These days the streets of Dead Town, laid out in a military grid, feature drifts of dust against the curbs and dry tumbleweeds waiting for wind. After the rainy season, the grass quickly turns brown and stays that shade most of the year. The shrubs are all withered, and many of the trees are dead, their leafless branches blacker than the black sky at which they seem to claw. Mice have the houses to themselves, and birds build nests on the front-door lintels, painting the stoops with their droppings.
