“Where we supposed to walk to? Don’t you know where we are?”
“But there are indigenous nomadic tribes that cross the desert and—”
“They don’t come anywhere near this place. They know better.”
“Planes, I—surely planes fly overhead on a regular basis, someone—”
“Seen a few, but they’re always so high they couldn’t see us even if they wanted to. And at night, I always have fires going. Figured if someone was going to see me, they would’ve by now. When I heard your chopper so close, I hoped maybe…but…”
“The smoke from my crash, it’ll be seen for miles.”
Owens shrugged. “Won’t matter.”
“How could that not matter?”
“There anything on the wreck we might be able to use?” he asked.
“No,” Richter said through a heavy sigh.
“Where were you based out of?”
“Company I work for is in Morocco. And I plan to get back there. I’m not going to sit out here and—”
“There’s not much choice.”
“The others who were with you, they’re all dead?”
“There were twelve aboard, two crew and ten passengers. Both crew and four others died in the crash. Two others, Russell and Ward, were badly hurt. We made it here but Ward died on the way and we lost Russell later that same day. There were four of us left, Lockwood, Marciano, O’Brien and me.” Owens ran a hand across his brow, pawing at the perspiration as he looked away. “We thought we were safe. We had water, food, shelter. What were the odds? I remember O’Brien laughing and saying how it was like hitting the lottery, crashing near an oasis in the middle of the Sahara.” A spasm-like smile crossed his face but his expression quickly turned dark. “He was dead that first night…died screaming. A week or so later, Marciano was dead too. It was just Lockwood and me for a while, I…I can’t remember how long exactly but…he’s gone now too.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Were they injured in the crash?”
“No.”
“Then what happened? How did they die?”
He turned away and into the beam of light shining down through the overhead door. It split him into two distinct halves, one light and one dark.
“Owens,” Richter pressed, slowly moving a hand to the knife on her belt. “How did the others die?”
He bowed his head. “They were killed.”
3
Still weak, Richter struggled to clear her mind and think clearly. Tightening her grip on the knife in her belt, she threw the word back at him. “Killed.”
Owens pulled the bandana from his head and wiped a slick sheen of perspiration from his neck. He was bald, the top of his head brown and burned from exposure to the sun. “Like I told you, we’re not alone.”
She’d seen no evidence of graves or bodies on their way into the outpost, only enough weapons to hold off a siege, but from whom? There was nothing out here but them and sand. Her legs shook but Richter fought the desire to sit down and rest. If there truly had been others here and they were now dead, how was she supposed to know Owens hadn’t killed them himself? She knew nothing about this man, or this place. Last she knew she was flying transport helicopters for a company based in Morocco, shuttling personnel to various points in Algiers. Coincidentally enough, in the past, she’d delivered workers many times to the same refinery in Béchar Owens had claimed he and the others had been working at. “Surely,” she managed, her throat already dry and raspy despite the long drink of water, “there must be people looking for you. A plane with twelve aboard goes missing, someone’s going to be looking for it.”
“Not after all this time. I’m sure they’ve called it off by now.”
“Well they’ll be looking for me, you can bet on that.”
“They can do all the looking they want. Only matters if they find you. Like us, you were probably so far off course they’ll be looking in the wrong place anyway.”
“But there are beacons on the aircraft that can—”
“You don’t understand.” He wiped his face, then tossed the bandana aside. “This place, it’s not like other places, it’s…it’s not…”
Richter’s head began to throb again, her temples pulsing in time with her heartbeat. She leaned back against the wall, then slowly slid down into a sitting position. Between the wound on her head and the adrenaline dump she was experiencing after parachuting from her crashing aircraft, and all that had happened since, her legs simply couldn’t hold her anymore, and her eyes had grown so heavy she had to fight to keep them open. “If all those people died—were killed—out here, where are the graves?”
“There are no graves.”
“Then where are their bodies?”
His eyes found her in the shadows. “After dark, you’ll see. You’ll know.”
“What happens after dark, Owens?”
He noticed her gripping the knife on her belt. “It’s not me you need to be afraid of. I won’t hurt you.” Shuffling closer to the ladder, he set a booted foot on the bottom rung. “Rest. You’ll need it.”
She watched as he climbed the ladder into the tower. After a moment he pulled the ladder up after him, then closed the trapdoor behind him, once again casting the room into near-darkness.
Maybe he was just crazy. Maybe being out here all alone had driven him mad. That had to be it. She was trapped in a nightmare in the middle of the Sahara with a madman.
Or maybe he was telling the truth, whatever that was.
Richter wanted it to matter, and fought it best she could, but sleep, or something similar, closed in and took her quickly.
* * *
That moment comes to me and I realize it’s all ending, that it’s not a concept or a dream, but the truth, it’s actually happening. And as those seconds burn away, one into the next, I think to myself, have I done right? Have I done enough? Who was I? Why was I? Then just when I’m certain I’ll panic and shatter into a million pieces, something happens, something wonderful. I realize it’s all right. All of it, right there between the darkness and light. It’s all right. It always was. A life—this life, my life—a soul looking out through slowly closing eyes, flowing like water to some greater place, some deeper understanding. And even as the terror and devils wash away, baptized in their hellish fire and carnage, they leave me just as I leave them, ash to the wind. There then gone. Prisoners set free. Finally, free. And it’s good. It’s good. Because I know then that I’m not alone and never will be again.
