3. Dilapidated Town

Ajay took a step into the portal and went into portal. He didn't feel any discomfort and entered the portal smoothly. His feet sank 2 to 3 inches in the sand.

'There is only desert everywhere you see.' Ajay looked around to watch the situation.

'Let's find some high ground. let's go to that dune. It looks highest around here' There were many sand dunes around. Some were bigger and some were smaller. Ajay started to climb the biggest seeming sand dune.

It took him around 10 minutes to travel to the peak of the dune.

He looked around to see any village, town or city. First, he looked in the north then east and west respectively. Then he turned towards the south.

'What is that?' He found a few buildings some distance away. It only looked like a black shadow in the desert. It can only be guessed that it is a village or town.

Ajay opened his backpack and picked binoculars to see the actual situation. He put on the binoculars and watched towards the buildings. The area looked not small. There were many buildings.

'Well, it looks like a town. Should I go or not? There would be no hostile or anything dangerous beast right?' Ajay questioned himself and was hesitating whether to go or not.

'Well let's go and see. What should happen will happen.' After a few seconds, he made up his mind and tightened the grip on the baseball bat.

He started to move towards the town. It was hard to move in the desert. The feet were sinking in the sand and it took double strength to take a step than normal walking.

"Well it looked very far, but it even exceeded my estimation. It will be a difficult journey." As Ajay was moving closer to the town the buildings could be seen very clearly.

"Why the buildings looked so dilapidated and so run down. It looks like the town is abandoned." As he moved closer he looked at the building. Some buildings looked like they bear a lot of storms and tornados, they had a lot of wear and tear. There were even some buildings that were not complete, some don't have roofs and some had only 1 or two floors.

It took him more than 2 hours to reach near town.

Ajay paused for a moment. He was drenched with sweat from top to bottom especially his back and around his stomach. His face was covered with sand. He was slightly panting and his legs were trembling because of lack of exercise. Usually, Ajay didn't work out much. He had some fat all over his body, especially around the belly area.

He found a stone and sat on it. He took a water bottle from the backpack and opened it.

Gulp

He was very thirsty, his lips were dry due to lack of water. He directly drank half of the bottle and washed his face with the rest of the water in the bottle. As the sand on his lips was entering in his mouth.

"Ha, that was refreshing. The journey almost drained me."

Ajay retrieved his phone from his pocket.

"Well as expected, there is no signal." He checked the signal of the mobile phone. Then he checked the time. "It's 11:45 AM, I have 2 or 3 hours to check this town. After that, I have to go back as it will take 2 more hours to travel back to the portal. As I am in the portal, mom and dad cannot connect me. They will be worried if I don't come back before sunset. Well, let's hurry."

Ajay stood up from the stone and started to enter the town.

There were only 1 or 2 storey houses on the outskirts of town. The road was messed up. There were big and small cracks all over the road. The road was full of the debris of broken buildings and some broken cars which were full of rust and squeezed with some big stones. the sand was all over the place. The windows of almost every building were broken.

"It's been a long time since this town is abandoned. Look at this mess."

Ajay moved on the road cautiously to avoid injury.

Crack

Suddenly he stepped on a bone. It broke into two pieces.

"What the fuck, there are bones here, and it looks like a human bone," Ajay exclaimed after watching the thing he stepped on.

He moved forward with extra care to avoid stepping on a bone again. He was looking around while moving.

"Hey, Is that a robot?" Suddenly his sight fell on a face made up of metal. The rest of the body was in the sand.

Ajay went forward and looked closely."It looks like a robot. Let's see remove it up from the sand."

Ajay carefully dug out the rest of the body from the sand.

The robot was like a metallic human of 5ft 7 or 8 inches.

'It's not moving, Is there any button or switch?' Ajay tried to find any switch.

After 2 minutes of searching, he found a switch on the back of its head. There was a sensor button like a led touch button, a hole around 1 or 1.5 centimetres wide and a slim long slit on the back of its head.

"The hole looks like a charger slot and the long slit looks like a chip slot or something like that."

Ajay pushed his 1st finger on the button. After waiting for a few seconds, there was no movement.

"Looks like its battery is down. Will mobile charger charge it?" He tried to fit the mobile charger in the slot. but it didn't fit in the slot.

"Looks like I have to find the charger in the house or somewhere. And obviously, this robot cannot be charged with a mobile charger."

Ajay tried to lift the robot but it was too heavy. "It weighs around 150 kg."

So Ajay pulled the robot on the side of the road. Then started to move forward.