Loosed Upon the World

by John Joseph Adams

  “More like a tsunami. And we keep getting hit by wave after wave of them, and we can’t hold ’em all back.” He pointed at the body. “This is Last Stand shit here. People are calling in the big guns. Maybe they’re praying for Santa Muerte to hit the Texans with a dust storm and strip their bones before they get here. For sure they’re asking for something big.”

  “So they call on Lady Death.” But Lucy was shaking her head. “It’s just that I need more than a body to do a story.”

  “But I got amazing pics!”

  “I need more. I need quotes. I need a trend. I need a story. I need an example. . . .”

  Lucy was looking across the CAP canal toward the subdivision as she spoke. Timo could almost see the gears turning in her head. . . .

  “Oh, no. Don’t do it, girl.”

  “Do what?” But she was smiling already.

  “Don’t go over there and start asking who did the deed.”

  “It would be a great story.”

  “You think some motherfucker’s just gonna say they out and wasted Old Tex?”

  “People love to talk, if you ask them the right questions.”

  “Seriously, Lucy. Let the cops take care of it. Let them go over there and ask the questions.”

  Lucy gave him a pissed-off look.

  “What?” Timo asked.

  “You really think I’m that wet?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Seriously? How long have we known each other? Do you really think you can fool me into thinking the cops are gonna give a shit about another dead Merry Perry? How wet do you think I am?”

  Lucy spun and headed for her truck.

  “This ain’t some amusement park!” Timo called after her. “You can’t just go poke the Indians and think they’re gonna native-dance for you. People here are for real!” He had to shout the last because the truck’s door was already screeching open.

  “Don’t worry about me!” Lucy called as she climbed into the beast. “Just get me good art! I’ll get our story!”

  * * * *

  “So let me get this straight,” Timo asked for the fourth or fifth time. “They just let you into their house?”

  They were kicked back on the roof at Sid’s Cafe with the rest of the regulars, taking potshots at the prairie dogs who had invaded the half-finished subdivision ruins around the bar, trading an old .22 down a long line as patrons took bets.

  The subdivision was called Sonora Bloom Estates, one of those crap-ass investments that had gone belly-up when Phoenix finally stopped bailing out over-pumped subdivisions. Sonora Bloom Estates had died because some bald-ass pencil-pusher in City Planning had got a stick up his ass and said the water district wasn’t going to support them. Now, unless some company like IBIS or Halliburton could frack their way to some magical new water supply, Desert Bloom was only ever going to be a town for prairie dogs.

  “They just let you in?” Timo asked. “Seriously?”

  Lucy nodded smugly. “They let me into their house, and then into their neighbors’ houses. And then they took me down into their basements and showed me their machine guns.” Lucy took a swig of Negra Modelo. “I make friends, Timo.” She grinned. “I make a lot of friends. It’s what I do.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Believe it or don’t.” Lucy shrugged. “Anyway, I’ve got our story. ‘Phoenix’s Last Stand.’ You wouldn’t believe how they’ve got themselves set up. They’ve got war rooms. They’ve got ammo dumps. This isn’t some cult militia; it’s more like the army of the apocalypse. Way beyond preppers. These people are getting ready for the end of the world, and they want to talk about it.”

  “They want to talk.”

  “They’re desperate to talk. They like talking. All they talk about is how to shove Texas back where it came from. I mean, you see the inside of their houses, and it’s all Arizona for the People, and God and Santa Muerte to back them up.”

  “They willing to let me take pictures?”

  Lucy gave him another smug look. “No faces. That’s the only condition.”

  Timo grinned. “I can work with that.”

  Lucy set her beer down. “So what’ve you shot so far?”

  “Good stuff.” Timo pulled out his camera and flicked through images. “How about this one?” He held up the camera for her to see. “Poetry, right?”

  Lucy eyed the image with distaste. “We need something PG, Timo.”

  “PG? Come on. PG don’t get the hits. People love the bodies and the blood. Sangre this, sangre that. They want the blood, and they want the sex. Those are the only two things that get hits.”

