The 1988 Honda Accord was not fairing too well while it rounded its way along the sloppy, tortuous terrain of the desert road. It was not made for such a road, let alone for such a speed, and the constant grumble it was making as it plowed on toward its destination was a testament of the incongruity of the situation. A frantic Thomas Brewer had thoughts racing through his mind faster than the Accord he was driving raced through the desert. He tried to blot out these thoughts, and he was able to for the most part, but some of them slipped by. They should never have taken the Honda on the trip; they should have got a rent-a-car, or had simply not gone on the trip in the first place. And, worst of all, it had been her idea to take the Honda on the trip—her idea that may just have been the last and most fatal decision of her life.
Don't think that! Thomas Brewer thought frantically. It will only make it worse! But could it have been any worse? Here he was, traveling across desert roads that twisted and turned at every junction, at a speed that was unheard of in these parts, trying to get to a hospital who knew where. It had been at least ten miles since he had last seen a sign, or a fence, or another car, or even any sign of human life, and at least double that many miles since he had last seen a town. And if he did not get to a town—any town—in time, his wife would be long dead. His family had a word for it—a certain euphemism coined by his now-deceased grandfather: Kabungolled. That's what he called it. Where his grandfather had come up with it, Tom didn't know. Why Tom remembered it was also uncertain. But he had been using it in lieu of the ever-hated word of death his whole life.
Tom spared a glance over his shoulder. His wife was miraculously still breathing—weakly, he knew—but breathing nonetheless. Whatever was wrong with her, a doctor would be able to find out and save her. All he had to do was get her there before it was too late.
Too late . . . what did that mean? When she has gone fucking Kabungolled and can never come back, and it's going to be all your fault, you asshole, just because you were too afraid to drive fast enough. Just because you had to agreed with your wife to take the piece of shit Honda. The Honda was a good car, and had served him and his wife well for around his town, but it was no match for the deadly slopes of the Nevada Mountains . It was about as effective at mountain driving as a high-school dropout was at giving a man heart surgery. It just didn't work.
Tom was doing his best to keep at a considerably fast speed of seventy miles per hour, but was refrained from going any faster than that. He knew that if he went any faster, he might not get there at all. Wherever there was. He did not know, and could not remember these foreign roads or the places to which they led. They should have gotten a replacement map before they had left. Then he might have been able to take a few shortcuts and be able to get her to the hospital faster.
Or if you hadn't spilled your coffee on the first one, you asshole, you may be able to read it a bit better. Slowing his speed a little more to be safe, Tom reached over, opened the glove compartment, and took out the coffee-stained map that they had gotten online, grimacing at the large, brown streak of what had once been his motivation to get up that morning. He looked at the map, desperate to be able to find a town that they could stop off at. But the next town stretched a good ten miles from where he was now. If he could make it around the next major corner, downhill from where he was at, he might be able to see it far, far away. But the slopes were tremendous, and he would have to tread carefully. But, at the same time, if he didn't go fast enough, it might be too late until he could reach it and all his efforts to save his wife would be useless. It was a doubled edged sword, and his mind, plagued by this indecisiveness, remained in an ambivalent state.
Tom spared another look behind him at his wife. Her eyes closed and her long, blonde hair awry, she still looked astonishingly beautiful. It seemed almost impossible that a person of that caliber beauty could enter such a terrible state of health. But here she was, just two hours on their way back from their trip to Las Vegas , struggling for her very life. Tom remembered the circumstances in which all this trouble had started vividly: his wife had woken up after napping for over an hour in the backseat and had said in a soft, oddly quiet voice that was so unlike her own, "Tom, I don't think I'm feeling too well." She said this in a plain and straightforward manner, not showing any real signs of discomfort. But, as Tom thought now, she had clearly been making a painstaking effort to sound orderly and suave, undoubtedly trying not to alarm Tom too much. Tom had been shocked by her saying this, and had given her the attention she deserved.
"Hmm? What is it that hurts?" He had asked this like a mother would ask her child when he had testified illness.
"It's just . . . it's just my stomach. I think I ate something funny in one of those bars." Tom had looked at her with an expression of mild worry etched upon his face.
