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The barren, dead landscape was home to nothing more than puddles of liquid sunlight and rusted cars with the occasional blistered crow descending from the sky to pluck a piece of glass or chrome from the bleached sands. Dust stirred around with even the slightest gust of wind and it assailed any who dared to walk the roads with particles so fine that they could penetrate even military grade gas masks. Heat mirage lifted in the distance off the broiling, cracked asphalt, taking on the appearance of giant puddles of water that could fool even the hardest of survivors into thinking water was a mere forty yard sprint straight ahead. Sunglasses and goggles helped to counter the sun's weaponized light rays a little bit, but just a little bit of the great ball of fire in a survivors peripherals could cause blindness. The greedy dust settled in my clothes, crest, in between my shirt and my scales and inside the curves and rail teeth of my weapons in such a way that cleaning would require dis-assembly, submersion and a toothbrush to remove it, assuming one had a toothbrush to begin with. I kept my back to the sun as I trudged down the baked ruins of what used to be Highway 96. The progress was horrifically slow, as I couldn't bring myself to stop searching the old, rusted cars that littered the roadway. Most of them had been empty, but a few decent finds in a few of them had lead me to keep going with thoughts of what I may end up leaving behind. In the shade of a large, decrepit billboard sat an RV, one of the expensive models with it's own engine and facilities, the billboard looked as though it were still advertising a circus from 2004, close to two decades ago. The RV itself was in super rough shape, the windows were covered in grime, the rear tires were flat on one side and the fact that there were a few bullet holes in the sides of the flimsy steel walls wasn't lost on me. I pulled my AR-15 off my back, flipped down the EoTech 3x scope for close range in the event that something or someone was living in the thing and walked around to the side, where I found that the door had been taken off the hinges.

I slightly lowered my weapon with a sigh, "looks like someone already beat me here", I said quietly, a rasp was about all I could manage from not having spoken for so long. The inside of the RV was dusty and dirty, with dirt colored rays coming in through the covered up windows and windshield. A musty smell rose from the rotting leather seats and the fact that wooden cabinets had been left to quietly rot away was obvious to anyone with a nose that still worked. The RV's suspension creaked and squealed underneath my nearly half ton weight, probably just from age, but none the less, I didn't exactly want this thing collapsing underneath me, it would generate a lot of noise that would call out to anyone or anything in a miles radius, "Here I am, kill me."

No one was in the RV, so I put my weapon on my back and began searching the vehicle. Working from the front back, the first things I checked were the sunglasses holders and inside the visors. The former was empty, but the keys to the RV were hiding in the driver's side visor, they were worthless to me, even if the thing had a full tank of gas, the RV was almost certainly rear wheel drive, and in this sand, over these roads with two flat rear tires, I'd be lucky to go ten feet before that tank was dry. I threw the keys aside, searching under the seats next. People keep a lot of random things under the seats, I'd found things ranging from old cellphones all the way up to handguns, but of course, there wasn't anything under either seat. I pulled myself up, using the seat for support and took off my ruck, setting it on the RV kitchen table, beginning to dig through the old, musty cupboards. The first one was empty aside from a few dust bunnies that were calling it home. The second one held only a few old plastic bottles, none of which looked salvageable for drinking water, but maybe if I could find space in my pack then I could use them to carry around not so clean water until I could get it purified. I removed the bottles from the cabinet and set them on the counter, continuing to search the above counter cupboards, all of which were empty except for more plastic food containers. I could probably get some use out of them if I could find the space in my pack, though it was unlikely as I was already carrying around a bunch of garbage it seemed. I set the food containers next to the water bottles and moved down to the cabinets and drawers under the counter. Empty, empty, empty, and of course, empty. I gradually worked my way towards the back of the RV, eventually coming to the small, single person bathroom that was equipped with a full shower, toilet and sink, the cabinet under the sink had no door, so it wasn't even worth my time. Upon pulling open the mirror however, I found a bunch of pill bottles, some tooth brushes and a nearly full tube of tooth paste.