  “This isn’t for the local blood rags,” Lucy said. “We need something PG from the dead guy.”

  She accepted the rifle from a hairy biker dude sitting next to her and sighted out at the dimming landscape beyond. The sun was sinking over the sprawl of the Phoenix basin, a brown blanket of pollution and smoke from California wildfires turning orange and gaudy.

  Timo lifted his camera and snapped a couple quick shots of Lucy as she sighted down the rifle barrel. Wet girl trying to act dry. Not knowing that everyone who rolled down to Phoenix tried to show how tough they were by picking up a nice rifle and blasting away at the furry critters out in the subdivisions.

  The thought reminded Timo that he needed to get some shots of Sumo Hernandez and his hunting operation. Sucker had a sweet gig bringing Chinese tourists in to blast at coyotes and then feed them rattlesnake dinners.

  He snapped a couple more pictures and checked the results. Lucy looked damn good on the camera’s LCD. He’d got her backlit, the line of her rifle barrel across the blaze of the red ball sun. Money shot for sure.

  He flicked back into the dead Texan pictures.

  “PG, PG . . . ,” Timo muttered. “What the fuck is PG? It’s not like the dude’s dick is out. Just his eaten-off face.”

  Lucy squeezed off another shot and handed the rifle back.

  “This is going to go big, Timo. We don’t want it to look like it’s just another murder story. That’s been done. This has to look smart and scary and real. We’re going to do a series.”

  “We are?”

  “Hell yes, we are. I mean, this could be Pulitzer-type stuff. ‘Phoenix’s Last Stand.’ ”

  “I don’t give a shit about Pulitzers. I just want good hits. I need money.”

  “It will get us hits. Trust me. We’re onto something good.”

  Timo flicked through more of his pictures. “How about just the beads in the guy’s neck?” He showed her a picture. “This one’s sweet.”

  “No.” Lucy shook her head. “I want the CAP in it.”

  Timo gave up on stifling his exasperation. “PG, CAP. Anything else, ma’am?”

  Lucy shot him a look. “Will you trust me on this? I know what I’m doing.”

  “Wet-ass newcomer says she knows what she’s doing.”

  “Look, you’re the expert when it comes to Phoenix. But you’ve got to trust me. I know what I’m doing. I know how people think back East. I know what people want on the big traffic sites. You know Phoenix, and I trust you. Now you’ve got to trust me. We’re onto something. If we do it right, we’re going to blow up. We’re going to be a phenomenon.”

  The hairy biker guy handed the rifle back to Lucy for another shot.

  “So you want PG, and you want the CAP,” Timo said.

  “Yeah. The CAP is why he died,” she said absently as she sighted again with the rifle. “It’s what he wanted. And it’s what the Defending Angels need to protect. It’s what Phoenix has that Texas doesn’t. Phoenix is alive in the middle of a desert because you’ve got one of the most expensive water transport systems in the world. If Texas had a straw like the CAP running to some place like the Mississippi River, they’d still be fine.”

  Timo scoffed. “That would be like a thousand miles.”

  “Rivers go farther than that.” Lucy squeezed off a shot and dust puffed beside a prairie dog. The critter dove back into
its hole, and Lucy passed the rifle back. “I mean, your CAP water is coming from the Rockies. You’ve got the Colorado River running all the way down from Wyoming and Colorado, through Utah, all the way across the top of Arizona, and then you and California and Las Vegas all share it out.”

  “California doesn’t share shit.”

  “You know what I mean. You all stick your straws in the river; you pump water to a bunch of cities that shouldn’t even exist. CAP water comes way more than a thousand miles.” She laughed and reached for her beer. “The irony is that at least Texans built where they had water. Without the CAP, you’d be just like the Texans. A bunch of sad-ass people all trying to move north.”

  “Thank God we’re smarter than those assholes.”

  “Well, you’ve got better bureaucrats and pork barrels, anyway.”

  Timo made a face at Lucy’s dig but didn’t bother arguing. He was still hunting through his photos for something that Lucy would approve of.

