My assessment of Ike's condition was correct. A brisk walk and a sated throat and a full belly have done wonders for his constitution. Still whip thin, but that's more his natural disposition it seems. And I have to admit, there are certain advantages to that lifestyle. The wind of needle sand that worms through lenses and slips under cloth doesn't seem to be that much trouble for him. It just flows around him, his body a knife to cut the current and let the rock behind him stand stalwart and strong.
He's wearing my spare equipment and he wears it well. Didn't have to help at all, other than a slow prod to get his mind working, understanding what I threw to him when I saw the first clouds of dust pour up from the horizon. At that mention, his face went deliciously wide and every part of him that could be was covered and cinched. There would still be scrapes and cuts. Those would always be there. A handful of grit has found my elbow and if it doesn't blister, it will certainly turn raw by the time the wind dies down.
We move to stay still. Any actual progress we could gain would undoubtably be in the wrong direction wind and needle knives spinning as topsy turvy until we walk off into the sky, so disoriented that we fall up. If we don't take the steps, then the wind pushes us all over, taking us up into the endless void anyway. So, the march. The march against the grit, the needles, the jagged edges that bite and slice and burn. Ike walks in front of me, shoulders hunched and head kept down each step a practiced shuffle off into the faceless maw of gale and storm.
I fight the desire to open my arms and laugh. But that would let more of the other sand down my throat. I smile, thought. I keep everything wide and open. The loyal tatters of my jacket whip and strike against my back, barked slaps of tanned leather. It hurts. It hurts just as the slice and the needle of the supersonic sand does and I want to laugh. It's not enough. It lacks and leaves me wanting. Failure, abject failure, absolute failure of the world to stop me and the death march across the dunes.
It fails. The world fails in its ceaseless rage. Impotent, simply impotent and ineffective, worthless hurricane typhoon apocalypse slipping into my thought, keeping it all in chaos. I keep marching, up the dunes, sliding down, stumbling, sure, but from my own overeager body to endure. Ike does not stumble. Surgical evisceration taking apart the world in calm steps, measured calculations side stepping brutal natural anarchy.
The chill hums and probes the flesh, knocking up the gaps so the gaps so the whole structure does not fall. It does snap and nip at the wind, the bits too close. But it knows, understands the purpose of the march. The legs keep moving, head down just a bit but not bowed. It all keeps momentum forward.
It snaps and breaks into the storm clouds, blinding blue-white arc to the heavens before quieting down back to its cage. Ike turns back and for a brief glorious moment, I feel the storm hit me full force. Glorious rage, condensed and manifested in wind and blade. Furious tantrum anger. Ike turns back to cutting the wind for me so I don't catch flight. Such a gentleman.
He stops and I collide with him. Not my fault. I trust the world to continue on as it should but apparently, he does not. Through the ceaseless haze, he points to an indistinct fuzz several dunes over. Blurred shapes, too narrow, too shallow for a dune. But I see it and nod. He nods, just to confirm my nod. And once more, we venture forth into the jaws of disaster.
Always such a thrilling sensation to bleed chilled spiking arcs. First, is always the pain, the sharp, the cut. Invigorating, immersed in a grand vortex of ice helps the senses collect. It does tend to distract and disorient in greater concentrations. In small doses, like the draw of metal across a whetstone, it sharpens and refines.
Beneath that is the heat, that competition sense against the chill. Pure blood, carrying no current, wells and beads and slips away, carried by the open air into nothing. The skin and the cloth trap it for the briefest of moments before freedom. That is what I feel that bit of confinement, the self-locked behind chain and cage, liquid and effluvial escape inevitable but sluggish and restrained.
All of it, the pain, the warmth, the pressure, and scratch bone bending and muscle clenching beneath the filter of thought is the rolling chill. It is not what I say it is. It is not a formed thing speaking to me of unleashed destruction, chaos anarchy birthed into the world through unlocked will. It is not even a thing, a bit of tangible reality, an organ tucked away and behind a battery charged past capacity. It is not. It simply is. It is and whatever word comes next is wrong. I say it is pain, but that it's the body controlling the release of it. The rapturous containment and trickle of beyond.
It just is.
