The hum of summer and the heat do not bother him.

"The world isn't empty," he writes into his journal. It isn't exactly his, though. He has to record what he sees. So the people on the outside can know. He ventures deeper, and he, in black ink and with quick hand, lists the scientific names for the plants he sees.

He stops dead in his tracks when he sees barn swallows flitting around the broken concrete structures, through shattered windows and empty storefronts.

He smiles, because the world isn't dead after all.