//------------------------------// // 9. The Poky Little Puppy // Story: Cross The Amazon // by Chatoyance //------------------------------// ══════════════════════ T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U : ══════════════════════ CROSS THE AMAZON By Chatoyance Chapter Nine: The Poky Little Puppy "Make certain all the windows are rolled up!" The view ahead was dirt, rocks, the pebbley Macadam road, dessicated tree stumps and a gargantuan wall made of clouds of soil and sand blowing on terrible winds. The new jitney whined and bumped and rattled as Calloway put the pedal to the metal. What was ahead was awful, what was behind was deadly - they had to make as much distance as they could before something terrible happened, like the jitney choking and failing altogether. And Calloway was expecting just that. "Is every window closed? Even that dome thing on top?" Dropspindle stumbled to the middle of the vehicle from where she had been checking the windows in the back. The 'dome thing', a transparent neoplastic bubble more for show than utility was locked shut. "Everything's closed!" "I hope so, because we are minutes from entering. Get to your seat and hold on. We'll lose a lot of visibility and I may have to slow down fast, okay?" Dropspindle made her way to the front of the jitney and slid into the already-connected seat belts. They just hadn't been designed for a pony, not even one trying painfully to sit upright like a human. She entangled her forehooves around her shoulder-strap as best as she could. "I'm set." The brown wall no longer looked solid, but was clearly made of dust and air now. Oddly, it was less frightening close up than it had been from kilometers away. It just seemed like a wall of tan-colored fog now. "Hang on tight, and be brave." Calloway gripped the steering wheel tighter and began to slow down in preparation. It would not be safe at all to be going flat out once they entered. By the time he had dropped to 40 kph, the dark cloud enveloped them. The world instantly vanished. The jitney began to shudder and rattle. "Shit!" Calloway began carefully braking, slowing the jitney down more and more. 30, 20, 10 - he still couldn't see the road. The jitney came to a stop. "We stopped! Is something wrong?" Dropspindle couldn't quite see over the dash unless she stretched. "Yeah. I can't see the road. I can't see anything at all!" The jitney rocked to and fro, as if giant hands were trying to flip it over. The wind screamed and howled like a cruel and ravenous beast. They could hear grit sandblasting every surface around them. The transparent bubble on the top produced a hollow scraping sound that never abated. "God damn... I literally cannot see anything, not even out the side. Nothing. It's just... gone." From inside, the storm was more red than brown. Outside every window of the shaking vehicle was a solid, dark, reddish-brown nothing rushing past very, very fast. Calloway tried turning on the headlights. Short beams ended in ocher oblivion. If anything, it reduced visibility even more. He switched the lights off. "How far did we get?" Dropspindle squinted as she looked out her side window. A river of dust, of dirt and particles ran by, but of the ground, of the world, nothing at all could be seen. There was only the dust storm. It was as if they were suspended in the middle of an infinity of dirty clouds. Calloway checked the dash. "Twenty... eight kilometers. I think. About ten shy of the goal. We gained another day and a half, so... four and a half days until the Barrier hits us? If we could make it to the station - that's what 'estación' means, right?" Dropspindle nodded. Her Spanish was still mostly intact, but she could feel it draining away. "If we could make the station - whatever it is - then we'd gain another half a day. Give us five solid days from Zero Point." Dropspindle blinked. "'Zero Point', the moment before Equestria Includes the last of the earth?" "It's Zero Point for us, so... it's Zero Point." "What do we do now then?" Dropspindle stared at the howling rush of sand and dirt and little bits of stuff that went by too quickly to identify. Calloway drummed his fingers on the wheel. "We need to see the road. If I run us off, we could end up in the ditch, or broken down on some stump or rock or something. I've got an idea... but it's not going to be fun. I don't see an alternative." He unbuckled and twisted in his seat. He lifted up a leg, reached down, and began taking his shoe off. Then he pulled his sock off. "Do we have any cable, or straps, or... a length of string , I don't know, ribbon? Do we have anything to tie anything with?" Dropspindle slipped through her belt and made her way into the jitney. "I don't think so, but..." She