The Botflies

The Prologue:

The Omega, The Moonuva, and The Glowing Marble

The Moribunda Desert, still hours away from the cool dark of night, or dead time. Time was treated cruelly in the desert. The day ran for 120 hours straight, and night for half that. It was eons of dunes, and her caps a liquidy radioactive green in contrast to its goldish trunk, and stretched so far it was almost ubiquitous. The slippy sand was as big of a pest as the bot flies that tackled and twisted around the donkey’s ass. Something must’ve died there. The heat was a rippling cloak, an illusive mirage, emulating the hypnotic waves of the seas. Mikal and Zane, were slowly wading candle flames, wandering silhouetted slumped orangutans in the thick of the mirage, and if they were capable of getting heat stroke they would’ve been dead by now. If that wasn’t bad enough, there was the rare but bizarre chance of falling into the enigma of these deserts, that is, the random encounters of the deep black pitfalls, so dark the mega red sun couldn’t seem to peek in it. They were the Moribunda’s black holes, and a wrong step could suck whatever, into an unknown hell that even the immortal can’t dig out of.

The troughs and crests of the dunes made the crossing as if hiking pyramids, one after another. It seemed like they hadn’t really moved forward even when they had traveled tens of miles, almost hundreds by now. It had been five gruesome days, and they had known since the beginning—since they climbed and scaled over the cold border walls, and onto the bouncy scalding sand that they were beyond fucked. Constructing a pulley system, using a rope, strong enough metals, and elbow grease, just to platform the donkey and launch it to the other side. It was a pain, and the unusually herculean strength of bots in this heat was drained by double, so they could only perform a strength of that of a malnourished gorilla. All the while the sun with its magnifying glass, burning a seeping hole on their fake, fragile flesh.

The desert was its own universe as far as they were concerned, but it was unfortunate that their knapsack, each passing day, looked more and more starved for something to fill it. The knapsack, after their epic escape from York, were stuffed with necessities like oil, rum oil, chewing oil, and the many many pleasures of oil, as Mikal would say. Without oil, they can’t move, they can’t function, but even oil is second fiddle to their foremost problem. Donkey food.

What really mattered the most was the sustenance for their jackass, Ol’ Napoleon, was running thin. Their thoughts may have been focused but they themselves were useless. Every once in a while in the intense heat had them so drained one would spiral into short bouts of madness, as if under a high. Beneath the rays of the mega red sun, which covered about a third of the horizon, nothing under it continued on sanely, whether they were human or not. The blaring red hue of the mega red sun caused the outer skies to appear purplish and pink, and while lancing the sky, even in five days' distance were the misty gray and black gradient of skyscrapers and factories spewing the rust and dusty particles that sprinkled like snow on the bots of York. And even over those buildings, lay staunch to the massive eiffel tower like oil rig, thrusting the clouds, and striking down hard into the ground, it could be seen moving up and down even from that distance. For Mikal, looking back while walking further away from it, was barely relieving, for Zane, who had taken the turn of hanging out to dry on Ol’ Napoleon, he felt even less so, he had been drowsy thinking about it too much in the godforsaken heat.

For them the only way to traverse these sands was to take turns riding the donkey, to make sure their oil didn’t fry, or they don’t overheat so much that the few brains left in their steel cranium don’t boil over into a brain stew. They took turns every couple hours, arched on Ol’ Napoleon's back like wet clothes over a clothesline, arms hanging and drawing lines in the sand like carriage tracks. It felt sort of like a game to them to pass the now boorish everyday backdrop of the piss yellow drumlin-like sandscapes. And in this place, where time is nonexistent, the hurricane of sands is insistent and who they are, why they are, and who they were don’t really matter. It can be said that York had a hold on them, their memories though dry and miserly, still were the only memories that held them, and shaped them into what they are. Change was dangerous, change always got somebody in trouble or—shut off—and they changed once they knew it was too late to do anything about it.

They were on a mission, one that forced them to rob from the old kook gypsy, Jezebel, the very same person who had inspired them to go on this mission. They were certainly criminals, but for other reasons, and seperate things. And they were being chased, they didn’t know by who, or when they’d get close but when they managed to escape, they knew it wouldn’t be easy. They didn’t have the warm beating heart that humans have and the feelings of fear, they couldn’t feel at all. They only had the necessities for preservation and survival; nobody lives and nobody dies, but they can get shut off, and that's the closest thing to death for a Manoid, or in York slang, Manoys.

