There`s thunder rolling in the distance, faint yet but getting closer. The man, who is now John Ryder, lies on the dusty ground, his hands gathering crumbling lumps of sandy dirt, dying it a dusky maroon before letting it trickle through his fingers again. There is only a slight sense of disappointment, he has always been a patient man.
Lightning momentarily drenches the desert in pale silver and a sudden breeze carries the first powerless droplets against his cheek. He smiles slightly to himself, running a hand over his dusty face. The sky thinks it is raining again, but in truth there will never be anything but a scorching sun shining down on the man lying among the brittle shrubs by the roadside. He closes his eyes and lets its rays blind him.
Stepping out of the murk of the tent, it renders him momentarily blind with its intensity. The men moving around him mere drab – coloured columns in a perpetual yellow veil of desert sand. For a moment he finds it difficult to recall the name he still had then. In that small city of tents he is "Major," spoken in clipped, dutiful tones by too young voices.
In the desert, cowering behind jagged rows of rocks, the staccato of machine-gun fire ringing out above them, broken only by the dull boom of grenades , he is still " Sir," the word shaky and breathless with fear and adrenaline. Only the man curled into a ball next to him has foregone all formalities, as he whimpers for water as the sun turns the puddle of blood beneath him into black dust. The sun that slowly flays their skin off layer by layer, hour upon hour, skinning them like onions. Unbeknownst to him a fiery seed is sown.
When the gunfire finally stops, their hands and faces are raw and bodies dot the scorched landscape. Skinny men in ragged clothes, some of them still moving feebly. Dark eyes in disfigured faces, gazing up at him, filled with hate and terror, bloody foam dropping from contorted mouths as they curse him in a language he hardly understands. They call him a devil.
Looking back, he can`t help but smile at the irony. It is not always your friends that know you best.
The rain is coming down hard now, uselessly trying to touch him when it never again can. He`s got sunshine on a cloudy day, or however that song goes, he has got the sun shining in his heart, scorching his brain, burning right underneath his skin.
Small, chubby hands shielding large blue eyes against the glare falling in through the car window. Two wavering, high – pitched voices mixing with the low hum of the engine, creating a strangely comforting background noise. Beside him the dark haired woman has turned her face away, hiding its unease from him, he knows. She had wanted them to stay on the road, had thought the shortcut he wanted to take too risky, but in the end she had accepted his decision, she always did. He squeezes her knee gently and she gives him a tense smile.
The smile is gone when the car breaks down. She stares into the distance, her lips pressed together in a thin line, trying not to blame, trying not to accuse, as he burns his hands on the blistering – hot entrails of the engine. His efforts remain fruitless. He decides that they will remain with the car, he will walk back to the road. It should take him about four hours he estimates. The children cry and want to come with him, he tells them they can`t. "Bye, daddy", they say, sniffling, and the woman calls him "Honey" and kisses him before he leaves. She tries not to look as scared as he knows she is.
He takes half a bottle of water with him, it is almost empty before he has reached the road again. He follows it for he doesn`t know how long. But he knows that sometimes days can pass without a single car disturbing the surface of that grey ,shimmering river that the heat conjures from the asphalt. Walking and walking he manages to ignore his sweat – drenched shirt clinging to his chest, beginning to chafe painfully, the skin on his cheeks beginning to blister, but when the sun looms red on the horizon, he has to sit down on the crumbling shoulder of the road, just for a little moment.
His eyes feel as if someone had taken a belt sander to them, a dull thrumming pounds inside his skull and he can`t swallow anymore without gagging. He tries not to think of the car, the woman, the children. Suddenly there seems to be a low humming on the wind, a faint roar, and he staggers to his feet again. A silvery dot glistens on the horizon and he shades his eyes with his hand, blinks, strains to see.
An indescribable weight seems to be lifted off his shoulders and he almost trembles with relief, as the dot shape-shifts into the outline of a car. Cutting smoothly through the wavering mirage it approaches swiftly, he can already make out the passengers inside, he raises his arms as he stumbles towards it, tries to yell, but his dry throat refuses to produce even a whisper.
For some reason he will forever be able to recall the tacky green ring on the leathery hand of the red – haired ,elderly woman in the passenger seat as she claps it over her rouged lips in shock, as the car swerves around him. He knows that very moment that they won`t stop for him. His voice will not even let him curse them for it.
More endless time has passed and he can barely see where he is going in the darkness. Sometimes he stumbles and falls and he vainly tries to brush off the gravel embedded in his palms. He is grateful for the pain giving him the least sense of alertness in the dark that seems to spin around him as he staggers on.
When a noise seems to emerge from the pitch – blackness ahead, he has to hold his wheezing breath before he is certain he doesn`t imagine it. He stands stock still as the noise draws nearer, searches for headlights in the distance. There are none, and he realizes that a car with its headlights turned off in the middle of the night will not stop for him, will not stop for anyone. He closes his eyes as it speeds past.
There is nothing but darkness after that, he can`t tell anymore in which direction he is moving, sometimes there is dry dirt crunching under his boots and he doesn`t know if he has not long since staggered off the road into the desert.
When the sun rises again, his tongue is so swollen he cannot close his mouth any longer. The blisters that have formed on the nape of his neck burst and ooze whenever he moves his head and the road seems to rise and fall like an ocean under his feet.
He lets out an almost hysterical chuckle that makes him retch when, after another eternity of barely conscious staggering on, he comes across an empty bottle in the middle of the road. Somehow he must have turned around in the darkness without realizing it. The wind has not yet completely obliterated his footprints in the dirt and he follows them with a sudden odd feeling of serenity.
He knows now what he will do. A thought that comforts and calms him as he finally begins to make his way back to the car. Sometimes he has to stop to heave as his body tries to vomit non – existent stomach contents. After the fourth bout of dry heaving he finds he cannot climb to his feet again. His parched lips crack and bleed when he smiles as he crawls on his hands and knees now. He will make it back to the car and he will take his Swiss Army knife from the glove compartment and slit his wrists right up to the elbows and he will let them drink, he will let them drain him to the very last drop. He can see their grateful faces, their smiles stained red.
The thought drives him through the eternity that passes before the car appears in the sand – coloured blur that surrounds him now. Closer and closer he crawls, they won`t have to wait much longer now, only seconds to salvation. On the wind a low noise reaches his ears, a faint buzzing, he believes he has heard it before, but cannot recall just when and where. When the smell hits him, he remembers. He remembers and everything just stops, he stops his laboured crawl, the wind dies down around him, the buzzing noise ceases and somehow he ceases as well.
Pulling himself up on the door, he casts only a brief glimpse into the car. The faces of the woman and the children are now hidden behind twitching masks of tiny black bodies. They always go for the eyes first, he recalls. He limply slumps on the ground, his head sinking to his chest, as he lets the unyielding sun burn his mind, his name, his life away.
Some time, very much later, there is a change in the buzzing, it grows stronger, louder, deafening, as a storm rises up around the now nameless man. He stares indifferently as the helicopter lands in the rushing sea of dust and weeds, two tense looking men carrying compact white suitcases getting out, running purposefully towards him.
They collect the shell, load it into the helicopter, keep it breathing, keep the sun burning inside it. When he wakes up again in hospital, he knows this sun will never leave him again.
John Ryder spits out a mouthful of rain and raises his head. A car approaches through the deluge. He rises to his feet and ambles down to the road. The rain creates a heavy, grey veil around him and as he sticks out his thumb, he wonders if the driver will be able to see him at all. But the car pulls up a little bit ahead of him. John Ryder jogs towards it and he hopes. He hopes.