"And that makes the entire thing worth it", I said taking the tooth paste tube. The brushes were too dirty to even consider taking, and going through the pill bottles one at a time, I discovered they were mostly prescription pills with some painkillers mixed in. Prescription medicine wasn't worth my time, but the painkillers could be a lifesaver sometime down the road. I removed the bottle of medication from the cabinet and returned to my pack. I unclasped a few buckles and pulled back the top flap, reaching inside for my first aid kit, I stuffed the bottle of painkillers inside, placed the tube of toothpaste in my hygiene kit, closed everything back up and hoisted it to my shoulders, grunting slightly from the weight of the thing. Upon exiting the RV, I carefully surveyed the landscape, looking for any sign that someone or something may have seen me enter the RV and was now laying in wait for me to exit. I didn't see any scope glint, nor did I see any oddly rounded objects or strange outlines in the sand, but then again, if someone was watching the RV, they probably couldn't go prone in this heat without melting the scales on their chests or burning their fur. I flipped up the scope on my AR and further surveyed the surrounding area, finding nothing out of the ordinary, I exited the RV, closed the door behind me and continued onward.

Past the RV and a few small bridges, the road began to open up, less cars, less signs and structures, and more and more endless landscape that had been sanitized of any sort of life form, filled in with scrap metal and the occasional whitened skeleton and empty bomb crater with green particles of radiation rising from it that made my Geiger counter go ballistic. Radiation didn't bother me, it didn't bother most dragons, an attribute that had served me well since the nukes fell a few years ago. I could still eat most foods, drink water as long as it wasn't chemically contaminated and scavenge in hot spots that would kill most others. I suppose if I was truly desperate I could hide inside of a radiation hot zone to get away from attackers, of course even at a high level of immunity the rads would eventually make me sick, but it's not anything I couldn't come back from with enough water. The heat was another matter all together. It made traveling hell, and the frequent stops and rests I needed to take to avoid killing over had greatly slowed my already laggy progress. There was no question I'd see home again, at least not to me, but when I would beable to sleep in my own bed assuming it hadn't been looted yet was another story. I'd been on the road for roughly two weeks now, no idea how much distance I've covered, but if the GPS on my old Samsung Galaxy is to be trusted, then I still have a long way to go. To help pass the time, I dug my phone out of my vest, fished up my ear buds, put them in and turned on some 80's music, I had about 22 hours in total of songs and instrumental stuff on the phone, so just turning on shuffle was probably enough to make sure I didn't hear the same song twice. Pre-War, I'd made a collection of over 60 songs that I'd listen to whenever we went on road trips, and since the list was 4 hours long, it'd probably last me the entire day.

After I turned the music on, I had barely walked for 20 minutes before I arrived at a small overpass that was pitch dark underneath it because of the four lane road it was holding up. While it was hard to see under the pass it self, I could see right through it, and on the other side I could see a female wolf trying to get a shopping cart to move. It was a good thing the wind was blowing in my direction, because while I couldn't see them, there were multiple scents on the wind besides her's. I could pick up two dragons, and at first I thought they might be on top of the bridge, but their scents were coming from the wrong direction, so I figured they were either hiding directly on the other side to ambush me, or sat behind some of the scrap metal about 20 or so yards away from the other side of the structure.

I chambered a round in my AR-15 and turned the red dot onto it's highest setting so I could see it as I drew closer to the bridge. About halfway through the overpass, the wolf saw my shadow and called out to me.

"Hey can you help me?!", she called.

I didn't answer, closing the distance towards the other side of the pass, checking both sides of the exit for her friends, the smells were much stronger now, like they hadn't cleaned themselves since the nukes, but they weren't where I thought they'd be initially, which means they had to be hiding behind some of the several cars and pieces of scrap metal that were strewn about, I flipped my rifle off safety as I approached her a little more and replied.

"What do you need help with?", I asked not approaching any more.

"Oh one of the damn wheels is bent", the wolf said, "and my friends are all too hot to help."

"Where are your friends?", I asked pushing my AR tight into my shoulder.

"Hiding behind that steel plate trying to cool off", the wolf said, "hey guys, show your faces so this one don't shoot you."

