Over The Iron Desert (Part Two)

Part three will definitely be the conclusion! Thank you for reading, leave comments or whatever. I hope you enjoy this one.

Over The Iron Desert (Part Two)

I am standing on the porch and cannot believe what I’m hearing; my life seems to be crumbling to dust. Sylvia touches my arm gently, her eyes are very round and very sad but the steely resolution lurking behind her pupils does not fade. “I’m sorry” she tells me.

“But I just don’t want to do this anymore... You’re a lovely guy and everybody knows it but I just don’t want to stay in this relationship, please don’t hate me... Can we still be friends?”

The grey clouds roll on behind her head and before the water begins flooding from their weighty bodies a tear forms in my eye and I feel it streaming down my cheek. I am humiliated and I hate myself. “Maybe” I tell her, in barely more than a choke. The rain begins and the pathetic fallacy does nothing to help my mood. She dawdles for a moment on my front door and tells me in an apologetic way: “I’ve really got to run! I’m sorry, I’ll call you!” and she puts up her hood and runs down the drive before getting into her car. I do not turn back into my house but stand there numbly for a moment, the tears are falling freely now and I vomit. It splashes onto the pavement and is quickly diluted by the rainwater. I bury my face in my hands and cry in a more unrestrained way than I ever have done in my life as I stand there wondering if the end of the world is coming.

Then I wake up, my front carved beautifully around Jessica’s. I marvel at how she has retained her womanly softness to the touch despite everything. There is still tear in my eye which I blink away, but I do not move, I allow our spoon to persist before I have to get up off this filthy mattress and return to real life.

Anthony stood up slowly and stretched. There was no real light outside, but then again there never was, he estimated it to be around 8 in the morning. It had been four days now since he had awoken to the universe he now inhabited, met Jessica and started off on their trek home. The progress had been much slower than he would have liked, but he supposed they were in no real hurry and he was now sure they were only a few hours away. He looked at her on the mattress on the floor and decided she would be ok if he left her for a few minutes, he pushed open the wooden door to the smallish abandoned shack they had decided to stop at. They had met a man the day before who had traded them a few sandwiches and some sugary orange drink that Anthony suspected was Fanta for helping him to plant some seeds in a long stretch of decent enough and seemingly uncontaminated earth he had found. After several hours work they had taken his supplies, thanked him and told him they may return at some point to lend further assistance. In an ominous move he had also given the pair of them a handgun and a clips-worth of bullets. He told them he had several guns and that he was just looking out for them. Neither of them really knowing how to use a gun they had accepted it with some trepidation, but thanked him nonetheless.

The food and drink had felt good last night and Anthony now nibbled on one as he made his way down to a relatively clean river they had located, a river that he used to paddle in when he had been a child. It was only a few hours walk from his old house, and a two minute walk for where the pair were staying that night. Dipping his feet into the cold water was refreshing and he stood for a moment, worrying about what was next. He had gotten used to the desolate landscape and the scarcity of basic supplies over the last few days but this tramping had all been in aid of getting home, what if there were no answers or relief to be found there? He shrugged off this thought and removed his trousers and jumper so that he stood there in simply boxer shorts and t-shirt. He crouched down by the bank and began to wash his face thoroughly. After a few moments he heard a twig snap behind him and as he turned around he was greeted with a punch to the mouth which sent him spinning into the water. He rolled over frantically and was seized by his neck and dragged upwards by a heavily built man wielding a vicious looking short sword, Anthony could feel his pulse banging against the large man’s fingers and managed to splutter

“What do you want?”

“Nothing fancy” he grunted.

“Just to rob you.”

The large man let him go and pointed the sword at him, turned on its side. He took a few steps back. “Your clothes” he demanded.

“All of them”.

It was an exceptionally strange feeling, standing submerged in a small body of water and being robbed of his clothes, but he was in no mood to try and test the man’s patience and so slowly and resignedly Anthony took off his T-shirt and removed his underwear too. He threw them on the river bank. “Now get lost” he scowled. The man’s sinister face contorted however and he chuckled.

“I don’t think so, you’re obviously sheltering somewhere near here and I want everything you have, so show me where you’re staying, right now”.

