Damn Your Eyes

The satchel full of Au197 was beginning to make my shoulders ache as I raced against the setting sun. The repurposed motorcycle on which I was speeding away lacked the convenience of any lighting mechanisms, so once the daylight was gone, I was at the mercy of the very unforgiving desert night. Not that it mattered anyway. I could tell by the oily stink of the exhaust that I was running on the very last of the biodiesel fuel in the small tank and I didn’t expect to see another fuel source before the last of that was gone. I knew that I should’ve gone back and grabbed the solar truck, but there was no time for that now. The tribe that I’d stolen this precious stash of currency from would already be at the camp by now, probably investigating the circle of bodies I’d left around the fire. I did my best to ignore it all and just kept twisting the throttle, speeding along the cracked and blistered pavement, just fast enough to keep the rubber tires from melting to the surface as it reached near boiling temperatures.

The oppressive heat of the sun cut loose its ferocious anger, beating down upon me with the wrath of a god irate with its derelict creations for their flagrant disobedience to its will. Despite my body’s adaptation to the nuclear blast allowing me to survive the sun’s atmosphere-free assault, I was still provided with the cruelty of being able to feel it all. It was my inner fortitude which had adapted to the pain of life on the surface.

At 90 miles per hour, the hot wind only served to feel like driving into a deeper layer of hell, providing a breeze filled with anguish rather than refreshment. Grains of sand peppered my face as though it were trying to rip my craggy flesh free of the bone. The hot desert crosswinds threatened to move my six-hundred-pound motorcycle across the gravel pitted roadway as though some almighty finger was nudging me to the edge with a wicked laugh as a soundtrack, just barely hidden by the roar of the engine between my legs.

I knew without question there wasn’t another village around for at least another fifty miles. We had planned our target for just that very reason. An isolated tribe rumored to be holding bricks of the only gold that hadn’t been eaten away by the nuclear radiation from the End War.

“I swear it’s true,” that mangy cactus farmer had stammered out between his bleeding lips. “They keep it all there. At the Ferguson ranch.”

“Boy, if you are lying to us, I will cut your damned tail off and feed it to you.” Gravel waved the large black blade of his machete in front of the farmer’s tear-filled eyes.

“No lie, boss, no lie. On my life.” The pathetic looking hillbilly held each of his three fingered hands out in front of him defensively. “Please, please, jes let me be.”

Gravel had forced the farmer to draw out a map of the ranch and then removed his head anyway once he’d finished, just for the sport of it.

“Why’d you do that, Gravel?” Spit asked with a laugh. “You shoulda cut his damned tail off, like you said.” The two leather skinned brothers smashed shoulders affectionately and went about desecrating the strange looking body, eventually tying the severed tail and hands to drag along behind their tar crusted choppers.

For three years, I had enjoyed riding with the Skaag brothers out on the desert landscape of America. I first met them in the barren wasteland of Oregon when both of our clans had zeroed in on the same small pack of hill folk trying to cross a dried lakebed. When the dust had finally settled from the territorial dogfight, the four of us still on our feet had stood around staring at each other.

“All right, greaser,” the eldest brother had huffed at me, trying to catch his breath. “You’re all that’s left on your side and our numbers are down. If you want to ride with us, you’ve earned it.”

I had looked around me to realize that he was right, I was all alone, and every marauder out there knew that numbers meant everything when it came to survival.

“All right,” I had agreed, spitting black blood out onto the cracked dry ground. “Let’s do this.”

All three of the Skaag brothers had a mean streak of violence that went far beyond necessity, but it did a lot to create a fear of the name, so that whenever we rode into an established area, the denizens often laid out food, supplies and whatever else they could muster up just to avoid the stories of torture and death that preceded our arrival.

When we came through the Elko village, they even gave us a young lad with strong mechanical aptitude, just to keep us from tearing apart what little they had. Of course, once we got to know him, we realized he was much better off with us than anyone else and I had figured that the people there were probably just as glad to be rid of him.

“So, you lead the gang,” the pink skinned lad had said to Gravel, who nodded in return, cramming his jaws with a mouthful of crusty brown mush and chewing with his mouth wide open. “Okay, and you two are the younger brothers.” This time he pointed at Spit and Monkey who simply snorted as they pried open a couple of rusty tin food cans.

“So how the hell do you fit into this?” This time he addressed me. I narrowed my eyes at him and spit on the ground, stoking the fire with my bare hand. He let out a strangled laugh, his eyes watching my stony fingers move the glowing coals around.

“Aw hell”, he choked. “You’re one of them, aintcha?” I ignored him and sat back on a rock, stretching my ancient leather boots out in front of me.

“You’re one of the originals, right? Like from the blast?” He had started to get excited and all three of the brothers snickered and choked at him. “What? What’s so funny?”

