The old man's body was found in a cabin, or something that resembled a cabin, lying in a crusted puddle of dried saliva and vomit, surrounded by apple cores and frenzied cockroaches. He must've been dead for a week or so by the time the boy and the bearded men found him. The boy kept his distance from the corpse; he was still somewhat inexperienced with the sight of a dead body, and the men in the group decided to not scold him for this, out of pity. There were two grown men, with coarse hair on their faces and hardly a shoe or white tooth between them. The boy had only a shirt, a pair of pants, and a knapsack to call his own, as he had nothing else. Not even a name. "Jesus," he heard one of the men say, standing over the body. "Bury 'im?" the other man asked. "No," wiping his nose in mild speculation. "He'll make for good fuel. C'mon, grab 'im by the other end." The boy stood by the doorway as the men carried the body out, each holding his breath. There was something eerie about the old man's eyes, which were only barely recognizable as such, that made the boy turn his head away, partly out of fright and partly from the smell. With the men outside for the moment, the boy tip-toed around the cabin's interior, trying not to step on bugs. The old man had a lot of junk in his possession: emptied food cans, jars containing dead animals, torn-up leaves that must've served as toilet paper, pieces of cloth that must've served as clothes. The boy got on his knees and reached around in places an adult couldn't, not stopping his business when the men returned. He realized there was something wedged behind the desk with the jars of dead animals. The object was roughly textured, like leather, and as the boy took it in his hands he felt just how heavy it was. The weight of this... [i]book?[/i] As they would've called it in a more civilized time. It seemed like junk, but different from the other junk in the cabin. The boy got something like an idea in his head, that he could use this thing for some purpose he couldn't parse. He put the book in his knapsack, sneakily and wearily, like a thief suffering a case of uncertainty. The men proceeded to ransack the cabin for what little it was worth. [hr] The night was cold, as it was November or thereabouts. The men had built a fire in what had once been a field of grass. Much of the greenery in the area had long since been spirited away. The old man was blanketed with chunks of wood; the flesh and wood merged, almost intertwining as they gave birth to flames and smoke. The smell was bad, but not as bad as before, when the body wasn't burning. Sitting by his lonesome, the boy pulled the book out of his knapsack and rested it in his lap. There were words on the cover, but he didn't understand any of it. Curious enough, though, he started flipping through the pages; words upon words upon words... and nothing to take from any of them. It was a fact of life that made the boy's face contort. Yet every dozen pages or so, there was a drawing that replaced the words. The book, as it turned out, was full of these drawings: of men and women from another time, roughly sketched and lacking in color, but containing a mysterious element that made up for the seeming lack of detail. These drawings had to mean [i]something[/i], but the boy didn't know what. "Got somethin' there?" one of the men said, squatting in front of the boy, startling him. "It's mine," the boy said. "Let me look at it," the man said, just sternly enough. Reluctantly the boy handed the book to the man, who stood up and went near the fire. He opened the book as if to read it for himself, only to start tearing out pages by the handful. "It's mine!" the boy yelled. "And?" the man said. "We need fuel for the fire, boy." He crumpled up the pages and tossed them into the flames. The boy watched, powerless, as the words and pictures were sacrificed. The man turned to the boy and said: "What d'you even want with a book, anyway? Can't [i]read[/i] anyhow."