Dread filled his stomach, hot dread which seemed to weight a ton. Anthony stood there for a second before deciding to decide later on a more definite plan of action. He took several steps forward to the man with the raised sword and was within half a foot before a voice rang out.

“Let him go!”

The man span round and Anthony squinted, Jessica was standing behind a building a few feet away and now stepped out into plain view, and she was pointing the gun at the thief. “Let him go” she repeated. There was  silence for a few moments and Anthony acted quickly, while the man’s attention was still divided. He threw his fist hard into the side of his face, flooring him immediately. He fell with a splash but still held onto his sword and in the panic Jessica shrieked “Don’t move!" But it was too late, the man had already pulled himself up with a furious roar, he gritted his teeth and drew his hand back. Before he had managed to swing it however there a sound like a whip-crack rent the air and the man jerked forward and like a marionette with cut strings he collapsed. Anthony’s breath was coming sharp and fast and he looked over at Jessica who was standing stock still. He ran over to her and asked her urgently if she was ok, she replied with simply – “Yes”. Neither of them were particularly shaken up by the necessity to kill, Jessica didn’t need much consoling after Anthony had revealed that the dead man was about to ransack their belongings and do god-knows what with her should he have discovered her asleep in their small lodgings. They stood there for a few minutes before Jessica looked properly at Anthony’s naked form and grinned. “Does this remind you of anything?” she asked him, he smiled at her and shrugged. “I’ll put some clothes on" he told her, but she gripped his hand and stopped him. “What?” he asked, as she drew in. His heart dropped in his stomach as she kissed him and although he enjoyed it he pulled away after a moment.

“You – you’ve been through a lot, you were nearly raped a couple of days ago, I don’t want to take any kind of ad – advantage” he spluttered. She smiled. “I trust you. I want to know you as thoroughly as I can.” Her look of sincerity was enough to convince him and he took her top off. “I think though” he tittered nervously “that we should take this back to the mattress. It does seem slightly inappropriate to do anything here... You did just shoot and kill somebody about five yards away”. She laughed dryly as he threw his clothes over his shoulder, then picked her up and took her back to the small shack down the road.

30 minutes later the pair were cuddling on the mattress again. “It’s funny”. Jessica mumbled. “I feel so close to you and it feels like we have our own private world...” Anthony laughed softly. “You know what I mean?”

“Yeah... We kind of do and well... it sucks”

“Yeah”. After a couple of minutes, Anthony asked Jessica: “What happens after 2011?”

“What do you mean?” She said with a quizzical frown. “Well...” he began “What stuff happened? War stuff aside”. He was fascinated to hear her relay what she knew about people’s careers and various bits she could remember from the news, but it came back down to the same problem as before - she was very young and had not been interested enough and what she could remember was not necessarily reliable. They spent longer than they usually did when they awoke sitting around and talking, and Anthony suspected if this was due to his worry about what he would find when he was finally home and Jessica did not attempt to hurry him along, she was happy to talk to him about whatever he wanted to know. She had discussed her passion for technology at length, her failed attempts at holding a relationship down, the way her father had walked out in her teens and her brother several months later, how every cat she had ever owned seemed to move on within a few months. Although the consequences of this inability to hold onto one feline for more than a few months had obviously been less monumental than the premature departure of both her father and brother, Anthony could not help but wonder if she put them all together in her head now and worried that it was somehow her fault.

After they had packed everything up they walked the last few hours in near silence; Anthony found the walk down the roads he once knew so well depressing now that it all lay heavily damaged or destroyed. When they got to the row of houses that had been Anthony’s old home he pointed it out and they stood and stared without really knowing what to say. The gate was hanging off its hinges and there were many roof-tiles missing as well as window panes, regardless of this it was a relief to him to see that the house was at least standing and after a long incalculable moment he sighed and nodded. “Let’s get this over with” he spoke in an attempt at a bold, unperturbed adventurer’s voice. They walked down the weed-strewn path and pushed the door carefully. Everything was as he remembered it, except for the obvious change that it was mostly ruined. He had resigned himself to the fact that nobody would be in the house, after all why would they? They had barely encountered anybody at all on their trek so far and it seemed very unlikely that there was anything to stay here for. This however only made it more alarming for Anthony when a gruff voice barked from another room “Who’s there!? I’m armed!” and into the doorway popped a man with a long beard, pointing a rifle at the two of them. “Dennis!?” Anthony gasped, and the bearded man squinted at him. The two brothers stood a few feet apart before Dennis laughed in a sort of barking manner. “Imposter!” he shouted, and Anthony could feel Jessica fidgeting nervously behind him. “No it really is me!” he protested, but this just seemed to anger the man. “If it’s you then I hate you for going and never coming back! If you’re an imposter then I’m gonna blow your head off anyway!” he snarled and before he could react, he fired the rifle in their general direction. He had not been paying much attention to where he was aiming in his distraction and the bullet went far wide, but the pair of them dived under a nearby sofa which was exactly how he remembered it to be apart from its decrepit state. “Please!” he shouted out to Dennis

