by Kris Holt
It looked like the goon had his hands on Cassie's neck, choking her even as she tried to keep the crane steady. When she tried to free herself from his grasp, he went for the controls, stabbing at buttons and wrenching at the joystick she was using to control the arm. On cue, I span around once more, heading back towards the Burning Man just as Cassie smashed the merc face first into the control panel. I went clear through a gap in the effigy's outer shell just as the final thread at the bottom of my trousers gave way.
I was launched straight through a pile of burning planks, bringing an avalanche of loose masonry and sheeting down upon my head. I grabbed a hold of the one beam wide enough to hold my weight and clung on for dear life. The rest of the scaffolding tinkled and thumped before being consumed in the white-hot nightmare below. It was a handy reminder of what I was due if I let go.
Here, swinging below the platform I'd seen earlier, the heat was intense, unbearable. A hundred separate blazes crackled around me, catching on my skin and my clothes. Clambering on top of the beam as the structure around me glowed, I whipped my smouldering jacket off, dropping it into the void. It burst into flame before it was halfway down. And then I climbed the scorched beam, one foot above the other, pushing the weight out and up. Pretend it's a hot summer's day and you're climbing a tree. It's a real goddamn hot summer's day and the tree's definitely not a cauldron of fiery death. The inner walls of the Burning Man closing round me like an oven. Seemed I could smell myself cooking. Sweat dripped down my arms, making the climb up the wood ever more slippery and dangerous.
Finally, having worked well past the point of exhaustion and with my blood roaring as it pumped at speed through my temples, I dragged my body onto the top platform inside the head of this wicked construction. The heat was rising, trapped in this chamber like it was a fishbowl turned on its head. I had to get out, and right on cue, the hook of the crane appeared at the end of the platform and hovered invitingly. Bless you, Cassie. No other women in the world had ever made me more grateful than she did right that moment.
'Phoenix...brother...that can't be you...'
Rat was kneeling where I'd seen her earlier, coughing, choking, but still fighting to stay alive. The will to live is in the genes, of that I was sure. Di Vio had had my sister chained to a spot in the plating, right behind the Burning Man's soulless eyes. From here, I realised Rat had been able to see everything that was happening below - a cruel touch someone was gonna pay for in spades. Now, when she saw me, I could tell she thought she was dreaming. But I had her upright in a second, and the charge I had left in the laser was enough – blessedly - to cut her loose.
'Is there anyone else?' I yelled.
'Just me,' Rat cried. She opened the locket around her neck, showed me the picture we'd looked at together when we'd first met. 'Their leader saw me looking at your picture.'
She stood upright, embraced me, and I turned to lead her back to the crane so we could head down safely.
When I turned back, the platform was blocked by an immaculately-dressed man sitting at a piano. He nodded to me, smiled evilly, and held my gaze as he played.
'Brother,' Rat said, 'What are we waiting for?'
Moving myself between her and Piano Man, I lifted my pistol. 'Someone's about to go to hell, Rat. But it ain't gonna be us.'
Chapter 35 – One Shot
'Brother?' Rat's face, confused, dirty, scared. 'What's the matter?'
I expected Piano Man to laugh or pull off one of his vile rhymes to mock me, but now he was looking straight past me at Rat. Looking at her the same way that wild dogs look at a straggler.
'Rat, get back,' I warned.
'What do you mean? Where am I supposed to go?'
'Just get back,' I pleaded. Back, into the fire, as though that was somehow safer. Maybe it was.
'You're scaring me,' Rat said.
Piano Man's tune was low, melancholy. 'Phoenix,' he said, 'ain't you gonna introduce me to your little sister?'
Nothing I could think of to say in that moment was going to earn me a place in heaven. Though maybe I should have just gone wild, because staying silent wasn't about to earn me any favours either.
'If I were you, I'd want to get her down from here,' Piano Man said amiably. 'It's pretty damn hot.'
'No hurry,' I growled. 'If you've got something to say, I'll wait to hear you out.'
I was dimly aware that the world was fraying around the edges, the flames climbing too slowly to be real. Rat's cries slowed down and she faded into the background, like someone calling my name from a street away.
The Piano Man's fingers blurred. They might have been the only thing that was still moving. 'Here's the thing. We've spoken a few times now, and that's not a common occurrence for me. Most people tend to find that once is enough for them. Now, first time we spoke, you should have died. Second time, pretty much the same. Third time, you actually did. Put all of them events together, and by rights, you shouldn't still be here to engage in polite discourse, you get me?'
I still said nothing. No words felt safe.
'Phoenix, you seem to have a taste for a particular kind of danger, and frankly, you've been pushing and pulling the boundaries of reality every which way for a while. Now, that's a high-risk strategy, and no mistake. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that you ain't so much burning a candle at both ends as you are trying to bring one intact outta Hell. You get what I'm saying?'
