Face The Strange - Chapter 4/11: Parts Unknown free porn video

FACE THE STRANGE by Crazy Baron Chapter 4: Parts Unknown As Martinez the militiaman stood there quietly, staring down at me, I closed my eyes out of fear and hoped feverishly that he would not lay a hand on me. In a moment of mind-boggling stupidity, I had attempted to seduce him in my female form, having forgotten that I was completely in his power anyway. It only remained for him to name the price I would have to pay for my latest mistake. Hardly ever in my life had I experienced this kind of debilitating fear. It was a small taste of a special and unique emotion which was reserved for defenseless and innocent common people totally at the mercy of rebels, insurgents, mercenaries, terrorists, counter-terrorists, irregulars and other sundry armed organizations that eschewed moderation and decency in their activities. Even after my tormentor let out a disdainful, mocking little laugh and went back to sit on the bale that had served as his seat before this incident, I felt weak to the point of nearly fainting and vomiting. My misery was interrupted by another scare. Less than a minute later, a series of footsteps on the concrete floor sounded out in the barn. When I turned my gaze to the door leading to the road, thinking that Martinez's brother-in-arms Burkhart had at long last returned with some water for Dan, I saw a tall man coming towards us. Unlike the platoon members, he was dressed in what was clearly civilian attire, a pair of jeans, a black jacket, brown leather boots and, as the icing on the cake, a large gray-white Stetson. A revolver was holstered on his belt. I could barely resist the temptation to pinch myself. This had to be the conclusive proof that everything since I had woken up in the field had only been a fantasy. Martinez got on his feet to address and challenge the stranger, but if the cowboy was in any way impressed or intimidated by the guard, his weapon or his attitude, he didn't show it. Instead, he walked up to us casually. He had the face of an elderly man, and his chin and cheeks were covered by a thick graying beard. The cheekbones were high, and both the ridge of the nose and the nose itself were quite prominent. The bright and observant eyes were a very light shade of blue, almost gray. Regardless of his age, the cowboy kept his back absolutely straight and his movements were purposeful, as though he carried within him a hidden source of unlimited energy and had to regulate it carefully. Had he been wearing a uniform, he would have appeared far more soldierly than any of the militiamen and much closer to what I imagined a retired but healthy and sharp-minded high-ranking military officer to be like. "Alright, kids," a gravelly but affable, grandfatherly voice spoke to me and Dan. "Why don't you come with me." "Sorry, sir," Martinez cut in. He was politely firm, but at the same time just as unimpressed with the cowboy as the cowboy was with him. "These two are to stay here under my guard. Platoon commander's orders." "And I'm here to pick them up," the cowboy said in a friendly tone. "I've got my orders too." Martinez was plainly ready to argue and tell off the old man. He had an unpleasant, joyless grin on his face while he was holding his rifle upright with one hand and staring at the intruder. For my part, I only wished for the whole thing to be over quickly. Wholly unexpectedly, however, Martinez tilted his head and shrugged his shoulders. "Okay," he said. "If you say so, gramps. They're all yours." "Come along now," the cowboy exhorted us. I was filled with immense relief at the peaceful conclusion to the confrontation and also a yearning to go and leave this wretched place with the cowboy, irrespective of who he was and where he planned to take us. Although I had never seen him before, he came across as instantly trustworthy to me. There was no real logic behind the notion: it was entirely the product of my intuition and a burning desire to get as far away from Martinez, the Chief and the rest, mixed with unfettered optimism and perhaps naivet?. Dan and I rose to our feet and followed the cowboy as he walked of out the barn. My legs were unsteady and limp, and I went through a brief additional bout of nausea as I made my way outside. The experience had been an exacting one, and we were still not out of danger. The flatbed truck was blocking the road as before. The militiamen were either standing around it or sitting on the truck bed, with some of them passing the time by chatting. A fire was burning in the field just a few yards from the road. Three of the men were gathered around it, tending to it and making coffee with an old black pot that was suspended over the flames on a stick. The amateur soldiers' own means of transportation, mainly jeeps and pickup trucks, were parked in a disorderly fashion around the barn and on the sides of the road. However laid back they appeared, I was indescribably tense. I kept glancing at them nervously and fought a constant, well-nigh overwhelming urge to run. The cowboy may have been able to bluff Martinez, but what about the Chief? What would happen if he caught us trying to sneak away? "Take it easy," the old man said to me in a low, calm voice. He had read my thoughts. "Just walk on like it's nothing. We'll be out of here in no time at all." I nodded and forced myself not to look at the militiamen. Dan was waddling along by my side, evidently unconcerned with the whole situation. He was incapable of either displaying the emotions that had stirred in him or, more likely, fully appreciating the peril to begin with. For once, I almost envied him for that. My car was standing by the roadside some fifty yards away. The militiamen had moved it here, to the other side of their roadblock, evidently for safekeeping. The vehicle appeared to have suffered no maltreatment in the meantime, I observed, and its nose was pointed in the direction I had been heading with Dan when we had encountered the men. As long as nobody had done anything to disable it, we could, in theory, simply hop in and resume our drive. Anticipating my next question as well, the cowboy told me, "You'll find the keys in the ignition, Mike. We get in and go." There were traces of an understated Southern drawl in his speech, but that aspect of our newest acquaintance might easily have slipped my attention, were it not for his attire. "O-okay," I stuttered. Even though we had gained some distance to the militiamen, who continued to be oblivious to us, I was still too jittery to notice immediately that he had used my real name. "Do I just...?" "Yeah. Start up and drive, that's all there is to it. Those fine gentlemen won't stop us." The car doors were unlocked, so we climbed in the vehicle. The cowboy took off his hat and sat down on the right front seat, leaving the driver's position to me, while Dan clambered in the back. The backpack containing my own clothes was still there, but the AR-15 was gone, predictably enough. The fear and depression that had been close to suffocating me only moments ago were beginning to give way a little, and the temptation to air my anger over the fate of the weapon proved too great to resist, no matter how grateful I was to be rid of Martinez's company. "The jerks took my friend's rifle," I remarked to the cowboy, who had to move the seat back by a couple of inches to make himself more comfortable. He buckled up conscientiously and then placed his Stetson on his lap. "I reckon they did, son," he responded. "It makes for a pretty nice addition to their armory." "What the hell am I going to tell my friend? It's not like he can afford to buy a new one any day of the week." "You'll see the gun again," the man assured me. "And you'll see your friend too. But now, if you'll excuse me for being so blunt, we'd better shut our mouths and get going fast." "Where?" "Forward. I'll give you directions when you need them." I turned the keys and started the engine. This was the critical point. If the militiamen were prepared to stop us by force, they would shoot right now. My hands