Arch/Eternal - Chapter Three

Long walks in the desert

This is Arch/Eternal, a sprawling novel-in-progress in the genre of philosophical sci-fi. Think Dune meets Harry Potter, and maybe channeling a little bit of Dan Simmons.

If you’d like to start from the beginning, here’s the Prologue.

And if you’d like to follow along with the world-building behind the story, take a look at the companion series shamelessly titled A Terran’s Guide to the Galaxy.

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Chapter Three: Long Walks in the Desert

I shook Andre awake. 

The sun hadn’t broken the horizon yet, and the morning still had its chill. The grumbling of the old engine was getting louder.

“We’ve got to go.”

Andre rubbed his eyes blearily and tried to get a handle on consciousness. “It’s so early.”

I pointed wordlessly in the direction of the truck heading our way.

“Oh shit,” Andre noted.

He started rolling up his sleeping pad while I crammed our belongings into bags. 

We weren’t fast enough.

As I fumbled with the tent, trying to take it down, something smacked into the dirt next to me, kicking up dust with a soft THAP. As I tried to figure out what it was, two more THAPs kicked up two more puffs of dust nearby.

“They’re shooting at us!” Andre shouted.

I blinked at my brand new tent, whole impossible minutes from being packed away.

“Come on!” Andre shoved my pack at me and then hauled ass toward the nearest ravine. 

Between more THAPs and puffs, I could hear shouts of laughter under the growl of the truck’s engine. With a sharp twist of grief, I loped after Andre. 

It was hard to hide in the desert. Great for stargazing, not great for getting away from a bunch of dicks with BB guns. For a little while, though, we thought we’d lost them. The truck swung wide of us as we continued to wind our way back home.

But pretty soon, as we tried to keep distance between ourselves and the erratic, zigzagging truck, I figured out what was happening. The guys in the truck were cutting us off. Shepherding us off course, further into the desert.

There was nothing we could do. Exhausted and helpless, we kept walking, marching aimlessly into the arid wilderness that seemed to stretch forever ahead. 

Before noon, we finished off the snacks we brought, and water was getting dangerously low. Neither of us had a phone, but it wouldn’t have done any good if we did. The nearest tower was probably two hundred miles away. 

At one point, Andre stopped and shook his head. “I’m not doing this.” 

I felt too persecuted to respond.

“Those deuchebags are going to walk us into the desert until we collapse, then drive away laughing. I’m not gonna die like that.”

“What do you—“ I started, but my voice was a rasp. I cleared my throat. “What do you wanna do?”

Andre started walking in the other direction, towards home. “If they want to kill us,” he said, “they’re going to have to do it themselves.”

As I watched my friend, I felt a swell of admiration. His courage melted away all the fear and helplessness. I would have followed him anywhere.

Our pursuers noticed right away. With a rumble of the engine, the truck made a storm of the desert floor, and headed straight for us. As it got closer, it became clear that if it kept going, it would run us over. 

Andre stopped, but didn’t turn around. He just stood there and watched the truck come at us. I stood next to him with an eery calm. My stomach fluttered as I watched the truck grow larger, the cloud of dust and dirt filling the horizon. 

“They’re not going to hit us,” Andre said.

“No?”

 “No.”

I thought Andre was probably right — hitting us would be outright murder, pretty tough to explain — but that logic was hard to hold onto as they got closer. All of my senses keyed into the roar of the engine, the chattering sound of tires chewing through dry dirt, and the image of that truck becoming huge, filling my vision, until I could swear I saw bits of tumbleweed flossed in the grill. Behind the windshield, a teenage boy’s wide, vicious grin.

That would be Sean Claw, Jeff Claw’s older brother by a few years. There had been a time when Jeff and I were friends. But the Claws were a big family, and had deeper roots in Wind Valley than anyone else. As soon as Sean realized his little brother was hanging out with me, the bastard son of the scoundrel Jacob River and the hated Sayer family — he helped set the boy right in short order. That had been a year or two after my mom had disappeared. Ever since, I had endured petty insults and general antagonism from Jeff, but Sean was the one I learned to be afraid of. He was the kind that would hurt you.

