A Shrouded World (Book 5): Asabron

by Tufo, Mark

  Like it was choreographed, we both looked over to the sun. The orb was burning brightly and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky to shield us from its fiery blaze.

  “Any chance this thing has AC?” I smacked the side of the hummer.

  “How many military vehicles do you know of that come equipped with comfort features? Come on, let’s get going.”

  I was going to ask him where to, but what difference did it make? We couldn’t stay here. I mean, we could—but frying on the roadway like an overturned turtle didn’t sound like much of a plan. I got in and was more than a little surprised when he turned us around. If I’d been driving, I would have continued going the way we were. Who knows how this may have turned out if we had? Fewer nightmares, probably.

  “Do you have to piss?” It was the first thing he’d said to me since we started driving.

  “Hadn’t thought about it,” I said as he stopped the hummer and shut it off.

  “We’re overheating.”

  I got out. “Us or our ride?” It was impossible to tell, but I thought we’d added another ten degrees just since we started. “Hey Jack, any idea how hot it can get before we fry?”

  “I’m not sure how I know it, but I think it’s around one forty.”

  “Great, probably have another six or seven degrees.” I was wiping my brow with my sleeve. We had to wait a few minutes before the radiator was cool enough to open without spewing hot fluid like a charged volcano. Then, when it came time to deliver, I had a timid bladder, though this had more to do with the fact that all the liquid in my body was being expelled through my sweat glands and summarily evaporating into the atmosphere.

  “You’re up,” I told Jack after my less than stellar performance. When he was done and closed the hood, I got back into the passenger seat. “Telling you right now, I’m not opening that thing again. One thing to be sprayed with boiling coolant, a whole other with steaming piss.”

  He smiled, but it was forced. If this kept up and at this pace, well, no further explanation required. Want to know the funny thing about shitty events? Once they get going, it is incredibly difficult to get the smell out. We passed by a lone sign on the side of the road: Welcome to Asabron.

  I looked out across the land, searching for any sign that would indicate what in the fuck Asabron might be. I saw nothing but more of the same. I was about to ask Jack what he thought when I was thrown against the passenger window as the hummer swerved violently; this had been preceded by a large popping sound of the driver’s side tire blowing out.

  “Fuck, now what?” Jack grumbled as he got the hummer under control.

  I turned around to see if we were being followed, it took me a moment to realize exactly what I was seeing, but I didn’t like it, not one bit. “Get us off the road, Jack.”

  “We’ve got a flat, but we should be fine. The run flats will let us go for a good long while yet, although the ride won’t be quite as smooth”—this delivered sarcastically. Like all military vehicles, a normal ride was like putting your kidneys in a paint shaker. I don’t know where they got their shock absorbers from, but whatever they’d paid, it was too much.

  “Jack, you’re leaving rubber behind—the road is melting them. You need to get off onto the shoulder.”

  I’ll give him this, he reacted quickly. Most would need to verify a fact like that before acting; he waited until we were in what I would assume was cooler ground before doing so. Now that we were stopped, we both could smell the acrid stench of melting rubber. We looked to each other, we both had questions but no answers. He drove on the shoulder of the road—if I thought the roadway was uncomfortable, this was downright hemorrhoid-shredding. Yeah, let that sink in for a sec. He couldn’t have been going more than thirty miles an hour but the dust he kicked up was lung-choking, and rolling up the windows was not an option. The wind, despite being blasted with heat, was the only thing keeping us from turning into charcoal.

  “Temperature is pegged in the red.” Jack’s arms were vibrating as he kept the vehicle straight.

  If we had to walk, I was certain we wouldn’t make it a mile before we succumbed to the inferno. Steam was leaking from the front and sides of the hood. There was a rhythmic thrumming coming from the area as well. I am far from a mechanic, but I was betting that a rod inside the engine compartment was getting ready to be thrown, or more precisely puncture the wall of the engine.

  “Shit,” Jack muttered.

  “That’s the best you’ve got?”

