Chapter 23
Many hours later, the troop carrier slowed its flight and circled toward the ground. The vessel touched down; Surabot unshackled Darc and Shara.
("And don't let me catch you with an unauthorized shampoo bottle again...")
With an iron hold of their wrists, he shoved them out through the rear port of the craft - and slammed the metal door shut after them.
("This is the last time I fly America West!")
Darc helped Shara onto her feet, and they rushed for cover - the craft's engines had never stopped, and Surabot lifted off without waiting.
("Hey, what about our free in-flight drinks?")
Columns of dust blew up around the rising carrier; from outside, the engine whine was deafening. Holding their ears and closing their eyes hard, the two outlaws crouched behind a cliff until the carrier had flown away.
(Insert Bush-Cheney joke here.)
The couple rubbed their eyes, coughed up sand, and regarded their surroundings.
(They choked on the sand in their lungs and died. The End.)
In Shara's eyes, the landscape offered nothing but miles and miles of rocky desert under a blue, cloud-specked sky.
("Can you see a Holiday Inn?")
Tall cactuses and bushy patches stuck up among the sand-colored rocks, but no other signs of life were evident - not even ruins. The wind rustled through dry bushes and blew Shara's black hair into her face.
("Sandblast - the super-dry shampoo for really greasy hair.")
From the shape of the distant vertical cliffs, with their flat peaks, Darc concluded they were in the central parts of North Amreca, or maybe a desert of South Awrica - or possibly Awstrala.
([Female voice] "You just can't admit you're lost, can you??")
No cities lay in sight. He weighed their water bottles; they would last one day, at most.
(Before Airport Security came and took them.)
"First, we must find water," he explained as he scanned the landscape. "And some firewood. And a cave or a ruin - the nights are cold in the desert."
("With a hot tub. And cable.")
"You're crazy!" she cried. "Can't you see? We're as good as dead! Just promise me one thing -"
("- never take me to see The Vagina Monologues again!")
She hesitated, but when Darc turned to look at her, she gazed steadily into his eyes.
"What?"
(What?)
"Darc... when the Lepers find us... you must kill me first. If I try it myself, I might fail... I can't risk that. Swear, you hear?"
("I ****ing hear you, woman! For ****'s sake, I'm not ****ing deaf!)
Darc shook his head violently, looking away: "No, no, no. Never."
([Techno song] "No no, no-no no-no, no-no no-no, no no there's no limit!")
"You bastard! After all the misery you've caused me, can't you at least do me that final favor?"
She lunged at him, tried to claw out his eyes with her nails; he grabbed her wrists and flung her to the ground.
(BOO!)
He cursed, almost losing his self-control: "Damn you, Shara! I'm trying to think out a way of keeping us alive! If we meet any Lepers, we'll hide or try to talk to them..."
"Ha! The rat talking to the cat!" She spat at his feet.
("I don't know that one, but I can do 'Three Blind Mice'...")
Suddenly, Darc felt like laughing.
(You know... ticklish.)
This situation began to resemble a parody of his endless quarrels with his ex-wife. It could have been Maggie arguing with him in the desert now - her stubby hair ruffled by the breeze, her voice rising to that searing pitch she knew went on his nerves - instead of this black-eyed gypsy of a woman, determined to die out of plain superstition...
(Of course, nobody in his day and age got killed by superstition...)
Shara noticed that he was grinning, and stood up. She wrapped her cloak around her; the sun was coming out of a cloud, and the heat was dry and unforgiving.
(And the nouns marched across the page, accompanied by legions of "was.")
Surly yet defiant, she asked: "All right then, crazy man. Where do we find water?"
("With this magical water-finding stick I bought from a native.")
As a child, Darc had hated his time in the Boy Scouts, and they soon kicked him out for insubordination - but now, he was grateful for the Boy Scouts having taught him the essentials of wilderness survival.
("One: Never be alone with the Scoutmaster. Two: Never volunteer for anything.")
("This sight always makes me think of the fall of the Soviet Union.")
From the tiny cave that they had found, Darc and Shara could only see black land and starry sky. Their puny campfire seemed the only thing that prevented the cold night from reaching inside.
("Hulk smash puny campfire!")
This, Darc thought to himself, is what the world must've looked like before electricity - a great darkness lurking in the night. You hear a wolf or a nightly bird... and you imagine all kinds of monsters out there, waiting for you.
(Celebrities... lurking out there, waiting for a chance to adopt you.)
I should know better. I should. If only I wasn't so damn hungry and cold.
Shara sat wrapped up in her thick cloak; Darc's cloak was thinner and failed to keep him warm. He huddled closer to Shara. When he spoke, vapor steamed from between his lips.
"Sorry about this mess, but I'm sure there's a way out."
(I am Jack's platitudes.)
Shara sniffed at him, and looked away.
("Ever heard of deodorant?")
If he tried something, she would crack his skull open with the rock she was hiding in her hands.
(It's The Bill & Hillary Show!)
"Could you tell me something, Shara... just to keep my mind off the cold?"
("Did I tell you about the time I swallowed an ice cube?")
Every time he felt cold, Darc remembered the terror of being thawed out of his cryonic sleep... a memory he wanted to blot out as much as possible. He explained, with chattering teeth: "I mean, anything. For instance, who are you? Who are you really?"
("Oh, I'm just a mass of atoms configured in complex molecular structures...")
His request confused her. Nobody had ever wanted to know who she really was; from her childhood, she had survived by learning to pretend and deceive.
Eventually, the word "truth" become an empty joke to her - better than most city-dwellers, she knew the hypocrisy and falseness of adulterous husbands and their spendthrift sons.
(Coming soon as a ten-part series on PBS!)