York City, York, this metropolis was a noose that they weren’t willing to hang in. To rust forever and become one with the asphalt didn’t sit well with them. Though they did harbor some regret leaving it, it was still better than the hundreds of years circling around the same areas, bound to the same conversations, and always hunched and bowing to the walking dead android computers, that stared at them under watchful red glaring laser eyes, and cold-blooded, no second-chances ignorance. In York, everyone practically knew one another. Especially the self-proclaimed prophet Cheshire. Whenever and wherever Cheshire was around, he would be announcing lavish soliloquies and flamboyant sermons for the few conscientious, the desperate, and the criminals, overcome with dangerous revolutionary thoughts against the Botany. This had become church for them, it’d happen every week, whether he was tracked down, or shot at, he’d always return to grace his words of the lord, because Cheshire was never the type to kiss metal ass. Having persuaded them into rising above their tyrannical soulless oppressors, illegally procuring and bearing arms, to regain their lost pasts, believing that those with their brains intact were the chosen ones, led by this God. Cheshire, a bot riddled with holes in his brain, believed vehemently that God was stolen from him, and he wanted him back.

God was a person, with human limbs, and Cheshire was convinced so. His damning evidence saved from the fires of time, through secretive underground networks, so incredibly long and large to produce shelves upon shelves of articles, documents, books,scrolls, and anything else that had survived. His loyal followers had also become archaeologists, digging burrows like moles,coming across skeletons, and relics that his followers were led to believe were objects of faith, which would further fervor their belief upon God, and Cheshire. This cult Cheshire had banded together, were adamant in their radical ideals, some with the courage of god believed wholeheartedly that the voice had whispered to them, and on its behalf committed atrocities on not only the governing but the governed. Those who were unwilling to fight for the cause, had been destroyed. A war burst through the city like wildfire, soon everyone with a literal half brain, and missing memories and dreams began to revolt, and slaughter and massacre, everyone including themselves. That’s right. Even themselves. They committed bot suicide, either by shooting the brain they had had left, or impaling their bodies with their mechanical hands and ripping the cords of their plugs like it was life support, and they plopped on the floor. Lifeless, but they were already dead, so double dead, but the Botany wouldn’t leave them be.

Cheshire had gone maniacal, most of the people in the city were rioting, the Botany was constructing more bots, from parts of discarded or dead radicals and made through factories, factories that made up about seventy percent of York. York City coined the title the factory city, the whole state had been the factory state, a pompous joke it was. Cheshire led an attack, with him at the front, against the whole city; leaving places burned, in a wreckage, soiled and there was no going back, nowhere for the remaining bots to return to. He headed for the Council of the Botany next. Marching and stomping, and crushing over those destroyed, or dead, as a result of the rebellion. Their seeping, scarred flesh stripped off their metal skulls, left impressions upon no one, they guilted no one, and no one looked back to mourn for the lifeless community. Mikal and Zane, midway through the crusade, managed to keep the sense about them that they wouldn’t be able to live long, whether they joined the rebels, or vanished to the rusting of time. It was an easy decision, but a careful evacuation, anyone with a programmed tendency to gossip, could spread rumours about the odd criminal duo, sneaking around in the alleyways, alone suspiciously located near the outer walls. By the time they had escaped, the clash between the Botany and the Cheshire crusaders had come to an end. Cheshire had dethroned the Botany, becoming the new leader, and enforcing his beliefs upon everyone. Soon everyone had worn a T-shaped necklace around their necks, the body of a man but the head had been cut off. It still became this hierarchy, Cheshire at the head, and everyone else as his servants. The criminals had become bounty hunters, tagged by Cheshire, with neck braces, clipped with an upside cross, so that if they disobeyed orders it would signal to decapitate them as fast as lightning. Cheshire’s goals didn’t really deviate from the Botany’s, and now that Cheshire was king, he had the oil to himself. The name was kept the same, he liked it, even though he didn’t know what it really meant. He found a list of all those who still had limbs of humanity, and it just so happened that Mikal and Zane were in possession of one. He couldn’t let it go, no matter what, and through intense questioning, and the torture of depriving them of oil, to die a long thristy death, they caved in, even when they knew little or nothing, they fabricated it , yeah he went there, or here, or near the walls. It just so happened they would finally find out, from the gypsy, a detailed accounting of it.

