Dust: (Part I: Sandstorms) (2 page)

An encounter

I must have been followed. The moment I stepped out into the storm I knew something was wrong. It is impossible to hear anything in that wind but sometimes you just know. I had barely stepped out of the door when I tensed, turning back to try and catch sight of whatever was out there. It was impossible, the sand drove at my goggles so hard that I could see no more than a few metres.

As I hugged the vehicle’s body, trying to get a better view at the obstruction, I heard a distinct rumble behind me. I had to jump backwards as a large truck ploughed into my vehicle, shunting it violently forward. It catapulted out of sight and I was flung backwards onto the ground.

The truck came to a halt where my vehicle had been. It was a hideous, rusted contraption. Its engine roared, pumping out thick smoke. Despite the sandstorm raging all around us and the protective material covering my nose and mouth, I could taste the acrid smell of the truck’s exhaust. I had been knocked flat on my back and struggled to catch my breath.

Before I could gather my wits a group of men had descended from the truck. Slowly they circled around me. I could sense their menace. These were dangerous animals, threatening violence. I had no idea what else.

My weapon had been knocked from my grip with the forcefulness of the collision. It was as good as lost now. They all wore dark clothes, rough garments designed for the dust. They were used to this. This wasn’t the first time they had rammed another vehicle. This was their bread and butter.

Why they had chosen to ram me I did not know. Did they know who I was? How long had they been following me? My mind ran back to my recent escape. Had they let me go simply to follow me. So that I would lead them to the prize? Or was this a different group entirely? 

If they did not know who I was there was a good chance that I might survive. Once they had used me and taken my vehicle they may well leave, presuming that I would die alone out there in any case. That was the best option.

If they knew who I was and had now decided to cut their surveillance short there was every chance things would be thoroughly worse.

One of them, the leader perhaps, came closer and half knelt to examine me. His face was smooth and featureless, a surprising fact considering the excoriating elements. He pulled down the cloth that covered my face and squinted at me. I blinked helplessly as the sand blasted my cheek.

Without a word he dropped his hand and motioned to the others who took a quick step forward and hoisted me in their arms. For a moment I felt like a child, they were strong, their manly hands lifted me effortlessly. I was swept up and the whirling sand all around, for a moment, was like the swell of a lost symphony. The tiny vibrations of dust the striving of an alto violin.

Their stern grip was reassuring, they could pull me apart but they chose not to. There was something religious, a benediction, in their decision to support me like this. To be borne bodily by other human beings stirred something in me. I remembered stories, palm leafs, redemption, a saviour transported across the sands. Desert to desert. If the ultimate destination was to lead to pain then it was only because of my own sins.

I was dropped and the hard floor of the truck struck my shoulder. There was utter silence. The contrast with the wild wind outside was stark. The leader stepped up and motioned the others to wait outside.  The inside of the truck’s rear was capacious. Despite the searing pain in my shoulder I had a worried thought for my bearers, waiting outside in the raging sand while their leader interrogated me.

‘Sit,’ he leant towards me. He had a kind face. ‘Have some water.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It was unfortunate.’

‘Unfortunate,’ I repeated.

‘We didn’t realise you had stopped.’

‘The sand,’ I said.

‘Yes, of course.’

I tried to smile. He was trying to be friendly.

‘This sand…’ He sat on a short bench attached to the side wall while I was propped in the foot well in front of him. ‘It never stops.’

‘Yes.’

It was clear there was something that he wanted, something more subtle than torture was likely to illicit. I had no idea what that could be.

‘You’ve caused a fair amount of chaos on your travels,’ he said. I could sense he was impressed, respected me because of the suffering I had inflicted.

‘Chaos?’ The idea that the world was somehow more chaotic because of my intervention amused me. That there could be any more chaos in the world was a joke.

He smiled.

‘We could have been friends perhaps.’

‘No doubt.’

‘You are looking for someone?’

This wasn’t about me at all. They were looking for Abel. How they knew my relation to him I don’t know. What they planned to do either. Abel was clearly more powerful in this region than I had imagined.

‘This person, that you are looking for,’ he smiled, leaning close to me and taking my empty glass of water to refill it from his flask, ‘we would very much like to meet this person.’

‘I don’t know what person you mean.’

He paused for a second the flask half-tipped above the glass.

‘You don’t know this person? Am I to presume you were driving, out here, in a sandstorm for pleasure?’

‘Something like that, yes.’

‘This must seem like a very inconvenient interruption.’ He continued pouring. ‘But, as I said, we are very keen to meet this person and securing an interview has proven rather difficult. We believe you might be the sort of person that could secure the sort of interview we require.’

It was clear they had not intended to encounter me so soon. Colliding with my vehicle was an unfortunate accident and now he had to salvage what he could from the situation. I doubted he even knew where Abel was. It filled me with confidence. They needed me, which meant that I was safe for the moment.

‘I can’t imagine it would be so difficult to arrange with you resources.’

‘We would be pleased if you would travel with us.’

