Explore the Junkyard

I decide on the junkyard. The shanty town may contain people, but after everything I have seen tonight, people no longer automatically qualify as safe. At least the junkyard offers cover. If Mars and Lizard are still searching for me, I would rather disappear into a maze of rusted metal than walk willingly into whatever community produced them.

Keeping low, I slip between two wrecked pickup trucks and disappear into the shadows. The deeper I go, the quieter the desert becomes. The walls of vehicles block the wind and swallow sound. Rows of rusted cars form narrow corridors barely wide enough to walk through. Moonlight filters through shattered windows and twisted frames, casting crooked shadows across the dirt.

The smell changes as well. The desert gives way to rust, old oil, cracked rubber, and sun-baked upholstery. I stop every few yards to listen, holding my breath and straining my ears against the silence. The junkyard remains completely still around me. There are no footsteps crunching across the dirt, no voices drifting through the rows of abandoned vehicles, and no distant engines breaking the quiet.

The only sound comes from the occasional creak of cooling metal and the faint whistle of desert wind moving through broken windows and rusted frames. The silence feels unnatural, as though the entire junkyard is holding its breath along with me. The vehicles themselves tell a story.

The useful parts are gone. Tires have been removed. Batteries are missing. Radios, alternators, catalytic converters, tools, and spare parts have all been stripped away long ago. Whoever scavenged this place knew exactly what they were looking for. But they did not take everything.

The first thing I find is a child's car seat. It sits alone in the backseat of a rusted SUV, faded by years of desert sun. One of the straps still hangs buckled. A small stuffed rabbit lies beside it, covered in dust. I stare at it longer than I should. The family that owned this vehicle almost certainly never intended to leave it here.

I move on. A few rows later I find a pair of prescription glasses resting on the dashboard of an old sedan. The lenses are cracked. A parking permit still hangs from the rearview mirror. The registration sticker expired twelve years ago. Farther on, I discover a suitcase sitting open beside a camper. The clothing inside has long since rotted away, but several family photographs remain scattered across the dirt.

I kneel beside them. A smiling couple stands in front of the Grand Canyon. A teenage girl poses beside a horse. A family of four sits around a campfire somewhere that is very much not here. The photographs have faded almost completely white. I carefully set them back where I found them.

The farther I travel into the junkyard, the worse it becomes. A wedding ring rests in a cup holder. A driver's license lies half buried beneath sand. A backpack still contains school notebooks. An inhaler sits on the floorboard of a pickup truck. A cane leans against the passenger seat of an RV.

Every object represents a person. Every object represents a story that ended badly.I begin noticing something else as well. There are no bones. There is othing that directly confirms what happened to the owners.The absence somehow feels more disturbing than finding remains would have.

The vehicles are here. The belongings are here. The people are gone. The implication hangs over the entire junkyard like a storm cloud. I eventually find myself standing beside the remains of a travel trailer. The sight stops me cold.

It is not my Airstream. Not even the same model. But it is close enough. The side has been ripped open. Most of the interior has collapsed. Cabinet doors hang crooked from broken hinges. Moonlight spills through a hole in the roof. I climb carefully inside.

The place has already been scavenged clean. Instead of supplies, I find only reminders. The cabinets have been emptied. The storage compartments have been searched. Anything with practical value disappeared long ago. There is no food left in the pantry, no bottled water tucked away in a compartment, and no tools hidden beneath a seat cushion.

Whoever stripped this place knew exactly what was worth taking. All that remains are the small, personal things nobody bothered to keep, the scattered traces of lives interrupted without warning. A coffee mug sits on the counter. A deck of playing cards lies scattered across the floor.

Someone left a handwritten grocery list attached to the refrigerator with a magnet; milk, bread, coffee, dog food. The ordinary nature of it makes my stomach twist. Whoever wrote that list had plans. They expected tomorrow to happen. I step back outside. The junkyard stretches endlessly around me beneath the moonlight.

Somewhere beyond it, I can still see the distant fires of the shanty town flickering against the darkness. For the first time since arriving here, I find myself wondering how many of the people who once owned these vehicles are still alive. The answer that comes to mind is one I desperately hope is wrong.