“Please don’t make me shoot you, I need some answers!”

“You had all the chance! You could’ve come back years ago, it’s just as well you’ve turned up now though because I’m going to eat you!” he raved insanely. Hoping he could frighten Dennis into a more subdued state he took the pistol from Jessica and stood bolt upright with it, pointing it straight at him. “People came looking for you y’know!” Dennis bellowed at him. “You were the most sought after man in the country because some rumour got around that you were the saviour, that you could rescue the entire world from the destruction you see before you”. Anthony decided this nonsensical statement was just another manifestation of madness however and spoke in a calm voice in an attempt to stifle his trembling.

“Just put that rifle down. I need to work out what to do next, how to survive indefinitely and see if there’s any way we can help”

“Pah! Help? Help?” Dennis was almost screaming now, tears were running freely down his face and every ‘p’ sent spit flying everywhere. “Where were you to help five years ago? You fucked off! You left for no reason! Mum was taken! Dad spent years looking for you and now he’s dead too!” His rantings were growing less coherent and his shrieking broken up with gasping for air. “I hate you, you could have helped but you were supposed to be dead, but now you’re back? To HELP?” and with that he raised the rifle again and instinctively, as though he were born to do it, Anthony raised the gun considerably quicker and fired it twice. The bullets whizzed through the air and cut straight into Dennis’s throat sending him slamming back into the wall and sliding down it. Following this was the loudest silence that Anthony had ever heard, he ran over to Dennis who’s eyes were rolling but mouth still moving. He crouched down and sobbed silently but drew very close and managed to hear the last feeble words his brother spoke. “The book... under... my b-b-ed.” And he went limp, the blood running down his front and collecting in a sickening, expanding puddle underneath him. Jessica timidly approached and asked him gently – “What did he say?” Anthony considered for a moment before replying in a voice of forced calm.

“I never heard.”

Over The Iron Desert (Part One)

Second (final?) part to come soon. Leave feedback if you like or let me know about any obvious mistakes in there. Thank you for reading!

Over The Iron Desert (Part One)

All of the lads had come out for Gary’s birthday and a lot of them had brought their girlfriends as well. Gary had just turned 27 and everybody knew his night out would be the event of the year, the group assembled in the pub at eight and intended to move on to a bar in town later on that night to drink ridiculous amounts and maybe do a couple of cheeky lines. Despite disliking being in the company of all those couples, Anthony decided to come along too. He had not caught up with Gary for several months now and he felt it was long overdue. He had packed a bag with a spare change of clothes in to take with him as he knew the long nights out did not always end where you’d expect them to end and he ought to be prepared in case he woke up somewhere completely alien to him. When the group got together in ‘The Hanged Bandit’ at just after eight there was 19 in total, they occupied a large section of the pub and they were being fairly raucous early on but after everybody had got through a few drinks the loud banter and shouting got much louder. Anthony was engaged in a conversation with the only other man there who had not brought his girlfriend along – Terry told him not to worry and that,

“You’ll find her eventually son, and when you do you’ll get very sick of her very quickly, don’t worry about that.”