"You should just lie down, hon. I'm sure you'll feel all right by the time we get there." She did seem to relaxed a little, and with a frail, but altogether loving smile, she had lain down in the backseat. There seemed nothing to worry about at the time, and soon his wife had fallen asleep; Tom, without even a little bit of consternation, had ruled out any possibility of his wife's condition being severe. Things like this happen all the time; if you go on vacation, something has to go wrong. In Tom's mind, there was no such thing as a perfect vacation, just one that you enjoy (although never, ever perfect) and one that turns out to be a piece of shit, and this one had
thus far seemed to be the former kind. And besides, Tom thought, they were almost home—less than a hundred miles out. So Tom continued on without a care in the world.
Not ten minutes later, however, she had stirred violently in her nap—so violently, in fact, that it had caused Tom to swerve off the road for a few (but no less agonizing) seconds. The dust trailing behind them rose up and clouded his view as he swerved back onto the main road. There was now no mistaking the troubled and fearful look upon Tom's countenance. He remembered the night before, and had recognized that same squirming movement.
The night before their departure home, they had had a celebration night at the local bar next to their hotel. Tom was not a heavy drinker himself (and nor was his wife), so they drank to their own good health and nothing more. They had agreed on getting a private table to themselves and ordering dinner and some light alcoholic drinks. But their waiter kept on prompting them to order the martini special, saying that, as it was the last few hours of closing, they would be discounted handsomely. Tom and his wife found this something of a stroke of luck, and so they had ordered two martinis to their table to add to their dinner tab. They drank them with a hedonistic attitude, taking in probably more alcohol than the should have, but adopting that what-the-fuck? attitude. They had gone back to their hotel in good spirits and had made fantastic love (the best love that they could have made under the influence of all that alcohol), and when they had finished they lay on their bed complacently, soaking in the pleasures that they had indulged upon during their final night. It had been the apex of their vacation, they both agreed on that, and Tom thought that it had been an overall damned good one. At last they both had drifted off to sleep.
The next thing Tom remembered was waking up to the sound of his wife's blow-dryer in the bathroom of their motel room. He lifted his head up off of the pillow, then, with a whir of
pain, slowly lowered his head back down. His head was aching with excruciating pain, and his body felt stiff as hell. He fucking hated hangovers, but he got them every time, even if he had only had a little to drink. He gave a languid groan as he forced himself out of bed, walked toward the closet, and opened his suitcase. He took from it a small bottle of pills, took one out, hesitated, then took another one out and dry-swallowed both of them. Doubting they would do much help, Tom nevertheless showered and braced for the ride back.
His wife didn't seem to have hung over at all; on the contrary, she looked in much better of a state in the morning than he had. She looked her usually pretty self, although she lacked her regular vivacity that Tom had loved about her so much. She had a sort of dull look to her, and she didn't talk much at all on their way into the car. He had assumed that her atypical appearance and her sudden silent personality had been because she had stayed up too late and hadn't gotten enough sleep, or if she had indeed hung over and just didn't want to speak at the moment.
By the time they had their bags packed and were in the car for the drive back from the trip, Tom noticed that his wife took the backseat of the car instead of the front. She mumbled something about being tired and wanting to lie down, and Tom didn't think too much of it until she started complaining about chest and stomach pains.
"Are you alright, hon?" He had asked her apprehensively. He remembered catching her eye as he said it, and he could not remember, in his whole twenty-eight years of life, of seeing such a weak look in someone's eyes. They were oddly blank, and had lost their usual cheerful blue color which Tom had loved so much about her. He remembered complementing her on various occasions about them, and had loved the way she looked at him, so often deeply, into his own eyes. There was always something magical about her look—something that Tom could not
quite explain—and Tom was deeply pleased whenever she met his eyes; he could somehow sense all the things he loved about her when this happened. But now, as Tom looked at her, he could not see anything meaningful in her eyes. Just blank. Nothing. Except for (but Tom would not dare let himself worry much about it for the moment, reminding himself that she was alright, that because of her prodigious beauty and her profound love for him that she was somehow impervious to disaster) a frail, apathetic look, like the look an old and dieing dog would give you on the eve of its death. At first Tom thought that she would not say anything. But then she began:
"It's just . . . my stomach . . . it hurts to breathe . . . I—I'm just going to lie down for a bit longer." She had said this all very slowly, with wheezes and haphazard pauses accompanying it. Tom was no doctor, but from what he could tell, it wasn't her stomach that was really the problem but her lungs, or perhaps both.