dug around in the supplies they had stored. "Wait! There's a sort of plasticky-strappy thing around the case of water. Would that do?" Calloway was up and back with her. "Yeah... maybe. And the transparent wrap around the whole thing... yeah, yes, this'll work I think." He took out the nice pocket knife he had scavenged from the hamburger mansion in Santa Maria de Nieva and began cutting the neoplastic binding strap and the transparent protective sheeting too. "What are you making?" Dropspindle watched curiously as Calloway laid his sock down and made tiny slits in the fabric. "Actually - your specialty is fabric and stuff, right?" "Yes! I have twin degrees in Textile Arts and Fiber Studies! That's why I was permitted to..." "Can you attach this length of strap to the sides of this sock? Like making a little sack? Do it so the ends can be adjusted - tied, whatever. Make it so that it's a bag with adjustable straps!" Calloway turned to the transparent sheet. "I... I think I can do that. I don't know this... plastic substance, but the sock seems to be woven of fibers and..." "Just do it! Quickly!" The jitney was juddering and the hum of the engine sounded different somehow. Dropspindle levitated the sock and the lengths of binding strap and began work. Her horn glowed brightly in the dim light as she used a variant of Ausokinesis to interweave the straps with the sock fabric, and to fix the slits that Calloway had cut during his misguided efforts. Dropspindle strongly disliked fabrics being mistreated. Calloway finished carefully slicing out two long, wide strips of the flexible transparent case wrapping. "This'll work. It's gonna work." He pocketed the knife. "Okay, back to the seats... if you're done. Are you done?" "Just... a moment... please." The glow surrounding the sock and straps flashed and flickered. The fibers of the sock seemed to grow through the plastic of the straps. "There. I left the ends as they were, they can be tied together, but I don't understand what this is..." "Seats!" Calloway was already halfway to the wheel. Dropspindle followed. She slid into her belts, the sock levitating to her side. "Okay. Put the sock over your mouth and nose. Here, turn, and I'll tie it on your head. Like a mask." "I beg your pardon!" The sock had been on Calloway's foot all day. It has been on his foot the day before. And the day before that. It may have been the same sock he was wearing when she had found him in Huancabamba. It most likely was the same sock. And it had been very, very hot since the beginning and of all the places that humans stank, feet were without question one of the worst. "I am not putting THAT over my muzzle! You have got to be..." "DO IT! Its to filter the dust! We're going to have to open the door, your door, and you're going to have to lean out into that shit!" "What?" Things seemed to be going from stinky to worse. "I can't see the road. It's gone. But we have to drive anyway. This stuff is thick, but it can't be completely opaque - I need you to lean out and see the edge of the road. You can tell me to steer left or right, keep us on it. Keep us from running off it. But we need to protect your lungs - you don't want to be breathing that crap out there - and your eyes! That's what these are for!" He held up the transparent strips of wrapper. "Bandanna goggles! Sort of!" "You don't understand - my nose, pony noses, are very, very sensitive, and you, well, you... well..." "I stink like hell! I'm very aware of that fact, thank you. Now put the damn sock on!" Calloway had picked up the sock-and-straps from where Dropspindle had let it fall. He thrust the mass towards her. "You REALLY don't understand!" Dropspindle was shouting now, and she was nearly in a panic. This monkey had no concept of the Equestrian sense of smell. For all intents, humans had no capacity for scents at all. They were smell-blind, the entire species. She had been informed that their ability to sense odors was at least twenty-thousand times less than that of an Equestrian. Calloway had not even the slightest concept of what he was asking her to endure. "Fine." Calloway sat back in his seat and folded his arms. "You have until the engine chokes and dies to change your mind. After that, it won't matter anymore. It's been nice knowing you, if you can stay alive for four more days, say hello to Equestria for me." The man's face became granite, he stared straight ahead. As if to push the point, the engine briefly sputtered. Dropspindle stomped a hoof on the seat. She looked out at the russet maelstrom. She stomped again. "Help me put that pionono thing on!" Calloway fitted the sock over the mare's muzzle and tied it around the back of her head. Dropspindle gagged several times and struggled