Help Me Blow

"Freedom in Clivilius is measured in three-quarters of a tank and a horizon you can actually chase—at least until the dust reminds you who's really in charge here."

Kain manoeuvred the ute with confidence, threading it carefully through the Drop Zone. The two small rock piles that flanked the entrance stood like ancient guardians, silent witnesses to our passage—markers that Jamie and I had placed to distinguish the Drop Zone from the endless sameness of the landscape. As we cleared them, I noticed the wheels deliberately veering away from the direction of camp, charting a course that was as unexpected as it was unannounced.

My eyebrows rose. This wasn't the way back. This was... somewhere else entirely.

Kain revved the engine, a declaration of intent as much as a necessity. The ute responded with enthusiasm, its wheels biting into the dust, sending plumes of red and orange spiralling into the air, painting the sky with the colours of adventure. The dust swirled around us, a tangible reminder of the untamed world we inhabited—that same dust that coated everything, that worked its way into our clothes and our food and our lungs. But for once, instead of feeling oppressive, it felt like freedom.

"What are you doing?"

I couldn't keep the mixture of apprehension and excitement from my voice, my grip tightening on the side of the seat as if to brace myself against the unknown. But even as I asked, I felt something loosening in my chest. Something that had been wound tight since I'd first stepped through the Portal—that constant coil of tension, of fear, of waiting for the next crisis. For the first time in days, it was easing.

"Just a short detour," Kain replied, his grin infectious, wide enough to dispel any lingering doubts.

The ute took a sharp turn, skirting the roughly marked perimeter of the Drop Zone, a clear departure from the beaten path. There was no path here. There was only dust and distance and possibility.

Laughter bubbled up between us, a shared moment of joyous rebellion against the caution that had begun to define our existence in Clivilius. It was a laughter born of complicity, of shared secrets and the thrill of the unexpected. When had I last laughed like this? Really laughed, not the polite chuckle of business meetings or the forced mirth of dinner parties with Claire's friends? I couldn't remember. Perhaps not since I was young enough to believe that laughter needed no reason.

The journey was rough. The ute churned through the dust, its passage marked by a trail of disruption in the otherwise untouched landscape. We navigated over small hills, each one a minor victory in our impromptu expedition, heading towards the imposing silhouette of the mountains in the distance. Their presence loomed large, dark grey peaks against that cloudless blue sky, a reminder of the vastness of the world beyond our immediate concerns. We had barely explored this world. Had barely ventured beyond the camp and the Drop Zone and the river. And yet here it was—endless, ancient, waiting to be discovered.

My heart raced with the exhilaration of the moment. This detour, this brief escape from the confines of our daily struggles, was a vivid reminder of the beauty and excitement that still existed in the world around us. It was a stark contrast to the often grim reality of our situation in Clivilius, a place where joy was a rare and precious commodity—rationed out in moments between crises, between miracles, between terrors. The night screams. Joel's resurrection. The grey that had spread across my arm before receding. All of it faded as the wind whipped through the open windows and the engine roared beneath us.

I found myself grinning—actually grinning, my face muscles remembering an expression they had almost forgotten. The wind tore at my hair. The sun warmed my face. The world stretched out before us in all its alien glory, and for just this moment, it was beautiful. Not terrifying. Not hostile. Just... beautiful.

"How much petrol?"

My voice pierced the roar of the engine and the rush of wind, a pressing concern as we neared the crest of another hill. The question was practical—the businessman in me surfacing even in the midst of joy—but it carried real weight. We were far from camp now. Far from any help. If we ran out of fuel here, we would be walking back through the dust, exposed and vulnerable.

The anticipation of our fuel status hung between us, a tangible reminder of our precarious adventure's limitations. Luke had said he was working on a solution for fuel. Luke said a lot of things. Some of them even came true.

"Still three-quarters," Kain shouted back, his voice steady and reassuring over the din.

The response was a beacon of hope, a promise of continued freedom, however fleeting it might be. Three-quarters of a tank. Enough to keep driving. Enough to chase the horizon a little longer.

As we reached the summit, my breath caught in my throat. The world unfolded before us in a tapestry of stark beauty, a vast expanse of reds, browns, and oranges that painted the earth in hues of fire and earth. It stretched endlessly, a wild and untamed landscape that spoke of ancient times and secrets buried deep beneath the soil. The dark grey mountains stood as silent sentinels in the distance, their peaks slicing into the clear blue sky, marking the boundary between our little corner of the world and the unknown.

