Welp, here it is!
Not so much of a rewrite than a light edit. I cut out some bits that needed cutting (how’d I know they needed cutting? ’cause I thought they were clever), reworded a whole bunch of things and made sure to set the scene a little better.
I tried a few times to start the story from scratch, but I think I’ve been involved in this piece well too much to do a complete rewrite without some guidance and motivation from a third party. Those few times I did try, I ended up recreating what was already there, almost word for word. Perhaps I like it too much to try rewriting it without someone’s help. Or maybe, like I always feared, I just can’t rewrite!
Anyhow, the new version is below. Let me know what you think of the edits, or the piece as a whole!
-Anthony
Idenbra
Written by Anthony Sweet
Now see, this is why I don’t do bloody scav runs.
Tide sirens wailed out ten minutes past, and my employer, quotation parenthetical and derision implied, is still sifting through a mountain of sand and rubble that once was a library or somesuch, nigh on gibberish in his frenzied scrabbling. I would have left the snout-faced junkscav in my tracks five clicks past, but the bastard strictly promised Payment On Delivery, and the only thing worse than dying out here is not getting paid.
Plus he’s still a mate, which apparently counts for something.
“Gimme two more!” he yells from within the man-unmade crater. “This could be genuine!” Jen-you-whine with his Yankton drawl.
“What’s going to be genuine are our impending demises if you don’t hurry yourself along.”
There’s snoutrise over the rubble. He pulls his damn stupid hat off his brow, giving me a trusting look that places responsibility solely on me and mine alone. “Nothing fearing! Sirens called only two-“
“Ten.”
“-minutes ago, and I have the rabbithole’s best getaway chauffeuring me home.”
He winks, a private joke with himself, and ducks back down out of sight. I shake my head, pump the clutch twice to keep the engine warm. That’s me alright – the only, and consequently best, working driver in Sparewood. Too many hoons burned themselves out over the years, and the profession got slammed down on by the magistrate jacks. If there’s to be couriering of any kind, they said, caterpillar moustaches wiggling with indignation, it can be seen to by the sufficiently equipped and more-than-capable federal trains. Put a lot of pilots to drink and their families on welfare, or what passes for it out here. There were pickets, protests, but there ain’t no use of a strike for folk who don’t work anymore. Truth is, most of them were a danger to themselves anyway– only reason I’m still alive when most others ain’t is I don’t risk a road I don’t know.
“Jaxon! My lead’s pushing the pedal by the count of twenty, regardless of the number of passengers it’s accommodating.”
“Two more! I’ve… just… about..”
Thump.
“Got it!”
“Great. Now move.”
He ambulates up the rocks. I’d berate him for taking his sweet time, but the strain is evident from the sweat on his face, and the curio in his hands looks no lightweight.
“What in sweet glory is that?” I ask as he dents my boat’s passenger cabin with his generous rear end. There’s a faint whine, the smell of ethanol, and we leave the memory of a civilisation lost to red sand behind.
“Genuine artefact, Id! Weighs a ton, could be solid iron by the looks. That’s some shitsweet rarity of a find, brother.”
“Worth something to a smelter then.”
The look he gives me should be withering, but borders more on the petulant. “This could date back as far as 20Cad, which would make it-“
“Worth more intact. Looks a little fragile, with all those moving bits.”
“All the more reason for you not to knock on it like that. Look, on the side.”
“What the hell’s a tie-pee-righ-ter?” I ask, glancing at the engraving on the side. Old letters, almost didn’t recognise them. Eyes back on the sand.
“Honestly? I’ve no idea.”
“Hope it’s worth it to you then.”
It’s quiet for a while. I figure if the tides didn’t come through every sunround, I’d spend my every moment out here absorbing this desert silence. It’s the kind of nothing that fills a man. Lets him look about himself without the clutter of anything else.
“How long ago did you say Forecast’s sirens blew?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“So we’re still at least five clicks afore the tide.”
“Yeah.” I try not to think of the headlines plastered across the broadcast boards the last few months. The appraisal and subsequent inquests into the Forecast Agency. Tidal prediction inaccuracies of up to a hundredclick. The latest federal casualty lost to the storm, an entire township’s worth of ethanol lost, left to stew in the sand.