Through the blood and horror, the screams and chaos, I blink and see it right before my eyes, the sun beating down and blurring the world until it slowly returns to focus. Somewhere else…
Malcolm…sweet, beautiful little Malcolm…
Such large, open spaces before him, such an endless, breathtaking canopy of sky stretched far as the eye can see. “God’s country” the locals call it, as if their allegedly omnipresent god exists only in certain specific, preapproved locales. It’s all so silly and self-serving.
As if to prove the point, across one such enormous field of tall, untended grass, there comes a little boy—I see him so clearly now—running beneath that immense sky as clouds gather on the horizon behind him. There’s a storm coming, and as with most storms this time of year, the darkness gathers quickly and without warning, rolling in with furious anger.
I watch as without slowing his pace, the little boy steals a peek back over his shoulder, because it is not the storm he’s attempting to outrun, but a group of three older boys sprinting after him perhaps thirty yards back. Stumbling, Malcolm flails his arms like a windmill, hoping for balance. But the momentum is too much, and he pitches forward, landing in an awkward belly flop into the swaying grass.
Even before he scrambles to his feet, I can hear his thought, his prayers to God to save him. We both know he won’t make it, that the rescue he prays for will never come, but he prays nonetheless, because they’re right behind him now, so close he can hear their labore
d breath and snarling descriptions of what’s in store once they catch him.
And catch him they do.
I want to help but can’t.
In that same field, after the storm has passed and the older boys have had their fill of beating him, spitting on him and calling him names (most of which he doesn’t know or understand), Malcolm crawls beneath a large tree that sits next to the house in the otherwise endless expanse of flatland and grass. He’d nearly made it. Another half minute and he’d have reached the safety of the house. Bloodied, bruised, filthy from the assault and drenched from the storm, he cries softly, trying to understand why it has to be this way and why the older boys hate him so.
Later, the dirt and dust kicks up as a car follows the winding road toward the house. It’s me. Our father is long dead—the victim of a car accident when my brother was just a toddler—and our mother is working late at the mill in town. There is nowhere to hide, and the shame my brother feels nearly drowns him. I know he wishes he could run away so his big sister won’t see him like this again, but there is little he can do.
Once the car rumbles to a stop in front of the house, I get out and start for the steps. I’m so young myself, I—I can’t help but smile as I watch the scene unfold before me. I’ve nearly reached the porch before I see Malcolm sitting beneath the tree. Schoolbooks in hand, I turn and slowly move toward him.
Malcolm wipes his face and eyes the best he can, but it has little effect.
In the dying light, he looks so impossibly small and fragile sitting there. I stare at him but say nothing, searching for the right words until I realize there aren’t any.
Instead, I reach down for him with my free hand. He takes it, and I lift him to his feet. Once I release him, Malcolm again wipes his nose and eyes. The back of his hand comes back stained with snot and tears and blood.
“Was it those same punks?” I ask softly.
He nods.
“Are you all right?”
He nods again.
“Malcolm, look at me.” I take my brother’s chin in my hand and slowly raise his head until our eyes meet. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” the little boy whimpers.
“Don’t cry.” I wipe a tear from his cheek with my thumb. “Come on.”
Together, we talk to the car.
We drive back down the dirt road in silence, then cut onto the state road and head across town. Now and then Malcolm glances at me, his jaw tight, cheeks sunken and his eyes a little wider than normal but beautiful as ever.
Moments later we pull onto a side street, slinking between rows of run-down homes until we arrive at a particularly dilapidated shack, the last in a row near the edge of the development.
“Stay here,” I tell him.
Leaving my schoolbooks behind, I step from the car and head for the front door, casually pulling up the sleeves of my blouse as I go. I climb the cinder-block steps and knock on the door.
It swings open seconds later to reveal an obese man in a stained tank top and a pair of filthy workpants. His hair is greasy and styled in a hideous comb-over so thin it’s transparent, and his bloated face is covered in stubble. He glances beyond me to my brother in the car, then grunts, “Yeah?”
“You’re Mr. Harnett, right?”
“Yeah, I’m Dale Harnett, so what?”
“Your sons are the triplets?”
“Why are you asking?”
“They’re freshmen in high school. Makes them, what, fourteen, right?”
“What’s this all about?”
“See that little boy in the car? That’s my brother. He’s eight years old. Your sons are teenagers, and they’ve been bullying him for months now. They’ve been knocking him around and giving him a hard time. My mother’s spoken to the principal and the guidance counselors at school, even the police, but nothing seems to help. So I’m here to talk with you to see if we can’t put an end to this.”
The man rubs his enormous belly and grimaces like he’s suffering a gas pain. “You can’t be much older than my boys, are you?”