  “Not now, Mike.”

  “Yes, dad. Sorry,” I told him when he looked over. “This is my only coping skill.”

  The ticking turned into a hammering, which in turn became a slamming, then an anti-climactic thud. The hummer’s forward momentum was rapidly coming to a halt.

  “We’re fucked.” This I did not like hearing from the ever-stoic Jack.

  “When you put it like that.” We waited until the vehicle had come to a complete stop before getting out. The hummer hadn’t done much to hide the heat, but being directly under the rays that were beating on us like bongos at a Jamaican musical festival was a whole other level of misery.

  We had two choices: get under the hummer and out of the sun, or wander as far as we could before calling it a life. Jack had made up his mind and had started walking off. I was still debating the merits of lying down in the dirt before I turned to follow. Hadn’t gone far before Jack handed me a canteen; I took a swig of hot water that tasted suspiciously like melting plastic. The road shimmered in the illusion of evaporating water.

  “Refreshing,” I coughed out, referring to the liquid that would have been better suited to steeping tea.

  He took a drink, paused to look up at the sky, and then once again resumed his walking without saying a word. I had been sweating profusely, like swimming in a hot tub of my own making. Then, for a bit, I was mildly comfortable as the moisture wicked away from my body—and then I realized I was no longer sweating.

  “Jack, I’m going to be in trouble soon.”

  Didn’t know it then, but my words were garbled. I was on the verge of frying my mind, which I’m pretty sure couldn’t take much more abuse than I’d already put it through.

  “Take another sip.”

  I wanted to push away the foul libation but instead I took another swig. I felt better, but it was like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.

  “Just a little further, Mike.”

  I wasn’t seeing the point. Maybe because I was looking at my feet. Jack tapped my chest; off in the distance, I could see what looked like a wall. A black wall, fairly foreboding.

  “Cold front,” Jack managed to say through a throat that sounded as dry and dusty as the dirt we were kicking up.

  “You sure?” I asked. I was swaying as much as I was moving forward.

  “Nope, but it had better be.”

  We plodded on that way. Sometimes Jack would tap me to get me moving again, other times I would grab his shoulder before he could veer off into the withering scrub growth. When I could pull my head up to look, it never appeared that the wall was getting any closer. If anything, I would have put money on it moving away, and it very well could have been. If it was indeed a cold front, who’s to say it wasn’t being pushed out? The sun was past its zenith, only another six or so hours of daylight left; us, though, half that, if we were lucky.

  Remember that part where I talked about shitty things having the tendency to keep with their crappy tendencies? Glad to say this didn’t disappoint. I picked up my left foot, which felt lighter. Didn’t think much of it—until my sock-clad foot began to sizzle when it made contact with the ground. The glue from my boot sole had completely given up the ghost. Another step before I could stop my momentum. I would not be able to go far like this before I burned all the skin from the bottom of my tortured appendage. I strained to hop back to the piece of rubber. It was gummy, like a half-chewed candy.

  Jack kept plodding on, oblivious to my plight. I didn’t call out to him—did
n’t see the point of both of us looking at this small problem that could, if left untended, escalate. The glue was tacky; I used my knife to cut off one of my sleeves, which I made into strips and then used to tie my sole back on. It would hold for a while, maybe. The workmanship was so poor a redneck wouldn’t have approved of the engineering. I walked with a gait favoring the “fixed” boot. The little chance I had of holding on to survival rested on my makeshift straps.

  When Jack finally looked around, I was a good hundred yards behind. I waved him off when he made to come back. He staggered and nearly went down when he turned. For the first time since we’d started this hellish trek, that black wall looked closer. I could not get the image of an oasis in a desert out of my mind—I was sure that most of those ended up being false promises. I was falling further and further behind; Jack was moving almost as much side to side as forward, and still he was making distance. He had the lumbering determination of one who has used every last resource available to them but realizes the end is in sight and does not have the will to give up.

