The ground changed before the farm showed itself.

  Trash and broken consumer junk fell away into hardpan and sun-bleached grit. The air got hotter, almost aggressive. Not the city’s wet heat, trapped between glass and concrete. This was famed Badlands glare, the one that cooked your thoughts slow and made sure you won't see the city again if you let it.

  I kept moving along the road, not on it. I needed to attract the least attention humanly possible. That process was made pretty hard since I was half dead. Maybe three quarters dead now. Heh. Rusted signposts, dead scrubs, and burned cars made me wonder if I ended up Fallout rather than Cyberpunk.

  Each time I took a break I felt like I was losing the thread of reality more and more, my ribs kept escalating their objections. Every breath scraped.

  I kept trying to figure out what was actually going on here, wondering about what kind of mechanism could have brought me here, seemingly just to watch me die again. I eventually gave up altogether. I had more important things to do.

  Like not dying in a ditch.

  The tremor in my right hand kept acting up. It wanted a fix. It didn’t care about plans or logic or where I woke up. It just wanted the world to stop hurting. In the distance, I heard a high cry. It echoed once, then died. The silence that followed felt deliberate.

  Dead zone, they would’ve called it. Not because it was empty. Because it was the kind of place that made people vanish and nobody felt like going to check.

  A half-collapsed fence line appeared first. Old. Looking around I saw some dead crops, burned by the sun. Then the bones of a farmhouse rose out of the heat shimmer.

  It wasn’t a romantic kind of ruin. No ivy. No soft decay. Just a box of sun-faded boards and corrugated metal patches, a sagging roof, broken windows. A water tower stood behind it, thin-legged and crooked, casting a shadow like a man being hanged long ago.

  The land around was trashed, for a lack of better description, and up to the standard of the Badlands. Old tracks, not fresh. Wind had scrubbed most of the story clean, but not all of it. Something had been here, moving with purpose. Something had left in a hurry, or stopped leaving at all.

  I slowed down before the last rise, crouched behind a dead bush that smelled of dust and bitter sap, and watched. Looks clear. Clear enough for a walking corpse like me.

  Flies hovered near the porch in a thick, lazy cloud that made my stomach tighten. Flies meant food, and food meant a body, and a body meant the kind of luck I didn’t want.

  I waited a full minute anyway. Then another. The urge to rush was strong. I forced it down. The city was far behind me, but the rules followed: don’t sprint into unknown corners, don’t assume silence was safety. I crept closer. That’s when I saw the stains.

  Dark splashes in the dirt near the porch steps, baked nearly black by sun. Drag marks leading toward the side of the house, thin grooves where something heavy had been pulled, or crawled. A scatter of shell casings glittered near a broken planter. Shotgun shells. Spent. A lot of them.

  The tremor in my right hand got worse, like it recognized the shape of what was coming. I swallowed and tasted blood again. A shape lay half in the shade of the porch, half in sun. At first it didn’t register as human, just… wrong geometry. Then the wind shifted and the smell hit me through the dust: putrid rot and iron and something sour underneath it.

  I stopped. A wave of nausea rolled over me. I had to pull a lot of my last reserves just not to bark over the scene. Fuck. The body wore a jacket stiff with dried grime, pants torn at the thigh. One boot was still on. The other foot was bare, pale, and swollen; toes curled.

  The face was turned away, but the neck… the neck told the story. Torn flesh. Ragged. Not a clean cut. Whatever did it, it had teeth, or claws, or both. There were scratches down the back too, parallel lines.

  Wildlife, my brain offered. A simple answer to keep me moving. Badlands animals. Pack scavengers. Dead zone rumor damn confirmed. And maybe it was true.

  But the shells on the ground looked deliberate. A man had stood here and fought for this place, emptying everything he had into the heat.

  I took another step. Something metallic caught the sun near his outstretched hand. Found a shotgun. Hell yeah. We’re moving up in life.

  Big. Brutal. Beautiful. The single most beautiful thing I saw since waking up in this godforsaken place. For the first time in a few hours, I felt like hoping a bit. Sure enough. Worn and torn, clunky and way too powerful to handle now, but here it was.

  Carnage.

  Seeing it in the dirt did something to my spine. A stupid, primal relief, like the universe, had finally offered a tool that matched the situation instead of another form to fill. I crouched slow, every joint protesting, and reached for it.

  My fingers wrapped the grip, and I felt how heavy it was, real weight, real recoil promise. I brought it close and checked the chamber like my hands had done it a hundred times. I was not in the state to worry about why I did so, especially since I've never touched a firearm in my life, and even less a weird, shaped shotgun.

