So what if he was the devil? If there’s a devil, there’s a God, and if there’s a God, there’s meaning. Hell itself can’t be worse than life without meaning.

Rachel’s eyes turn back toward Manning.

RACHEL

Did I mention he was the greatest fuck I ever had, or any woman ever had?

Rachel’s breath comes shallower and more broken. Her lids close. Her chin lolls forward onto her chest.

Manning himself begins to go under.

Then:

A sound like knuckles rapping on metal.

Manning hears it. He tries to open his eyes.

The sound intensifies.

No longer rapping on steel.

Glass now.

The windshield.

Manning forces his lids apart. He turns toward the glass.

Outside, a hand scrapes away sand and grit.

Daylight.

A man’s face appears.

Boots mount the overturned hood of the Humvee. Manning stares as lugged soles clamber to the driver’s door topside.

With a heave of inhuman strength the man hauls the door open. Sand pours in onto Rachel and down onto Manning.

INSTANCER

Hello, Jim.

Instancer reaches down into the cabin with one hand, seizes Rachel by her shirt collar. He hauls her out.

Manning peers up.

Instancer’s hand stretches down a second time.

Manning clasps Instancer, wrist to wrist.

Instancer hauls Manning clear.

Instancer lowers Manning past the heeled-over roof into the sand on the far side. Manning collapses beside the overturned Humvee.

Instancer has already deposited Rachel in this spot.

She struggles to one knee, sucking in great gulps of air. Temperature has dropped dramatically outside the coffin confines of the buried Humvee.

Backed up to the Humvee, tailgate-to-grille, squats Instancer’s Chevy Chinook. Taillights, cargo-bed lamps, and the rear-facing red and yellow spot-beams of the light bar blaze into the gale-beaten murk.

INSTANCER

(to Manning)

Help me do this.

Instancer drops the pickup’s tailgate. From the cargo bed he hauls two heavy-duty chain-and-hook cables. He spools one clear and passes the other to Manning. Instancer yokes his cable to one of the two D-rings on the prow of the Humvee. Manning does the same with the other. Instancer checks both to be sure they’re secure. He starts toward the driver’s door of the Chinook.

INSTANCER

(to Manning and Rachel)

Keep clear of the vehicle. This thing’s gonna come out like a cannonball when it pops.

Manning and Rachel obey. From a rack on the pickup’s grille, Instancer removes a five-gallon flax sack with DESERT WATER BAG stenciled on the front. He tosses it to Rachel. The bag lands with a full-sounding splat on the sand before her. Rachel seizes it and upends the bag over her face, pouring the liquid, hot as it is, straight down her throat.

In Ben-David’s cab, I’m taking in this spectacle in snatches of garbled sound and depixelated video.