not to throw up inside the little sack. Next, the strip of transparent covering was wrapped around her eyes and head, the ends tied like a bandana over the ties for the sock. The neoplastic felt constricting to Dropspindle and irritated her lashes. The sock was beyond horrific, it was a face full of humageddon. It was a scentastrophe, an odorpocalypse of vomirific proportions. It was pretty bad, and never in her entire life had her nose been so savagely abused. "I'm reaaaaa....ULP!" She just barely kept her stomach contents. "Reeeaaaad.....ulgh.." "Brave heart, Tegan." Calloway reached past her and put his hand on the door handle. "Mfwhat?" "Really old show I liked. Pre-Collapse. Never mind." He opened the the passenger side door. "Lean out, tell me if you can see the road." A bandanna went around his own face as he lifted himself back into driving position. The jitney began to cloud with dust. Dirt began to cover every surface surprisingly rapidly. Calloway wrapped the remaining strip of transparent neoplastic around his own eyes and tied it behind his head. His face looked squished and packaged, like vat-grown meat in a Twoper market. "Can you see the road?" "Mffbarely! Mfgotta lean down more!" Dropspindle was half hanging from her shoulder belt and half supported with a leg on a ledge within the door. "Pffokay! I can make out the edge of the mffroad!" Calloway pressed the pedal down slightly. The jitney began to move forward very, very slowly, about a single kilometer an hour. He was literally driving blind, he could see nothing at all beyond the windows. "MFFLEFT!" Dropspindle shouted out, her head held low, the raging dirt blowing through her mane, caking her formerly shiny coat. "MFLEFT! YOU'RE GOING MFFOFF THE ROAD!" Calloway adjusted the wheel. "PFFRIGHT! RIGHT! I'M LOSING THE MFFEDGE!" The wheel turned again, very slightly. ""FFOKAY! GOOD, good... good, now pffleft! LEFT! GO LEFT!" After some long time of this, both human and pony became more confident, and Calloway was able to bring the speed almost up to three Kays per hour. Occasionally Dropspindle would lose sight of the edge, and they would drop to a single kilometer an hour while they worked to try to find it again. Several times Calloway had to open his own door a crack to make sure they weren't near the opposite side of the road. Twice, they had to stop entirely because the storm of dirt became so thick and fierce that even leaning low was insufficient to perceive the road. Eventually the air became amazingly calm - and opaque - and Dropspindle hopped out of the jitney entirely, and walked beside the vehicle pressing into the doorframe while Calloway kept the velocity well below crawling speed. The lights actually helped then, illuminating the ground just enough for Dropspindle to see it in the murk. The world was a silent tomb of dim, fuscous chocolate. For hours this went on, until finally, after choking and gasping for slow, difficult, mile after mile the engine simply died. Dropspindle climbed back into the jitney, and pulled the door shut with her hornfield. Everything was brown. The dashboard was layered with silt, the floor of the car was solid dirt. Calloway looked like a sculpture in dust. She tried to shake the soil from her coat, but it was caked in and heavy on her back. Even despite the sock over her nose - which had stopped smelling of anything hours ago - her nostrils and mouth was caked in incredibly finely powdered mud. Her throat was sore from coughing. She felt sure that without the sock, she would be dead by now. "Wah we do?" Dropspindle gummed clay and dirt. It was difficult to form words. Calloway sat, head low. "Intake's fucked." He coughed for a while. "Wah now?" The dirt was between her teeth, it was in her throat. "I go unfuckit." Calloway unbuckled and clambered out of his seat as he opened the door. He coughed for a long time outside, and blew brown snot from his nose onto the ground. The air was utterly still and thick, like fog, only the color of soil. He slowly made his way around the jitney like a blind man learning what an elephant was. Dropspindle waited. Occasionally, her sensitive pony ears made out a sound to reassure her that Calloway was still alive, and still near. A great fear for both of them was stepping more than a meter from the jitney and becoming lost forever in the empty horror. They had made a rule to never stop directly touching the van. Sound was damped down even centimeters from the vehicle. More than a meter, and there would literally be no way to detect where it was, not by sight, and not by sound. Maybe the horn would penetrate the gloom. Maybe. It was not an experiment either wanted to have to try to confirm. Eventually, after an eternity of straining