  Empty. Of fucking course, it was empty.

  I let out a self-deprecating snicker. No additional safety measures for me then. The dead man had spent his last shells on whatever came out of the scrub. Then it came anyway.

  I looked over the body again, careful not to touch more than I needed. No ammo bandolier in sight. No spare shells in the pockets I could see without rifling him like a ghoul. Just the shotgun, useless until I fed it.

  The flies crawled over his collar. I backed off, swallowing nausea, and scanned the ground around the porch.

  More marks. Deep gouges in the dirt that made my throat go tight. I kept reminding myself that choice was a luxury I couldn’t afford right now. A smear led toward the side of the house and disappeared behind it. I didn’t follow it. Not yet.

  I kept the Carnage in my hands anyway. Empty or not, it was still a club. Still a symbol. Still, something that made a man stand taller even when his body wanted to fold.

  The wind nudged the porch door. It creaked on one hinge and tapped the frame softly, like the house was trying to get my attention. I stared at the doorway.

  Inside could be shade, water, and a place to not die. Could also be whatever finished him after the last shell clicked dry. At the edge of my vision, faint text flickered and died, a glitch in cheap optics.

  VITALS: UNSTABLE

  STATUS: WITHDRAWAL

  Then the flies surged and I heard it, somewhere behind the house. A scrape, slow and patient, something dragging itself through dirt toward the smell of living meat. I tightened my grip on the empty Carnage and took one step toward the door anyway. I slipped through it.

  The inside of the farmhouse was cooler by a few degrees, which was enough to feel like mercy. Dust hung in the air in slow motion. Sunlight came in through gaps in the boards and painted thin bars across the floor.

  It smelled of old, dry wood, stale fabric, and that faint tang of fuel that told me somebody had tried to keep a machine alive in here. Damn good start.

  I eased the door shut until it almost clicked, then stopped it short. I wanted it closed enough to hide me, open enough to run.

  The scrape outside continued for a few seconds, then faded off into the wind. Whatever it was, it wasn’t charging the house. I held my breath and listened.

  Nothing. Just the house settling, and my own heartbeat trying to stutter out of my chest.

  I set the Carnage down on a table that used to be a table before time and sun warped it. The gun looked obscene next to a chipped mug and a stack of brittle paper. Then I checked the room like my life depended on it, because it did.

  Kitchen to the left, looking straight out of resident evil. A back hallway. A door that might’ve been a bedroom. A corner where someone had piled scraps of wire and plastic like they were building an altar to bad decisions. And a generator.

  Small, portable, the kind you’d use to keep lights on when the grid didn’t care about you. It sat near the back wall with a jerrycan beside it and a spiderweb of extension cords that disappeared into the house.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  It should’ve been my first clue. This place hadn’t been stripped because it wasn’t worth the risk, sure, but also because the last guy here had made it a little fortress of “not worth it.” The kind of setup that scared off casual scavvers. The kind of setup that got you killed when the wrong thing found you anyway.

  My mouth was so dry it felt like my tongue was made of sandpaper. My hands shook worse when I tried to swallow. I needed water. And quick. I followed the cords to a corner where a sink still clung to the wall. I turned the tap out of habit.

  Of course, no running water. What was I expecting anyways? I went to the back door and pushed it open an inch, peering out into glare and scrub.

  The well was there a few meters from the house, covered by a warped sheet of metal held down with rocks. A rope hung from a simple pulley, frayed and dark with use. I waited a beat, listening again. Silence, for the most part, the rest was just flies and heat.

  I stepped out fast, crossed the yard with the knife in my hand and the empty shotgun slung awkwardly under my arm like dead weight. The ground near the porch had that same pattern of violence: scuffed dirt, crushed grass, and brass shells.

  The smell wasn’t sewage, not exactly. It was… metallic. Stale. Water that had sat too long near something it shouldn’t touch. I lowered the bucket anyway.

  The rope burned my palms through grime. The pulley squealed a little, loud in the open space, and I hated how far the sound carried. I froze twice; sure, I’d hear something answer.

  The bucket hit water with a dull splash. I hauled it back up, arms trembling, ribs complaining with every pull. When it came over the rim, the water inside looked almost normal in the shade, dark, with a faint oily shimmer that made my stomach twist.

  I stared at it and tried to be optimistic about this whole thing. It was still an opportunity. Unlike before, miserable as I was, I still had a chance here. Then I carried it inside.

  In the kitchen, I found a pot with a dented bottom and a lid that didn’t fit right. I poured the water in and watched the shimmer spread across the surface in slow, ugly patterns.

