Solitude
The monsters hit the RV in the middle of the desert—three hairy beasts, howling, drooling, snarling. Their bodies were bloated with an overabundance of muscles and fangs; their skin bristled with shocks of black fur that would have made a porcupine seem cuddly. As they tore at the metal side of the vehicle, their claws made an awful fingers-on-chalkboard screech. The walls of the big RV didn’t offer much more protection to the people inside than the perceived weak spot of the spiderweb-cracked windshield.
The overlapping chorus of screams was such a loud racket that I couldn’t tell how many victims were inside, but if I had to guess—judging from the make and model of the recreational vehicle—it was probably Mom, Dad, a boy, a girl, and maybe even an obnoxious yap-yap dog. I doubt this was the family vacation they had expected to have.
Yeah, another example of the American Dream falling short. Been there.
The recreational vehicle was one of those big palatial monstrosities, the kind retired people call a “camper,” but is basically a spa on wheels. It was decked out for state parks and fishing trips, not boulders, washouts, and other typical desert undercarriage-killers. This one looked new, with a good paint job, although smeared with the reddish dust from the canyonlands.
I don’t know how the hell they had gotten the RV all the way out here in the deep desert. In this part of southern Utah, a person should know where he’s going. The scenery is bleak but spectacular; the sky is wide and clear and blue, as if washed clean, except for crisscrossing vapor trails of jets going to and from the Air Force bases. The “roads” are faint dotted lines on the map, and in actually they’re little more than ruts and suggestions across the landscape. It’s not a place for blundering amateurs.
As I rolled up on my ATV, in which I don’t feel any obligation to follow roads—dotted lines, or otherwise—I could see the lopsided way the vehicle sat on the rutted desert road. A flat tire, probably a broken axle or universal joint, too.
This was by no means an off-road vehicle; it didn’t have the suspension or clearance to go on roads like this. What was the idiot thinking, driving all the way out here? The only unpaved road that sort of vehicle was rated for is the gravel parking lot of a Good Sam Campground.
Sometimes you have to wonder what people are thinking. Definitely contenders for the Darwin Awards, if anybody still keeps track of those.
In a national park like Arches or Zion, you expect lowest-common-denominator tourist yahoos who don’t know what they’re doing, but here in isolated Bureau of Land Management territory, you almost never see anyone else—and that’s the way I like it.
I love the desert, and I feel I belong out here. The tough and unforgiving environment makes a person strong and self-sufficient, gives you the time and silence to figure out things, or just to have a little bit of peace. The desert rewards those who understand it and punishes those who don’t.
The three monsters—werewolf types, if I had to put a label on them—rocked the RV back and forth, which only increased the terrified screams from inside. I heard a gunshot, and a bullet hole punched through the side door of the vehicle, then another shot blew out the passenger-side window.
At least somebody inside had the good sense to carry a firearm with them; unfortunately, the shooter didn’t have any skill. Both bullets missed. Bad luck.
With the passenger window shattered, I could hear the screams even louder. The three monsters let out a victorious howl. With the passenger-door window shot out, which was clearly a stupid tactical move from the people inside, the werewolves could get a good grip. They tore the door right off its hinges. The racket was deafening.
If I wanted this much noise in my daily life, I could have stayed in Afghanistan.
After coming back from over there, I couldn’t leave my nightmares behind, but I could leave everything else. I threw in the towel, turned my back on civilization, and came out into the isolated Utah desert, where I hoped to find a little solitude. There’s a lot of emptiness in these hundreds of square miles of BLM lands. Once every few months, I’ll make the long trip into Mexican Hat to load up with supplies, and then I head back out. That’s all the contact with people I need or want. I have no TV, no radio—no interest and no cares.
Now it looked like I was going to have to head even deeper into the desert. Why is it so difficult just to be left alone?
My ATV engine is loud enough, especially in the desert silence, but the three werewolves were so intent on their victims, they wouldn’t have heard a full brass band. I roared up to the stranded vehicle, grabbed my weapons from the back—and combat training kicked in.
The monsters were like a comedy routine as they all tried to pile in through the open door at the same time. The victims were trapped inside like fish in a barrel. I heard the tearing of skin and muscles, the sucking and cracking of limbs being torn from torsos, screams of terror taking on a different note of despair and agony.
The third monster lagged behind his buddies, and I killed him as he was trying to climb inside the vehicle to share in the Winnebago banquet. I kicked the carcass aside.
Sensing something wrong, the second werewolf smashed out the whole spiderwebbed mess of the windshield, popping it onto the hood. He sprang out onto the RV’s hood and glared at me with blazing yellow eyes, curling his black lips back to show off his fangs—which might have impressed a dentist or a taxidermist, but I didn’t care. His muzzle was splattered with blood; torn ribbons of flesh and muscle dangled from his mouth. He flexed long, curved claws and coiled his muscles as if he was auditioning for a “don’t let this happen to you” steroid-abuse commercial. He let out a roar and sprang at me.
