Desert Wilds

As the unchanging desert landscape rolled by, the wind blowing through Olimar’s hair did little to relieve him from the draining heat of the sun. Unlike the fully-furnished, well-shaded, two-story bus that their captors drove, the cramped wagon in which he and Joel were being towed had no roof over its cabin. He glanced around to see if they were anywhere close to the gang’s hideout and groaned when he found only mud and dust in all directions.

“This is unbearable,” he said. With his hands tied tight behind his back, he leaned to his right where Joel sat next to him and wiped the sweat gathering on his brow off on the shoulder of his friend’s t-shirt. “At this point I’d rather they just killed us and got it over with.”

Joel nodded to the distance. “Looks like another storm’s coming in,” he said. “Maybe that’ll help.” After a pause, he added, “That guy on the radio was right. These deserts are getting a lot more of them. Maybe we’ll start seeing more plants here, too. Could help things out a bit. It’s a lot of terrain out here to—”

“Joel, please. Shut up.”

“Hey look, don’t be mad at me. I’m not the one that had two guns lying next to him and decided to pick up a goddamn boomerang to fight with instead.”

“Well I’m not the one who didn’t even have his gun loaded. I couldn’t risk picking up the empty one.”

“Then pick up one in each hand.”

“My aim sucks with my right hand.”

Joel said nothing and Olimar set his sights back on the road ahead, hoping desperately they would drive closer to the small hills dotting the area where there was shade. As he scanned the horizon, he noticed one of the gang members watching him from the upper deck of the vehicle. Her scarred face scowled, and without taking her eyes from Olimar, she started turning his opened pocket knife playfully between her fingers. She then placed the blade to her tongue and licked it slowly, a smirk replacing the scowl once she finished. A man watching her laughed heartily then took several large gulps from their stolen bottle of whiskey, being sure to let plenty of it waste down his unkempt beard.

Olimar huffed. He slid back down into the wagon to try and hide his face from the sun and thought back to the previous night. Their camp had been made with a small enough fire atop a hill with a wide enough plateau to keep any smoke from reaching a noticeable height. And, despite passing that same whiskey between them more times than he had intended, they had remained calm and quiet in their late-night conversations, drudging up the past and reflecting on their mistakes and failed relationships. All because Joel had found that cracked, empty husk of a locket while looking for another bottle of booze in Olimar’s backpack.

“Wait a minute,” said Olimar. “Where did you put Savannah’s locket?”

Joel squinted and tilted his head in thought. “Oh, uh….” He looked down at his feet and when Olimar’s eyes followed he found a heart-shaped protrusion coming from inside Joel’s damp and dirty socks, just visible above the top of his shoe.

“Really, man?” he said. “Your feet? You couldn’t find anywhere better to hide it than your feet?”

“Hey, it’s still with me and not with them, is it not?”

Olimar offered a meager smile. “Fair point. Thanks for keeping it safe.”

“I got you,” said Joel. He frowned. “It’s there next to….what are those?”

In the sock on his other foot were two spherical lumps. Olimar grimaced. “Joel, we’ve only been in the Wilds for a week. If you’re already getting sick from some undiscovered disease then we need to tell everyone back home not to trust those immunity tests.”

“No, no, these are only in my socks, not in me.” Joel craned his neck down for a closer look. “I honestly hadn’t even noticed them until now. But they feel….metallic?”

Olimar’s heart stopped. “Smoke bombs,” he said, hushed.

“What?”

“My smoke bombs.” Last night’s fog started to clear. “Oh my god. You stashed them there after I gave you crap for thinking it was a good place to hide things.” Olimar chuckled and kicked at his friend’s knees. “Somehow, you never run out of ways to prove yourself right.”

Joel beamed, then frowned again just as quickly. “I don’t remember any of that after putting the locket down there. How much of that whiskey did we end up drinking?”

“Enough,” said Olimar. “And they’ll get to keep the rest of it if we don’t get out of these zip ties.” He shuffled awkwardly, scraping his locked wrists against the wall of the wagon. “Who the hell still uses these things to incapacitate people? They’re over a century old.”

“People who haven’t been around human civilization for many years, that’s who.”

“They have my knife up there. If we can get to the one in your bag, we can cut each other loose, then we grab our stuff. Our bikes are faster than this monster truck.”

“You think we can do all of that with just two smoke bombs?”

“I made them myself. They’re strong, loud, and long-lasting. Now stretch your foot behind my back so I can get them out of those rancid rags you call socks.”

With steady work of his fingers, Olimar slipped the devices out and clenched them softly in a closed fist.

“Ready?” he said.

“I guess so,” said Joel.

