A week passed this way, Ruben...or Ben as R.C. called him...feeling a twinge of growing guilt as the old man nursed him back to health and telling Ben story after story of the open road. Ben's memory was still eluding him, save for the nightmares of the bombs that woke him every morning, leaving Ben wishing that he had some stories of his own to tell.

Ben could finally take no more. He rose from the bed one morning and met R.C. on the trailer's ramshackle porch. "R.C....", he began - the man silenced him with a raised hand, his eyes fixed on the horizon.

"Sandstorm's a comin'. We better get busy." R.C. rose quickly and sauntered over to a pile of metal. Ben followed and over the course of an hour, they had repaired the hole in the trailer and taped all the windows to control shattering. All they could do now was sit in the living room of the mobile home and wait for the storm to pass.

R.C. seemed to spend most of the next few days glued to the phone in the bedroom, not sharing anything with Ben about the conversations. Ben, on the other hand, amused himself watching late 20th-century films about post-apocalyptic Earth. The credits were rolling on one of the "Mad Max" sequels when R.C. finally came out of what passed for seclusion in those tight quarters, turned off the TV, and sat down for a serious talk with Ben.

"Movies will rot your brain, kid...They are nice for entertainment, but they sure ain't livin'."

Ben stared at him for a moment, looked back at the shelves upon shelves of tapes and DVDs, then looked back at R.C. and shrugged. "For someone who hates movies, you sure do have a collection...” R.C.'s brow furrowed and he reached up to the top shelf, grabbing a lone DVD and throwing it into the player, stabbing a finger at the play button as of gouging an eye out of it. A late 70's biker movie rolled onto the screen. R.C.'s eyes glittered as youth seemed to flow into him from the screen.

"Not sayin' they are worthless. Hell, Hollywood was a teat I suckled until this lifestyle..." he smiled as he gestured at the screen "...drew me away back in '02. Good thing too, since it moved me and mine out to a dusty desert town with more tumbleweeds than people, sparing us from the hell the others suffered in the war. Point is though, money can buy a lotta things, but freedom should be free." Ben glanced back at the screen and suddenly felt the hairs tingle on the back of his neck.

"Why the sales pitch, R.C.? You wanting someone to ride with, or you plannin' on ridin' off alone and this is your way of sayin' 'Time for you to go, kid.'?"

R.C. smiled and fished a folded slip of paper out of his pocket. "A little of both, kid...a little of both... I do have a couple of small problems that this paper in my hand can solve in one swoop. First thing is that you can't stay with me forever. It's time for me to go home and be with my family. Second, since you still can't remember what you're doing out in this endless beach, you're gonna be here for a while until you find where you belong."

Ben nodded, mentally packing his bags, trying to plan for the future. R.C. snapped his fingers and brought him back to the present. "Third," the man continued, "The bikers in this desert will eat you alive if you don't belong. It's survival of the fittest out here and you may be big, Benny, but you ain't no biker." Ben cursed his beer gut again but felt confused at the same time. The biker in the movie playing on the long-forgotten TV had a huge beer gut and was a "biker" - where was the difference besides the bike?

"Fourth, you'll need a job or 'desert skills' to survive more than a day out here, even if you did get past the gangs. God knows you've eaten a few platefuls of my savings just being here less than a month, which brings us to the next problem... Helpin' me patch up a hole you made and doin' the dishes every night don't put gas in my tank. I hate to be this blunt, Benny, but yer an unexpected expense and this old man needs financial payback, if you know what I mean."

Ben was at a loss, not knowing how long the truck had been driving before he was tossed, literally, into R.C.'s lap. No idea how close the nearest town was, or how he would ever be able to make enough money to pay R.C. back even half of what he owed him. All of the questions in Ben's head spilled out of his mouth as one sound. "Uhhh...” R.C. tossed the paper into his lap.

"Like I said, kid, the answer to all these problems is right here..."

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