The monster might have been big and ferocious, but I’m not a soft pink family from the suburbs. I’m used to defending myself. I know how to fight, and I know how to kill. I’ve done it often enough. Sometimes in Afghanistan they were faceless enemies; sometimes they wore terrified expressions. Sometimes they pleaded with me in a language I did not understand; sometimes they spat their hatred at me in the same language. Even without understanding the exact words, you get a feel for what they meant. Regardless, all those enemies ended up dead in the end.
Just like the second werewolf did. Adrenaline, training, and instinct can work wonders.
I tossed his carcass next to his companion’s, then climbed through the gap in the side of the RV where the passenger door had been.
The vehicle’s interior was a bloodbath, limbs strewn about like discarded chicken bones on all-you-can-eat wings night back at the mess hall. At a quick glance, I could see enough body parts to make up a little boy and a little girl, lying about like the pieces from a Mr. Potato Head. There was even a mass of bloody fur—yes indeed, the family yap-yap dog. Do I know how to call it, or what?
I heard a loud crunch and saw the third werewolf bite down on the head of a woman—Mom, I supposed. He crushed the skull as if it were the shell of a hard-boiled egg, then slurped out the brains. I thought zombies were the ones with a fondness for brains, but judging from the bloody mess and the mangled corpses, werewolves were not picky eaters.
He looked up, startled to see me there, with blood and gray matter oozing from his fang-filled mouth. His black fur bristled, his hackles rose; he challenged me as if I might be competition, someone intent on stealing his fresh kill. But I wasn’t interested in his meal, and I wasn’t his competition in the natural order of things. I was a threat, nevertheless.
After all my time out here in the desert, I’ve come to think of this as my territory, and I don’t like anyone intruding on my territory, whether it’s unprepared families in large RVs or big hairy monsters.
I killed the third werewolf and was done with it.
I drank in the sudden blessed silence for a few seconds before tiny background noises intruded: blood dripping from where it had spattered on the walls, the hum and low drone of voices and static from a poorly tuned radio station … then the whimpering groan of one of the victims, not quite dead. The father.
I saw that his forearm had been torn off, noticed a detached hand lying on the floor, still gripping a pistol. The weapon hadn’t done him much good. Dear old Dad was twitching and mangled, half-dead from blood loss and fear.
On the radio, an announcer whose voice had an edge of urgency spoke with breathy words beyond the usual gravitas of a “trusted news anchor.”
I frowned. Ever since I isolated myself in the desert, I haven’t exactly kept up on current events. The world was a cesspool before I left, and it didn’t sound as if it had gotten any better. Good riddance.
The dying father looked up at me, his mouth open and trailing blood. His eyes were glazed. As I leaned over him, he obviously didn’t know where he was. His face buckled in terror, and he lifted his arm to fend me off—but he didn’t have much of an arm left, and the stump wasn’t much of a threat. He gurgled and coughed. Dying people aren’t much for conversation.
The radio continued to talk about an invasion of vampires, werewolves, strange hybrids from dusty old folklore books, but it was all nonsense to me. I switched off the radio so the pure, beautiful desert silence could return. Why ruin it with talk radio?
The father died as I leaned over him, which was a relief for both of us. I didn’t want the responsibility, and he didn’t want the pain.
I climbed back out of the blood-soaked RV under the blue Utah sky. No wonder people came out here for vacation. I could just stare at the surrealistic landscape of red rocks for hours. Despite the similarities of rugged terrain, this did not look at all like Afghanistan, nor did it feel like that place.
Upon closer inspection, I saw that the RV did indeed have a broken axle as well as a flat tire. The driver must have been hauling ass, pursued by the hounds of Hell (which wasn’t far from the truth, I guess). A driver has to exercise care and caution on rugged roads like this. I suppose they had learned their lesson.
Looking at what was left of the dead family, as well as the carcasses of the three werewolves, I pondered driving all the way to Mexican Hat to report what had happened. I didn’t own a sat-phone or CB or any other way to make contact—on purpose. In the end, I decided it was none of my business.
I was pleased to discover that the RV had plenty of supplies, canned and dried food, containers of water, even toiletries. The suburban family had packed up and rushed out to the wilderness to get away from the horrors and complexities of the world. Right idea, lousy execution. Amateur survivalists!
But the RV wasn’t going anywhere, and somebody may as well make use of their stuff. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? I loaded up my ATV with all their supplies, even unwrapped the dad’s dead fingers from the handgun to add it to my own arsenal.
When I had secured the packages, I spun the ATV around and rolled off. I glanced over my shoulder at the wrecked RV, the mangled bodies strewn about. I considered giving them a decent burial or a funeral pyre, or … hell if I know. The Taliban liked to leave dead bodies around as a warning for others to see. Since this was far enough from my camp, I decided to let the desert take care of it. The circle of life and all that. La, la, la.
