Hello there reader! Nice to have you with me. Welcome to chapter 45. In this one, we learn a little more about the team. Music plays a big part here. If you want, have a listen to the tunes while you follow along. They're by no means a requirement to enjoying the story, but they might help, especially if you're a fan of classic rock and Motown like I am. What do you think of the music references? Do they add, or take away? Music is very important to me, even though the only thing I ever learned to play is the radio. Is it important to you? I'd love to have your thoughts. Either way, I hope you enjoy the chapter.
If you're younger than 18 or find these kinds of stories offensive, please close up now and have a great day! If you are of legal age and are interested, by all means keep going. I'll be glad to have you along for the journey. Please donate to Nifty. This is a great resource for great stories and a useful outlet to authors like me and readers like you.
45
An Electric Guitar
I opened my eyes. I'd woken up before the alarm, but not by much. I was warm and comfortable and had my arm around the person that mattered the most to me in the world. I shifted enough to admire his placid sleeping face. I realized, as I gazed at him, that fleeting thought was completely true. Shawn was the person that mattered the most to me in this or any world. I was hopelessly in love with him and ready to lay down my life if that's what it took for him to live.
I thought about the forty wasted years I'd lived on Earth, years I wouldn't have over again as a gift. I thought of the thirty-odd days of friendship, love and fun and sex. There was no comparison. My old life was hell. Heaven was every single second I got to spend with Shawn. Even climbing a goddamned mountain was pure joy if I got to do it with him.
I watched him sleep and thought about the gifts he'd given me, the new life I had. No amount of imagination or hard drugs would have prepared me to find love and acceptance with a beautiful young man. A month ago, I was Church Philips, welder, drunk.' I thought. If everything goes well, in two days I'll be Church Philips Incolumitas, interdimensional hero.' I was already Church, wielder of holy-fuck-magic and certified biggest guy in the world. And this person who found me, this person willingly sharing a bed with me, a man who could have anyone, he wants me, and I know it's true.
Shawn stirred and opened his eyes. He stretched, reaching his arms over his head and arching his back like a cat. He smacked his lips and blinked at me. As his gaze settled on me, I wondered how eyes the color of frozen water could convey so much warmth. "You feel different." He said and ran his fingers through my hair and left his hand rest on my head. "You've resolved something. What was it?"
"I decided to win."
He patted my head and grinned a silly, amused grin. "Oh, is that all? You just decided to be the big hero."
"Yeah." I grinned back at him. "I even brought my cap gun." I said in reference to the last time Shawn had called me his big hero.
He laughed his beautiful, musical laugh and the smile stayed on his face. "You are a silly ass."
I didn't know if I could ever explain what he meant to me, how he'd saved me. I doubted I ever could. I worried what would happen to him if I died, how he would react. I worried that he'd blame himself for involving me in the first place. I had to make sure that wouldn't happen. I didn't want to worry him, or ruin the morning, but I had to broach the subject. I tried to do it gently, even though there was no gentle way to deal with life and death. "I need to say something to you. I want you to listen carefully and pay attention to how I feel when I say it. OK?"
"You're scaring me." He said, the humor he'd felt just a moment ago was replaced by anxiety.
"Will you do as I ask?" I pressed.
"Yes."
He propped himself on his elbow and laid a hand on the center of my chest to listen to me. "I'm glad I'm here with you." I began and paused to organize my thoughts before I went on.
Shawn interrupted me when I didn't continue right away. "Is that all? You scared me to tell me that?" He moved to roll away, but I reached out and pulled him into me.
I wrapped him in my arms and held him to my body. "That's not all. I want you to understand that no matter what happens in the next few days, no matter what happens to me, I'm glad you found me and brought me here. You've given me more happiness than I have a right to. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Shawn's eyes searched my face as the implications of my words settled on him slowly. "Don't talk like that." He scolded.
"Shawn...do you believe me?"
He nodded up and down like his head was mounted on a rusty hinge rather than a supple and kissable throat. "Yes, I believe you're expressing your true feelings. It doesn't matter though, because we're all going to be back here the day after tomorrow and Bem will be knocking on the door to tell us he found more lube packets."
I cracked up at the image my brain generated, of the lean man coming into the room, his pants' pockets bulging with multi-colored samples. "You're right. I don't know what I was thinking."