her dirt-packed ears, Calloway came back inside. He tried to shut the door several times, but the dust blocked the mechanism. In the end, he just left the door hang slightly open. "Cross your... whatevers." He pressed the starter button. The engine clunked and a whining noise dimly sounded. He pressed the button again, and pumped the pedal slightly. Again the engine made strange noises but failed to start. "Dammit." His voice was weak. "FffI have... an pftidea." Dropspindle spat mud into the end of her sock. "Fie have an idea." "What?" Calloway was beyond dejected. "Take me to the... whatever it is. I can send my hornpffield - hornfield. I can send my hornfield into it and find where it's clogged. I can unclog it." "You... you can do that?" Dropspindle nodded, dirt falling from her head as she did so. "Yeff. Pfft. Pft. Yes. Ptui. Yes I can. I'm sure I can." Calloway nodded. The worst thing that trying would do would be to waste time, and they were doing that anyway. Once again, they were moving. Dropspindle called out 'left' and 'right' between coughing, and tilting her stiff, caked muzzle-sock to let the spit-mud dribble out. Calloway inched the jitney forward, keeping an eye on both the fuel and electrical power. Both were running out. The endless sepia realm never changed, no wind moved, no sound could be heard besides the jitney and each other. It was like they were in some limbo of filth, some elemental plane of dirt, where all that existed was themselves, the macadam road, and thick dust suspended in the air. They often felt hypnotized by it, as they crept their snail's pace. Several times, Calloway had pondered whether they had died and gone to some strange hell. He felt certain that if it were true, he would not be the least bit surprised. The jitney poked along, mushing through the thick dirt that gradually had covered the macadam. The only way Dropspindle could tell the edge of the road any longer was that there was a ridge, a slight line, where the dust followed the contours of the road. The road was slightly thicker than the ground, and so the dust was slightly raised. It was just enough, in the headlight beam, to tell where the macadam, below, ended. It was difficult, though, so they were forced to travel even more slowly than before. "Wait!" "What?" Calloway stepped on the brake. "I think... I think the road splits off, I can't tell exactly." She hacked and coughed for a while and spat while she tilted her sock out of the way. "The map, what does the map say?" Dropspindle did her best to scrape out her sock with her hornfield. "I haven't a clue! Pfft... ptui - I don't even know how far we've traveled. How far?" Calloway checked the dash. "This should be it. Close enough, anyway. We've come ten Kays." He looked again. "Jesus, we've come ten kays. We actually made ten kilometers doing this. God damn." "I can't see anything. The road... the dust... I think it splits, but I'm not sure. What do you want to do?" "God... ahhh... can you tell if one way is wider, or bigger or thicker... more traveled, anything like that?" Dropspindle looked at the rolls in the dust illuminated by the headlights. It was very dark now. It was almost certainly night, the dim red glow had entirely vanished over the hours, leaving them in utter darkness and flecks of dust in the headlights. It was like snow at midnight, save for the stifling heat. "Maybe... maybe keep going straight for awhile. Maybe." Calloway thought for a moment. A side road could lead anywhere. Off into the endless desert of the former jungle, away from any hope of buildings, supplies or survival. A wrong choice here could mean life or death. It was such a strange thing. Keep going straight, or follow what seemed to be a possible turn off. The turn off might lead directly to the station, or it might lead them away. There was no way to make a rational decision. "Any Equestrian magic for something like this?" "I thought we were past that." "I'm desperate." Dropspindle stared at the foreknee-high dust her legs were sunk into. "No. I mean, yes, sure! I just don't know it. There's all kinds of fancy location magic. I never had any reason to learn any." "Worth a try." "So... what do we do?" Calloway rested his head on the dirty wheel. Dirt and dust fell from the top of his head, from where it was caked in his hair. "We go straight." "Why? Any reason?" Calloway turned his tan, solidly dusted face to the mare. "You suggested it first. You said maybe. Go straight maybe." He grinned under his bandanna, Dropspindle could see the edges of his face shed dust as the corners turned up. "Unicorns are magic. I've always believed that, even as a child, even before you came. Your maybe is better than my 'I don't know'." "Thank you... I guess?"