To Kill a Cactus - Heroes part 1

Last part: HERE
Chapter 2

Heroes

I am not a hero, I don't have any superpowers and I definitely can't pull off a cape. I'm the type of person who would try to blend into the wall at any given opprtunity, just to be unnoticed, so in all honesty I don't know why I'm doing this -  step after step walking towards a black hole of destruction with no walls to blend into. If I were to follow my first instinct, this is where the story would end, I'd turn around go as far as possible, hide, pretend it's not happening until I manage to decieve myself and die happily with all the wild animals I manage turn into my pets during my years in the wilderness. 

However, my perfect illusion gets crushed the moment my second instinct strikes. The little voice in the back of my mind that says: "Maybe you could help someone?". I can't shut it off, so I'm going, even if it means I can't have a family of wild animals. Of course there aren't many wild animals left anyway, so my dreams would be shattered way too soon.

I think this is enough monolouge by me and it's time to actually start the story of my travel towards the city of Exitium.

...

It was a sunny day, just like most days during the past century or so, the ground was dry and dusty, I could see the remains of a road ahead of me, no other feet had touched the ground in a while, I could only see my own fairly tiny footsteps. I had to stock up on my supplies, I imagine most people would get questions about what I ate, where I got water from and so on, I had quite a bit stored, in case of emergency, I could make do with very little and I also had aquired a skill to making a variety of dishes out of cacti. So I won't go in depth into it, it's sort of boring and I don't think you're really that interested in it.

I also had a map that I had drawn myself, the world was changing so fast, roads appear and disappear before anyone could even notice, I had to draw down other landmarks to understand more or less where I was located. My main goal was to get to the city and save those who could still be saved, I had a vision, perhaps a naive one, that we could still get out of this mess, that perhaps we could find a cure. That maybe this wasn't the end of the world.

I am no hero, but I am a chemist and I did believe that if I could get my hands on the original "medicine", I could find a way, some way to at least make it a bit better, but I had no chance of doing that without proper equipment, so that's another reason I had to go to a city, one with a proper laboratory, Exitium was definitely one of them. All I had to do is not get killed before reaching it.

I made my way towards a trail covered with rocks and pebbles, it was right by an area that used to be a forest, but had turned into a large patch of dried trees, it was safer to be in the shadow, the sun was burning, I felt as if my skin was going to melt. 

For the destruction that was going on in the world it was awfully quiet, maybe that's how the world will end, in silence, but just as I thought that I could see a dark shadow from the corner of my eye, I turned around and faced my first obstacle...

...

To be continued