Endless Desert

  I wipe the dust from my face, licking my cracked lips with a dry tongue. The sun above glares down on me, forcing my eyes to squint as I stare into the shifting sands in every direction. No sign of water. Everything's dead.
  I trudge through the loose sands, burying me up to my knees as I move on. I keep hope in the back of my head, hoping for some sort of lifeline, some source of moisture in this hot, hellish Wasteland. But wishful thinking doesn't bring rain, especially not to a cloudless sky. The only thing protecting me from the harmful rays of the sun is a layer of dust high above, too thin to fully block the sky, but thick enough to be prominent, and to glow a brownish-red by sunset. How I wish it could be sunset.
  Instead, I endure the heat beating through my skin, seeming to melt my bones as I move forward, legs baking in the sand. A faint clicking catches my attention, and I take a look at the Geiger counter in my hand. Radiation. Could it be water?
  I don't rush. I learned better than that long ago. Instead, I follow the clicking, peering out through the dust storm around me, searching desperately for a hint of blue, of life. Despite the endless, dark orange colour of sand, I follow the sound of my Geiger counter, possibly throwing survival away on a mere hunch.
  If only the sun hadn't made my sight so bad. Maybe then I wouldn't be crying out now, falling into the water below, listening to the ticking speed up, knowing in an instance my fate. Radiation poisoning. The water is safe enough to drink, with filtration, or in very minute amounts, but being covered in it, that's a death sentence. It's only a matter of time before I vomit and defecate the remaining moisture inside me. A slow, painful way to die.
  I dunk my head in the water, hoping to all decency that no one else has to find this water, with my no-doubt decayed body rotting in the radioactive soup...