The desert stretched for miles and miles in every direction like a vast gash of red dust where cacti and old vehicles reduced to scrap metal clung to the wound. Hale was in a truck that sped along the old broken road. He knew if he stood still out in the desert there would be no sign of life or movement as far as the eye could see. Except maybe a hot breath of wind that would swirl the red dust around. That would be the only sign the world still lived.
His partner navigated the truck in a steady northward direction along the road waiting for a sign from Hale as to where they could turn off. They were in pursuit of a gang they had heard about. A safe haven somewhere in the desert at the end of the world.
It was dust that drove Hale to near madness. Dust drifting about the truck windows and filtering through the buff he kept bunched around his mouth and nose. The sky was red with dust, smoke from campfires billowed bloody. There was always dust down in the creases of his skin and irritating his feet, eyes, hands, mouth, nose, and ears.
They were getting close. The sign for their turn off was the body that dangled on a line tied up to an old Pepsi billboard. HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE the sign read. Hale sat up and peered through his binoculars. What was that atop the head of that bloated corpse?
One of those Stetson hats.
Hale told his partner to stop the truck and he ran out to collect that hat whose wide brim would shield him some from that torturous dust.
A bit of style at the end of the world.
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Picture source is myself. Taken in the Badlands, South Dakota on 9/2/17.