Even the engine of the ATV grated on my nerves as I rolled off. This wasn’t at all how I’d expected my day to go. It was going to be a long time before I could feel the silence settle inside me again.
On a clear black night without a moon, the stars shine down like a billion bright eyes—and it’s creepy to think about all those things watching you.
Heightened sensitivity, paranoia, PTSD—the military has developed plenty of handy labels, but not many cures. They like to package their cases up in neat categories and write prescriptions for the drug of the month, pat you on the back, assign you a counselor, and applaud themselves for the great job they did.
After Afghanistan, I found my own cure. Solitude works better than any number of pills, no matter what color they are. People, in fact, are the problem—with their noise, hatred, emotions, jealousies, ambitions, vendettas. For me, the best way for a full body-and-mind cleanse was to turn my back on the world, let the VA seal my file, mark it “Case Closed,” and worry about other things.
I know the feel of raw wounds, torn flesh. I’ve seen IEDs up close and personal, watched a buddy get blown apart by a rocket-propelled grenade right when he was in the middle of telling a joke, and I never did figure out the punchline.
I even saw the flash of white teeth in a suicide bomber’s last ecstatic smile before he detonated his vest and headed off to his version of Heaven, some assembly required. And I remember those pearly whites flying at me like projectiles along with gobbets of flesh and blood. It wasn’t bullets that injured me, but the sharp and jagged teeth of a terrorist.
But the Army decided the injuries still counted, so I earned my Purple Heart.
I didn’t just get wounded in Afghanistan; I was changed there. That place, that war, changes everybody, one way or another. I don’t think I’ll ever get back to the way I was, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
I have my place out here in the desert, a shack made of corrugated metal reinforced with wooden walls, set into a natural alcove at the base of a canyon wall. My own private little lair. A long time ago, some uranium prospector or Navajo shepherd had abandoned it, and I fixed it up. I’ve got my sleeping bag, a cot frame, some clothes, plenty of supplies (thanks to the fortunate encounter with the RV today), a folding chair, and my fire pit. That’s all I need.
And solitude.
The dark night smells clean, and the desert has few enough insects to make a bothersome noise. The burning mesquite logs send up tiny sparks like tracer fire, but that crackle is the right kind of sound, and it only adds to the silence. I can spend hours here alone, hands folded, thinking hard and not remembering.
After a while, you get attuned to the desert; you can sense things. I perked up, sniffed the air. I heard movement, something furtively pacing in the darkness beyond the ring of firelight. I heard a skitter of pebbles, claws moving on the ground, then a snuffle.
I levered myself out of the folding chair, which creaked. I stood, shoulders squared, hands loose, ready to flex. I inhaled deeply and let all of my senses broaden. I could sense beasts in the shadows out there, like Taliban. They were circling, probing, exploring … but this was my territory. They could sense that.
They probably knew what I had done to the three werewolves in the RV. They were assessing me, and I stood facing the darkness without a flicker of fear—not provoking them, but letting them know that it wasn’t in their best interest to come closer. I put my hands on my hips, refusing to budge. I stood by my fire and saw muscular, bestial shadows moving out there. I waited, defiant.
Eventually, the beasts went away.
The dawn stillness in the desert is crisp, clear, and with a biting chill. It’s like glass, so intense and transparent that it magnifies the surrounding world. And like glass, it can all too easily shatter.
I woke from a deep sleep that might have been classified as a coma. I had eaten well, rested well, and enjoyed the warmth of my sleeping bag and my extra blanket in my alcove. I boiled water for the morning coffee, rummaged in the supplies I had taken from the RV, and found packets of something called “cinnamon dolce latte mix”—what the hell was that? Amateur survivalists, indeed! It was sweet and not at all like anything I would have called “coffee,” but I had learned how to adapt.
I moved about my camp, hoping for a quiet day. I thought I might explore the canyons before the day got too hot, or maybe I’d just stay here and watch the world, look at the red rocks, admire the endless kaleidoscope of sunlight and shadow on the formations. I didn’t even need to move to get a good show.
Swallows were nesting high up on the slickrock cliff, and I could hear desert mice pattering around in the rock field. Most of all, the stillness had its healing effect on me, and I just drank it in. I was feeling calm and settled enough that I even endured a second packet of that powdered cinnamon dolce latte.
I saw the tiny human figure, a backpacker, making his way across the desert, stumbling through the bed of the wash and heading up into the deeper canyon, straight for my camp. He lurched along, clearly exhausted and in a hurry, but the enormous load on his back made him ungainly.