were shaking as I methodically and carefully released the parking brake, put the first gear in, grabbed the wheel firmly, pressed on the gas lightly and lifted the clutch pedal. The car nudged forward, nearly stopped and then began to roll steadily on. I unconsciously bowed my head, squinted my eyes and bit my teeth together in preparation for the hail of bullets and the excruciating pain. The first hundred yards seemed to take an hour; the next hundred went a little more quickly. The shots that I had feared never rung out, but it wasn't until we were well over a quarter of a mile past the roadblock that I could start to relax to a moderate degree. "Where to?" I asked the cowboy. "Forward," he repeated with a jovial chuckle. "I don't see any other roads here, so you've got exactly two choices, and turning back doesn't sound like a very good idea to me." I was about to clarify that I had meant to inquire about our next destination, but other thoughts distracted me. He had called me Mike--I was positive I had heard him say my real name out loud. This went far beyond my ability to explain or understand. Not only could he see through my disguise, which was probably as close to perfect as anything that existed, but he also knew who I was. Moreover, he had shown up when he was needed the most, when Dan and I had ended up in a complete mess, and he had somehow convinced the militiamen to let us leave without further ado. Our escape had been effortless and unceremonious, even though the militiamen and the Chief in particular had been adamant to detain us just a little earlier. The terrain soon underwent a subtle change, becoming a bit less unvarying with scattered hills, batches of wood and the odd small stream. The road, while still narrow and topped only with gravel, began to turn and descend and ascend gently, seeking the path of least resistance through the land. Even so, the landscape was not really scenic, but I welcomed the change and let the car build up a bit of speed. If we were to encounter other vehicles, I would have plenty of time to react, unless someone was in the habit of racing with hot rods around here. On the other hand, the big river and the bridge were nowhere to be seen, and to complicate matters, I had not the faintest recollection of ever before passing by the barn where we had been held captive. My mental picture of this area was therefore all wrong, making me completely dependent on the cowboy for directions. The old man himself appeared self-possessed and downright imperturbable. If he had any doubts, which to me seemed unlikely, he certainly didn't let the outside world in on them. Every once in a while I would steal a glance at him, and I invariably found him sitting upright in his seat, head held high, looking in a tranquil fashion into the distance through the windshield. He had hardly moved a muscle during the whole time. The enigma that was the elderly cowboy bothered me more and more now that I no longer had to fear constantly for my life or health, and broaching the topic of his identity became ultimately too tempting to resist. "Who are you?" I inquired him, taking my eyes off the road for as long as I dared. "Hmm?" he intoned absentmindedly, turned his head towards me and lifted his eyebrows a little. "What did you say, Mike?" "I asked you who you are. Please, tell me." "Oh," he reacted and gave a faint smile. "They call me Bill. Gunner Bill." "Right," I said. "Bill it is. If I'm not mistaken, you know my name already, and probably Dan's, so there's no need for formal introductions." "Yep," he confirmed and returned his gaze to the horizon. This exchange proved that precisely as I had assumed, I would have to squeeze the necessary information out of him in bits and pieces. Then again, my curiosity and persistence were forces to be reckoned with in their own right. "How did you know we needed help?" I quizzed him. "There's no way you could have been passing through by accident. I don't buy it." "It's my job to know when to arrive and who to assist," Bill said to this. "And what exactly might that job be, if you don't mind me asking?" "I'm a... Well, I suppose you could say I'm a troubleshooter. I show up where and when things need fixing, and then I do what I can to set them right." "Things?" "Yeah, like the two of you getting in trouble with a bunch of overly eager militiamen." "Okay--but that doesn't explain how you know my name." "It does." "Or how you can tell I'm not really a plump college girl with a head full of progressive ideas and a skin covered in gaudy tattoos." "It explains that as well." "I'm sorry," I said, unable to keep a note of frustration from creeping into my voice, "but you really have me at a disadvantage here. It would be nice if you could share something about yourself." "I already have," he said with another subtle smile. "All you need to know at this point is that I'm on your side, as I'm sure you've realized. You can trust me completely. The way I see it, everything else is pretty much irrelevant." "Maybe to you, but---" "I don't mean to be rude, son, but I think we ought to stick to what's absolutely necessary. If we meet again someday and have the time, I'll tell you more; that's a promise." He added with a laugh, "Chances are I'll tell you more than you even want to know if you don't stop me. I'm an incurable blabbermouth at heart." "I find that hard to believe." "I'm on duty. That'd be the reason why." The silence returned. I was quietly miffed at Bill's reticence because I honestly regarded myself as deserving the answers I wanted, but he appeared unyielding. Arguing with him, besides being rude, would very likely have done no good whatsoever. I had to save my questions for a more opportune time. There were more pressing concerns, as I was reminded when I glanced at the fuel gauge. Its needle had fallen very close to the point where the orange warning light would come on. Then we would have enough fuel for around forty miles on a paved road; but that distance shrunk to maybe one half of the optimum in these conditions. I was at a loss as to where we could get more gasoline. We passed through a crossroads a little later. Another gravel road connected with our road at right angles and disappeared behind low hills in both directions. The junction had no traffic signs or any other kind of markings that could have helped in determining our location. "Straight on," Bill advised me. "Straight on it is," I responded automatically and drove through the crossroads, not bothering to slow down as the coast was clear. The deserted road went on as before. For a way of its kind, it was not very demanding to drive on, since it had evidently been maintained well and there were few potholes, sand ridges or patches of loose rubble that might have led to damage to my car or a loss of control. Nonetheless, a sort of numbness was settling in as a precursor to sleepiness, and were it not for my suspicion that the militiamen or others of their ilk were possibly on our tail, I would have suggested that we pull up and take a short break. "As an aside," I spoke up, reopening the conversation, "we may have another problem." "What's that?" Bill asked. "Food and drink. I haven't eaten anything for hours, and I assume the same goes for Dan. Do you know a diner or a gas station around here somewhere?" "I was expecting you to bring that up," the cowboy commented. "It's good thinking. You can't get far with an empty stomach. But to answer your question--no, I'm not aware of places near here where you can buy food, but don't worry about that. Turn right at the next crossroads, and we'll see what we can find." His words were less than reassuring, but I had come to the conclusion that there was much more to Bill than met the eye. It was difficult to imagine that he hadn't given any consideration beforehand to prosaic but essential things like provisioning during our trip. I suppressed my doubts and the craving to hear the specifics of his plan and instead simply tried to concentrate on driving. We did arrive at an intersection of sorts only a few minutes later. Another