The Trade
They were about twenty miles out when the engine began to stammer and steam and finally cease. The two sat for a moment grumbling in silence until the one behind the wheel got out. He stepped down onto the cracked pavement with the far-off glint of the city amidst the gray hills and dust and clouds like a rippled cloth overlay. Near them a highway overpass cast a shadow from a muted sun that palled just out of their range and when he lifted the brown hood he saw it as a hollow gate to separate the city from where they ventured. The wastelands. Tremendous swaths of vacated ruins and nomadic cadres repopulating a wild and transformed country where even the illusion of law had no homestead. The other man who rode shotgun had his head propped up on his knuckles and his forearm braced on the open window sill. The black jacket he wore like a second skin opposing his light shirt and pale complexion. Monochromatic save the shock of hair and even formal in as much as the road would allow. He br...