O.C. Writers

 

“Why again did we decide against Sedona?” Phillip asked. “That’s where the refueling vortexes are after all.”

They stood on the rim of the Barringer crater, likely the most famous terrestrial impact site in the world. At just over one kilometer across and nearly two hundred meters deep, it was far from the largest, but the visible alteration that it made upon the surface of the desert landscape was quite captivating. The fact that it hit relatively recently, at least on a planetary scale, and in the midst of a rigid, barren landscape, allowed for the edges of the crater to remain crisp and well defined. It had been photographed, filmed, reproduced in miniature, and is one of the first images that comes up if one were to type “crater” into any available search engine.

“Vortices,” Cynthia corrected. “And, no they are not.”

Phillip had hoped that the crater would be the place. It had certainly fit the bill on paper, but he had been utterly unprepared for the tasteless commercialization and theme-park-styled ambiance that had been built up around it. He should have known better, having had some forays into the States prior to this one.

Still, though . . . this was just so . . .

“The Sedona Vortices are pure bollocks,” Cynthia pulled him back. “When the county had to lengthen the runway at the local airport, they moved the Airport Mesa Vortex. Can you imagine that? A celestial power source, born of the primeval elements of the cosmos, was somehow ‘relocated’ for tourist convenience.”

“Hmm,” Phillip mused.

This wasn’t at all what he had planned.

His heart had begun to sink when they parked in the visitor’s lot, next to several rows of enormous caravans and private luxury buses that so many people in the States seemed to own and use for an activity that they mistakenly referred to as camping. It still baffled him that many of the glorious and scenic wonders, dispersed throughout the staggeringly large expanse of America, had all come to the same conclusion: that it made perfect sense to bulldoze large sections of that beauty until it was level, cover it with thick layers of concrete and tarmac, and essentially obliterating the beauty that had drawn them all there in the first place.

Then, to add insult to the injury, rather than actually look at the natural wonder in front of them, the visitors briefly braved the unfiltered atmosphere of their planet for the duration of a brisk walk from their mobile living rooms to the visitor’s center. Or, as was the case here, to an airconditioned theater and 4D “collision experience” to view simulated infotainment about the monument that they had come to see. The stunningly obvious fact that the real thing, the actual crater caused by a massive impact from an object not of this world, was just outside seemed to completely escape them all.

Phillip agonized over his decision to select this destination. Many a night had been spent at opposite ends of their flat, each multiple tabs deep into the interwebs, calling off possible cities and countries to the other. In the end, though, it had been his choice that had won out. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the majestic bit of the infinite captured and frozen in time that he had imagined, but a rather shoddy tourist trap. He might as well have taken her to an amusement park. At least then, people might want to do more than watch a short film and buy overpriced knickknacks.

Well, now that wasn’t quite fair. There were a few more adventurous souls who walked the observation trails along the rim or descended into the impact basin below. True, most of them had Canadian flags stitched onto their carryalls, but not all.  

“Ready?” Cynthia asked.

“Absolutely,” Phillip replied, but stopped when they began to walk in opposite directions.

“Are we not going into the crater?” he asked.

“Can’t see any reason to,” she said and then shrugged. “Still have to make camp, after all.”

“We can be set up in less than thirty minutes,” Phillip reasoned. “Hours of light left, too. Think a nice walk—wouldn’t go so far as to call this a hike—but a nice walk would be good.”

Cynthia seemed taken aback. “We cannot stay here.”

“How’s that?” Phillip asked, confused and a bit dismayed. After a fourteen-hour flight into Phoenix, renting a car, spending a full day shopping for gear more easily purchased than transported almost halfway round the globe, and then finally driving for several hours to this exact destination, he had not envisioned a stay of less than twenty minutes.

“Do you really think that we’ll see any action here?” Cynthia gently chided in a manner that always made his ears burn. “It would be like Christ returning to a church carnival.”

Phillip considered arguing, maybe just giving it one night, instead of the week for which they had planned, but knew that she was right. This was a disaster. He had envisioned camping, alone together, at the bottom of the crater, far from the noise and clamor of people, beneath a vast blanket of stars. Here, they would be wedged betwixt fiberglass sperm whales while engulfed in an invisible cloud of country music and fried foods.

He surrendered. “What do you suggest, then?”

“Plan B, of course,” Cynthia riposted, and then smiled in a way that always made his stomach flutter.

He found the turnoff without much trouble, and could clearly see the defunct campground’s main office a short distance up the dirt road that led directly away from the interstate. It certainly hadn’t closed any time recently, based upon the state of disrepair, but neither did it appear to have been entirely abandoned. There were plenty of fresh tyre tracks in the soil, bright and clear layers of graffiti on the buildings that had yet to be dulled by the dust and winds of the open desert, as well as the discarded containers of what had to be a significant percent of all the beer purchased in both Flagstaff and Winslow. What could only be bullet holes also decorated some of the walls of the abandoned building, which gave Phillip further pause at the idea of spending the night in this particular location. As before, though, Cynthia seemed to be both inside of his head, and a step or two beyond his reservations.

“This place looks like a regular destination for drunks with firearms,” Phillip said, striving for reason in his voice, rather than cowardice. “Perhaps . . .”

“Just adds to the adventure,” she countered. “Besides, we’ll be able to see them coming, and we’ll have the high ground.”

“You underestimate their power,” Phillip gave his best Anakin impression, and Cynthia ignored it.

“If we can’t just drop some rocks on them,” she said, as if this were completely reasonable. “Then we can just run away and sneak back to the car.”

“You’ve never actually seen a horror movie, have you?”

“Loads of ’em,” she turned back to the window to look up at the cliffside appraisingly. “The difference is that I can separate fiction from reality.”

Phillip recognized the tone and knew that he had come to a crossroads. He could insist on going somewhere else, he might even be able to convince her that his line of thinking was logical, reasonable, and correct, but would still lose this argument. Wherever else they went, he would essentially be going alone.

In response, he put the car in gear.

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You can buy Two Guns, 1 Mile at https://www.amazon.com/Two-Guns-Mile-Thomas-Butler/dp/B0948JWQVX.