We got up. Shawn went to his suitcase to gather his clothes for the day. I went into the bathroom, turned the shower on and adjusted the temperature. I dropped my briefs and stuck my head back into the room. Shawn was still fooling around in his suitcase. "Hey," I barked to get his attention, "if you think that moment we just shared can't be followed by something as vulgar as a shower quickie, you're wrong."
His lust caught fire immediately. He dropped the clothes from his arms and bounded to me like an excited puppy. He stopped next to me and pretended nonchalance. "You're a true romantic, Church." He hit me with an up-from-under look to drive me wild.
I controlled the impulse to ravage him where he stood and teased a little more. "I am a romantic." I stepped back, opened the shower door, and bowed. "I'm chivalrous to."
He laughed as he stepped under the water. I followed him in.
Breakfast was subdued, but not overly so. I stuffed myself silly. Between the stress of what we were about to do and an extreme feeling of emptiness, I ate everything I could reach and ask for the rest to be passed to me. The kitchen served our breakfast family style. They covered our table with big platters of scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, fried potatoes, piles of buttered toast, pots of coffee, and pitchers of orange juice. I was the first to dig in and was still eating long after the others pushed their plates away. Bem leaned against my shoulder as I was mopping the grease from the inside of the empty sausage pan with a piece of toast.
"Hey, Big Guy, you alright?" He asked.
I pushed the toast in my mouth and responded through a spray of crumbs. "Why?" I found another piece of toast and reached for the bacon platter.
"Anyone...anyone at all." Bem scanned the table and called on his teammates to reinforce his concern.
Neb stood and shoved her rolled sleeves up. "We're a lot closer to the magic draw." She reasoned. "It could be affecting him. Shawn?"
Shawn put a hand on my forehead like a worried mother checking a child's temperature. He hedged his answer. "It's possible, but I don't think that's the case." Shawn addressed me. "Church, are you OK?"
I was drinking orange juice out of the pitcher when he asked his question. I set it down and tried to focus. "OK...what? Why?"
"Have you had enough to eat?" Shawn pressed.
"I'm stuffed." I admitted and suddenly realized how uncomfortable I felt. I glanced from Shawn's worried face to the pile of empty plates and platters that were grouped in front of me. I realized with a wave of embarrassment, what I'd been doing. I rubbed my face with my greasy breakfast hands and dropped them to stretch my watch on my left wrist. "I'm sorry if I worried you. When I'm stressed, I eat. I mean, I used to eat and smoke and drink, but...I guess without the cigarettes and booze, the eating is winning. I'm OK. I promise."
Shawn exhaled a noisy breath that he seemed to have been holding and nodded understanding to me. Neb seemed to relax as well. I pushed myself away from the table and rose. My stomach protested against the movement, but it was time to go. I was very uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable to the point that I considered going to the bathroom to purge some of what I'd shoveled in. I decided against that and followed the group out through the rear entrance of the hotel. I found myself wishing I had a cigarette as we walked outside into the cool of the pre-dawn darkness.
Being on my feet and getting away from the table made me feel a little better. I was stuffed to the gills and still stressed out, but slightly less so as I rolled the tarp off the car. Shawn was right with what he'd said the night before, having something to focus on, a job to do, was better than worrying. It also helped that getting in the Vic when it was still dark out felt as right as going to work on a normal weekday. The heavy weapons strapped to the car hood marred the normalcy a bit, but I tried to look passed them.
The team mounted up, distributing themselves by size. The Dux brothers and I were the broadest and I took up the most room, Shawn was the next broadest, with Neb and Bem even for last place. I drove with Shawn next to me and Bem next to him. Neb sat behind me, then Vulp in the middle, and Cy behind Bem.
Neb gave me a compass to keep on the dash and some instructions. "Keep the needle pointing due west. We'll have to make a course correction when we get closer, but we'll see the mountain long before we get near it." I started the car and waited for it to idle down. When it did, I put it in gear and drove us out of the sleeping town and onto the nameless plains.
I took the first two hours easy, maintaining a steady thirty miles-an-hour out of caution. The 1980's style sealed-beam headlights weren't very bright in the pitch dark of the moonless nothing. Even the high beams weren't quite enough to get a good read on the land features, and I didn't want to be surprised by a drop off or sharp rise. I was powerful enough to lift the car out of anything it sank into, or got stuck on, but I couldn't magically fix destroyed suspension components or a ripped oil pan.
