War. War never changes. Since the dawn of time, man has struggled to etch out an existence that seemed to be cursed with hardship, causing one friend to turn against the other, brothers to suddenly become enemies. This struggle culminated with the Great War, sending the collective world of humanity into another dark age of new horrors, one where the homo sapien was no longer dominant. Great Vaults held refuge for those of lucky stock - at least it seemed. For hundreds of years after, the world struggled to right itself, with not much to show, as human nature is not so easy to tame.
But sometimes, forces from beyond a mere man's understanding decide to exert their influence, and change the fate of an entire wasteland. This is a tale of an individual thrust from one world to the next, one of relative comfort to one of blasted and scorched hell-on-earth. This tale is of his journey, one of undoubted pain, blood, sweat, and tears in the search of an explanation, and purpose.
He woke with a gasp and sat upright. Something wasn't right. A minute ago he had been comfortably falling into a deep sleep in his bed after a grueling day's work, and now…
It was the air; it was dry, and had an uncanny smell, as if everything good and pure had been sucked out of it. Becoming more uneasy by the second, he unconsciously reached to his right for the lamp switch, but found himself groping empty air. "What the-," he muttered.
Suddenly, he realized his only light source was coming unnaturally through cracks and slivers in the wall. Cautiously he twisted his body so his feet were hanging over the bedside. He allowed himself to slowly slip of the bed, and planted his feet on the floor. He gasped at the feeling he received from his bare skin. Not only was the floor chalked with dust, the boards were uneven and sticking higher than others in some places. By this time his uneasiness had turned to palpable fear as he stumbled around the room blindly searching for something, anything to shed light on his surroundings.
Suddenly his hand brushed what felt like a door handle and he stopped. With apprehension he tentatively gripped it and turned it clockwise. The door for a moment didn't budge, but after a moment of determined pulling on his part the door abruptly blew open, revealing a blinding light, stunning him as he shielded his face. Slowly the light lost its blinding power as his eyes adjusted.
His first impression of the light was not of its luminosity, but the deadly heat that seemed to emanate from it. He slowly allowed his hands to fall away to his sides, and that's when he realized what the light was.
It was the sun. It wasn't the sun he remembered rising yesterday in the east, but one impossibly brighter, and suited to a desert climate. That's when it dawned on him. He was in a desert. From horizon to horizon was an endless stretch of plain tan wasteland, speckled with an occasional dying plant. He opened his mouth and tried to form words, but he quickly shut it after it seemed to instantaneously adhere with the parching desert heat. For a minute he was transfixed by the sight in front of him and felt his insides turn upside down with a near-debilitating shock. He was finally pulled from his stupor by the overbearing sun, which had the uncanny ability to give him a sunburn in a matter of minutes. He ducked back into the shack, and examined his newly-lit surroundings.
The place was crudely built, with what seemed to be a patchwork of both wood and metal. Its dimensions added up to be even less than the size of his bedroom in his expansive condo back in Houston. Placed in the center and against the back wall was the bed he had been laying in, and with revulsion he noticed it was just two tattered mattresses lying on top of each other, with what looked awfully similar to a burlap sack used as a blanket. Scattered across the floor was a number of random items that spanned from pots and pans to syringes. "Syringes?" he wondered with a mutter to himself.
His gaze then rested on a faucet against the right wall, and he didn't realize until he had rushed across the room and nearly yanked off the handle how parched his mouth really was. As if mocking his urgency, it took half a minute to produce a very small trickle of water, which he eagerly drank. A second later he stood up with a grimace as he wiped his mouth of the foul-tasting water. Sighing despondently, he sat down on the makeshift bed and put his head in his hands.
Suddenly his ears picked up a distant sound. The noise was subtly shaking the boards beneath him, and it was getting louder and closer. Sitting up he looked out the door to see a highly erratic dust cloud approaching. Perplexed, he stood up and walked to the doorway and peered out. The cloud was about a quarter of a mile away and approaching fast, but this wasn't what he saw. Leading the cloud was a red and black object that he couldn't decipher, but it was heading his direction. A minute later he realized it was some sort of car, but then he changed his mind a half a minute later when the desert haze inhibiting his sight was traversed by the object, and he saw it was a dune buggy with two occupants. "Oh thank God," he said gratefully as he ran out to greet the new arrivals.
As he ran out toward them, the buggy suddenly began to twist and zigzag as it made its way towards him, and a moment later he was able to pick up screams and shouts coming from inside the vehicle. For a second he became panicked thinking that they had somehow lost control of the buggy and were yelling in fear, but then he realized as they came closer they were screams and shouts of emphatic laughter. The buggy abruptly came to a halt twenty feet from him, stirring up a large cloud of dirt and obscuring his view.
"Uh, hello? Can you please help me, I-I don't know where I am," he said cautiously as he pressed forward to the buggy through the thick shroud of dust.
