It comes from the east: today’s wind, but it isn’t as cold the frost on his bedroom window implied. According to the calendars, Spring will come soon, but the most recent calendar he has seen is two years out of date. Two years! Has it been happening for that long now? Maybe so. More cities have fallen off of the map. Milwaukee is silent (as expected) and so fewer cars head north. Someone has said that it’s spreading east, that parts of Ohio are next. The coasts—as always—are still safe. So is Canada. He can still hear it on Val’s radio. He is out to check the traps now: there may be carp or trout, or even some small, gristly thing—enough for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Enough to sell or trade for tobacco, or salted meat from Kelly’s stockyards. He likes checking the traps. He likes being alone. The camp isn’t far. He can hear it, can smell the smoke. There are scavengers in the hollowed out condo stacks along Sheridan, but they aren’t likely to find much. They scavenge anyway, as kids do these days. They find things—knick-knack-garbage things to trade for whatever it is they value. There’s always someone at camp who’ll take it. Hummel figurines. Half-empty jars of cologne or perfume. Cans of soup swollen with botulism. The scavengers leave those alone, or throw them from glassless windows so that they’ll pop like metallic balloons on shattered asphalt and concrete below. He was a scavenger once, but now he’s a fish-trapper, and so as he walks (and yes, the wind still whispers from the east) he wonders what has meandered into his cages or snared itself on his lines. He’ll find out. He always finds out. *** Ah, that Dhalgren-inspired world rears its head again. I haven't started reading that novel yet, but I feel its pull. I'm currently finishing Hunters of Dune which satisfies me enough: it's not up to Frank Herbert's original standard, but it's a good enough novel and a fair offering from Frank Herbert's son and his collaborator. It's good to see the Dune Universe (Duniverse?) expanded a bit, and well...Hunters of Dune is the long-awaited closure to the Dune Chronicles as Frank Herbert imagined it. Well...there's a followup book The Sandworms of Dune which is little more than part two of Hunters...but it's the close...the grand finale, the denouement, or whatever those things are being called these days. When I'm finished with Hungers... I'm diving into Dhalgren and that's something I look forward to. Maybe I'll figure out why that novel has such an influence on my recent posts. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and hopefully everyone is staying nice, comfortable, and warm!