Fiction Snippet

This rose from debating if x event would lead to y result with a friend.

I saw him from almost a mile away. Even from that distance he looked weathered and bent. Like everyone, he carried a rifle, but he carried his differently from the people around here. A stranger; with his weapon held as if expecting trouble at any moment.

He was clearly heading towards my place; not passing by.

That was very unusual. Strangers were rare enough since the flare. A stranger interested in one particular person set off alarms. Not too loudly, he was clearly alone and I'd had to deal with far worse during the riots when the government bungled just about everything in trying to restore basic services that had been disrupted by the nation's electrical grid going tits up. To be fair, if it had merely been just the government, we might have gotten through but just been miserable; but too many people panicked. Then others panicked in response to that panic and it just kind of snow balled from there.

I was lucky. My parents had a farm and we lived where crops grew. Outside of a few towns; where I lived was sparsely populated and the nearest city had a college and a animal disease research facility. A bad combination it turned out when inexperienced students and professors who'd spent too much time isolated from the realities of life discovered that research cattle was not good food. We give the city a wide berth, I am not sure the ruins harbor anything contagious, but I also want to die of old age.

The stranger was at the fence. He paused long enough to catch my eye and slung his rifle. He didn't wait for me to wave or acknowledge him; he just opened the gate and started up the drive. I grabbed my rifle and checked to make sure there was a round chambered. The stranger saw and grinned; and kept walking.

I could see him better now. He was obviously older than me, and seemingly older still from having traveled a less lucky path since the flare. His clothing was that strange mix of recently made and scavenged military many of us wore. What was exceptional was that he was wearing an ammo-carrying vest. Now that things had settled down locally, few of us bothered being that ready for trouble; but I suppose a traveler would need to be. His shoes didn't match. The newer shoe was on the leg with the limp; the older shoe was actually a boot. His face was leathery weathered and there were clearly well set laugh-lines. There was something familiar about his eyes that I almost recognized.

He walked right up to the base of the porch steps, smiled wide, and reached into a canvas satchel. I tensed up and pointed my rifle more generally at him; his movements slowed down but he continued to remove something from the bag. He said, “Anglave, I believe I owe you a coke.”

Setting the can on the porch steps, he turned and limped back the way he'd come.

“Thag?”

Can't learn to write until you practice writing, I says.