The two dragons stood up from behind the plate. They were both pitch dark and I could see the rosy tint in their cheeks and necks. It wasn't so bad if you had tinted cheeks, but if the scales on your neck started to change, you were in trouble, so I could understand why they were trying to hide from the sun, "hey look, a friendly face", one of the dragons said, sounding like he was still in single digit ages.

"You guys look like you're about to die", I said as they stepped out, "must feel like hell out here right now."

"Brother you have no idea', The dragon said, "I feel like my internal organs are cooking."

"You guys have anything to trade?", I asked, "specifically snack foods, been ages since I had something good to eat."

"We may", the wolf said, "assuming you can pay for it."

"Depends on what kind of payment you'd like", I told her with a shrug, "I know the location of something that might be your saving grace."

The wolf reached into the cart and pulled out a small tote bag. She emptied it's contents onto the sand, empty STANG magazines, the slide to a colt 1911, lots of small pocket knives and some Frito lay snack foods, puffy Cheetos among them.

"Information for the magazines, a knife any any snack foods you'd like", the wolf said.

"Fair enough", I said, "there's an RV a 20 or so minute walk down the way I just came, keys are down in the passenger's seat. Looks like it'll still run, but the one of the rear tires is flat. Assuming you can find a spare and tools to change it, and you're willing to clean it a bit, could be something worth putting your time into. Shower, bathroom, full kitchen and a bed, it's all there. Not of much use to me but you might want such a thing."

"Brother I could kiss you", The wolf smiled, "even if it don't run we can make it home assuming the battery works."

"I'm happy to help", I said, "but try not to make yourselves look like bandits from afar any more please. I was ready to do some shooting when I saw you fucking with that cart from a good distance away."

"I'll keep it in mind", she smiled, "now you wanna do some trading?"

"I'd just like that bag of Cheetos please", I said, "they're my guilt pleasure and I haven't had any since the nukes fell."

The wolf tossed me the bag and then started picking up her stuff.

"Have a safe trip brother", one of the dragons said extending his paw.

I accepted, "I will, you should do the same."

He nodded and I once again returned to the road, music playing in the background as loud as I could have it without losing situational awareness. Minutes turned to hours, and those hours carried the sun high above my head, mercilessly cooking the landscape and boiling any living thing in liquid light. I could feel it beating down on my back and through my vest and shirt, reminding me I had to pace myself or risk overheating and falling over, and since there wasn't shade to be found anywhere, apart from hiding in the occasional rusted car that was just as hot if not hotter than the area around it, about all I could do to keep it off my head and neck was take my Shemagh and wrap it around my hat. The heat could still come through, but at least the light wouldn't bleach my scales and start peeling them off. As the day wound on, the sun began to let off with its attacks only a little bit, making traveling easier, but also making me colder. The problem was, I couldn't travel at night. Temperatures could get well below zero, and being primarily desert, I needed it hot outside to beable to function properly, so I had to start looking for a place to camp for the night, didn't matter where, I just needed somewhere, but since nothing was around, I kept on walking.

My feet hurt, my shoulders ached and the muscles on the inside of my legs burned from lack of rest. Sun burn had begun to form on my back, top of head and my horns had begun to lose color. As the sun was beginning to dip behind the horizon and the temperature began to drop, reliving the few living inhabitants of the wastelands, I happened across a ruined house. The siding had been burned, the roof had a few holes in it and every window was boarded up. Sand gathered against the side and in cracked and crevasses in the windows and window frames, while a rusted station wagon that had been stripped down to it's frame by scavengers sat quietly in the driveway decaying into nothing. I raised my AR, taking it off safe as I peered inside the window. The inside of the house was a trashed, disorderly mess. Yellowed papers were strewn around, several pieces of broken glass from the windows lain nicely hidden on the darkly colored floor and there were many, many holes of varying sizes in the walls, sand was everywhere, collecting in neat piles in seemingly random places all over the house. It didn't look like anyone was home, or had been home in years.