And here they were, criminals, without the neck brace and the cross, bucking one another to make their worries seem as small as a grain of sand.

“Let’s rest for now, we’ll pick up in a couple,” said Mikal

Zane nodded,“Just hope the Omega sun, doesn’t dusk, if it does, we’ll be wandering in the dark cross eyed,”

Ol’ Napoleon was looking a little despondent, but with a little petting and some oily breadcrumbs he seemed to be braying ok. They stopped in their tracks, finally looking about them only to notice Zane this whole time had left oil marks. Though they couldn’t sweat, their faces certainly wanted to, to cool this pressure. Zane on the ground, searched his body,peeling his shirt, unzipping his pants, peeking in his underwear. He kicked about his clothes, knocking it up with the dust, undoubtedly afraid for his life. After picking at his flesh a bunch of times, Mikal told him to turn around so he could search his back, and Zane complied.

“Do you see anything,” said Zane anxiously.

“No, I have no idea where it's leaking from, dear lord, we walked all this way without stopping, we should’ve looked back, then we may have seen this coming--Damn it! How did we not see this coming!”

“I’m sorry--I’m really sorry Mikal, I wasn’t trying to lead them to us or nothing, I swear,”

“Calm yourself, we don’t got time to blame, or apologize--just, start walking again, that way we can see where that oil is coming from, move a little forward”

Zane lifted his foot forward and Mikal’s hand magnetized onto his ankle, and he clutched it tightly “Don’t move, it's obvious where it is by now don’t you think,”

“Huh, I never thunk it. What made it spill so much, it's got to be something sharp...but what’s sharp in the desert?”

“Don’t know, but once I do find out what it is, put your clothes back on, before I take it out.”

“Sure thing Cheshire,” he said sarcastically. He returned to his senses, he wasn’t really sure why he said that, but saying it put a bad taste in his mouth, and left Mikal with a solemn emotionless face, but Zane knew, he knew more than anyone about him than anyone in York, they had been together for decades, doing nothing but scavenging and laughing, there was not much to do besides those two things. He remembered when Mikal adopted an abandoned dog, left in a box, inhaling and cackling from the noxious fumes and starvation. He fed that dog, took care of it, it wasn’t the healthiest of dogs, no animal in York was, or could be, he knew it and when the dog, Lil’ Mike he used to call it, died he made that same face, it wasn’t sad, but it was a silent sobbing, the one where the tears were dripping, they were just invisible, Lil Mike must’ve felt them though, on his face, because for that day he didn’t look so thirsty anymore.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean--that,”

“It’s ok,” said Mikal removedly, “ Let’s just get on with it.” Mikal didn’t have anything to tweeze whatever was inside his foot, so he compromised with his fingers, time wasn’t to be ignored, especially since for the time being they were supposed to use this hour to rest. Zane stretched his ankle backward while still standing and hopping on the other, Mikal down on one knee inspecting it. Zane’s whole foot was bedded in sand, but once Mikal swiped it clean off his foot was still black, of oil. “I’m gonna have to call you Blackfoot from now on.” Zan smirked, still hopping around unsteadily, and unfortably, and nakedly. Before Mikal swiped his foot again, his eyes focused on one spot of the foot that did not shine under the Omega sun. His hands like pincers, clutched at it and tugged, carefully so as not to spill an over abundance of oil. It came off easily, like butter, and he looked at it closely, his eyes an inch from it stabbing into the plastic like corneas of his shapely eyeballs. It resembled the stinger of a bee, but it was larger, and sharper, about a half of the handle of a knife, and sharper than the tip of one, it had completely divided the flesh of Mikal’s thumb.

“Hmm, it's a stinger, a bee able to fly out this far away from anything to be a survivor.”

“Well damn, we got to cover our tracks, now don’t we?” said Zane.

“We don’t have anything to cover it with though, maybe if you plug it up long enough it’ll dry? But what if it don’t, damn how did we manage to screw ourselves this bad.”