modest gravel road, much like the one we had traveled on, forked to the right and began to climb up the side of a wooded hill. The elevation, noticeably higher and girthier than the mounds that dotted the landscape, stood out somewhat. Bill nodded lightly as I slowed down and then turned onto the side road. In no time, there was a continuous forest of mostly pine trees on both sides, a significant change from the wide open emptiness of the farmland that we had traversed for tens if not hundreds of miles lately. The trees gave some shelter and cover, but I simultaneously became increasingly aware of the fact that they also offered the same advantage to anyone who might be lying in wait for us. After what I had gone through in Sunnydale and then later at the barn, I balked at the prospect of being ambushed again. The road leveled out, curved left and entered an open grassy area. I was badly startled immediately. A few hundred yards away, just to the left of the road, was the wreckage of a large airplane. The sight, which took me a good three seconds to identify, bordered on the surreal: the white- painted fuselage, which had broken in two a little behind the cockpit, contrasted extremely starkly with its natural, undisturbed surroundings. Miscellaneous debris littered the field of hay. Both of the severed wings, as well as what I took to be the engines of the plane, were resting on the ground a little further back. The biggest parts of the plane had plowed deep gashes into the turf as they had touched down forcefully. I looked at Gunner Bill in astonishment, waiting for him to explain, but he merely instructed me, "Stop here, Mike. We'll fill up." Too dumbstruck to ask anything or to think for myself, I automatically did as he had told me to do and pulled up on the side of the road, approximately abreast of the nose of the shattered plane. "We'll stretch our legs a little," he added and unbuckled his seatbelt. I followed his example. "Dan," I called to the young man slouched in the back seat, "we'll be stopping for a little while. Do you want to get some fresh air?" He lifted his head, as if suddenly roused from deep sleep. Dan, whose presence had mostly passed out of my mind due to more pressing concerns, hadn't said anything since we had resumed our drive. In all likelihood, he had at first been daydreaming and then dozed off, indifferent to the outside world. "Are we there yet?" he asked in a groggy voice. "In Bedford? No. We just... pause for a bit." "Okay then. I'll rest here." He appeared to lapse back into his typical passive existence that occupied most of his daytime hours and leaned back, eyes half closed. If he insisted on being cooped up in my car even when I offered him a chance to get out, that was his choice, I thought and opened the driver's door. A cool breeze was blowing, driving the clouds across the sky and making the trees hum softly. The gray cupola overhead was showing unmistakable signs of breaking up, and small, transient patches of blue sky already appeared here and there. While this change in the weather was as heartening as the change in the landscape, if not more so, the increasing levels of daylight had the less pleasant effect of bringing out the tiny details of the crash site. The first direct rays of the sun I had seen for a long time fell on the remains of the airplane, and they reflected the beams like a toy or a miniature model. Nonetheless, the true scale of the wreck had already become obvious to me. The wind was powerless to clear out a strong smell of jet fuel. Bill didn't procrastinate. He marched to the wreckage, stepped over some of the larger pieces of the scattered debris and entered the fuselage through the hole in the front where the nose of the plane had been sheared off. He pushed aside a thick loose bundle of electrical wires hanging from the ceiling and went in confidently. I was filled with healthy respect for the hazards that might lurk in the wreckage and decided to stay close by the car unless Bill needed help or something else equally surprising happened. The crash site was not exactly cozy or welcoming, and although the feeling of isolation and vulnerability was no longer as great and ominous as it had been on the open plain, it lingered on in my mind and would most likely continue to do so until we again made contact with the rest of the civilization and met other people. At any rate, the lonely opening and the surrounding woods by themselves did create a peaceful atmosphere, something I would certainly have enjoyed after weeks spent in my city apartment and could appreciate even now, although it failed to banish completely the fears of what awaited us and what was possibly following us. The more I relaxed and the less I had to concentrate on other things, the more conscious I became of my new body. I had only transformed into Michelle a few hours ago, and even that short period of time had been spent mainly on keeping the car on the road and being scared, rather than calm introspection. I felt at home in her form to a striking degree and was no longer in particular hurry to take the suit off at the earliest opportunity (which was then at hand). Much of it probably had to do with the fact that the dimensions of her body--her height, weight, the length of her limbs--were decidedly closer to mine than Buffy's were, and I of course had already gained some experience with being a woman physically. Even so, the realization that my brain had accepted her hands, feet, legs, butt, her head and hair, even her breasts and genitals as my own, essentially without a second thought, gave me pause. This form was simply comfortable to be in. There was no argument that Michelle was considerably overweight and not very fit, but that issue didn't bother me. It would only pose a real problem if I had to exert myself at some point. Militiaman Martinez may have inferred Michelle's political leanings and views reasonably accurately, as far as her intrinsic personality went, but he had definitely been wrong about her sexual orientation. She liked men. As I stood there by my car, arms wrapped around my portly chest, shifting my weight from one foot to the other and waiting for Bill to finish whatever he was doing inside the wreckage, a series of blatantly erotic images flashed across my mind. The source was the skinsuit symbiont; it (or she) wanted me (or us) to indulge in a daydream about sex with two enormously well-hung men. The show started with caressing, developed into fellatio and then ended with a two-sided simultaneous penetration. I tried to push the fantasy aside but it was both extremely vivid and persistent. I discovered that I was biting my lip without being fully conscious of it. Michelle's nipples hardened under the layers of garment I wore, and the beginnings of wetness had appeared in my crotch. If only I had the chance to make all that come true, I thought and then found myself wondering if I could and should retreat to the edge of the woods and relieve my tension there quickly. It took me considerable effort to reassert control over her horniness, which was well on its way to becoming ungovernable. Bill's footsteps carried intermittently from inside the fuselage, and there were also the muffled sounds of metal banging against metal every now and then. He was trying to scavenge something from there, I reasoned; perhaps food for us. I had noticed early on that the fuselage had only a few small portholes, which suggested that this was a cargo plane, not a passenger airliner. Few if any people had probably lost their lives when the plane had fallen out of the sky. On the other hand, this meant that the aircraft had likely not been carrying anything edible, besides a sandwich or two for the pilots. Things didn't look much better for my car, which would also begin to suffer from a lack of stored energy before long. Even if some of the plane's fuel cells had remained intact and we had been able to tap into them, they contained kerosene and not gasoline, given that the plane was obviously a jet. I let my gaze wander lazily over the wreckage and the