He said it as though I had a choice in the matter

‘You will see that my car is very comfortable, far more so than the vehicle you have been using.’

There was nothing I could do. I was his prisoner. Whether he could make me lead them to Abel depended on my stamina. I had the feeling I was not so strong. An immense tiredness came over me. The thought of making even the slightest effort suddenly felt like enough to break me.

There had been a period, after it became obvious that the dust would not recede, when a strange malaise started to afflict people. It’s symptoms varied slightly between cultures but mainly it manifested as extreme tiredness. It became known as LESS – Lower East Side Syndrome – after the place of its first diagnosis.

A city once renowned for its energy, dynamism, slowly crumbled as more and more of its inhabitants struggled to make it out of bed each morning, lifted their heads from their pillows and could not face what was outside, could not face to look out the window. The wall of swirling dust sapping their blood.

The young and old were affected equally. Medical conferences were convened and there was rigorous debate about its causes. Was it psychosomatic? What was the link to existing diseases such as ME? Many people believed it was not a real disease, a psychological weakness and nothing more.

One of the most vehement opponents was Bill Brogan, a right wing talk show host. He campaigned on national broadcasts demanding that people show more back-bone, that healthcare for sufferers was cut and the money used to tackle the real problems. He had a very clever slogan I recall – MORE not LESS.

He talked at length about the strength of the individual and the leadership that had first built nations. He compared the struggle against the encroaching dust with the first explorers that had made the arduous journey across the land to build the foundations of wealth. He belittled the weak leftists who promoted a society that ‘sapped the human spirit’.  He was vigorous, loquacious.

‘This disease is an excuse, it’s something invented by the weak to hide their lack of spirit.’ I could almost hear his booming authoritative voice. ‘This nation was built on the strength of people that weren’t afraid, people that didn’t run away at the sight of a storm on the horizon.

He was very successful. At the height of his campaign there was even a downturn in the number of reported cases of LESS. Even those people, like me, that were naturally inclined to gloominess, were briefly convinced.

Then his broadcasts stopped.

‘Bill is taking a break from live broadcasting to focus on the campaign,’ his PR people said. ‘He is taking his message to the people on streets but he will be back on our screens soon’

Of course it was only a matter of minutes before the first jokes circulated, the rumours that Bill Rogan was suffering from LESS. Nobody thought it could be true at first but as time passed and it became obvious he was not ‘taking his message to the people on the streets’ a new mood took hold. People started to realise there was no joke. 

They never discovered the cause of the disease. It became an academic question. Despite the media interest and the fervour that surrounded it the sufferers were a relatively small fraction of the population. People became hardened, developed a new way of getting through life that didn’t have space for the sort of questions Bill Brogan asked.  When there was no healthcare then the issue of how taxes were spent became irrelevant.

I was simply over-tired I had been driving for days, driving myself hard, travelling head first into the blizzard. The thought of sleep was sublime and as I looked at my captor, above me in the back of the van I saw him as my saviour. I barely noticed the noise as the rear doors of the truck were opened again and the same strong arms lifted me back into the air.

I sailed through the dancing dust and they transported me to the other vehicle. The leader’s car no doubt. The saviour that had found me out here in this blizzard. Inside was like a womb. I was a little girl, carried by these men. They placed me delicately in his bed. He would look after me I felt sure. He had a kind face. I hoped I could show him my gratitude. Would be good enough to please him.

Across Land

We were moving. I had been far away. A familiar place, somewhere there was no dust. I had no name for that place but I knew it well, there was sky there. Once upon a time the sky had even been clear but recently, whenever I went there, it was always overcast. Threatening clouds always appeared. Still it was a relief that there was no dust. It had grown with me this dream place, it had grown with my dreams, and had also failed.

As I awoke I felt I was being tugged back across a great distance. The bed sheets were smooth and comfortable against my skin. I was warm and cosy, snuggled into the bed. Beneath me the solemn throb of an engine caused a pleasant vibration to travel through the mattress.

Everything suggested I should leave the dark foreboding clouds of my dream and return to the real world but I knew that the real world meant dust. In the dream realm a nightmare was something that you could wake from. I dove down again, searching for sleep, but some force buoyed me upwards, back towards the surface.

His car was evidently more of a wagon. I was in a small pristine cabin in what I took to be the rear of the vehicle. Everything was simple but with a functionality that implied luxury. Miraculously there was not a sign of dust anywhere. The air cleansing unit must have been top of the range. Beside the bed was a small basin and a shelf. There was no sign of personal items. Why would there have been?

My head still swam with images from my dream and a cold, unhappy stone settled in my stomach as I realised where I was. I thought of my captor. His kind face. A certain seriousness, a determination to achieve something. It was not a look I had seen on someone’s face in a long time.