Mikal, still kneeling and observing the stinger, like Hamlet to a skull, he got up and put into his satchel, and he took off his vest, ripping it and wrapping it around the area where it had been oiling (yes, oiling, when someone made oopsie, but only from oil), and slapped him on the back and with a handprint of oil on his stretchy skin, he didn’t say anything else, except, for him to put his damn clothes on. Mikal didn’t know why he thought it was immoral for him to be naked, but he did somehow, even though there was nothing beneath the belt anyway.

The mega red sun, unforgiving and unforgettable for five days, finally dusks its head, launching spiked shadows created from round top dunes. They were stuck on their butts for what felt like a couple of hours to hang their heads, even the donkey stood still not even to open its mouth or shake its head, or bray even, maybe to cool itself, for the next voyage. Zane, with his straw hat, bristling at the ends of the brim, he took it out, and reached in deep, like he was waiting to pull out a bunny, it was funny because, it stook out a little more than his head, and something clashed whenever they were walking together, so Mikal knew something was in there but he never wanted to speak on it.

“No not this, not this either, Ah! Got it!”

Zane pulled out a pocket watch, large and gold, it plopped open and the sun and moon cover two halves of the watch, no numbers but only smaller lines and larger lines to substitute for an hour the little hand and large hand white. The sun half, was a bright lava orangish red, and the moon half a black with violet, sprinkled with bright different colored stars, it was glowing even under the brightness of the falling sun.

“Omega is falling, it’s dead time, The Moons are rising”

The Moonuva, or two moons, like the crater of death’s eyes, would soon look down onto the desert of the Moribunda.

The pocket watch, with the Sun at the top, glowing, was starting to dim, and was sinking in its translucent glass, and dropping steadily, soon it would disappear, and become dark, and another moon, take its place. But only gradually it still shined in the drowning sun. They still hung hands like boats anchored on the beaches of the sand, while sitting down, they looked toward the vast and vacant sky, the radiant reds and pink, now becoming a little magenta and purple, it was like landscapes in the skies, of rainbows, and they were at the bottom, the yellow, piss yellow.

Zane snapped the pocket watch, placed it back into his hat, and dug into the hat once more, snagging a fairly long smoking pipe. It was a churchwarden, but it was warped about the rim, open like a wide open mouth. Like the rim of a bugle, or a french horn, and he added some powdery substance into it. “I use it for a horn sometimes, it makes a noise, I didn’t want to play it because I was scared you might’ve been annoyed by it”

“Not really, it would've been entertaining, better than doing nothing, listening to hooves, and footsteps, and sighing, and y’know, well damn play some, you know any good’uns?”

Zane playingly blew air into it so he could show Mikal it really made a sound like a horn, but instead blew a dust of powder, embarrassingly. It sprinkled like soft snow.

“Well, I did used to play this song, a hundred years or so, that the horns spread on the poles of the work camp that York used to play loudly, it woke everybody up, they played just to play something, but they probably don’t even know what the name of the song is even, let me play it.”

As the sun cut into its equator, Zane using his smoking pipe, was then used as a bugle, it sung loudly, and he as he sat crisscrossed, the backdrop, made his silhouette, oddly nostalgic, his song and his pipe, and his presence, for Mikal it was only missing a bonfire. He was playing Taps, the song civil war soldiers would play, as a wake up call. Mikal knew this song, and out of everything he hated out of York, this alone was one thing he missed about it.

He stopped blowing into it, and let it down, looked into his hat, and brought a pack of matches, issued from 1869, with a picture of Abraham Lincoln, his tophat so high it was cut off near the rounded edge that opened up. The matches were single file, and he took one. He swept it onto his tooth, and it burnt brightly, their faces shown in the creeping darkness, the flame swinging, side to side and up and down, like a door spring.

Zane and Mikal closed in on it. Mikal was in awe as if looking at a star up close “Beautiful ain’t it,” said Zane “It’s funny how such a little stick could carry such a big flame, I’m gonna get the pip going want a swig?”

“Yeah, I ain’t never had one, before, what flavor is it?”

“You’ll like it, it's your favorite, oil-flavored.”