"I'm going to get you to a doctor, hon, just stay in there for me, ok?" He asked, and then, realizing the worry in his face, forced an encouraging smile to form. His wife, however, was not looking at him. She had closed her eyes and had either fallen back to sleep or fainted. Tom did not know.
And that had been the last time that Tom had talked to her until now. And even now, as Tom saw her slowly rising and falling chest, and her pale, wan face, Tom feared that it would be the last time he had talked to her before she died. Whatever her sickness was, there was no doubt that it had now exacerbated to a level of deep gravitas that called for urgent medical attention. And if she did not receive this medical attention soon, Tom feared she would soon have gone Kabungolled. Goodbye, missy, see you in Kabungolle land. Have a nice trip; see you next fall.
Don't think that! He thought again and again, and he tried to shove the thought to the back of his mind, but it kept recurring, like a tenacious fly does when you keep swatting it away. If he could only take a shortcut safely—if he could chance some desert riding, that is—he would be able to reach Fort Irwin and get help from there quick enough to save her. He knew that Fort Irwin would have strong enough radio towers there to be able to signal for help miles away. But the fort was a military training area, and Tom had strong doubts that they would be so accommodating. But still, looking at the map, it was there: a tiny black dot marking the convenient spot where the fort was, just a few miles from where he was. And it was probably closer than the village if he turned off the road right now.
Tom had never driven in the off-road before (he had always driven street cars; he didn't care for four-wheelers), but this part of the desert looked fairly sturdy. There couldn't have been any precipitation in this area for months, and the ground would have had time to solidify. There were many rocks flecked across the ground, but very few of them were large enough to require evasion. Tom thought of his Honda, and had a more realistic feeling that the car would not be able to make much ground on the off-road. It's made it this far, though, and the fort is close by he thought. Four-wheel drive or not, Tom would not have to go too far uphill to reach the fort. But he had to decide now if he was going to do it. He had already spent too much time than was wise, and if his wife had any chance of survival, it was through Fort Irwin . He chanced one last hasty glance at his wife. She was quite still, and, to Tom's tremendous horror, he did not see her chest rise and fall anymore. Whatever her illness was, she was no longer able to breathe. Sweat dripping down his face (and now he thought grimly that it was not just the heat of the desert that was causing it) and, realizing that he had no other choice, Tom slowed down to a dull twenty-five and carefully veered off the road.
Despite the slow speed at which Tom drove, the Honda was still taking massive damage; brutally bumping whenever it went over a hump of rocks, the car whined in strong protest the more and more Tom drove on to what he hoped was the right route to Fort Irwin . As he drove, Tom made countless references to his coffee-stained map to make sure that he was heading in the right direction. One screw up in the path and he may never see his wife again. Noticing a long stretch of mostly flat ground and not much rock, Tom risked a little more pressure on the gas pedal. The car moaned in cynical disagreement, but Tom's faith in the Honda was growing largely by the minute. It had made it this far, after all, and he could not have been more than three or four miles from the fort. Tom smiled and glanced at his wife and said, in the most reassuring and tranquil voice he could muster, "It's going to be all right, honey. We're almost there." She did not appear to have heard any of this, but it was said more to himself than to her. Tom looked at the map, and was almost positive that he was on the right track. He put his face close up to it, trying to read out the exact distance he had left. Surely he would have been able to see the fort from now, but there wasn't anything to be seen out yonder but rock, sand, a few small and uninteresting cacti, and more rock. Tom looked behind him, thinking for one wild moment that he had somehow passed the fort already. Yet it was nonsensical thinking, and he knew it. The fear of his wife dieing had messed up his cognitive thinking process, and he tried with his best to suppress such inanities by adopting a more rational method of thinking. I'm almost there, I'm almost there, I'm almost there. Hang on there, good ol' Tom, faithful old Tom, we're almost there. We're almost there. But wouldn't he have seen it by now? Wouldn't he have been able to—
Bump
The car rose and fell viciously as it went over a large rock; the map flew out of Tom's hands and landed somewhere beneath his feet near the pedals, the body of his wife fell halfway down the seat to the floor. Tom's head slammed against his windshield and, as he used all his willpower to get his senses back in focus to regain control of the now-swaying car, he hit another rock—larger this time—and the car slid around and around brutally like a radio-powered toy car would when the stick is twisted to one side. And then it happened: spinning wildly to the left at a speed that was deadlier than a ravenous mountain lion, the car smashed sideways into a massive, monolithic boulder. All Tom remembered was hearing lots of scraping of metal against stone, a sudden Bang ringing in his ears that sounded louder than anything Tom had ever heard in his life, and then being propelled to the side of his car. His head was thrown to the shotgun seat of the car, but his feet remained planted on the brake pedal. He had not been wearing a seatbelt, and his body was now twisted up in an oddly slanted position. Then the car—and the noise that had been issuing from it—stopped. A very peculiar silence followed. It was atypical compared to the loud banging that had been happening just moments before. Tom felt numb—all his body ached, but the pain was lessoning. Softening. Fading away into nothing. He could not feel. He could not see.