At 14, he wasn’t old enough for a license, but he was more than big enough to drive. 

In the end, it was easy not to run. My visceral panic froze me into place just fine. At the last second, Sean cranked the wheel, veered sharply out of the way, and kicked up a tidal wave of earth that left us shielding our eyes and coughing into our arms. 

“Looks like we caught the fags!” shouted another boy from the truckbed. 

As they dust cleared, we looked up to see Sean and Jeff in the cab, and two others in the back. 

“Where you fags headed?” the second one asked. 

“They want to go back to that shitty little trailer,” his friend laughed.

“Isn’t that where that old bitch lives? The one with all the snake oil?”

“His grandma,” Sean yelled from inside.

“Running back to grandma’s house!”

“Whataya wanna go back there for? You should come hang.”

“Yeah, you guys wanna hang?”

“No fag stuff, though.”

“Yeah no fag stuff.”

Andre started walking again. 

I followed. 

“Hey! Don’t walk away from me! You walk away from me you better RUN, little fags!”

The truck’s engine revved again, and they pulled around in front of us again, then stopped. The engine clicked off.

Sean got out and walked toward us. He was wearing a dusty white shirt with a picture of a sunset printed on it. He had long hair, and some wispy hair on his chin that somehow made him look meaner. His skin was darker than mine, with more Navajo in his blood. A badge of belonging.

“You wanna walk? Walk.”

Andre and I studied the ground. 

“Did you hear me?”

“Yeah we heard you,” Andre said.

“What?”

“I said we heard you.”

“Walk away, you little bitch. Why aren’t you walking?”

Andre started walking again. I followed. Legs heavy as rusted iron.

“Faster,” Sean said.

We picked up our pace.

“Faster!”

Andre flinched, but just kept walking. 

Sean shouted up to the others in the truck. “Seems like they need some help. Give them some help.”

I saw both of the boys in the truck bed raise BB guns. 

“Wait!” I shouted. 

The first shot missed Andre as he ducked and covered his head with his arms. The second shot caught me in the wrist as I tried to turn away. It hurt like blistering hell, but I didn’t make a sound. I just started running. 

This time, Andre followed me. 

“That’s right!” Sean laughed. “Go go go!”

“I can’t run like this,” Andre said between puffs of breath. 

He was right. Heat exhaustion would kill us more certainly than Sean and his friends. But as the truck’s engine roared back to life, I knew I didn’t really have a choice. My wrist throbbed, and my whole body tingled with the anticipation of getting shot again. This was flight’s answer to the fight, and I knew I’d keep going until I collapsed.

The truck pulled close, and to the right. We watched it pass, and noticed both BB guns trained on us again. 

I flinched and stumbled left, right into Andre, who tripped and sent us both into the hard-packed dirt. Andre broke his own fall with two scraped up hands, as I completely lost my balance and landed on my backpack hard enough to almost flip over.

When I came back to my senses, I could see the truck pulling away, our tormenters howling with laughter. 

I rolled over and sat up. Andre examined his hands. 

“You OK?”

“Yeah. Just some scrapes.” He looked up. “You?”

I looked at my wrist, half expecting to see blood. But it was just a big fat red welt.

“I’m fine.”

We sat for a few seconds, catching our breath, letting the adrenaline bleed off. 

“How far are we from home?”

I looked around, struggled to get my bearings. “An hour? Maybe two.”

“Those assholes,” Andre said.

“Yeah.”

We got up and started walking again. 

I knew the heat like it was part of my body. The way the Sun stared hard and blankly at the ground, the slim noon shadows inky black in the chalky blaze. A high resolution nightmare if you couldn’t get out of it. The air alone would drink you dry.

My mind wandered into thoughts about the burnt yellow-white sky, and the way it hid the universe and crowded you. Made you claustrophobic.

A familiar sound whipped my attention back to the present.

The coiled hiss and silent strike, like a rope slashing through a bush, then falling to the ground. 

Andre let out a broken vowel, then jump-stepped to the side. I saw the diamondback disappear into a snarled brush. They were hard to spot if you weren’t looking for them. 