A few minutes shy of six o'clock the sun crested the horizon behind us. Thin, wispy clouds looked like smears of smoke on the pale-blue sky. I powered my window down. It was cool, almost to the point of being cold, but it was going to be a nice day. The increased visibility allowed an increase in speed. I brought us up to forty-five and set the cruise-control. The old sedan handled driving on the plains with no difficulty and very little noise. The poorly maintained roads that I was used to driving over daily, the streets of Philadelphia and the highways out of the city, gave a harsher ride than the flat wilderness.
No one spoke as we rode along. After a while, the heavy silence in the car became oppressive and started to get to me. I tried talking about the plan because that's what was foremost on my mind. "So, today we just get there. Tonight, we camp outside the barrier. Tomorrow, we force our way in and storm the mountain."
Bem reached around behind Shawn to pat my shoulder. "Big Guy, we all know what to do. No need to go over it again. We've started the job; now we follow the plan. Talk about something else. Why not tell us about your old life, on Earth?"
"Nothing to tell." I shook my head.
Bem sat back in his seat but persisted with his question. "You lived there your whole life. You must have something to say about it."
I shoved the rearview mirror up toward the headliner to keep the sun's reflection out of my eyes. I'd hesitated before taking the action, until I realized that I didn't need the mirror for passing. Having taken care of the annoyance of the reflected sun, I considered how to answer Bem. I'd lived on Earth my whole life. I wondered if there was anything worth saying about that time. I decided there wasn't. "The day I met Shawn, was my fortieth birthday. Forty years of existence, not life. No, I don't acknowledge that time. My new birthday is my first day on Solum, November 28th, 2019. I'm a month old."
"I don't understand." Bem said as he looked at the side of my face.
I turned my face to his so he would know the words I planned to utter were sincere. "I have hope here. I didn't have that on Earth."
"What gave you hope?"
"He did." I nodded at Shawn.
"Aaaawwwww..." Bem teased. "You're a romantic, aren't you?"
I turned back to the plains and elbowed Shawn. "See, I told you I was a romantic."
Shawn chuckled and went back to looking out the windshield. Bem did the same. Neb and the Dux brothers hadn't even acknowledged the conversation.
No one seemed to want to talk, and I was sick of the silence. Out of habit, I switched on the dash-mounted, after-market radio and CD player. The speakers hissed as the digital numbers of the FM tuner scrolled by like the spinning wheels of a slot machine. I quickly realized that there was no FM radio on Solum. I took the jacket of CDs that had been placed on the dashboard for the lack of anywhere else to put it, found one I liked, and fed it to the radio.
The chugging country-rock rhythm that characterized many Stevie Ray Vaughan tunes blared from the ancient paper-cone speakers. I turned the sound low and enjoyed the distraction. The album was one of my favorites, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble's Texas Flood.' If I'd been alone, the volume would have been as high as I could get it without distortion, and I'd be beating the steering wheel in time to the music. I restrained myself but still managed to enjoy the first tune, Love Struck Baby.'
Pride and Joy' came next. That was a better display of Stevie Ray's god-like guitar skill, but the best was yet to come. Texas Flood,' the album's title track was up next. I bumped the volume slightly and readjusted the rearview to see if I was disturbing the back seat passengers. Neb was leaning forward with her hand cupped around her right ear. She met my eyes in the mirror. "What is that?" She asked.
"Music from my world. If it's bothering you, I'll turn it off."
She shook her head and sat forward even farther. "No, make it louder."
I gave the volume a few more decibels and patted the wheel to the beat. Neb slid all the way forward to talk to me over the seatback. "What's that instrument he's playing?"
"That's an electric guitar. Stevie Ray is a virtuoso."
"What makes it electric?" She asked.
I tried to explain the best I could. I didn't know much beyond the very basic principles of the electric pick-ups and amplifiers. Neb said that while electric amplification of instruments was common on Solum, no instrument used electricity to produce sound. She was captivated by the idea.
"I can play almost anything with strings." She explained. The admission surprised the hell out of me. Neb hadn't exactly been secretive about who she was, but she hadn't offered much either. The hardened ex-cop and military strategist I'd come to know didn't put me in mind of someone who'd be a music lover, much less a musician. "This `Stevie' man is amazing." She purred.
I started telling her about his career and tragic death when the instrumental Testify' came on. She shushed me and demanded more volume, then listened with rapt attention. Testify' gave way to the guitar assault that was `Rude Mood.' Neb made me close the windows so nothing would interfere with the music and listened to all four minutes and thirty-nine seconds with her eyes tight shut.