"Looks like no body's home", I said quietly to myself as I tried the knob, it was unlocked. I pushed on the door, it shrugged, opening with a grinding sound. I stepped inside, closing it behind me and putting both paws back on my rifle. Before I could even think about putting up for the night, I needed to sweep the entire house, I couldn't pick up any body's scent, but that didn't mean that someone wasn't home. The house was more or less a singular room, with short walls and thin doors dividing sections that made up the dining room, kitchen, living room and a small, walk in closet near the front door which had a door that was only on one hinge, slightly ajar, showing me it was empty. The last room in the house was the master bedroom, which was tiny, maybe 15 feet across in either direction. It was the only room in the house with no window, and therefore, no sand. It smelled of that old house smell and the carpet had that feeling to it that we all know. That stiff, slightly crunchy texture that the old house down the street had because it had sat in the sun with a ruined roof for too long. Satisfied that no one was home, I tried the light switch, not expecting shit, and to much to my understandable surprise, the light actually came on and I immediately switched it off, not willing to risk the house being on some kind of aging pre war power source and killing it with the lights when I had electronic gear that needed to be charged. My mind started racing with all of the things that almost certainly were out of order, but could still be working due to the power. A Cold shower, a meal cooked on a real stove, air conditioning if the window unit I'd seen on my way up still worked.

"Wonder how long the power's gonna hold out", I asked myself. I set my ruck, AR, shotgun and vest down against the wall, happy to be free of it for at least the night, maybe a day depending on how I felt when I woke up in the morning. I kept my SigSauer on my leg as I went to the kitchen to try the sink, not even a little bit of air came out, so I assumed the house was on some kind of public water system despite it being in the middle of nowhere, or maybe the town this house used to sit in had been burned and swept away by the wastelands.

"It's never that easy", I sighed, "so much for a cold shower tonight. Oh well, just have to do it the old fashion way I guess. Wonder if the old Window unit still works?"

I went into the house's garage, pistol in hand, to retrieve the unit, finding in the process where the electricity was coming from. There were several car alternators and what seemed to be pieces of generators all hooked together via bike parts that ran a metal rod up into the attic fans. Whoever had built this was using the constant wind and kinetic energy of the attic fan to turn the alternators and charge several batteries that were all crudely hooked together and poorly wired into the houses breaker box. This system had been here for a while, and could probably stand for a few minor repairs, but I didn't trust it not to fry me like a sausage, so for now I decided to leave it alone. I looked to see if there was some kind of gauge that I could use to tell the current power level, and all I could find was a small, colored LED light strip soldered into a jury rigged mother broad that had all of it's lights ranging from red to green lit.

"I hope that means it's got a full charge", I said to myself as I tapped the cluster, "it'll be disappointing as hell to have this AC running and have it die the second I start to cool off."

I wasn't any stranger to heavy things, but the AC unit turned out to be too heavy to carry to the bedroom by myself, so I improvised, and by that I mean I just tied a rope I found laying around the garage to it and dragged it there. I set it in the corner of the room, plugged it in and turned it on, setting the thermostat as low as I could get it to go, which was 65 degrees. I sat down for the first time in almost 18 hours, unlaced my boots and kicked them off, pulling my socks off with the claws in my toes. I un buttoned my shirt, pulled it off and threw it to the side and took my jeans off as well, stripping all the down to my underwear. It was a relief to get everything off after the day that I'd had. I gathered my clothes and folded them up, setting them neatly by my backpack and then I dug out my portable stove, mess kit, cup and dinner for the night, a sausage patty MRE. MRE's, while rather salty, were pretty filling and never left me feeling hungry when I put up for the night. You're supposed to heat them up with flame less ration heaters, but I've never found them to work correctly, so I always emptied the contents into a surplus mess kit and cooked them that way, plus I could add spices to the food when it was cooking, which had better results than adding them after you had already sat down to eat. I set the sausage patty to fry, and while it was cooking, turned my attention towards my firearms and knife. I'd cleaned the AR-15 and Sig last night, as I'd been actively using both of them to shoot my way through mutants, and they both could do for a touch up, but my Winchester 1300 hadn't seen action in a few weeks and needed a good soaking if I was honest, the sand hadn't been kind to her. I unscrewed the magazine extension, slowly removed it and the spring and then, with a bit of effort, pilled the barrel off. I exited the room and sprayed the inside of the receiver with brake parts cleaner to get all of the sand filled oil out of it, re oiled it, cleaned the nasty sand out of the stock and forend and put my shotgun back together. I set it aside, broke apart my AR-15, gave it a simple spray and barrel swab, cleaned and re oiled it and then moved onto my SigSauer. I took the slide off, took the barrel out, sprayed it down, re-oiled it, stuck it back together and then set it aside, by this time, dinner was ready. I pulled the pan off the stove, turned the stove off, sat against the wall and ate a cut of meat that made me reminiscence back to the time before the nukes fell.