  I left one of my straps in the dirt as I’d worn through it: two left. My trudging, which had already not been an economy of movement, was exaggerated even further. Inexplicably, Jack was moving ever ahead. I contemplated stopping. The heat was too much, all of my exposed skin was turning an angry red bordering on purple. Soon I’d have blistering pustules. I’ve been stationed in the desert, exposed to heat I would have previously said was among the hottest ever experienced—that was a spring breeze in San Diego compared to this, whatever “this” was. I stumbled, my knee debated giving out—without any internal lubrication to keep it moving, it couldn’t be blamed. As I jerked my head up, I was just in time to see Jack step forward into the wall. One moment he was there, and the next … gone. My heart, which was already laboring under the torturous conditions, lurched a little more.

  So many times we’d been separated, like the fates were actively working against our collaboration. I gave a sour smile, thinking that perhaps they were frightened we might actually accomplish what we’d been summoned here for. Whatever the fuck that was. If Jack was gone, I was done for. But that’s the beautiful thing about Marines: we’re either too stupid or stubborn—or a good mixture of both—to stop. Forward, ever forward. Another strap gone, the front of my flapping boot sole now catching the dirt unless I made a herculean effort to lift it higher with each stride.

  It was with mixed blessings that I celebrated the release of the third and final strap. I figured I’d only need to travel fifty or sixty yards before I burned through all the nerve endings in my foot, and then it wouldn’t hurt so much when I stepped down. Wrapping what remained of my military top around my foot would have been a smart move, yet that extraneous thought was beyond my ability at that moment. The wall was fifty feet ahead, I could now see flashes of light blazing through it. Lightning, artillery, or hell-bound creatures—could be any or all of them. It was slowly moving toward me. I could see and now hear the sizzle as some sort of precipitation fell upon the superheated highway. This was causing fog to rise, obscuring what laid beyond. It could be acid spewed forth from the mouth of a monster for all I knew. Didn’t stop me; when faced with only bad options, what’s the choice?

  My eyes were dry, caked with grit and dirt, blinking was becoming more and more painful. Soon they would be either stuck up or down. Sounded about as much fun as getting your dick stuck in a pencil sharpener. Not sure the logistics of that, but yeah, I was imagining that kind of pain.

  I saw a boot, then a leg, then the upper torso of Jack. He was soaked—sopping wet—but his clothes immediately began to steam as he moved back into the sun and the heat. He was moving as quickly as he could toward me, which wasn’t all that fast.

  “It’s fucking water … bucket-loads of it.” It should have sounded joyous, but he didn’t deliver it that way.

  “Water,” I echoed. He handed over the canteen, which was sloshing around about halfway full. I took it down in two great pulls and then puked it up in one. Jack put a shoulder under my shoulder. He looked down at my fucked-up boot and my bloody sock.

  In a couple of minutes, we were at the wall’s edge. “It’s bracing,” was all Jack said.

  I stayed still as the water struck. Bracing was not a good word. Chilly, cold, frosty, frozen, maybe even bitter—this was like diving into the snow runoff from a high mountain stream. I found it difficult even to breathe. I had a moment of panic within me when I couldn’t catch a breath. To go from the frying pan into the icebox was a shock to my system I wasn’t sure I could take just now, in this condition.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Jack offered. I noted he was shivering.

  All I knew was that on those very rare occasions I’d been forced to take a cold shower due to a faulty water heater, I’d moved with lightning speed to get clean and free from the misery as fast as I could. You didn’t get used to glacial water, ever. The water that should have felt like a blessing instead felt like the caustic chemical burns of the acid I was afraid this storm consisted of. Still, I tilted my head back and was allowing water to fall into my mouth. It wasn’t enough to sate my thirst—I’d not learned the lesson from the canteen just yet.

  “I love this place,” Jack said sardonically. “We should keep moving.”

  I shit you not, I turned to look back the way we’d just come, which all of a sudden seemed like the better idea.

