They came at midnight, just as old Baltazar said they would. Howling and flocking around the compound. Luckily, they could not breach the palisade we raised today.
I couldn't believe that desert will conain anything than sand, but the old man told us to dig and dig we did. Not everyone joined in, of course. Some just ate stale food and water, napping in the shade, while others were sneaking around tents, trying to steal one more bite. Then there were those who whined and fomented rebellion.
"Don't pay attention", said Baltazar, "We are all dead already, so let them have their way."
"If we are dead already, why do we dig the sand and haul the scraps?" I asked him, placing another two by four snapped in half into the cart.
"Don't know about you, but as long as I can work, I feel alive. Besides there are different kinds of death. Do you really want to give it all up? To surrender to the pain as they rip you apart and eat you alive?"
I shivered. Old man quite vividly predicted what's to come tonight. Only when the moaning stopped, my thoughts crawled back to me. I wondered if morning will bring another nightmare, but I did wake in the same lil tent I went to sleep in. Eeach of 40 of us got a different square in the sand, some planks and cloth to build a tent, some stale food and a box. Apparently the content was different for each box and mine contained matches.
"Why are we here? Who arranged all this? Who were those demons?" I asked the old man as soon as it dawned.
"oh, someone woke up as a philosopher... you better take that cart and head out in the desert. We will meet here when sun passes the zenith. Tonight more of them will come, we need to reinforce the gate.
I stepped through the opened gates of our compound, with squeak of the cart as my soundtrack...
No comments:
Post a Comment