For a moment, I forgot about everything.

Forgot about the terrors. Forgot about the night screams that had shattered our peace and nearly destroyed our minds. Forgot about Joel's resurrection and the horror of watching Glenda stitch his throat closed with trembling hands. Forgot about my grey-touched arm and the fear that had gripped me when the discolouration had spread. Forgot about Claire, whose face I was starting to have trouble picturing clearly. Forgot about my children—Rose with her stuffed rabbit, Mack with his stubborn silences—impossibly far away on a world I might never see again.

There was only this. The wind. The dust. The vast beauty of a world that wasn't mine but was becoming, slowly, inexplicably, something like home.

The feeling was strange. Unfamiliar. It took me a moment to identify it, so long had it been since I had experienced it without complication or qualification.

Joy. This was joy.

"Floor it!"

The excitement was irresistible, a command born of the moment's exhilaration. I wanted to chase the horizon, to defy the constraints of our reality, if only for an instant. Wanted to feel the acceleration push me back into my seat. Wanted to experience speed and power and the illusion of control.

Kain's response was immediate, his foot slamming down on the pedal with a determination that matched my own. The ute leaped forward, a beast unleashed, its engine roaring with newfound vigour. We surged ahead, leaving a billowing cloud of dust in our wake—a red-brown banner marking our passage across this alien landscape.

The thrill was short-lived.

Barely a hundred metres into our mad dash, the engine sputtered and died, the sudden silence a disappointing contrast to the moments before. The ute coasted to a stop, its momentum spent, leaving us adrift in the vastness of the landscape. The silence that followed was absolute—no engine noise, no wind rushing past, just the empty quiet of an empty world pressing in from all sides.

I turned to Kain, confusion and disbelief etching my features.

"What the hell?"

My question hung in the air, an echo of our shared dismay. One moment we had been flying, chasing the horizon, free. The next we were stopped, stranded, the magic evaporating as quickly as it had appeared.

Kain's hands worked the ignition, the engine chugging in protest as he turned the key several times. But the only answer was silence, a stubborn refusal that left us stranded, the adventure abruptly grounded. The key turned again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. The click of the ignition was the loneliest sound I had ever heard.

As we disembarked from the ute, the silence of our surroundings enveloped us, the mechanical heartbeat we had become accustomed to during our journey fading into a distant memory. The act of stepping out felt like a concession to our predicament, an acknowledgment of the unexpected pause in our adventure. My boots sank into the dust—ankle deep here, softer than near the camp—and I felt the familiar grit working its way into my socks.

We made our way to the front of the vehicle, the ground beneath our feet shifting softly with each step. The sun beat down mercilessly, and without the wind of our passage to cool us, I could feel sweat beginning to prickle along my hairline.

Kain, with a sense of purpose, lifted the bonnet, and his exclamation cut through the quiet.

"Shit!"

I peered over his shoulder, and the sight that greeted us was one of desolation. The engine, the heart of our ute, was cloaked in dust. The fine, pervasive dust clung to every surface, insidious in its infiltration. It coated the spark plugs, the air filter, every crevice and component. It had worked its way into spaces that should have been sealed, had penetrated barriers that should have been impenetrable. The engine looked like it had been abandoned for decades, left to moulder in a desert storm. The dust had claimed another victim.

Of course it had. The dust always won. The dust was patient and relentless and inevitable, and we were fools to think we could outrun it.

"How are we going to clean that?" Kain asked, his question hanging between us, a challenge to our resourcefulness in the face of adversity.

We had no compressed air. No cleaning supplies. No tools designed for this specific and absurd situation. Nothing but the clothes on our backs and the empty landscape around us. Back in Broken Hill, I would have called roadside assistance. Would have waited in air-conditioned comfort while someone with the proper equipment solved the problem. Here, there was no one to call. No equipment to summon. Just us, and the dust, and the silent engine.

Without a clear answer, I acted on impulse, leaning in and blowing hard into the cramped space. The result was immediate—a large cloud of fine dust billowed into the air, a visual echo of my efforts. It wasn't much. It wasn't sophisticated. But it was something.

"Help me blow," I called over my shoulder, a request that was both absurd and essential under the circumstances.

Even as I said it, I could hear how ridiculous it sounded. Two grown men, standing in the middle of an alien wasteland, blowing on an engine like it was a birthday cake. If Claire could see me now. If my colleagues from Broken Hill could see me now. The image was so far removed from anything they would recognise that I almost laughed.