Gravel washed down his food with a can full of cactus juice and then blew his nose into the fire.

“We all are, boy,” he said to him, wiping a glob of mush from his whiskered face. “That’s why we can ride all day. That said, you, with your soft pink flesh, you’ll be staying in the truck.”

This seemed to shift the kid’s attention well enough. “Well, all right, but I’m driving.” This brought a fresh gust of laughter from the brothers.

“That’s half the point,” said Monkey. “What else do we need you for? You drive the truck and you keep it running and fix the damned bikes. You do that and we keep you alive.”

It didn’t take long to realize that the kid was just as good in a scuffle as he was turning wrenches, though he wasn’t much good with a gun. During a raid on a small family cockroach ranch in southern Utah, he had nearly gotten himself killed trying to shoot it out with a ranch hand from less than ten feet away.

“Hit that roach wrangler already,” Gravel had yelled, shaking his head as the kid’s gun seemed to aim in every direction but where the ranch hand was shooting from.

“Aw to hell with it,” he said, turning the rifle around and attacking his opponent with it like a shovel. He managed to slip in just as the cowpoke was reloading and beat him into the afterlife with the butt end of it. He then decided to celebrate by opening the roach pen and jumping onto the back of the first escapee, clasping its shell with his legs and laughing maniacally as the giant insect spun circles trying to whip him off. He had almost gotten caught in the stampede when the rest of the herd came flooding through the open gate, but he held on like a rodeo champion.

We made our living without remorse, taking whatever we could from those ill-equipped to defend their resources and using our superior adaptations to survive those that were. The Skaag brothers lacked the mental prowess for planned attacks, so we just came in like Berzerkers, blades swinging and guns blazing. Whenever the situation looked particularly difficult, I would hang back with an assault rifle and snipe off any attackers that would have taken the marauders out. When we attacked the biofuel depot just outside of Denver, I took out most of their small army from around 100 yards away, finishing off the rest with my pistols as I closed in.

“How the hell did you do that,” Spit asked me, staring as if he’d just witnessed a miracle. “I ain’t never seen nobody shoot like that before.” I had only answered him with a grin. There wasn’t any explanation to give him.

“I mean, not even just the rifle shooting, that was good, but those pistols? Nobody moves that fast.”

“Spit, shut up and give that boy a hand loading the fuel tubs into the back of the truck,” Gravel ordered. “Monkey, you give me a hand with this safe.”

I stepped over one body after another, glaring at the surrendering workers, who just stared at me with the same disbelief Spit had, only their faces were also wrought with fear.

Everyone had to find a way in the remnants of the world and this way was ours. The four of us were some of the only humans whose physical bodies could withstand the heat of the daylight since the bombs had dropped and we took full advantage of that fact. While every other two-legged creature hid away in their bunkers, caves and well shaded villages, we traveled the wasted earth from one deserted city to the next, taking what was left behind from the old civilization and forcing the lesser creatures back into the darkness.

On this day, I should have been able to enjoy the feeling of cruising along on this perfectly balanced machine of freedom. Instead, my mind was unable to reach its usual place of serenity. The same scenes kept repeating over and over in my mind: the words of trust, the brotherly embraces, all from the same bastards that left me standing there when the militia came through.

“Kid, you stay with the truck,” Gravel had ordered. “Be ready to get us out of there as soon as we come running, you hear me?”

“Yeah, Gravel, I gotcha.” The lad smiled and nodded eagerly. I grabbed my rifle and started towards a good vantage point.

“Not this time,” Gravel said. “They’ve got enough building coverage to make an outside shot damned near worthless. We need you with us.” I looked at the solid cement walls of the main edifice where the cactus farmer told us the Au197 was stored and realized that he was right. Those walls had to be at least four feet thick.

There was an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that I should have paid more attention to, but instead I just choked it down and fell in at the rear of the pack. I had no reason to think anything of it. There was no reason not to trust them. No reason except that I was just one more percentage cut they wouldn’t have to make once they had the precious metal.

We stormed through the main entrance, taking out a small group of guards that were all huddling in the shade of the dome roofed entrance. A crew of unarmed employees fled down a dark hallway as we set up a pile of explosive charges the lad had put together for this job.

The explosion worked, blowing a gaping maw into the thick wall of concrete, exposing the innards of a narrow room, with one single row of 24 gleaming bricks of Au197 gold.

“Grab it up, Spit, let’s go”, roared Gravel, his eyes glittering as brightly as they ever had. Spit hurriedly threw the bricks into a large leather satchel as the sounds of reinforcements came tromping up the dark hallway.

It wasn’t until a team of nearly twenty armed and armored soldiers stormed the room that I realized I’d been had. I turned around just in time to see Gravel’s smiling face disappear behind a closed door, leaving me cornered with nothing but a pair of revolvers. The son of a bitch had used me as a distraction. He knew they would never get out of there alive any other way.