debris field again, both to pass the time and to impress the scene in my memory as a form of insurance against any later doubts about the recent events having actually taken place. I found it curious that the plane was painted solid white. That might have been a clue that the aircraft belonged to some Government agency, or maybe that it was being ferried to a new owner when the crash had happened. It did have an identification number on the evidently intact horizontal stabilizer, I noted. On a quick glance, there seemed to be nothing about the markings that would have attracted the attention of a non-expert, but when I looked more carefully, they didn't resolve into a series of neat numbers and letters. They were crudely done, as if someone had been in a hurry and merely grabbed a thick brush to slather some paint on the tail surface of the plane. In fact, they were as good as illegible. Unable to keep my curiosity at bay any longer, I walked a few dozen yards up the road to be able to have a better view of the identification code. As soon as I got it, a shiver passed through me. The characters were not numbers and Latin letters at all, but entirely unrecognizable symbols, as far as I could tell. They reminded me of the made-up scribbling sometimes used on TV shows and movies to represent alien writing. From a distance, they could have fooled a casual observer, but when seen up close, there could be no mistake. I blinked several times, stared at the nonsensical markings and wondered whether this was proof that I was dreaming. I couldn't find any kind of logic behind it. Worse was to come. On the ground near the severed nose of the plane were blue lumps that I had initially assumed to be bundles of mattresses or something similar that had been thrown out of the aircraft as it had broken up, but now my heart skipped a beat as another realization hit me. They were dead bodies clad in blue clothes. However, some morbid form of curiosity overwhelmed my instinctive impulse to flee or, at the very least, to turn my back on the horrific sight. It downright enticed me into finding out more. Against my better judgment, I stepped into the field of grass and made my way cautiously to the nearest body, taking care not to tread on any of the broken pieces. The deceased aviator, who was lying on his back in the grass, was about the size of an average man and dressed in a jumpsuit like those that Air Force pilots and astronauts often wore. His arms were neatly by his sides and his legs were only slightly bent at the knees. It seemed that a surviving crewmate or a rescuer might have deliberately arranged his body that way after his death. The chest of his flight suit was stained in blood and dirt, and the heels of his black boots were muddy. Either he had crawled forward in search of help before rolling over and expiring, or someone else had moved him, I reasoned and approached for a closer look. I was still a few paces away from the body when its facial features registered in my consciousness. A thick ridge of flesh lined the pilot's brow, but he had no nose, aside from what appeared to be a small orifice above his tightly closed, virtually lipless mouth. His eyelids were open, and they revealed a pair of huge, bulging, slightly purplish globes, whose unflinching stare was aimed at the sky above. Not a single hair grew out from the florid, smooth skin that covered his massive skull. Drops of dried, bright red blood were scattered on his face, but they left more than enough of it visible for me to reel in shock. I had to cover my mouth with my hand as I gaped at the being I had assumed to be a human male. What had been a gruesome discovery but one explainable in terms of normal human experience had morphed into yet another instance of supernatural horror. Who or what the pilots were, where they had obtained their aircraft and what they had been doing was a truly astounding mystery, but it held little interest to me just then. I only wanted to get away as quickly as possible. I needed every last reserve of my mental strength to maintain a measure of self-control, but it succeeded well enough that I merely returned to the road and my car at a fast walking pace and avoided flying immediately into a mad panic. "Mike," Bill called out. He had emerged from the fuselage and was carrying a large brown cardboard box. "Give me a hand, will you?" "I'm not going anywhere near that thing anymore," I voiced my refusal. "No way!" "Why?" The cowboy seemed genuinely surprised. "There's nothing dangerous out there. The plane won't catch fire or anything." "No!" I said. "Those bodies... What the fuck is going on, Bill?" "Oh, that," he commented and stepped onto the road, lowering the box on the ground. "So you saw them too." "You bet I did. What are they?" He went quiet for a second or two and then gave me a reassuring smile. "You're pretty rattled," he said, "and that's perfectly understandable. The people who flew that plane were not from this world." "I figured that out myself," I told him pointedly. My irritation at the lack of forthright answers from Bill was again increasing. "Yeah, of course you did. In any case, you shouldn't worry about that. Them being here and their plane crashing is all a coincidence of sorts, but it's working to our advantage. Thanks to them, we're going to get water, food and gas for your car." "From the plane?" "Precisely. Here are some ration packs," he announced and pointed at the cardboard box. "I'll get the water and the gas. Wait here if you don't feel like joining me." I definitely did not, and so I remained the car and guarded it as Bill made a total of four additional expeditions to the airplane remains. First, he brought another box with him, then six big plastic bottles of water, and finally three jerry cans and a funnel on two separate trips. He let out a weary but contented grunt as he put the last two cans down so that they stood together side by side. His harvesting mission was complete, and he sat down on top of the line of cans, taking off his hat and wiping his forehead lightly. I could see that despite his hairline having receded a little, he still retained an almost full head of soft, silvery gray hair. It was styled in a meticulous medium-length cut. "Dan!" he yelled. "Come on out and dig in if you're hungry! We've got food!" Eating was one of Dan's favorite activities in life, and he scarcely needed more persuasion. He climbed out of the car, trudged around it and stood by as Bill opened one of the cardboard boxes for us with a small knife that he carried on his belt. He took out several packages wrapped in green, beige or white plastic and handed a mix of these to each of us, along with a water bottle. Since the jerry cans could only support a single person, I opened the left front door of the car and sat on the driver's seat with my legs out of the car. Dan followed my example and occupied the back seat in the same way, and then the feast could begin. The food packages had no writing or symbols on them, and so only their weight hinted at what they contained. The first package that I tore open was a green, flat packet, and I found what looked and smelled like beef jerky inside. Bill was already happily consuming his portion, and upon noticing my hesitation, he exhorted me, "Go ahead. It's good!" I was by then acutely aware of how empty my stomach was, and it even made a point to rumble on cue. After considering in passing the alternative--living on Michelle's spare body fat for a little longer--and promptly rejecting that idea, I took a tiny bite of the dried meat, ready to spit it out if it tasted in any way unusual. My apprehension was unwarranted. The beef jerky had a faint flavor of barbecue sauce, but it was otherwise fairly bland in taste. At that very moment, however, it was indescribably delicious to me. I emptied the entire package, chewed on each piece of meat hurriedly and swallowed them one after another. A big swig of water from the bottle washed the jerky down, and the food had an immediate invigorating effect on me. The white packages held thick bars of dark