  “Boil it,” I muttered. “Like a caveman.”

  The generator was the next problem. I crouched beside it and popped the side panel. My hands moved like they remembered doing this, which was weird, because the last time I touched anything mechanical was replacing a broken office fan with one stolen from a meeting room.

  This wasn’t the same. This was more… instinct. Pattern recognition turning into muscle memory. I checked the fuel first. The jerrycan still had some. It smelled old, but fuel was fuel. I poured a bit into the tank, not enough to waste, enough to test. Then I pulled the starter cord. Nothing.

  I pulled again. The engine coughed once, then died. Great. I swore softly and forced myself to breathe through the tremor.

  Okay. Basics. Air, fuel, spark. The holy trinity.

  I found the spark plug with dirty fingers and unscrewed it. It came out blackened and wet. That told me enough: it was flooding, or the plug was fouled, or both. Either way, it wasn’t firing clean.

  I wiped it on my hoodie sleeve and immediately regretted it. The sleeve was already disgusting. Now it was gasoline-disgusting. I didn’t have a proper brush. I didn’t have tools. I had a knife, a pot, and a body that wanted to crawl out of its own skin.

  I scraped the plug gently with the edge of the knife until the worst gunk came off, then blew on it like that would help. I checked the gap by eye. Close enough for this level of misery.

  I screwed it back in, tightened it with fingers until it resisted, then gave it one more careful twist.

  “Come on,” I whispered, like that mattered. “You and me. We do this, we both live.”

  I primed it, set the choke, and pulled.

  The generator coughed harder this time. A second cough. Then a shuddering start, I thought the engine hated the idea of existing but did it anyway. The noise filled the house, rough, rattling, alive.

  A stupid laugh jumped up my throat and died because I remembered where I was. Noise was a beacon. Still. Power.

  A small bulb in the kitchen flickered to life, weak and yellow. It lit dust motes like tiny drifting ghosts.

  I turned the hotplate on, yeah, there actually was a hotplate, half-buried under junk and plugged into the extension cord like the last guy had planned for exactly this. The coil glowed dull red. I set the pot over it and watched the water start to tremble.

  I didn’t trust boiling to fix whatever chemical kiss that well had going on, but I didn’t have choices. I had time, pain, and thirst. While it heated, I searched.

  Slowly. No frantic looting. I wasn’t a scav. I was a starving man trying not to die in a dead-zone house. Cabinets first.

  The first two had nothing but dust and a dead insect nest. The third had a pile of cans shoved to the back under a torn cloth. I pulled the cloth away and stared.

  Canned food. Old labels, faded, smeared with grime. Beans, maybe. Something that used to be meat. Something that might’ve once been fruit if you squinted and believed.

  They were coated in dust and looked like they’d been forgotten on purpose.

  I ran a thumb across one and felt the grit. The can itself was intact. No bulging. No rust deep enough to scare me. My stomach made a sound I hated. Not hunger, exactly. Hunger was polite compared to this.

  I stacked the cans on the table like they were treasure, then stopped and listened again. The generator rattled. The water began to steam. Outside, the flies kept doing what flies did.

  And somewhere in the back of the house, faint under the engine noise, I heard a soft tap.

  Once. Then nothing.

  I froze with a can in my hand, the label peeling against my thumb. The house felt smaller all of a sudden. The tap came again, a little louder. Something small hitting wood with patient rhythm. I set the can down without sound.

  The generator made it hard to hear anything subtle, but it also gave me cover. If something was stalking close, it couldn’t hear my breathing over that rattling engine.

  I took the knife and moved toward the hallway, keeping my shoulders low. The empty Carnage stayed on the table where I could see it, heavy enough to break teeth if I needed a club. I hated leaving it behind but dragging it through a tight house with shaking hands was how you dropped it when it mattered.

  The hallway was narrow. Walls stained from old leaks. A door on the left hung half-open, swelling at the bottom from moisture years ago. The tap was coming from deeper, in the back room, maybe.

  I stepped heel-to-toe, slow.

  Tap.

  I stopped.

  Tap.

  The sound wasn’t random. It had timing. Like something testing. I held my breath and leaned forward enough to see the end of the hallway.

  A back door. Cracked. Sunlight leaking through the frame. And in front of it, dangling from a nail, a strip of metal, one of those cheap wind chimes made from scrap. It swung in the draft and clicked softly against the wall.

  Just the house breathing. It must have been the wind. My pulse didn’t care. It kept hammering. I exhaled through my nose, quiet, and forced my shoulders to unclench. Then I turned back toward the kitchen.

