The Drifter

He had walked for miles, the dry dust of the desolate road stinging his eyes and clouding his vision, caking hardened earth on the inside of his labored lungs. The sun over head was a bright, angry red, and poured out an angry onslaught of blistering heat on his sun scorched face. He walked in a kind of lurching motion, weariness, hunger, and thirst clenching in his stomach and slowing his weathered mind. 

He had nothing, save a large, tattered overcoat, which wrapped around his ankles when he walked. Everything else he had left along the roadway, in order to save himself the weight of carrying it. Not that he had much else, save a few pots and pans and a plastic water bottle. All useless with no food to prepare, and no water to drink. 

He was walking along a dusty back road, and had seen no one else on it. It was most likely abandoned, and the odds of him seeing anyone were scarce. He had not eaten for days, and the cramps in his stomach made it hard to walk. This was nothing, however, compared to his thirst. He could not remember the last time he had drank anything, and he had to frequently stop to cough up thick masses of dirt, often followed by bouts of dry heaving. His head throbbed with a aching, feverish pain, which radiated through his skull, and left small black dots on his blurry vision.

He knew the odds of being found were little, but that had not stopped him from constantly looking ahead at the abandoned dirt road before him, as if a rapture might appear at any moment, spewing cold water from the burning dust. Whether it was these thoughts that kept him going, or the inability to think beyond them was uncertain, even to him. He walked simply because he had to walk. Around each bend in the road lie another chance of salvation, and his life now depended solely on finding it. So, with a lurching step, and head downcast, he pressed on.

He was unsure of how long he walked like this, minutes and hours had long since melded into obscurity. He knew only when he stopped, when the pebbles along the roadside began to jump. He knew, better than any, what that meant. A car was coming. Salvation had finally arrived. 

The car pulled up, a teal sedan with three passengers. The radio played loudly out of the lowered windows, overlaid with three high pitched voices, singing and laughing. He waved his hands frantically, and he could see the driver look in his direction. He shuffled his way to the car, hands still waving. 

Without a word, the windows in the car rolled up, and the car sped past him, without a backward glance. He fell to the ground, choking violently on the dust the car left behind. And with one last pleading glance, he watched as salvation vanished, swallowed by the quickly fading horizon.