Neb opened her eyes when the song ended and opened her mouth to say something, but she didn't say it. Instead, she looked from me to Shawn, then to Bem, and the Dux brothers and seemed to have a qualm about exposing something of herself. She shrank back into her seat and apologized to me for asking so many questions.
I was thrilled to know more about her. Her love of music meant that she and I had something in common. I wished I would have known sooner. I rushed reassurance. "I love music. I don't play anything, but I enjoy listening. Ask me anything. I'll explain as much as I can."
Neb smiled at me in the mirror. It wasn't the first smile of hers that I'd seen, but it was the sweetest. We talked music and I kept up a steady stream of variety, sometimes only playing one tune from an album. She loved the lilting twelve string work on Elton John's Holiday Inn,' the steel guitar from The Rolling Stones' No Expectations,' and the layered depth of The Band's `The Weight.' I loved sharing the world of classic rock with such an eager student. I was also glad to finally establish a real connection with her.
The rest of the passengers seemed to appreciate the distraction and a topic with no life-or-death connotation hanging on it. Neb's fascination for the sound recorded on the small reflective discs was child-like in its innocence but serious in its intensity. I was happy that she was enjoying herself. I was happy that I was. We were having fun on a journey that quite possibly, would be the last any of us made.
We were a few songs into a `Greatest Hits of Motown' collection when it was time to stop for lunch. I'd been unsuccessfully trying to explain Motown as a nickname for Detroit, and what that meant and how it impacted the music and how civil rights played a part and...all I'd managed to do was muddle Neb and myself. I parked the car and shut the engine off but left the radio play as we got out to stretch our legs.
When I got out of the car, I noticed the breeze. The plains seemed to have a constant wind across them that blew from west to east. When I thought about it, it made sense that land that flat would be subject to air currents. It wasn't a great revelation or anything, just something I hadn't considered. I was glad the wind wasn't strong, no more than a few miles an hour, but I had a passing worry that the intensity would increase with the altitude of the mountain we had to climb. I shelved the worry, as there wasn't anything I could do about it. I also figured that the breeze must be a known weather condition and therefore, something the team leadership had accounted for. I stopped worrying and focused on the task at hand.
I took two fuel containers off the roof and worked on dumping their contents into the car's gas tank while Shawn opened the crates holding our rations. Cy and Vulp were busy using each other as anchors to do weird stretches. The desperate yearning of `You Really Got A Hold On Me' by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles came on the car radio. As it played, I caught some movement from the corner of my eye. Neb was listening to the tender love song; eyes closed as she swayed to the music. Bem stepped up to her. I feared he was about to start something, but he surprised me.
"Do you dance?" He asked, his voice low in a confidential tone.
"Not in years." Neb admitted without opening her eyes.
"Would you like to?"
Neb snapped her eyes open and subjected Bem to sharp scrutiny. She obviously expected the same thing I did, a prank to make her look silly. Whatever she saw must have satisfied her because when Bem opened his arms, she took his hand and leaned into him. Bem led them in slow circles using measured steps. He held her close as he guided their movements in perfect time to the music. They looked like they'd been dancing together their whole lives.
I knew from Shawn's neutral emotions that he was missing the show. I flailed an arm out to get his attention. He was closer than I thought, and my enthusiastic hand hit him square in the chest and sent him staggering. I had to catch him with magic to keep him on his feet. He started to object to my rough treatment, but I shushed him in time and pointed his attention to the dancers. "Wow." He breathed. That one word said it all.
When the song ended, the dancers separated, but remained only inches apart. I kept watching them until a little gust of wind sent the lid to the open ration crate clattering to the ground and shattered the moment. Neb and Bem leapt away from each other like teenagers who'd been caught necking and the song changed to Aretha Franklin's `Chain of Fools.'
Shawn went back to getting lunch ready and laid the food out on the little bit of open real estate between the weapons on the car hood. We ate standing. It wasn't the first time that hood had served as a lunch table and none of us wanted to sit down. After lunch, we walked around a bit, reluctant to resume the dull journey. At one o'clock, we could delay no more and set off again.
The intensity of the before-lunch conversation between Neb and I didn't return. Each person seemed to retreat into their own minds. Neb went back to looking out the window, Bem took a nap, as did the Dux brothers, Shawn took over the radio, using my memories to select albums I liked, and I drove. The drive required no attention at all. All I had to do was keep the car pointed so the compass needle stayed at 270 degrees. There was no scenery and with the cruise-control set, I didn't even need to watch our speed. Aside from minor course corrections, I could have tied a rope around the wheel and gone to sleep.