Dust
By Robert Williams
© 2010 by Robert Williams. All rights reserved.
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The great man fell out of the sky and crashed into the earth. More or less to his benefit, he happened to be inside of an airplane at the time. The antique, single-engine World War I fighter plane descended in an erratic, jagged arc that would be generous to call a glide path, as the pilot struggled to maintain control of the aircraft. A trail of smoke billowed from it, marking out its trajectory like a graph illustrating a stock market crash, falling unavoidably to ruin.
The pilot managed to keep the plane’s nose up, so that it did not crash head-first into the ground, spreading itself and its sole occupant over half a mile of barren Nevada desert. Instead it came in at an angle, but its velocity was much too great to make a safe landing. The landing gear broke off the instant it touched the ground. The plane skidded on its belly with a scream of tearing metal, trailing sparks and smoke. First one wing broke off, then the other, before it skidded to a halt. The pilot managed to clamber out of the open-air cockpit just before the whole thing burst into flames.
He stumbled away until he got clear of the smoke, coughing and choking as he went. He pulled his ridiculously old-fashioned aviator goggles off his face and looked around, trying to get his bearings.
Forgetting the old adage about any landing you walked away from, he said to himself, “Stan my man, you fucked up, big time.”
Stan Owens, billionaire, entrepreneur, aviator, adventurer and explorer, found himself in a land covered in dust, rocks, and not much else. An empty desert landscape stretched away to the limits of his vision in all directions. It was the quintessential desert; a harsh, rugged scene unsoftened by vegetation. He couldn’t see a trace of green anywhere, not even cactus. Only infinite shadings of brown blending upwards through the heat haze to the pale, harshly sunlit sky.
The land stood in sharp contrast to the airport in Reno from which he had taken off mere hours earlier amid the camera flashes of dozens of photographers. Using his antique airplane, which he had paid some highly skilled restorationists a great deal of money to rebuild, had been part of the show. He was going to look for a dried-up lake bed, over which he planned to set a land speed record in a rocket-powered motorcycle. He had made a second career out of breaking world records ever since retiring as CEO of his aerospace company, Owens International. He held the world speed record for circumnavigating the globe in a glider. He was the oldest man to scale Mount Everest, and the only man to have visited the highest point on Earth and the lowest to which human beings could go, having set a depth record in the Mariana Trench off Guam in a specially built submarine. He had visited both poles and all seven continents, and was the toast of royalty and world leaders. And now here he was, stumbling away from his ruined, five million-dollar plane, lost in the desert.
Peeling off his aviator’s jacket, he sat down on a flat rock to catch his breath. One had to wear a jacket while flying, especially in an open-air cockpit, because the air was cold up there. Down here though, it felt somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifteen degrees. Not exactly jacket weather.
He fished his portable GPS unit out of his jacket pocket. Now he was grateful he hadn’t had one installed in the plane. He had instructed the restorationists to rebuild the old bird as close to its original state as possible and only to add what was necessary to adhere to the FAA’s guidelines for flyable aircraft. That meant no GPS in the plane. However his insurance company would not let him into a cockpit without one, considering the risky nature of his lifestyle. So, he had a portable GPS safely tucked into his jacket pocket, and not melting away in the burning wreckage of the plane.
Except now the lousy thing seemed to be on the blink. It was the best model available, state-of-the-art, but the screen just flickered at him. He couldn’t make out a thing. Must have broken it in the crash, he figured.
The outrage of the plane crashing now rose like bile in the back of his throat. He had paid those restorationists top-dollar. Now this. When he got back he would see to it they never worked on another airplane again.
He stood up and tried to think things through. His radio was in the plane, along with his emergency gear, all of it enthusiastically burning. He had his jacket, his boots, his clothes, the broken GPS, his wallet, a pocketknife, and his car keys. No cell phone; he never took it flying with him. So what was he supposed to do now?
He would have to wait for rescue. It was all he could do. But the question was: How long would it take for rescue to reach him? Stan was a hale and hearty seventy-two, but he was lost in the desert, with no water and no shelter. This desert Sun could kill men one-third his age. He had to find a way to stay alive until he was saved.
Which reminded him of those buildings he had seen, just before the plane went down.
The engine had started to give him trouble almost as soon as he had passed over them. He had caught a glimpse of a few small white buildings tucked into a rocky hillside next to a square concrete platform. He had just had time to wonder why there were no roads leading to this place, and then pop, smoke had started billowing out of the engine and down he went.
Those buildings couldn’t be more than five miles from here, he reckoned. Even if they were abandoned, they would serve as shelter. And if he could see the buildings from the air, then his rescuers could too, and it would be reasonable for them to assume he would go there.
It was decided then. Before setting out, he took a few metal struts that had snapped off the wings, tied them together with his belt, and draped his jacket over them, creating a makeshift parasol. That would offer some protection from the Sun. Then he took his bearings. He might not have a GPS, but Stan Owens had been flying airplanes long before the GPS was a glimmer in some nerd’s wet dream. He found east and west, determined the angle he came in from, made his best guess, and set off.
The walk took a couple of hours. He had to stop and rest several times. He spent most of the day on a meandering southeast path, detouring here and there to climb small hills and look around. Once, after cresting such a hill, he made a significant discovery: a crashed helicopter. Just a pile of wreckage sitting in the middle of the desert. It looked like it had happened a couple of weeks ago, judging from the layer of dust covering the wreckage. This disturbed him. No aerospace institution left crashed aircraft sitting where they fell. They were salvaged, transported back to warehouses and taken apart piece by piece to determine the cause of the crash. Did this mean they weren’t able to find this helicopter? If so, it did not bode well for him.
He didn’t see any bodies, which was encouraging, but he supposed scavengers could have taken care of them. Dust lay in mounds on the seats. It must have drifted inside the cockpit.
Stan looked over his shoulder. He could still see the cloud of smoke rising from his burning plane, and now he wondered if this was the right course of action. Maybe he should have stayed by the crash site. Surely the smoke would have drawn some attention. It would make it easier for rescuers to find him. He could have waited until nightfall and then started walking if no one came. Then it would have been cool and he could have navigated by the stars. For the first time in his life, Stan doubted his judgment. He must be getting old, to make such a mistake.
But it hadn’t really been a lapse in judgment. He had been working out his strategy, subconsciously, all this time. Where other people saw a crisis, Stan saw opportunity. If he was able to save himself, it could be a public relations jackpot. Think how it would play in the media. The aging adventurer, still at the top of his game! He realized he hadn’t really been afraid as the plane came down. He had been excited. Another challenge to tackle.
And now, as he so often did, Stan saw his opportunity. He saw tire tracks leading away fr
om the helicopter. They must be relatively fresh; the wind had not yet erased them. So someone had come out here recently. All he had to do was follow the tracks to rescue.
He set off again, energized by his newfound optimism. He was soaked with sweat, thirsty as hell, and his feet had started to feel heavy, but these were still minor discomforts. He was certain he would find help before they became anything serious.
As he walked, the stark desert landscape reminded him, strangely, of his son.
This took some pondering to figure out why, but