October 26, 2020.

Fait Accompli, Chapter Six.

That boy was acting pretty queer, I think to myself, and wonder how he got all the way out here into the desert. I got all the way out here and it damn near has killed me. I think maybe he was a hallucination borne of heatstroke and hooch, but no, there's the soft divots of his footprints in the dune, already filling up with the gently shifting sands.

I climb the dune, already so hot it burns my palms. I cuss and spit and when I get to the top of the dune I look off at where the boy should be but he's not there, and neither is the tower. Instead I see something unexpected (although I suppose not terribly more unexpected than a tower and a boy fifteen miles into a desert) and I almost fall flat back down the dune.

The desert, completely barren a few moments ago, is now suddenly populated with a sea of identical canvas pup tents, spread across the sands like headstones in a vast graveyard. Some are more ably erected than others, and they don't seem to follow any logical layout, no rows or columns, no obvious paths through their multitude. The camp (or city, considering the number of residences visible) appears to be abandoned.

There is, of course, a reasonable explanation for this: the gin and dehydration have combined to give me acute brain poisoning, and I am hallucinating as I die, which is too bad for me. I feel sorry for myself a little and start to wander around the tents.

I wish upon a star I hadn't come out here, I think, peeking inside a tent at random (empty but for a rough wool blanket, which looked like the ones they gave us back in the Army), and I wish upon a star I wasn't dying out here either. I am afraid of dying, but I guess I'm not alone in that. I climb inside the empty tent and immediately am relieved by its shade.

I take out my notebook to write a good-bye to Annie Xiu and her terrible children, and I do an O.K. enough job, considering my state. Then I write a go-to-hell to the University men Besmont and Rahey, and a thanks-for-the-boots-keep-the-sawbuck to Dinnick.

Finished with my letters, I consider sitting around and waiting to croak, but it doesn't seem to be exceedingly imminent, so I decide to leave the tent and explore the deluded mirages of my collapsing consciousness. I readjust my floppy hat and head back out.

An abandoned tent-city in the middle of the desert is a pretty odd hallucination. I'd always heard people saw oasises and big roast turkeys and things of that matter. I poke around some and see the tents all seemed to be laid out in the same manner, same wool blanket inside. Annie always put a lot of weight on the meaning of dreams, she was always talking about dragons and mirrors and stuff, and I guess this is a type of dream. I can't for the life of me figure out what a tent city would mean, though.

My eye catches a glint, some movement. I turn towards it, and see a distant fire, belching black smoke into the cloudless sky. The source is hidden by the waves of heat shimmering off the sand, and as I squint and try to figure out what I'm looking at, that's when I feel it for the first time.

I'm being watched.