chocolate, and the beige ones had some sort of sweet cookies in them. I ate one portion of each and drank some more water, after which a nice warmth was starting to make itself felt inside of me. What I had eaten didn't take up very much space in my stomach, but I knew full well that the jerky, the chocolate and the cookies easily supplied the calories I would need over the next couple of days. As was to be expected, the warmth was soon accompanied by the sensation that there was a heavy lump inside my belly, and right afterwards came a lovely drowsiness. One extra gulp of water, and I would have been ready to lie down and take a good, long nap. Dan Mancini was not subject to such limitations. He tore open package after package and devoured their contents in short order, without showing the remotest signs of his appetite being sated. He ate everything he happened to lay his hands on. Chocolate was followed by jerky, jerky was followed by cookies, cookies were followed by jerky, and jerky was followed again by chocolate. At one point, Bill gave him a red plastic tube that turned out to contain whitish sauce or gravy, perhaps mayonnaise or something similar. Dan opened the tube and squeezed the sauce into his mouth, smacking his tongue out of pleasure. Although I regarded his table manners as less than sophisticated, to put it charitably, I couldn't help but let out a semi-involuntary burst of laughter at the sauce episode. When he was finally finished, Dan burped loudly, drank an entire bottle of water in three gulps and lay down on the back seat, with his legs hanging out of the open door. With that, he had once more lost interest in anything and everything outside of his own head. "Want some more?" Bill asked me and offered me a chocolate package. "There's still plenty to go around." "No, thanks," I said and patted my belly. "I'm full. As a matter of fact, I don't know if I can stay awake with this kind of blood sugar high." "Okay. I'll put the box in the trunk just in case, although I don't think we'll be needing that much food anymore." This off-handed remark aroused both my curiosity and my anxiety right away. "What do you mean?" I inquired sharply. "We won't need food anymore? What's going to happen to us?" "We get to our destination, hopefully," Bill replied in a solemn manner. "If I'm not mistaken, we ought to have a day's drive ahead of us, give or take a few hours." "A day's drive to where?" "That's... kind of hard to explain," he admitted, and for the first time I detected an unequivocal note of indecision and uncertainty in his speech. "It's not so much a place as it is... Oh, well, never mind, Mike. We'll get there soon enough and you'll see it for yourself." "That's not acceptable," I argued. "What's going to happen to us, Bill? Are we going to die there?" "No, no," he said and shook his head. "Nothing like that at all, trust me." "It would be easier for me to trust you if you explained what's going on." "I can't really explain things I don't understand myself, so this'll have to do for now, son," he responded. The tone of gentle but firm determination was back in his voice, and I comprehended that my attempt to get him to open up and share information had failed again. "Alright," Bill said and jumped to his feet with agility that was at odds with his apparent age. "We had dinner, and it's only appropriate that your car gets some as well. Open the fuel door, Mike." I did as he requested, pulling on the lever that made the little hatch swing out on its hinges. "Do you need help with that, Bill?" "No, I'm good. This won't take a minute." The cowboy pushed Dan's legs inside the car and closed the rear door before he got to work. Dan was sound asleep by this time, and he snored quietly in the back. I watched in the side view mirror as Bill unscrewed the tank cap and put the funnel in. He proceeded to empty the cans into the tank, pouring slowly so as not to spill one drop of the precious liquid. After he was done, however, he threw the cans briskly and casually away, and they fell onto the grass by the side of the road. "That's not our problem," he told me as he walked around the car and sat down on the front seat. "This whole mess gets cleaned up when our mission is over and things are back to normal." "Even those bodies?" I queried. This was an intentional provocation on my part, but sadly it produced nothing particularly illuminating. "Yeah," he said. "Even the bodies. None of it will ever have existed." He buckled up and looked at me, with a small trace of a smile playing on his lips. "Shall we?" "Yeah, let's go," I responded, but before I could turn the key, a deep yawn distracted me. "Jeez, I'm tired. I'd love to sleep for an hour or two if we could fit that into the schedule. Do you know if the militia platoon is chasing us?" "I'd be surprised if it was," Bill said after a short pause. "We're pretty much off their radar at this point. What actually troubles me is that we might run out of time if we dawdle around this place." "Maybe you should drive for a change," I suggested more than half seriously. I was just beginning to perceive what a heavy toll the psychological traumas I had suffered through had taken on me, and that exhaustion was compounded by a huge dose of tremendously energy-rich food. The latter would have been enough by itself to make me drowsy for an entire afternoon. "It's your car and your responsibility," Bill countered my proposal without missing a beat. "But I can give you something that'll help." He dug into his trouser pocket and pulled out a piece of blister pack with four light green tablets. He pushed two of the tablets out and onto the thick, wrinkled skin of the palm of his hand. I was wary of his offering, to say the least. "What do you have there?" "They ward off fatigue," the cowboy explained. "Don't worry. They're harmless, unless you overdose on a regular basis." "I really don't know if I should take them," I said. I was trying to come up with a polite way to reject the tablets. I had no idea what they were and what they would do, aside from keeping me awake. "I told you to trust me," Bill admonished me in a jovial way, but I thought I could detect a touch of actual frustration with me in him. "You see, Mike, I was sent to keep you safe and guide you. Poisoning you is the last thing I want to do." He moved his hand closer to me. The two tablets were nestled on his palm, waiting for me to pick them up. To gain some more time to make my decision, I let out a brief and partially forced laughter and looked at him again. Bill didn't say anything. He merely looked back at me, with a characteristic small smile of encouragement on his lips. He nodded approvingly and dropped the tablets. I barely managed to put my hand underneath his in time to catch them. "Won't I need to wash these goodies down with water?" I asked him. "No. You can swallow them like that, dry and whole," he advised. "Better get it over with, son. We don't have all day." "The hell with this," I sighed and threw the tablets into my mouth. ***** The rest of the day until nightfall was technically uneventful in that nobody captured us, threatened us with firearms or tried to force us into skinsuits. Nor did we encounter any more crashed airplanes piloted by aliens or demons. Nonetheless, it was no less strange than what had occurred before, rather the opposite. Initially, the landscape and the road were much like they had been, with curves, mostly gradual rises and falls, alternating patches of woods and grassy clearings, along with culverts or little concrete bridges at the ditches and creeks. The clouds had broken up and the sun was shining in the blue sky, which had effectively transformed a morose and forbidding environment into an idyllic piece of quiet countryside. The accident site with its chilling secrets was miles behind us, and thanks to the supplies provided by Bill, I could temporarily put most of my worries aside and just drive on, curious to see what would await us behind the next curve or hill. The fuel from the plane had caused no problems either, and the car was running