“Ugh, I am done with this nonsense!” she growled, irritated, and tossed the mess of straw strands away. She and the girls had spent most of the day weaving mats out of grass. Or to be precise, Nata and Sveta did weave it, Candace made shapeless knots that stuck together at odd angles or fell apart, or both, simultaneously. The only thing she achieved was inadvertently teaching the girls some creative cursing. “ I declare this thing to be impossible. This is some fucking Russian folk witchcraft Im too civilized to master. It's like trying to solve a fucking Rubens Cube made of grass but in reverse!”

“Rubik’s Cube,” said Miguel matter-of-factly.

“What?” she snapped.

“It's called Rubik’s Cube, after its inventor, the Hungarian genius Erno Rubik. Rubens was a Baroque painter who liked fat ladies…”

“Don’t test me Gordo!” she tossed some straw at him. “Or I’ll kick your… Rubensian arse. Now, have I used it correctly?”

“Yes, Candace. I don’t see how you find it difficult. You just need to cross the strands at right angles, then you have to twist the leading strand over itself and into a loop-”

“All right smartass, how about we trade?” She asked. “I will help Raul with the shelter, and you try this crochetting… thing.”

“Actually,” said Miguel, " this is weaving. Crocheting requires a crotchet.”

“Oh shut it! Say actually again and I'll kick you…” she growled.

She traded places with him. Miguel grabbed the neatly arranged straw bundle, and after a bit of consultation with the girls, started weaving it into a flat panel just as expertly as they did.

“See?" he said. “It ain't that hard.”

She shot him a murderous glare, and moved to Martinez to help with the construction. He and Miguel already built a squat teepee frame out of long branches and bamboo. Rather than waste precious woven mats to build the walls, they simply tore off entire patches of grass, roots and all, and piled it over the frame, turning the teepee into a small green hill. All she had to do was finish the top, which was beyond Martinez's reach. He tried to help her, tossing grass clumps up for her to catch, but he soon bowed down grunting in pain.

She looked down on him. His face was red and swollen, eyes bloodshot.

She saw big droplets of sweat forming on his forehead despite the morning chill. His hands were trembling and his cocky confidence was gone, replaced by fear and misery.

“Talk to me, Martinez. What the hell is wrong with you?” she whispered.

“Nothing, I…” he hesitated.

“Cut the crap.”

“Ok,” he said and exhaled hard. “Being stuck in this rock… it fucked me bad, I think.”

“What do you mean? You in pain?” she crouched near him, examining his swollen face.

“Yes, but that’s not the worst part, I think. I haven’t… I mean, I couldn’t… Miguel was right.”

“Spit it out, mate. Consider me your nurse.” She checked his pulse. In just a few seconds, she was sure it was racing, definitely not right for a man who had been standing still.

“Sorry to be crude, but I haven’t gone to the toilet in two days,” he said, wincing.

“You mean you didn’t or couldn’t?”

“I couldn’t, not for the lack of trying. When Gordo joked I won't be able to crap, he was right.” He sighed again, and curled down, hugging his stomach. “Can’t piss either. But that’s not the worst part.”

“I can see that. You look crook, badly.” She checked his eyes. His pupils were even, but his eyes were bloodshot and feverish.

“There is something very wrong with my, what is it called…, the veins and arteries stuff…” he mumbled, groggily.

“Cardiovascular system?” she asked. “Shit. Your legs and arse being encased in rock defo messed up with your blood circulation. ” She pressed her ear to his chest. “Your heart’s beating like a hummingbird’s.”

“I can’t feel them anymore. My legs.” he leaned against her. “Felt very cold at first. Tingling, like ants all over. Now I can't feel them at all. But my upper half feels so hot I can’t breathe…”

She hugged him awkwardly. “You need to calm down. You’re panicking ‘is all”.

He shook his head. “Not panicking. Chest hurts. Head hurts. Feels like my brain will explode.”

“Hey. Hey! Focus. Ain’t you a badass special forces copper? Get your shit together. We’ll dig you out in no time, no worries.” She got up, looking for the rocks they brought to hammer at the slate. Martinez grabbed her hand to stop her.

“Candace. I tried. We tried. All the work and we only dug maybe one centimeter. ” She tried to argue but he waved that away. “Listen. We will try. One more day. Then…” he hesitated, “then you leave me. Go find help.”

“You got to be bloody kidding-” she started.

“No. One day. Then you leave. Go, find help.” He grinned through pain. “get a crew with actual power tools. Jackhammers. Maybe a doctor for me?”

“Shit Martinez, You can’t just…” she trailed off. She knew he was right.