Although it was an occasion and he was out with many of his old university friends and a couple from beyond that even, Anthony could not enjoy himself and it was most likely this reason that led to him getting bored at the relatively slow rate the others were drinking at and ordering himself three pints in a row. The first two of his drinks he downed swiftly at the bar much to the shock of the barman, and the third he sat back down with. Around 10 o’clock the boys were indicating they were ready to move on and Anthony did his best to agree through the haze that had descended around him. “Quick piss break though lads!”, Gary proclaimed. Another thing that Anthony tried to agree with. The majority of the group left their tables littered with pint glasses, tumblers and VK bottles and headed for the door while Gary and Anthony stumbled to the toilets. Anthony shouldered his backback as Gary clapped him on the shoulders and began saying things to him that he couldn’t quite make out. In order to try and clear his head he headed straight for a cubicle. He managed to put his bag on the floor and after a moment of trying to steady himself he slipped over and fell, hitting his head on the locked door and knocking himself out.

He blinked a few times and lay exactly where he was, his head was throbbing and he had an awful taste in his mouth. Wondering exactly how long he had been lying there he slowly got to his feet and noted that he felt dehydrated and his head hurt on account of where he had bashed it... But past that he didn’t feel particularly drunk or even hung-over. He stood up and brushed himself down thoroughly. He then moved his hand to the lock and noted with intense confusion that it had changed colour to a sort of brown. He touched it and it almost completely rotted away; the door swung open. When it did he nearly passed out again with shock; the roof had disappeared and some of the wall was missing, he realised he was standing in a shell of a room. The doorway led to nowhere and the entire pub was pretty much gone except for a few mouldering walls, here and there a table leg could be seen. He stepped out onto the pavement and looked around him, he saw more of the same all down the road, what he remembered as his town centre was now comprised of mouldering buildings and bricks, it appeared almost completely destroyed. A few signs he recognised were strewn across the floor under beams of wood, bricks and stone. He appeared to be looking at life through a grey filter of despair; a panic began to rise within him as he wondered what was going on and where everybody was for as far as his eye could see there was not a soul in sight.

He walked quickly back to the cubicle where he had come from and quickly found his rucksack, the presence of which soothed him considerably for some reason, it seemed like he had taken a part of home with him, and this at least was something. He knew that the taxi from his house to the pub was about 30 minutes (he had shared with a lot of people to reduce the high fare) and that walking would take an age, but then he considered that he had literally nothing else to do and if he could find the way then he may as well make the effort. He looked around at the ruins of the town centre; the old stone fountain lay in disarray with over half of it missing entirely and the rest crumbling to pieces. He managed to control the panic washing over him and set off at a trudge to walk home across the deadened landscape. The rubble was jagged under his shoes, the spit in his mouth tasted foul, (he knew he must soon find a drink) and the almost complete lack of a wind evoked misery to his core. It was impossible to tell what time of day it was and consequently became difficult to keep track of time or how long he had been walking but if he was forced to estimate, he would’ve said maybe two hours had gone by when he heard the screaming. A rotting door was knocked off its hinges and out of it flew a youngish girl (Anthony estimated her age to be 21 at the oldest) who was completely naked, head to toe. She was sobbing frantically and upon seeing Anthony she flung herself upon his startled figure and gripped him tightly. “Please” she gasped between sobs “they’re going to rape me.” He tried to gently prise her off him but despite her shaking her grip was firm and she would not let go. Anthony look behind her and in the doorway she had smashed off its rusted hinges stood two men of a medium height and a fairly unimpressive build. Their clothes were little more than filthy rags and their hair was long, tangled and dirty. Between the rasping sobs of the young girl there was no noise being made.

“Fuck off”. Anthony told them firmly, startled to hear his voice sound much more authoritative than he was used to and barely blighted at all by the fact he had not used his voice at all for god-knows how long. One of the scruffy thugs scowled and took a step forward but the other one touched his arm.

“Let’s leave it. I’m hungry anyway.”

The silence persisted and the one who stepped forward eventually scowled and simply spat on the floor. They both turned around and walked back into the building. The young girl let go of Anthony who she had been hugging tightly up to this point and met his eyes, he could see that she had bruises around her face and what wasn’t bruised was puffed up from the crying. “Thank you” she sniffed and they stood there awkwardly for a moment or two. “I have some spare clothes y’know” he offered, and she beamed at him. The change was remarkable and for a second, all her troubles were wiped away and even the bruises and swellings seemed less prominent and Anthony saw that she was beautiful. He took his bag off and handed her: boxer shorts (which she gratefully immediately pulled on), some jeans (he took his belt off and gave it to her to compensate for the size difference), a t-shirt, a hoodie, some socks and a pair of trainers. He tied the laces as hard as possible on her so as to minimise any slipping around in shoes a few sizes too large for her. He also discovered a bottle of water in the bottom that he had forgotten he had packed, he took a swig from it and so did she, thanking him sincerely. He smiled warmly at her. “You’re safe now.” He told her and she hugged him again, although this time in a more gentle and less ‘running for my life’ manner. They sat down against the side of the building and began to swap stories. “So I have to ask a few questions... Because I don’t even know how I got here.” He told her, and she replied

