"Sand And Thunder " by Nevercry They’d stopped for a piss on the side of the road, and TJ tried to spell his name, the way he had when he’d wound up in the Sierra Nevadas and snow had been full of possibilities. But the drops impacted the ground and soaked up so much dirt that they became little pellets, sitting in the bottom of their own craters. Didn’t stop him from trying, though. TJ finished, and suddenly the air went flat. His hair stood up, and his body felt like someone had taken a run at him with sandpaper. Or possibly fiberglass insulation. And it tasted tinny, sharp, and nearly tangy, but mostly like it should taste like something. TJ frowned. What the hell? There wasn’t any wind. It had all just died. He tucked himself in and turned around, dreadlocks tugging on his scalp to steal the impetus they needed to move with him, and looked at the beaten car they’d brought all the way to the Great flat, empty Plains. Amal was standing with one foot out of the driver’s side, sole flat on the pavement, back straight and pelvis slung forward slightly, one hand on the top of the car door. He was staring west, back the way they had come. “Amal?” TJ called, hitching his pants up the right way and fitting the button in place with that easy, absentminded twist that everyone knows but no one thinks about. His traveling companion had that blank look he wore when he was mentally reassessing his priority list. He was completely motionless, dark upper lip jutting out over the lower. Completely single-minded and concentrated. Fifteen seconds passed, and the weird air was a vacuum, so silent that it was a dull roar, swallowing up TJ’s footsteps. Pebbles on the asphalt crunched as he loped back to the passenger side of the car. In a sure, steady voice, Amal said, “We are going to leave.” TJ opened his mouth, nonplussed. The yellow glasses had progressed to disconnecting whatever synapses were supposed to fire in understanding. “What? Leaving where?” There was only the one road stretching on forever, two directions to choose from, and nothing else anywhere on the horizon. Amal turned his head, and fixed that piercing brown gaze on him. The prickly feeling on TJ’s skin gave way to goosebumps. The silver strands in the dark hair were framing them just so. And the mocha skin, soft and smooth and probably the same everywhere. TJ caught himself. That deep voice left no room for thinking. “TJ. Get in the car.” So TJ pulled open the door and folded himself into the seat. Amal was already putting the car into gear, and they sped off down the highway, pedal to the floor. “What the hell?” TJ yelled, when his tongue came unstuck from the back of his pharynx. “Thunderstorm,” Amal said. “And we’re the only piece of metal in the entire world.” TJ blinked, and twisted around to look out the back window. The clouds were a grainy, photoshopped orangey-grey, like sand, and pulling together, a knot of yarn on a massive scale. “Oh,” he grunted, mildly intrigued. A white-blue flash sprayed across the underside of the clouds. And then he got the metal thing, remembered about lightning rods and the laws of conductivity. “Shit.” Amal nodded. TJ figured that a fun montage of the effects of lightning on the human nervous system was running through his head. And now that he thought that, a lot of pictures from encyclopedias and textbooks lumbered up in his yellow-tinted world. Damn. He asked, “What could we do to find cover?” Amal scowled, and TJ judged that he was genuinely worried. “How far to the next town?” “There haven’t been any signs.” He contorted himself to reach back behind the seat to the pile of pristine maps Amal had insisted on picking up at some random stop along the way. “Not for a while. Shit.” Amal’s eyes moved from the straight-shot road to the rearview mirror, fast and often. His voice was still steady and patient. “Teej?” “Yeah?” TJ said, in a big exhalation that gave him the flexibility to grab the really, really general map of the entire state. He tore it along one of the inside seams unfolding it, and then had to fold it back around and under to get it out of the driver’s way. Amal said, “I can’t even describe for you,” he took a deep, steadying breath, made sure his tone wouldn’t change, “how very, very deep my desire to avoid being electrified truly is.” TJ chuckled, because he couldn’t do anything else with that, and jabbed a finger at the highway they were on. “How long’s it been since the last water hole?” “About forty miles. But the storm’s probably already passed there, and we can’t turn back.” “Okay. Okay.” TJ wasn’t panicking. He judged by sight how long forty miles was on the legend in one corner, and applied that to where his finger was stuck, and dragged it along the black line to where they were now. “About another fifteen to Bumfuck, Nowhere.” Now Amal’s voice changed, pulled in tight. “You mean there’s nothing close?” “No. The place is called Budeville.” He pronounced it ‘Boo-dee-ville’. Amal’s lips moved, and he squinted at the horizon, willing a church spire to rise up like a sailing ship on the sea. “That can’t possibly be the name.” “Maybe they say it different,” TJ said noncommittally. “But it’ll be about ten minutes, if this thing doesn’t rattle itself to pieces first.” “Fine. We’ll make it.” Amal’s grip on the steering wheel relaxed, and the tension in his shoulders that TJ hadn’t even noticed was there disappeared. His foot stayed pressed to the floor. TJ leaned his head back and around the seat, looking at the storm upside down. It was turning redder and darker. “Y’know, it’s funny.” He paused on purpose, to hear Amal ask, “What?” “I usually really like thunderstorms. The way it echoes right here.” His knuckles rapped on his sternum through his shirt. Amal let the silence stretch for a while, until there was a real dot on the horizon that looked a lot higher than a five-foot-tall car. Then he sighed, “Me, too.” TJ grinned at him, a little lopsided. “Really? You’re sure you’re not afraid of thunder?” “I’m not. I never have been.” “’Cause you sure act like it.” “Caution and fear are separate.” Amal glanced at him, and away, and back, and then his eyes settled on the road. He admitted, “I’m not just worried about my own safety.” “Oh, no?” TJ said, but he wasn’t trying to tease him. He’d been more worried about Amal, too. “After all,” he said, and that dark, soft upper lip pulled up in a clever grin, “You’re much taller than me. If we were still walking around, the lighting would go for you first.” TJ laughed, taken by surprise, and managed to say, “Probably true.” But that was okay. Because they were nearly inside the hundred-person town (correctly pronounced Bud-a-vull) and TJ was determined to find them a place where they could watch the storm that was drawing close, making him wonder if this was what sandstorms were like. He vaguely remembered that sand generated electricity when blown together like that… Yeah. It was alright to laugh, now. end