After a few minutes of running, I stop and listen. There’s a rumbling in the storm that’s more machine than wind. I swear, I can smell diesel fumes. And as much as the dust boils and tears at me, it isn’t nearly the storm I thought it was. It’s not a cocktail party, and I’ve been to some bad parties. The storm isn’t even what’s sending the dust into the sky. It’s something inside the storm.
I do a slow three-sixty. The rumble and smell of fumes get closer. When I’m facing it, I stop. Wipe as much grit from my eyes as I can. I can feel the sound in my chest, a deep shudder like someone running a drag strip through my ribs.
I’d do all kinds of depraved things right now for a smoke.
A second later, the rumbling stops. I don’t mean the noise dies down. I mean that whatever is causing it stops dead in its tracks, but it’s still growling and grinding as loud as ever. I stand where I am. Where am I going to go? Whatever it is, is a lot bigger than me, and if I’m about to get eaten, I’m going in facing the fucker. If I get lucky and it breathes fire, I might even get to smoke one last cigarette on the way down its gullet.
Choking dust billows around me, but I continue to remain uneaten. If whatever is out there wants to play games, it better be ready for a round of “Stark runs away and hides under a rock until the bad thing goes away” because without weapons, I’m not about to play Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots with a Hellbeast.
It’s a good minute before the dust thins out and I can see well enough to look for a weapon. All I find nearby is a baseball-size rock. I pick it up and weigh it in my hand. Fuck. It’s pumice. Light as a feather. I might as well throw marshmallows at the thing. I toss the rock back where I found it. I’m not sold on the concept of death with dignity, but I’d rather not be a story monsters tell each other around the watercooler.
The dust finally settles down and I get a look at what’s coming.
Huh. I didn’t think of that.
Turns out it isn’t one giant thing. It’s really a lot of big things growling and shuddering at the fucking sky. More than fifty of them.
The simple way to describe it is that I’m face-to-face with a smoke-belching desert rat parking lot of semitrucks and pickups, passenger cars, construction equipment, and motorcycles. There’s even a few hellhounds with saddles and riders. Maybe I should have kept my rock. At least I wouldn’t look quite so much like a deer caught in the headlights.
No. I’d look like a deer with a rock. Forget it.
We stare at each other just long enough for me to, one, notice that no one is offering me a ride, and two, get bored. So, I head over in their direction. I’m maybe twenty yards away when a Hellion in a jeep up front holds his fists over his head. The sound of the engines dies away. He’s a big, spiky bastard, like a horned toad in a doorman’s uniform.
“Stop,” he says. “Where are you from and where’s the rest of your group?”
“At the day spa at the Bellagio. Come on over. We’ll have a shvitz and get to know each other.”
The Hellion talks to a short, baby-faced damned soul in the jeep with him. The soul shrugs and points at me. The Hellion frowns. It doesn’t improve his looks.
“What’s a shvitz?” he yells.
“Really? You’re driving up Hell’s asshole with these Grease rejects and that’s the first thing that falls out of your skull?”
The Hellion stands up a little straighter.
“What did you say?”
“I said, does Baby Face dress you? ’Cause from where I’m standing, I bet you don’t know how pants work.”
The Hellion gets out of the jeep. The damned soul starts to hand him a rifle, but Horned Toad shakes his head and starts in my direction.
Well, I got his attention. Everyone’s attention. Now for the second part of my well-thought-out plan to get a vehicle and get out of this dusty shithole. If I stand still, I’ll look scared, so I head straight for Horned Toad. Along the way, I look around for weapons, but all there is around me is dust and more of those light stones. Halfway there, I spot some animal bones sticking up out of the hard ground. Something the size of an elephant died out here and the wind scoured it clean. I need to think of something fast or my bones are going to be the next thing on display.
The real problem isn’t that I don’t have weapons, though; it’s that I don’t know anything about myself right now. Am I still strong? Am I fast? Can I still do hoodoo or manifest my Gladius and if I can, do I want a hundred or so Leatherface grease-monkey types knowing it?
I guess for now, part two of my plan is stay alive—so to speak—see what I can get away with, and go from there. Yeah. That should work. No problem.
Another question that just occurred to me: In my present condition, am I still hard to kill? Will I heal if I’m injured or will I bleed out like any other sucker down here and wind up in Tartarus? Whatever the answer is, I think I’m going to have it in a few seconds.
Horned Toad stops about ten feet from me. I spot a gun on his hip and he catches me looking at it.
“Scares you, does it?” he says. “Don’t worry. Got to conserve ammo these days, and anyway, I don’t think you deserve a bullet.”
“No. What I deserve is to be back in L.A. with my girlfriend, her girlfriend, and a bunch of other nice people who don’t look like they eat bugs in a West Texas gulch.”
Horned Toad pulls a knife the size of a labradoodle.
He says, “What I like to eat are eyes. I’m going to eat yours one at a time. Let you watch me swallow the first one before I cut out the other.”
“It’s good to pace yourself. You don’t want to fill up before dessert.”
“I know about your type. Talkers,” he says. “Talkers are all cowards.”
I check my sides, and while the ground is flat and even, there’s nowhere to run to except the mountains. Besides, I’ll never outpace all these trucks and bikes.
I point at Horned Toad.
“You look like an apple-pie guy. Me too. Except when they put cheese on it. Do you like that? Can toads even eat dairy? Is that why you eat eyes? Have you tried Lactaid?”
“Kill him,” yells the baby-face guy from Horned Toad’s jeep. Other voices join him, chanting for Horned Toad to gut me.
He lunges at me with the giant knife. I dance back and he misses me by a mile. He lunges again and I jump to the side this time. Okay. I can still move. That’s the first piece of good news since I woke up here. I wonder what else I can do?
He lunges at me again, but it’s a fake-out. Instead of going for my gut, he does a second lunge down low. I move out of the way, but he still gets a piece of my left leg. It burns like hell and the sight of my blood gets the peanut gallery going with whoops and catcalls.
When Horned Toad comes for me again, instead of moving back, I dive under his arm and drive a knee up into his lower ribs. I hear him suck in air when the pain hits, but the fucker