He took in a deep breath to steady his nerves, waited until he was sure no one from the bus was watching them, then slammed his weight against the side of the wagon. Joel did the same on his side, and after a few hits it started rocking slightly on its squeaking wheels. A few more and Olimar managed to throw himself up and over the wall just as the entire wagon started to tip his direction, and with a loud snap of cracked wood the wagon broke free from the back of the bus and toppled over, taking the two men with it.

Expectedly, a few of the gang members heard the commotion and shouted for the driver to stop. Olimar stood, dropped one of the smoke bombs to the ground, and smashed it with his heel, breaking the outer shell. He heard it clicking, meaning he had successfully activated it, and quickly kicked it toward the bus. Seconds later the device erupted with a deafening bang and sent the passengers inside diving for cover in all directions.

Though he couldn’t hear anything more than muffled yells over the intense ringing that now plagued his ears, Olimar made his way with Joel through the growing cloud of smoke toward the back of the vehicle where the gang had stowed their belongings. Joel reached his backpack first, and Olimar exhaled when he saw the knife tucked in its place in a side pocket, making it easy for Joel to pluck it out with his teeth. He, too, dropped it to the ground, squatted down and fumbled with it for a moment before finally securing it in his palm. The two then stood back-to-back, and a blinded and disoriented Joel began sawing clumsily through Olimar’s tie.

Aside from the jabs his wrists were currently enduring, every part of Olimar’s plan was unfolding smoothly, and he didn’t trust it. They had no way of fully knowing just how long these people had been capturing wanderers of the Wilds like themselves, and what tools they might have with which to secure their prey.

As it turned out, the only tool of theirs that surfaced was his own, as the burly, bearded man from the upper deck stumbled into view, now holding Olimar’s knife in his massive hands though clearly still dizzy from the blast. He lunged at them with a roar and Olimar ducked and pushed him to the side with his foot. The beastly man fell and Olimar lost his balance, his arm landing clean on Joel’s knife. White hot pain rushed through his veins just as he felt a sudden release of tension from around his wrists and found his hands freed. Ignoring the cut, he turned and took the knife from Joel, making quick work of his restraint.

With sweat pouring from his forehead and blood trickling down his arm, Olimar threw his bag around his shoulders and grabbed his bike, heaving it from out of the bus and onto the ground where Joel had already mounted his and started the engine. He started his as well, heart pounding as it rumbled and purred, and jumped on.

He wheeled around and started to take off just as their attacker launched himself at them once more. He fell short of the bike and Olimar let out a bellowing laugh of victory, intentionally mimicking the bearded man’s celebration from earlier. His smile vanished when he turned his head, however, and saw that the man had sliced open the tank of Joel’s bike. Steam escaped from it in a hurry and the bike died almost instantly, crashing to the ground and taking Joel with it.

“Joel!” he shouted. He whipped his own bike around and started back toward the smoke cloud. “No!”

In a matter of seconds the man had pounced on Joel, and before his friend had a chance to shout for help, the two disappeared into the smoke. Nothing was visible now, and once Olimar reached the scene and started shouting out for his fallen friend, no one could be found. He rode straight through until he was out of the smoke cloud on the other side and found the bus already driving away, then started to take chase until some kind of projectile and then another whizzed by inches from his ear. He hadn’t seen any member of the gang carrying a gun, and the bullets, or whatever they were, caught him off guard and forced him to wrench his bike to the side. The bus ahead started to turn back around toward him and, with only one loaded gun and a boomerang at his disposal, he spun the wheels around and took off in a cloud of dust.

He rode straight ahead at full speed and waited until he was sure he had put some distance between them before he looked back. The bus was considerably smaller now and was no longer pursuing him, an observation that did nothing to help the deep hole in his gut. He tried to swallow the saliva coagulating in his throat and choked on it violently until he finally turned the bike off and fell to the ground. As he heaved he took out his water bottle, now only about a third of the way filled, and drank some of it down until the coughs subsided.

The desert around him was empty. And quiet.

His friend was gone.

He was alone.

A tiny, muffled beeping sound came from inside his bag. In his fury and panic he barely noticed it until its continuous ring finally snapped him from his daze. Realizing it was his watch, and that maybe Joel had somehow managed to call him on it, he pulled it out from under some clothes and looked at its screen.

It wasn’t Joel. It was Savannah.

His GPS had connected with hers. The virtual compass needle on the screen pointed northwest. At last, he had a heading.

Amidst the despair now settling into his mind and stomach, his heart still had a beat, though it skipped when a sudden thought entered his head.

Her locket was still in Joel’s sock, and Joel was now a dirty gang’s lone prisoner. From his seat in the dust, Olimar buried his face in his arms as the dull sound of thunder echoed in the distance.