perfectly with its tank topped off. Bill and I would exchange a few words every now and then, but for most of the time we stayed silent. Dan was sleeping in the back seat. My tiredness was gone and I was alert and energetic--unquestionably due in part to Bill's tablets--but this came at a cost of a peculiar feeling of unreality that, occasionally, developed into a sense of near-complete disconnection. I would steer the car and be keenly aware of the road and my companions at one moment, only to doubt it and my very existence at the next. It was as though a voice were telling me that it wouldn't matter if I drove into a ditch and wrecked the car because none of this was happening anyway, but simultaneously I knew that I would risk my life if I did that. Keeping the vehicle going forward was easy, maintaining focus on the present was difficult. My sense of time suffered badly as well. The clock in the center console was working and its numbers changed steadily, but they didn't tally with the events as I perceived them. I wondered idly how far we had gotten, thinking that the roadblock incident was perhaps about two or three hours in the past, and then noticed that the sun was already setting. One glance at the clock contradicted this in its turn: the timepiece showed 2:30 p.m., so night couldn't possibly be coming yet. I was unable to make any sense of this, and a little later I stopped trying altogether. In any case, the sun was fairly low in the sky when I became aware of another change in the environment. The road was passing through a meadow where flowers were in bloom, although it was supposedly November. The air was filled with gentle, diffuse golden light, like on a clear evening in late summer. The cabin was getting decidedly warmer with each mile, and I had to set the air conditioning to cool; it had only been needed to warm the interior ever since Jake, Charlie, Scott and I had left Greensville so long ago. On the other side of the clearing, the road plunged into a forest of maple and oak trees, which sported dense foliage of green leaves and formed a partial canopy over the road. I wanted to ask Bill if we had traveled in time, seeing as this season had to be summer instead of early winter, but decided against it. I would get nothing from him, except more riddles and mystifying allusions to things that he was reluctant to discuss. Daylight began to fade shortly afterwards. As the road made a curve and reached another open grassy field, all the while going forward in a very slight downward slope, we were treated to a stunning display of colors ahead. The sun, a fiery reddish globe, shone through a layer of wispy clouds on the horizon and cast its flames across the western sky. It hid behind a mountain briefly when the road turned again, came out, flooded the land one more time with its orange rays and then dipped under the treetops over the distant hills. Behind us in the east, the sky was already taking on a dark blue color in anticipation of the coming night. When the road passed into the shade of big trees, I had to switch on the headlights. The fact that our surroundings were dark was nothing but a minor inconvenience at first. Apart from having to slow down and rely on the car lights to reveal any obstacles before we ran into them, I continued on much like before and kept guessing absentmindedly at how far we still had to go. However, when my eyes began to adapt to the lack of sunlight, I discerned tiny yellow dots shining in the woods on both sides of the road. They looked like fireflies, only somewhat larger and brighter than I would have expected. Although they seemed completely harmless and were indeed probably just insects flying around and dancing in the air, I was suddenly gripped with fear. There was something sinister about the lights and the entire forest. I pressed on the gas and accelerated. The wooded area ended a couple of miles later, and the road took us to another vast plain. More lights appeared ahead. They emitted a flickering glow that rose high in the air and marked the location of other lights that were obscured from direct view by the terrain. Regardless, it took me a minute or two to realize that the fires were actually far away, not nearby like the insects--and that they had to be positively enormous. I trembled in my seat and fought against an impulse to close my eyes so I wouldn't have to witness the horror. If the militiamen had been right about a new world war having broken out, this might well have been the result: entire towns burning like bonfires across the land. The road approached one of the fires directly, and the light grew rapidly as we neared it. Eventually it filled half of the windscreen. Despite this, I was unable to make out any details beyond the flames and the pulsating red glow that hung above them. Their brightness dazzled my eyes and prevented me from seeing the burning thing itself. "Stop here," Bill advised. "Why? Shouldn't we---?" "No. Just stop for a few minutes. We'll be on our way again right after that." I had already slowed down after we had cleared the forest, and pulling up was effortlessly done. The car came obediently to a halt in the middle of the road. I pulled the parking brake on but opted to leave the engine running for the time being, unless Bill would explicitly disagree and tell me to turn it off. He had to have a good reason to call a pause here, I thought and glanced at his face, which was eerily illuminated by the massive fires raging in front of us. Instead of giving an explanation, he sat completely still and stared into the distance, deep in thought. His features were stiff and unmoving, as though they had been carved in granite, and both the cordial small smile and the lively glint in his eyes were extinguished. Specks of light, which I presumed to be large embers floating in the updraft, separated from the flames and flew high in the dark sky. They appeared to circle one another and, little by little, coalesce into bigger lights that hovered in the air. The process struck me as fascinating and strangely purposeful. The incandescent particles acted like living beings that were driven by some instinct to come together, merge and grow. "Close your eyes," Bill said in a thin, strained voice. "What?" "Close your eyes!" he repeated in an urgent tone, more strenuously than last time. I was flabbergasted. The sight was mesmerizing, and although it was odd, I failed to understand why and how just looking at it could be harmful. In any event, I tore my eyes off it and forced them to close. Bill had brought us this far, and if he thought that gazing at the fires was a bad idea, then perhaps it really was. Nothing happened for a while. The car stood in place with its engine idling, and both of my companions remained silent. I could hear Bill breathe next to me; he sounded out of breath, almost panting under a heavy pressure, and suddenly I understood that he had to be stricken with terror. At that instant, my own courage evaporated too. I was about to disregard his order and open my eyes, but then I saw a faint light through my eyelids. It grew brighter for a few seconds and then began to move slowly from one side to the other. It was joined by another one, and they floated back and forth in unison, like a medical instrument that was scanning us. More lights joined in, and they all appeared to be flying around me. "Don't look at them," Bill warned me. His voice had broken into a hoarse, loud whisper. "They'll go away. Just don't look at them!" His effort at persuading me was unnecessary. I had absolutely no intention to sneak a peek. Although I kept my eyes tightly shut, I could still see the bright lights wandering restlessly nearby, approaching, receding and approaching again. There was something else as well, a strong sensation of the presence of a consciousness and a will just outside the car. Whoever or whatever it was, I was certain that it was malevolent in nature. The harrowing minutes passed by at a snail's pace. I had to put all my resolve into breathing steadily and ignoring the lights and the probing