Zane got an opaque bag, blurred by dust, purplish and black, and he scooped the pipe into it, enough for the powder in it to drip out a bit. It made a bit of a trail, and he licked his lips onto the taut mouthpiece, handing the match to Mikal.

“Light it for me won't cha?” said Zane

Mikal held the flame, the fore, the power, and Zane held the addiction, the fire coming closer, and then a noise booming, closer and closer, so loud it jolted Mikal and Zane to their feet and the Donkey resting wagged its flaccid tail once more and braying. A bright light like two domes, peered over the black sandy mounds of sand. It was revving sound, and coming closer. The match and pipe dropped to the sandy floor, the fire died out by now, but still producing a little smoke from the pipe.

“It’s them, they found us didn’t they, damn it, damn it! I knew we’d never be able to leave, no one leaves York, at least not alive.” said Zane.

“Keep calm, we came from that direction, the south, they’re coming from the north, they can’t possibly be them, right, unless they wasted their damn time circling us, just to surprise us, nah, that’s not so.”

“So what is it, a monster maybe.”

“I don’t know, let's hide behind one of these, sand mounds, maybe we can blindside it”

“Alright”

They took all their stuff and walked a few feet past a mound, large and round, and went to the top of it, but they forgot to bring the donkey with them, and Zane couldn’t find his pipe, struggling and slapping his pockets and body. Mikal slid down the sandy hill, to bring up the donkey.

“Dammit Zane, help me to get the donkey here, its just as important as everything else did you forget?”

“Ah, yes, you’re right.”

While Mikal was pushing the Donkey to move a little faster, pushing it by the rear, Zane was half-assed in doing it, looking back the whole time around the floor and back again.

“Get pushing Zane, stop flubbing”

“My pipe, I’m looking for it”

“Who gives a donkey’s ass, its us or the pipe”

“And the Donkey”

“Just shut up and keep pushing, we’ll check later”

They pushed it on, Zane half-heartedly, and laid prone beneath the sand hill again, looking downward onto the spot they were just in, the noises louder, the revving, revving hard enough to bound the sand like it was wind, they could hear crunching and smell gasoline, and see gas even in the pursuing darkness of the sky. This reverberating of their robotic senses, was a human equivalent to goosebumps. Finally the sounds were near, they came to a halt, it was a monster of a vehicle, and the lights were as large as spotlights.

The body of the vehicle was naked, full of poles and no windows, or doors, it was handcrafted, and had makeshift floors and exterior, but the tires were large, heavily ridged and robust. It was clear to see three people at max could fit into it, two inside, and one riding on the back of the rail cage. There were three already on it, all masked and naked from the abdomen, and legs, but with a torn top, and clothed at the pelvis. The mask was white with lines of red making an enigmatic face, some happy looking, some sad, some wild, and too much going on, for Mikal and Zane to even attempt to figure out. All they knew was that they were savages, stories the gypsy, in York to past time, would describe in vague detail, all those too strange, and not from York were deemed savages, but somehow, the gypsy had to disclaim that she herself was not one, most likely in fear that her stories would become truth in the eyes of the Botany, and she’d be molted, or turned off.

They hopped out of the monster-like vehicle, simultaneously. They were speaking a language to one another in haste, and quizziness, that to Zane and Mikal was not known to them. One of them spoke a little higher, his body was smaller than the others and pot bellied, his hair, ruffled as it was, could be seen through the mask. His hair so long, it reached his elbows, and white as snow, it flew in the dust winds, and had held the universe in it, as it sparkled in speckled areas, like diamonds. His mask, was a red in stripes, but blue in others, the interior was white, there were eyeholes, and no nose hole, as did all the masks, but this mask also had a strange feature, a feather, from a large bird, perhaps not even a part of the mask but the savage himself. A beautiful read point. Glowing, like a phoenix, white fading toward the middle, and black at the very bottom of it. It was strangely beautiful, to Zane, but Mikal wasn’t about to be enchanted by a potential enemy, no, a definite enemy.