Kain's initial reaction was one of surprise, his eyes wide as he processed the unconventional nature of our solution. He stared at me for a moment, and I could see him wrestling with the absurdity of what I was proposing. Yet, without protest, he shrugged his shoulders—a gesture of resigned acceptance—and joined me. What else were we going to do? Walk back to camp and admit defeat? Leave the ute here to be swallowed by the dust?

Together, we exhaled forcefully, our breaths merging in a shared endeavour to revive the ute. The dust rose in clouds around our faces, coating our lips, invading our nostrils, making us cough and splutter. But we kept blowing.

The work was exhausting. My lungs burned with the effort, each exhalation feeling like it was being dragged from somewhere deep in my chest. My lips cracked from the dryness, the delicate skin splitting in places where the dust had sucked away all moisture. The taste of dust coated my tongue, my throat, seemed to work its way into my very soul. I had thought I knew what dust tasted like. I had been wrong. This was a deeper, more intimate acquaintance—the kind of knowledge that came from breathing the stuff directly into your lungs for half an hour.

But there was no other option. We blew and blew, pausing only to cough and gasp for cleaner air—though "cleaner" was relative when the very atmosphere seemed saturated with particulate—then returning to our absurd task. My face ached from the effort. My diaphragm burned. My vision blurred with dust-induced tears that I wiped away with the back of my equally dusty hand.

"It's working," I observed, a note of surprise in my voice as I stepped back, gasping for fresh air.

The process was arduous. Over half an hour of almost continuous blowing, interspersed with attempts to coax the engine back to life, became a battle of wills against the elements. My face ached. My throat was raw—rawer than it had been since that terrible first night, when I had screamed myself hoarse calling for Rose in the darkness. But slowly, gradually, the engine components emerged from beneath their dusty shroud. Metal gleamed dully where before there had been only red-brown powder. Spark plugs became visible. The air filter, though still clogged, began to show signs of its original colour.

"I'll go give it another shot," Kain announced, determination lacing his words as he climbed back into the driver's seat.

I took a few steps back, watching with a mix of hope and exhaustion. My hands found my knees, my body bent forward as I tried to catch my breath. The world swam slightly at the edges—dehydration, probably, combined with the exertion. We hadn't brought water. Hadn't thought we would need it for a quick trip to the Drop Zone and back. Another lesson learned the hard way.

Please work, I thought. Please, please work. I don't think I can blow any more.

The key turned. The engine chugged. Coughed. Sputtered.

And then, miraculously, roared to life.

A large cloud of loosened dust heralded the engine's triumphant return, billowing from the exhaust pipe like a victory banner. The sound—that beautiful, mechanical coughing that became a steady hum—was the sweetest music I had heard in days. Sweeter than any song, any symphony, any carefully curated playlist from my old life. This was the sound of survival. The sound of not being stranded. The sound of going home.

Relief and triumph flooded through me, manifesting in a wide, albeit tired, grin. I gave Kain a thumbs up—a silent celebration of our victory over the odds. He grinned back through the dusty windscreen, his own relief evident even from here.

We had done it. Two men, no tools, one absurd solution. And it had worked.

Then, with a sense of finality, I closed the bonnet, the sound echoing in the quiet that surrounded us. The metal was warm under my palms, heated by the sun and the brief burst of engine activity. Climbing back into my seat, I settled in, the familiar contours offering a small comfort despite the dust that now coated every surface. The engine's steady hum was a welcome backdrop, a sign of our resilience, and a reminder of the journey that still lay ahead.

My throat felt like sandpaper. My lungs protested with every breath. But we were moving again, and that was all that mattered.

The journey back to camp was an ordeal, each metre fought for against the relentless grip of the thick dust beneath us. The ute struggled, its tyres grasping for traction in spots where the dust seemed to conspire against us, almost swallowing us whole on several occasions. The vehicle lurched and slid, the back end fishtailing wildly as Kain fought to maintain control. I found myself gripping the door handle, bracing against each lurch and slide, my knuckles white with the effort.

The joy of our earlier adventure had faded now, replaced by the grim reality of navigation. This was what Clivilius was, really. Brief moments of beauty and freedom, paid for with long stretches of struggle and survival.

"We need some roads," Kain said, his voice cutting through the tension. He glanced at me, as if seeking confirmation or perhaps a shared recognition of the problem. "We need to contain this dust!"