“Like you said. I'm a police officer. Vowed to protect the people. Went against the Cartels, against terrorists. Danger and possibly dying is part of the job.” His arrogant cocky smile was back.

“Bloody hell. When I met ya, I didn't peg you for a heroic type. More of a narcissistic wanker.” she said.

“Can’t I be both?”

Meanwhile, the girls finished the first cape woven out of grass. It was simply a big rectangle with a hole in the middle, that could be pulled over the head like a poncho. Miguel put it on and approached Candace.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Fabulous Gordo. Could be better if it was longer and your cock was not hanging out freely,” she joked, but Miguel’s mood soured when he saw Martinez.

“Hell man, you look bad,” he said, crouching beside him in the teepee.

“Well, I'm dying, so I’m excused” wheezed the cop. “Still looking better than you. When you were completely naked, you were … just naked, but with that cape on, you are straight-up pornographic.”

“Here, try it on.” she said, pulling the poncho off Miguel and putting it on Martinez against his protestations. “Hey, on you it reaches the ground, so you look like a Latino Hobbit now,” she said, but could not quite cover the worry in her voice with the joke.

“Hah. Fucking hah.” he deadpanned. “Jokes aside. Gordo. I look bad because I feel bad. Something in my legs is fucked up.”

Miguel nodded gravely. “I figured as much. The rock trapping your lower body works kind of like a tourniquet, preventing proper blood flow. Not completely, but enough to do damage over time. Can’t be good for you after so many hours. And the cold… No matter how warm we keep your upper body, the truth is your legs are soaking in cold groundwater, getting hypothermia damage, made worse by the fucked blood circulation…” His jovial manner was gone, replaced by gentleness. “I'm sorry I laughed at your situation earlier. And I'm even more sorry for abandoning you. And… I never thanked you for pulling my face out of the dirt.”

“De nada.” Martinez was back to his cocky self, even if the pain was breaking through his grinning facade. “But I would really appreciate it if you got back to trying to dig me out. Let the girls handle the weaving.”

They set to work. Martinez and Candace pounded the rock in front of him with stones, while Miguel chiseled at it with a sturdy branch, trying to pry off slate tiles as it cracked and flaked. Rather than trying to dig around him, as they did before, they concentrated on widening an opening around the front of his body. Meanwhile, the girls finished four more ponchos and clothed them all. Then they painted fearsome snarling faces on their fronts and backs, using soot and white ashes for paint.

Noon came, and Candace was exhausted. Miguel failed long before that, and only Martinez now pounded feebly at the rock. They managed to dig a few centimeters in, freeing his stomach and hips. They could clearly see that the rock was hugging his body completely, like an amber with a fly trapped in it. Even his body hair was encased in it, and torn off as they flaked the slate away.

“Ow!” Martinez yelped.

“What?” She asked.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Uh.. good news and bad news, I guess. The good news is that I'm less numb than I was, freeing my abdomen must have unpinched some nerves. The bad news is, If we keep hammering like that, we are definitely going to pulverize my cojones, which just let me know they feel pain perfectly well.”

“Not sure what you want us to do then?” she asked. “If we leave you like that, you are surely going to die. If we crush your balls, you are likely going to die as well, but curse our souls first.”

“I have an idea, but I think you’re going to hate it, Raul.” Miguel rose and considered the hole they burrowed. “This kind of rock looks like it cracks easily when temperature shifts. Especially if it shifts… dramatically.”

Martinez looked at him, then at Candace, then at the bonfire nearby. “Oh Hell no, Gordo! Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare!”

Candace sighed and touched his shoulder. “I think he is right though. At this pace, it will take us a week to dig you out. We need to speed things up.” She turned to Miguel before Martinez could protest, “So what do you mean, we burn the hole in? Won’t that roast Raul’s balls?”

“I'm quite positive it won’t.” Miguel said. “He is embedded into a whole plate of wet rock that stretches in all directions, and will soak up heat. Only the immediate area that we apply fire to will become hot enough to matter.”

“Quite positive does not cut it Gordo!” Martinez protested. “Look, I made my peace with the possibility of dying. But please don’t torture me on my way out.”

“Relax Raul, the heat won’t hurt you. Although… the explosion later might.” Miguel admitted.

“What? Can you fucking stop trying to make things explode for five minutes?”

“Ok, I know what you are up to,” she said to Miguel. “You want to heat up the rock, then like, pour water on it, so it cools quickly and cracks? From steam and stuff?”

“Correct, though I don’t suppose the steam will do much more than crack it a bit. Loosen it up. I might have overstated it, calling it an explosion.”

Martinez sighed and threw his arms up in exasperation. “I guess you are determined to kill me. Roast me. Cook me with steam, or blow me up. Do your worst then.”