  The water was boiling hard now. Steam rolled up and coated my face in damp heat that felt like luxury. I killed the hotplate, took the pot off, and let it settle. The oily shimmer was still there, broken into smaller islands, but the boil had changed the smell to something a little less stale, more metallic.

  Good enough to not die of thirst today.

  I found a chipped mug and rinsed it with a splash of boiling water like some primitive ritual of cleanliness. Then I poured a small amount in and waited a few seconds, watching it cool.

  My hand shook so badly that the mug rattled against my teeth when I drank. The water tasted like warm pennies and distant chemicals. It hit my stomach and sat there like a rock.

  Still. Water. Still Water? Don’t care.

  I drank again. Slower. Smaller sips. I didn’t trust my guts not to revolt. A minute passed. No immediate vomit. Critical success. Well that much I'll know tomorrow if I don’t die in the night. I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and opened a can. No can opener. Of course.

  I used the knife tip and my own patience, working the seam until the metal gave. The lid bent up with an ugly squeal. The smell that came out was… food, technically. Salt and old sauce and something that used to be meat in a better life.

  I didn’t think. Thinking made it worse.

  Cold. Greasy. Gritty from dust that I couldn’t fully wipe off. It still felt like my body was thanking me with every swallow; calories were a language it understood better than fear. Halfway through, my hands steadied by a fraction. Not cured. Not fine. But less like they were trying to jump off my wrists. Good.

  That was when my eyes wandered back to the table.

  The Carnage sat there, matte and hulking. The dead guy’s shells were still in my mind, spent outside, near the porch, like he’d held his ground until the last click. I needed ammo. Later. Not now. Now I needed a moment where nothing attacked me.

  I searched the rest of the kitchen. Found a small stash of basics: a half-roll of duct tape, a lighter with no fuel, a pack of stale crackers, and a cheap metal thermos that smelled old mushy coffee. I took the thermos anyway, filled it with boiled water, and screwed the lid on tight. I checked the bedroom.

  A mattress on the floor, stained and sunken. A blanket that had seen too much sweat and not enough washing. A small pile of clothes. A boot that matched the one on the corpse outside, which made my skin crawl.

  On the bedside crate, a handful of scattered things: a cracked mirror, a dead battery pack, and a shard case. Empty.

  I picked it up and turned it in my fingers. Cheap plastic. Scratched. Likely from a street vendor who promised it wasn’t stolen.

  My thumb brushed a small engraved mark on the inside, two letters and a number, half-worn away. Not a name and not a clue. Just another piece of a life that wasn’t mine.

  I sat on the edge of the mattress anyway. My ribs complained instantly. I lay back carefully and stared at the ceiling.

  The generator rattled in the next room like a mechanical heartbeat. The air in here was dry and warm. My eyelids felt heavy in a way that scared me. No. Not yet.

  I forced myself up and went back to the kitchen. I taped the worst rip in my hoodie where Jacket’s knife had kissed it. Then I wrapped a strip of cloth tight around my ribs and taped that too, crude compression to make breathing less like knives in the sides.

  It helped. A little.

  I shut the front door as best I could and wedged a chair under the handle like some cliché apocalypse movie. The back door got the same treatment with a broken table leg.

  My hands shook less now. My stomach was full enough to stop screaming. The heat outside pressed against the walls, but inside it was bearable. That’s when the flicker came back. Thin text in my peripheral blinked again, more present this time.

  WITHDRAWAL: ACTIVE

  RISK: ELEVATED

  STABILITY: LOW

  It hung there for a second longer than before, as if it was deciding whether I deserved more. Then another line appeared beneath it.

  FRAMEWORK: DETECTED

  RECURRENCE: TRUE

  I stared at the words until my eyes watered. “Yeah,” I whispered. “I noticed.” The text didn’t react. Expected.

  Outside, the flies kept buzzing around the porch. Somewhere far off, that high, ugly cry sounded again and cut out. I drank a mouthful of boiled water and let it sit on my tongue, tasting metal and survival.

  Then I let my head rest against the wall and looked out through the old, dusty windows, contemplating the desolate landscape and the distant neon lights. Just for a minute. The minute stretched.

  The generator’s rattle became a lullaby made of bad engineering. My heartbeat slowed. The tremor dulled into a faint buzz. And in the warm darkness behind my eyelids, something moved, slow and patient. A clinical whisper threaded through it.

  PROGNOSIS: POOR

  I clenched my jaw until it hurt.

  “Shut up,” I muttered.

  The darkness didn’t care. Sleep took me anyway.