9. Finger

Hunter had never been interested in medicine and had no idea if it was correct to pour disinfectant on a head or brain injury, but he figured out that there was no way that it would kill him, and an infection sounded problematic.

So, he poured it on Jack's forehead, the patient not even flinching. Hunter wondered with raised eyebrows,

"It doesn't hurt?"

"Not a bit." Jack himself didn't understand what was wrong with him, no pain was not necessarily a good thing.

"But you can feel touch? Can you tell if it's cold or warm?" Hunter asked as he touched Jack's smooth cheek.

"Yeah, everything else is normal, I think." 

"Okay. Tell me if you feel something strange, we should observe your condition." Hunter got back to bandaging.

"Kay." Jack was really happy with his trip outside, he gained water, snacks, and a like-minded acquaintance.

Hunter bandaged his head, and they were ready for the second try down the stairs. Hunter was taller than him by approximately five centimeters, but he didn't weigh much because he apparently hadn't much to eat.

Jack first helped him down one floor, then got the wheelchair and axe, then they rested for a few minutes.

Like this, it took some time until they finally arrived at the ground floor, where he started to push the wheelchair with his occupant. Hunter should have been seeing the outside from the window frame in his suit, but due to the sand in the air, there wasn't much to see. While that was still the case, he finally saw the ground with all the sand.

"Just how could it come to all this?" He asked while holding the axe in his lap, as Jack was busy with pushing.

Shrugging his shoulders, he commented, 

"No idea."

"The bomb theory is basically out, there would be other people, there would be a ton of them in the hospital, and the police or the military would be everywhere." Hunter mused loudly.

Jack listened as he pushed him along the street. It wasn't easy through the sand and rubble, but it was manageable as long as he went slowly. Luckily, he found a wheelchair with leg support, so Hunter was relatively comfortable with his plastered leg outstretched. 

Jack continued the line of thought, 

"Same goes with a meteor, right? People, police, and military should be everywhere? But a meteor would explain the sand, wasn't that when the dinosaurs became extinct—something with sand went into the atmosphere—something?" 

Hunter thought about it, 

"But there were no cities then, they had just earth and sand on the ground. I don't know how it would be if there crashed a meteor in a country full of cities–besides everything being destroyed."

Jack pushed the wheelchair over something when he paused. Hunter turned around to question him when he saw the youth kneeling.

"My god...." Jack stood up and turned the wheelchair so that Hunter could see what he found. Hunter looked at the place on the ground and touched the sand.

There he saw a finger.

"What the?"

The two tried to take the finger out, but that wasn't possible, so they dug in the surrounding sand with their hands, the finger led to a hand, and the hand led to an arm. They were speechless, and tried to dig more, but it wasn't just the sand; there were asphalt chunks, and without appropriate tools they wouldn't get anywhere. Jack thought of using the axe, but he wouldn't want to destroy the corpse.

"So... it isn't that there is no one, but that they are buried under the ground?"

"Yes... this person should not be dead for longer than two weeks..." Hunter looked at the arm in the sand, he stared at the street as long as he could see, which was only 2 meters.

"Just how many corpses are there, under our feet?"

They both tried to overcome the shock and fell silent.

Jack was the first to speak again. 

"So… let's say a super big, and I mean a massive meteor went down; the impact was so strong that the asphalt was destroyed along with the streets; the people who were outside were buried under the ground, but there were a few people who survived? And there are semi-intact buildings everywhere? Is that even believable?"

"We have to ask the others what they remember, if it was like that, then someone had to have witnessed something."