Dirt kicked up from underneath the spinning bus wheels as they went along the unpaved road. Cold steel hung heavily around his wrists and ankles while Dirk did the only thing he could do in this situation- stare out of the prison bus' window. There wasn't honestly much to see out there- besides oil rigs and left to die farm land that saw too much sun and not enough rain. It hadn't taken long in all honesty to chain each prisoner together, prod them onto bus 27 and send them off into the lands were the mafia often buried their dead to not be found again. The dust that was being kicked up from the sandy road made a film grain across the window, only allowing minimum visibility. His eyes, squinted even now, from the harshness of the sun streaming into the window. Kar sat not too far ahead of him, while Evert sat horizontally behind him. They passed several other prisoners, those he assumed had been the first few trips on bus 27 or perhaps another cell block all together from the different color jumpers. He let out a slow breath, feeling the grate in his throat from what particles wormed their way inside through the buses small holes in its metal skeleton.
The prisoners they passed were working hard digging for silo supports or building, some were tilling the land and others were harvesting as best they could. Dirk watched each they passed until they crossed the eyesight of one who was staring straight ahead into the sun. His eyes fell on him first- almost catching sight of him in slow motion- before he was gone. The prisoner's eyes were sunken and there were three long scratches on his cheek, and Dirk had to do a double take before the other was gone. Long left behind in the dust cloud; though he could swear that they had been staring straight into each other's eyes for a moment. A brief, incomprehensible understanding and knowledge of each other's presence on some… strange level. Dirk swallowed, feeling the same stone settle in the bottom of his gut before looking away from the window. He already had enough on his plate than some prisoner who was half crazed by sunstroke. His orange eyes focused forward on the guards with shotguns, one being in the front beside the driver and the other in the back.
Dirk looked down at his feet then, not wanting to look at anyone too long to make him think he was trying to start something. The inmate behind him had a nasty bruise from doing that early on in the ride. If you stared too long, they would make you unable to stare at them again. There was something sobering in that, he imagined. He let himself continue to breath slowly, pretend that he was unaware of what was going to happen to him shortly… and truly, he really didn't know. Kar and Evert had been extremely vague in what they were going to put Dirk through and he didn't know whether to be grateful for not having fear on the edge of his mind going into this… or fearful of the unknown itself. In mere minutes he was sure to find out. Though as he thought this, the bus wheels started to grind to a stop, bus shaking and sputtering with the mildly rough terrain. "Look alive, ladies! Time to get off your asses and work for a living!" They were ushered up from their positions via two to a seat and made to stand in a line going off the bus. The sun immediately hit him and he could have sworn that his skin sizzled underneath it. Of course, he was nowhere near as pale as Roxy was… but he was still very close to cue ball color.
He stepped out and guards shut and locked the bus door behind the last person. They had their cuffs unlocked from their wrists and ankles and the Warden looked down at them all. He stood between the inmate who had told him the guards stole food from the inmates and another who was twice his size. Dirk's eyes glanced around a bit more wildly than they should have, more out of the desire to memorize his surroundings now he wouldn't feel so… exposed. The Warden tapped his cowboy boots on the sand, chewing something in his mouth before spitting it out on the ground. It was probably the grossest thing he knew; people spitting tobacco chew on the ground. At least smoking a cigarette looked a little dignified versus just hacking a wad on the ground. The man's voice drew Dirk out of his thought's, "Welcome to El Desierto. Where you ladies will be spending the next twelve hours doing whatever tasks that the owner of this property wishes. You all know the drill but for our new comers today..." His wicked, almost sharp, grin formed looking at Dirk through his sunglasses, "I'll explain the rules." He walked around. "We aren't within establishments walls anymore! So there are no rules!" The Warden shouted as they were circled by men with shotguns. Dirk felt very… very, exposed.
"If you try to run?" He asked rhetorically and pointed to his left, "There is a town, about a hundred and fifty miles to your right!" His arm went the other direction, "And that way is about a river two hundred miles. Back behind you is a good seventy mile walk back home and in front of you is a cliff. All of these directions are void of water, food, shade, and covered with every poisoness son of a bitch creature you'll ever meet. So… We will not come after you. We will not remember you. Go! Shoo!" He was still grinning, "We won't even come to pick up the body. One person has tried that journey before. And we found his bones on a hike a couple years later." Dirk swallowed, throat already feeling raw from the lack of water. The Warden chuckled at their joint looks. "We do have the right though, if you fuck around, or start trouble, or not listen… to shoot you and let you bleed out. We have no rules here." He nodded, "Go see the owner for your work duties and we'll come pick you all up when your day is done. Except you, 413, who is gonna stay here and work until your fingers and toes bleed."
