The sun was a dying ember, a grotesque, blood-red wound in the sky that bled its last, sickly light over a sprawling tomb of rusted steel and shattered plastic. I moved through the junkyard like a phantom, a scavenging rat in a graveyard for a world that had not only moved on without us but actively forgotten us. Every shifting shadow was a lurking threat, every groan of decaying metal a hollow warning that the predators were always circling. This wasn't merely a place where things came to die, it was a hungry carcass, a gaping maw of decay, and tonight, just like every unforgiving night before it, I was losing the desperate battle to escape its gut.
My raw, hardened fingers scraped over the corroded guts of a gutted refrigerator, tearing at the warped metal until a thin line of blood welled beneath my nails. Nothing. Just the sour stench of mildew, the grit of forgotten filth, and the gnawing, ceaseless ache in my stomach. Three brutal hours of searching had yielded nothing but a worthless half-melted circuit board and a cracked phone battery. Worthless. Not enough to barter for a single mouthful of stale bread, let alone the fleeting illusion of a night's shelter. Not that I had a shelter to go back to. Not since they burned it all, reducing my last scrap of belonging to ash and memory.
A sound...
I froze, my breath catching in my throat, becoming as still and inanimate as the corpse of a sedan beside me. The sharp clank of metal against metal, followed by a low, dragging scrape, echoed from behind a mountain of rotting tires. My pulse hammered against my ribs, a frantic, panicked bird trapped in a cage of bone. It could be a stray dog, half-feral and starving, driven mad by hunger. Or it could be something far, far worse. The answer didn't matter. There was nothing left in my tattered pack to steal, but that never stopped them from trying to take even the air I breathed.
My hand instinctively found the makeshift knife at my belt, a jagged shard of rebar crudely wrapped in stained electrical tape, and my knuckles turned bone-white with the desperate pressure.
"Who's there?" My voice was a dry, raw rasp, barely a whisper against the vast silence.
Silence stretched, thick and heavy, mocking my futile question. Then came the laughter. A thin, reedy sound that grated across my nerves like rusted gears.
A figure emerged from the deeper shadows, a skeletal grin etched onto his gaunt face. Sunken eyes, a mouth full of broken, yellowed teeth. It was Davis, a familiar specter, a scavenger like me, only his hunger seemed sharper, more predatory. "Well, well. Look what the rat dragged in," he crooned, his gaze, devoid of warmth, flicking to my tattered pack. "Find anything good, James?"
I tightened my grip on my weapon. "Back off, Davis."
He raised his hands in a gesture of mock surrender, the chilling grin never fading. "Easy, easy. Just making conversation." But his eyes, empty and desperate, held the same hollow hunger that I saw in my own reflection. In the Junkyard, the illusion of friendliness was just a prelude to the knife.
Another rustle. More movement in the dark, creeping closer.
Shit.
They appeared from every direction at once, three more spectral figures slipping out from behind the wreckage. They moved like shadows across the moon-blasted landscape, encircling me, their eyes like predatory coals fixed on my pack. All of them knew I was alone. All of them knew I was easy prey, a lamb among wolves.
Davis chuckled, a dry, rattling sound that made my skin crawl. "Now, let's talk about what you owe us, brother."
I lunged, a desperate, futile act, swinging the rebar wildly. "I don't owe you a damn thing!"
Someone yelped as the tip of my blade grazed fabric, perhaps even skin. But the fight was over before it had truly begun. A heavy fist cracked into my ribs, a sickening crunch, and the air whooshed from my lungs in a painful gasp. I stumbled, my vision blurring, and that was all the opening they needed. Hands grabbed me, pulling me down, a boot slammed into my stomach, another into my back. I hit the dirt hard, my head cracking against a hidden rock, and the world spun into a dizzying, agonizing blur.
"Get his bag!" Davis's voice was a triumphant roar, a sound that twisted my gut.
I fought, snarling like a cornered animal, thrashing with every ounce of my meager strength, but the hands were too many, the collective weight too great. One of them wrenched my pack from my shoulders, tearing the worn straps. Another tore the rebar from my numb grip.
Rough, impatient hands tore into my pockets, stripping me bare of every pitiful possession. My last protein bar. My half-full canteen. They even took my damn shoelaces.
Davis crouched in front of me, a grotesque grin splitting his face as he flipped through the scavenged scraps I'd worked for hours to find. He pocketed the worthless circuit board with a casual flick. "You should've just shared, James. This place belongs to all of us."
I coughed up a mouthful of blood and spit it, a weak, defiant gesture, at his feet. "Go to hell."
He simply laughed, a cold, empty sound, and stood, melting back into the maze of rusted metal and forgotten lives. "We're already here, brother."
They were gone in an instant, swallowed by the encroaching night, leaving me in the dirt with nothing but my agonizing bruises and a rage that burned hotter than the dying sun. I rolled onto my back, every muscle screaming, staring up at the darkening sky. The first few stars were starting to appear, distant, cold pinpricks of light that seemed to mock my utter desolation.
I had nothing. Again.
No food. No shelter. No hope. No family.
But I was still breathing.
In the Junkyard, that wasn't a blessing. It was the deepest, most insidious curse. It meant you got to wake up and start losing all over again. I pushed myself up, every movement an agony, wiping the blood from my mouth with a trembling hand, and started walking, not towards anything, but simply away from the hollow space where they had left me.
Tomorrow would be another day to survive. Not to win.
Just to survive.