, a strip of concrete barriers. He hopped over one of them and looked down the road on that side.

  “It looks clear, but I can’t tell.”

  The two of them slowed their pace, but soon they arrived at the outstretched body. Glade startled the crows, which scattered in a large cloud of soaring blackness.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “Died recently,” Jude said. He crouched beside the dead body and began prodding it. The man seemed to have been in his mid-30s, plump, and friendly-looking. He had an unkempt curly beard and mid-length hair and lay sprawled against the broken asphalt.

  Glade checked his surroundings. His mind churned through the possibilities of a trap. Raiders might be waiting for them to feel at ease before they emerged from their hiding places. He had no desire to meet the same fate as the man at his feet. His eyes flickered back to the corpse. He stared at the discoloured face, and his heart dropped. His intuition told him that this man, whoever he was, had been a good man. Glade needed to look at something else. He turned his back and took a deep breath. The air seemed still and stagnant. He inhaled not the promise of spring, but the decay of winter.

  Meanwhile, Jude acted slowly and methodically. He searched for booby traps, checked beneath the body for mines, and felt the inside lining of the man’s vest for anything unusual. Then, he began to rifle through the pockets of the dead man. He removed every item and laid them on the ground.

  “What are you doing!?” Glade grabbed the old man’s hand. “He’s dead. We should bury him.”

  Jude shook his head with a smile. The old man stopped his looting and stood.

  “Look, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you need to turn back and go home.”

  “I won’t!”

  “Then, kid, either you’re going to have to learn quickly or resign yourself to being destroyed by the time you reach Dewindalo. We’re not playing with cows or whatever you do on your three acres…”

  “It’s closer to fifteen or twenty…”

  “I don’t care,” Jude interjected. “The point is: if you want to survive, you have to grow tough and callous. Is this a dead guy? Sure is. Do I know him? No. Do I care that he’s dead? Yes, actually. You know why? Because he has plenty on him that we can take and plenty on him that we can sell. All the sweeter because we’ve almost reached Manolin. We lug this junk for an hour, maybe two, and then we convert it into cash. Now, are you going to help me with this body, or are you going to keep your mouth open and catch flies?”

  Glade closed his mouth and watched while his stomach twisted. He was shocked at the total lack of care for the dead. When his father died, his family made sure to give him a prompt and proper burial in the family plot. Many of their neighbours came to pay their respects to a generous and upright man.

  When Glade was younger, he remembered attending the burial of one of the other subsistence farmers. His father taught him the importance of the dignity of the dead. ‘Life,’ he remembered his father saying, ‘is much more than mere survival.’

  “Catching flies? Suit yourself.” Jude turned his back to the youth and continued his systematic stripping. “You think people will care when we die? When I die, I’ll meet the same fate. And so will you.”

  Glade watched as Jude lined the dead man’s belongings on the asphalt and emptied the man’s bag. Then, he moved toward the body. He removed the broad-brimmed hat from the corpse and took the binoculars from around its neck. Then, he flipped the body on its side as he proceeded to remove its vest and his shirt. He continued by taking the belt and removing the dead man's pants.

  Glade felt a pang of conscience. He wanted to stop Jude from desecrating the body further. This felt wrong. It was embarrassing. He was stripping this man to his undergarments -- for what? A little bit of money. Glade wanted to have something to bring to his family, but not like this. He wanted to earn his money honestly.

  Glade blinked and shook himself from his fugue state. He must have dissociated, because when he came to, he saw Jude standing in front of him with a second backpack slung around the front of his body. All of the dead man’s items were rolled and tucked away into that bag. Jude wore the dead man’s hat. In his hands, however, were the binoculars and a small cloth-wrapped package of food.

  “Good hunting,” Jude said happily. “Here, I can’t fit and carry everything myself, so you can take these binoculars as your own. Sell ‘em. They’ll probably fetch you a lot. Consider it a gift. As for this” -- he waved the food into the air -- “you might be a little hungry.”

  Jude slapped the food into his hands and continued walking down the abandoned highway as though nothing had happened.

  Glade simply stared after the old man and then down at his own hands. The binoculars felt heavy, almost too heavy to bear. He took the faded neck strap and threw it over his head. The binoculars fell to his chest and about his neck was hung. He looked at the food in his hand. His stomach growled, but he had no appetite. His eyes moved to the nearly naked dead man on the road and then to the world around him. No humans were present. Only he and the crows.

  His eyes twitched with sorrow. He had suppressed his tears throughout his life, but now, he felt like crying. His mouth painfully curved. He would not let himself cry. Instead, Glade looked to Jude in the distance and ran toward him.