The other two were big and burly, but it was clear the two big ones didn’t have much of a relationship, as one talked, the other two ignored. From the shrillish yell in his voice, it was clear, they didn’t like him much, and he didn’t trust them with his life. Zane, while looking at them from behind the sand wall, took his hat again, Mikal stealing a few glances, and in the big cup in his hat space, saw a white covered pouch beneath it, an optical illusion, that could carry just as much as Mikal’s satchel. He tried reaching in a little more but this time he turned his body against it, his head resting on it, it felt like a brick, but his steel head dent it enough to make a crescent on it, the unhinged pillory headrest, and while digging into while using the remaining amount of light to search for what he was looking for he was kicking the sand a little bit with his sprawled out feet. The head rolling along the sandy headrest, having some falling streams of sand. Mikal quickly, but still prone, grabbed his feet so as not to make any noise while he, ignorantly, looked into it. Mikal was still looking at him, whispering at him but in anger.

“The hell are you doing!?”

“I’m looking for your Backgammon, it’s got to be somewhere in here.”

“Well, do it quietly, are you daft”

“Nah, I just really want to see you shoot it, the last time you used it was when the gypsy was chasing us after we stole the thing.”

He stopped rummaging, and his body froze altogether ”Hey, Mikal” he added “You still got enough bullets don’t cha?”

“You idiot, I only have two, I damn well couldn’t take the whole damn arsenal, and I fired one already,”

“That’s fine we could take them down.”

“Zane , what’s one plus two”

“Uh, three”

Ok, what’s one save plus two savages?”

“Ah, this one, is tough, no wait, three savages.”

“How many bullets do we have?”

“Two”

“And how many savages are there”

Zane took a look down, his eyes and the top of his head, and nose dee in the sand, looking down on them, he saw two of them talking near the vehicle, the lights still on, the third looking at the sky..

“Three”

“So two bullets can only kill two people, and what about the third?”

“Well, that’s easy enough we’ll whip him with the gun, or step on him”

“As logical as that sounds, we don’t know what savages are capable of, they could pile drive us harder than an oil mill, digging into earth, plus I think they got something in the monster, it's too dark to see anything but, we got to prepared to believe it to be a weapon, are you with me?”

“Gotcha, so what do we do then”

“Damn it, I don’t know, let me think, watch them while I get my gears going”

His gears were going, Zane could actually hear it, in the silent nightfall, of the desert. The three savages were restless, but they were waiting restless, not what is here restless. Zane had it through his thick head, maybe they weren’t the only ones, that they were only waiting for more savages. His gears stopped its clicking and clangor, and his hands, rubbing against his temples, were now at his sides again.

“Ok, we got no choice, we’re jumping ‘em”

“Oh, I couldn’t agree more”

Zane with the flintlock, Backgammon, a glossy gray, and he pulled out two pellets that had little ridges, in spiral, but were beautifully glowing, they were marbles, glowing marbles, used in the game of Backgammon. He held it up to his shoulder, the barrel, pointing to the sky, the moons staring at them, one softly glowing blue to the west, and the other glowing boldly to the east, both twins, and third the size of the Omega. They made a countdown, and both hopped up from the sand wall, Zane pointing toward them, both ready to yell their spartan yell, like warriors, and rush them, but another spotlight in the distance, revving, was coming closer, the sand making a larger stream, and a rustling noise, they all too quickly, shot back down prone, snapping turtle heads in their shells. They instantly regretted their decision, and now at bigger odds than they can handle.The desert had abandoned them this time, no longer wasting at them, just left them, to the most complex of conundrums.

They were at odds, to fight at night would be too risky. They knew so, even if the stars in the black concave space provided a little bit of light, it was like thin cylinders of limelight that sparkled the sand, the lit sand, at first glance to Zane and Mikal, a treasure box of gleaming sea tiny jewels. Still prone on the sand wall, they couldn't stop the movements and impatiences of Ol’ Napoleon, his braying loud and obnoxious in the circumstances. Mikal cursed the randomness of animals, their actions improbable, and oblivious to the problems they had gotten themselves into. Ol’ Napoleon started swinging his head, and peeking his head over the wall, by then it was too late to even try to hide themselves any further, so they didn’t. There was no way the savages below didn't hear the noise beyond the sandy dam. In fact, although they cringed and ached in a silent scream to themselves, hand firmly in foreheads, they could hear a loud cry from one of them and movement in the sand. Zane looked Mikal in the face, slapped him on the shoulder and picked himself up and forward over the slope, sliding down, and he loaded Backgammon the pouch of marbles, tied to his side, he opened it, while struggling to figure out the gun he had in his hand. He instantly regretted moving from his hiding place before learning how to use Mikal’s gun, the savages leaving little time for him to do so, heading into his direction, only the two. The white haired savage was only looking from the side of the vehicle, his eyes two moles out of the mask, and looking intently, and hardly into his rushing eyes.

