The Heart of the Desert.

The Heart of the Desert

The year is 2135, or at least it should be as best as anyone can figure. We lost track of exactly what year it was. It had been about roughly sixty years since this once great nation fell due to a final Civil War that left scars and changed the face of the globe. I ran a group of what we called “Cowboys”. At best, our profession would be archaeologists; at worst we were called grave robbers. My group always sided with whoever paid the most. Over the years, we did some good. However, we also did things that made it hard to sleep at night.

About a week ago, best I reckoned, we were contacted by some rich land shark about going into the Midwest Desert. As it turned out, all our time together wasn’t enough to truly prepare us for this job. It seemed like a simple enough task: recover an old family jewel that had been lost in the last days of the war. It was said to be in one of the old relocation centers out in the middle of what used to be, at least according to the old maps, Kansas and Oklahoma. Our employer called the jewel, The Heart of the Desert. Described as a locket in the shape of a heart and set on a thin golden chain, the locket was said to have a large blue diamond nestled inside.

With the assurance of our benefactor, and the allure of the reward in our minds, we took to the desert. Our horses were saddled, and a spare loaded with as much extra water and food as it could hold. It would be enough to last us for about three weeks in the land of sand and wind. The group of Cowboys coming with me included my best friend James Davis, little brother Billy and William Hall. James and I had been getting in and out of trouble all our lives. His little brother Billy, known usually only by Bill, was a little hot headed with a tongue that seemed to get him into more trouble than he could handle. The fourth member of our group, William, was a strong man by the look of him. Though we have seen him run from a fight before, we figured on giving him another chance. As for me, my name is John Clark. I guess you could say I was the leader of this bunch of Cowboys.

On the way into the desert, we passed what used to be large cities, now swallowed up by the oceans of sand, and mass graveyards for the victims of the war and the sudden change of the environment. We traveled mainly by night, resting when possible. During the days, we hunkered down to avoid the heat of the sun and the bands of rogue mercenaries that were said to roam the sands, killing all they crossed. We figured that was the fate of all the other hired Cowboys over the past few years.

During the heat of the day, the wind bombarded everything in its grasp with sand. At night, the wind carried the voices of the dead, cries of agony that chilled the blood of even the bravest of men. The long hours of our journey were passed by telling tales of the location we were headed: an old school building once sat up as an aid and relocation center during the war. The site had been targeted by one side or the other. No one living knew for sure who, or what, did it, only that there were no survivors that day The Heart of the Desert was lost. The story tells that a soldier, greed and murder growing strong in his heart, found the locket. Taking the locket for himself, he was in turn killed, though rumor and hearsay fill the rest of the tale. What everyone can agree on though, is that no one made it out of that haven alive and that the sand claimed the building and souls for her own.

It was the deepest part of the fifth night when we arrived. We tied our horses outside in the lee of the building, doing our best to keep them out of the stinging sand driven on the wind. James and I took the lead. The wind blew hard against the building, the causing structure to scream and moan in the onslaught. The sound was eerie, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end. It was as if it was screaming at us to turn back. Drawing my two revolvers steadied my nerves as we crept into the dark building. “Better safe than sorry, right James?” I asked, my voice breaking through the sounds of the night.

“Darn right,” James replied, his eyes wide with the same uneasy fear that filled me. Wordlessly, he pulled a rifle from his saddle and cycled a round into the chamber.

We walked through the building, checking room after room and finding nothing but skeletons. It was a constant reminder of the loss of all who sought safety and shelter here, only to be entombed by the sand. After nearly two hours of searching, we stumbled upon a room that had a table set with four chairs. On the back of one chair hung a belt with a pair of revolvers still in the holsters. Their ivory handles, thick with dust, caught our eyes for a second. That was until the light from our torches fell upon the table and the shine of blue illuminated the room.

Abandoned revolvers forgotten, James rushed toward the table, snatching the source of the shine. Holding it up, he turned the object over and over in his hands. “Guys, I think we found it,” he said as he studied the heart-shaped locket gleaming in the torchlight.