 “My name is Jessica <”Anthony!” He interjected, and they shook hands> and I haven’t really got any answers, I barely know what’s going on at all, after the explosions and all that I just ran for my life. I don’t know what’s happened to any my family or anything.”

 He stared at her for a moment before asking a question he had seen asked many a time before –

 “What year is it?”

 She raised her eyebrows at him. “2020.” She replied. The most shocking thing Anthony found about this information was not how ridiculously far into the future he had somehow been propelled... but how little. Her version of events was patchy and not helped by the fact that she was only 11 in 2011 (she turned out to be exactly 20 years old) but the main points were fairly by the books – war in 2015 had led to worldwide devastation and the eventual collapse of government and any kind of democracy. Her story was patchy and he was not sure how inclined he was to devote his total trust to somebody describing something she clearly wasn’t too knowledgeable about that had began when she was definitely too young to remember it properly. But as she was his only source of information and it seemed to corroborate the destruction around him, he accepted at least the main points of what she was telling him. She told him that there were reportedly still some pockets of civilisations and societies left and there were still merchants who sold things like clothes and food around, just that things were usually traded now, sometimes just in favours or manual work. This too seemed plausible enough and he accepted it without too much probing or questioning. Next came the harder part of the conversation:

 “What about you anyway? How do you not know this stuff? And asking about the year, you weirdo? I mean clearly you’re a time traveller, which explains it all.”

Her light-hearted mocking made him smile but he still sighed and felt the worry building up inside him; he really didn’t have a better story than that and didn’t really know how to reply. He decided to explain to the best of his knowledge exactly what had happened, that he had been out with friends and that that last thing he knew it had been 2011, the longer he talked the more foolish he felt; not that he had long to talk as not much had really happened beyond his waking up and walking around a bit. She questioned him about a few details and asked him what 2011 had been like, which he found an odd question and simply told her he remembered it being:

 “Hazy... and quite lonely.”

 The conversation dwindled out and Anthony asked her if she thought him crazy.

“Maybe. But I owe you a lot...”

And she snuggled close to him as the first hints of real cold swept over them. They sat there for a few more moments before Jessica asked him:

“What are you doing now then?”

“I don’t have anything to do really and about the only thing I can think of to do is to go home. Or where home used to be... I don’t know if I’ll find any answers there, I don’t know if anything will be clarified but it really is the only thing I can think of to do. It’s a personal thing probably... I want to see if any of my family is still there.”

 She didn’t reply to this and when Anthony stole a look at her she was looking morosely at the floor. “You’re welcome to come with me if you like” he told her quickly and she immediately looked up at him. “Really?” she asked, smiling again. “Really” he said. He explained his primitive navigation system of “just sort of guessing and following what looks familiar” to her and she giggled and said that sounded fine to her. They stood up and dusted themselves down and began slowly to walk. After a tentative moment he offered her his hand, his heart beating hard in his chest. She looked up at him and Anthony saw her face blush under the dirt and bruises. She grasped it tightly and he steered her onto what was once clearly the road and they walked down the middle of it in the direction Anthony was vaguely inclined to believe was homewards.

 The first real gust of wind he had yet felt was refreshing on his face, it rustled through her long hair and blew a few scattered leaves up into the air as they walked. They both looked into the sky and with a shock Anthony saw the moon, he had not even noticed its steady climb as he had been thoroughly engaged with talking to Jessica for what he now realised must have been several hours. Night had descended and the pair walked on into its heavy embrace and wondered where it would take them before their journey was complete, and what might lie in wait for them once it was. Anthony thought of speaking again several times but decided to leave it. The touch of her hand was comfort enough.