Nobody jumped out of the black hole of the bunker-like entrance behind me. Nothing but white endless plain and high blue sky was in front of me. The mountain was gone; I'd found it and I'd lost it. I lay with my face down in the dirt, waiting.
Looks like they don't come out in the light, those masked humanoids.
A motorcycle roared in the distance. By the nature of its sound, it seemed like it was going past me, but then turned around and was now getting closer. It stopped right in front of me; Holly took off her goggles and looked at me.
“Wow, boy. You look like you went through some real dark shit.”
“You have no idea how fucking right you are,” I mumbled while trying to get up on my feet.
She jumped off the motorcycle and helped me get up. Surprisingly, I could stand just all right. The wound on my left shin was bleeding, but it wasn't deep. My body hurt, but I could move. I lost my shoes and my backpack with the notepad, together with the hoodie – that was the worst outcome in this endeavor. I was alive though, and that felt the best.
Holly handed me her bottle, I washed my face, wetted my hair, and made several gulps.
“Okay, fighter-boy, where do I get you?”
I stood there thinking for a minute. The factory building stood behind the black entrance some 900 feet away. Two metal things were still clanging into each other somewhere there; streaks of sand blown by wind were flowing off the building's roof.
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“How much?” I asked her.
“For this bloody mess of yours? You can run for free all right. Consider me your ambulance,” she said with a kind smile.
Another cloud of dust ran across the plain; I thought I saw a ghost in it again, but that was just a whirl this time.
“Take me to the 'Dead Fish'.”
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We rode over the desert fast and smooth. I sat behind Holly holding her tight, thinking about my experience. How could she do this to me?
How could you? I came here to be your ally, yet you put me through this crap. What are these bodies? What did you do to them? What are you going to do to me?
Have I actually made a mistake coming here? Answer me, I need to know now!
How do they know my name? My real name is Alex. I did not tell this name to anybody here. I used my pseudonym everywhere. Yet these freaks somehow know my name.
Holly slowed the motorcycle down and stopped near a sign pole. She had to fix the splashboard, so we got off.
As with everything else here, the sign on the pole was all white. I wiped it with my hand – 'Graveyards' was the word written on it. I looked out in the distance and started seeing tombstones materializing from the air here and there, and eventually everywhere. They spread over the plane all the way from us and to the horizon. It was a huge graveyard, apparently.
“Can see it now?” Holly asked from the motorcycle.
“Yes, I... very well can.”
“What are these, climbers?” I asked coming back.
“Climbers, wanna-be-climbers, couldn't-get-to-it-climbers, non-climbers. There are lots of them here, it's only one of the graveyards.”
Tombstones stood in a multitude of straight rows, like a low-grown stone forest. The uncaring wind carried another one of its dust clouds over it as if making sure, that everything – absolutely everything – in this desert was always white.
Holly fixed the splashboard, and we drove on, away from the graves, away from the wind.