It was there that the company retreated in the dust. A desert in which, perhaps, wolves roamed about its dunes. They were stalking the men and women while their burning ships sank, and the ones that bogged ashore rotted in the wetness of the great valley. Most of them were sitting about several bonfires of boat wood and the others were scouring the wreckage. The moon was bright that night, and it showed on the land. A few hundred men and women were alive including the Human, the Native, and the General. They sat in a group of seven as the Native stoked the fire and the rest ate fire cakes. 

One of them said something. “Pa’ made these when we was little. The neighbors was rich and sold cobbler. Never accrued such money.”

“If we make it out of here you can visit your neighbors again,” said a woman.

“Right. I’m still gettin’ paid is that right, General?”

The General sat in the dark with his back lit while his brew sat beside him, untouched, his cakes ditto. He was fiddling with sticks and playing with the sand. They all stared at him.

The Native spoke. “Who is General?” the Human looked sternly towards him.

“He’s leading now apparently,” said the woman.

“Does he have a name?”

“There’s no name to him. He’s just the General,” the Human interrupted as they glared at the Native and their hand firmly gripped his right shoulder.

They looked at each other, then the General, all throughout the night until something took them under. When they all woke up the fires were dead, their stocks of smoulder killing the sky, and the General was still playing in the sand. But soon, they all went, bellies thin, trekking the desert, leaving behind tens of emaciated bodies and the ships that still dawned the imperial symbols on their gaffs which faded into the cloudless sky. They all followed the General. They walked the ridge of a great dune, passing fat, black, horned beetles that bathed in the dew of that morning. Some picked and ate them. Tens of thirsting men and women, mostly men, chased after water in the distance but never caught it, and always returned with their feet cut and bleeding, their hands and fingernails similarly and sand covered.

They reached some great white mountain that broke the sky, behind which was a decent cave considering the mountain’s size, and they entered. There, the General poured powder on the ground before he grabbed the closest man or woman and took their jacket to throw onto it. He took the flint from the hammer of his pistol and struck it until the coat caught some. It burst into a fiery inferno and it smoked the bats out. Several men went to chase them. By night, most of their coats were smoldering and the heat began to die. The General played with the bats’ feces in some corner of the cave, and few men got rest. The rest died. In the morning, the Human, the Native, and the rest of them woke and saw bodies scattered about, all similarly and generously skinned and stolen of muscle and flesh, and at the entrance of the cave, bathing in the sun and its smoldering heat, was the general, and he was bloodied, carrying heavy slabs of flesh and meat. They were all terrified of the Human. And the Human watched him stand there in front of the sun, bright, and cloaked in darkness.