Candace ran back to the river and brought several nenuphar leaves filled with water. Meanwhile, Miguel built a small wall of soil and rock against Martinez’s abdomen to shield him from the flames and then pushed the hot embers into the shallow hole they dug out. Martinez groaned, wafting smoke away from his face.

“If this fails and you end up cooking my crotch, please be so kind as to lean over so I can strangle you,” he said with a rueful squint.

“Relax Raul, it will work. As you said not long ago, have a little faith, a little optimism,” Miguel said and winked.

He and Candace sat on the opposite side of Martinez and fanned the flames away from him, slowly adding firewood as it burned out. Within minutes the rock around the fire started to kiss and steam.

“How ya doing Raul?” Candice asked. “Do you feel any heat around your crotch, some tingling sensation?”

Martinez barked a laugh. “ This was the worst pick-up line I’ve ever heard. But yes it feels different. My left leg is not numb anymore and it feels slightly warmer.”

“What now Gordo?” she asked, “ should we pour in the water now?”

“Not yet, I think. Only once it stops steaming on its own.” Miguel said, and frowned. “And hey listen closely, can you hear it?”

Candice leaned towards the ground, as close to the fire as she dared. “Sounds like popcorn cracking. That's a good thing, right? Means the flakes will start coming off soon.”

“Yeah now I think is the right time to start prying at the cracks around the fire, but slowly and gently without rousing the flames,” he added, reaching for a sturdy stick. “Let's keep Raul medium rare rather than well done.”

They started scratching at cracks in the rock with bamboo splinters and prying off flakes. As they did, embers fell into the cracks releasing steam and more cracking sounds. They kept digging and stirring the hot coals until the rock no longer steamed and Martinez started to complain about his nether regions baking.

“All right,” said Miguel, " this is it, we can't get the rock any hotter without doing you harm. We're going to pour the water now. Raul, you're ready?”

“Absolutely not," said the cop. “But please proceed.”

Candice put her poncho on top of his head to protect him a bit better.

One, two, three, go!” she yelled, and they flipped the leaves over the coals, filling the hole with water. A jet of steam shot up, and there was a cannonade of small explosions, like firecrackers going off. Martinez yelped but it was a sound of fear and surprise rather than pain.

“Are you okay mate?" she asked.

“I'm peachy!” he said grimacing, “except the boiling water seeping down my balls, I could do without that…” He looked down, with great relief on his face. “Also, I uh, unlocked on the front side, you boludos do not need to pour more water for a while, and maybe back off a little….oh Madre de Dios, this feels good…”

“Ew. Bloody ew.” Candace backed off. “And to think you pissing all over yourself and giving us a hot piss sauna from the vapor is the second grossest thing I exepreinced lately.”

Nata came over wrinkling her nose. “bleh, why it stinks?”

“Martinez needs a diaper change,” Candace said. “Oh and also you two are next on the digging duty. We’re too buggered to lift a finger.”

Sveta and Nata took their place, and began to dig into the cracked rock. Martinez regained his cocky enthusiasm, and encouraged them between the ecstatic oohs and ahhs over his slowly regained freedom.

As she left the teepee, Miguel led her away, out towards the river.

“Look,” he said, “I just realized something… I don’t think Martinez will be alright even if we release him.”

“Why, what do you mean?” she frowned.

“I was thinking… the symptoms he has, don’t look like something he would get just from being buried. I mean, that should be no worse than having a lower body cast. Some ischemia, maybe even blood clots, but not… whatever he is experiencing. ” He crossed his arms, staring at the ground.

“What’ya saying Miguel?”. She did not like that his words confirmed her worries.

“I think whatever force, magic, God, or whatever had put him in here, probably did not intend to embed him in rock. I mean, what would be the point? And when it accidentally did, it got… messy.”

“Messy how?-” her face dropped. “bloody hell, Gordo. Do you mean to say it got rock into him? The way it got him into the rock? That he fused somehow with it?” She sat, crushed by the revelation. “But that's nonsense. I mean, you woke up face-planted in the mud, and I was mid-air. If this thing was messy, I would be half air and you would have dirt in your brain”.

“And how do you know this is not the case?” he asked with a heavy sigh. “Look, let's talk physics. Your body, or my body, the dirt, the air, the water, and the rocks, everything around, is basically made of a vacuum, with a few random atoms spread extremely far away from each other. So, if we somehow ended up fused, meshed with or I don’t know, overwritten on the preexisting matter, the atoms that were already here simply went between ours, without doing much damage.”

“So what you are saying, we are ok?” she asked.

“No. Just because most atoms would mesh without conflict, some might try to occupy the same space, in a manner of speaking, and that's usually very, bad.” he sat on the ground, pouring beach sand through his fingers.