thoughts of the mind behind them. I was acutely aware that a pane of automobile glass and a millimeter or two of sheet metal were everything that protected me from them. My fears were heightened for a few seconds when the separate points of light seemed to merge and come to a stop right in front of me. This had to mean something decisive was about to happen, I reasoned and braced myself. Instead, following another couple of seconds that felt like a lifetime, the combined light began to fade. Soon it was gone, leaving only lingering afterimages in my field of vision. "It's okay," Bill said and sighed. "They're gone. You can look now." I opened my eyes gradually and reluctantly, but there was nothing more to see besides the distant fires, the dark sky and the desolate road. The globes of light had disappeared. "What were they?" I queried the cowboy, who was leaning back in his seat. His face looked haggard. "I'm not sure I could explain that to you," he responded quietly, going on to add, "And maybe it's for the best that you don't know, anyway." "You'll get no argument from me," I commented. "We must hurry. This means that things have been set in motion, and chances are we've got even less time left than I hoped." I was glad to get on the move again, be it that we had no choice but to press on through the apocalyptic land. Bill's tablets kept any sensation of physical weariness away, and I had no problem maintaining a sufficient level of concentration and staying vigilant, although I knew that I should have been exhausted. My loss of the track of time was even more thorough than during the previous leg of our journey. Afterwards, I would vaguely remember that we passed by the last of the big fires at some point, and then the world became pitch black, save for the beams of the headlights of my car. My next recollection is of the sun rising in the east, pushing away the darkness and revealing what was essentially the countryside of yesterday. A curious white mass appeared a few miles ahead of us when it was fully light. When I first caught a glimpse of it, I thought that we were headed for the edge of a large depression or perhaps a line of mountains and that what I was seeing were clouds hanging low in the western sky. At times, it disappeared behind trees and elevations and soon reappeared as the road weaved towards it, clearly coming closer by the minute. When we finally reached it, I was surprised to find out it was an opaque cloud of mist or smoke, hundreds of feet high and immensely long. It sat squarely on the road in the middle of an open field, reaching all the way down to the ground. It reminded me of a concrete wall and appeared to be just as solid. I slowed down, hesitant to barge in since I was unable to see what was inside and behind the mist. My car evidently shared my misgivings and stopped a short distance from the cloud wall by itself, as if it had activated its own brakes, while I slammed my foot down on the clutch and narrowly succeeded in keeping the engine from cutting out. The sudden stop had to have something to do with the cloud. I shifted the gear to neutral and engaged the parking brake, given that we probably wouldn't be able to make any headway until the unforeseen and unearthly obstacle had been removed somehow, and began to think what we should do to that end. "This is where I get off," Bill announced curtly and opened his seatbelt. "You fellows take care now." "Wait!" I exclaimed. "You're leaving us?" "That's right," he said as calmly as ever. "I can't come any further with you, and you can't continue unless I deal with that wall out there." "What the hell are we supposed to do?" I asked him, struck with outright desperation at the possibility of losing such a good guide. "I don't know the way to Bedford. I don't know the first thing about this place!" "It'll be alright," he assured me, opened the door and got out. "Just keep going straight on until you see the end of the road, and then drop Dan off. That's it. I reckon you'll be seeing some mighty strange things out there, but don't let them divert your attention. Those aside, you shouldn't encounter any more problems from here on out." I let out a heavy sigh. I was unable to make Bill stay with us if he was determined to leave--I knew him well enough by now--but I had little confidence in myself when it came to avoiding and surviving whatever bizarre threats we might face during the last part of our journey. The lights would have been our undoing without Bill, and so would running out of fuel and food, assuming we had first managed to escape the militiamen's custody unassisted. The elderly cowboy with his weather- beaten face and stoical attitude had been our savior on every one of these occasions. "Vaya con Dios, pals," Bill said, flashed one more smile at me and closed the door. He put his Stetson on, straightened it and walked steadily off into the mist. His figure became an indistinct silhouette, which vanished entirely from sight in a matter of seconds. I was still looking where he had disappeared in the clouds of mist, trying in vain to pick up his shape, when the wall began to rise like a curtain. Simultaneously, it thinned out and soon disappeared entirely. The obstacle was removed, but Gunner Bill was no longer anywhere to be seen. It was as though he and the mist had dissipated together, I thought. I put the car in gear and drove forward carefully. Ahead, the road led across a land of rolling fields of flowering grass and woods and small streams, somewhat akin to what we had seen before, but it was bathed in glorious sunlight that was (quite literally) unreal in its beauty. The colors were pure and intense, and a faint but pleasant fragrance, coming from the plants, furtively snuck into the car. I had a strong feeling of having entered a dream; the world around me was an untainted paradise where the car, myself and Dan were the only discordant and utterly mundane detail. Time didn't exist here, nor did corruption or death in any of their forms. The road snaked between hills whose tops were covered by groves of extraordinary trees. They were tall and had silvery trunks and light green leaves. A haze of gold floated around the woods, and when the road turned towards the sun, even the fine sand on its surface started to glow like a mixture of gold and silver. It was all but noiseless under the car wheels, which were only making a low humming sound, as opposed to the crunching of gravel that I had gotten used to. Dan's question interrupted my absorption. "Are we there yet?" he inquired in a lifeless voice that sounded almost sacrilegious under the circumstances. If he was unable to hold his tongue when surrounded by such wonders, he should have had something far more appropriate and respectful to say. "No, not just yet," I managed to respond. "Where's Bill?" "He went away a moment ago, but he told me we'll make it on our own." "Okay," Dan commented. As usual, he was unable to express his feelings on the matter, sincerely unperturbed or simply not caring one bit. If not for the amazing landscape before my eyes, I might well have gotten angry at him, despite his disabilities and the fact that yelling at him would have achieved absolutely nothing. A flock of birds was slowly circling above the road. They were somewhat like peacocks in shape but much larger, and their feathers reflected sunlight brilliantly and glittered in every imaginable color and shade, giving the impression that the birds were wearing psychedelic scale mails. This display surpassed anything I had seen previously in the same fashion that a mile-long covered bridge outclassed its real counterparts: it was a thing that could have existed within the drab consensus reality, but magically magnified and raised to a level that was unattainable otherwise. I was momentarily alarmed to see thick blue smoke come out of the ground. It emerged in large thick clouds that blocked my view forward for a few seconds, but they rose and began to form into an organized shape. Soon we were driving in a surreal colonnade whose columns and ceiling, a series of