  Nothing PG about dying, he thought. Nothing PG about clawing your way all the way across a thousand miles of desert just to smash up against chain link. Nothing PG about selling off your daughter so you can make a run at going north, or jumping the border into California.

  He was surprised to find that he almost felt empathy for the Texan. Who knew? Maybe this guy had seen the apocalypse coming but he’d just been too rooted in place to accept that he couldn’t ride it out. Or maybe he’d had too much faith that God would take care of him.

  The rifle was making the rounds again. More sharp cracks of the little .22 caliber bullets.

  Faith. Maybe Old Tex’s faith had made him blind. Made it impossible for him to see what was coming. Like a prairie dog who’d stuck his head out of his burrow and couldn’t quite believe that God had put a bead on his furry little skull. Couldn’t see the bullet screaming in on him.

  In the far distance, a flight of helicopters was moving across the burning horizon. The thud-thwap of their rotors carried easily across the hum of the city. Timo counted fifteen or twenty in the formation. Heading off to fight forest fires, maybe. Or else getting shipped up to the Arctic by the Feds.

  Going someplace, anyway.

  “Everybody’s got some place to go,” Lucy murmured, as if reading his mind.

  The rifle cracked again, and a prairie dog went down. Everyone cheered. “I think that one was from Texas,” someone said.

  Everyone laughed. Selena came up from below with a new tray of bottles and handed them out. Lucy was smirking to herself, looking superior.

  “You got something to say?” Timo asked.

  “Nothing. It’s just funny how you all treat the Texans.”

  “Shit.” Timo took a slug from his beer. “They deserve it. I was down there, remember? I saw them all running around like ants after Hurricane Violet fucked them up. Saw their towns drying up. Hell, everybody who wasn’t Texas Forever saw that shit coming down. And there they all were, praying to God to save their righteous Texan asses.” He took another slug of beer. “No pity for those fools. They brought their apocalypse down on their own damn selves. And now they want to come around here and take away what we got? No way.”

  “No room for charity?” Lucy prodded.

  “Don’t interview me,” Timo shot back.

  Lucy held up her hands in apology. “My bad.”

  Timo snorted. “Hey, everybody! My wet-ass friend here thinks we ought to show some charity to the Texans.”

  “I’ll give ’em a bullet free,” Brixer Gonzalez said.

  “I’ll give ’em two!” Molly Abrams said. She took the rifle and shot out a distant window in the subdivision.

  “And yet they keep coming,” Lucy murmured, looking thoughtful. “They just keep on coming, and you can’t stop them.”

  Timo didn’t like how she mirrored his own worries.

  “We’re going to be fine.”

  “Because you’ve got Santa Muerte and a whole hell of a lot of armed lunatics on your side,” Lucy said with satisfaction. “This story is going to make us. ‘The Defending Angels of Phoenix.’ What a beautiful scoop.”

  “And they’re just going to let us cover them?” Timo still couldn’t hide his skepticism.

  “All anyone wants to do is tell their story, Timo. They need to know they matter.” She favored him with a sidelong smile. “So when a nice journo from up north comes knocking? Some girl who’s so wet they can see it on her face? They love it. They love telling her how it is.” Lucy took a sip of her beer, seeming to remember the encounter. “If people think you’re wet enough, you wouldn’t believe what they’ll tell you. They’ve got to show how smart and wise they are, you know? All you need to do is look interested, pretend you’re wet, and people roll right over.”

  Lucy kept talking, describing the world she’d uncovered, the details that had jumped out at her. How there was so much more to get. How he needed to come along and get the art.

  She kept talking, but Timo couldn’t hear her words anymore because one phrase kept pinging around inside his head like a pinball.

  Pretend you’re wet, and people roll right over.

  * * * *

  “I don’t know why you’re acting like this,” Lucy said for the third time as they drove out to see the Defending Angels.

  She was driving the beast, and Timo was riding shotgun. He’d loaded his gear into her truck, determined that any further expenses from the reporting trip should be on her.

  At first, he’d wanted to just cut her off and walk away from the whole thing, but he realized that was childish. If she could get the hits, then fine. He’d tag along on her score. He’d take her page views, and then he’d be done with her.