Fort Irwin Military Reservation stood as imposing as ever. Even in the blazing heat one would have to be blind not to notice its sophistication in such an unsophisticated desert; with miles of nothing but desert surrounding it, Fort Irwin stood out like a straight man in a gay bar. Built as a collective training center for the United States army, it was both densely populated and
unusually noisy, as there was very little competition for sound. Aircrafts would be continually taking off on runways that stretched thousands of feet, and returning aircrafts would return on landing strips that also stretched thousands of feet. Occasionally gunfire could be heard, or else the unmistakable sound of a M1 Abrams United States Army-issued tank plundering along desert rock. It was always the new recruits that dreamed of manning one of these and using all sixty-two tons it packed on to go wherever the hell they wanted to, blowing shit up in the process. But these recruits rarely got their wish, and if one of them did somehow ascend to the rank of being permitted to operate one, they usually lost their first immature desires and had adopted new, subservient personalities that were to carry out orders, and carry out orders only. Oh yeah, son, the military would do that to you. Whip your scrawny ass right into shape. Change your character from juvenile to man. That's what they advertised, at least.
Fort Irwin Military Reservation, located in the Mojave Desert , worked within the R-2508 Special Use Airspace Complex, a designated land that was used for air warfare and operated as a flight test center. Alexander Kregg, who went by 'sir' to his subordinates and was called 'Captain Kregg' by his superiors, had been in this program in his younger days. He had also been in the Logistics Support Element program, and had spent years working his way up in the military ranks. He was the battalion executive officer at Fort Irwin , respected yet feared by his subordinates and was called many politically incorrect names when he was out of earshot. He knew it, of course. He knew what they thought of him here at Fort Irwin . They didn't care that he had spent years of his life to be here; he was nothing but an asshole in there eyes.
He had been appointed the position of instructing hopeful privates at Fort Irwin , and it was in this that he had gotten his rather spiteful reputation. He hated teaching here; he despised the students that went through the program, and he particularly hated being treated as one of
them. He hated having to salute his senior officers, hated having to act like some sort of subservient peon in the military ranks, even though he had been in the service for ten years. But most of all he hated Colonel Anish, his Indian senior officer that treated him like dogshit. Anish never once hesitated to tell anyone the story behind his name, ostentatiously telling anyone who would listen that it meant 'supreme' in Indian. Who fucking cares? Kregg didn't give a flying fuck, and doubted many others did either. It was just another one of his little power trips, a way of him showing that he is better than you, that you are nothing but a piece of trash in his eyes.
Colonel Anish was a somewhat tall, beefy man who had been in the service for over twenty years. He was revered by the trainees and soldiers at Fort Irwin , and although he was feared by many of his subordinates, it was a good kind of fear. It was more of a respectable, oh-shit-he-can-get-me-discharged kind of fear, unlike that of Kregg. People feared Kregg because they feared of getting their nose bloodied or their bones broken.
Despite the opinion Kregg had about Anish, he was usually considered more of a mild, yet still stern, man who would either love you or hate you. Generally the people at the Fort looked up to him for encouragement, and although they did not find much, Anish was at least understanding. He had been in their position once; he knew what it was like and he was able to sympathize with them. He had once been a neophyte himself and, for a forty-three year old colonel, he was not as uptight as he looked.
