SWNOVELS Chapter 3: Desert Confessional
My pants make a soggy slapping sound as I stride out of the gas station lavatory with as much confidence as I can muster. Amanda is scanning the horizon with an intense look on her face.
“Feeling a little fresher?” she asks without turning around to face me.
“Everything is fine,” I assure her with as much zeal as a man that just washed his pants in a toilet can muster.
Mercifully, that’s as far as the conversation goes.
“Come on,” she commands. I follow her around the corner of the service station, which is the only structure in the vicinity. The highway it services is devoid of traffic. She looks around cautiously, then opens the door to an old Honda Civic. She motions for me to get in the passenger side.
“Can you hotwire a car?” she whispers.
“No. Can you?” I whisper back.
She rolls her eyes at me. “Didn’t you pick up any skills in prison?”
“Well…” I know I shouldn’t say it… but what can I say? I’m a born wise guy. “I got pretty good at hanging from the ceiling. Strangely, no one ever came and read Popular Mechanics to me.”
She lets out a little sigh and her eyes start rolling around again. I spot something glinting between the driver sun visor and the car roof. I decide to make her work for it.
She glances out the rear window and hisses, “Well we’ve got to get out of here somehow! The Warden wants us both dead!”
“Why does he want you dead? I thought you worked for him?”
Amanda’s lips purse for a moment before she answers. “We fought and argued about your treatment all the time. He kept hinting that I should accidently overdose you or something. I always refused and it made for a rather toxic working relationship. My skin would crawl every time that stupid little drone flew into my office.”
“He wouldn’t come see you in person?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think the Warden was actually on site. I can’t remember any of the staff saying they had ever met him in person.”
She pauses, then reaches into her lap coat and produces the bottle of pills from Little Green. “Here. Take one. The little alien guy said two a day.”
“And we’re just going to trust him? Just like that? What about my regular medication? Am I going to lose my mind completely without it?”
Amanda scans the horizon for a moment before responding. “You’ll be fine without it. Take the new meds. The little guy didn’t seem like he was interested in hurting you. Just let me know if you have any strange sensations.”
I cock an eyebrow. “Strange sensations like…”
“Just take the damn pill!” she commands.
“Yes, Dr. Vincent,” I mumble and pop one of the green capsules.
She turns around and pounds the steering wheel with her hands. “We’ve got to get out of here! Why can’t you start this car for us?”
I get a sly grin on my face. Time to be the hero finally. “I said I didn’t know to hot wire, I didn’t say I didn’t know how to start it.”
I make a deliberate motion of reaching over her, pausing at the sun visor, then flipping it down with one finger. A candy wrapper and pair of sunglasses fall into her lap.
The look she gives me can’t really be described. I’m fairly certain I said “I dunno,” as a reflex.
She lets out another long sigh. Like… really long. Like… ‘I’m impressed with her lung capacity now’ kind of long.
She shuffles out of her white lab coat and tosses it in the back of the Civic. “Come on!” she commands and exits the vehicle. “Bring your pills!”
We jog away from the service station about a hundred feet from the road. Close enough to flag down a passing car, but far enough that we could hide if it was a military vehicle.
An hour passes. Then two. Then two more. We’re both panting and sweating from our aggressive march in the heat of the day.
“Hold on…” Amanda wheezes. “I need hydration.”
She picks up a sharp looking rock and approaches a hedgehog cactus. She bashes it several times until the spines are knocked off and the meat of the plant is exposed. After a few minutes of work, she’s chowing down on sticky cactus flesh. Talk about Jane of the Jungle!
She tosses me the rock. “It’s not amazing, but it will keep us going. Do just like I did.”
“Okaaaaay,” I murmur. I take one swing at the cactus, miss the plant with the rock but manage the get the back of my hand buried deep in the prickles.
I desperately try to be manly and fight past the pain. I fail miserably. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!”
“Oh Fenris, seriously?”
I try and laugh off the pain and smile as one by one, I pluck the spines from my hand.
Another military vehicle rumbles past us in the distance. The sun is setting and the temperature has begun to dip. We look up from our rocky hiding place to make sure the coast is clear.
“Take another pill, Fenris. It’s about time,” Amanda says as she slumps against a rock.
I do as she says. It’s tricky swallowing it in my partially dehydrated state. Amanda the Amazing had been very good about feeding me cactus flesh for the past several hours, but they don’t carry enough water to really keep you topped up.
“Any difference yet? Feel anything?” she whispers.
She looks so tired. I just want to hold her in my arms and make everything better. Press my lips to hers. Smell her neck. Nibble her ear lobes.
“You should be regaining some of your abilities shortly.”
I nod my head with a silly smile on my face, still lost in my fantasy. Her hour glass figure drives me w—wait, did she just say ‘abilities’?
“Did you just say, ‘abilities’?”
She closes her eyes and slowly nods. “You should start to remember shortly now that you’re not on medication any longer. Hopefully the little alien guy’s pills will help too.”
I nod. Wait a second…
“Wait. Did you just say now that I’m -- NOT-- on medication I’ll start to remember? I thought the meds were to HELP me remember!”
She shakes her head without opening her eyes. “No, sorry. Your abilities caused a few deaths when you first arrived at LifeGuard, so we put you on a suppression regiment. We upped your dosage when you started getting flashes, and decreased it when you had no memory at all.”
“I… I…” I have no idea what to say to that. I’m suddenly seeing my gorgeous doctor in a whole new light.
“And that’s why you were suspended from the roof, which I’m sure you just figured out.” She opens her tired eyes and look into mine. “I’m sorry, Fenris, but it was necessary for everyone’s protection.”
I sit and mull over her words for a few minutes. She closes her eyes and starts to breathe in a rhythm.
“What did I do?” I finally ask.
“You killed several prison guards.”
I take a sharp breath. “I see.” I wrap my arms around my legs and quietly rock back and forth. I honestly didn’t think killing people was in my wheelhouse. A lump forms in my throat as I consider their poor families. I choke back my emotions and clear my voice. “How did I do it?”
“We’re not sure. Every guard that touched you was fatally electrocuted… or something like that. You also projected energy from your hands once in a while.”
My heart starts to pound in my chest as I consider an awful scenario. “Did I ever hurt you?” I say in a low voice.
Amanda smiles a little, but keeps her eyes closed. “No, Fenris. I was the only one you never hurt.” She takes a couple deep breathes before continuing. “And it wasn’t your fault. You were wild when you came to the prison. You weren’t in control of your mind. I don’t think you would have hurt anyone otherwise.”
Her words comfort my heart and I start to calm down a little. I love this woman.
A cool breeze kicks up and the tiny hairs on her arms stand up. She opens her eyes and glances around. “We’re going to have to figure something out to keep warm tonight. Another couple of hours and it’s going to be freezing out here.”
Ordinarily I would have simply suggested we get naked with each other and use our clothes as covers, but do to the heavy nature of the topic at hand, I thought it inappropriate.
Amanda starts to unbutton her blouse. “We’re going to have to huddle together and use our clothes as blankets. That’s basic desert survival. Can you deal with that?”
I suddenly feel like I have to urinate.