"Haw man, that thing knows how to throw you around doesn't it?" a rough voice suddenly said loudly in front of him. The buggy was finally visible as he approached, and he saw its two occupants, who both had full length beards, tattered bandanas covering their mouth and noses like some old western movie, and riding goggles use the handlebars on each side of the cabin to throw themselves out on the ground.
"I told you! Aren't you glad we stole it from them Johnson boys now?" the man on the driver side replied with a wild laugh. "Yeah, now we don't have to load up the Brahmin every single time we-" his counterpart started to say, but stopped short once he saw the man. His look of brief shock turned to a crooked grin as he examined the man from head to toe.
"What in Sam hell do we have here?" he said after silently surveying the man. "Hey Lloyd, check out what I've found!" he loudly exclaimed.
"What are you going on about-" the driver said as he came over to the passenger side of the buggy, but stopped just as abruptly as his friend when he saw the man. The same lopsided grin came to his face as he looked over the perplexed man. The driver known as Lloyd suddenly burst out laughing as he said, "Well, what do we have here! You lost boy?" he said with an unsettling grin.
"Uh, yeah, I don't know where I am, I just woke up in that shack over there," the man said pointing behind him. There was uneasy silence as he looked to each of the men, who simply continued to give him unnerving grins.
Finally the passenger side man said to the driver without taking his eyes off the man, "So what do you want to do Lloyd?" The driver's smile turned almost malicious as he said to the confused man, "Let's go to the shack and we'll talk about your…situation," he said, motioning for the man to lead the way. The man looked apprehensively from the driver to his companion, who gave him a toothy grin and a thumbs up as he turned to go back to the shack. It wasn't even five seconds before he felt a heavy and painful blow to the back of the head and then black.
A sense of vertigo came with his awakening, and then an excruciating pain in the back of his head. He then realized the dizziness and lack of direction was because he was actually spinning. Opening his eyes slowly as to minimize the effect of the nausea, he saw that he was back in the shack, but from a different perspective.
His hands had been tied together by some dirty rag or shirt into a triple knot, which was bound around one of the rafters of the ceiling. His feet had also been bound firmly with a faded bandana. His spinning came from the partially cracked door and the almost gale force winds outside, which seemed to have brought in an actual dust storm. Looking frantically around, he saw he was alone again, but a kerosene lamp had been lit, illuminating most of the shack with a fickle flame. He instantly started to test his bindings, seeing if he could loosen them at all. Wasn't happening, whoever these guys were they had done this before. The knowledge of this fact brought even more fear to his already adrenaline filled mind, giving him more motivation to find a way out of this nightmare. He began to twist and contort his body as he wildly swung about, trying to loosen something that kept him captive, even using the wall as a springboard to gain increased momentum.
That's when he heard a crack from above. Craning his neck to look up, he saw that his efforts had been awarded by a partially broken rafter that his restraints were anchored to. He earnestly began to tug on the board, but before he could negotiate it anymore the ramshackle door burst open, ushering in his two captors. He stopped what he was doing immediately, leaving him swinging back and forth as they watched from behind their glasses and covering bandanas. He looked at them with a barely concealed look of fear, expecting the worst. His response came in a small chuckle from one of them, turning into uproarious laughter shared by both of them. The two removed their bandanas and continued to keel over in amusement, revealing two grotesque sets of decaying teeth, giving his stomach the urge to turn upside down.
When they had finally contained themselves, the one on the left managed to say as he wiped tears out of his eyes, "Just what in heck are you doing?" He didn't respond, but other guy had already figured it out.
"Tryin' to escape, that's what," he said with a malicious, scrutinizing smile. The man, too paralyzed with obvious dread, didn't reply again, making the one called Lloyd chuckle as he produced a large Bowie knife from in between his shirt and trousers and began flipping it around in his hands playfully.
"I think we can teach him a lesson without affectin' the askin' price," he said with a devilish grin at his counterpart. His partner returned the look, and they both side by side turned on their captive, which is exactly what the man wanted.
He was still swinging, giving him enough momentum to arch his body backwards in order to plant his feet firmly on the shack's wall, allowing him then to push forward with hurtling force into the unsuspecting pair, sending them flying backwards into the opposing wall with startled yelps and finally dislodging him from his restraint with a crack of the overhead board and a face plant on the floor. He recovered quickly though, frantically trying to loosen the rags clasping his hands together, succeeding just seconds before the other two recovered and looked at him wide eyed that quickly escalated into murderous glares as they bum rushed him with hoarse cries.
An infinitesimal moment passed in the man's mind in the span of a second as he perceived his situation. The moment passed by, and the man sprung forward and grabbed the Bowie knife that had fallen on the floor, swiftly bringing it upwards, plunging it into its owner's belly, stopping all movement for another second in the shack.
