October 15, 2020.

Fait Accompli, Chapter Four.

I leave some paper for the room on the old gal's table and dip out through the back door with my bag of supplies and the boots and floppy hat that I took from the sheriff.

A gale of desert wind rips at my face and pants legs like a wolf. The cold is somehow even worse than the heat was. I've gotten a few nips of sleep but it's 3 ay em now and a doozy of a hangover is knocking at the door, my internal body temperature is dancing merry hell, all my structural elements are threatening to collapse. And now this wind.

I huddle against a corner and set fire to a match, use the light to refer to my notebook. A wind like this I'd expect to howl, but the desert it rushes over is flat and dead and there's nothing for it to catch on and howl off of so instead it just sings whispers into the sky and that's worse.

In a few hours this place is going to blister with heat and so am I, if I'm not grabbed and hanged by the affronted populace first, so I decide to eschew the ceremony and leave Dinnerset. The moon is in the sky now and it casts an O.K. light so I don't have to worry about tripping over rocks and brush and things of that nature. My compass shows me where west is and I go there.

Dinnick and I worked out that it would take about four hours to get to the spot, maybe five (because I'm a wet pork dumpling), so starting around 3:00 would get me there by 8:00 at the latest and then I'd be able to avoid the worst of the sun. This time of year, should just start coming up around seven, he guessed. I said that was fine by me.

Walking is easy to start off with. The boots the Irishman gave me fit and keep the sand out O.K. The wind pushes me around a little, but with things as flat as they are, as long as I keep heading west I should find the spot I'm going. Getting back should be fine too, even if I get off course I go east long enough, I'll hit the road that runs north-south, follow that I can get back to Dinnerset. Fine.

What I know of sand is walking on the beach, which works your calves and sticks to your skin, but is generally not something you spend a lot of time worrying about. Something about this sand is different, it's finer, fine enough you might breathe it in if you're not careful. The wind whips it around and it stings my face and hands and I say ouch and goddamit and sonofabitch which doesn't make it feel any better but I do it anyway.

Luckily there's not very much of it. It's blowing in from somewhere but what I'm walking across is almost all flats so it's going fine. I check my compass and keep an eye out for snakes hidden in the moonlight. I make sure my iron is in my pocket in case I see a rattler, although I don't know if the Mojave has rattlers. I try to think what Dinnick told me about the local fauna but my head is cloudy from the hangover and I can't recall with any real sense of clarity.

In addition to the water flask the Irishman gave me, I filled the two empty gin bottles with water before heading out. I drink some water from one of them, and I drink some gin from one of the full gin bottles, to help with the pain in my head and the sick in my gut. They both help a little.

I start to think about what probably happened to my quarry. Dead, I'd guess, of heatstroke, maybe, or fallen into a ravine. Got by coyotes or scorpions or rattlers. Maybe just lost, wandering forever in the desert. This thought gives me the shakes and I take another gin break with water chaser. This one doesn't help.

My legs are already crying out for me to stop, it's been three quarters of an hour, maybe. I'm drenched in sweat and so cold my teeth knock together like a busted textile machine.

I consider turning back. If I get out to the spot and there's nothing, no shade, I could croak out here. This paycheck is O.K. but it's not worth a one-way-trip. But I guess if I get out there and there's no shade I could always turn back and get to Dinnerset around noon. I could hack that. I'm fat and useless, but I could walk in the sun for a couple hours without dying. At least, I hope.

Anyway, I made a promise. I checked in on the families before I left Frisco. They were pretty busted up about the disappeared men, Dr. Palmer's mother and his wife and his five kids, Mr. Scmitt's new bride, only three months in but already showing signs of being in the family way. There were a lot of waterworks and I promised and promised again I'd find out what happened just to extricate myself from the tears and grasping hands. I don't welsh on my promises, although now, I wish to God I did.

It's two hours in, still heading due west, and I realize that when the sun comes up it's going to rip open the back of my neck with sunburn unless I get this hat on presently, so I do. My stomach hurts. My calves have been screaming at me for a while, but now my thighs and knees join in three part harmony. The flats are now host to small ambulatory waves of sand that bluster against my trouserlegs, and I am filled with fear and hate and pain.

I throw up a little in my mouth, gin and water, but not wanting to lose hydration, I force myself to swallow it and wash it down with more gin and water. I feel like I'm already dead. My bones are chilled, my skin is damp and clammy, I can feel the hollows under my eyes and my tongue sits thick and lifeless in my mouth, coated with sand from the open-mouth gasps I resort to when snorting in air through my nose no longer feels sufficient to keep my brain alive.

Then, at around two hours and a half, I hit something of a stride. Everything hurts, everything is terrible, I actually do throw up a gulletful into the sand, but the process of walking becomes somewhat automatic, the pain doesn't lessen but retreats to somewhere in my mind where I can ignore it. I let my mind wander, thinking of all the great and wonderful things I'll do with the money from the University men when I get back to civilization.

I picture a warm bath and a cool fan. I picture laying in my bed and drinking mixed cocktails. I picture a great desert falcon swooping down from the sky, lifting me up in its claws, and carrying me gently through the dry air to deposit me gently at my destination.

This goes on for about another hour and then I realize I have been asleep while walking. Terror rushes through me. I check my compass, but there it is, still due west, I have not strayed from my path.

However, the blowing sand has, gradually, over the past hour, overwhelmed the flats, and I now find myself trudging through shifting dunes. The sand sucks at my boots, and I have to high-step to extricate myself, slowing my progress, creating sharp, shooting pains in new and exciting bundles of muscles.

I consider laying down and dying here, but after a brief session of vomiting and weeping and gnawing dryly at the air, I decide I should at least get to my destination, because I said I would and maybe there's a rock to huddle under until nightfall.

Progress is so slow and excruciating that over the next indeterminate amount of time I barely notice the rise of the sun, the cessation of the wind. I stare at the compass, I stare at my feet, my eyes blur with tears and sweat and pain, and I do not know at what point I look up and first see the thin vertical line piercing the horizon, and a small blob of shadow below it, in the sands.

I stare at these two objects for a time. Neither of them are sand or the sky, that's for sure. I try to think what else they might be, and I go through the list. Are they a tree. No, neither one is a tree. Are they desert brush. Maybe the little one, but definitely not the tall vertical line. Also the little blob is moving in a way that makes it seem alive, so probably not a plant. An animal, then. A snake? My hand instinctively reaches for my shooter. A coyote? I fumble idly at the holster while I think. The blob doesn't seem like a snake or a coyote. In fact it seems very familiar, like something you might see back in the city. What could be both out in the city and here in the desert? I strain, trying to gather all the facts, fight against my sick and my bone-deep exhaustion and use pure logic to undo this knot.

Then, unprompted, it comes to me all at once. Two words:

TOWER.

BOY.