Nevertheless, Alexander Kregg held an irrationalized low opinion of Colonel Anish, yet obligatorily listened to what he said and saluted him with gravid respect every time they met. Kregg had learned that to excel in the military you had to kiss some ass, no matter how ugly. And, in Kregg's opinion, ass like that didn't much uglier.
Two days before Tom Brewer was having his breakdown in the car, Alexander Kregg had been having a little trouble of his own. During an urban training operation, one of Tom's students had accidentally fired off a round of his M4 Carbine during a stealth operations test. Kregg, who had started off the day in a bad mood to begin with, entered the unceremoniously training course and had rounded on the kid. Kregg told him that, if it had been a real situation, he would have been killed along with the rest of his squadron. When the kid who fired the rifle turned his head away in defiance, Kregg had struck him down to the ground.
"You gonna listen now, son? Or am I gonna have to mess you up a bit?" The kid turned his head toward Kregg and said, in a truculent manner, "Fuck off!" For a moment Kregg's anger seemed to abate a little. Yet his subsequent actions did not match this: pulling the kid up, he violently shoved his shin into the kid's stomach. The he said, in what was clearly a voice of forced calm, "Teach me to fuck off, eh? I'm gonna teach ya to follow instructions, punk. You gonna wish you never been born, son. That's insubordination, and you're about to see what we do to insubordinates at this school." Kregg grabbed the kid by the ear and dragged him away, violently twisting it in odd ways, causing the kid to shriek in pain. The kid, whose peers had always remarked as somewhat cocky, had his face contorted in sharp pain, making it take on a countenance that looked like a crumpled map, with premature wrinkles spread across his face. Kregg was clearly giving him hell.
Later that day the kid had indeed been discharged for insubordination, but not before he could get his revenge. He had filed a complaint about Alexander Kregg, saying that he had used cruel and unusual means of punishment. Word of the kid's quarrel with his instructor spread rapidly throughout the Fort, and soon started to spread outside the Fort, with newspapers printing in bold headlines about 'brutality within the military' and 'cruel and unusual forms of
punishment'. Protesters arose, demanding the discharge of Captain Kregg, assertively stating that keeping him at the Fort to terrorize and torture the cadets at the Fort was unconstitutional.
This did not worry Alexander all that much; his obdurate personality remained intact, and it was two days before he was finally called into a one-to-one conference with Colonel Anish. Just fucking what I needed, Alexander thought, a conference with Dr. Dipshit himself. The meeting, however, was mandatory, and he thus had no other choice but to attend. This was scheduled to take place five days after the incident with which the conference was about had occurred. Three days after Thomas Brewer had crashed his 1988 Honda in the Mojave Desert, a few miles away from Fort Irwin Military Training Center .
Heat. Pain. Heat. Which was worse, Tom Brewer could not even begin to guess; he felt a tremendous amount of both. He opened his eyes. Out of them he saw floor—the car floor! Then he remembered everything—the crash—his wife—his wife! Tom twisted his body violently to try to break free of the car. He let out a wail, for sharp pain—sharper than he had ever experienced before—surged through his whole body, from his head to his toes. He examined himself. He could not move his legs; his arms were bound between his legs and the seat, and his head was pulsing with pain. He felt a liquid trickling down it, and did not have to see it to know that it was his own blood.
Tom did not try to get up again for a while. For a long time he just lay there, in a sort of amnesic shock. He felt outside of his body, yet at the same time felt pain from within it. How
long he lay there, he would not remember. But after some time, he awoke from his daze, and realized again the importance of the situation: his wife was dieing. With a tremendous force of willpower Tom forced himself to try to move his arms again. And as he did so sharp pain came from his hands, but Tom ignored it; he had to get his hands free from between his legs. With a great effort he wiggled his right hand free first. Then, stoically, his left, until at last both his hands were free. Tom then spared more time to survey the scene: his legs were bent double under the steering wheel, and his head and torso were bent under the shotgun seat of the car. It was one fix he was in, he thought dismally. His hands felt oddly light, not having moved in so long. Tom braced himself for the pain before he tried to lift his legs free. His left one seemed alright—he could move it without it causing him too much pain—but he was unable to move his right one without causing severe pain to sear from his leg to his thigh. Broken, he thought. What a fuckup this was.