  “No,” was all Jack replied. “We need to find you some footwear.” He took off his fatigue top and wrapped it around my foot, tying it tightly above my ankle. It would work for now, even if it was soaked and weighed in excess of ten pounds. I wished some of my other wishes had been blessed as quickly and with as much abundance as this one had. I’d begged for water and relief from the heat and had been dealt both in spades. Where were these kinds of answers when I was thirteen and hormonal? I’m sure you can guess what those requests were. Or how about when as a young family we’d been struggling financially? Where was that winning lottery ticket? They say be careful what you wish for—maybe they should add in a part about being careful who you ask. At least, not any of those with a sick sense of humor that delight in the suffering of others.

  My teeth were chattering and my steps resembled something along the lines of what a drunken marionette operator might perform on an old puppet.

  “Well, we can’t stay in this either.”

  I wanted to thank Jack for his astute observation, or maybe just keep my mouth shut and not be an asshole. Who the fuck was I kidding? I would have said something if I wasn’t so concerned with shearing my tongue off as I formed words. My skin burned more now than it had under the scorching sun. I could feel the cold settling deeper into my core. My extremities were already busy closing off, protecting what they perceived as the more important internal organs. I guess they weren’t thinking this through—if my legs stopped working, I wasn’t going to be able to walk my way out of this mess. I can’t fault them for not planning ahead; I mean, look who their role model was.

  Water was sluicing down the sides of the roadway in a burgeoning flash flood, or pooling up in the depressions and threatening to take over the highway completely. I don’t think I had it in me to wade through anything at this point. I was already suffering; I did not feel like I needed to take it to a new level. I hated that this was always a contest. Hey, let’s see how we can make this even worse! It was like a Japanese game show—they aired some fairly strange stuff. Booming blasts of thunder echoed across the land along with brilliant flashes of lightning that for split seconds turned the gloom into a brightly lit day. It would have been impressive if we weren’t fighting for our lives. As it was, the only way I knew there was lightning was that I could see my feet. I can honestly say that this was the first time in my life I was hoping to take a little jolt from the lightning.

  I walked into a stopped Jack; it should go without saying that it was with my injured foot. That got my attention quick enough. He was looking at something ahead
. It was golden—a golden wall, not like the one Gabriel’s horn took down, but rather one made of sunshine. We were coming to the end of this latest escapade. Back out of the freezer and into the oven, like leftover lasagna. I didn’t have it in me to do it again. I don’t think Jack did either, as he wasn’t moving. My body had become numb, and my mind was closing fast.

  “Ever forward,” was all I could think to say. Jack fell in behind.

  I was twenty feet past the rain squall before I realized it. The sun felt … normal. My uniform was slightly steaming, but not the kind of heat a steam iron might make. If I had to put a number, I’d say a quite comfortable seventy degrees Fahrenheit. I started laughing; the relief was almost too much. I stripped the clothes off my upper half, allowing the sun to warm me. My sunburnt parts were angry and offended, but the majority reveled in delight. I would have taken my boots and pants off too, but Jack had already been through enough, I wasn’t a monster. I did a twirl or two à la Maria from The Sound of Music, though I did not belt out in song—see the “I’m not a monster” part. Jack had plopped down and was sitting on his ass, laughing like a loon.

  I sat down near him and removed what was left of my footwear. My right foot had fared well, though my left looked like I’d checked to see what a sausage grinder felt like. I rolled up my sopped top and made a pillow before lying back. I was out almost immediately.

  No idea how long I was asleep, but when I awoke it was to a thud near my head. I turned and looked, my eyeball less than an inch from a shoelace attached to a boot. I sat up. Jack was pulling a little red wagon piled high with supplies, clothes, food, bullets.

  “What the hell is that?” My body stiff and sore and protesting every movement. Not nearly as bad as it could have been.

  “I saw something glinting off to the side. I went and checked it out.”

  “You left me here alone?”

  “Did you die?”

  “I mean no, but ….”

  “Do you want some food or do you have more complaining to do?” he asked.