The Wastelands

Three years ago, El Horgas was a healthy man like any other known.

The sky was stormy above him, threatening rain at any moment. Horgas was on the ground, face down, when he opened his eyes heavily. He saw two guys dressed in biohazard protective clothing. He reacted, turned in gray mud and tried to get up, but he couldn't.

"Hey! Hey! Who are you? Where am I?" El Horgas shouted at them.

The men do not even turn to look at him. They hurry aboard a hovering electric vehicle, which begins moving as soon as they close the hatch. El Horgas follows the craft with his eyes until it vanishes among dark clouds, then examines his surroundings. He has never been there before. A silvery mist keeps him from seeing clearly. He sits in the gray mud and inspects his body. On the inside of his left forearm, he discovers a tattoo that reads: EL HORGAS 13. He touches it. He does not know what it means; it is neither his name nor his nickname and signifies nothing to him. He stops paying attention to it.

Horgas was scared like never before, he suddenly sat up, examined his surroundings again. The ground beneath his feet was barren mud. He spun around. Meters beyond their position rose large, dark, jagged, gray hills. Those shadowy hills stretched in all directions for miles around, taking up everything in that landscape. Shocked, surrounded by gray edges like lead clouds, he approached one of said hills. Little by little he reached the foot of the one that was closest, he looked up. Just as his eyes were pointed towards the sky, intense rain fell, thick and heavy drops as it always used to be.

Horgas was hurt by the drops that patted on his bare shoulders. He was only wearing pants and was barefoot. He had nowhere to take shelter, he just tried to endure the pain that the drops caused him. He concentrated on the hill. He discovered that this, as well as others that were abundant in the area, were made up purely and exclusively of waste, accumulations of objects such as wings, tables, chairs, toys, rat corpses, skeletons, broken glasses, pieces of vehicles and even hospital garbage, among many others. He prepared to climb that hill of debris, the intensity of the rain intensified from one second to the next.

He climbs with great difficulty. Unlike a natural hill, everything he steps upon, grips to keep from falling, or uses to propel himself higher is irregular and unstable. El Horgas scales artificial terrain that has been growing constantly for several centuries. The summit remains some distance away; he sees it from below whenever he raises his swollen gaze. He does not do so often, for thick raindrops strike his eyes and cause him pain. He endures them as best he can and presses on. Throughout the arduous task, he concentrates on something capable of keeping him calm, something that can motivate him: Britu.

As soon as he reached the top despite the powerful downpour, he planted his feet on plates that offered no safety. With extreme caution not to slip, he observed the panorama towards three hundred and sixty degrees. What he had to see was a disastrous landscape. Around him as far as the eye could see, there were dozens, hundreds, thousands of hills of waste like the one he now dominated from the top. The heavy rain that soaked him made him cold and in turn, the cold air transformed into thick gray fog; It smelled very bad. That made it difficult for him to see beyond nearby mounds, but he still made out certain things. He could see, relatively close to his position, what appeared to be the bank of a watercourse, perhaps a river. Towards another side, he saw a hill crowned by a crucified skeleton.

"No, no, no, no… The Wastelands," he exclaims.

In the opposite direction to the skeleton he saw a great wall, a huge artificial wall without doors or windows that separated Stormport from this vast area. Someone took the trouble to transport him there with no possible return.

"Only certain types of people fall here," said someone who sounded exhausted.

Horgas was startled, he looked around for that voice, he saw no one. Finally, looking under his feet, he saw an old man dressed in rags. He was sheltered from the rain under the same rusty sheets on which El Horgas tried to stay balanced.

"Am I in the Wastelands?" The old man ignores him.

"Only criminals, the terminally ill, the very old, people with irreversible psychiatric diagnoses, and others like them end up here," the old man states. "They also throw in poor devils who cross important people," he adds.

Horgas swallowed in the rain, it was difficult for him to breathe.

"Have you seen who brought me here? Have you been able to see his face?" asked El Horgas, but again he would remain unanswered.

"I don't know if you're a crook, you seem a little naive for that. You are not psychiatrically ill, I believe, nor terminally ill. I bet you're a poor devil who messed with the wrong person."

Horgas descended from the plates with great caution, he positioned himself with difficulty right next to the old man. He saw that the old man's right leg was trapped under metal plates and other heavy objects.

"Maybe you are mentally ill after all," the old man argued.

"Give me a minute, I'll help you," El Horgas warned.

He grabbed the plates and pulled himself up with his arms and legs with great effort. He ended up tearing off piles of sheet metal from the top of the hill. The old man was freed and relieved, although with a transverse wound in his leg. He readjusted himself on the spot.

"You did not need to do that," the old man remarks.

"Thank me another day. I should tend to that wound."

"You’re not breathing well. I’ll help you return to Stormport. There is only one way back." The old man points to the enormous wall. "Cross over that and you’ll be back. Stormport is waiting on the other side."

Through the dense silver mist, El Horgas tries to see what the old man is pointing at. Instead, he makes out shadows, silhouettes, threatening people. He does not know what intentions have brought such people there, but there are far too many of them.

"Who are all those?" asked El Horgas with some fear.

"Those?" The old man smiles. "That is what you become after spending too long immersed in this shit."

"No, no, no, no…"

El Horgas followed his instinct, he tried to flee as quickly and silently as possible. He descended from the hill of dirt under copious rain of thick drops. It was not possible to maintain stealth, he stepped on something that betrayed him, he slipped, fell down the hill among garbage; generated scandal. His body involuntarily rolled down. Once he hit the barren gray mud floor, silhouettes he had seen before soon reached him. Sinister-looking people surrounded him immediately, there were dozens of them, both women and men. The half-naked bodies of these people were completely covered in blisters from head to toe. Some lumps even peeked out from between the strands of hair. There were children too.

Without even saying a word they immediately threw themselves on him. The only thing El Horgas managed to do was utter a desperate scream that was soon drowned out. He felt himself being hit, scratched and bitten, until a loud, high-pitched whistle sounded from the top of a hill. The melody appeased the angry masses and although dissatisfied, they stopped attacking El Horgas. When they moved a little further away and cleared him enough for the raindrops to soak him again, he saw himself smeared in blood, pus, and other indefinable nauseating secretions. Disgusted, in pain and above all scared, El Horgas got up with all the haste he could and ran in the opposite direction. He gave one last look at the old man who had babbled from the top of the waste hill.

"You’ll thank me another day," the old man murmurs to himself.