The human race has somehow been reduced to a brutal, animalistic state. The cities are full of animal-people looking for what food they can find. He encounters the mysterious Sophia who also seems to be immune to the mindlessness. The wanderer remembers living in Arizona when a strange wind came blowing across the land. The wind seems to have blown away the memories and minds of everybody.
Humans become snarling animals.
The big take from the small, the strong take from the weak. Most victimized are children. The wanderer tells Sophia that he remembers the coming of the wind and the loss of all his intelligence and memory. He remembers fighting to wrest sausages from some young children. Then he stumbled onto a government defense facility where a dying scientist, Johnny, had been working on memory enhancement.