“Shit!” He said as he hopped a step and sat down. He pulled up his pant leg and sure enough, two perfect holes on the side of his leg.

“Hold still!” I said, and moved over to him. Thin streams of blood had found their way out of the wound, and Andre was gripping his leg tightly above it.

“Can you — are you supposed to suck out the poison?”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t really do anything. Just keep letting it bleed, if it will.”

I took my backpack off and opened it up. I saw a reddish stain.

“No no no…”

The vials were smashed. Bits of glass and fresh goat blood coated the inside of my bag. 

“What’s wrong?”

I stared into the bag. “They must have broken when I fell.”

“You don’t have any of the stuff?” Andre asked, pitch elevated by the opening notes of panic. 

Blood flushed my face, my own panic thickening my thoughts. 

“What do I do?” Andre pleaded. “Tell me what to do.” And then, his tone shifted. “I feel sick.”

I snapped back to clarity, grabbed up both backpacks and helped Andre onto his feet. I was pretty strong for my age, but there was no way I could carry him all the way home. Instead, I took as much of his weight as I could and headed us toward a low stand of volcanic rock in the near distance. 

I did my best to talk Andre down. An increased heart rate would just make things worse. 

It took about twenty hot, painful minutes to get to the rocks. I guided Andre to the east-facing side, into a puddle of shade that would keep growing as the day aged, and laid him down. 

I unpacked our bags, balled up one of them to put under Andre’s head, and then took inventory. A little bit of water, a few peanuts, the crust of a sandwich. 

“Don’t eat these,” I said. “Just drink the water when you need to.”

“Where are you going?” Andre asked, panic rising again.

“I have to go get help. You can’t try to walk all the way back.” My voice sounded confident in my ears. “But if you stay here, and lie still, you’ll be OK. I promise.”

“How long before you get back?” 

He was a kid. A little kid. Scared half to death and trying not to show it. I had to get away from him. 

“Couple hours. No big deal. Just relax, enjoy the shade. I’ll be back in no time.”

And then, before he could protest, I got up and started walking. I didn’t look back. 

I wanted to run, but the one thing you should not do in the desert with no water is work up a sweat. So I walked. 

And while I walked, I talked, keeping myself company. I told myself that I knew the way. That Andre would be OK. That I would make it back to him in time. That I had plenty of water earlier. That I knew this desert, and I could beat it at this game. 

I talked partly to scatter any snakes that might be in my path, and partly to distract myself from the thoughts that threatened to ruin me. 

Images of the boys who I hated and feared.

Images of broken vials.

The image of Andre, stiff and open-eyed in the place I’d left him without even saying goodbye. Tiny desert flies exploring a vast new feast.

After two hours of walking, I realized I was off course. I cursed myself with the strongest words I knew and got back on track. In another hour, home was in sight, but still 30 minutes of walking away.

By that point, I couldn’t have jogged if I’d wanted to. The desert furnace had been devouring every drop of sweat I produced, and I could feel the fluttering hollowness that signaled heat exhaustion. The heat of the walk quieted me. Andre became a haunting abstraction, and the crunch of my shoes on the cracked dirt the rhythm of my whole life. The sun an inscrutable god, blessing and cursing my every step. 

When I finally made it through the threshold, the dark, cool interior of the trailer was so overpowering I almost collapsed.

Nali had been waiting for me, having grown concerned when she didn’t see us in the morning. When I showed up without Andre, she was ready to hear the worst. 

As I made my way home, I had imagined Nali and me hightailing it back out into the desert to rescue my friend, but this prediction failed to account for the wealth and concern of Andre’s parents. Nali called them as soon as I’d gotten the most relevant details out — no easy task, all things considered. Using our slow internet connection, we managed to approximate Andre’s location. 

His dad called some important people and got a helicopter in the air less than twenty minutes after I stumbled through the door. Andre was found unconscious, flown to a hospital, and treated with the best medical care available in the state. 

If he had been a full grown man, he might have lost his leg to the venom. But he was 11, and small for his age. 

I wasn’t invited to the funeral.

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Since this is a novel in progress, any and all feedback is earnestly welcome. My goal is to finish this book next year. Please help me make it better.