vaults, were made of crystallized blue gas. As the beams of the sun hit the material, it absorbed the light and was filled with it, as if the light had been a liquid being poured into a translucent container, and then emitted the rays again in an astounding array of colors and hues. It was a vision that felt oddly familiar to me, and I could have sworn that I had seen it before, in a dream if not in waking life. We were in for an even more staggering sight. The colonnade ended, the road climbed steeply, turned and leveled off while the ground on both sides instantaneously dropped by thousands of feet. We were on top of a high ridge that separated two vast valleys, with faraway snow-capped mountains hemming in the whole scene. The view was magnificent. On the left, a circular lake filled most of the valley, but a huge mass of red rock that tapered to a sharp point stood in the middle of the shimmering waters, reaching for the sky; and on the right, a river flowing from the lake crossed an idyllic meadow far below us. In addition, the entire marvelous spectacle was permeated, enhanced and intensified by an ethereal, preternatural quality that was present everywhere and transformed the vista, breathtaking in itself, into what bordered on a religious experience. I was filled with a longing to stop, step out of the car and stay here forever. I was sure that the mere air, together with the view, would be enough to sustain me indefinitely and heal my hurts. Finally, there was a sign that the land was not entirely virginal. As the road passed by the island on the left, offering me a better and closer look, I noticed that the stone had actually been worked and carved into a round monumental building. It was reminiscent of a majestic Gothic cathedral with a mile-high central spire and shorter ones flanking it on the rim. The complexity of the shapes that formed the arcs, towers, pinnacles, windows, doors, flying buttresses, apses and other features was mind-boggling, even at this distance, which hid some of the smaller details from my eyes. The roof was dotted with huge statues depicting animals, from rearing elephants to fish and caterpillars, cheerfully ignoring the actual relative sizes of these beings. Everything was made out of the same red stone. The temple was, to put it as succinctly as I can, a three-dimensional, real-life version of a Pieter Bruegel painting--if he had worked together with Salvador Dal? and Ren? Magritte and the three had been high on LSD. The road crossed the river at a dizzying height by an arch bridge, and when I looked ahead, I was shocked to discover that the road evidently ended where the bridge did. I had time to gasp and prepare for a stomach-turning plunge that would inevitably lead to my death and Dan's, but the car kept rolling forward as though nothing had happened. Only then did I realize that we were indeed still on a firm surface, but instead of rock and turf covered by gravel or gold dust, the road rested on and consisted of a material that seemed like faint stained glass. It was nearly transparent and perfectly smooth. How the wheels could maintain traction on a polished surface like that was one more puzzling question. There was one final upward slope, more gradual than the previous one, and then I could no longer tell the road from the terrain. We had arrived in an immeasurable field of glass, level with the distant mountaintops. The place was absolutely featureless, except for a milky white pillar in front of us. It was so tall that its top was not visible from the car, even when I leaned forward in my seat and craned my neck. Like the ground, the pillar showed no detail whatsoever, making it very difficult to gauge its size and distance. When I strained my eyes, I got the impression that it--or its surface--was in constant small movement, vibrating or rotating very fast. Not wanting to get any closer to this latest weird phenomenon before I knew what it was, I pulled up. My car, which had traveled hundreds of miles through space, time and perhaps even different realities, came to a stop on the bizarre glass plateau. "Right," I whispered to myself. "We're there. Now what?" We had come this far, but there was no more road to follow or anyone to instruct us. What was I meant to do here? This was not Bedford or any other location on the North American continent; so much was certain. Quite likely we had left the normal plane of human existence and experience altogether. Dan stirred again in the back seat and looked through the windshield. "What do you make of that?" I inquired him with a touch of sarcasm and pointed at the pillar. If a person with my mental faculties was totally bewildered, someone like Dan shouldn't have been able to say much. Nevertheless, he had yet another surprise in store for me. "Kent!" he burst out and his eyes bulged out behind the large lenses of his glasses. An emotional reaction broke clean through his thick outer shell, a rare occurrence for him. "Kent Noggin! He's there! He's there just like you said he would!" "What?" I shrieked, startled by his reaction. "Where?" "Right there, next to that tower thing! He's waiting for me!" I tore my seatbelt open, but I had no hope of getting out in time to stop Dan in his agitated state. He opened the rear door, jumped out and ran towards the pillar. Given that I was already too late and in any case averse to leaving the relative safety of the car in this uncanny environment, I resorted to rolling down the side window and shouting desperately, "Dan! Hey! There's nobody there! Don't go! Don't go, Dan! Come back!" I could hear the sound of wind blowing steadily, and it nearly drowned out my words even though I was shouting at the top of my lungs in Michelle's feminine voice. Dan paid me no heed and rushed forward, the hem of his hippie cloak billowing as he went. The pillar was a lot further away and bigger than I had thought because Dan had not reached it after about twenty seconds, and for a brief while, I bitterly regretted my decision not to race after him and restrain him. I actually pulled at the inside door handle and set one foot on the glass surface just before Dan spread his arms, took a few more running steps and abruptly disappeared into the pillar. I thought I could see a dim glow of light where he had entered it. Then I was alone in this wonderland, dumbstruck and left to fend for myself. I had no time to ponder whether or not my mission (and by extension Bill's) had failed and what I should have done next. Still gazing at the pillar, it dawned on me that it was expanding or drawing nearer to me, or maybe both. It really was rotating around its axis, I noted, and another realization forced its way into my consciousness right on the heels of this discovery. The "pillar" was no solid object, but a vortex of air. It was a tornado. Every thought and consideration bar avoiding certain destruction drained from my mind. I started the engine and turned the car around as fast as I could and dared, and the second its nose was pointed in the direction we had come from, back towards the bridge, the causeway and the sunny fields, I thrust the gas pedal to the floor. The engine roared and the wheels were slipping on the glass. The vehicle skidded left and right before steadying on a course roughly forward, finally beginning to gather speed. But my time was up. The vortex already filled the rear view mirror, and as I was trying to find the road again, I felt a powerful kick. A great force took hold of the car, pushed and shook it violently, and then there followed a sickening sensation of falling. My last proper recollection is of my hands gripping the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles have turned white. I can see nothing through the windows except for the white of a thick cloud, and the car is lurching and swinging every which way. Its wheels are no longer touching the ground. I am curiously detached, positive that I will die any second now and that there is nothing I can do about it, but in passing also thankful that I was allowed to witness such marvels. Then my vision fades.