I was a man walking a tightrope. A tightrope that reached out beyond this devil from the Sands, and down to earth and something like safety. I didn't want to have to go through the Piano Man – hell, I didn't even know if I could walk right through him like he was made of air - but if I stayed to hear to what he had to say, there was every chance Rat and I would be burned to cinders before he was done listening to the sound of his own voice.
'But you have a saving grace,' Piano Man continued, closing his eyes and playing by feel. 'The toll. Whatever you do, whatever crazy risks you take, it's okay, because you always pay the toll. Ain't that right?'
'I always pay my debts,' I said. If I threw my whole weight into that piano...
His voice cut through me, and I was sure he could tell what I was thinking. 'Why, if only everyone was as trustworthy as you. Here you are, a veritable Southern gentleman, honest, reliable, virtuous. If there was more people like you in the world, why, then it wouldn't be about to burn to a crisp, would it now?'
'Burn up here, or burn down there. Hell looks the same from every angle.' That thought stayed hanging there. Heat crawled up my neck, blistering the skin as it went. I could hear Rat whimpering.
'If only being deserving of a future was enough to earn you one, huh.' Piano Man's eyes flicked open and he looked over his shoulder and downwards. Instinct caused me to follow his eyeline and I saw Jensen a hundred and fifty feet below, standing on a raised platform at the edge of the bowl, Betsy at his shoulder. The barrel of the gun seemed to widen in a yawn, waiting for its moment.
Up here on the platform, we were sitting ducks. I had no time, had nothing, no threat, only an offer. 'You can do what you like to me. Ain't no need for me to fear death. It ain't nothin' new, after all. But don't take my sister.'
'I saved your life twice already,' Piano Man said, the tune gaining a tempo, his hands a fury as they rattled at the keys before him. 'But I happen to know you're plumb out of cash, and I'm not in any kinda mood to go giving out freebies.'
'She's young. There's hope for her.'
'People say it's the hope that kills you. 'Course, a bullet'll do that too.'
'People say a lot of shit,' I said, levelling my pistol.
Piano Man blinked as I brought it up to his face, and then pointed it past his shoulder at Jensen below. Time was standing as near as possible to still. I figured this probably wasn't a fair advantage, but I was gonna take any one that I could get.
I wasn't too sure what I'd expected to happen when I squeezed the trigger. Was I subject to the same universal rules as usual? Would I watch t
he laser beam scream across the distance like a rope and grapple? Would it burn through Jensen and leave him standing there dumb until the world turned again?
Instead of any of the above, the trigger clicked away to nothing. Piano Man raised an eyebrow. 'Nice try. But you used all your charge getting the young lady free.'
'Just out of interest,' I asked, deadpan, dying inside, 'what would happen if I picked you up from your stool and threw you at that guy down there?'
Piano Man laughed in his wheezy way. 'Dyin' didn't affect your sense of humour, boy.'
He broke out of his tune for a moment to play the low, sombre bars from the Funeral March, ending at once in a single flat note that raised the hairs on my neck. But he continued staring, straight past the gun, straight past me.
'Whatever the price is,' I said, desperate, 'I'll pay it. However long it takes. I'll pay it.'
When he spoke, it was in a voice barely louder than a whisper.
'I don't doubt you would. But son, this isn't your toll to pay.'
There was a crash beside me as the climbing flames reached the support beams on our floor. I couldn't turn my head, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see them, smouldering chunks of wood, floating, suspended in the air.
'So why are we even having this conversation?'
He fixed me with a hard stare. 'Because you have to learn that it's not always about you.'
Suspended, like a life on hold. Like borrowed time, time I'd been living on since the day I'd first seen the Piano Man. The day after I'd met Jayci and Gregor. So recent, but to me it could have been lifetimes ago.
There were no words.
'Phoenix!' Rat pulled me around and screamed in my ear. The floating beam crashed down beside me, rocking the floor we were standing on. 'Stop it! There's no-one there!'
All at once, she was right. Piano Man was gone.
I grabbed Rat, hugged her close to me, as though my body could somehow shield her from a high-calibre bullet. Tears were flooding down my cheeks and hissing as they fell onto the wooden beams below. My little sister. I'd only just got to know her.
And then, as I looked down from the space on the platform where the Piano Man had been, I understood. A hundred and fifty feet below, Jensen was standing, Betsy still at his shoulder, but with the barrel pointed not up at us, but down towards the crane cab. Cassie was sitting with her back to him, staring up at the Burning Man.
'Cassie!' I yelled. To no avail.
'It's not always about you...'
It might not have been about me, but it still felt like it should have been. Clutching onto Rat with all the strength I had left, I dived for the hook of the crane just as Betsy sang out below us and a bloody splat shattered the window of the cab.
Chapter 36 – Taking Us Home
Staring eyes, scorched earth. Cassie sprawled, limbs loose among the glass and metal.
As soon as the image hit my eye, the bottom fell out of the world and we were falling forever. There was only one way to go, and we were set to hit the ground like a fist from heaven.
Rat was clutching at me, screaming all the way. I think I was screaming too. But more than that, I was thinking. There was a chance.