Using his hands to support his damaged leg, he rose a little out of his seat. As he did so, the sheer amount of damage that had been done to the Honda dawned on him for the first time. The car was trashed, to say the least: the windshield was broken in many places (some glass shards were laying on and under the front seat), the passenger side of the car had a massive dent in the middle; the fenders were dented even worse, and the front of the car was completely trashed. The slow trickle of oil and gas could be heard as it trickled down the front of the car and onto the hot, sandy ground. All in all, the car was a complete wreck, and Tom had no doubt in his mind that the car had seen the last of its days.
After getting his legs free, Tom wobbled a little toward the back seat, where his wife sat.
"Arrrgh!" Tom yelled at the sight of his wife, or, moreover, what was the unambiguous corpse of his wife. Tom had been lucky to get out of the car accident for only a few broken bones
in his legs, and right now, he didn't even feel it; he was filled with too much shock. His wife had not been wearing a seatbelt, and she had flown up when the car had crashed. Her head had rocked in the air and had come crashing to the side of the right passenger window shield. Her head had penetrated the window and now stuck out like a rag doll. Blood trickled down her partially-severed head, and her eyes were shut. All in all it was a horrific outlook, and Tom could not bear to stare at his wife any longer. His wife, who he had spent the last five years of his life with; his wife, who he had tried to have children with; his wife, who he ultimately should have died with, had it not been for a stroke of luck.
She was dead. She had gone fucking Kabungolled, as his granddad would put it. It wasn't fair. I should have died, too, he thought. The sight of his wife's dead, limp body only exacerbated Tom's trepidation. She was dead, and he would soon be, too. Why wouldn't he be? He had nowhere to go, had a broken leg (among other possible unknown internal injuries), and the desert ahead was a completely foreign land for him.
He recalled a word from the back of his brain, a word that he had somehow remembered throughout the years of his life: Terra Incognita. He had read it in a vocabulary builder book years ago, and it had, for reasons unknown, stuck in his head for years. It was land that has not been explored yet, land that has not been mapped. And in Tom's mind, he figured that much of this desert hadn't been mapped yet; surely no one could have personally walked across this long, convoluted desert and explored it in its entirety. Probably most of the areas on the maps of this desert had been merely inferences by map makers, some areas that were left unexplored. Terra Incognita. That was where he was, unexplored land. No one would come for him; he was miles off-road, in an already 'off-road' area. No one would come unless he came to them.
It was then that he remembered where he had been heading in the car before the crash. Before, it had not seemed to matter; only his and his wife's condition seemed to matter. Well, he was ok, he supposed. Sure, his leg was a little fucked up, but overall, he was feeling right as rain. Fort Irwin . That was the place he wanted to go; that was his safe haven. If he could make it there, he would be taken in, cared for, and in all likelihood we would be driven back to his house from there, fed, watered, bandaged, and in good health.
Tom looked at his wife. She was deader than Hitler, but he would have to carry her. He could not leave the person he had loved for five years just sitting there in the blazing car as it slowly dehydrated her body, dried her blood, and decomposed her body. He repulsed at the thought of a large, black scorpion crawling in and out of her mouth. No way, uh-uh; no way he could leave her. But how would he be able to carry her while sporting his broken leg? He would just have to drag him and her there, he supposed. Yes—that was it. It would be hell, but he would have to do it; it was the only way he would be able to make it out alive while not leaving his wife to rot in the bakery.
Tom tried to open up his door to the car, but it wouldn't open; it had jammed itself shut. He pushed it with all his might, but it still would not budge. It just stood stubbornly in the same position, as if mocking Tom's futile attempts to open it. Tom would have to go through the window. But how would he break it? There was nothing within grabbing reach that was powerful enough to smash it. It would have to be short, durable, and strong.
Amazed at the magnitude of what he thought would be a minor setback, Tom leaned forward and started taking off his shirt. It was not easy. He had been sweating profusely, and his shirt stuck to his back like an obdurate Band-Aid would stick to your foot. It was then that he noticed how hot it was (it must be fucking one-hundred and six degrees, he thought) and how
that was also going to be a problem as well. He would have to drag himself miles across desert sand, under the scorching hot sun, all the while dragging his dead wife along, too. He considered for a moment leaving his wife, but the image of the scorpion crawling freely in an out of her mouth had set such an impression on him that he figured he would have nightmares for the rest of his life.