  Cutting her off too soon would get him nothing. She’d just go get some other pendejo to do the art, or else she might even shoot the pictures herself and get her ass paid twice, a prospect that galled him even more than the fact that he’d been manipulated.

  They wound their way into the subdivision, driving past ancient Prius sedans and electric bikes. At the end of the cul-de-sac, Lucy pulled to a halt. The place didn’t look any different from any other Phoenix suburb. Except apparently, inside all the quiet houses, a last-battle resistance was brewing.

  Ahead, the chain link and barbed wire of the CAP boundary came into view. Beyond, there was nothing but cactus-studded hills. Timo could just make out the Texan on the far side of the CAP fences, still dangling. It looked like the dogs were at him again, tearing at the scraps.

  “Will you at least talk to me?” Lucy asked. “Tell me what I did.”

  Timo shrugged. “Let’s just get your shoot done. Show me these Angels of Arizona you’re so hot for.”

  “No.” Lucy shook her head. “I’m not taking you to see them until you tell me why you keep acting this way.”

  Timo glared at her, then looked out the dusty front window.

  “Guess we’re not going to see them, then.”

  With the truck turned off, it was already starting to broil inside. The kind of heat that cooked pets and babies to death in a couple hours. Timo could feel sweat starting to trickle off him, but he was damned if he was going to show that he was uncomfortable. He sat and stared at the CAP fence ahead of them. They could both sweat to death for all he cared.

  Lucy was staring at him hard. “If you’ve got something you want to say, you should be man enough to say it.”

  Man enough? Oh, hell, no.

  “Okay,” Timo said. “I think you played me.”

  “Played you how?”

  “Seriously? You going to keep at it? I’m on to you, girl. You act all wet, and you get people to help you out. You get people to do shit they wouldn’t normally do. You act all nice, like you’re all new and like you’re just getting your feet under you, but that’s just an act.”

  “So what?” Lucy said. “Why do you care if I fool some militia nutjobs?”

  “I’m not talking about them! I’m talking about me! That’s how you played me! You act like you d
on’t know things, get me to show you around. Show you the ropes. Get you on the inside. You act all wet and sorry, and dumbass Timo steps in to help you out. And you get a nice juicy exclusive.”

  “Timo . . . how long have we known each other?”

  “I don’t know if we ever did.”

  “Timo—”

  “Don’t bother apologizing.” He shouldered the truck’s door open.

  As he climbed out, he knew he was making a mistake. She’d pick up some other photographer. Or else she’d shoot the story herself and get paid twice for the work.

  Should have just kept my mouth shut.

  Amparo would have told him he was both dumb and a sucker. Should have at least worked Lucy to get the story done before he left her ass. Instead he’d dumped her and the story.

  Lucy climbed out of the truck, too.

  “Fine,” she said. “I won’t do it.”

  “Won’t do what?”

  “I won’t do the story. If you think I played you, I won’t do the story.”

  “Oh, come on. That’s bullshit. You know you came down here for your scoop. You ain’t giving that up.”

  Lucy stared at him, looking pissed. “You know what your problem is?”

  “Got a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

  “You’re so busy doing your poor-me, I’m-from-Phoenix, everyone’s-out-to-get-me, we’re-getting-overrun, wah-wah-wah routine that you can’t even tell when someone’s on your side!”

  “That’s not—”

  “You can’t even tell someone’s standing right in front of you who actually gives a shit about you!” Lucy was almost spitting, she was so mad. Her face had turned red. Timo tried to interject, but she kept talking.

  “I’m not some damn Texan here to take your water, and I’m not some big-time journo here to steal your fucking stories! That’s not who I am! You know how many photographers I could work with? You know how many would bite on this story that I went out and got? I put my ass on the line out here! You think that was easy?”

  “Lucy. Come on . . .”

  She waved a hand of disgust at him and stalked off, heading for the end of the cul-de-sac and the CAP fence beyond.

  “Go find someone else to do this story,” she called back. “Pick whoever you want. I wouldn’t touch this story with a ten-foot pole. If that’s what you want, it’s all yours.”