There was one solitary chance.
With Rat still clamped around me, I threw us away from the plummeting chain and aimed straight at the water tower. In the distance as we dropped, I was able to pick out Di Vio's giant monster truck. It was tearing out of the dust cloud I'd seen earlier, travelling in reverse at unnatural speed.
It was ridiculous. It should have been funny. But Cassie. Oh God, Cassie.
Rat and I hit the water together and I lost my grip on her. There was enough water left in the tower – just – to cushion our fall. I touched bottom and concertinaed back upwards to the surface. Rat's head appeared a half-second later. She spluttered, kicked and made her way over to the lip of the tower. When she got there, she lifted herself up and threw up over the edge.
* * *
By the time I got to the cab, limping, soaked through and with clouds of steam rising off my clothes, Mar was already there, cradling Cassie in her arms. The dark angel's face was pale and completely empty. She could have been a tree in winter.
I hated asking. I half-expected her to take a swing at me. But I had to know. 'What happened to him? What happened to Jensen?'
'He ran,' she said simply. 'Jumped on a trike and took off at speed. His men went with him.'
Then Rat was there, shrieking. The shrieks became tears as she gave her friend a final bloody embrace. The crowd, who'd scattered when the gunshots had begun below, were returning slowly now. It wasn't every day you saw someone throw themselves off a giant statue and land in a water tank. That was like something right out of the circus.
At the head of the crowd came Mayor Belasco, holding a pair of magnificent pistols with polished mother-of-pearl handles. He was a proper statesman; ready to defend his town to the death if need be. Like me, though, he was less use when the fighting was over. When he saw the girls fortressed around our dying friend, he lowered his arms and looked around for Sergeant Carter, who took a step forward.
Before she could say a word, Di Vio's truck burst out of the dust cloud that had rolled as far as the edge of the bowl, turned a full one-eighty and rested perfectly in the basin, as though it'd been parked there specially. From this angle, you could see most of the rear shielding had been torn away and bastardized into a massive trailboard that was hanging dangerously off the front of the truck.
'Right on time,' I murmured.
Carter looked at the transport and back to me. 'Where are Di Vio's men?'
'They're gone,' I said. 'Back to the water.'
She looked past me. 'And this is our transport?'
Even before the hasty adjustments that Mama Smokes' outlaws had worked on, there'd been enough room inside the truck for Di Vio's small army. With people stacked on top of the people stacked onto the trailboard, it might just be big enough.
A chubby figure with a facescarf stepped out of the dust cloud and looked around for a moment, finally setting eyes on me and stumbling over. I knew Gregor from his shambling walk long before he got close, and I eyed the sweat patches on his shirt and trousers as he approached. They were a handy reminder of our fast-approaching hot deadline.
'Phoenix,' he said. 'We have to go now.'
'No-one's going anywhere until I say so,' Mayor Belasco said. 'We need to understand what's happening here.'
'There's no time.' Gregor pulled down his facescarf and spun to face the mayor without breaking stride. There was something new in his manner, something that a crisis had brought to the surface. 'We have to get everyone on board the truck now.'
'Everyone?' Mayor Belasco looked mystified.
'The entire town,' Gregor said. He turned on his heel with a sense of timing I'd have been proud of, only to call over his shoulder, 'Now, and I mean now. Anyone not on that truck when it leaves in five minutes is going to have a really, really bad day.'
Carter turned to Belasco. 'Mayor, you have to tell the people to get on board. Use the speakers they were using for the celebration.' Belasco still looked bewildered, but he was sweating as badly as anyone else as he followed Carter over to the edge of the bowl, and I could tell he sensed the events running away beneath him, flowing freely away like a new river in the dust.
'Phoenix,' said a small voice behind me. 'Will you help us?'
Rat and Mar were kneeling next to Cassie's body. As I watched, Mar reached down and tugged her late friend's knife from its sheath, placing it in her belt next to her own. When this was done, she closed Cassie's eyes gently with her forefingers and stood up.
'She comes with us,' Mar said. 'I won't leave her to the sun. We need to find a blanket or a tarpaulin.'
Rat and I hightailed, and we found a blanket in an abandoned hut by the side of one of the torchlit pathways. We'd just made it back when the PA system kicked in. There was no time for lengthy speeches, and Belasco was admirably
quick. He made it clear that Di Vio's men had seized the water, and survival depended on the entire town, every man, woman and child, loading themselves onto Di Vio's truck and doing their part to help take it back.
The bounty hunters, overlooked once and never again, helped police people onto the truck. If people didn't want to go, no-one remonstrated with them, just let them be. But there weren't too many of those – Hole Town was incensed at those who would harm it, and parching in the rotten heart of the desert, people would need to drink pretty soon. That focused the mind in a way that stirring words never would.
Carter reappeared at my side as I was helping Rat and Mar load Cassie's body onto the truck. She'd dumped her military jacket in favour of a loose khaki vest. A large bag was swinging in an eyecatching fashion from one shoulder.