For all I know, we could have found ourselves mid-tide ten clicks ago-
There’s a tingle through the steering column, a precautionary alert that makes a catch in my throat. I’m already looking at the LED atop my boat’s mast before the squealing starts. The signal turns red. I flick a switch just as quickly as the alarm started, the siren strangled midcry.
“What? No, no, I just said we’ve got at least five more-“
“Seems the world don’t want to wait for you Jaxon.”
I can already see the storm coming in the rear-view bar. It’s only a shadow on the horizon now, but soon enough it’ll be rolling right over us. Jaxon’s contorted in a half-spiral, lap pinned to the chair by his leadweight antiquity, eyes darting to see to the telltale black line. It doesn’t feel so quiet anymore.
The prow of the boat slices through red sand, streaming freckles of black particles where the burners skim too close to the desert floor. I release the catch-alls, the half-circle shells unfurling along the mast. We may look as unwieldy as the SydOp House, but the wind now serves more use than just a whistle – not much of a boost compared to the eth-burners that run this skiff, but more of an edge than without.
“Sweet Alice look how fast it moves,” murmurs Jaxon, still pin-twisted in his seat to see behind.
“Make yourself useful.” I toss the comm.-unit at him. “We’ll need the rabbithole’s shield doors down if we want to get inside.”
“But they wouldn’t be up, they know we’re out here!“
“And they know that’s coming.”
“Shit shit shit,” he fumbles. “Forecast this is Jaxon Ridley, Forecast this is Jaxo-“
“Station Sparewood, we receive you Ridley.”
“We’re coming in with the tide on our arses; I hope you’re keeping the welcome mat out for us.”
“Ridley, we advise you make Shelter West One. The shields are powering up within your estimated arrival.”
“We can’t make Shelter West, it’s on the other bloody side of the city!”
“The shields are coming up in four clicks, and your nav-cord puts you out beyond that time frame. The Agency cannot risk delaying the shield protocol.”
“Tell them to give us one click longer,” I say, watching the tide roll behind us in the rearview. The black swirls, turgid and chaotic, spilling over itself to claim whatever unfortunate lies in its path. The keening wail of the wind shearing through the black waves is already audible.
“You won’t make the gates in time,” I hear crackle through the speaker in Jaxon’s hand.
“We’ll make it, if those doors are open for one minute longer.”
“Sweet damnation, Forecast, you can’t leave us out here!” Jaxon paraphrases.
There’s the hiss of intereference for a moment, and then, “Affirmative.” The line cuts out.
“Does that… do they… are they going to…”
“Guess we’re ‘bout to find out.”
I wing us left and up the slope towards Sparewood. The skiff’s already running a mite slower with Jaxon’s clunked-up piece of shite weighting us down. Behind us the screech of the tide hurtling across the desert steadily gets louder. By now we can see the dark bulges, a landbound storm that eats both the sand and sky. Already the day grows dark, a premature nightfall that will only last a few clicks at most. Rarely do we see a cloud in the sky that blots the sun as effectively as the tide.
Up the hilltop, the walls of home. Sparewood. The metal is scratched black, day after day of the tidal winds hurtling past. Already the translucent blue of the shield doors are starting to creep up, a spherical growth, sterile and indomitable. Only the technology of these domed shields makes settlements like Sparewood possible, a haven safe from the daily storms.
Also making my job that little bit tougher today.
“They’re already going up! Id!, the doors!”
We’re angling up the slope now. Sand is kicking over our heads, a red cascade creating our own dome, parted only by the catch-alled mast and Jaxon’s ridiculous hat. It’s a spectacular feat of millinery functon that the piece has remained atop his head the whole time.
The keening wind is now accompanied by the cries and howls of the inhuman caught in the rip and pull of the tide. Not all living can remove themselves from the rolling storm’s path, and few enough of those that don’t are left to live the torment of being pulled along with its current. Some say it’s not so much the wind that will kill you, but what is carried on it.
“Now don’t you start to panic on me,” I say to Jaxon, even as I begin to steer the column right and back down the slope.
“What, where, where are we going?”
“We’re on the east slope; we have to take the switchback.” I imagine his eyes widen as he hears this, and I see him look down the slope.
“No no no no Id no take the ravine you can make it Id-“
“No jump, Jaxon. In this wind we take the switchback.”