Now, in the warm sheets, I imagined him returning. Forcing himself upon me. I felt the stone in my stomach start to glow. I felt my hand moving down between my thighs. The bed was floating on a sea. I was youthful. In the Caribbean. Somewhere that used to exist. Shallow tropical waters. It rocked gently as we made love. I couldn’t tell if the bed was on stilts or was floating on the waters surface. He was on top but he wanted to enter from behind. With one easy motion he twirled me, as if I was as light as a feather. My body was like a cat’s. In the covers I squirmed over on to my front. My arm was trapped beneath my belly. I spread my lips and pushed my finger deeper. His body felt good against mine. Forcing deeper into me. Loving. I moved my fingers faster. He tugged at my hair. Something changed in his demeanour. He becomes angry with me. He is enraged at my presence. He calls me a ‘whore’, a ‘bitch’ but that only heightens my pleasure. The stone in my stomach pulses, burns brightly. I am the stone and the burning. I have a momentary sense of what it is to be a thing, a rock, inanimate, a useless particle blown by someone else’s desire, something that does not deserve its own thoughts, something to be ground down. He cannot even see me, the angle that he pushes me down, but he can see straight into me. The Caribbean waves lap at the bed and, around the cove, no-one would suspect the violence that he metes out on me. I feel guilty but it is the violence that I ask for, the violence I demand.

I fell asleep again and when I awoke he was by the bed.

‘You have rested,’ he said.

I felt a momentary embarrassment as I remembered him inside me.

‘Yes, thank you.’ I was grateful to him.

‘We have stopped,’ he spoke firmly but there was something hesitant behind his voice. ‘We need to know the direction.’

They had no idea, no idea where Abel was. I wondered again what they hoped to achieve. What they were pursuing him for. Whatever their goal it could not be good. They had little hope of succeeding. I had no idea what sort of force Abel had been amassing but he would not be defeated by these few soldiers. No doubt they were only the reconnaissance party but still I felt a flitter as I imagined the kind face in front of me crushed.

‘I told you I don’t know where he is.’ It made it slightly easier that it was the truth but I had long since passed the point where lies mattered to me. ‘If you want me to suggest a direction I can but there is no guarantee I will find him any more than you.’

He kept his eyes fixed on me and reached down to pull my map from his bag. Spreading it on the duvet he pointed to a deserted section of contours.

‘We are here,’ he said.

We had made good headway while I slept. They evidently knew enough. I tried to estimate how long I must have been unconscious for us to have covered so much ground. Their vehicles must travel fast. I saw small marks on the map at key junctures - questions, dilemmas, uncertainty that he had passed. Had he tried to wake me earlier?

We were approaching the mountains and the way ahead would become difficult. There was a town marked on the map. Who knew if it still existed? Once it had been an oil town. A prosperous place where people had flocked to make money, an oasis in the frozen north, where they had once sucked petroleum out of the ground. I had passed through it and it had unsettled me - the wealth and starkness.

We could go there or we could head deeper into the wilderness. There was a route that had once been navigable all the way to the northern fjords. We could take this and head deep into the unknown. I felt that was where we would find Abel. Somewhere in that incalculable wasteland. He was there, somewhere in that brown morass of contours on the map.  I knew Abel would not be in Bonmont but it made sense to go there. We could be wandering for weeks if we set out straight. Without something more solid to go on we would never track him down.

‘Bonmont,’ I said pointing at the map.

He disappeared into the front of the vehicle.

I was left alone again.

His serious expression stayed with me. Seriousness had become a rare quality in the world. True seriousness, focus, that invisible property. It had disappeared from the world because nobody could bear it any more, nobody could bear to countenance it, replaced instead by dull determination.

People were serious about staying alive, it was true, but they protected themselves with fatalistic disinterest. There was an inevitability to everyone’s movements, a slack disinterest in their faces. They carried on due to some ancient instincts that had outlived the environment that birthed them.

To most people it no longer mattered who survived and who died. It was obvious that survival was mere luck. In the dust there was only chaos. Anyone who truly realised this could no longer stomach the idea of hope. They would rather not believe in anything than let the smallest glimmer of hope eat at them. Prayer was dead, blown away in the dust.

I wondered what Abel prayed to. Despite the dust and the chaos I had no doubt that Abel retained his seriousness. He would not be able to shake it. I had watched him, many times, sitting purposefully, motionless for hours.

It takes an immense amount of energy to do nothing, even to appear to do nothing. To appear to do nothing is, for most intents and purposes, identical to doing nothing. What sort of person can do this?

Who can bear to achieve nothing with their day, does not find it exceptionally burdensome to let their time evaporate, not to have a job, or even some simple task they are employed at that takes their mind off things. Who can bear just sitting, the clock ticking, doing nothing, watching one of the few days they have disappearing.

To do that, I felt sure, implied some instability, an hallucinatory life, a belief in invisible chords. There used to be people who called themselves Artists. None of them had fared so well recently.

To stare for hours, stare at a blank sheet or a twig, and then, after much painful deliberation, decide merely to make a black mark or a minor re-arrangement. What sort of sallow, cadaverous being can live like that? I thought again of Abel, staring out into the swirling curtains of dust. I thought I could shake him by thinking those thoughts in the hard open light but I knew I would never be able to shake him.