Eventually, Tom managed to get his shirt off. It was drenched in his own sweat and probably smelled like a horse's ass, but who would care? He was alone, and he needed to survive. He wrapped his slightly-cut hand in the shirt that he had just taken off, and made a fist with it. He had never done this before, and wasn't sure if it would work or not, but he would at least give it a try. He pulled back his arm, prepared for the impact, and then heaved his arm with all his strength at the window, shielding his eyes with his free hand just before he made contact. Glass flew as the window broke, and the unmistakable sound of glass shattering filled the car.
The window gave in easier than he had expected it to, and his hand felt fine. His knuckles hurt a little bit, but he didn't think he had done any serious damage. Now was the tricky part: he would have to somehow climb out of the window. How he was going to do this, he did not yet know. But he knew he must do it. It was either that, or stay in the car to burn up and eventually die a slow, painful death. He preferred the former option.
Tom decided that it would be best to go through the window headfirst. He figured it would be safer that way, that he would protect his head from serious damage. He shifted his body to the side and, after clearing off the last jagged piece of glass with his shirt-hand, started to climb through, headfirst. His head fit through the window easily, but Tom expected to have trouble getting his belly through. While not necessarily fat, Tom was not the skinniest person, either. Hell, he was nearing his thirties—he had an excuse for it. But when it came to getting his
abdomen through, Tom didn't encounter any problems. The problems he encountered were when he got outside the car.
The first part of Tom's body to touch the sand was his hands, where he put them out for balance. The moment he touched it, however, he recoiled in agony. The sand was unbearably hot, much hotter than he had expected. No, not hot Tom thought, it's fucking scorching. Tom managed to keep his failing balance by using the arm that was still wrapped up in his sweaty shirt. He put the fabric against the sand and put his other arm on the shirt, too. He wiggled the rest of his body out of the car and landed with a dull thud on the sand.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!" Tom wailed. The heat was unbearable; his skin was turning a gruesome red where the sand touched. Never in all his life had Tom felt pain as agonizing as he did now. All rational thought leaving him, Tom got to his feet and ran about the car, screaming curse words that had never been known to mankind as he did so. After almost thirty seconds of running around, Tom finally got the sense to go back in the car through the window. He wanted to get the fuck out of the sand.
Tom made it back to the car at last. He was panting, not just because of the running around he had done but because the pain had induced a sort of shock that was causing him to hyperventilate. What the hell was that? He thought numbly. He had by no account expected the sand to be so fucking hot. Tom looked down at his feet, which were still throbbing in sharp pain. His whole foot was now deep scarlet—close to purple—and the incipient signs of unfriendly blisters were noticeable.
Well, now what? He found himself in the same predicament that he had been in just mere minutes ago, and this time he had a burnt body to go along with it. Good job, Dr. Brewer. Nice work on that modification of the human body. Record timing, that was, sir. Just thirty seconds
and bam, instant change of skin color. You can now fit in with your new Indian relatives. Tom could not get these thoughts out of his mind. Some part of his brain processed them before he could stop from thinking it. Fuck, he was thinking about it now; thinking about not thinking about it. You're going insane, man. Get a grip. He thought.
But still, it was much easier to stay in the car and wallow in self-pity while his body fried in here like a turkey on a thanksgiving afternoon than to actually come up with rational thoughts of how to survive. A sudden radical feeling to go into the backseat with his dead wife and die next to her crossed his mind. He had as much of a chance of surviving in the desert than Hitler had of coming back from the grave, anyway. Why not die happily in the car next to his wife? Why die in the unknown, the terra incognita. That was no place to die.
Yet somehow, Tom felt compelled to strive for life. He was, after all, only a few miles from the Fort, and in all likelihood a plane or army convoy would spot him if he flagged one down. He could make it, he thought to himself. Physically, he could make it, but mentally he was unsure. He would have to force himself to leave his wife; he had decided that ever since his skin had turned red. There was no possibility of taking her with him; even if he and her did make it back, her body would be so marred by the heat of the sand that she would be undistinguishable. And he wouldn't want her to be that way. But, at the same time, he couldn't just leave her in the car to bake like a batch of cookies, either. He would have to bury her. He would have to bury her himself.