“I’m a senior. I graduate this year, I’m eighteen.”
“Maybe you should run along and let your mama handle this.”
“No thank you.”
He stares at me with a look somewhere between confusion and amusement. “So my boys have been beating up on your brother?”
“Yes, sir, and it needs to stop. I’m asking you to tell them to stop before they really hurt him. They bloodied him up today as it is.”
“Look, butch, they’re—”
“My name’s not butch.”
“I don’t give a damn what your name is, girl. These are kids we’re talking about.
“Hell, you’re a kid yourself, I’m not gonna sit here and talk to you like an adult. But I’ll tell you this. Maybe if your brother learned how to fight his own battles, he wouldn’t get picked on so much. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds like bullshit.”
He looks me up and down. “You got some mouth on you, girl.”
“He’s eight years old.”
“You ain’t doing the boy no good babying him.”
“Your sons are fourteen. There are three of them and one of him. Does any of that seem like a fair fight to you?”
“From what I’ve heard it wouldn’t matter if it was fair or not.” He chuckles. “Looks like somebody got the balls in your family but it wasn’t him. Way I see it, you ought to thank me. My boys are toughening up the little faggot.”
“Just keep your kids away from my brother, got it?”
“Or what?”
“Or the next time they put a finger on him my mother will have them arrested.”
“You gonna sue us too? No wonder you two are so fucked up. Everything’s backwards in your family. That’s what happens when you don’t have a mama and a daddy, everything gets all confused. Boys acting like little girls and little girls acting like boys, it’s disgusting and against nature.”
As the fat man places a hand on my chest and attempts to push me off the steps while copping a cheap feel, I catch him by the wrist, turn it and drag him down into the weeds, dirt and trash that constitute his front yard. I manipulate the wrist until he drops to his knees and cries out in agony.
I release him, and Harnett swings at me. I avoid his awkward blow and return it with two of my own. Both punches land, cracking against his jaw as he sprawls onto his back in the dirt.
I am in as much shock as he is.
As we drive away, Malcolm cannot take his eyes from me. “You always told me fighting is never the answer,” he says.
“That’s right, it isn’t. It’s never the answer.” I look at him and smile guiltily. “Except for when it is.”
He smiles but it obviously hurts his split lip, so he closes his eyes and surrenders to the motion of the car instead. “I wish you weren’t leaving after graduation,” he tells me. “I’m going to miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too,” I say, fighting back emotion.
“I bet you’ll be a good soldier.”
“I hope so.”
“But I wish there didn’t have to be any such thing.”
“That’d be nice, wouldn’t it, a world without the need for such things.”
In the darkness of my mind, I picture the field and untamed grass blowing, swaying in the wind, and my little brother dashing through it. I wish I could run with him and hide us in it. I wish we could lie down in the safety of that tall grass, sleep for a very long time, then awaken to find this was no memory at all, but a dream instead, a trick, an illusion, God dreaming.
Until it clears and the blood is in my eyes again…eyes looking into a blaring sun set high above an ancient desert…
And it is then that I realize it’s not God dreaming at all.
It’s me.
* * *
Richter came awake to the sound of raindrops hitting the building. But that wasn’t possible, it—no—yet they continued echoing through her mind even once t
he remnants of her dream had faded and she’d come fully awake. Before she could make sense of it, the raindrop sounds were joined by an odd scraping noise. She rubbed her eyes. The door in the ceiling was still open, but the sunbeams had been replaced with moonlight. A squat and dated oil lamp burned next to the bed. A few feet away, bathed in shadow, Owens hastily pulled on a large leather belt from which two long, ornate swords hung, the tips scraping the floor as he hoisted the belt up onto his waist and secured it.
“What’s happening?” Richter asked.
Rather than answer, Owens snatched a rifle he’d previously leaned against the wall, slid the bolt into place, then hurried past her and down the stairs.
Heart racing, Richter struggled to her feet and looked out through the door in the ceiling. The sky was a brilliant canopy of stars, the moon, full and bright. And though the sounds of rain hitting the building continued all around her, she soon realized it wasn’t rain she was hearing at all, but a continuous barrage of small rocks. Several flew by the door, clacked against the ceiling or soared straight past. But where had all these stones come from, and who—or what—in God’s name was throwing them?
She climbed the ladder and hoisted herself up and out onto the platform at the top of the tower, the muscles in her arms and legs sore and tired. Once on the landing, she stood but remained in a crouch, dodging the rocks as best she could and using the waist-high wall that ran the length of the tower for cover.
Peering over the side of the wall, she could see the outpost below and a massive expanse of desert in every direction. The desert looked so different at night. It felt different too, colder and still predatory, but in a completely different way. In daylight it was like an intense fever dream that might never end. In the dark it was surreal and nightmarish and strangely beautiful.
A fire burning below caught her attention.
Owens was using it as a wall of sorts, to block the entrance to the building below. But what did he hope to block it against? There was no one—nothing—and just then she realized the onslaught of stones had stopped.
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