Last Refuge

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.”

“Really? You could have fooled me.” I couldn’t stop the snarky response. To be truthful, I didn’t try.

“Why are you being such a downer?” Her head bobbed into view over the roof of the car as she spoke.

She was beautiful. Her short rugged cut auburn hair glimmered in the fading light. Although sweat and dirt clung to her face, it only added to her striking features.

I tossed my cigarette butt just past her left ear before I responded. “Because it’s hopeless. Once the sun sets, we are on our own. Just the two of us with what? A beat-up van, a quarter bottle of kerosene, and two shovels?”

“You forgot my blanket and our dauntless drive to live.” The lilt her voice took on when she mocked me cut worse than the knife had.

“Yeah, you’re right. I forgot to mention the blanket you’re wearing.”

“See, Karl, that’s more like it.” Her voice strained as she pulled her face out of my window. I think I preferred it there. At least then I had something other than the destroyed city below us to look at.

“Ruby, why did you bring me up here?” I felt a cough welling up, and I struggled to keep it down. I needed what little blood I had left in me to stay there.

The sand-filled blanket quickly obscured the flash of her distressed Jump Boots as she leaped off the roof of our wicked two-seater camper van. A cloud of dust quickly consumed her, and it was too much. The cough I had been holding onto freed itself violently from deep inside my chest. Blood flecked the inside of the windshield and I wheezed helplessly.

“To save you. And don’t worry, I will.” The settling dust muted her child-like voice, but I heard her well enough.

“You realize I’m dying, right?” Her finger pressed against my lips, gently cutting off anything else I might have said.

“Shhh… you’ll be fine.”

She quickly flipped the blanket from her shoulders before she said anything else. I could tell from the playful gleam in her eyes. The same look she gave me before tossing me into the van. Then she drove it straight up the mammoth dune that has protected the city for centuries. It was a rough ride, but we survived.

The sickeningly sweet smell of my shirt as it slipped stickily across the leather seat. Each bump and sway pulled it farther along its path. Farther away from the door and tighter across my chest. Pain tore at the edges of my vision. There were moments of clarity between the drowning swirly of sand and horizon, although I’m not sure if I could tell you what I saw. Not then and definitely not now.

Metal grated across metal and it snapped me back to the present. To Ruby, stretching her lithe body across mine. Warmth radiated off her skin, and it was comforting. Her fingers darted between me and the seat a few times as she fumbled with something she wasn’t looking at. I knew this because her breath played across my neck in agonizing puffs. Although she did her best to keep her weight off me, our bodies met in a tantalizing juxtaposition of torment and ecstasy. With a click, it ended. The seatbelt careened back into place and she carefully hauled me onto her shoulders.

“Don’t…” I tried to stop her. I tried to make her let me die there…in the van…with the dying city sprawled out between me and the ocean. But her playful eyes bore down on me and, like the glittering distant waves, she was untamable.

“Shhh…”

My head swam, and my chest throbbed in pain. Each step was excruciating. Blood ran along the inside of my ACU shirt and pooled where it pressed against her shoulders and back. Her body writhed under mine like a steed whipped for a long run. The heady smell of her sweat mixed with the sand in ways my mind couldn’t process. Old ways, unnatural ways, ways lost in the sands and dusk of time. A shred of cloth played across my face for a moment before it ended. My breath forced through my gritted teeth. I wasn’t prepared to be dropped so gracelessly.

“I think I need that.” My fingers threaded the air as I tried pointing to my blood on her uniform.

“Shhh… I’ve got you.” I could hear her voice. It was cracking with exertion as her words fell from her chapped lips.

“So tell me again… about the dragons.” My words hurt my lips and throat, but I had to say something.

Her body enveloped mine as she fussed the blanket into place. Something soft was under my head, supporting it, cradling it. It wasn’t until she carefully unbuttoned my ACU blouse that I realized my head was in her lap. Her torso shaded me from the setting sun as she slowly ripped my undershirt away from the bubbling gash in my chest.

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. There used to be grass and trees. Before man came and uprooted it all. They brought the dragons and the Gods. With them came the desert and the magic that consumed all that ever was beautiful in the Valley.” Ruby’s words were soft. Like the light breeze that carried sand into my wound. Harsh, but not abrasive. Realistic. That’s what they were, like something from a prophecy.