they found me marty.

Robert stood on the edge of a cliff. He was in a desert, the cliff was the western wall a canyon that, while not exactly grand, was really fucking big. Robert was afraid of heights, but he sat on the edge of the cliff, his legs dangling over the crumbling edge. It was hot. The sun was bright. The sky was infiNite and it was the only thing that was not the color of dry death. There was a car behind robert. It did not work. It had, until recently, worked just fine. In another time, a different life, robert would have had a dead horse behind him instead. Instead of the smell of burning rubber and toxic coolant, instead of the hiss of a radiator, robert would have had a 400 lb pile of rotting hair, meat and teeth, staring at him as he stared across the horizon. Of course, there would be other differences, his clothes for instance, certainly his reason for being out here, a place that was now, just as it had always been, the exact middle of nowhere. Capital cities are almost never in the middle of their territories. This is because most cities are founded, fill with assholes, and then anyone who isnt an asshole, moves away, and becomes their own kind of asshole somewhere else. Society would be in trouble once the assholes had no where left to run, when all places an asshole could run to were full. Assholes rarely solved disputes well. In fact, the defining characteristic of an asshole is being one. Certainly there was a certain peace in this murderous environment. There was no reason to hunt here, the sun and waters's absence would make meat that could not fight or run or check email. Things lived here, fucked and slept. They had no need for the internet or a tv show about bears. They would eat robert, most likely. The internet might help robert out of this mess, but he did not have access to it. A lot of people could use the internet, right now they could watch a video where a racist with more teeth than he had finished grades, could use things in the car, his knife,and his seemingly useless skill, some.... Robert was very thirsty. This was worse because he had a hangover. Drinking alcohol was legal, even bears got drunk. Robert had a gun. The gun was loaded. It was not fully loaded. Assault weapons were not allowed because rednecks know rifles are better than handguns. But you cannot hide a rifle in the waist band of your underwear. Rednecks are dangerous, not subtle. 9 bullets, 9 kills. 10 if you were good. How many could you kill with a knife? Robert was not a good killer, he was rarely good at anything right at first. Talent was practice. He didnt like killing. It wasnt cool or fun or empowering. But he had promised. And it was easy. Easier than it should have been. Killing dogs, of course, robert could never have killed a person. The dogs where like animals, they would not have stopped unless killed or commanded to heel. People were back on the table. He would have killed any number of anything, for as long as was necessary for a shot glass of water. He would rape his own mother for an ice cube. For two ice cubes and bottle of sunscreen, he would pray. This was the kind of thing that ancient people experienced all the time, if you lived after asking god for the only thing that mattered to you, well that kind of help might come in handy again. But why tell anyone about it. If god was my secret survival tip, id keep it a secret.