A startled gasp came from the shocked bearded man's face as he realized what had happened to him, his accomplice staring in shock at the result. To make things worse, the man tried to dislodge himself from the blade by backing up, making him succeed removing himself from it, just allowing him to topple in a drunken way to the floor, where he stayed. Shock wore off as the other man recovered and gave a hate-filled look at his former prisoner, muttering, "You son of a-," before reaching to his holster, but falling short as the move was anticipated and blocked with a parry from the man, then a swift punch to knock out cold the unexpecting bandit.
The man looked upon the scene, his body heaving with the effort it had taken that he had never known, his mind running in a nigh indiscernible swirl he could barely comprehend. He…had just done this. Him.
His brain awakened from the unreality he found himself in a moment later with the stinging feeling of sand and dust pellets striking his cheek at gale force speed from the outside, reminding the rest of him of his predicament. Next step. He slowly shook himself from the stupor of the situation, and looked around. There was nothing for him here, he had to get out…somehow. His eyes went to the open door, seeing a moment later after inspection of the outside the buggy parked several yards away, almost concealed by the storm. There.
He began to move, but then stopped when reality set in once again. He couldn't go out like he was. Boxers and a t-shirt wouldn't stand a chance out there. His eyes fell on the unmoving forms of his two former captors as his insides threatened to upend again. Fighting the bodily urge, he stepped over and gingerly removed the unconscious man's bandana, as well as goggles. His eyes flitted downwards and took note of the man's tattered coat and trousers, but only for a second. He couldn't bear to do it.
Stepping back, he looked around for an alternate source, finding to his surprise a pair of clothes laying on one of the decrepit tables, along with a collar of some sort. His mind only had to wander for a second before putting the pieces together. It was meant for him, slave gear, like in the movies on Antiquity.
Snatching up the patchwork array of clothes and avoiding the piece of metal with revulsion, he donned them quickly, the acrid smell ever so present, then checked his surroundings again. His parched mouth nearly devoid of any moisture reminded him of an essential in whatever this wasteland was. He moved his gaze to the sink, and saw conveniently two canteens there, prompting him to go over and check their contents. One was completely empty, the other half full. Taking this one, he waited for the creaky faucet to produce a trickle of water, filling it at an agonizing slow pace as he watched anxiously the two bodies.
Finally full, he screwed on the lid and made his way to the door, forgetting almost his lack of footwear. He scanned the room, but found none other than on the feet of the two men. Pushing back his feelings, he knelt down and maneuvered the boots off the unnamed man's feet, finishing the work a moment later and trying them on. Too big, but it was them or nothing.
Looking around for any more essentials, his gaze rested on one of the open cabinets to the side, finding a lone small Hostess-like box, its label faded, but still readable. Fancy Lad Snackcakes. What? What's more the artwork seemed to hearken back to a time before he was even born, but no matter. Grabbing the box, the man stuffed it in his clothes pocket before heading to the outside.
Wait - something glimmering had reflected off his peripheral vision. Turning back, the man scanned the room fully, then back again, catching the glint as he came full circle. There, on the stand next to the bed. He walked over, then stopped dead in front of it. It couldn't be, but was it the same? The gold lettering of the small, compact book told him the contents. Beyond Boundaries. Ever so cautiously he picked it up, as if was a talisman, and slowly opened the cover.
The second evidence ratified the first: it was his mother's writing. It was a devotional she'd given him, out of the blue as it was, and inscribed inside an encouragement to read it. Not that he had, schedule and all, so it eventually became like a Gideon Bible, staying on his nightstand and collecting dust. He wasn't even sure what it was about entirely. That wasn't the debate raging in his head though. How did it get here? What was all this? Searching around for a moment, futilely nothing else related to him could be found. Sighing after flipping through briefly, he pocketed the book with resignation and walked to the front.
Standing in the doorway, the man looked out at the fierce storm, then back inside to the inception of this nightmare he had been found in, as if the shack could hold some clue to what in the slightest happened to bring him here. Was it all a dream? No - too lucid, too painful. Anything else was possible though.
One of the bodies of the men moved, and then some more. No more ruminations. The man took off into the storm towards the buggy, struggling against the stinging wind to reach it, finally doing so after some effort, climbing into the driver's seat and finding the keys in the ignition. A miracle. He twisted the inserted key, receiving a roar of the engine in return, bringing relief to him as he gripped the steering wheel.
Where to? The two…men had come from the opposite direction, but could have made any number of twists and turns to reach the current place. He couldn't wait though, not with one of them still breathing. The man's other hand went to the clutch and shifted, putting the car into reverse and pressing the gas as he twisted the wheel, pulling the vehicle away from the shack and putting its back to it, then the gear was shifted forward as the man accelerated away from the decrepit building, deeper into the storm that personified his ambiguous future.