This Burning Man (Future Arizona Book 1)

by Kris Holt

  Gregor carefully explored the buttons on the device until it beeped into life and numbers spread across the liquid display. 'Aha! I knew it!'

  'Knew what?' I said.

  'Oh, dear God, do not ask,' Jayci said, collapsing theatrically onto the sofa.

  Gregor held up the device with all the dooming demeanor of a man with one of them "The End is Nigh" boards, except that the screen on the device read a slightly less dramatic, "140F err".

  'What does that mean?' I asked.

  Gregor sighed and wiped his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. 'It means that it's really damn hot.'

  * * *

  With the light low in the sky, Gregor took me up to a concealed space on the roof of his building. Inside, there was a drainage pipe and a long, heavy tube on a tripod. He shifted his bulk so I could stand behind the tube.

  'I need to know about the Oasis,' I said.

  'And you will, in a little while. But first you need to see this.'

  'I don't need to see anything.'

  Gregor ignored me. 'This is a telescope. Some nights I come up here and use it to look at the stars.'

  'Whatever. It ain't night right now,' I said.

  'Right you are,' Gregor replied, looking kinda pleased that I had any deductive skills at all. 'Which is where this comes in.'

  He produced a thin sleeve from his pocket and took out a narrow disc, which he slipped onto the end of the telescope. 'Solar filter,' he explained.

  'So you can look at the sun?'

  'Two for two,' he said, nodding approvingly.

  Jayci's voice echoed up from the bottom of the ladder below. 'You're on a roll! Best quit while you're ahead.'

  Gregor called down to her. 'Don't distract him. This is important.'

  'What's more important is that you two stop messing around, take me out and get me drunk.'

  'Ignore her,' he said to me.

  'I heard that.' Jayci was never going to lose her smart mouth, but for the first time I saw the other side of their relationship - the one where he got to lead and she rode shotgun. It was an interesting contrast, or would have been, if I had time for it.

  Gregor pointed down the length of the telescope. 'It's safe. You can look now,' he said.

  'I don't really care,' I said.

  'Do it,' he insisted. To speed things up, I went with it.

  Through the eyepiece, the sun was a bright orange ball against an eternal black backdrop. Lights played around the surface, like embers at a campfire.

  'What do you see?' Gregor said.

  'It's orange.'

  'What else?' he asked patiently.

  I felt pretty dumb just then, but my grasp of what he was expecting to see didn't fit with the words I had.

  'It's big,' I tried.

  'There we go,' he said.

  I was totally confused now. 'So, wait...you brought me up here to point out that the sun is big?'

  He snapped the telescope around so he could look through it himself and the concern on his face was both genuine and total. 'Not just that it's big. That it's too big. Too big and too hot. Hotter than it should be. Hotter, I think, than it's ever been before.'

  It took me a moment to process that. 'Do you know why?'

  'Perihelion,' he said promptly. 'The planet is getting close to the sun. That happens every year, as you'd expect - except something has changed, something is different from usual. This is too big to be a natural variation in solar radiation. Perhaps it's the impact of war abroad. They might have let off enough nuclear detonations by now that it's affected the orbital path - or dust and gases are getting trapped in the atmosphere and affecting the light...I don't know. But whatever is causing it, it's really bad news.'

  'Like bad juju?' I asked. He blinked in response, but I could see wheels turning behind his eyes.

  I looked down past the ladder. Jayci was nowhere in sight, so I decided to go for broke. 'Gregor, what did you see in that village when you went there?'

  'N...nothing,' he said, but as I stared, I realised his sweating wasn't just down to the heat.

  'So you didn't see the Piano Man?' I asked.

  Gregor's face went white, and for once I knew I'd asked the right question.

  Chapter 11 - Cross Words

  The doors to the bar crashed open and Jayci was through them with a flourish. All eyes were on her and her trailing braids, giving Gregor and I the chance to sneak in behind her unnoticed.

  Before she'd even made it as far as the candlelit bar, two burly farmhand types fell in beside her, their obvious enthusiasm for her company making up for their relative lack of teeth. She smiled and said, 'Boys, it's mighty fine to meet you both. Buy the drinks, say nice things, keep your hands where I can see 'em and we can play nicely. Let 'em wander, now, and we'll have cross words. Just so you know, I've broken more than hearts in the past.'

  I kept an eye on her while Gregor stole into a booth, air-washing his hands all the time like a crazy person. I sat opposite him, gave the bar a quick once over. Low light, a single soulful girl singer in the corner, cheap booze, clientele more likely to pass out than fight. Just how I liked my drinking holes.

  'Doing okay over there?' I said.

  'I'm anxious,' Gregor said, like that wasn't obvious to everyone. 'I don't really come out that much.'

  'Yeah, well,' I replied, following Jayci with my eyes. 'This keeps her occupied while we talk.'