There used to be a certain camaraderie among hikers and backpackers. Out on the trail for long periods, you rarely saw anyone, but when you did cross paths with another hiker, you were expected to say a polite hello, share information about trail conditions, maybe exchange supplies if you needed anything. It was a brief and tolerable interaction.
This man, though, came directly to my camp. I could hear his breathing from a long distance away, hear the stutter-stumble of his footsteps. A shame. The day had started out so quiet, so pristine. This intrusion was as grating as a dentist’s drill.
I waited for him, wary but resigned, not knowing what to expect but convinced that I didn’t want his company, didn’t want what he was selling. I was not interested in a “backcountry buddy.”
As he came close, I could see he was bearded, dust-streaked, gaunt, as if he’d been living on the run and in constant fear for a very long time. I’d seen that look on the faces of some comrades back in Afghanistan, especially the ones who had served three or four tours.
Some say that when you get that haunted, you’ll never recover. I disagree. Solitude can even a person out. Uninterrupted solitude.
He was bedraggled, sweating, ready to drop as he staggered to my camp. “Thank God!” he said. “I saw your fire last night and I marked where you were, but … I don’t travel at night. I found a safe spot, barricaded myself, and just hunkered down to wait. Did you hear the howling?”
I just looked at him, cold and silent, then finally answered, “I heard.”
“As soon as the sun came up, and it was safe, I made a beeline here. I hoped you wouldn’t leave your camp.”
“This isn’t just a camp, this is my home,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The backpacker looked around, studied my shack, my supplies, my chair. “So … you’re safe here? It’s secure? They leave you alone?”
“Nothing bothers me out here—until recently.” I only have one chair and I sat in it. To make a point.
As if I’d invited him to join me, he unclipped the front straps, groaned, and swung around as he dropped the bulky frame off his shoulders. The backpacker didn’t seem to understand subtleties.
“I see you had the same idea,” he said. “It’s sheer hell out there, and I decided the only way to survive that holocaust was to head out into the middle of nowhere. Be self-sufficient. It’s monster against monster back in the real world, a menagerie of vampires—civilized ones and barbarian ones, all at each other’s throats … and at our throats! We’re just fodder to them—some of them at least.” He shook his head, and, seeing no other chair and receiving no invitation from me, he hunkered down on his pack.
“I try to stay away from all that mess,” I said.
“Me, too! Hole up out here in the deep desert, someplace where no one will find you, and let all those things sort it out back in the cities. Then we can come back when it’s settled down.”
“I’m not going back,” I said. “I’m here for the peace and quiet.”
He unzipped one of the front pouches of his pack, pulled out a sealed envelope of jerky. “I’ve got supplies. We can share. But it’s not safe—some of those monsters have come out here, too. You and me, though … safety in numbers, right? The two of us could stick together, join forces. I’ll watch your back, you watch mine.”
I cut him off. “No thanks.”
He looked crestfallen, then grew more desperate. “You’re dead meat out here if they come. And I can make myself useful. Honest! Let’s just try it for a week or so.” He extended a grimy hand, pleading. “By the way, my name is—”
“I don’t want to know your name. I don’t want to know you. I don’t want you here.” I could feel my blood boiling, my hackles rising. I hate it when someone provokes me to anger. “You don’t understand solitude,” I said. The words sounded rough, like a growl.
The backpacker was slow to realize what was happening, and only in the last instant did he have fear in his eyes.
I dragged his body far from my camp. No need to have the smell of blood and death near where I live.
It took me half the morning to dig a grave deep enough in the rocky, sandy soil so that I wasn’t worried about scavengers. I didn’t mark the grave—what would be the point?
After all that, I was jittery and stressed. I had an edge to my mood. I don’t like being disturbed; I don’t like having my solitude shattered; I don’t like all this nonsense. I went back to my camp, stretched out on my cot, closed my eyes, and just breathed, listening to the air, feeling the silence.
Far overhead I heard the roar of fighter jets, saw the vapor trails of dark aircraft racing across the sky … chasing after some other war. But it wasn’t my war. I’ve already done that, and I left it behind.
I worked hard to calm myself, opening my hands, flexing fingers, making the claws retract. I felt as if I could just wring the silence out of the air, but it eluded me. No matter how long I stay here in the empty desert, it’s hard to control the beast inside me, the one that’s been there since Afghanistan.
At first, I tried to crush it, kill it … but that wasn’t going to happen. Now I revel in the wide-open emptiness, the beautiful red rocks, the deep canyons with guillotine shadows, the painted terrain and the hardy plants and animals that know how to survive in a world that doesn’t make it easy for them.
I like to let the beast out sometimes, but on my own terms, when I can be free to lope for miles, run across the desert and hunt whatever I like, stop and sleep in whatever lair I choose.
In the distance, even during the daylight, I could hear a bestial howl, a call of some other monster. It sounds … lonely. I hope it doesn’t track me down. Kindred beasts or not, I wish they’d just leave me alone.