Into the Desert

It was dark in the desert when the gray station wagon that was moving silently down the highway put on its right turn signal and pulled over to the side of the road. A man got out, walked around to the rear of the car and opened the back door, and began taking out a brief case, a folded up blue tarp, a green blanket and a bundle of man-made grocery store kindling. Briefcase and kindling in each hand, the tarp tucked under his arm, and the blanket slung over his shoulder, he slammed the door and began walking into the desert.

He was dressed well, for being in the middle of nowhere: brown leather shoes and brown slacks, a white long-sleeved shirt and suspenders. Thin, with messy brown hair that was just starting to gray, he was unshaven and had a visible layer of dust on his glasses. Visible if anyone had been there to see it, that is. "The good thing about being alone," he thought, "is that you can't look out of place."

When he'd walked a hundred feet or so from the highway, he stopped, and let the tarp and bundle of wood fall to the ground. Kicking the wood aside, he spread out the tarp and threw his blanket down on top. Setting down his briefcase, he opened it and took out the day's newspaper that he bought at the same service station he got the kindling from, and pulled out page after page, wadding them up and throwing them on the ground. When there was a sizeable pile, he began slipping the sticks out of the bundle of wood, without untying it, and tossing them on top of the papers. Stopping when he'd thrown in about half the wood, he took a box of short stick-matches from his pocket, removed a match, and struck it on the side of the box before touching it to the layer of papers beneath the wood. He hoped the fire would catch; sometimes it took a few tries.

He sat down Indian style on the tarp and watched the fire consume the paper wads, traveling across them, eating the ink and the flame changing color accordingly. There was a lot of colored ink; it looked like mostly advertisements. Slowly the fire spread up the wood. "They look like little boards," he thought, "like you'd build a house with them. Like you could build a little house out of these." Satisfied that the fire was going to take, he leaned back and took his shoes off, setting them aside, and lay down on his back on the blanket.

His blanket was heavy and green, and could have easily kept him warm, but the fire was nice. In the desert, it was ungodly hot in the day but also cold at night. There were no trees or lakes or buildings to absorb the heat of the day to resist the cold of the night, or vice-versa. It was just flat and barren, except for the rock and highway, and the occasional weed which he could not identify.

He sat up and took his keys and wallet out of his pocket and put them in his briefcase, adjusted the blanket behind his back, and lay back down to go to sleep. In an hour or so, after the fire died, he'd wake up shivering and roll himself up in his blanket and go back to sleep, as had become his routine over the past few nights. He closed his eyes.

It was silent. Before a few nights ago, he didn't think he'd ever heard silence. There had always been noise, as far back as he could remember. Whether it was the alarm clock in the morning or the sounds of traffic in the car, or the radio and voices of people at work or his wife and kids and television at home, noise had always been there. After so many years, all the sound -- the noise -- seemed to blend together into one dull, never-ending buzz. But now it was silent.

And he was lying there enjoying this silence when it was broken. Very faintly, off in the distance, he could hear a purring, like the far-off roar of an engine. He recognized the sound as a motorcycle. He hoped it would pass soon.
The sound grew louder and closer, until he could tell it'd reached the point on the road perpendicular to him, where his car was parked. But the sound of the motorcycle didn't pass and begin to fade as he'd expected. Instead, it hovered over the highway, and then ended abruptly. His eyes shot open. His ears strained to hear, and in a second they heard the sound of gravel crunching under slow footsteps. He sat up straight, faster than he'd opened his eyes, and turned to look at the dark figure coming toward him.

"Can I help you?" he called out, but got no answer as the outlined figured continued to get closer.

"Can-I-help-you?" he asked again, pausing between each word, though his voice was more than a little shaky. Again, the only sound that answered him was that of crunching footsteps.

He watched as the figure made its way to his little camp, and took a place standing on the other side of the fire. It squatted down, and in the light of the fire, the man couldn't tell if the figure opposite him was a biker or a cowboy.

"Hey there," the newcomer said in a tired, flat voice.

It was clear to the man that the stranger had both male and female genitals; he could see it with his x-ray vision.

"Mind if I have a seat?"

"We don't cater to the weirdos here, Quincy," the man said.

"My name's Mark" the hermaphrodite said, "and perhaps you would like to feel my fist of pure steel!" and lunged for the man. But before he could take even one step, he was vaporized by the man's laser-hot cyborg death-ray beam.

Disaster was narrowly avoided for Jack, but he knew that the desert contained many dangers, and that he'd not experienced his last tangle with evil. Not by a long shot.