Dirk looked up at him, lips sealed shut with a glance from Evert and Kar toward him, otherwise, no one stood up for him. No one would. He didn't lower his head though, he had done enough of that under the shadow of Nathanial. They were forced to walk, the Warden waving goodbye to them as they left before climbing back on the bus where there was air conditioning. Dirk followed in the group as some started to dig pylons for the oil rigs or sickles for the crops. Either way, the group was split in half to do their shares of the work. As they did, Kar grabbed him around the bicep and took him into the line for the crops since he was still standing in the line they were first in. "Leave you alone for fifteen minutes and the Warden fucking gives you overage days." He murmured, pushing a sickle into his hand and a cloth. "What's this for?" He asked softly, trying not to draw attention to them since Kar had been whispering to him. "For when your hands bleed." Evert murmured beside him; how the larger man moved around so quietly he would never know. He picked up a basket and same items Kar had just handed to him before gesturing to Dirk for him to follow.
They went out into the fields, where crops stretched for miles. There was a 'shitty' irrigation system that broke half the time and made them work in the mud. Dirk didn't waste his time trying to figure out why it didn't work or why the lines were broken on some of the attachments. The men with shotguns regularly patrolled, and he didn't dare make them angry. A lot of the inmates complained about their feet having fungus when it let loose for a second time before another hour was up. Chopping down plants wasn't the hard part strangely enough; it was dealing with the heat. The water issues (both drinking and mud) and the fact that Dirk was so sunburnt by the time the next hour rolled by that Kar was thinking about holding him underneath a corn stalk. "Who gets this fucking pale?" He asked under his breath, shaking his head at Dirk's now cherry red skin- it was peeling horribly.
Kar's own was tanned, like he had been doing this long enough to get one. Meanwhile, Evert had the skin tone that claimed he had been in sunshine much more than either of them had. Dirk didn't think it could get much worse by the time the sun was directly over their heads. Two inmates had fainted already. He swallowed against dry, cracked lips that were slightly parted to breath in the boiling air. Dirk felt like he was being cooked alive in his own skin and leaned up, back popping with the movement he had been bent over so long. He felt a weight being pushed onto his head and he looked up to see Evert had put a baseball cap on his head. Dirk blinked tiredly, wavering where he was standing, the other man looked down at him for a moment before letting go of the edge. He looked up at it, seeing it was orange in color to match his jumpsuit. Ironic.
"Thank you." He said softly and Evert shrugged, putting the stocks they were cutting from the plants in his basket. "Orange is more your color than mine." He cut the next stalk, the cloths wrapped around his hands. Dirk looked at his own that weren't thankfully raw yet from the sickle. It wasn't a sword, but he had built up enough strength in his hands to withstand something like this. He went back to cutting, not removing the baseball cap from his head. It gave him a little relief from the star above him. Kar swore at times, but kept uncharacteristically silent as he worked. Guards would wander past, smoking their cigarettes and checking their shotguns. They would make the offhanded remark at times telling them to hurry or there were still thousands more to cut down. Dirk said nothing, nor did the two inmates he found himself working between. It was strange to almost feel a kinship between the men by his side. Even if they were convicts, or hell, trolls at one point. It didn't seem to matter now as the sun kept making its way across the sky until it was nearly sunset. The guards came for them… all except 413.
Kar looked back at him as he boarded the bus and the guard that remained kept a shotgun trained on Dirk. He tried to offer a small smile, but it didn't come. He was ushered toward other workers who had apparently pissed off their own Wardens and told to start working. Dirk looked up at the large oil silo, the piston moving rapidly as men either wielded, tossed coal into flames, built more, or dug for the pillars to hold them up would be deeper. The end of a shotgun was pushed into his back and he started forward, the sun setting and flood lights were turned on. He took off his upper jumper with a hiss, wrapping it around his waist as he grabbed a wielding tool and started to climb- like all the inmates, up the pylons holding up the giant make-shift oil rig to stabilize the piston pumping oil out of the ground. It made him curious, when he wasn't too tired to think, who would have oil rigs that were one, as shitty as these were, and two, would hire inmates to do their dirty work. He supposed prison labor was cheaper but… there was a point where someone should draw the line between the work of experts and the work of a criminal. His own thought made him pause for once. Was that what he was now? A criminal being used as cheap labor?
He frowned hard, straddling the beam as he made sure another bolt didn't raddle it's way loose and kill everyone above him. It sobered his raging thoughts… Along with the idea that he wasn't going to get a chance to really explore that train of thought for long. Dirk had been working so long at this point that the minutes had gelled together and in the distance, he saw a bus coming toward the group of inmates that had done the overnight work. None of them had spoken to each other- a form of solitary he supposed. No one talked, so no would stop being productive. The bus screeched to a stop from old breaks as he wandered over and stood in line with the rest. Kar and Evert looked him over. The sunglasses, orange ball cap, black tank-top with orange over-alls tied tightly around his waist. The sunburn on his shoulders and bleeding hands. For a moment it was the oddest thing, like they knew him before, as they saw the Warden step off the bus and looked straight into Dirk's eyes. "Look who decided to stay here! I guess he thought he couldn't run as fast as his mouth." There was a half second that Dirk wondered if he should let it go before sighing out, "I would tell you to go fuck yourself but I'm pretty sure you'd be disappointed." The other inmate's mouths dropped while Kar grinned like he'd won the lottery. Evert groaned with a soft utterance of, "Foolishness."