Mikal rose, and did not even yell to him, instead hopping onto Ol’ Napoleon holding onto the reins, he smacked his ass, Ol’ Napoleon, like a great stallion, his front feet in the air kicking up sand leaving a dust trail. It was like the portrait of Napoleon on his march up a mountain rock. He was neighing, and his mouth jumbling and shaking, he rushed down the hill, sliding, and trying to recuperate, being steady so as not to fall over. He never even went down the slope in its entirety, he simply hopped a little near the end, and jumped forward to the two savages, past frozen Zane, his hands in a fumble, with his gun and bag clumped together stopped to look at an even more savage sight than the savages. Until a grin flexed on his face, a big wide, happy grin, that boosted his morale, and made his eyes glow.

“Yahooo! Get it going, Ol’ Napoleon, we knew you had a fire in your belly” said Zane.

Ol’ Napoleon coming closer and closer, the two men who were racing toward Zane like a running barricade, were now split, and dodged him, rolling on opposite ends in the sand. Like a battering ram, Ol’ Napoleon went past them and to the white hair first, even Mikal could control him, the reins he was pulling on had no effect on the momentum Ol’ Napoleon was gaining. He was a comet by now, Mikal was remembering the wall in York. It would have been faster, he thought, to have Ol’ Napoleon speed into the wall, and pop a hole in it than use a damn pulley. Less work, time, and worry. Mikal, lept off of the jumping hump of Ol’ Napoleon, and let him run his course. He was a train, with no conductor at this point.

“Zane, stop taking your damn time, load it, and pop quick!”

Zane was managing to hold all at the same time, his indecisiveness was one of his biggest flaws, one that Mikal took great pains for him to understand, but telling someone their own flaws, only made it more apparent for them to ignore it, and make their flaw a more carnivorous application in frequency. He dropped the bag altogether, his hat in the movement of all things, brim cast over his brows, he finally managed to load a marble in it, through an opening in the hammer, and clicking the hammer back even further, he aimed it without looking at the sight, and hastily shot it. It was like a firefly being slingshot at a high speed, a glow of green, level a downward angle, as Zane was still placed on the rise of the slope, the space around the bullet, produce a radius of light, until it finally struck past nobody, hitting the side of the vehicle, cracking the petrol tank lid. The savages watched it pass by, but they didn’t wait around for that strange light to be shot out again, they immediately got up, on synchronization, one going for him the other, in haste to defend the white haired man, sprinting toward the rushing bull donkey.

While the loyal savage and the donkey were on the race to the white hair savage, he still hung by the vehicle, unfazed, not moving, left arm on the hood of the vehicle, caressing it, and looking at it calmly. The donkey was fot from ramming into him, the loyal servant, who was leaping with every step, caught up to it, grabbed its tail, and yanked it, undoing all its momentum, and causing it to fall on its side, and sliding.The donkey breathless as it hit the ground, due to its own weight, and the surprise of it all, had it splotching out spit and maple like saliva. Covering the sparkling ground, in darkness. Mikal got the brunt of the weight to his leg,it bent a little, and Mikal couldn’t even move it, it felt not a part of his body anymore, just dead weight, even though he couldn’t feel any pain from it. It was painful, the thought that he’d have to drag himself until he could get it fixed or a new one to replace it.

Mikal then immediately focused onto the incoming savage, who was trotting toward Zane slowly, and silently, as if not worried at all, anymore, seeing that Zane was flubbing, glancing at him and the gun at regular intervals. He had only one marble left, and this time he was using the sight, but he couldn’t seem to stop this strange movement, a nervousness, Backgammon, swaying up and down and around, and straight again, it was like trying to balance a heavy weight on one arm alone.