“You’re crazy! Id, we’re gonna drive right back into the tide! Take the ravine, for sweet sake!”
“That as may be, we won’t make the jump.” To further dissuade argument, I pull the column right, perhaps more violently as needed, and jerk the pinned Jaxon into his cabin side.
We’re now angled back down the slope, the switchback only a short respite before the climb back up to Sparewood. The ravine, unseen but only metres away, was the bright idea of some jack official generations ago, acting as a catchment for the unwanted terminals caught in the tide’s wake. Peeling burnt flesh caught against the shield walls after tide would have no doubt been a revealing job, and the ravine served a means to minimise civilian and federal conscience. To risk sickness of the flesh is one thing, but of conscience, to know that what you’re chopping and scraping was once a living, breathing beast, mayhaps even a man, is knowledge most could live without.
“Id. Id. We’re going- Id!”
“I know,” I say, though I doubt he can hear me now. The storm has rolled closer, devouring the vast expanses of blue and red we took for granted moments ago. It’s night that we look into now, not broad daylight as it should be. The shriek of the black wind is symphonised to the cracking of stone, the squawking of beasts. It is mostly black cloud we watch, jumping erratically forward, pulsating to almost be breathing. Amongst the wind and burnt sand is the limb of a man, the gnashing of a snout. The wind is stinging across our faces and arms, and where black sand scratches at our skin a strange tingle surfaces that, from experience, I know will burn unholy for days, if those days are to come for us at all.
A creature unknown to me bursts out of the roiling black, close enough to see its eyes rolled back into its skull. It thrashes madly from the tide and dives right for our skiff; propelled either from the burning gushes behind or its own crazed bid for freedom, I can’t tell.
“Id, dude, dude, dude dude dude,” is all Jaxon says, watching the black eternal bearing on us, his measure getting faster and more frantic. He points to the incoming projectile, and it’s all I can do to swerve the column left, veering from the switchback path. Leathery wings spiral uncontrolled, and the crazed creature erupts into raucous screeching. It plunges into the middle catch-all sail and filters out and back into the approaching tide.
“Dude, dude, dude,” continues Jaxon of his mantra, though I can only keep my eyes on the sand in front. Any second now we’ll have the corner to the path back up the slope and towards the homestretch. The shield doors of Sparewood are almost halfway up now. I chance one look into the swirl of the maelstrom, perhaps only a hundred metres away now and approaching faster than any other means of dying I have entertained. I know now there is another nothingness that can take a man, and it is not a quiet one.
“Get ready to ditch it,” I yell above the thunderous wails. I hit the steering column hard further left, back up the slope and past the switchback.
“What?” he yells back above the roar.
“That,” I indicate to his archeological find. Even if I could wish this boat to go faster it wouldn’t be enough to quell the sick feeling in my stomach. The waterfall of red sand is once again scooping over our heads, falling from the catch-alls and swirling into the black devil chasing at our heels. “I say when, it goes overboard!”
The blue of the shield doors is all but full now, the dome around the cityscape complete. Only the barest of mouths at the station door remains, inevitably closing tight. We’re barely a handful lengths away, and my stomach tightens further. “But-“
“Now!”
With an effort born of, well, I don’t know what, Jaxon pushes his arms and legs up, hauling his solid iron find up and overboard as at the same moment I snap back the catch-alls, the sails snapping full in the wind. Without the weight of the contraption in Jaxon’s lap, the boat’s burners leap forward, and as if the atmosphere had just turned to liquid, the boat bouyants up and into the air, soaring without any semblance of ease or grace.
This is the first time, and I pray last, any of my rides ever become airborne.
There’s the barest of gaps to fit half the skiff through. I hear metal rip and supports shatter along the hull as they tear along the uncompromising shield doors. A thunderous snap as the mast breaks in half and tears out the decking and half of my cabin. Still we’re airborne, one burner crunching and blasting, cut in half as the last of the shield door seals up against the rest of the translucent dome. All around now is the steel runway of the Sparewood Forecast docking station, and I can hear the wail of the tide banging and scraping along the city protected. We’re no longer outside, but still we hurtle forward, uncontrollable.
These few moments borne on broken wings of metal and timber are horrifying, and I have all too much time to look at the solid ground below and think,
‘I bet this is going to hurt.’
