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"The fourth world war will be fought with sticks and stones.” – Albert Einstein

Bil sat hunched against the wall of the cave, knees drawn up to his chest, shivering. His teeth chattered. Outside, the wind howled like an animal in pain.

Even the wind is cold, he thought.

He drew the ragged animal skin poncho tighter. It helped, but, under the skin, he wore only a tattered loincloth. His feet were bare. He stared through long strands of dark hair toward the entrance: it was pitch black outside. The man-eaters were out, now, prowling the night in search of… food. His hand emerged from beneath the poncho to clasp the handle of the club that lay next to him. He had fashioned the weapon from a length of heavy iron, wrapping the handle with strips of cloth and sharpening the bladed end on rocks. Holding the weapon was comforting.

Another howl caused him to stiffen.

That’s not the wind…

His grip tightened on the club and he watched the darkness warily. Whatever it was, it was close. He shivered again.

He woke without realizing he had slept. He was still sitting upright, his bearded cheek resting on forearms crossed atop his knees. The club lay across his knees, providing support for his arms (and his head). His eyes opened slowly. Sunlight coming through the square cave entrance had awakened him. He lifted his shaggy head and looked slowly around the cave.

There were artifacts here from before The War: fossilized pieces of furniture whose function he could not divine. He rose, stretched, and walked over to stare down at the odd forms. Whatever they had once been, whatever their purpose, they were useless, now- gray, geometric lumps that had been caught in the blast. He touched one with his bare toe: it was hard as rock.

He looked toward the doorway.

Time to move on.

The city had been burnt black by the blast. The buildings that still stood were little more than pueblos, some with many levels, some with but a single cave. He tried to avoid the single-cave dwellings because he knew that the man-eaters regularly checked them for solitary scavengers. He’d gone into one such cave and found the walls dripping with gore, the eviscerated remains of a scav laid out on the floor. He had gotten sick. (He often wondered if the man-eater had returned to finish its meal and discovered the puddle of sickness. He could easily imagine the man-eater greedily lapping up the mess…)

The streets were little more than dirt paths, now: the wind had covered over most of what had been left and mutated vegetation had taken root; strange weeds clung to the buildings, grew on them like fungus; unnatural plants sprouted here and there. He had used the poisonous juices from some of these plants to coat the blade of his weapon. It was said that a man infected with one of these poisons would literally turn himself inside out…

The sky darkened and he looked up to see clouds the color of bad dreams hurrying past overhead.

He walked faster. He wanted to get out of the city before nightfall.

He felt unseen eyes upon him.

He walked quickly, head down (the ground was pock-marked by holes where the ground had slagged and then hardened and split as it cooled). His heart was racing.

Some man-eaters, he knew, came out during the day.

He heard a rock dislodged, looked up sharply to see it tumble to the ground from a building half-buried in sand. He stopped, and stared. A small cloud of dirt risen in the wake of the falling rock drifted upward. There were three darkened cavities from which the rock could have fallen. The wind moaned, low, and ominous. He swallowed. Whatever had dislodged the rock was sitting up there, in one of those dark caves, watching him. Had it also been following him…? He tightened his grip on the club.

Come and get me, he thought defiantly: I’m not going to turn and run…

Something stirred in one of the caves. He tensed. Whatever it was, it was big. It moved sluggishly to the entrance of the cave and looked out. At him.

A man-eater, he thought: It’s a man-eater!

It stood upright, like a man, but its skin was the faded gray of something long dead. It was naked but for the tattered remains of a dark uniform of some kind, its feet bare. It stood staring out at him, unmoving.

What does it want…?

The answer was obvious: it wanted him.

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