At the thought of that, a sharp pain of emotion swept through his body. What the fuck is happening he thought again and again. His wife couldn't be dead. He couldn't be in the desert, fighting for his life. Just a day ago he was having the time of his life, and his wife had been right along side him, enjoying the festivities of their vacation. It was as if his whole world changed in
just a few seconds. Well, it had, he thought. If you hadn't crashed that car, you asshole, she might have been saved. She might have—
"Shut up!" Tom yelled frantically. He wasn't aware that he had spoken aloud until his voice had reverberated off the walls of the car. He hated his mind; he hated the iniquity that ensued from his thoughts. If he could only think like a normal person, he would have the situation under control. He would have found a way to save him and his wife—hell, he may have even found a way to save the car, too. But no. He was Thomas Brewer, twenty-eight years old, the breakdown man of the year. If he could just get his shit together, he might actually be doing something useful. But he had broken down, and he knew it. He had never really been under this great of stress in his life before, and he hadn't been able to cope with it. That was it. He was 'freaking out', being melodramatic. But my wife's fucking dead, she's dead, and I will be, too. Melodramatic? But there he was again. Freaking out. Worrying about what he could not control. Worrying about what was really not his fault at all.
But his mind would not let himself believe that. Uh-uh, no way. His mind would always blame him for his wife's death, would always remind him that he was a screw-up, an asshole, that he should just do the world a favor and die in the car with her. And no matter how hard he tried, he would never get the image of his wife's look out of his memory, the look that she had given him a few moments before she died; that blank, lifeless, apathetic stare. Oh no, his mind loved that memory. It was, perhaps, its best find yet. It would come up again to haunt him in his dreams forever; it would resurface and float in the back of his memory until he died (which might not be too far off from happening). It would haunt him again, and again, and again, and again, until he died, which, Tom thought sullenly, might be in the not-too-distant future.
At any rate, Tom would be marred for life. It was a double-edged sword: if he somehow found a way out of this hellhole of a desert, he would have nightmares that would never cease to haunt him in the darkest hour, and if he could not find a way out of the desert then, well, he might as well say his prayers and his wife's last rights now.
But the Fort is so close! Tom thought. If only I could make it there, I would be alright; hell, I might even be able to get a search crew to recover my wife's body. But could he risk that? No, he thought. He couldn't risk the chance of leaving the car and then dieing somewhere out in the foreign desert, having him and his wife's body decompose in such a godforsaken place apart from each other. Again, the image of the scorpion crawling in and out of his wife's mouth haunted him, and then his wife's body changed to his own. The thought of his own body being decomposed by a large army of scorpions that were ravenous and had been voraciously awaiting fresh meat was enough to drive out any thought of him leaving the car.
But if he died in the car, wouldn't the same thing happen? The scorpions and god knows what other decomposers wouldn't suddenly turn away when they saw a feast before their eyes. They wouldn't be afraid of crawling through the window or any other nook and cranny to gain access to their feast of human flesh, which would undoubtedly be something like heaven to them. They would say their little scorpion prayers before blissfully devouring Tom and his wife's corpses, and would leave nothing but their bones, which would probably be blown apart one day by a sandstorm.
Yes, this would surely be exactly how it would go, Tom thought. He could already imagine it, and the images in his mind sickened him. And once again the magnitude of Tom's problem hit him, and despite Tom's strongest efforts to throw them off, they seeped through somehow: Your wife is dead you will be too you're going to die the most painful death you're
going to die along with your wife you're going to die die die and no one will find your car because you are in the middle of the motherfucking desert and there is no one for miles around you are going to—
Die? Was it definite that that would happen? Yes, it would definitely happen if Tom stayed in the car. But then Tom thought of his first idea of trying to somehow make it to the Fort, and, thinking about it now, it didn't seem like such an irrational idea after all. It was so fucking close, and now that Tom thought about it more clearly, he figured couldn't be more than three miles away from where the fort's boundaries were drawn. He could make it if he really wanted to. Yes, he knew that now. It would take a lot of perseverance, Tom thought, but he could make it if he willed it. But he would have to leave his wife; taking her with him would be impossible.
Tom looked at his wife's dead body. He knew that if her spirit was alive and she could give him advice she would tell him to go on without her, to save himself. She wouldn't want him to risk his own life simply for her dead body, and she would be satisfied dying in his car if it meant saving Tom's life. She would tell him to get going.