I house it sometimes. I do my best to sate it, appease the endless appetite, soothe the gnawing hunger I think it calls out as. But it wants nothing because it is nothing at the basest level. It is within me, poking through me, but doing nothing of the sort. It is sideways from me, something beyond my thought, my interactions with the world, my interpretations, my understanding. It does as it wishes, from my point of view, but it may not even wish at all. It is.
I smile as it bubbles and burbles through the warm blood weeping into the sand-stained fabric, poking and prodding, slipping between the lines it takes as it pleases. I watch the dance in the gaps, the playful jumps of innocent exploration, a place it knows well by now. The tattered jacket, threadbare strips that are at least somewhat new. A playground struck by hurricane earthquakes but a set it knows. New gaps, new stretches, but that is just space to mold and shape for itself. It already has my blood and flesh. That belongs to the shell, the thing that I call the presence. Even my mind has so much wonderful rapture writhed from its fold when the chill so desired. Puppet and puppeteer blended together, locked and intertwined.
Ike stops again and I slam into his back. His fault, not mine. I apparently have the insane notion that people should keep on walking in the hellscape we find ourselves in, just so we eventually, hopefully, impossibly, get out of it and go to a place that does not entertain such notions of terrible sandstorms. But I'm the dumb one.
Like a gentleman, he was waiting for me and enduring glorious agony when shelter beckons not a handful of steps away. He is the dumb one, though. Rock and stone make for a better roof than wind and sand, but he insists on staying put and singing the praises of chivalry. I retract my initial dismissal of my intelligence as I peer into the rock.
A cave, but mostly man made, chiles and carved into smooth lines. Odd, but not worth stopping for. What does makes sense of the halt, is the dozen or so people huddled together inside, each one with a chest of layered and lacquered wood in their vicinity. And they are all watching us, eyeing us, hands to knives, the less than fit in the back. Save one, I realize. That specimen points a rifle right between my eyes, so dutifully trained.
Ike puts his hands up and I do the same. I wonder if there are bullets for the gun. I doubt it, but the threat is enough to stay my hand for the moment. Bullets are a pain to remove, tend to splinter and fragment. I swear, bits keep turning up a year or so after. I might even still have some in there, mixing with the blood, passing along the chill current.
My arms grow sore as they linger, held and still. Some masks and lenses turn to the others and I focus on the rifle. What little glimpses of skin I see is tanned and scarred, beaten leather rough, courser than the sand whipping at my back. The chill behaves, for the most part. It still bites and stings with the gaps in my skin, hidden and unseen.
A wave travels through the dozen or so gathered. It's hard to ever recognize them as human or anything close to it. They might not be. Some other slinking slithering things of rock scales that figured out how to stitch and patch the broken things of the sand.
"Friends?" asks the one with the gun.
"Friends," says Ike. He bows his head and I do the same.
"The desert does not discriminate. But we shall. No harm to us, then no harm to you."
Ike nods and leads me to a side as far away as we can get from the group. They still watch us, watch us collapse and shift and settle. I stop watching them after a bit. I'm much more interested in the piles of sand forming at the lip of the cave. Hypnotic really, the rise and fall of endless sand. A mountain to stand the test of time and the elements, only to fail and crumble to dust at the whim of fate.
Ike stays close to me, almost latched to the hip. The gathered masks of hard leather keep watching. We are unknown and thus a threat. They fall into the same category as us if they could actually be effective. As painful as a bullet is, the storm possesses a greater threat overall. Weathered countless times with broken skin and shredded flesh.
"Names," says the man who has set the rifle down.
"Ike," my companion says. "From Fingertree Fort. Had a run in with some slythers and-"
"Jill," I say with a hand to poke and stop the words.
"Slythers," the rifleman continues. I hide a grimace.
"Do not offer more than is asked," I whisper to the poor boy.
"Young ones," I say to the collective, "Wandered from the hive. They were harassing him, but they ran off when the storm hit. Found him shortly before that. We were lucky they weren't full grown. I heard there are some ruins around here, back west. Might be their nest."
Two more masks turn to the rifleman. Between the wind and the cloth, I can't make out the words. They nod and continue the report and our favorite finally breaks eye contact. He joins the hushed voices.
"Don't tell them what I am," I whisper, "Fingertree threw you out, right? There could be a nice reward for the both of us all brought in nice and neat."
