::Overpass

We’d been driving toward those blood-red thunderheads for days, and finally under.  The twisters tearing us apart, shredding our armor.  The lightning prying underneath, turning our flesh to blistered steam and reducing our broadcasts to pained squealing.  Pieces falling away, slagged by the acid rain.  Engine sputtering on regret and nothing but a lonely silence in the cab, listening to the rain pelt down on the cracked windshield.  We wouldn’t look at one another, just wondering when it would all seize up and grind to a halt in the cold mud.  The tires juddering over craters in the blastcrete, axles groaning at the strain.  The weight of our baggage crushing down on the hull wasn’t helping.

So.  My hand hovered over the amber button, cool against my palm.  <eject?>  It flickered with the rest of the dying powersystem, teasing; on auxiliaries most of the day.  The rusted turbines were giving us what they had left, and that was all we could ask for.  All we dared.  It was the end.  The rations were gone, our tongues were dry and the air was going sour.  Just a matter of time.  My fingers were shaking.  I was empty, worn through.

Then, silence.  Holy silence.  I curled my fingers carefully away from that fatal button.  The rain had stopped; the howling wind, too.

A scalpel of sunlight gently lanced across the hood, then, like so many bad dreams, the boiling clouds melted away before us.  Incongruent and shockingly beautiful, the blue skies had us blinking in amazement.  Even the engines settled into a more reasonable rhythm.

A hiss, a buzz, and the radio kicked back on.  Tinny, but still distinct.  Break on through to the other side, indeed.

Her fingers ghosted along my scarred forearm where I clutched the shifter in disbelief.  Slid along the back of my hand and knotted carefully between my own calloused digits.  She didn’t say anything.  She didn’t need to.  Where were we?  I wasn’t sure.  But it didn’t really matter.  Enough time in the clear and this thing would fly again. 

* * * 

An unexplainable joy, this week.  Sunlight and spring breezes and thunderstorms and curls.  The new Star Trek and ordering my Gen Con badge.  My goofy son proudly crowing the name of every object he knows.  "Car!  Truck!  Doggy!  Bird!  Horn!  Fart!"  Driving a little faster than I ought and taking roads I normally don’t.  Giving and receiving actual, bona fide orgasms with no bullshit, no baggage, no are-you-sure or oh-go-ahead.  Just a good sweaty FUCK.  Drums and bass and incense and candles.  Everything is good and I’m anticipating the weekend and I don’t know why, but the hyperdrive is fixed and the stars are streaking and full speed ahead, Goddammit, I’m going to ride this as far as it goes.