Dust

eventually he placed it. Some years back, when his son was still a teenager, Stan Owens, Jr. had come home from high school bursting with excitement to show him something. It was a poem called “Ozymandias,” written by some dead Englishman. Stan couldn’t remember any of the words, but he did recall the gist of it. The poem was about some old statue out in the desert that had fallen to pieces over time, and there was an inscription on the base of it that said something like, “I am the great king Ozymandias, look at all the great stuff I did and see how much better than you I am.” (The poem had phrased it a lot better.) The thing was, if somebody looked around, they wouldn’t see any of this king’s great works. They would just see sand stretching off into the distance. Time had erased everything Ozymandias had built. The statue, instead of showing the king’s might, now showed his foolish arrogance.

  After Stan Sr. had finished reading the poem, his son had told him, “This poem reminded me of you, Dad. You have a lot of great works too, but what do you have that will last forever?”

  Stan had responded by smacking his son in the mouth.

  Even now, years later, it still galled him to think about it. His own son had used this poem to mock his accomplishments, everything he had built up over the course of his life. The ungrateful little bastard had run off in tears.

  Then, a few years later, Stan Jr. made his big announcement. “Daddy, I’m gay!” Big surprise. It still amazed him how selfish his son had been to say such a thing. His skin had crawled when he thought of the media getting wind of it. It would be so humiliating! Let the fathers of today parade their queer sons around like they’re actually proud of them. Stan Owens, Sr. was of a different generation. He had decided another smack was in order, but this one would have to hit home in a different way.

  Stan had called his son into his den, and spoken to him from behind his massive redwood desk. The conversation had been rather one-sided, but that was okay. Stan liked to dominate the conversation. He had explained to his son the reasons why it was important for him to keep his damn mouth shut about his bedroom antics. Stan had explained to his young namesake that not only was he cut out of his will, not only was he officially disowned both legally and in his father’s heart, but if he ever felt compelled to go public about his unfortunate condition both he and his current “friend” would face some extremely unpleasant consequences. If Stan Jr. knew what was good for him, he would take his hush money and go somewhere far away. He had taken his son’s tears as agreement and that was that.

  Now it had been twenty years since he had seen his son. Stan missed him sometimes and occasionally regretted his actions. He supposed those feelings were natural. But he knew that he had done what he had to do to survive. In the end, that justified everything.

  A flash of light in the distance caught his eye. Peering through the heat haze, he saw a chain link fence, glinting in the Sun.

  “I made it,” he said to himself. He lifted his head and barked at the sky. “I made it, you bastards! What do you have to say about that? I made it!”

  He could see buildings enclosed within the fence. Sweaty and exhausted, Stan staggered towards them.

  The tire tracks led through a big gate in the fence, which stood open. Here something strange caught his eye.

  Someone had mounted three signs next to the gate. The first said, “Property of the United States Department of Defense. NO TRESPASSING.” The second said, “Violators will be prosecuted!” And the third said, “DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE!”

  Stan now understood why there were no roads leading to this place. But if it was so top secret, why was the gate standing open? The grounds beyond the fence looked deserted. Curious, he decided to take a calculated risk. He reached out and grabbed the fence.

  Nothing. No electric shock. Either whoever was guarding this place had really dropped the ball, or these were very discouraging signs for his chances of finding help here. Maybe the place could at least serve as shelter until rescue came.

  A driveway started just outside the fence and continued inside of it. Stan took this to mean that the place was or had been stocked with ATVs at some point. With no roads around, they had to have had a supply of vehicles in order to merit building this driveway and gate, even if the place was supplied primarily by air, which was a distinct possibility.

  He passed through the gate. The grounds beyond were a paragon of inactivity. A pall of silence lingered over the place, like a ghost-town. Abandoned military base? Stan wondered.

  He shuffled along, his clothes soaked with sweat. For the first time in his life, he looked and felt like an old man. His makeshift parasol hung above his head like a dark solid mass, a miniature moon eclipsing the Sun. The heat seemed to clutch him like a giant fist. He couldn’t go on much longer, but the buildings were set far back from the fence. He still had a bit of a walk ahead of him.

  In cooler weather he could have covered this same distance in minutes, but he had already walked more than five miles in over one hundred-degree heat. If he didn’t find some water and shade soon, he would be in serious trouble.

  His foot hit something. Looking down, he saw a pile of clothes, partially covered in dust. Curious, he bent down and fished through them. It was a full set of clothes, pants, button-down shirt, shoes, socks, belt, even a pair of underwear. The shirt and pants were khaki, and the shirt had a nametag and badge. This was a guard’s uniform. He found a wallet with forty-two dollars cash in it, along with two credit cards, a driver’s license for someone named Michael Dougherty, and a condom still in its wrapper. Even stranger, inside the left leg of the pants he found two metal screws. He recognized them as titanium screws; he used the metal in a lot of the aircraft he designed. A moment later he realized they were surgical screws, like the kind doctors implanted in an injured knee.

  Looking up, he saw another set of clothes lying in a pile of dust a few yards away. And another one just a little further off. What had happened here?

  As much as he wanted to continue on to the buildings, he first searched the other piles of clothing, and found something even more disturbing: a gun. A military-issue pistol still in its holster. Stan didn’t know what to make of it. Even if this was a closed military base, no one would leave behind a loaded gun lying in the dirt. More bad signs. But he had nowhere else to go. If he didn’t get out of this killer sun, he would die.

  Stan looped the holster strap over his shoulder, and continued on his way to the white buildings shimmering in the distance.

  The man who finally shuffled up to the steel door of the largest building in the complex bore little resemblance to the hale and hearty septuagenarian who had clambered away from the plane crash looking for opportunities. Stan moaned with every breath. Sweat ran down his face, through the folds of skin on his neck, and down his entire body, soaking his clothes. The dry desert air had sucked pints of precious moisture from his body, desiccating him. He felt like lead weights had been tied to his ankles. Every step was an enormous effort. Now he knew what the slaves who had built the vast statue of Ozymandias must have felt like as they labored in the hot desert sun.

  That was an odd thought, but he supposed thinking of his son earlier must have put him in an odd frame of mind. That, and he had developed a pounding headache. This was caused by a lack of electrolytes, since he had lost salt by sweating so much. He knew this in a detached, clinical sort of way, the same way he knew that the square concrete platform he had just shuffled across was a helipad. But knowing these things did nothing to help the pounding in his head, or make it any easier to keep himself from vomiting, and losing more of his precious bodily fluids to the desert dust.

  At last he reached the steel door. No way that’s going to open, he thought. This is the kind of place where the doors are always locked. But then he noticed a square plastic pad set into the wall next to the door. He recognized it as an electronic lock, the kind that required some kind of card-key access. Many of Stan’s own office buildings used them. He had also noticed that elect
ronic devices didn’t work too well around here for some reason. He tried the doorknob, and sure enough the door pulled open. Stan stepped through the threshold into a stifling darkness.

  He stood in the doorway for a few seconds, letting in the light from outside. A hallway stretched off into the shadows before him. A set of double doors stood in the wall to his right. The double doors had glass windows in them, through which he could see a faint blue glow.

  Stan hesitated. This was what he had come all this way for, after wandering in the desert all day. But something inside of him quailed at the thought of entering this place. As hot and thirsty and desperate for rescue as he was, a mindless swell of fear filled him as he stood at salvation’s very doorstep. Try as he might, he could not strangle it down.

  Stop being an old fool, he thought. Get in there and find some water!

  But still he stood, unable to move.

  A dire voice rose in his mind. Something dangerous is in there. This place is not safe.

  It’s dangerous outside, his conscious mind