Giants of the Plains

She set camp when the sun still shone over the horizon. Some scrap wood for a bonfire and a bedroll. For dinner, roasted rabbit, if the traps did their work during the night. If they didn’t, jerky or canned food. On terrible days, she just stared into the flames for hours.

Before going to sleep, she switched on her radio. The crackling of the white noise soothed her, somehow. It had no indicator of the remaining battery, but she dreaded the day it would run out. Not because of the faint hope the noise kindled, but because that was the soundtrack that put her to sleep.

She was now crossing the plains. She walked for hours at a time. For days. And all there was to see was the grass, and in the late hours of the day there were shadows in the horizon and they stood still, for they belonged to the giants, and they were long gone, having left behind only their bodies.

The white noise swallowed every other sound the night could bring. She would lie on her back staring at the sky, at the foreign constellations.

“Who are you?” the voice asked in the middle of one night. She woke up at once and sat down. The white noise was gone and the voice sounded clear.

“I’ve seen you before, but I don’t know you,” said the voice. She crawled to the radio and held it. Then, pressed the button and talked with a raspy voice, faint after so long.

“Hello?” she asked.

“I’ve seen you,” the voice repeated. “You travel on your own. Sometimes you shoot things.”

She took an involuntary look at her rifle, tucked in the bedroll as if it was a teddy bear.

“I hunt,” she said.

“It’s fine,” the voice said.

“Where are you?” She let her fingers crawl the distance that separated her from the rifle.

“At the mountain,” the voice said. “The mountain of concrete and glass.”

“I don’t know what that is,” she said as she pulled the rifle out of the bedroll and made sure it was loaded.

“I can guide you, if you want,” the voice said and they both remained silent for a while, pondering the implications of such a proposal.

“Alright,” she said at last.

Now she walked north with the feeling of being driven into a forbidden place. Her goal had been the east and whatever secrets it held. The ocean, she had thought more than once. A real one. Beaches of grey sand and a salty breeze. The song of the waves, she had heard, was soothing. Maybe that could put her to sleep when the white noise of the radio was gone. But now there was no more white noise. Now, there was a voice and she was headed north, away from the ocean.

The shadows of the giants drew closer and an old fear ran through her veins watching them loom over the grass. The farther north she went, the more there were.

“You are close now,” the voice said the second day. Around her there were hills and empty places that once were homes and now just husks. The air did not smell of grass anymore and there were no rabbits to be seen. Among the dusty roads that traversed the hills there were giants and under their blind gaze she set camp, refusing to take shelter in any of the houses.

The next day she got to the mountain of concrete and glass over the hill.

“I’m here,” the voice said as she looked at the mountain, which she recognized as an observatory.

As she went up the hill, she took the rifle out. The door of the observatory opened and the person to whom the voice belonged stepped out She raised the rifle.

“Are you going to hunt me?” the kid asked, and she controlled her breath to put her heart at ease.

The kid looked frightened, but he didn’t run inside. He stood in front of the door, shaking. She crouched and let the rifle on the ground. Unable to control it, she cried.

“It’s alright.” the kid said.

That night she slept in the observatory with a fire at her feet and the kid laying in another bedroll close to her. He had talked until he had felt asleep and now she lied there, looking at the stars. At her side rested the radio, but she never switched it on again.