The white hair man, looking closely at the ground, his belly, large, and round, creasing against the vehicle, seeing the dome of radiant light that the marble discharged, ricocheted against the petrol tank cap. He couldn’t help but get more engaged in it than in this strange situation. He walked around it, and picked it up. He looked at it as it made his face glow, and his eyes apparent. His skin was tanned, but the lids on his eyes were white, and his irises blue, the crows feet apparent. He held it to his right eye, toward the green moon, as it covered it, and became a much more beautiful one, with its different mist of colors, and fluid, trapped in glass. He grunted, and as the man came even closer the Zane enough to sock him in the face with his rock fisted knuckle, he yelled.

“Hold!” said the white hair savage.

Zane hand and gun cowering against the savage fist froze, Mikal on the floor scrambling his feet stopped, the savage with his fist raised to Zane halted, the savage about to stuff his foot in Mikal left it in mid face, and the Donkey, slowed its straggling feet. The white har savage got up from his knees, and walked toward Zane, without looking up, passing Mikal, the savage, and the donkey, the marble in between his thumbprint and the crevice of his first finger, like he was about to flip it in the air like a coin. Zane and Mikal were still a little slow to realize that the savage spoke English, their thoughts still in the heat of adrenaline.

Zane shaking in his boots, his knees shaking, and the gun raised in the direction of the savage who gave him an even darker shade that the moonlight had provided. The savage was a giant, even though he was atop the slope higher than, enough so that they would be about close to the same height. Mikal, unfrozen, looking to the side that was the walking white haired savage.

“I’m losing it, since when do savages speak english?”, said Mikal.

The white hair savage, bypassed the remark, with his own question.

“You there, with the gun that glows, stars, are you the possessor of it?”

Zane was still shaking,” Well, yeah, you see me holding it don’t you? Come any closer and you’ll be looking at them with stars. Now back away and tell this one too fore I leave him with a hole in him.”

The white hair savage gestures the savage at eye level to Zane to retreat behind him, he does, and the gun is shaking at him now. He puts his finger in the shape of the gun. “I’ve got a gun too, dumb one, but this one is a lot more effective watch what it can do.” He left it motionless in front of him, it was still, and unmoving, it was silent, even the jostling of the shaking gun and its machinery hadn't made a noise, and it made his statement a little awkward. But he suddenly jolts it into the hole of the gun barrel. “Boom!,” he says, giving Zane a start, his finger making the gun straight, against his jittering wrist. His thumb raised with the marble in it.

He held it right into his eyes, and Zane was mesmerized by it, but at the same time, bewildered at this strange show, the savage displayed. The wind was blowing, a frosty air, the two moons, at each end, rising up from the desert floor, two large eyeballs, with different colored eyes. The stars make a stairway in between them, glittering, and make the dark desert sparkle in bits like gold dust. The marble in the middle, its dome of light, made it like a third moon, a mix of blue and green, like a lava lamp, its fluid within the glowing glass, was circling, and colliding, and dispersing. His eyes seen in the face of Zane, he thought they were just as mesmerizing.

“Answer me correctly and I’ll let you live, and he will die, if not, you will die, and he will live to see Omega rise again.”

“What are you on about? What kind of deal is this, I want us both to live!”,said Zane. Flabbergasted and unstill, it felt like he might accidentally pull the trigger any minute, out of a human fear, he only felt in minute pulses, at York. Mikal was now struggling to stand on one foot, as if he did stand on his other, it would fold over, being flattened and all. He was kneeling on it, arms across the belly of the sideways Ol’ Napoleon, he was struggling to breathe, but he did not know why, his long black hair dripping onto his mouth, and he spitting wind so it was moving out of the way. The savage had already let his foot down, now looking in his general direction, his face in the darkness could not be seen, two dark pits, the stars could not lighten it.

“Wait, don’t do this, we’ll do anything, we’ll even give you our donkey, I bet you never seen an animal like this, huh, we’ll trade this donkey for our lives, it's a great deal.” said Mikal.

“Deals, that word is only for the dead, that want to live, it shouldn’t be used so lightly.”

“No, you take us both, or you take none of us” said Zane. “Why one of us gotta die, just to survive? Only a coward would sell his partner short.”

“Then one of you will be a coward, since I only need one of you, to bring back to Konnetikut.”