People who were present during the attacks of 9/11 say that they can remember exactly where they were standing, and recall the very minute that they heard that the towers had fallen. They don't lie. In fact, I remember exactly where I was when I saw the first report. I was standing in the living room of the house that my dad had rented for the winter, or so he said. I had my laptop in front of me and was sitting in the left hand corner of the couch, complaining that there wasn't any room for my tail. I was listening to one of my favorite YouTubers, when the show my dad was watching on the discovery channel suddenly cut to the news, the time was 1:21 PM, it was -27.8 degrees outside. The reporter said that two nuclear bombs had gone off in NYC, shortly after that, there was a thunderous bang in the distance and the TV went out, the lights went out, my computer died and clock stopped working. For the next month, we purged ourselves with nuclear fire, turning our once green planet into a rock floating helplessly in space. When the smoke cleared, some of us still lived, and God apparently decided that finishing off those who had walked through hell was too cruel, then he went about his business or perhaps died, while we stayed on this used up and discarded planet, just going with it, going nowhere. Years passed, my family began to rebuild in Maine, and up until a few weeks ago, I was content, until things got so bad with bandits and mutants wandering out from the smoldering ruins of New York that I decided I just couldn't fucking stay. So I hit the road, been at it for I don't even know how long, still have a crazy way to go, but if I can see Texas again, it will be worth it.

But if I really stop and think about it? While I was uncertain of the future for a while after the nukes fell, looking back, had I been who I am now, I would have welcomed the change. I don't much care for the life I used to have, back before the world went to shit. I know it sounds crazy, but I feel more at home in the dry, vast expanse of the Deserts than I ever did in my apartment or even in the very house I'm attempting to return to now, and the reason for that is actually quite simple I think, and that's that I'm simply not the dragon that I thought I was. I find it easy to bottle things up and not have it bother me as much as it would someone like, say my Mom. She was furious when I told her and my Dad that I wasn't hanging around, that I was going back to Texas, or at least going to die trying. My Dad called several shades of bullshit, and as I'm getting ready to walk out the door, he told me that if I walked out, I better not ever come back, and I walked out without so much as a second thought. What it must have done to my Mother, I suppose I'll never know. I'm fond of telling people that home is where you make it, and while that is true, sometimes you just can't bring yourself to sever ties with the place you grew up, no matter how logical it may be. Is this trip logical? It abso-fucking-lutely isn't, the logical thing to do would have been to stay with my parents and work security, because my Dad was starting to get a bit old, but it wasn't anything my Ex Military brother couldn't handle. It's amazing what a bite of pork could make you think about.

When I was done eating, I used more of the brake parts cleaner on my mess kit, packed every thing away, drank some water, brushed my teeth, took care of a few other things I needed to do to stay clean, brushed my teeth and put up for bed. With the room chilled by the window unit, I crawled into bed, turned on some music and opened notepad.

"Day 12. I saw the first faces since I left today. At first, they looked like bandits, but it turned out to be a group of friends who'd stopped to fix some equipment and cool off. I chatted them up a minute or two before eventually moving on. I took down a lot of desert today, or at least it feels like I did, but in reality I probably only went like 20 miles, assuming of course my GPS is still accurate. I suppose of course it doesn't matter, once I pass the Texas state border, I can navigate by road signs and landmarks if I have to. The house I've stopped in for the night has a working power supply, enough to run a window unit and charge the few electric devices I have, but I have no idea how long it will last, could last 8 more minutes, or it could last all night and well into the morning, I'll have to see how the day goes."

Sighing, I turned off my phone, plugged it into the charger, pulled the covers up to my neck and dropped off.