Crossover Earth '98
Second Coming Jay Shaffstall
The heat of the sun on my face wakes me. I am lying on a soft surface; my fingers feel sand beneath them. Sand. I do not remember feeling sand before. I open my eyes, revealing a blue sky studded with white clouds. It seems right.I sit up, looking around me. Miles of sand in every direction.
A desert. What am I doing here? I try, but cannot remember. I stand, looking east. East? A vague shadow of a memory pulls me in that direction. Something that must be done. No, someone that must be found and stopped. That seems important.
I walk east, drawn by the half remembered need. I trudge through the sand, the rising wind covering my tracks behind me. The sun sets. A moment of worry takes me; yet somehow I know that it will return. Still I walk; in time the sun returns.
Something cuts across my path ahead, a fence. I do not know where the name came from, but feel that it is correct. The fence stands several feet taller than myself. Several strands of thin wire run across the top.
I stop next to the fence. There is no opening. I will have to climb it. At first I am unsure, but this is something I have done before. At the top, I try to slip through the strands of wire. A barb catches the fabric of my shirt. As I move to release it several more barbs catch my clothes. One digs into the flesh on the back of my hand.
I scream. Somehow I know this is pain, and not to be desired.
Instinctively I harden my skin. The barbs do not penetrate now, yet the pain lingers. I drop and rip the nearest fence pole out of the ground. I feel satisfaction as I swing it through the fence to clear a path.
A sign affixed to the other side of the fence drops to the ground some distance away. I pick my way through the wrecked section and move to the sign. "WHITE SANDS MISSLE RANGE -- DO NOT ENTER" White Sands. The words trigger an urgency pulling me eastward. Someone must be stopped; I must discover who.
I have been travelling along an asphalt road for several days. I raise my thumb as vehicles pass, thinking that they will stop. None do. In time I come to a small town. The sign outside it reads La Luz, Population 800.
A small gas station stands just inside the city limits. No one seems to be around it. I can tell the pumps are old fashioned, although I do not know how. A vending machine reminds me of my increasing hunger. I harden my skin and smash through the glass cover. As I remove a bag from the machine, a man rushes from the inside of the building.
"Hey! You stop that!" He comes toward me brandishing a metal prybar. "Get out of here you vagabond!"
I smile, knowing that the name was meant to be mine. My hand darts out, closing around his neck. I hear vertebrae pop as I lift him off his feet.
"I am Vagabond." I drop him to the ground in a heap. "And I take what I need."
"What's wrong Fran," Sheriff Peal asked, sipping from a coffee cup, "this stuff's actually drinkable tonite."
"You're just getting used to it," the waitress replied. She grinned and started wiping the counter top with a threadbare rag. The sheriff sipped some more coffee, wondering what the day would bring.
He should have known better. At that moment, a man walked into the diner; your typical hitchhiker, yet the man's features tugged at the sheriff's memory. He was dressed in faded jeans, denim jacket, carrying a worn duffel bag slung over one shoulder.
It had been months, but Peal would not likely forget the man who saved his life. Leaving his coffee on the counter, he moved toward the wanderer, hand outstretched and a smile on his face.
"I never thought I'd see you in these parts again," the sherrif said. The hitchhiker grasped the sheriff's hand cautiously.
"Do you know me," he asked Peal. His voice was the same...deep, assured in a quiet sort of way, but somehow, different. Almost...colder.
The sheriff looked into the man's face, into the blue-gray eyes that seemed to look upon a space much larger than one man could contain. Peal tried to disengage his hand from the other's, but found himself firmly trapped.
"Where did he go?" The wanderer's voice was hard edged, a tool capable of slicing through the sheriff's resistance.
"He--" The sheriff hesitated, caught in those eyes. "He went east." The man released Peal's hand and glanced toward the waitress. In that instant, Peal stepped backward, drawing his revolver, pointing it at the man's chest.
"Who are you?"
"You know me, sheriff." Peal shook his head slowly.
"No, you're not him." He placed both hands on the revolver to steady it. "He said someone might be after him, but I didn't think..." Lightning fast, the stranger moved, slapping the revolver out of Peal's hands before the sheriff could react. The waitress grabbed the pot of coffee, intending to scald the wanderer with it, before she remembered that she'd toned it down for the sheriff. She didn't want to admit it, but the sheriff had turned out to be a good man.
The stranger tossed Peal across the counter top and onto the grill. The call for burgers at five in the morning wasn't high, so the grill was still cold.
"I am Vagabond," the stranger said in a voice that chilled both of them to the bone. "And you are nothing." In others that statement would have been a boast, or a threat, or an attempt to convince oneself. Coming from this drifter, it seemed like a statement of fact.
I walk out of the town, moving eastward. Somehow I feel that the man the sheriff mistook me for is the one who must be found. I do not know who he is, or who I am, but will find the answers to both questions before killing him.
Much is at stake, I feel. Somewhere in my memory, a phrase comes to mind, a bit of wisdom greater than any passage found in the world's religions.
The end justifies the means.