I scrunched my face, deep in thought. The idea of combating the omnipresent dust seemed like a battle against the very nature of this place. How did you fight something that was everywhere? Something that was, in a very real sense, the ground itself?

This dust is just not containable, I lamented internally, the realisation settling in with a weighty sense of resignation. It was everywhere. It was everything. Fighting it felt as futile as fighting the sky itself. You might as well try to contain the air, or the light, or the passage of time. The dust was simply... there. Eternal. Immutable. Victorious.

"Even if we just clear a few trails down to the hard crust beneath, should be good enough to drive on," Kain proposed, his voice carrying a hint of optimism amidst the bleakness of my thoughts.

My eyes widened at the suggestion. The hard crust. Of course. Beneath all this powder, there had to be solid ground. The dust couldn't go down forever. If we could just scrape away the top layer, clear a path to the firm earth beneath...

Why didn't I think of that?

The idea sparked a brief flare of hope, a potential solution that seemed so simple yet so effective. Not fighting the dust—working around it. Finding the solid ground beneath. It was exactly the kind of practical thinking that I should have been capable of, that I had built my career on. But here, in this world, my brain seemed to work differently. Slower. Less creatively. As if the dust had infiltrated my thoughts the same way it had infiltrated the engine.

But almost as quickly as the hope appeared, a wave of overwhelming reality crashed over me.

"There's so much to do. Where do we even start?"

The scope of our task was daunting. Tents to erect. Concrete to pour. Sheds to build. People to feed. Supplies to gather. Joel to care for—and to watch, to make sure his resurrection was permanent, to make sure he was still... Joel. The list seemed endless, and we were so few. Every task we completed revealed three more waiting behind it. Every solution we found uncovered new problems we hadn't anticipated.

"We need a bulldozer," Kain chuckled, the laugh more a release of tension than amusement.

His laughter barely registered before I found myself considering his joke with grave seriousness. A bulldozer. An actual bulldozer, with its blade and its power and its ability to move earth in quantities that would take us weeks to shift by hand. Luke had brought a ute through the Portal. Had brought bags and boxes and all manner of supplies. Why not a bulldozer?

"That's actually not a bad idea," I said, turning to him with a look of sudden inspiration.

The notion of a bulldozer, absurd as it might have sounded moments before, now seemed like a rational step towards reclaiming some semblance of control over our environment. Luke could bring a ute through the Portal. Why not something larger? Why not the exact tool we needed to solve this exact problem?

I filed the idea away for later. Something to discuss with Luke when he next appeared. If he next appeared. Luke's schedule was as unpredictable as everything else in this world.

"More people?" Kain mused, his gaze fixed on the path ahead, squinting as if the answer might be etched somewhere on the horizon.

"Huh?"

The shift in conversation caught me off guard, my mind still wrestling with the logistics of our newfound plan.

I turned back to face the front, trying to align my thoughts with the reality that awaited us. More people meant more hands to work, yes. More skills. More knowledge. More capabilities that we currently lacked. But it also meant more mouths to feed. More personalities to manage. More complications. More conflicts. More of... everything.

Was that what we needed? Or would more people simply mean more problems, more demands on resources we barely had, more strain on a community that was already struggling to cohere?

I didn't have an answer. I wasn't sure anyone did.

As Kain eased the ute into camp, the sight that greeted us was unexpected. Two unfamiliar figures stood near Glenda—a man and a woman, both watching our approach with expressions I couldn't quite read at this distance. They looked clean. Composed. Distinctly un-dust-covered, which made them stand out like beacons against the red-brown landscape.

"Shit!" The word escaped my lips before I could contain it. "I forgot about Karen!"

Luke had said he was bringing her. Luke had told me specifically to give them a warm welcome—had entrusted me with that responsibility, had made it clear that first impressions mattered. And here I was, covered in dust from head to toe, my throat raw from blowing out an engine, my hair plastered to my forehead with sweat and grit, completely unprepared to greet newcomers to our struggling settlement.

Some welcome this would be. Some first impression I would make—the dust-covered madman who couldn't even remember that guests were arriving.

But as Kain brought the ute to a stop and I prepared to face our newest arrivals, I found that I didn't entirely regret our detour. The joy of that drive—the wind, the speed, the vast beauty of the landscape—still lingered somewhere beneath the exhaustion and the embarrassment. For a few precious minutes, I had been free. I had been happy. I had felt something other than fear and confusion and the grinding weight of responsibility.

That was worth something. That was worth a lot.

Even if I did look like something the cat had dragged through the desert.