All of us rushed forward, wanting to hold or touch the prize we had been searching for. A small tug of war match almost started between William and Bill over who would carry the locket. I raised my voice. “Alright you two, stop your squabbling and hand it over before you break it, and we lose our reward.” Holding out my hand, I took the locket from their resisting hands. In the short struggle, the latch must have triggered because it opened in my palm. We gazed at the locket for what felt like hours, entranced by the light of the torches dancing off the blue diamond. In the sudden illumination, we saw an inscription on the inside of the locket. I held it up and read aloud the word inscribed on the surface. Awaken. As the last sound of the word had passed my lips, a massive gust of wind hit the building. The sounds of the sand screaming and moaning from every window and crack of the building filled the room in a deafening roar. The sound of those chilling screams sent us running for the exit.

When we finally found the exit, what greeted us was not the pale moonlight we’d left upon entry of the building but a wall of swirling sand that had seemed to descend upon the world. James yelled out, “We have to save the horses!”. Before any of us could object, he ran out into the storm in the direction we had tied our horses. We were getting ready to bundle up and go after James to help with the horses when we heard an all-mighty yell of pain and a single shot. With the sound, the storm seemed to surge with added fury. We had no choice but to fall back into the ruins and hope that the storm would die down. There would be no going after James in the gale that assaulted the ruined building.

We found a decent sized room and set up camp to wait out the storm. We were able to light a small fire, providing light and giving us a way to heat up our meal. Having ridden through the night, exhaustion won out over fear. When time came to hit the sack, we gave the first watch to William. We dared not risk someone sneaking up on us if they got through the storm. Best case, it would mean someone was up if James made it back into the building.

Bill and I awoke with a start as the sound of another gunshot ripped through the roaring storm. We looked around the room and realized William was nowhere to be seen. Our little fire had burned down to faintly glowing embers, obviously not having been tended for a while.

“Where the heck is William?” asked Bill. “Check your pockets, I bet that coward stole the locket while we were sleeping and is hiding out somewhere in the building.”

I checked my pockets and found the locket still inside the breast pocket of my shirt where I had placed it earlier in the day. “William might have gone off to answer the call of nature and gotten lost.” I told Bill. “Let’s not judge him for being a coward just yet. We might find that that shot was a call for help.”

We set new torches to the dying fire, providing enough light for our search of the deeper sections of the ruins. We wandered from room to room and let the light from our torches shine inside each before moving on.

“Nothing but sand and skeletons,” said Bill as we came to a fork in the hall.

“If we split up, we can cover more ground in hopes of finding him,” I said. I went right, Bill to the left.

I was maybe six rooms down my side of the hall when I heard Bill yell out. “I can hear William calling out for help from the outside,” his voice called. “He claims he found James and got turned around in the storm.”

I went running down the hall just in time to see Bill pelting for the exit. “Stop!” I yelled after him. “Do you even know where he is out there?”

Bill raced into the night air, the storm raging all around him. By the time I reached the exit I heard a scream and yet another gunshot. I retreated into the ruins and walked the dark halls searching for what, I did not know. I found a door open to the left and entered the room where we had first seen the locket. Just as before, there sat in the middle a small table and four chairs. I removed my belt and set it, along with my two ivory handled revolvers, on the back of the chair I sat in. I removed the locket from my pocket. Holding it up, I placed it on the table in front of me. It was then I decided I should record the misfortunes of my little band of Cowboys. Retrieving a pencil and paper, I began to write my account.

I can hear my friends’ voices in the storm. They are calling to me from the outside. The sound of it is moaning in from a crack in the wall, their voices like screaming in the wind. I will leave my guns and the locket here. Maybe whatever is outside will spare me. If I do not make it back out of the desert, at least this note that I’ll leave under the locket will be a warning to all. I’ll go now to join my friends, to join the voices in the wind and sand. May the Lord have mercy on us and not judge us too harshly for our past.

As I turned from the table, towards the crying wind that was drawing me inexplicably into the storm, I did not notice the scrawled words of my last warning disappear from the page, as if sucked into the locket that rested upon them.