  Gregor reached down inside his coat. The movement was downright furtive. For a moment, I thought he was going to draw a gun or some other mad shit, but instead he pulled out a screwdriver and the electronic device he'd been working on before we left.

  'Don't mind me,' he said, looking past me at the wall behind.

  I lowered my face so he could see my eyes. 'We're still gonna talk, you know.'

  'I'm resigned to that fact.' He pressed the tip of the screwdriver delicately into one of the screw holes and balanced it there.

  'So tell me what you know about the Piano Man.'

  Gregor's eyes searched for a way out. When they didn't find one, they rolled around inside their sockets. He laid the screwdriver carefully on the table and said, 'He's an urban myth.'

  'And yet I've seen him. Spoken to him.'

  Gregor's fingernails found small grooves in the wooden surface of the table and tugged at them. 'It's the wisdom of crowds. People hear stories and when they retell them, they exaggerate the detail. Once you've heard a story, it sticks in your mind, even if you don't think you remember it. Then you're out one day, you see a shadow, your brain puts one and one together and makes three...'

  He tailed off as a waxy-faced foreign server in a dirty white shirt appeared by the table with two drinks on a tray. One large gutburner hooch, one glass of ice water. 'From the woman at the bar,' the server explained, and left. I glanced over at Jayci, who was half-buried under attentive boys. She winked at me.

  When I turned back to Gregor, he was balancing the screwdriver between his thumbs. The narrow end was short, no more than three or four inches. Still, in a pinch, you could use it to do someone a serious misservice.

  Seeing things as weapons came with the territory in my line of work. In Gregor's hands though, the screwdriver looked bland and functional. Like if he held it to your throat, you'd laugh and play along with the joke. Only when he was on one of his pet subjects - science, history, obscure general knowledge - did he muster any kind of authority.

  I said, 'When you found that village, you knew that something was wrong. Energy, you called it. But you meant him, didn't you? You saw him and you fled. That's why you never had a chance to collect what was there.'

  Gregor rolled the screwdriver back and forwards under his fingertips. I could imagine him and Jayci, newly acquainted and sitting in a room just like this one, her explaining that she'd paid his fine but that now he owed her, owed her big time...

  For the first time since we arrived Gregor looked up, but rather than glancing at me, he stared over at Jayci. Distracted as she was, she
didn't notice his gaze, resting there on her, on what she was to him. The point of the screwdriver turned downwards, began to gouge at the surface of the table.

  'Do you like her?' he said.

  'Do I what?'

  'Do you like her?' His voice was strained, like the question was hard to ask, but the answer might be harder to listen to.

  For the first time, I found myself on the defensive in Gregor's company.

  'Jayci? She's okay,' I said. 'Not my thing, not in that way.'

  Gregor gently lifted the screwdriver and brushed away the curl of wood that had formed when he scratched at the table. 'I haven't been into the Sands for ages. Before I met Jayci, I had a tool that I used to help me find my way around. It was a GPS. Military doesn't fire satellites into space any more, it's too expensive. Some of the old ones were still up there, still beaming away, into the void.'

  'And now?'

  'I can't get reliable signals anymore. I don't know if it's the satellites, or if it's related to the perihelion. And then-' Gregor's voice trailed off, and he sipped glumly at his water.

  'Then him,' I said.

  'I want her to stay safe,' Gregor said. 'But what's happening with the perihelion could be cataclysmic. Think, like, the Rapture, but with everything going up in flames. If we're going to figure out what's happening, I need equipment, and that means scavenging in the Sands.'

  'And you send her rather than going yourself. How courageous of you.'

  Gregor glared at me. 'You can judge all you like. But we, Jayci and me, work as a team because each of us does what we're best at. I don't know how to fight something supernatural. Whereas you seem to be completely fine.'

  Fine for now, sure, but the three of us might be dead in less than a day unless I got the info I needed. I downed my moonshine. It was strong stuff, stronger than I reckoned. My head buzzed.

  'I never saw him.' Gregor's eyes did that thing again, and I had to fight the urge to bang his head on the table to make him focus. 'But I heard the piano. I know the story, I know what it means. The only way to stay safe is to stay out of the Sands.'

  'Safe, Gregor,' I said. 'Safe is the one thing we are not. I spoke to him. I spoke to the Piano Man. He told me that we're all going to die. Together. Tomorrow.'

  Gregor choked and spat his mouthful of water. 'No. You're lying. He didn't say that. I don't believe you. I don't believe that you even spoke to him.'

  'I don't care what you believe,' I said. 'But here's the kicker. For us to all die together, we have to be together. So that's why you're gonna tell me where that oasis is, and I'm gonna leave. Right now, this second. Out of your lives forever.'

  He stared at me for a moment, his little piggy eyes in that squashed up face, and I felt right then that what he said next sat better with him than anything else he'd done or said up to that point.

  'I don't know of any oasis in the Sands used by female outlaws. There could be one, but my knowledge died with the GPS.'