Somehow, even over the sounds of the gunfire, I still managed to hear the tires of the truck spinning as the Skaag brothers and their escort fled into the heat of the desert.

I knew they never expected me to walk out of there alive. I could see it on their faces. I could hear it in their laughter as they tossed the bricks of Au197 back and forth to each other, the gold gleaming in the firelight as I watched from behind a large outcrop. There was no sentimentality in their celebration. Not a single mention of my name, of the comrade they had just lost. Not one glance back down the road they’d all just come from. They were so distracted with their winnings, that not one of them noticed me walking out from the shadows with that rifle held up to my shoulder.

I could have spent some time menacing each of them, looking down the rifle’s iron sights at their shocked faces, while I made each of them beg for forgiveness. I could have asked Gravel why he did it. I could have demanded an answer for their betrayal. I could have done this, but I didn’t. Instead of wasting any time, I just took advantage of the opportunity of surprise. I laid all four of them down dead before there was ever a chance to run or to fire back. Four shots, rapid fire, each one shredding through their gaping mouths and dropping them instantly as the bullets shattered their brain stems. It was the same practiced series of shots that I’d done so many times before on far less-deserving people.

As I watched their bodies fall limply into the dirt, I moved in, just like it was any other job. I stepped over their leaking, twitching carcasses, filled the satchel full of the only solid metal currency that was worth anything, and tore off on my bike, leaving nothing but a trail of dust and the stink of death behind me.

Peeling down that broken highway all alone was my first taste of true freedom. Staring down at an endless strip of cracked pavement and barb-wired tumbleweed ready to shred me to strips at the first sign of a careless move, I sped the cycle along at dangerously high speeds. Surrounded on all sides for as far as my eyes could see by spiked cacti and baking dirt, the mirage lines of heat wavering up from the ground that hid dog-sized scorpions, sixteen legged black widows, and two headed rattlesnakes all vying for survival against the same churning ball of gas in the sky, which both sustained life and dared it to continue. Miles of roadway disappeared behind me, a steady reminder of the distance between the freedom of my new path as a lone wolf outlaw and the comradery that I once knew. Freedom, as I dug just a little deeper into the throttle with my wrist, twisting enough to make the speed dial climb to 100. A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth, but the wind’s continued sandblasting assault on my face turned it into a pained grimace.

I no longer felt any concern about reaching a specific destination. The next place to stop only meant an end to the current ride. There was no more seeking relief from the pain of the sun’s heat, nor the pleasures of the next pillage. There was only enjoying the ride towards it, for finding relief would mean the end of the ride and the greatest sadness that I could have thought to face in that moment was the fact that what once was, had come to an untimely end.

I propelled myself deeper and deeper into the void of nothingness where the desert plains could bring me. The gargantuan cacti ticked by faster and faster, forming an unsynchronized rhythm with the purr of the engine and the shockwave blasts of the rifle shots slamming away in my memory. All of these separate metronomes came together as one, clocking the beads of sweat as they dripped down the sides of my leathery face and evaporated in the arid bake of the heat before they had time to form rivulets down my jawline.

I took a deep lungful of the punishing desert air and ran my tongue across my teeth, cleaning the grit of sand granules from my tight-lipped smile and exhaled, my shoulders and hands finally loosening a bit as all of the stress left my body in that breath. I began to forget about the burning sensation on my bare face and on my scalp where the sun was able to find clearance around my tendril thick hair. I let go of the ache in my neck muscles and my abdominals from trying to fight against the one hundred mile per hour headwind I created as I laid into the throttle ever further.

It was that last look at Gravel’s face before the door locked shut that did it. It was right there in his eyes. No regret, no apology, no sign that he wished things could have gone a different way. The only look I saw in that last moment was the same mischievous glare of greed that he always had. It was a ‘gotcha’ look. A gloating look of braggadocio that broke right through every withering layer of emotion that I left in my scarred and broken soul.

For better or worse, a jaded and dismantled approach was exactly what I needed to survive in this world. With anger and appreciation mixing into a fetid stew, all I could do to let it go was to thank Gravel in the only way that I knew how.

“Damn your eyes,” I whispered to his memory. “Damn your eyes.” I let up slightly on the throttle and allowed the cruiser to reach a more sustainable engine speed, coasting down a steep hill as I passed a fraction of a billboard still managing to hold onto its life. Half the words were gone, but the message was still clear enough. “Now entering Las Vegas”.

THE END

Bio: Justin DeMoulin is a city police detective in New York's Hudson Valley and was previously a musician in Las Vegas. Aside from reading and writing, Justin loves to ride horses and motorcycles.

E-mail: Justin DeMoulin

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