“Bad how?”

“I have no idea because by all logic, this process is impossible. But I guess that when one particle tries to appear in the place reserved for another, either one will be forcefully knocked out of its place and flung away, or broken apart. The first process would just create heat, and very little at that… but the other...”

“What? What's the other?”

“Radiation, Candace. If you smash an atom, the little excited bits gotta go somewhere.”

“Fuck.” She closed her eyes and slumped. “So we all got Chernobyled?”

“What?” he asked, “Oh, Chernobyl, I get it. Yes… but no. You and the girls are most likely fine. You displaced air, possibly water vapor, pollen, and dirt floating in the wind. Not enough actual mass in that volume to matter, the chances of one of your atoms hitting a preexisting one would be absurdly low. But me and Martinez, especially him, displacing solid rock… Well, as solid as any matter ever is… our chances of accidentally smashing some atoms are orders upon orders of magnitude higher. I still feel good, but you saw him,” he gestured at the tent, “he acts like he is fine, but his body gives off all signs of slow, yet severe poisoning. Is it radiation poisoning, or just a buildup of suddenly broken-up chemicals that were shot to shit with microscopic collisions, I have no idea. ”

“So what you're saying,” she said, “is that Martinez is effectively a dead man, that we are all dead, either from radiation poisoning or cancer or some shit like that?”

“You and the girls are probably safe. If I am correct about this process, then your bodies might suffer some radiation damage, and in effect get cancerous mutations here and there, but at such a low level your immune system is completely capable of handling it. Shouldn’t be worse than the suntan you got.” He said, touching her arm. “Martinez however got it much worse. I hope I'm wrong but if I'm right, then he is unlikely to make it, even if we find help.”

“What about you Miguel?” she asked, watching him pour sand from each hand, letting the streams fall in one, mixing haphazardly. Did the same happen to the atoms in her body? ”Aren't you worried about yourself? Your head was in the dirt and your hands... You must be having a lot of fucked up particles inside you now.”

Miguel snorted a laugh. “I’ve been working with toxic, carcinogenic, and plain deadly chemicals every day for the last five years, sitting in a poorly ventilated basement lab. I inhaled enough acid fumes, fluoride, and shit you wouldn't be able to pronounce, to kill a horse. So no, I'm not especially worried about a little poisoning and a few extra cancer cells. I'm most likely already a walking tumor. Besides, “he said, patting his stomach, “as you can see I worked very hard to get an obesity-related cardiac failure first. When I die, It will be a case of chocolate overdose rather than radiation poisoning.”

“You are a strange, strange man, Miguel Aguirre.” she said, smashing the pyramid of sand he built. “But I like your style of strangeness. How about we do our best to save the cop and the girls regardless of their respective chances? We get out of the woods, find help, and then we go back home because I'm done prancing about China or whatever this place is.”

“Have you seen the night sky, Candace?” Miguel asked.

“No, I mean, yes, sorta, why?”

“Look up once it gets dark. It's full of stars. I’ve never seen a night sky so clear. You can see the Big Dipper and Polaris clearly, so we are somewhere in the Northern part of the globe. Like maybe Canada, or Northern Europe. Maybe Russia or China. But…” he hesitated. “But there is not a single place in the whole world where you have both civilization and a sky so clear. No pollution, to speak of. This place is absolutely pristine, like no place I have ever heard of. And you know what else should we see in a sky so clear? The International Space Station.”

“Ok, so maybe we are a bit further away from the cities. Maybe it is China, or I don’t know, some remote place in Norway? I mean, I think I saw smoke when I was up that hill… well, it disappeared but.. ” she said, but she did not believe herself, and the sinking feeling in her stomach made her realize she was holding the truth at bay for some time.

“Candace,” he sighed wearily, and grabbed her hand, “This smoke could easily be a minor forest fire. Or not smoke at all, just vapor over a swamp. But how do you explain the Space Station being gone? Trust me, I'm a lifelong nerd, I know what it looks like, and how to find it. It's not there. And no other satellites. Or planes.”

“Are you saying that it's all gone? Civilization?” she felt anger rising in her. She hated that he was right, and her protective bubble of purposeful ignorance was pierced.

“ No, I'm saying we are gone. Look around. Sure as hell there isn't any wild-growing bamboo in Northern Europe,” he pointed at a nearby stick, “Nor is there English Oak in China. Giant otters like the ones you described live only in South America, except they are not even remotely as big. There is no place in the world where those things exist side-by-side. And there is certainly no place on Earth with giant dogs that leave footprints the size of saucers. So my best guess is that we are not in the wrong country or even wrong continent, we're in the wrong fucking reality.”