  I fixed him with my least friendly stare. 'Why do I feel like you're lying to me 'cause you got some crazy idea that I'm a rival for your affections?'

  'I'm concerned about stopping the end of the world, but you carry on thinking what you want. This whole thing was all Jayci's idea. She just wanted someone to come along and help gather resources in the desert. Add to the posse! As it turns out, having you there caused more problems than it solved. Just like I told her it would.'

  'End of the world? For real? You're not a religious man. You don't know shit about the Rapture.'

  He practically burst with contempt. 'Ask her.'

  I didn't need to. Gregor was more confident just then than I'd ever seen him. Fuzzy with alcohol, with anger, with the anxiety of impending doom, I stood up and walked away. In my heart, I'd known it was a fast one all along. This is why you work alone, I told myself. You just can't trust people.

  I was at the door to the street when Jayci appeared, grabbing at my elbow. 'And where exactly are you goin'?'

  'Get your hand off me,' I said automatically.

  Her look was fire. 'I ain't letting go till you tell me what's up.'

  'You should know. Your man over there tells me you've been lying to me all along,' I said. 'He told me that the oasis is a crock of shit.'

  'Ah.' The little smirk on Jayci's face said all it needed. She shrugged and said, 'Come on, did you ever believe it, really? Phoe-phoe, when I found you lying under the rubble in the church, you were a man at rock bottom. You done fucked up that job. You got no family, and apart from us, no friends in the world. You're, what, twenty years old? Twenty-five? Looking for a mama who's been gone for a decade? Sad is what it is. But things are looking up for you now. You got a posse to look out for you.'

  'Fuck you, Jayci. Sideways.'

  Her two new farmboy friends flanked her out of nowhere and loomed . I popped a candy jack in case they got frisky. 'Don't go there,' she commanded them when they looked ready to advance. 'You'll regret it.'

  I took a step backwards, but Jayci took it as an invite to step forwards. 'You can leave if you want, I ain't gonna stop you. But where you gonna go? What are you gonna do? Go back to bringing in small fry bads for rent money. Spending your evenings prayin' outside ha'penny whorehouses rather than shooting the shit with us.'

  Then she smiled wickedly and imitated my accent damn as near perfect. 'Going your own way is a step backwards. Best believe it.'

  Something clicked in my head. By now I was as pissed off as I get, and I ain't responsible in those moments. All fire and brimstone, I leaned into Jayci and said, 'You like your secrets. Go ask Gregor about the Piano Man. Ask him why it is you're both gonna die tomorrow.'

  The candy jack kicked in, and my limbs fired into life. I pulled myself away from the girl with ease and made for the door, which the singer from earlier was now holding open.

  She was a beautiful girl indeed, about my age, the bluest eyes, hair dyed mallow pink and hot-curled into ringlets. As I walked past, I said, 'Hey sweet thing, what are you doing tonight?'

  'Not you,' she replied with feeling, before closing the door on the whole sad affair.

  Chapter 12 – One out, one down

  'You mind if I stay?' I asked.

  'Suit yourself,' Carter shrugged. 'But I can't go through no paperwork right now. Radio's buzzing. We've got a whole lot of activity going on in towns around. I'm hearing reports of bandit attacks all over. They moved all my spare men down to the Mount to protect the water.'

  'It's okay. I don't want no jobs right now anyhow.'

  'What do you want?' she asked.

  I was still mulling the question, sitting in the corner of the quartermaster's office and picking my teeth with my knife when a short, fat man came through the door and dumped a cloth bag and a revolver onto the counter. His shirt was open at the waist, showing off a pale pot belly.

  'I'm looking for the no-good two-bit that took my kid brother,' the man said.

  I tipped the corner of my hat in time to see Carter glance over at me. 'Who's your brother?' she said.

  'Waylon Boggs.'

  'Boggs is all set to move down to the Pen. Court is done running the numbers on him if you're here to pay bail.'

  'I want words with the man that bought him in. This is fucking bullshit.'

  'Might want to show a bit of respect if you want help,' I said

  Waylon's brother looked round and saw me in my spot behind the door. He opened his body up in my direction. 'And who might you be?'

  'Who wants to know?' I said.

  'Name is Orie. Orie Boggs. I run a farmstead out in the Sands. Or I used to, anyhow.'

  'Well, Orie, my name is Phoenix. I'm the bondsman that brought in your brother.'

  Orie smirked under his jowly moustache. 'Phoenix? What kind of dumbass name is that?'

  I flipped the knife and started cleaning under my fingernails. 'The kind my Mom gave me.'

  'Phoenix what?'

  'Phoenix mind your own damn business.'

  The ma
n stared at me for a good long time, and then shook his head and turned away.

  'Where's my brother?' he said.

  'He got a shock,' I replied.

  'He badly hurt?'

  Carter leaned across the counter and handed Orie a form covered in scribbles. 'Judging by his language when they took him down there, he'll live.'