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aged spots that now dotted the land around him. In another hour, he would be surrounded once again by death.
     
    Alex rubbed his eyes. The morning sun also brought along with it the tiredness of his body. His legs and arms felt heavy, and the squinting against the sun’s rays only increased the desire to close his eyes. He reached around to his pack and pulled out a small plastic bag. White pills lined the clear bag, and he popped one in his mouth. He washed it down with a swig from his water bottle and splashed a little bit of water on his face.
     
    It’d take a minute for the caffeine pill to take effect, but once it started working its magic, Alex would feel like he could walk all the way to the East Coast. He’d bought the pills right before news of the soil crisis. He bought it in bulk, and he still had half the container full back home. With coffee now considered a luxury item, his body was thankful for the purchase of the pills to help ease the addiction from the daily five cups of coffee he used to choke down.
     
    Once the sun morphed from its infant morning orange to an adolescent white, Alex could see the shambled outline of Junction City in the distance. From there, he could find something to take him the rest of the way to Topeka.
     
    Junction City had become a bit of a wheel hub for the rest of the state. The town was small enough for easy government control when the soil crisis started to gain momentum, but large enough to act as a refueling station for transportation vehicles heading out into the less populated areas of the state.
     
    The soil crisis had brought an unintentional boom to the area, which now drew a large economic presence from the government because of their stake in the Soil Coalition. It also provided another service for anyone interested in dealing with the black market. There were certain government officials who didn’t shy away from gestures of bribes to peddle something, or someone, under the radar.
     
    The smog from the traffic pollution grew thick as Alex made his way onto Highway 18, which held a deadheading straight into the city. He was stopped by a few sentries at the city’s entrance, but a flash of his hunting registration, along with a few ration cards attached, slid under their palms didn’t lead to any questions or further pat-downs.
     
    Junction City may have been larger and slightly more chaotic than Alex’s community, but the look of the population was eerily similar. The thin frames had slightly more meat on them, but that same look of dazed hunger filled their eyes.
     
    Of all the things that Alex had noticed since the soil crisis started, people’s eyes were the detail he fixated on the most. There was a journey, along with a tipping point, for someone starving to death, and you could always see where a person was by the state of their eyes.
     
    In the beginning there was the panic, fear, frustration, and agitation that accompanied the desire to eat but not having the ability to find food. However, the will to survive was still clearly visible, along with the strength to obtain it, usually by force.
     
    Once the hunger continued its vindictive pursuit in your consciousness, it would begin to cloud the mind. It was like a slow fog you could see coming, but no matter what you did, you couldn’t stop walking toward it. The misty, low-lying clouds covered you in a blanket of confusion. You wandered aimlessly through it, unable to make out any clear objects, and grasping violently at anything you could draw close.
     
    The fog would thicken until the fear and apprehension of not being able to recognize anything gave way to numbness. The hunger would remain, but the desire to conquer it would be replaced by apathy. Apathy about continuing forward, apathy toward the people around you, apathy for the situation you found yourself in.
     
    Finally, the struggle to continue the mindless wandering would end. The eyes would close, ending their torturous journey, and