Only her intelligence and stubborn self-preservation had saved her from becoming a prostitute and drunkard.
(Sure, tell yourself that.)
If some complete stranger was asking her to reveal the bleak truth, she was certainly not prepared to oblige... but her curiosity had been tempted by Darc's weirdness.
"You tell me first," she asked after a while. "Who the King's ass are you?"
("I'm Cherokee Jack!")
Darc chuckled - a funny sound, because he shuddered as he did so.
"Truth is stranger than fiction," he said. "Once I was a rich man, nine hundred years ago.
("I owned Google stocks.")
I fell sick, they froze me down before I died. Lord Damon found me, and they brought me back to life. After that, it's just one mess after another... maybe this is all just a bad dream."
("Maybe I just dreamed 2001-2007.")
Shara smiled at him; she was fond of confidence games, but rarely got the chance to play them with others.
("Say, have you tried Three-Card Monte?")
"Oh yeah? Then where do I fit into your nightmare?"
("There's a space between the eight-foot vampire and Osama bin Laden.")
"If all this is just a dream... then I guess you're a dream image of my last wife. You have her temper, but you're more beautiful than she ever was."
("Which isn't saying much.")
Looking away, she replied: "If I was dreaming this, you would be... a witchdoctor or a holy fool... No, I just don't know."
(Grammar, that is.)
"Nonsense," he muttered.
(Actually, it sounded more like: "N'sn's.")
And yet - to most people in this world, that was exactly who he was. It annoyed him, especially because it came from her. A silent determination filled him, to show this world just what he was capable of.
("Look! I can wiggle my ears!")
A wink of light from outside caught their attention. Shara's reaction was swift and determined: she tore off her cloak and quenched the campfire with it. The cave went pitch dark and cold.
"What are you doing?"
([Panicky] "You did not see me play with a Shakira doll!")
"Quiet!" Shara whispered. "They mustn't find us!"
They watched the dark outside, but saw nothing more - the tiny light had just flared up for a moment, far away, then vanished.
"We must move," Shara said. "In daylight, they can find us. We must flee now."
Mindlessly, she stood up and stumbled toward the cave opening. Darc got to his feet and grabbed her from behind.
("Mr. Clinton!... Oh, it's you.")
They wrestled in the dark, and fell into the hot ashes of the campfire. Shara screamed, and tumbled away from the ashes. Darc held on to her, though she kept fighting.
(Someone, somewhere, found this page by Googling "campfire fetish.")
"Listen, Shara! It's in the middle of the night, you can't see a thing, and there are snakes in the desert -"
"King's shit!" she protested. "I'd rather be bitten by snakes than taken by Lepers!"
("Furthermore, I'd rather be chased by wolves than sit through 300!")
A scraping noise suddenly came from outside the cave - and they both froze still. Something was sniffing at the cave entrance, scraping its nails - or claws - against the rocks.
("Damn it, why'd you have to tell your sister we were staying here?")
Darc and Shara had no knives. From the gravel, Darc dug up a heavy stone for a weapon.
(And with a piece of flint, he sculpted it into a flamethrower!)
A few moments later, a black shape appeared in the cave opening. It could be anything - to Darc, its ragged outline indicated a rat, the size of a lion. The creature poked its dark head into the opening.
("Hi! How are ya?")
Darc stood up, trembling, and hurled the rock at the intruder. It hit the creature in the eye with a heavy, wet thud - it screeched horribly, and darted away with a rustling of bushes and rocks.
Shara whispered a prayer, her first sincere one in a long, long time: "Kristos, save me..."
("... from Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.")
Darc used his head: they couldn't light a fire, but they needed to shut out the "things", so he had to block the cave opening.
(He pushed his head through the opening, and sealed it shut.)
He took a stick from the campfire ashes, and felt his way through the narrow cave. Shara listened as she heard him carry and push minor boulders and rocks to the opening.
([Female voice] "No, move that big rock into the other corner... no, that doesn't look right... put the small rocks over there...")
In a while, he had built a crude barricade covering almost half of the entrance. It also kept some of the cold outside.
"There," he gasped, "that ought to be enough. Now I have to ask you to share bed with me."
("We'll saw the bed in half.")
"No! Don't you touch me!"
"That's not what I meant - never on an empty stomach. I just want to keep from freezing my ass off. Right?"
(...as the Congressman said to the Bishop.)
Shara consented; they wrapped themselves together in her cloak, and Darc folded into a pillow - carefully, since he didn't want to damage the hidden things inside. Even fully clothed, Shara's curvy body felt soft and warm against his lanky, tall one.
([Female voice] "I'm incontinent.")
She was tense at first, prepared for an assault; but as the minutes passed, she relaxed somewhat in his arms.
"Did you ever spend a night like this with your last wife?" she asked.
("Not a night... every damn, frigid 'I-have-a-headache' night!")
They couldn't even see each other - only feel each other's breath, smell each other's stale sweat.
(Unbridled passion in the retirement home!)
"No. She often wanted to drag me into the wilderness, and I always refused. I wanted to study nature in safety... not be out in it, where it would try to eat me."
(The Grizzly Man did not share this view.)
Shara giggled, forgetting her anxiety for a moment. She stroked his cheek, and said softly: "Please be quiet now. I'm so tired."
("Of you.")
They slept.
(*SNORRRK*... *ZZZ*...)
DARC AGES (c)A.R.Yngve 1995, 2000, 2004. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.
______________
A.R.Yngve
The MSTing Of
DARC AGES
Book 1.9
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("This place used to be casinos all the way the horizon...")
The sun sank, red and bloated, below the distant, vertical cliffs - and darkness swallowed the desert.
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